Work Text:
For the most part, Jaemin has done a fine job avoiding social media like the plague.
Scientific research has shown time and time again how damaging SNS is to neural development, and he’s more than happy subsisting on rewatching his favourite video essays and the occasional cat video Renjun sends him without downloading any other apps themselves. Jaemin connects to the real world. He goes on walks. He touches grass.
When Donghyuck texts him a Twitter link, Jaemin expects a shit post or a reposted TikTok or some terrible conservative take, the kind of Donghyuck-branded bullshit that he sends just to piss Jaemin off.
It’s not a shit post or a reposted TikTok or some terrible conservative take.
The clip is from Chenle’s apology dinner, his most recent video and one of the few Jaemin didn’t edit; he was upset at Chenle for drinking his brains out the night before at Kun’s birthday party, knocking over three of Jaemin’s favourite mugs upon coming home, and throwing up his entire digestive system all at three in the morning. Jaemin left for Renjun’s apartment before Chenle woke up, the two bingeing Single’s Inferno over glasses of virgin margaritas while Jaemin stewed in his own gloom and Renjun provided the world’s worst therapy.
Jaemin went home arguably worse off than when he left, but when he opened the door to the smell of sweet and sour ribs and cheonggukjang, and saw Chenle setting the table for two with a frown Jaemin had never seen on him before, his resolve crumpled to shreds and he held Chenle in his arms until the food went cold.
“It doesn’t have to be that perfect,” video Chenle says, voice more subdued than his usual sunny camera disposition. The colour grading is abysmal and he must’ve forgotten to connect the camera microphone, because the cutting is barely audible. “Really, none of these date night foods have to be perfect. The care you put into your cooking is what makes the final dish taste good. My boyfriend has better knife skills than me anyway.” He says the last part with a laugh.
There’s a few extra seconds of Chenle explaining the kimchi soup base, but Jaemin can’t help replaying the “my boyfriend has better knife skills than me” part. It’s innocuous, yet it makes his heart skip a beat.
Then, Jaemin exits full screen and gets an eyeful of the caption.
bambi @913haechansun
guys this is definitely about donghyuck
1.
Jaemin isn’t mad about it.
Jaemin isn’t mad about it.
“Proteins from the egg help thicken the soup, which concentrates the flavours and—you can’t see it? You want a different camera angle?”
Chenle says the last part louder and Jaemin snaps back to the present, fiddling with OBS until it switches from the overhead to the front. Chenle tilts his head in question and Jaemin shakes his head, gesturing for him to focus back on streaming with a smile.
Chenle clears his throat. “Anyway, thicker soup, more concentrated flavours. Eggs can get expensive, so foods that are high in fats or sugars like frozen meats, powdered starches, or potatoes all work as ways to elevate otherwise basic instant soups with nutritional value.”
As Chenle keeps talking, Jaemin’s eyes drift back to his phone.
Earlier in the week, he caved and started a Twitter account, telling himself it was just to maintain a grasp on Chenle’s growing fanbase. The spike in popularity from earlier in the year after his collaboration with Johnny from Johnny’s Communication Center hasn’t died down, and with Chenle keeping up his social presence on every app known to man, it’s beneficial for Jaemin as his editor to keep track of all his platforms.
Except, instead of looking over analytics, Jaemin’s been refreshing the same tweet over and over again, gritting his teeth watching the likes and retweets go up without actually changing the results.
coco @chenlebear
now that chenle has confirmed he’s taken which of his random friends that appear in the bg of his videos is his boyfriend
Chenle and Jaemin started dating well before Chenle started his YouTube channel, and it was Jaemin’s idea in the first place to keep their relationship off camera, but he can’t help feeling miffed. At least with all of the frantic girlfriend stans Chenle has, Jaemin found comfort knowing Chenle is both entirely uninterested in women and entirely uninterested in dating fans. The shift from “did you guys know chenle is dating me” comments to “did you guys know chenle is dating jisung” rubs on Jaemin’s skin the wrong way, far too close to his chest.
Jeno calls it his tendency to be territorial after his exes failed to live up to his commitment standards. Renjun calls it being a Leo.
Jaemin sends the tweet to Renjun.
[Injun - 21:10]
Injun
donghyuck is winning?
LOL
other is only 0.1% behind
who’s “other” supposed to be
Jaemin watches from behind the camera as Chenle piles some noodles and a piece of egg onto a spoon to give to Mark. In any other world, Jaemin wouldn’t have batted an eye, but in this world, the way Chenle blows on the spoon to cool it off before handing it to Mark has the live chat exploding into the stratosphere, and the way the most liked reply to the tweet that isn’t about Renjun, Donghyuck, or Jisung reads “chenle and mark have definitely explored each others bodies”, has Jaemin’s mouth going sour.
“This is gas,” Mark says, mouth still full. Jaemin grimaces as some spit flies out.
Chenle starts wrapping up the live and Jaemin ignores his phone—ignores all of the poll updates Renjun sends him. Soon enough, the cameras are all off and Mark is on his way home with five bowls of modified instant ramen.
“Do you want to order in?” Chenle asks, watching Jaemin pack up all the filming equipment. “You seemed kind of tired earlier, and I need to air out the kitchen anyway. We don’t have to cook.”
“Did you know your fans think you and Donghyuck are dating?” Jaemin blurts out.
Chenle blinks once. Twice.
Then he laughs so hard, he slams his hand down on the granite counter and groans in pain. “Fuck.”
“It’s not that funny,” Jaemin mutters, though everything always gets a little lighter hearing Chenle laugh. “Yah, Chenle.”
“Donghyuck,” Chenle wheezes, “That’s—seriously? Donghyuck?”
“Can you believe it?” Jaemin tries for a smile, but it feels strange and plasticky on his face.
Chenle slides over to pinch Jaemin’s cheek with a grin. “Are you jealous, princess? Jealous of Donghyuck?”
Jaemin wrinkles his nose and pretends the pet name doesn’t make his breath hitch. “Ordering in sounds great. There’s a new Korean restaurant downtown I want to try.”
“How about kimchi jjigae? That’s Donghyuck’s favourite—”
“Chenle,” Jaemin whines, and Chenle bursts into a fit of giggles all over again.
Chenle doesn’t let it go for the rest of the night, poking and prodding and liking as many compilations of him and Donghyuck he can find on official account as they clean and eat.
Once they finish, Jaemin wrestles Chenle into the shower and goes onto his official Twitter to unlike everything, then edits the stream into video form, making sure to cut out any and all PDA. On his burner account, he likes a tweet that points out Mark can’t cook, therefore can’t be the alleged “better knife skills” boyfriend, and when they fall to bed that night, Chenle under his chin with his head pressed against Jaemin’s heart, he closes his eyes to let the warmth lull his brain into forgetting it all happened.
2.
Until the video with Jeno releases and the same thing happens again.
Videos with Jeno are usually Jaemin’s favourite to monitor, since he and Chenle share the least amount of overlapping subscribers. There’s always a bump in views for all of Chenle’s health related videos, plus an influx of male viewers commenting things about body positivity and healthy masculinity that Jaemin knows Chenle loves the most.
The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon strikes Jaemin down, and every other comment made on the new video seems to be speculation about Chenle’s boyfriend.
5starmichelin
chenle is a cat boy and a dog person, jeno is a dog boy and a cat person, they’re meant to be!
goldenstatechenle
jeno and chenle match so well omg
ajayinthedark
13:02 did you see how chenle reached out for the pepper and jeno didn’t realise and held his hand instead
halfandhalf
jeno’s calm personality really balances out chenle’s energy well, they would make such a good couple
His eyebrow twitches the more he scrolls, and eventually, he closes out of the tab and huffs, “Doesn’t it bother you?”
Jisung blinks, slowing down the speed of his treadmill. “Huh?”
“That everyone thinks our boyfriends are dating,” Jaemin clarifies.
Jisung takes a sip from his bottle, takes far longer to swallow his smoothie than necessary, and answers, “He got last place on that second Twitter poll, though.”
“Not the point,” Jaemin mutters. He’s glad they picked an isolated section of the gym to work out at, because he doesn’t need more people to bear witness to his misery. “Jeno and Chenle would be terrible for each other! The lack of communication, the shared stubbornness, their opposite outlooks on life—if they ever dated, Chenle would walk all over Jeno and Jeno wouldn’t protest because he’d think he deserved it—”
“Hyung,” Jisung interrupts, “Don’t be a dick.”
“Sorry.” Jaemin ducks his head, picks up the speed until he’s practically sprinting, and lets out all of his pent up frustration in one loud, full bodied groan.
It’s not much different from any of Jaemin’s other gym groans, but this one in particular makes Jisung stop his machine so he can fix Jaemin with a stern expression. It looks ridiculous on his face, though Jaemin knows better than to coo; icey, furious Jisung fed up with Jaemin’s teasing is much more frustrating to deal with than pouty, angry Jisung mad on his best friend’s behalf.
“Your relationship with Chenle is the longest out of all of us,” he chides, “What are you so insecure about? He loves you a lot. It’s cringe.”
Cringe. Jaemin rolls his eyes. All of Jisung’s funny new words are somehow always used to insult him. Under his breath, he mutters, “No one else knows that.”
Razor sharp, Jisung retorts, “So make them know.”
Huh?
“Huh?”
“Go public.” Jisung shrugs and pulls his towel off the treadmill to wipe his face. “What’s stopping you?”
Jisung voices aloud the thoughts that have been swimming around at the forefront of Jaemin’s mind for the past few days—at the back of his mind for the past year—and like always, Jaemin’s clever, shower-constructed argument beats it down with a stick.
Revealing personal information online is dangerous. The closest call in their friend group was a letter mailed to Donghyuck and Renjun’s personal address instead of their P.O. box. It was a week before they were scheduled to move to a larger condo, but it rattled all of them and left Jaemin on a permanent edge, going through extra leaps to make sure Chenle is safe. However, much of Jaemin’s old employment information back when he worked as a freelance photographer hovers around on the internet, almost impossible to erase. There are way too many factors in Jaemin’s real identity being exposed.
Plus, what if Jaemin just fucking sucks on camera?
What if his skin looks bad even with editing? What if his voice is too hoarse? What if none of his jokes are actually funny and being put on camera makes Chenle realise how lame of a boyfriend Jaemin is, eventually leading Chenle to realise that they could never be a duo act and maybe Jaemin isn’t even a good editor to begin with so Chenle decides he wants to break off their business engagement only it spirals until Chenle breaks up with Jaemin entirely and—?
Jaemin flinches at the hand suddenly grabbing his face and squeezing.
“Stop doing your doom, gloom, and destruction thing again,” Jisung scolds, still squishing Jaemin’s cheeks together. He must’ve turned Jaemin’s treadmill off, though Jaemin still feels like his legs are scrambling to catch up. Softer, Jisung adds, “Jeno and I have been talking about it too. If you’re nervous, we could always do something together, or you can take your time, as long as you communicate, because you suck at that. It’s still worth thinking about, instead of sticking to what you decided for yourself half a decade ago. Change is good, hyung.”
3.
Change is good.
Jaemin moves his normal weekly run on his schedule from Thursday to Friday.
Change is good.
Jaemin adds an extra hour of editing to Wednesday to bolster their stockpile of scheduled videos.
Change is good.
Change is good.
Change is—
“What’s wrong?” Chenle calls out, jerking Jaemin out of his thoughts, “You’ve been drilling holes with your laser eyes into Google Calendar for the past hour.”
Jaemin turns his laptop away from Chenle. Most Sundays are spent like this, Chenle recipe testing in the kitchen while Jaemin sorts out their schedules for the week, the evening saved for romance movies or walking around downtown or way too much sex. Instead of zoning out and thinking about what goods the near future has to offer however, Jaemin keeps hearing Jisung’s words spinning around in his head, like refreshing a page over and over again only for the first line of text to load.
“I’ve been thinking,” he settles on answering with.
“First time for everything,” Chenle hums. At Jaemin’s glare, he rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out, then simpers. “Yes, sweetie, tell me what you’ve been thinking about, you know I love to hear all the thoughts in your big, big brain!”
Chenle is infuriating. Jaemin is in love with him.
Jaemin flicks a balled up piece of dried pie dough at his face and Chenle shrieks when it hits square in his forehead. They dissolve into a fit of giggles that take another few minutes to dispel. Eventually, Jaemin quiets and asks, “Do you think change is good?”
“Like, in general?” Chenle pauses, icing bag dripping over the table. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, it’s kind of just inevitable.” He says it so simply, so easily, it squeezes Jaemin’s heart. He wonders what it would be like to live in Chenle’s brain for a day, wonders how much louder it would be in comparison to his own, yet how much more straightforward all his thoughts would be: their labelled and organised spice rack, as opposed to their overflowing and absolute mess of a fridge.
“What about me?” Jaemin prods. “Do you think I should change?”
Chenle wipes the icing off the table and goes back to drizzling over the pastries. “You could take less time to get ready,” he muses, “You could be less strict about being punctual. You could take more breaks in your work life.”
Rebuttals lie on the tip of Jaemin’s tongue—he needs time to doom scroll through news sites on his porcelain throne, early is on time and on time is late, there is always more work to be done—only for him to slump a bit realising that maybe those thoughts are part of his problem to begin with. Chenle’s observations are arguments they’ve had before; as small and innocuous as the comments are, little bits and pieces of frustration stuck to the two of them like lint on a sweater after two washes. Plus, they’re things Jaemin knows he should work on, that he’s saving for New Year’s resolutions instead of confronting immediately like every other mature and responsible adult.
“That’s not what I meant,” Jaemin sighs. He removes the extra hour of editing and instead adds a midday break.
“So tell me what you meant,” Chenle replies, sliding over the plate of pastries. All of them are strawberry except one, which is apple. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking about in that big, big brain of yours.”
Jaemin eats the apple pastry. The crust falls apart in his mouth in buttery flakes, and the filling is perfectly fruity and sweet, exactly to Jaemin’s tastes. “Are these for the video with Jisung?” Chenle nods. “A little more sugar.”
Chenle scribbles his note down on his paper, then keeps staring at Jaemin with a raised eyebrow until Jaemin’s resolve crumbles. It always does for Chenle at the end. “Have you ever considered…” Jaemin trails and tries to figure out how to word his thoughts. “Have you ever considered changing the content you create?”
The silence they lapse in is thick enough to cut with a cleaver. Chenle speaks up first, words slow and measured. “Jaemin—no, Jaemin-hyung.” The rare honorific makes Jaemin flinch. “I told you from the start, you should never hesitate to tell me if you want to switch career paths, because I’ll support you unconditionally and—”
“No!” Jaemin interrupts, “No no no no, that’s not what I meant at all. I just…” He’s never been good at being blunt like Chenle, never knew how to say things as they were, flat and simple. All of his thoughts spin around his head, stuck in a perpetual salad spinner basket with no way to get out. “I was wondering if you ever thought about doing—lifestyle content.” Yes, yes. This seems to be the right direction. Jaemin keeps going. “You know, to…introduce your viewers into your personal life. Maybe do a relationship challenge, like those funny questions where one person writes the answer while the other one says what they think is correct?”
He says the last part with a laugh, as lighthearted as he can, because it’s too close to what Jaemin is thinking and he can’t confront himself without making it a joke first or else he’d explode and die on the spot.
Chenle doesn’t laugh. “Hyung.” His voice is resolute. “Do you want to go public?”
The million dollar question. Jaemin squirms in his chair and changes the colours of all his Google Calendar events to highlighter pink.
“I would never pressure you if you didn’t want to,” Chenle continues.
“Jisung said change is good,” Jaemin mumbles. The next words crawl out of his throat at a snail’s pace. “Jisung also said I suck at communicating. Jisung also also said I’m…insecure.”
It’s moments like these where Jaemin remembers how long they’ve been together, how much of each other they’ve grown accustomed to. He watches Chenle read his mind, and can pick out every emotion running through Chenle’s head by the twitches across his face like it’s second nature. Chenle settles on a soft understanding, smiling gently as he reaches a hand over to squeeze Jaemin’s wrist. “You’re communicating right now, aren’t you? And I don’t think the problem lies in communication.”
He traces an absent pattern on Jaemin’s skin. “You could do better at being selfish. You could do better at making choices that are purely for yourself. You could get better at asking for things.”
“Okay.” Jaemin clears his throat. “Okay. I’ll start now. I’ll change now! Change is good! I’ll ask you something now.”
“Ask away, oppa,” he says, back to cheeky.
“Can you—?” Jaemin swallows. “Can you—?” Trying to keep his face impassive while also fighting down his urge to cringe at himself is harder than every photo critique he’s endured his entire college career. “Can you ease on the—” He makes vague hand gestures, hoping they get the point across— “the next time you film? A lot of people have been speculating and it makes me uncomfortable because I’m…insecure.” The last part leaves an ashy aftertaste. Jaemin chases it away with more pastry.
Within a second, Chenle has rounded the kitchen island and enveloped Jaemin in a tight hug. It’s an immediate comfort, and Jaemin sinks into his warmth, closing his eyes.
“I’ll tone it down,” Chenle promises, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his hair. Jaemin doesn’t protest, even though he spent an hour and a half teasing it into place this morning. “I’ll tell the others too. They’ll get it.”
For the first time since the first goddamn poll, editing the next video doesn’t make Jaemin want to claw his eyes out and curl into a ball, never to be seen again.
There’s enough of Chenle and Jisung’s innate intimacy in the footage, shared smiles and double takes and terrible jokes they both laugh at, without any of the excessive skinship Chenle’s sicko fanbase is so fond of. While prepping for the scheduled upload, he makes sure to include Jisung’s Instagram account in the description, hoping everyone clicks on it and notices the “@leejen_o_423 ❤️” in his bio.
Falling asleep with Chenle clinging to Jaemin like a clingy cat, feels more personal somehow, a reminder that as touchy as Chenle is, in the end, Jaemin gets this Chenle in his arms every night, and not anyone else.
Sleep is good that week, great even.
Sleep is great, then Jaemin wakes up to a tweet sent from Donghyuck with a string of “ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ” the morning after the video releases.
justin bieber fan @markmeinurheart
see how the editor kept emphasising that chenji are just friends? do you think the editor knows something we don’t omfg
4.
Deep inside, Jaemin knows Jisung is right.
His relationship with Chenle is double the length of Donghyuck and Renjun’s, who didn’t admit their feelings for each other until they graduated and couldn’t bone away their feelings after weekend benders, and triple the length of Jeno and Jisung’s, who only realised the magnitude of their feelings after they saw a video compilation of every tender look they’ve ever given each other on camera.
The two of them were built on steady foundations—coffee one afternoon, dinner and wine another evening, walks around the dog park with both hands on Daegal’s leash—everything about them built brick by individual brick until nine years had passed and they stopped celebrating month-iversaries and started considering shared bank accounts, insurance information, and which one of them got main car privileges. They were whipped cream on the outside, impossible to tell there was something forming until it came together all at once and they were kissing each other goodbye before their friends realised they’d even been holding hands to begin with.
The YouTube channel, the livestreams, and Jaemin’s decision to keep his face off the internet came way after, and even that had a precursor embedded in their history.
Jaemin reaches a tentative hand out and runs his fingers along the gloss cover of Chenle’s first cookbook, a passion project sprung together by them after Chenle finished culinary school and Jaemin bought a new DSLM.
He flicks through the book and lets the full page spreads of photos, short and silly stories, and careful instructions take him back to their older days, back before being a content creator was a legitimate career, back when Daegal looked like a fuzzy potato and Renjun had that God-awful crew cut. The previous apartment was cramped, Jaemin taping lamps to the ceiling and stacking chairs on top of each other to get perfect shots while Chenle worked in the living room, typing up a storm on the five pound brick of a laptop he refused to let go of.
By the end of both their agonising, the food was always cold, and it always tasted like love.
“Are you a fan?”
Jaemin blinks out of his daze, the sounds and lights of the supermarket sharpening into view again. Instead of being alone in the cookware aisle, a young woman, maybe in her early twenties, stands next to Jaemin, pointing at the cookbook. “You know, Chenle Zhong, the YouTuber?”
“Yeah.” Jaemin laughs at the absurdity of the question. On the cover of the book, Jaemin is credited in fine print as the photographer and graphic designer. The watch on his wrist is a birthday gift from two years ago. Chenle is currently lying in the bed he bought, waiting in a whining mess for him to come back and baby him through the world’s most mild fever. “Yeah, you could say I’m a fan.”
She hums and takes her own book off the shelf. It sits in the side of her basket, full to the brim of kitchen tools Jaemin remembers were listed in Chenle’s newest drawer tour. “Who do you think Chenle is dating?”
The question is a slap to the face, and Jaemin prays his face isn’t as sour as he knows it can get. Do all of Chenle’s fans care this much? Talk about nosy. “I think he hasn’t revealed his boyfriend on camera,” he answers, keeping his tone level.
“Really?” She laughs. “Chenle is always so earnest and cute about his relationship, I feel like we’d all know if he was hiding his boyfriend far away from his channel.”
And, well, while he has more than enough snap in him to argue, Jaemin can’t say much against the first part, and the second part isn’t worth his time. “Who do you think it is?” he asks, half to entertain her, half to satisfy his own morbid curiosity.
“Renjun,” she responds easily. “They bicker like an old, married couple, and I mean, look.” She flips open the cookbook to the Chinese soul foods section, the longest and the one Jaemin hates to remember Renjun helped taste test for. “I’m Chinese, and I don’t love Chinese food as much as those two do. Wouldn’t it make sense that Chenle makes all these elaborate dishes and barely eats any of them, since Renjun has such a huge stomach and he can’t cook himself? Also, Renjun’s knife skills are really, really good for some reason. Maybe it’s the sculptor in him.”
“I guess,” Jaemin grumbles.
For the rest of the conversation, all he does is give half-baked responses to make it seem as if he’s paying attention, and he lets out a deep exhale once the woman leaves for the check-out aisles. It’s the first time he’s ever bumped into one of Chenle’s fans alone in public, and the conversation has him reeling, a gross and oily dressing added to his salad spinner that makes his entire brain sour. He knew the relationship speculation garnered numbers online, but he didn’t realise every fan had their own two incorrect cents.
Instead of going to pay, Jaemin does a circle around to return all of the groceries he initially picked up to make chicken congee, and grabs ingredients to make his mother’s hobakjuk, his ultimate Korean comfort food. Then, he dislikes the Instagram reel Renjun sent him without watching it, and replies to Chenle’s text about the next date night meal with as many Korean dishes as he can think of off the top of his head.
When Chenle fires back immediately with a few hearts and some more complaints about his sinuses, Jaemin smiles to himself and packs his groceries in his favourite tote, texting a promise to be home in five.
5.
Chenle squints at the writing on the notecard Jaemin passes over, nose scrunching as he reads the small print. “What is Jaeminie-hyung’s favourite fruit?” After a second of deliberation, he grins and declares, “Strawberries.”
“No!” Jaemin rolls his eyes and pretends to kick Chenle off the picnic blanket as Chenle laughs so hard, he has to steady himself with a propped up hand. It was Chenle’s idea to film a small portion of one of their dates, a picnic at a local park they’ve never gone to, with a charcuterie board hand picked and arranged by Jaemin himself.
However, the camera has been rolling for barely five minutes and they’ve already lost all sense of seriousness.
“But you love strawberries!” Chenle retorts, as if Jaemin hadn’t cried eating the strawberries in his parfait on their third date in an attempt to seem cool and composed around Chenle after their waiter mistook his order.
“C’mon, Chenle, what is it?”
“Guys, his favourite food is strawberry yoghurt.” Chenle says right into the camera. He tries to school his expression, though his dimples give him away.
“Answer the question honestly!” Jaemin urges. In the seconds Chenle hesitates to answer, Jaemin crosses his arms. “Wow, you really don’t care about me.”
Instead of responding, Chenle examines all the fruits on their picnic spread, and Jaemin wonders if the questions he prepared were too difficult. While Jaemin is the kind of person to memorise the little details of people, every last preference, Chenle picks up everything in between lines, the words that are thought but go unsaid. They balance each other out, Jaemin’s revelling in exact coffee orders and Chenle always knowing whether or not it’s one of Jaemin’s off days without Jaemin needing to open his mouth.
Which is why testing Chenle on all of Jaemin’s fickle opinions for their eventual relationship reveal video is both the funniest and the most painful ordeal Jaemin has ever gone through in his entire life.
Chenle takes a sip of champagne. “Grapes.”
“No.” He seriously doesn’t know, then. It’s a miracle they’ve lasted nine years.
“Green grapes.”
“No.”
“Watermelon.”
“No!”
“Banana!”
“No!”
Chenle’s voice reaches a desperate peak. “Peaches?”
“There you go.” Jaemin rips out some grass and throws it at Chenle, who dodges the attack by a hair. The blades land on Daegal’s fur, and she shakes it off, going back to sleep under the sun. “On the count of three, let’s react now so I can edit it later and it looks like you got it right on the first try. One, two, three—”
They laugh so in sync, it sounds like a royalty free sound effect, which in turn makes them laugh even harder, Chenle flailing about, unable to keep steady. Jaemin has to set his flute down to catch Chenle in his arms, and they accidentally knock over the camera in their tumble. Some dirt stains the white of Jaemin’s button up, and Jaemin gasps so loud, Chenle jerks up in surprise and bangs his forehead against Jaemin’s chin.
“Fuck!” Jaemin groans, falling backwards on the grass. “Chenle-yah, you broke my jaw.”
Except Jaemin’s jaw is actually a little sore, so the words come out funny in a way that has Chenle doubling over again, laughing so hard, his lungs can’t stop wheezing and tears start forming at the corners of his eyes.
“Your,” he gasps, “Your—your face!”
Chenle glows brighter than the sun in his own wild entertainment, and despite it all, despite the stained shirt and the sore jaw and the maybe now unusable footage, Jaemin knows the boy in front of him is the one.
The camera is fine. Jaemin’s jaw is fine.
Jaemin’s shirt isn’t fine, but he throws on the emergency hoodie they keep in the car—a gag gift Donghyuck bought Jaemin that Jaemin never opened, reading ORGASM DONOR in bold print on the front—before the two of them head home and he attacks it with stain remover.
Once Chenle retires for his midday nap, Jaemin sits Daegal on his lap and gets to work.
Combing through the footage has Jaemin light in the head from amusement yet again, and it takes double the usual amount of time to sort everything and pick out what he wants to use. All of Chenle’s other videos, Jaemin takes an almost narrative approach, constructing the course of the content around a central storyline and making sure every cutaway, extra joke, and silly edit follows the course. Considering how chaotic their friends are, paired with Chenle’s natural born need to be an instigator, it helps Jaemin organise his thoughts when he’s working with a coherent sequence of events.
Instead of like the usual videos, Jaemin keeps his editing sparse, letting the footage speak for itself. The two of them talked about a potential new series together, and Chenle insisted on simpler effects and softer energy, a breath of fresh air amidst the rest of his channel. A part of Jaemin thinks that Chenle only suggested as much because he knows Jaemin can’t be as loud as the rest of their friends on camera, can barely act human on camera to begin with, and the thought leaves the tips of his fingers and his toes warm.
Halfway through adjusting audio, Jaemin pauses to take a break and pulls up Twitter on his second monitor. He’s been able to stave off all other SNS, but Twitter has him in a vice grip of morbid fascination and addiction. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t look away from the internet car crash hot spot.
After retweeting something from dog_feelings, Jaemin does his weekly rounds searching for Chenle’s name, and finds today’s most engaged tweet. It’s a picture from earlier today, taken when Chenle was getting them sorbet; in the background of the shot, Jaemin can even see himself and Daegal inspecting a squirrel in a tree. The caption talks a bit about meeting Chenle, though Jaemin ignores it entirely and dives straight for the quotes.
Having to wade through endless amounts of “remember when Jeno said his ideal date was going to the park” is worth the singular “hey is that guy in the bg chenle’s bf lmfao”, and Jaemin makes sure to retweet it onto every burner account he’s made.
It doesn’t make a dent in the person’s terrible ratio, but it does keep Jaemin smiling for the rest of the day, even after he gives up three—donations that night and almost passes out from exhaustion. When Chenle asks about it, sweaty and breathless, all Jaemin can do is laugh and hide his smile in his shoulder.
+1.
Chenle’s solo streams are always the easiest. Aside from switching angles when gestured to and occasional adjustments to the equaliser whenever he cooks on high heat, all Jaemin has to do is sit back and watch him come to life in the kitchen.
Today’s stream goes as expected, and as Chenle mixes together the marinade for the fried chicken, Jaemin lets his eyes drift off to look out the window, where rain cracks down on the city. It was Chenle who decided on the last minute live, after they cancelled their tasting menu reservation, and while it’s the first time Jaemin is spending Valentine’s Day doing his job, he doesn’t mind much, considering he gets to watch Chenle cook, chat, and melt into the cute boy he fell in love with back during their university days.
“—and that gets set aside for half an hour,” Chenle says, bringing Jaemin back to attention. Chenle rinses his hands, covers the bowl with the new reusable beeswax wrap Jaemin bought last week, and looks over at the TV screen displaying the donation chat. “AmaranthRice, thank you for your subscription. ‘Why are you spending Valentine’s Day streaming instead of going out with your boyfriend?’”
He has to squint to read the whole sentence, and Jaemin looks down and opens up the streaming software, adjusting the font size to fill more of their displays.
“The weather is abysmal in the city right now,” Chenle answers, “and I know a lot of you are spending tonight alone, so I decided to grace you with my presence. Also, my boyfriend is here with me, off camera.”
Jaemin jolts and whips around, but Chenle isn’t even looking at him, continuing to read off the display without a care for the heart attack he just induced. “‘Do you have any tips for cooking chicken?’ Chicken breast is healthier, but chicken thighs are usually more affordable and much more forgiving to cook. Start with easy pan-frying or steaming and move your way up. ‘How often do you sharpen your knives?’ My chef knives, every one to two months, and everything else, about every three months. ‘Do you like ice cream?’ No.”
“Chenle,” Jaemin hisses, careful to keep his volume down, “The date video doesn’t go up for another three days!”
“So?” Chenle shrugs. “They know I have a boyfriend, why not mention you?”
“Because—! Because—!” Jaemin gestures wildly— “Because Mercury is in retrograde!” Chenle rolls his eyes and Jaemin flounders for a different response. He can’t come up with anything remotely better, except maybe, what if there’s an impending alien invasion, so instead he tries for a different route. “At least manage the chat!”
“Okay, fine, fine.” Chenle starts trimming his chicken, keeping an eye on the exploding live chat. “‘Why is your boyfriend off camera?’ This live is going to be edited into a date night dinner episode, and all the date night dinners are actually dinners I make for him. Candied yams, tteokbokki, and fried chicken is what he told me he was craving earlier today. ‘Has your boyfriend ever appeared in a video before?’ Actually, about that—FUCK!”
Chenle’s knife clatters out of his hand and Jaemin is on his feet in a second, rushing over to the island in a panic. His heart threatens to jump out of his chest and out the window. “Chenle, are you okay?! Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?”
In the blink of an eye, Chenle’s face goes from an agonising contortion to a bright smile. “This is him, everyone!”
What?
“What?”
Chenle nods towards the camera. “Look over there.”
Jaemin blinks and faces forward, where he sees himself with his pink hair and his still-panicked expression and the stupid ORGASM DONOR hoodie that’s genuinely comfortable to wear around the apartment, displayed on the recording monitor right next to Chenle. He’s on camera.
“This is the alleged knife skills boyfriend, everyone,” Chenle announces, poking Jaemin’s cheek with one finger. Jaemin is frozen in place, unable to turn and instead watching it all unfold in front of him. “Jaemin, say hi to the camera!”
Jaemin opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a garbled noise. They’ve joked so much about the possibility of him just showing up on a live one day or in a video without explanation, considering all the terrible one-liners he could deliver, and all of them escape him in the time he needs them the most. He can barely see the set-up, screens full of colour moving far too fast for him to focus on.
The singular highlighted chat message he catches makes his entire face crumple in on itself. “No, I’m—” he stammers, “I’m not Donghyuck in a skinsuit, what the hell?”
Chenle snorts and nudges him out of the kitchen back to his original seat, Jaemin returning back in a state of complete and utter shock. What just happened?
“Guys, he’s camera shy, be nice to him,” Chenle scolds. “He doesn’t have his own channel. Yes, he can cook. Yes, Jeno and Jisung are actually dating.”
Once he gathers his bearings again, Jaemin croaks, “Chenle, how long have you been planning to do that?”
Chenle shrugs. “Since I woke up this morning.” He doesn’t bother looking at the camera, keeping his gaze right at Jaemin, as if it’s just the two of them in the moment, no live audience. He does that magnetic thing he always does around Jaemin, where he makes Jaemin feel like the only person in the world, and it sends shivers down Jaemin’s spine. “You were still asleep, drooling on Daegal, and I remembered again you were the one for me.”
Jaemin reaches a hand up to ghost over his face; it’s red hot to the touch.
There’s a million and one things Jaemin wants to say, half of them curses for pulling that kind of stunt, the other half all jumbled mush way too embarrassingly romantic even for someone like Jaemin to utter aloud.
Because Chenle is it for Jaemin too. Nine years, eight pillows on their bed, seven cameras, six couple watches, five shared friends, four apartments, three cookbooks, one wrinkled white tissue dog, and the two of them, have been it and will be it for the rest of Jaemin’s life.
And he knows Chenle knows he feels the same. He knows that in their held eye contact, there’s a spark that’s never faded, a pull that’s never lessened, an indescribable magic locking each other in the same system since they spilled jungle juice on each other at some forgettable party the first time they met.
Neither of them are the ones to break the silence, rather the robotic female voice programmed to read superchats. Both of them snap back to the present when it says, “From littlesunrise, nice hoodie.”
And they laugh.
They laugh, and Chenle throws his head back only to knock into the cabinet behind him with a yelp, and there’s soy sauce marinade spilling on the counter, and Jaemin thinks what they have might be perfect.