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double-barreled shotgun: chenle's birthday
[november]
[problem 2] [Mark Lee is stubborn.]
“You look like a dead rat,” Chenle comments, sliding the bag across the counter. [Finals season.]
Mark, who looks seconds from collapsing in exhaustion despite it barely being lunchtime, grunts in return. “I feel like a dead rat.” He opens the takeout box and examines the insides of the container like he always does. To this day, Chenle doesn’t know why he does it, and hasn’t figured out a way to ask without sounding like a creep that knows too much about Mark’s weird habits. Does he think the food is going to poison him or something? [This is something one of my friends does, to check to see if he got his order right, because he has this weird anxiety about going back with his takeout, realising it’s the wrong order, and being too scared to call; telling them in person is easier apparently. This has never happened ever LOL, but it reminded me of Mark. A lot of minute character details like this are things I’ve observed from the people around me, that I’ve lifted and placed into my fic.] “Whoa. Extra sauce. Nice.” [Chenle is really good at remembering details about people, but I’ve noticed he’s especially perceptive to their food preferences. I also included this to underscore how Chenle is good at intrinsically knowing/remembering what Mark wants without Mark having to say anything.]
“You come by so often, Auntie Shi knows your order by now.” Chenle doesn’t mention he’s always the one slipping into the kitchen to add extra sauce, much to Auntie Shi’s protests. He also doesn’t mention that she’s noticed him going into the kitchen less in the past couple of months. [During my short stint as a server at a Korean place, my boss was this old cranky lady who always seemed to make my favourite dishes when I was having a shit day. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not, but sometimes the most perceptive person in your life is the old Asian lady who orders you around and treats you like a bad son.]
Entering in his employee discount into the cardreader is such an automatic action, Chenle doesn’t realise he’s zoned out until Mark waves a hand back and forth in front of his face. [I don’t know why, but I’m disproportionately proud of how this dialogue tag turned out. It packs a punch.] “Yo, it’s your birthday?”
“No, it’s not,” he replies before he can think. Mark’s eyes flick down to something on Chenle’s chest. Chenle looks down too and realises the stupid birthday boy ribbon Yizhuo forced him to wear for a photo is still pinned to his apron. “Fuck— I mean— yeah, it is. I don’t know why I said that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Chenle rips the dumbass ribbon off and stows it in the counter’s designated junk drawer, underneath craft scissors and several rolls of duct tape. “You never asked.” [I’m going to talk more about my experiences with birthdays in a bit, but level with me: is there really a casual way to tell someone your birthday if they don’t ask? Does it not just come off as conceited, especially if you aren’t doing anything to celebrate? I’ve had so many friends whine that they forgot my birthday because I didn’t tell them, but how DO you tell them? “Hey my birthday is in 12 months, write that down mf” I don’t get it.]
“But you knew mine.”
“Yeah, and I found that out by accident.”
“I guess—” Mark furrows his eyebrows. “Wait, why are you working?”
“I have rent due in a week?”
“You’ve been working every day this week.” [Mark knows this because he walks by the restaurant all the time trying to casually peek inside.]
Has he? Chenle blinks and mentally counts the days in reverse, then realises— “Hey, you don’t know that, you haven’t talked to me all month—”
“It’s your birthday!” Mark sounds so upset, Chenle flinches. It’s not even his birthday, yet he’s making enough of a fuss to attract the attention of everyone in the dining area.
“It’s just another day.” Chenle jams the print receipt button down. He doesn’t fucking get it. “It’s not that big of a deal. Why do you care so much?”
[Okay, so. Re: birthdays. Chenle mentioned a few times that he never cared about his birthdays until he debuted and other people started caring about it, and it’s a detail that’s stuck out to me because I’m also the same. There’s a variety of reasons why I don’t care about my birthday, but the resounding one is that as much as I enjoy being perceived and being the loud yapper centre of attention, I don’t like asking for it. Something about asking for people to look at me, to acknowledge that I’ve done something every single person in the world does every year, feels like too much. I also hate it when people make a big deal out of my birthday, and then never talk to me afterwards.
I definitely put those feelings into Chenle, because every fic I write contains bits and pieces of me, but I also think it felt right. Mark has been a terrible friend since he started dating, who gives him the right to care so much about Chenle on a singular day of the year? Why do birthdays give you the excuse to be an attentive friend for one day of the year and that’s it?]
“Because I—man, what?” Mark shakes his head with a scowl. His face looks all wrong when it’s scrunched up, older and meaner and way more tired. “Because I care about you, that’s why! Because you’re my friend and I care that it’s your birthday. Why are you so allergic to the idea of—I don’t know, being known? I know everything you care about, like your grades and your work and fucking Stephen Curry, but I don’t get to care about you. You talk so goddamn much yet somehow, you don’t actually tell me anything! I don’t know if you still call your parents [He doesn’t] or whether or not you believe in fate [He does] or any of your dreams or aspirations or guilty pleasure TV shows or—or your birthday, Jesus, don’t you think those are big deals? Don’t you think you’re worth caring about?”
[This is my favourite dialogue in the whole fic, which is ironic because I noticed a couple months ago that it’s eerily similar to another dialogue in my HyuckLe fic, Stars In Their Multitudes LMAO. Self plagiarism, I guess?
I think it’s interesting how Chenle’s considered very TMI, very open to talk about himself, very quick to give deep sage advice, but sometimes his oversharing is about the small silly things and never about his inner thoughts. I feel like it wasn’t until ChenRa when he started getting more honest and more personal. This isn’t a bad thing by any means, just something I noticed during my time as a little sun. And as someone who’s very similar, it felt right to put in. There’s something weirdly vulnerable about other people knowing you better than yourself, so why not just cut the bud before it can sprout?
Chenle’s mouth goes dry.
Everyone who turned to stare at them quickly go back to their own food.
Mark sucks in a breath all at once and shrinks in on himself, trying to make himself smaller. [Too many eyes on him.] “Are you doing anything today at least?” he asks softly, like he’s scared of the words that will come out of his mouth next. A part of Chenle is scared, too—the part that hasn’t had an LED beacon flashed at it, illuminating all the raw edges. “You’ll break my heart if you tell me you’re not celebrating.” [I like this line a lot. It survived all four drafts!]
Chenle shifts his weight and focuses his attention on picking at some adhesive residue stuck to the counter so he doesn’t have to look up. His heart thuds against his chest, uneven and painful. Out of all the ways to have Mark pay attention [Again, full circle on the asking for attention thing.] to him again, this is probably in the top three worst.
“Drinks, Netflix, nothing big.” He invited Donghyuck, Mark’s roommate and an unlikely but not unwelcome new friend, after he found out Donghyuck also liked Single’s Inferno, and Yizhuo invited herself. The plan was for a tipsy season three binge party, though it sounds way sadder in his head now. [I’ve mentioned a lot that this fic was originally in Mark’s POV, and this moment is an instance of it. Donghyuck had a huge role in the original draft, and I wanted to parallel NaHyuck’s relationship with Mark and Junghwa’s, to show that it’s possible to keep being friends with Chenle in a relationship, Mark is just a bad friend.] “You can come over if you want. My place at six.
When he looks up again, Mark’s face is crumpling in on itself, cycling through all five stages of grief. It would be hilarious to watch in any other context. It’s not very funny right now. “I’m getting dinner with Junghwa. Her birthday is tomorrow, but she’s too busy to celebrate. Just like you, haha.” [Chenle makes a huge effort to avoid learning about Junghwa at all costs, but in the original draft, I wanted Junghwa to feel eerily similar to Chenle, because Mark was just looking for Chenle in the people around him. The reason why he hesitates agreeing to go out with Junghwa is because dating someone who’s essentially girl Chenle means reckoning with the fact that the only thing that’s stopping him from dating Chenle is Chenle’s gender.]
Great, getting chewed out in front of the entire restaurant over a stupid fucking day amongst three-hundred sixty-four point two five others, and Mark doesn’t even fucking care about the day to begin with. Brilliant, even.
“We could head to the courts tomorrow, then. I haven’t been to the gym in a few days, maybe you’ll finally be able to beat me. We haven’t played ones in a while.” Not since Junghwa Baek, Chenle doesn’t say.
“I—wanted to surprise her in between tests.”
“Next week?” Mark doesn’t have to open his mouth for Chenle to discern what he’s going to say next. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. “Nevermind.” [I’m sorry for putting you through the horrors Chenle, rereading this is making me sad.]
Before Chenle can look up and tell him to go fuck off for good, he feels himself get crushed in a hug. Mark buries his head in the crook of Chenle’s neck and his arms wrap around Chenle tight, tight, tight.
Chenle doesn’t get the chance to figure out what to do with his hands by the time Mark pulls back to his side of the counter. “Happy birthday, alright?” He doesn’t meet Chenle’s eyes, tucking his wallet away and grabbing a hold of the bag. “Let me in your head once in a while.”
[In regards to this being the climax of Chenle’s main character arc, from here on out (and in the present timeline), he puts a lot more effort into opening up about himself. Ultimately, this fic is about honesty and letting yourself be known, and even though Chenle is out of the closet, he’s more experienced with his sexuality, and he’s so much more candid, both of them need to be shoved out of their comfort zones because both of them are so scared of not knowing who they are. Chenle in particular struggles with people perceiving him differently than he perceives himself, to the point where he actively pushes against it and resists it, but it’s a necessary part of growth. This fic itself was such a challenge to write, but as a porn with feelings fic where to have sex is to be known… I think I pulled it off pretty well!]