stars in their multitudes: the confession
Dec. 30th, 2023 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajayinthedark
It doesn’t get easier.
Tech flies by faster than Donghyuck can catch his breath, and it doesn’t get easier. Mark asks him for breakfast recipes, Renjun sends him photos of rocks and snails he finds, Jeno passes him granola bars during intermission, Jaemin winks at him every solo [Wish Jaemin could've been here more :( He makes Donghyuck and Chenle's life a living hell when they start dating.], and it doesn’t get easier.
Chenle walks Donghyuck all the way up to his door for the first time, and it is not easy. [Reference to when Donghyuck narrates earlier that everything about Chenle is easy. Becoming friends with Chenle is easy because he bleeds all his emotions, but falling in love with him is so, so difficult because he bleeds all his emotions. Donghyuck and Chenle are so similar as friends, but so different as lovers, and it's one of my favourite things about them.]
“Opening night in twenty-four hours,” Chenle says as Donghyuck unlocks his front door. “How are you holding up?”
“Ready to get it over with,” Donghyuck answers honestly, leaving space for Chenle to step inside as well. Donghyuck kicks his shoes off and switches to his favourite slides. Otherwise, he lingers in the entryway with Chenle, who peers around in curiosity. For how many times they’ve hooked up, for as long as they’ve been friends, Chenle has never come over, and Donghyuck prays he doesn’t take note of the dirty dishes in the sink or the clothes in a pile on one of his dining room chairs.
“Our Apollo.” [I changed what Chenle says here ten times while editing after I published it. I settled on Apollo because Enjolras, Donghyuck's character, has the nickname in Les Mis of "Apollo", and it's another connection Donghyuck has to the sun.] Chenle grins and draws Donghyuck into a hug, pressing the side of his head against Donghyuck’s shoulder. His hair, damp and smelling of citrus [Orange, like the sun.] shampoo, tickles Donghyuck’s jaw. “Keep your confidence up. You’re going to set the stage on fire [Sun, sun, sun. It's barely a few paragraphs in, and already so repetitive LMAO.] tomorrow.”
“I can’t do that, I need to get paid.”
Chenle shakes [He's laughing here lmao.] in his hold and it leaves Donghyuck dizzy. [Bringing it back to the brunch flashback, Donghyuck loves making Chenle laugh.]
He spent so much time during dress rehearsals whittling down what to say, yet with the moment presenting itself now, Donghyuck finds himself at a loss for words. He’s an actor, he reads off scripts written hundreds of drafts over by writers who have dedicated their lives to capturing metaphysical beauty, a skill he himself can’t fathom, much less summon on the fly. [Something that's stuck out to me with my theatre experience is not just how much of myself I put into the characters I play, but also how much they leave an impact on me. I'll do something a certain way and think, "Oh, this would've been a great character choice for x". On occasion, when I'm really lost, I'll think, "How would x do this?", which is what I channelled for Donghyuck here. The actor may move on from the character, but does the character ever really leave the actor?] How could someone begin to describe the importance of sunrises, high noons, and sunsets beyond physical needs? [Sun, sun, sun.]
Every word, every thought, every emotion stays trapped in him, impossible to force out, and Donghyuck’s knees threaten to crumple when Chenle pulls back with a small smile. “Goodnight, Donghyuck.”
“Goodnight, Chenle.” Even saying that much is a Herculean [More Greek allusions.] task.
Chenle lingers for a moment, maybe twenty, all of which slide past Donghyuck’s fingers into a small mound on the floor.
He watches Chenle close the door behind him and strains to hear footsteps fade down the hall.
Renjun followed the exact same steps hundreds of times. Donghyuck would watch him leave for the real world outside of the apartment walls, and he’d never speak up. Every time Donghyuck turned the lock behind him, an inch of his soul fizzled out into midnight. [While Chenle is likened to the sun, warmth, and mornings, Renjun is likened here to night time and darkness. Renjun is sort of like the moon to Donghyuck's sun, and Chenle is the Earth in between.]
Chenle isn’t Renjun. Donghyuck is still Donghyuck.
He can’t bring himself to get up and lock the door, instead drifting off to his living room.
On the coffee table is a stack of cookbooks Donghyuck bought on a whim the other day, stories of classic Chinese dishes from as many provinces as he could find compiled into beginner friendly recipes. Next to it is a light brown reusable boba cup, one that could be refilled at orders for a small discount on the final price, won together with a matching blue cup the day he and Chenle went in on the twentieth anniversary of the chain. There’s the stupid Stephonious Curricles pen too, laying on his phone he forgot to bring to rehearsal. [Acts of service, quality time, and giving gifts all together on the table.]
Donghyuck jolts, then immediately lunges for his phone, scrambling to swipe over the keypad. He scrolls through his contacts, jams his thumb down on the call button, and grips his phone so tight in his hand he dents the plastic case with his nails.
“—uck? Hyuck? What’s up?”
Leaking through the receiver is the faint sound of an engine, and Donghyuck runs over to the window, where he can see Chenle’s hand on the car door. [This is such an unashamed romcom moment, and I was so pleased with myself when I first thought of it. There's so much physical distance between them in this moment, but they're both connected by their phone call and their matching thoughts.]
“Did I—leave anything in your car?” he stammers, “I think I left something in your car.”
He watches Chenle loop around to check the passenger seat, the backseat, and the trunk, ducking in and out of his view. “Not that I can tell. Did you lose something specific?”
Every part of Donghyuck screams at him to stall, stall, stall, do anything to keep Chenle from leaving the street. “What about gas? Is your gas tank full? There’s a station one block away. You don’t want to run out of gas and break down on the side of the street tomorrow, do you?”
A beat passes. “Yes, Hyuck, my gas is full.”
“What about oil?” he cries, “Tire pressure? Battery? Wiper fluid?”
“Donghyuck, stop. Breathe.” Chenle turns around and looks at him from below through the window, jaw set and eyes shadowed. [The differences in elevation between them is an allusion to one of the scenes in the original Les Mis novel, where Grantaire, Chenle's character, looks from the ground up at Enjolras while Enjolras is waving a flag out of a window. It's also another sun reference: Donghyuck is on a higher elevation than Chenle, the sun looking down at the Earth. I actually really enjoy doing differences in elevation/levels across all of my fics; I picked it up from theatre, and I like the physicality of it.] A singular street lamp illuminates his visage. “What do you really want to ask? Are you nervous? I told you, you’re going to do amazing and—”
“I don’t know why I never told Renjun I was in love with him,” Donghyuck blurts out in one breath. He doesn’t wait for a sign to continue, squeezing his eyes shut and rambling on, “I don’t know why I never told him. I met him when he was single, we were both gay and out, and he joked so many times about how I’d make a good boyfriend. We were best friends, we would’ve patched up any holes we had if Renjun didn’t reciprocate, and even if we dated and broke up, I would’ve at least known that I tried my best. [Donghyuck's sharp self awareness is his unbecoming in his relationship with Renjun. The fact that Donghyuck can't tell how he feels whatsoever around Chenle is one of the reasons why they work so well. The moment Donghyuck's overanalytical ass can step out of his brain for two seconds is the moment he really learns how to live and feel.]
“I don’t know why I never told him, and I fell out of love with him, and fuck, I might’ve lost the chance of a lifetime to a guy that burns his homemade mixtapes onto CDs.” [I meant this as in playlist mixtapes, Perks of Being a Wallflower style. The first CD Mark ever gives Renjun is probably something like "songs that played on our first date" or "songs we should slow dance to". Corny lame stuff that's the ideal Mark/Renjun dynamics to me.] Donghyuck’s next inhale hits him so hard, he stumbles forward and his head thunks against the glass pane. “I can’t do that again, Chenle. I can’t lose another chance.”
“Donghyuck Lee—”
“I think I’m falling for you.” [I love Donghyuck's uncertainty here, because he's spent years unsure of his own feelings that he can't differentiate between his real feelings and his acted feelings, between the lines of the script and reality, between what's supposed to happen and what's actually happening.] Donghyuck opens his eyes and Chenle is nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t care, he can’t care, not with every part of his human being fighting to crawl out of his body and lay itself bare on the hardwood floors. It’s well past the point of no return, too far out the horizon to see the sun. “Or, at least, I know I feel something more, and I know I could fall for you. I’m telling you now, I know I could fall in love with you. I know I could be in love with you. I know I could love you.
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same. You can love your other person and I’ll be more than happy to be your friend. [He's lying. He's "acting".] I just needed to tell you, because I didn’t want to lose to the tide again and have this eating at my heart for another five years.” He slumps on the floor and curls in on himself. The side facing the room is hot, burning up, and the side pressed to the floor is cold, freezing over. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ll be okay. I’m—”
The front door slams open and closed and in a flash, Donghyuck is yanked to his feet and it’s a wild-eyed Chenle, and Chenle is here, and Chenle has both his hands clutched around Donghyuck’s face and Chenle is kissing him.
Chenle is kissing him. [In the living room where Renjun and Mark kissed the first time.]
Chenle is kissing him, and Donghyuck can’t keep himself from melting [Again, temperature/heat with Chenle.] into his touch.
Pulling apart leaves them both breathless, gasping for air. Chenle presses his forehead to Donghyuck’s, his voice low enough to send a rumble down Donghyuck’s spine.
“I—” he breathes— “I really fucking like you, Donghyuck. [Soooooo much more confidence in Chenle's confession. He knows. He's known. He falls in love like a meteor, and he always knows when he's close to terminal velocity.] I really fucking like you, and I think I’m falling for you too. I fucking will, if you give me more time. A month, two weeks, a week and a half, tomorrow, I’ll be in love with you, all of you.”
“There’s not much to love,” Donghyuck croaks, “I’m terrible at communication. I’ve been eating the same soup at least once a week since I graduated high school. I bought a monthly med sorter so I only had to refill my doses once every few weeks, but I never ended up taking it out of the package.” [I wanted to take more time to explore Donghyuck's mental health, but I knew if I spent any longer on this fic, I would've gone insane. It's there in between the lines though, and you'll find it if you're looking close.]
“I don’t care,” he replies, quieting to match Donghyuck’s volume. Chenle is never this quiet, and it scares Donghyuck as much as it leaves him breathless. “I don’t care how much you have, how much you think you have, I’ll love it all. I’ll text you everyday, I’ll make you new soups, I’ll sort your meds, I’ll do whatever the hell it takes for you to love yourself as much as I will. As much as I do.” In his eyes is the reflection of the nighttime sky, stars in their multitudes [Title drop! Also, the sun is a star, and Donghyuck is seeing his own reflection. He's the one that's shining so bright, because that's how Chenle makes him feel.] shining so bright, Donghyuck can’t look away. “Give us more time, and we can love each other.”
None of Donghyuck’s words can match the earnestness spilling from Chenle’s heart, so he opts to close his eyes and tilt his head up, drawing Chenle in again, pouring every ounce of his being into Chenle’s parted mouth until they’re both overflowing to the brim, an ocean in Donghyuck’s living room pulling them into the furthest depths. [This is a reference to the earlier flashback, where I describe the tides pulling off Donghyuck's shore, and how he is able to pick up sand from the ground. Tides are influenced by the movement of the moon, but in that specific flashback, Donghyuck is picking up the sand: picking up the Earth, picking up Chenle. In that moment, he wonders vaguely if the sand will slip through the cracks in his fingers, if Chenle will slip through and get away because of the cracks in his heart, in a sense.
When I mentioned earlier, how Renjun is like the moon, in this paragraph, in an abstract sense, the tide is receding--how Donghyuck feels about Renjun, Renjun's presence in Donghyuck's life--is receding, pulling the two of them into the ocean, into the furthest part of the Earth. Very esoteric. I'm a huge loser.
But anyway, cracks or otherwise, Donghyuck understands how he feels about Chenle, as articulated in the phone call, and all that's left for him to do is drown in his instinct and let himself get swept into the ocean--swept into Chenle.]
