#renjun imagine

[f4irys4n]

nct dream p♡rn links pt1

lee mark

hitting it from the back

your favourite necklace

nothing a man loves more

huang renjun

treating you right

using his pretty face

it’s play time

lee jeno

he loves hearing you

stretching you out

at your pace

lee donghyuck

he’s an ass man

toying with you

you can’t keep quiet

na jaemin

lunch never tasted better

you love his hands

destroying your insides

zhong chenle

subby!chenle’s punishment

riding him slowly

putting his tongue to use

park jisung

using you like a toy

hands behind your back

pretty boy gets his face wet

please make sure you log into your twt on the browser or it’ll show up as the tweet doesn’t exist <3 some links also may break over time due to account or videos being deleted/removed !!

[xrenjunniesx]

could you do one where reader reacts to their smoothie mv cuz i’m addicted fr

text reaction to smoothie MV

// bf!dreamies

[cafelattaes]

beat you at your own game | hrj

summary : y/n has a crush on renjun, who's not that great with people. despite his standoffish nature, she makes an effort to be friendly. but things take a twist when she starts to ignore him.

pairing : renjun x fem! reader

genre : college au. romance, fluff, angst

word count : 3.5k

huang renjun, how exactly would you describe him? well, for starters, he can be a bit cranky. he's all about having his own space, not a fan of dragging things out, and gets things done in a flash. he’s also straightforward and not afraid to speak his mind. people have mixed feelings about him because of it. but oddly enough, it only adds to his charm, making people naturally drawn to him, much to his 'i'd-rather-not' demeanor.

needless to say, you just had to develop a crush on someone who’s the total opposite of you. you’re a people-pleaser; you’d much rather say things that would please others rather than express your genuine thoughts. confrontations make you uncomfortable, and you lean towards making excuses for those who hurt you on purpose. you also always try to avoid conflicts as much as you can, and resort to suffering in silence instead. you're trying to change that aspect about yourself, but you grew up having those traits, making it hard to break free. nevertheless, you're working on it.

you never intended to let renjun know about your feelings, but your friends were determined to embarrass you whenever he was around, constantly teasing you. it didn't help that despite not being close to renjun and his group, some of them were friends with your close friends, so they eventually joined in poking fun at your crush. one day, you decided to dismiss their incessant teasing and initiated a friendly conversation with renjun. at first, he responded out of courtesy. you weren't stupid though; you could tell that renjun was clearly fed up with his friends and wanted nothing to do with their antics.

he began to dislike being associated with you, offering only short responses and not acknowledging your presence more than necessary. you didn’t pay it much mind, since getting close to him wasn't your original goal. your aim was to ease the awkwardness and shed the embarrassment that accompanied your interactions. you happened to share some classes with renjun, coincidentally, those were the ones where both your friends weren't around. sitting next to him became a default habit, as he was the only familiar face in those particular classes.

one morning, you found yourself running late for your 8am class, prompting you to dash before your professor arrived. you accidentally collided with renjun, who happened to be holding an iced coffee. to your horror, more than half of the drink ended up spilling onto his shirt.

“oh my god, renjun, i’m so sorry!” you looked at him in fear, and it took everything in him to remain calm.

“why are you running around a busy hallway?”

“i’m really, really sorry. i’m late for my first class and i didn’t think i’d bump into anyone.” renjun let out an annoyed sigh.

“whatever.”

“wait!” you opened your bag to bring out your alcohol and wipes. “do you need them?”

“no, thank you.” he proceeded to walk past you, but you held onto his arm.

“what about the stain?”

“i have a spare shirt. can you let me go now? i thought you said you were late.”

“shoot, you’re right. i’m sorry again, i promise i’ll make it up to you!” you shouted as you ran.

“please don’t,” he grumbled.

later on, you found renjun at the library working on your assignments. you sat quietly next to him and began doing your own. he didn’t spare you a look and just carried on with his work. you spent a few hours completing them, and both of you got it done at the same time. as you got up to gather your things, you spoke to the boy beside you.

“renjun, do you have anything to do after this?”

“no.”

“do you want to try the newly opened diner just a few blocks away? my friends have prior commitments, and i wanted to make it up to you for spilling your coffee earlier.” you already knew he was going to refuse, but it wouldn’t hurt to still ask.

“sorry, i’ll have to pass. i need to get home quickly.” you nodded in understanding and smiled at him.

“no biggie. take care on your way home!”

“thanks,” he simply said before leaving.

“how are you and y/n? any progress? are you going out already?” jaemin asked teasingly, wiggling his brows.

“shut up. i want her to back off, honestly.”

“you want everyone to back off.”

“yeah, but most especially, y/n.”

“uh, why do you sound so annoyed with her?”

“because she is. i turned her down several times, but she can’t take a hint. nothing’s more annoying than someone who imposes themselves on others.”

“relax, man. you’re being a little too hard on the girl. you’ll see that she’s nice if you give her a chance.”

“what exactly is nice about her being fixated on me? it’s mostly your fault. if you guys weren’t such instigators, she wouldn’t have been pushy.”

you walked away from the scene, ensuring they didn’t notice your presence. you wiped away the lone tear that involuntary fell from your eye. it wasn’t often that you heard someone openly talk about their obvious dislike of you, and hearing it from the person you were supposed to like was quite disheartening. it wasn't your intention to impose your presence on him or force a connection that wasn't meant to be. you reckoned it was time to reevaluate your feelings and accept the need to let go of your futile crush on renjun, sparing both of you from any further confusion or misunderstandings.

renjun had grown accustomed to spotting you in your regular seat during your shared class. however, he was met with surprise when he noticed you had moved to a vacant seat considerably distant from your usual spot next to him. he was a bit confused at first, but chose not to dwell on it. he also noted that you didn't notice his entrance into the room, as you were engrossed in some task.

you continued to maintain a distance in your next classes with renjun. he was uncertain if you were oblivious to his presence or deliberately avoiding acknowledgement, given the lack of glances his way. he found it a bit strange that you refrained from initiating any form of interaction, but he didn’t mind. he thought he felt better. at least, for now.

however, renjun was not expecting your odd behavior to persist. it brought another surprise when you ignored him again the following day. even when your eyes accidentally locked for a second, you quickly averted your gaze. renjun wasn’t sure if you really didn’t see him or were just pretending not to. you weren’t wearing your glasses, and your eyesight wasn't the best. but even if you did ignore him on purpose, he didn’t mind… or did he?

it’s been a while since you stopped talking to renjun. at first, he thought he felt a sense of relief, thinking it gave him some space. but after a week, he was confused about why you suddenly stopped. the following week, he could feel his stomach churning seeing you leave class, secretly hoping you’d look back. then, the week after that, he felt a wave of anger because there were more than a few times he bumped into you purposely to get you to talk to him, but you did not utter any word other than a quiet apology. now, nearly a month later, he started to feel dejected because no matter what he did, you always acted like he wasn't even there. renjun wasn’t sure what he did wrong to make you so determined in avoiding him completely.

“renjun is going through 5 stages of grief,” jaemin started with a taunting smirk.

“what?” haechan looked at him in confusion.

“y/n has been ignoring him for a month.”

“WHAT? WHY?”

“exactly. i haven’t had the chance to ask her since we’re not close enough.”

“what about jeno?”

“he doesn’t want to pry.”

“maybe she got tired of renjun’s grumpy attitude,” chenle chimed in.

“maybe,” jaemin turned to the boy in question. “look at him, he’s miserable.”

“shut up,” renjun muttered in discontent.

“stop provoking him. this is his first heartbreak,” chenle taunted, making renjun roll his eyes at their ridiculousness.

“you know you can always speak to her first and ask her what’s up, right?”

“if she wanted to speak to me, she would’ve done it first,” his friends could only shake their heads in disapproval.

“don’t be stupid.”

“and i’m begging all of you to mind your own business.”

“be that way, and you’ll find yourself in an irreversible situation.”

"yeah, renjun, don't say we didn't warn you!" haechan added with a mischievous grin.

you kept quiet about what you had overheard from renjun in the last month, choosing not to share the details with your friends. you figured they would eventually notice renjun's absence from your life, and when they finally asked you about it, you dismissed their probing questions. you casually informed them that your crush on him had simply faded after getting to know him better. you were quite good at making believable lies, they were convinced by it and dropped the topic quickly.

unexpectedly, renjun sought you out in an empty classroom to confront you about your sudden disconnection. you looked like a deer caught in headlights when you realized who had just entered, walking in long and quick strides to your direction. in your mind, you were already conjuring up excuses to explain yourself.

“why are you ignoring me?” his question broke the silence, leaving you with no room to escape.

so much for attempting to evade this confrontation.

you took a moment to gather your thoughts, unsure how to respond. you tried to conceal your distress as renjun stared down at you while waiting for you to talk. it seemed like he was determined to stand his ground, expecting you to tell him the truth. with a frustrated sigh, you finally spoke up.

“i’m just staying out of your way,” you said after a moment of silence.

“yeah, so why?” his voice was demanding, it ticked you off a little.

you questioned why you were initially afraid of renjun confronting you and why you bothered coming up with excuses. after all, it wasn't his place to interrogate you when you were simply doing what he seemed to want from the start.

“i don’t know why you’re asking. isn’t that what you want? you should be happy.” you began to gather your things so you can walk off, but you heard him speak again.

“i don’t remember telling you to keep your distance. you obviously have a problem with me. what is it?”

“you don’t remember telling me because you didn’t. you told other people.” your tone laced with a hint of annoyance.

“that what?”

“renjun, i don’t get you. you keep brushing me off, you show your irritation with me so openly, and you tell everyone that you want me out of your line of sight. and now that i’m doing exactly that, you’re still mad at me? what’s your problem?”

“stop speaking in riddles and just tell me what's going on,” he said in an exasperated tone as you shifted to face him directly.

“last month, i was passing by the main library, and i overheard you talking to your friends. you mentioned something about me not getting a hint and wanting me to leave you alone,” renjun looked a bit puzzled at first. when you were about to walk away, his eyes widened in realization.

“no, y/n, i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean any of what i said-“ you shook your head lightly at his predictable response.

“don’t be. you were completely right, and i’m not even angry about it. i just don’t want to do anything with you anymore.”

“listen, i really am sorry. i blurted out those things in the heat of the moment. i regret saying them out loud, especially now that i know you were there to hear it… it’s really not what i think of you.”

“it’s fine, renjun. i didn’t tell you all of this to get an apology. i’m only telling you why i’m doing what i’m doing, like you asked, and to make it clear that i’m done.” renjun blocked your way hastily to stop you from leaving.

“hear me out, alright? back then, i was being overly sensitive. they were pushing my buttons, and i didn't know how to handle it. i messed up, treated you badly, and you didn’t deserve any of that. a month without you made me realize a few things. i had to confront what i really want and face some truths i'd been avoiding,” he paused, gauging your reaction before continuing. “i miss spending time with you, and, well, i realized i've got feelings for you. more than i thought. it never crossed my mind that you'd actually step away, and it hit me hard. the idea of losing you if you choose to walk away made me lose my mind.” your heart raced as he spoke, and his confession stirred up a mix of emotions. your confusion lingered, but you decided to reason through it, pushing aside the sincerity in his eyes as you gave him an incredulous look.

“are you… getting your feelings confused with something else? did you consider that maybe your mind is playing tricks on you, making you think you like me because you're used to others chasing after you?” he winced, trying to ignore the indirect suggestion that he might be a narcissist. it was a struggle for him to open up about his feelings, only for the girl he liked to question and imply that he couldn't understand his own emotions.

“i wouldn't be here questioning why you've been avoiding me for a month, and pouring out my feelings if i hadn't thought this through. it might be hard to believe right now, but if you give me a chance, i can prove it to you."

“i don’t think this is a good idea,” his face contorted into a pained expression. he felt lost, trying to find the right words to convince you. taking a deep breath, he gently held your shoulders, making you look up at him.

“please, just give me a chance to prove myself. i feel like i've wasted so much time.” the desperation was evident in his voice. still skeptical of his feelings, you removed his hands as they fell down to your arms.

“i’ll think about it.” you said before walking away, leaving a lingering sense of uncertainty in the air.

renjun’s friends had been observing him for a few days, and he’s become unusually quiet. they contemplated asking him what’s wrong, but they wanted to give him some space. it was glaringly obvious that something was bothering him, and he didn’t want to talk about it. jeno couldn't help but express his concern.

"renjun, you've been awfully quiet lately. everything alright?"

"yeah, i'm fine. just dealing with some stuff." jeno and jaemin exchanged knowing glances.

"we're here whenever you're ready to talk." jaemin assured, patting his back.

he had been feeling down since your conversation a few days ago. your words had been weighing on his mind and creating an internal turmoil. the fact that you continued to ignored him in all your classes didn't offer much comfort. renjun couldn't help but cast a longing look in your direction whenever he saw you. he was torn between regret and fear that he might have already ruined his chance.

meanwhile, his confession has been replaying in your mind. the idea of him reciprocating your feelings caught you off guard; it was something you never saw coming. after some contemplation, it became apparent to you that renjun really felt apologetic and was filled with remorse. could it be that he genuinely likes you? even if that was the case, you're still unsure whether it's the right move to start something with him.

maybe i should stop overthinking this.

you took a deep breath before releasing a loud sigh, unaware that the boy who had been occupying your thoughts, stood right in front of you.

“y/n,” you looked up to see renjun. you waited for him to speak, but it seemed like he was having a mental struggle, debating whether to say what was on his mind. he mustered up the courage to ask if you were willing to give him a chance. staring at him with an unreadable expression, he didn't know how to interpret the situation. was it a bad time to talk?

“why?” you finally asked. although renjun was hesitant, he answered.

“i was wondering if you already thought about what i said? i mean… i can wait if you’re still thinking about it.”

“if i say no, are you going to leave me alone?” your heart sank a little when his face fell. he didn't respond right away.

“well, if that’s what you want, i guess i would have to…”

“renjun,”

“yeah?”

“let’s give it a try.” his expression became hopeful.

“really?”

“yes. you said you liked me back, i’ll hold onto that for now. i just hope you won’t let me down.”

“i won’t.” a smile spread across his face as he enveloped you in a tight embrace. returning the hug, you savored the comforting feeling of his arms around you. "thank you for taking a chance on me," he said, the sincerity evident in his words and the embrace.

“i’m happy for them, i really am. but watching these two stare at each other lovingly is sickening.” giselle said, faking disgust.

“at least they’re just staring… you wouldn’t believe how clingy renjun gets when they’re at the dorm.” chenle remarked, your friends swiftly turned their heads around.

“spill.”

“he’s always attached to her, literally. there’s no other way to describe it.”

“huh… i thought it would be the other way around.”

“yeah, no. but i guess that’s just right, considering he didn’t give her the best treatment at first.”

giselle and karina chuckled at the revelation. intrigued by the dynamic between you and renjun.

"love can do wonders, huh?" jaemin grinned, nudging jeno.

"guess he learned his lesson," karina added, raising an eyebrow. "who would've thought?"

as the group watched the both of you, they exchanged knowing looks. it was obvious that renjun had gone through some changes, moving from his initial standoffish ways to being glued to the person he wasn't so kind to initially.

“i have the dorm all to myself this weekend.” you raised your brow at him.

“and what are you insinuating?”

“you know…” he continued with a suggestive look.

“i’m studying for finals week," you deadpanned.

“which is exactly what i’m suggesting. i find myself more productive when i’m with you.”

“quite the contrary. we don’t get anything done when we study together.”

“don't you want my hugs and kisses?” he pouted.

“not when i’m busy trying to finish school-related activities.”

“fine, i’ll behave.”

“you always say that. i don’t believe you anymore.”

“maybe i’ll be less clingy if you pay more attention to me. you’re always busy, you don’t have time for your boyfriend.”

“renjun, unlike you, i have to put in extra effort into studying to get good grades. i’m not as smart as you are.”

“excuses.” you rolled your eyes.

“you’re so adorable,” you cooed, grabbing his face for a quick peck. “i never imagined you to be the touchy and clingy type.”

“baby, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

“like what?” you inquired with a playful smile.

“like how great i am at using my hands to make someone feel really good,” he whispered in a lower voice.

“oh?” you raised an eyebrow, smirking playfully.

“yeah. apparently, i give one heck of a shoulder massage,” you burst out laughing at his endearing silliness. the sound of your laughter made renjun pause and smile, as he took his time to observe you. suddenly, he felt an overwhelming surge of happiness. taking your hand gently in his, he pressed a tender kiss to your fingertips, capturing your attention and prompting you to look at him.

"you make me feel the happiest. i love you," he confessed, the sincerity resonating in his words.

your stomach flipped, the euphoria of hearing those three words from him for the first time washing over you. then it hit you- the unexpected journey with renjun had led you to a place you never envisioned. he, too, held the key to your happiness.

“i love you too.” you closed the distance between you two and your lips met his. as he wrapped an arm around your waist, you let yourself fall to his embrace, deepening the kiss.

renjun was met with the realization that while you fell for him first, he descended later, but with an intensity that surpassed a thousand falls.

[ruwriteshours]

✰ RUNNING AWAY AFTER CONFESSING TO THEM ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ OT7! DREAMIES

pairing: OT7! dreamies x fem!reader

genre: fluff, suggestive, slight angst

warning: shaming reader for being a virgin, a whole lot of cliche, lots of hand grabbing and pulling lol, i got a little too carried away with Haechan & Jeno :p

@xrenjunniesx did smtg similar to this and i got inspired <3

✰ MARK.

"Mark, you have to give yourself a break." You advised, watching as he rubbed his face in exhaustion.

It's been five hours since Mark spent doing his song-writings in his room for his upcoming comeback. As much as you admired his hardwork, you also hated when he overworked himself.

As his best friend, you wanted him to get the rest he deserves but it was impossible for the stubborn boy to succumb to your wishes.

Oh, how much you love him.

Rolling over the bed as Mark continued to do his work on his desk, you begin walking over and snatching his pen mid-way while he was writing.

Mark let out a disgruntled grunt, hand reaching out to grab onto it but you only held it away further.

"Give it back, I still have tons to finish!"

"Not until you get some rest." You stuck your tongue out defiantly, "You've been working for hours, just come here and talk to me for awhile and then you can go back, please?"

Mark looked into your eyes for a moment before letting out a sigh of defeat.

"Fine."

And that's when the both of you find yourself laughing away from the stories you both shared from your childhood.

"Remember that time when you got braces and you were complaining that you couldn't eat meat." You laughed, "So you blended the chicken and started drinking it!"

"Oh man, it tasted horrible. I don't know why I did that." He cackled. "And I look so ugly in braces too!"

"That's not true." You disagreed, watching as he was wiping away a tear from his eye.

"If anything you looked cute." You mumbled, looking down at your feet. "I liked you back then too."

Shit! You didn't mean to say that!

"What was that?"

Fuck! You were screwed.

"Huh? Nothing." You backed away.

"I couldn't hear you just now. Tell me!" Mark pushed on, holding onto your arm to prevent you from retreating.

You pulled away from his grip.

"It's nothing!" You tried again, standing up onto your feet hastily.

"It's not nothing when you're literally red in the face." He said, making a move to stand up as well. "Come on, tell me. We promised not to keep secrets from each other."

"Just let it go, Mark." You groaned, hiding your embarassment.

"We're literally best friends, you have to tell me."

"That's literally the problem!" You snapped.

"What?" Mark paused, looking at you with wide eyes.

"I said you looked cute in braces because I like you back when we were kids." You pulled your hair in frustation, "And I still like you now! Okay? I have always like you more than a best friend!"

As soon as those words leave your mouth, you could feel the clockwork ticking slow, nibbling your bottom lip in nervousness as you watch Mark's face contort to confusion.

Anxiety arises when he begins to open his mouth, but you didn't let him say anything when you dashed out of the room and into the living room, ignoring his calls.

"Hey! Wait, where are you going?" His voice was nearer to you than you expect.

Just as you were about to open the front door, it was slammed shut when his palm made contact with it.

You mentally cursed Mark for his long legs, having that advantage to catch up to you. You could feel his hot breath at the back of your neck, you shuddered at the contact, refusing to turn around despite his body being much closer to you than it has ever gotten.

"Turn around," He demanded, your name escaping his mouth. His voice tickling your ears as you made the move to turn, eyes closed from the sheer shame of confessing to your best friend.

You could hear his chuckle, making you close your eyes even more tightly, if that was even possible. You were definitely sure that your face was redder than before, not having to expect the situation to unfold in the way it has.

"Open your eyes." He said softly.

However, he was greeted with a shake of the head from you, stubbornly refusing to meet his eyes.

He pouted, though you couldn't see as you were still having an internal battle with yourself.

Just then, an idea popped into Mark's mind, hand slowly reaching out to your neck, goosebumps filled in your body as he lifted your head higher. You were confused with his actions and just as you were about to ask him what he was doing, his lips met yours in a passionate kiss.

You let out a sound of suprise as you began to kiss him back on instinct, teeth clashing slightly as his warm lips moulded into yours with such intensity that you didn't want the moment to go away too soon.

Unfortunately, Mark pulled away, which caused you to open your eyes in disappointment.

However, just as you meet his eyes, you could see him smile smugly, face inches away from you.

"I guess you can open your eyes." He teased, which only made you more embarassed, looking away but you were immediately pulled back by his hands and was met with another surging kiss, which lasted longer than the previous one.

✰ RENJUN.

The thing about your friendship with Renjun was that the both of you provide equal balances when it came to taking care of each other. It was never one sided.

He was your emotional support and so were you to him. It was a solid friendship from the start, so it wasn't out of the usual for him to get extra protective whenever you would injure yourself during practice.

So you couldn't understand why you felt a sudden tinge of butterfly at the pit of your stomach this time when he carried you out of the practice room after you sprained your ankle.

In fact, it was such a normal occurence that even your friends didn't bat an eye. You ignored it, thinking that you were still skitterish and that the stupid feeling will eventually go away but the more Renjun took care of you, the more flustered you felt. Flushed faced and stuttering profusely when he would ask if you were okay.

"I told you not to try out that dance move!" He scolded you gently, carrying you in a piggyback as he nagged at you like a worried mom.

Again, usually you would take his gesture nonchalantly but this time, you would only apologise while hiding your face at the crook of his neck.

Renjun smiled at your action, finding you adorable.

"You're lucky you have me."

Ever since then, you began avoiding him for the sake of saving yourself from rejection, you knew deep down that Renjun couldn't possibly reciprocate your feelings. It even took awhile for you to process your emotions towards him but the more you thought about it, the more it made sense.

Renjun had been there for you, had been your number one support system and was overall, kind, generous and caring. Who wouldn't want him?

Unfortunately, you couldn't take that risk and opted to avoid him until you eventually got over it.

Little did you know, Renjun didn't like it one bit.

Especially when you would go as far as to turn the other way when he would approach you. He let it slide initially, thinking you needed space and tried to be understanding.

However, he was very concerned when you began to act weirdly around him, being too anxious to talk to him and being way too overly jumpy when he would touch your shoulder or doing something as simple as a brush on the hand. He thought he had done something to scare you and he wanted to apologise if he did.

But when he came up to you and did so, he was very shocked to find out your actual reasoning.

"Look, it's not you. It's me!" You cringed, hating the way you sounded. Renjun raised an eyebrow, not fully convinced with your words as well. "I'm serious! Lately, I've been having this strong feelings towards you and I can't help but feel nervous around you."

"What 'strong feelings'?" He asked.

"Do I really need to spell out for you?" You retorted, "I. Like. You."

His eyes widened at your straightforward confession, but you were quick to backtrack on your words when you realised you had just spoken aloud impulsively.

"But it's nothing serious— I swear! I'm just distancing myself so that I can get over it and we can be back as friends!" You chuckled nervously, not wanting to embarass yourself more than you probably have.

Without even looking at him, you turned your heels and began speed-walking away, wanting nothing more than to burn a hole in the ground.

Before you could make your exit, he gripped onto your hand, stopping you from your escape.

"You do have a way of confessing, don't you?" He scoffed playfully, pulling you closer so that your chest would touch his. "Dummy, why would you try to get over your feelings for me?"

"Because I know you don't feel the same— ow!"

You rubbed your forehead where Renjun flicked at, glaring at the boy.

"Idiot, you didn't even let me say anything."

"W-What?"

He leaned in closer, breath fanning your face before he gave you a light peck on the lips.

"I like you too."

And that is when you gained the confidence to pull him by the collar to steal another kiss.

✰ HAECHAN.

"Hey! Get back here!" The infuriating male chased after you, watching as you fastened your pace whenever you saw him.

For the past few days, Haechan had noticed your obvious distance towards him, which only made him upset whenever you refused to acknowledge him. He would sent you texts everyday but was only met by a single tick.

It was frustating to see you get so comfortable around his friends but immediately turning stoned-faced when it came to him, especially when you were the closest to him than anyone else!

Having had enough of your sudden cold attitude towards him, he was determined to find out why.

"What do you want, Donghyuck?" You asked in mild annoyance, partially to cover up the fact that your heartbeat kept racing whenever he was near you.

"Okay, that's it! What's your problem with me." Haechan huffed, arms crossed as he blocked you from the door.

"I don't have a problem with you." You lied.

"Then why do you keep avoiding me?" He asked sternly.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"We're not gonna talk in circles here." He groaned.

"Great, so let me out." You pushed him aside and began walking towards the door.

You gasped in shock when Haechan held your waist to tug your body closer, face buried in your neck. "Haec—"

"Tell me what's wrong." He said, softly this time.

You gulped nervously, hand holding onto his as you tried to remove yourself away from him, but the persistent male held on tighter.

"I'll let go after you tell me the truth." His voice muffled against your sweatshirt.

"Promise you won't laugh at me?" You asked shakily.

"I promise."

He looked up, piercing eyes gazed onto yours as he saw your pinky out in the open, waiting for his to intertwine against it. He smiled softly and reached out for your hand.

You sighed, mind going haywire as you tried to calm your nerves.

"I like you, Haechan. Like— really, really like you." You emphasised, eyes avoiding his as it was focused on your feet, "I got jealous when you got touchy with her because you were never like that to me."

You mumbled the last part.

"Her? You mean, my junior?" He clarified.

"Yeah.." You trailed off, hating how pathetic you sounded.

A moment of silence passed by when you heard Heachan let out a humouress laugh. You frowned, heart clenching at the thought of him mocking you.

"I knew it!" You shook your head, "I should've never told you anything. Forget I said anything." And with that, you took off.

You ran as fast as you could, desperately trying to get away from the most humiliating situation that you had stupidly gotten yourself into.

Too consumed in your self-pity, you didn't notice an incoming car driving its way towards your direction. It was when a loud honk snapped you out of trance but even then, it was too late.

Just as you were about to accept your fate, a hand pulled you, making you collide with the person.

"Idiot, did you not see where you're running!" Haechan yelled, face full of worry as he scanned over your body to look for any injuries.

"You promised you wouldn't make fun of me." You teared up, ignoring his previous question.

"No! I wasn't making fun of you." He explained, hand gripping your shoulder in an attempt to make you look at him. "I just find it funny that you would get jealous of her."

"I fail to see how that's funny." You crossed your arms.

"It's just, I should be the one confessing first." He revealed.

"What—"

"And don't even get me started on how Renjun would get all up on you whenever he sees you. I hate that shit." He rambled on.

"You were jealous." You concluded.

"Was that not obvious?" He shrugged. "So, I guess we both have a fair share of jealousy."

"But we were just talking about you." You justified, still in shock with his confession.

"Doesn't matter, now that we've both declared our feelings, he needs to back away from my girl." He smiled proudly.

"Um, excuse me. Who said I wanted to be your girl?"

"I literally chased you down the street like a maniac, are you really gonna prolong the inevitable?" He deadpanned.

"Hm," You pretended to think, "Walk me back home first then maybe I'll consider."

"I'll do more than just walk you back home."

"Watch it." You said sternly, face beet red as his cocky smirk was plastered on his face.

"God, you're so sexy when you're serious." He leaned over to give you a peck on the lips, "But let's see how serious you can get when I'm balls deep inside you."

And with that, Haechan did fulfill his promise by doing more than just walking you back home.

✰ JENO.

"I'm sure Jeno likes you." Haechan repeated for what seems to be the fourth time.

"Of course he likes me," You deadpanned, holding onto two pieces of dresses that you doubt would look good on you. "I'm his friend but does he like me?"

"Again, yes. He does." The male groaned, looking around to see piles of clothes scattered across your room. "You don't need to dress yourself up too much, he loves your own style."

You frowned, recalling the fretful memory a few days back.

"I heard Jeno likes girly girls."

"Yeah, that's what I heard too." Another one gushed, "That's why I don't see her as a competition.

"I know right. I mean, look at her!"

"Jeno must be blind if he ever goes out with her!"

And to think you met him and started off as casual flirting.

"That's a lie. Do you know how many pretty girls that are just drop-dead gorgeous? And you'd think he'd settle for this?"

"You're underestimating yourself, just ask him out normally." He shrugged, as if it was the most simplest thing you could do.

"Like this?" You asked incredulously, gesturing to your clothes.

"What the fuck does that even mean?"

"Ask him out with a baggy shirt and sweatpants? Are you serious?" You threw your dress onto the floor. "He'll laugh in my face, for crying out loud!"

"Look, I'm not gonna feed into your delusions so I'm gonna head outside and by the time I get back, you better be done." He walked out, ignoring your calls for him to come back.

In the end, you just settled with a warm sweatshirt and a denim skirt. It wasn't too fancy but it definitely wasn't your usual style.

"Are you done yet!" Haechan yelled from the other side of the door, too which you answered back, opening the door as he eyed your outfit with a hum of approval. "Not bad. Let's go."

The whole outing went relatively well, I mean—as well as it could cosidering your failed attempts at trying to ask Jeno out in private was very evident. A second couldn't go smoothly when girls would swoop in and join in the conversation, where you would have to awkwardly leave when the girls would get too flirty.

Little did you know, Jeno dreaded the attention, desperately wanting to spend some alone time with you. He sighed in defeat as he tried to tune out the conversation, shoulder slumping when you walked away.

As if the night couldn't get worse, Mark had drunkedly suggested to play a game of truth or dare. You had reluctantly agreed as Haechan practically pushed you in the circle. You blushed when Jeno sat by your other side, knees touching yours.

Rowdiness consumes the room as each took their turns, you looked away in disgust as Haechan made out with a girl as a dare. When it came to your turn, you had meekly picked truth, causing the room to let out sounds of disappointment.

"Okay." Jaemin smirked, watching you tensed up when he called your name. "When was the last time you hooked up?"

You looked down in shame, knowing that you hadn't been intimate with anyone for as long as you could remember.

Giggles could be heard as the girls pocked fun at you, one of them decided to berate you. "Of course she hasn't done anything. Why would you even bother asking her that?"

You were about to speak up when someone beat you to it.

"There's nothing wrong with that." Jeno spoke up, glaring at the girls. "And there isn't anything cool about shaming others for it, too."

"I'm not shaming her, I just think it's pathetic that she hasn't." She scoffed playfully.

"And you think it's not pathetic that you think you're better than her because of that." Silence filled the room as the girl stuttered, tears welling up her eyes.

"I—"

"For the record, I wouldn't fuck you even if I got paid to do it."

The girl stood up and ran away in embarassment, other girls following behind while glaring at you and Jeno.

It was silent for awhile before Mark spoke up.

"Well, this was fun."

After the awkward incident, the party ended shortly after. Slowly the crowd became lesser and you think it's time to leave after helping with the clean-up. Haechan was your ride and you had to wait outside his car alone while he went to the bathroom. You shivered at the cold breeze when suddenly, you felt a jacket wrapped around you.

Turning around, you saw Jeno, with a big smile as his eyes sparkled under the light. You awkwardly shifted, too shy to look at him for a little longer.

"You okay?" He spoke up, to which you give a firm nod.

"Thank you for standing up to me, by the way."

"That was nothing." He shrugged, "I would have done it to any friend."

Friend.

"Of course, we're friends." You gulped, fighting back tears, "That's all we'll ever be."

He called out your name with a hint of confusion, "What's wrong?"

"You know, I don't think I can stay friends with you." You told him.

"W-What, why?" He asked, taking a step closer towards you.

"I just don't know if I can ever deal with just being your friend." You revealed, "I mean, I can't exactly blame you either, I'm just an idiot for liking someone that's out of my league."

You didn't mean to pour all of your doubt onto Jeno but it was something that had been kept inside your heart for the longest time and it just burst out unexpectedly. Luckily, your conscience stopped you from spilling out more than what you have, shaking your head when he would try to come near you.

"Shit! Just ignore what I said." You said regretfully.

"No, talk to me." He pleaded, your name escaping his lips.

"Just let it go, Jeno." You stepped back, "Forget about it, please."

"No, there's no way I'm forgetting what you just said."

Just as he was about to speak again, Haechan came out, to which you signed in relief when he clicked his car keys, giving you the opportunity to slide in his car, Jeno following behind to stop you.

"You can't leave." Jeno pleaded, "We have to talk about this."

"Leave me alone, Jeno."

"What's going on?" Haechan spoke up, eyeing the two of you.

"I just really want to go home." You ignored Haechan's question, he didn't push further and only gave Jeno a look.

Thankfully, Jeno gave you space, but not before giving you one last glance as you sat on the passenger seat, you didn't bother looking at him, eyes focused on the front as Haechan entered the car.

The whole car ride was silent, Haechan didn't bother asking you what had happened, knowing that you didn't want to talk about it.

"Call me if you need anything." He said.

"Thank you." You closed his door before making your way to your apartment, keys in hand.

You stopped dead in tracks when you see a familiar figure standing outside your door, drops of sweats on his forehead as his shirt was wrinked up. You gulped nervously, mentally preparing yourself as you walked up to your door.

Jeno's head immediately turned towards you, he stood in front of your door with his arms crossed, face full of determination as he stared you down.

"Can you move." You looked down at your feet.

"Not until we talk." He said firmly.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Well, maybe to you but I have a lot to say." He said sternly, "You didn't even let me say anything before you start assuming that I wasn't interested."

"You said I'm your friend." You frowned, confused with his words, "Why shouldn't I assume that!"

"Because I thought you liked Haechan!" He shouted, chest heaving up and down.

"W—What, why?"

"Well, for one, you came to the party with him, and two, both of you would always come in pairs all the damn time so I'm sorry if I saw it the wrong way!"

"You should be because there's nothing going on between me and Haechan." You explained.

"I got that now." He muttered sarcatically, "And what were you even talking about with 'liking someone out of your league'?"

"It's pretty self-explanatory!" You deadpanned, "You're hot— like really hot, and look at me, you'd want to go out with someone who looks like this!"

"Someone as gorgeous as you, yeah!"

"You don't understand!"

"Make me understand then!"

"I'm sorry." A woman's voice spoke up, the room beside you opened as she walked outside the hallway, "Could you both keep it down a little, I have work the next morning."

"Sorry." The both of you mumbled in unison.

"We're done here." You said, taking your keys to open the door as you walked in to slam it shut on him.

However, he put his foot in between the door before squeezing his way inside. "Could you stop running away from me, we're having a serious conversation here!"

"Well, how about I take back my confession so you don't have to stress yourself out too much."

"There's no way I'm letting you take that back!"

"Well, too bad. I did." You crossed your arms, as if you had solved the problem, but your smile quickly dropped when you noticed his expression.

"Are you sure about that?" He smirked, trapping you behind a wall as his arms caged around you.

"What are you doing?" You asked nervously, watching as his eyes looked at you up and down with hunger.

"Changing your mind." His mouth made contact with your neck as you let out a loud moan.

You were in for a long night.

✰ JAEMIN.

Jaemin had always been a romantic. To you, it could come as an advantage or the complete opposite. For one, he would always notice the little things that would upset you, offering comfort and food to cheer you up and overall being the most caring and loving friend someone could ask for. However, his charms played a huge part in fuelling your hopes towards the lover boy. You couldn't risk destroying whatever you had with Jaemin just because you couldn't control your emotions. For that, you couldn't bring yourself to tell him how you truly felt.

This was one of those days. You were sick for the past few days and Jaemin had took the liberty of taking care of you, despite you warning him that he could catch your illness. The boy couldn't care less.

He placed a hot cloth on your forehead, bring you a bowl of soup that his mom made and rub circles at the your hand. All of this actions were too overwhelming for you to the point where you had accidentally blurted out your feelings towards him.

"You're such a boyfriend material, Jaem. I wish you knew how much I love you." You sighed dreamily.

Of course, in your sickened state, you hadn't realised and went back to sleep after your confession.

Jaemin chuckled at that and gently caressed your cheeks, admiring you, even though you were basically at your most unappealing state, tissues stuck up your nose as your eyes were puffy from the flu. Eventually after a few minutes, he too dozed off.

When you had awoken up the next morning, you felt much better than before, thanks to Jaemin. As you shuffled your way to the kitchen, you could already see him cooking up something. You quietly sat down on the stool as you watched him do his thing.

When he turned around, he gave you one of his signature smile that made your heart melt.

"You feeling alright?" He walked over, handing you a plate of omelette.

"Yeah." You yawned, "Thanks for taking care of me, Jaem."

"Of course, why wouldn't I take care of the girl who's in love with me?" He teased, making you freeze in your seat, eyes widening at his words.

"W—What are you talking about, idiot?" You attempted to cover up, chuckling nervously when he rounded to corner to get close to you, in which you backed away in return.

"Come on, let's not kid ourselves here." He smirked, "How long were you gonna keep your feelings hidden away from me?"

You began backing away more further, "Stop coming nearer, you freak!"

"Stop running away then!"

"Get away!"

"Get back here, missy!"

He broke out to a sprint, chasing you around the house when you began picking up your steps. You were red from embarassment and Jaemin didn't make things any better for you.

"Stop running!"

"Never!"

Unfortunately, you did stopped when Jaemin tackled you down on the couch, his hands holding your arms to restrain you from moving. You squirmed under his touch, humiliated that you had just gotten caught.

He began tickling you, to which you only thrash around, laughing hysterically as you begged him to stop.

"I'll stop when you don't make a move to run again." His hands made its way towards your stomach, continuing his attack, "Do we have a deal?"

"Deal! Deal! Just stop!"

True to his words, he did and that's when the laughter died down as the both of you stared into each other's eyes, lost in the moment as he began to lean in. You didn't get to process his actioms before you began kissing him back, hands wrapped around his neck to pull him closer as he gripped onto the couch to support his balance, hovering over you as you both made out.

After awhile, you pulled away, to which Jaemin leaned in again, wanting to get another kiss.

"I'm still sick, Jaem." You leaned away.

"I don't care."

And with that, his lips reconnected with yours once again.

✰ CHENLE.

"Idiot, watch where you're going." Chenle scoffed, bumping his shoulder against yours. "I almost spilled my drink on my shirt because of you."

You rolled your eyes at the taller male. Chenle had been your arch nemesis since the dawn of time. It was never usually serious though, more of light jabs and insult thrown at each other but none were ever meant to be hurtful. You never really hated Chenle, it's just that you had this dynamic where bickering was a constant need to keep the conversations going with him. And you really like aggravating the hot-headed male.

"Whatever, I bet it would make it look better than whatever you're wearing."

"You little bitc—"

"Okay!" Jisung interjected, squeezing his way between the two of you, hand awkwardly stretched to keep a distance. "Let's have fun at this party and not cause unnecessary fights."

"But she— fuck!" Chenle groaned, bending down slightly to rub his ankle that Jisung had kicked, glaring at the male. "Right, Chenle?"

Chenle let out a sigh of defeat before nodding along to his best friend's words, burning holes at your face when you snickered at him.

The night went on, full of alcohol and dancing and you were honestly on the brink of passing out but you kept downing down shots, your body at a point of losing its own control.

"Okay, that's enough." Chenle snatched your glass away, which caused you to whine obnoxiously.

"Dude, you're completely intoxicated. I'm taking you home."

"N-No! I wanna stay! It's fun here." You slurred, stumbling with your balance.

"Uhuh, come on." He held your waist to balance you up, "Let's go."

After bidding goodbye to your friends, he guided you towards his car and just when he tucked you into the passenger seat and helped you with the seatbelt, your words made him paused his actions.

"You know, Chenle. You're lucky I like you because I would never let anyone do this to me."

"Is that so?" He hummed.

"Mhm, here feel my heartbeat." You grabbed his hand and placed it on your chest, he could feel your heartbeat beating fast, "It always like that whenever I'm around you."

He smiled softly, a blush crept on his face. "Let's get you back home, cutie."

The following day felt like a blur, you groaned when you stirred yourself awake, only to be greeted by three missed calls from someone.

You grabbed your phone and looked through the call sheet to check who it was, your brows furrowed in confusion when you saw that those three calls came from Chenle.

Just as you were about to ponder more, your phone began to vibrate and he called you again, making you answer his call with a loud huff.

"What do you want?" You said.

"Shower and get ready, I'll pick you up."

When you were about to reply, he had already hung up. In your tired state, you didn't have room to argue and you shuffled your way to the bathroom, yawning loudly in the process.

"Mind telling me why you're acting so weird today?" You entered his car, watching as he helped put on the seatbelt for you.

"Can't I just be nice today?" He shrugged, a smug smile on his lips.

Throughout the car ride, he would occasionally steal glances in your way and purposely shift in his car seat to get closer to you. At first, you didn't think much of it and assumed that you were just overthinking but the more you could feel his arms brushed up against yours when he made a u-turn, the more you couldn't contain your flustered state. Letting a noise of complaint when you realised that he was doing it intentionally.

"Ugh, is it something I did yesterday? I swear, whatever I did or say means nothing. I was drunk." You explained, once he had parked his car outside your destination.

He wasn't fully convinced with your words, "Haven't you heard of 'drunk words, sober thoughts'?"

"Just tell me what I did—"

"You confessed your undying love for me." He revealed, making your eyes widened as you let his words sink in.

"You said I was the reason your heartbeat's beating so fast everytime." He came in closer, hand reaching out to hold your palm, "Let's put that to the test and see if you're lying."

Truth be told, your heart rate was beating so fast that you swore you could hear it. Embarassment flooded through your face as your only thought was fleeing out of the car, reaching out for the door handle, your heart dropped when it clicked back in place.

"Nuh-uh, I knew you were gonna run away." He tsked, "Come on, sweetheart, nothing to be embarassed about."

"Ugh, Chenle. Let me out!" You groaned stubbornly. "This is kidnapping!"

"You're such a drama queen, at least turn around and look at me."

"No!" You refused, "If I do, I feel like I'm gonna humiliate myself further!"

"You won't, just look at me please." He said softly, hand gently holding onto your shoulder to turn you around.

Just as you did so, his lips met yours in a passionate kiss. His other hand cupping your cheeks as his teeth gently bite your bottom lip, causing you to gasp as he took the opportunity to slide his tongue inside.

For a moment, you indulged yourself into the kiss, hand reaching out to tug his hair as you both made out in his car.

Pulling away, you slowly opened your eyes, only to be greeted by a cocky smile from Chenle.

"No more running away, we're together now." His hands made its way to yours as he interlocked it.

✰ JISUNG.

"Do you think this girl looks cute?" Jisung showed you his phone, for what felt like the tenth time, at this point, you were grown tired at his obliviousness to your bubbling jealousy.

"I don't know, does she?" You asked in annoyance, trying to appear as if the topic bores you.

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking you." He scratched his head awkwardly, looking back and forth between his phone and your disinterested figure.

"Are you serious, right now?"

"What?" He tilted his head in confusion.

"Nothing." You huffed, "It's whatever."

"I'II help you find a guy too if that's what you're angry about." He muttered, as if that was what you were truly upset about.

"It's not even about that!" You snapped, head turning back towards the TV screen as you tried to contain your emotions.

"Then what is?"

"Forget it!"

"No, something I'm doing is upsetting you and I want to know what."

"Fine." You looked at him, watching as he slightly flinced at how fast you turned. "Since you want to know so much, I like you Jisung." You rambled on, "And it hurts when you don't feel the same! Watching you for hours finding some chick all while trying to keep it to myself at the fact that I'm madly in love with you!"

You let out a breathe you didn't know that you had held for so long, conscience crept in when you realised you had exposed yourself a little too much. Regret started seeping in as you began rushing to collect your things to leave his apartment before you embarass yourself further.

"Fuck! I should go."

"Wait!" He grabbed onto your hand, preventing you from moving.

You tried to pull away from his hold, shaking your head when he came closer.

"Just leave me alone for now, okay?" You pleaded, "I really need time away from you."

He seemed to hesitate, hand still gripping onto yours when he realised your distress state and eventually loosened his hold, giving you the chance to run away.

Ji: 'I hope you get home safe.'

Ji: 'I know you want space but I really want you to know how much I care about you. Talk to me when you're ready, I'll wait.'

It's been a few days since you've been actively ignoring Jisung, despite him agreeing to give you space, he didn't necessarily stopped checking in with you through messages, to which you only replied dryly.

Other than that, he didn't try to approach you and would only give you a small smile from a distance.

Days went by till weeks and you were still in the process of getting over him. It seems as if the odds were in your favour when you met a a friend of a friend, you both seemed to be getting along well and you agreed to hang out with him when he offered.

Hearing this, Jisung didn't like it one bit. Hating the fact that you were trying to get over him. He rushed at your apartment door, banging on it repeatedly, stopping when you opened it abruptly.

"Jisung?" You asked, "What are you doing here—"

You were cut off when he engulfed you in a tight hug, face buried in your neck as he mumbled something you couldn't quite understand.

"What?"

"I said don't go on the date with him." He pleaded, eyes glossy as he looked at you. "I was an idiot, I should've realised it sooner. I love you too and I was too scared to admit it too!"

You gasped in shock but Jisung still continued on.

"I tried to move on because I thought you didn't feel the same but when you confessed to me that day, I was happy." He explained, "You told me you needed space so I gave it to you, but I can't let you get over me. I won't let you!"

He sobbed quietly in your arms while you tried to soothe him.

"Calm down." You patted his shoulder, but he only gripped your waist tighter.

After a moment, he lifted his head up to which you took the opportunity to give him a kiss. You could hear him gasped in shock but he eventually melted against your lips, moulding it against yours as your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer.

It was safe to say that you had ditched your date.

©ruwriteshours

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 18.3k ❧ warnings: cursing, renjun gets CONSENSUALLY dosed with a magical aphrodisiac For Science ❧ genre: fluff, humor, one (1) heavy makeout scene but no actual smut, 0.1 seconds of angst if you can even call it that, academic rivals to lovers, modern magical creatures au, college au, siren reader, human renjun ft. siren ten, same universe as strawberry sunday ❧ extra info: in my lore, siren scales are visible when they’re in more human-like forms because of magic, and it’s not an indication of their skin tone at all. so when the reader’s scales are mentioned, please don’t take this as any sort of allusion to them being pale/light-skinned! i tried to take care and make sure i wasn’t implying that in how i wrote it, but please tell me if it reads like that this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe, they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ author’s note: y’all. get ready for this one. no spoilers but renjun and reader r both crazy and nobody should be subjected to them except each other. like they both look at the other and think “i could fix them but whatever the fuck is wrong with them is infinitely funnier to me” but they’re both Wrong. they could not fix the other. i don't want what they have but good for them. anyway as always i had way too much fun writing this that it went over my projected word count and i hope y’all have a lot of fun reading it too

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

2608, 2610, 2612…

The numbers of the study rooms you passed by went up, up, up, as you continued your hunt. You knew he’d be here. It was the day before the first test in your Linguistics in Magical Creatures Studies class, meaning he was going to be holed up in the library until closing time. Now it was just a matter of finding him. Somewhere quiet, obviously, which was why you’d completely skipped the first floor with its wide-open “collaboration areas.” The second floor was all bookshelves and private study rooms that would hold four or five students at most. You peered into the narrow window on each painted metal door as you walked down the hall. While the first floor was recently renovated with new technology and upgrades such as the “collaboration areas” and bright pops of your university’s school colors that made for great promotional photos to put on the website and pamphlets to hand out to new students, this floor hadn’t had seen anything more than a janitor in a good couple decades. The musty, stale smell of old, unused books was all around you, the air conditioning hummed and clicked irregularly, all the furniture had ugly, outdated patterns, and the exactly three desktop computers they did have in a far back corner were practically as old as you. Which, in the digital age, meant that they were artifacts belonging in a museum.

And of course, sitting at very last one, as if he had been hiding behind all of these bookshelves from you personally, was Huang Renjun.

Renjun was sat in the wooden chair facing the computer, clearly deep in thought. He had one foot propped up on the wide chair seat as both of his hands were on the archaic-looking keyboard, speedily typing something out. He wore a pair of jeans, yellow hoodie, and a red backwards baseball cap kept his hair out of his face. An open energy drink can and empty bag of chips on the desk next to him belied that he had already been there for some time.

Now that you had found your target, you put on a burst of speed, stalking up to him from the side and smacking your hand down on the tabletop beside him. “Renjun.”

The human jumped in his seat, looking up from his screen to you. Taking his hands from the keyboard, he made a couple quick clicks on the mouse as he used the other to take his headphones out of his ears. “Y/N. Fucking hell… is your new strategy this semester to give me a heart attack and kill me?”

“If murder was on the table as part of our little academic rivalry, don’t you think I would’ve just drowned you after our Intro course freshman year?” You asked, tilting your head innocently. After all, you were a siren, that would be much easier than scaring him into an early cardiac episode.

Huang Renjun was not your friend. Not necessarily an acquaintance either, you’d known him for going on four years now, since your first class on your first day of college. The two of you were in the same Introduction to Magical Creatures Studies class. He had sat in the very front row, you just behind him in the second row. When your professor had asked an open question to the class, both you and Renjun eagerly blurted out the answer, Renjun just a millisecond before you. Dr. Li gave him the credit, and also requested that you two raise your hands in the future. And from then on you hated Huang Renjun.

Well, hate may be a strong word. You overlapped in at least two classes every semester being in the same major, and were both chronic overachievers. The first to raise your hands when a question was asked, studying in the library until closing (separately), and visiting professors’ office hours just to discuss topics from class further. Your professors noticed this. Some would pit the two of you against each other, and others would try to pair you up, whether on projects, research, or just in general, as a meeting of the minds or whatever. And you two would get your project done, pocket your As, and part ways again. Academic rival slash frenemy was the best way you could describe who Huang Renjun was to you.

“Who knows, you might still, if they ask me to carry the banner,” he muttered, picking his pen up and spinning it between his fingers.

This was your last semester, both you and Renjun were graduating in just a few months. At commencement, each department picked one “outstanding student” to lead the progression, carrying a flag with the department’s name and seal on it. This semester it was Magical Creatures Studies’ turn to select a student for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and your program head had already heavily implied that they could choose either you or Renjun, but they hadn’t made their final decision yet.

This was actually a pretty good segue into what you were really here to talk to him about. Pulling your lips into an alluring smirk, you nodded, “You’re right. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that—”

“A fucking what?” He cut you off, his face scrunching up as he blinked at you in confusion.

“Obviously it’s going to be one of us two, since we’re the two best students in the program.”

“Well, yes.” He nodded, seeming to let go of what had presumably been another one of your jumbled human malaphors. You admittedly hadn’t been living among humans for terribly long, and for some reason their idioms just didn’t stick in your brain very well.

“I mean, we not only are dedicated to the field itself and the content we study in class, but the program too. We probably know everybody in it, professors and students, right? Between the two of us?”

Renjun considered this for a moment. “Yeah, probably. We’ve both taken on a lot of SI and tutor opportunities for lower-level classes.”

“Right. So, you know those forums the school has on the online class platform? The general message boards?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m going to need you to sit tight with me on this until I finish talking, okay?” You pointed at him sternly. He nodded slowly. “Good. Back in the fall, about the end of September, I was on the message boards, just browsing around killing time. I was in the Tips & Advice section and saw this post. It was a gryphon who was losing feathers on one specific spot on her wing, and she didn’t know why. The witch she went to didn’t know why, nobody could figure it out. I was about to reply asking if it was her left or right, when I saw that somebody else already had. It was her left, and she’s a lefty. The same person replied again, asking if she sleeps with her wings out or not. She sleeps with them out. It turns out she was stress-preening in her sleep. Username: dr_magic2303. A couple weeks later, same message board, Tips & Advice, a human is suddenly producing dark purple goop from his feet but it’s so slippery he can’t even leave to go see a doctor or a witch and he was typing the post from his bathroom. Within an hour, this Dr. Magic is back telling him someone’s put an aether ooze hex on him, and to sit down and scoot on his butt to the kitchen and gather up all these ingredients for a cleansing foot bath. And if he doesn’t have them, then he’ll have to butt-scoot his way to an apothecary or call one who does home deliveries. Now people are posting on there specifically asking Dr. Magic to come heal all their magical aches and pains.”

Renjun stared at you, unblinking. The pen had gone still in his hand.

You breathed in, continuing, “I tracked this Dr. Magic all the way back to their first post in the first week of fall semester of this year. Now, I’ve been trying to figure out who they are on my own, and I’ve made a lot of progress on who they aren’t. But I’m going to lose access to those message boards once we graduate at the end of the semester. I know Dr. Magic has to be an MCS major, there’s no way they would be able to have to breadth, depth, and flexibility of knowledge by just Googling this stuff. And you and me, Renjun, I know we can do this. Not only do we know MCS, but we know the department, the people in it. It has to be us.”

He was still staring at you, mouth slightly agape. Then, his whole demeanor shifted. He dropped his leg so that both his feet were on the ground, and he resumed spinning the pen.

“Okay. I’ll help you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “If you’ll do something for me.”

“Do what?” You straightened up.

“I’ll tell you after we find Dr. Magic.”

You crossed your arms. “No, tell me now or no deal.”

“I tell you after, but you can still say no then if you don’t want to do it.” He bargained.

“That just sounds even more concerning, Renjun. Tell me now or I’ll do it myself.”

“I’m hurt. What happened to ‘it has to be us?’”

“I’m a siren, I know how to sweet talk. Don’t take it personally.” You snorted. “Now, what do you want from me?”

“You’re a siren,” he echoed plainly, as if that were all the explanation you needed.

“And you’re a genius.” You retorted. “Tell me now or I walk out.”

“I... want to experience siren venom. For science.”

Oh, you could kiss him right now, no deal necessary. He was meeting your gaze head-on, a slightly unhinged glint in his eye. Not a hint of fear, just a craving for new experiences, unbridled curiosity. Yeah, he was a bit crazy, you were realizing four years on, and you wanted him.

“You’re insane.”

He leaned back in his seat, putting his hands up in front of him in an ‘I-don’t-care’ gesture, “If you don’t want to find Dr. Magic—”

“I didn’t say no, I said you’re insane,” you corrected him with a grin, dragging your eyes up and down his form as he sat so confidently, negotiating with a siren like it was any average Tuesday for him.

“So do we have a deal?” He set his pen down and held a hand out to you.

“You help me find Dr. Magic, then I’ll spit in your mouth.” You momentarily thought about the disparity in division of labor on that, but decided not to point it out aloud. Easiest handshake of your life. “Deal.”

You wanted to eat him alive.

“You’ve tried IP tracking?” Renjun asked, scrolling through your word document of notes that you’d accumulated on Dr. Magic.

“‘You’ve tried IP tracking?’” You mimicked him under your breath, making your voice so high-pitched to the point of mocking.

He rolled his eyes.

This was your first meet-up to try to hunt down Dr. Magic together. It was a couple weeks after he had agreed to help you in the first place. There was a test and some assignments in a few of your classes to get through first before either of you had enough spare time to dedicate to this. But now the two of you were back in the library, having taken a study room on the second floor and set up with your own laptops. You’d sent him your notes to look through on it while you perused the message board for any new posts from Dr. Magic.

“You do know that any geographical location an IP address can give you will just be the city, right? It’s not like the movies,” you snorted, dropping your voice back down to your normal intonation as you shook your head. “Anyway, I did do some extra legwork with the IPs, and matched most of them to desktop computers here in the library. I think the others are a personal device, their laptop or something.”

“They’re all different.”

You tutted at him, “Oh, you sweet Thursday’s child…”

“That’s not the say—”

“They’re all somehow on other continents. Now, I don’t think Dr. Magic teleporting abroad and cross-dimensionally to make forum posts.”

“VPN?”

“Definitely. They’re covering their tracks, they almost never use their own device, and when they have to, they use a VPN to cover up the IP address of it.”

He made a noise of acknowledgement, eyes still focused on his screen.

Then, something on the forum caught your eye. “Oh! Right here. Thirty-six minutes ago, a dryad posted that she can’t sprout daffodils from her body anymore. Every other plant and flower are fine, except daffodils. She posted it specifically asking Dr. Magic if they know what’s wrong with her.”

“Huh.” Renjun’s brow furrowed. “Just daffodils?”

“That’s what it says,” you confirmed, making a few clicks on your computer. “And… ‘notify me.’”

“You can turn on notifications for forum posts?”

“You can’t,” you informed him smugly. “But one of the sirens in my pod, he’s got a bunch of CompSci friends who I paid to write a browser extension for me that bookmarks forum posts and sends me email notifications when anybody replies to them. So I’ll know exactly when Dr. Magic responds.”

“You…”

“Have definitely spent too much time, energy, and money on this, I know. Sunken cost fallacy, look it up.”

“I was going to say ‘are insane,’” he breathed out, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief.

When you looked up from your computer at him, you saw that he had a curious gaze fixated on you, eyes narrowed slightly, mouth parted, and head tilted ever so slightly to the side.

You leaned forward minutely, holding his eye contact. “Takes one to know one, Junnie.”

He looked down at his keyboard, shifting in his seat before he looked back up at you. “Why are you calling me that?”

“Do you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do like it.” You smirked.

He frowned. “I didn’t say that either.”

“Well do you?”

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine.”

“I asked first.”

“Ooh, how very primary school,” you teased, setting your chin in your hand.

“It’s only fair.” He pointed out.

“We could flip a coin.”

“Y/N.”

“Junnie.”

The human sighed, holding your eye contact wordlessly, looking entirely unamused.

You finally gave in with a casual shrug. “I just am.”

“Seriously? We’ve known each other for four years and you’ve never called me that—you’ve called me plenty of other things—but now suddenly you’ve got a nickname for me?”

“I’m not trying to be derogatory with it, if you’re worried about that,” you clarified. “Just sort of happened. I’m a siren, I flirt with cute people, sorry. Do you want me to stop calling you that?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing some off his face as he turned his focus back down to his screen. “It’s fine.”

“Anyway, I bookmarked the new forum post, so it’ll go on the board.”

“The board?”

“I, uh, I may be using a spare wall in my apartment to host a conspiracy theory board with you know, the red string and thumbtacks and stuff…” You admitted quietly.

“Can I see it?”

“Ho-ly shit,” Renjun breathed out, staring up at the multiple time-stamped printouts of forum posts, pictures of classmates and faculty, sticky notes, and yards of red string that you had pinned to a blank wall in your apartment.

You stood next to him, gazing up at your creation with a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment. This was the first time you’d let someone see this, and you were kind of glad it was Renjun. He actually seemed impressed. You were sure that any of your friends and family would be weirded out at best, and very concerned at worst.

“Yeah, I’m adding color copies off the school printers to the invoice I’m sending Dr. Magic at the end of all this.”

“You’re sending them an invoice for your self-assigned mission to hunt them down?” He snorted.

“Yup. It’s their fault for not using their school-issued login.” You crossed your arms. “Makes them enigmatic.”

Your classmate pointed to one of the headshots. “Is that Dr. Li?”

“Did you think our scope was narrowed to just students? Faculty have access to the message boards, too. And we’ve learned everything we know from our professors, so they obviously have the knowledge and skill to be Dr. Magic.”

“And their names also start with Doctor.” He added dryly, which you took to be a joke.

You decided that it wasn’t at your expense, though, and after giving a short chuckle, continued on with your explanation of why you specifically had your program head up on the board. “When I was grilling Dr. Li for information in the fall, he was giving me very duplicitous answers. Pointed me towards a freshman who I swear didn’t even know the difference between Arctic sirens and glacial sirens.”

“You think it was a diversion.”

“Obviously.”

Renjun tapped his chin thoughtfully. “What sort of questions were you asking him?”

“I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was Dr. Magic. So I was asking him things like... other than you and me, who did he think was the best student in the program, that kind of stuff. Said that kid reminded him of you and me on that first day of Intro to MCS.” You couldn’t help but let out an indignant scoff at the idea. “Can you believe? Didn’t know the difference between Arctic and glacial sirens…”

“Who was it?”

“Some basilisk in one of his Intro classes last semester. Uh…” You snapped your fingers as you tried to remember his name. “Seunghan! Hong Seunghan!”

“Seriously?” The human turned to look at you incredulously, clearly offended at the comparison as well.

“Seriously!”

He clutched at his chest like he was about to have a heart attack. “That’s who he thinks is the next us? I was an SI for that class…”

“I know! He’s not the brightest tool in the shed, huh?”

“So close, Y/N. So close…” He sighed.

“It almost completely threw me off my search for Dr. Magic. I figured I needed to seriously step up my game in his undergrad research or something.” You shook your head at the horrible memory. “Then I realized he might have been trying to get me to do exactly that.”

“Huh.” Renjun folded his arms over his chest as he looked away, pretending not to seem interested. “You did research with Dr. Li last semester?”

“Don’t give me those kicked puppy dog eyes, you’re doing research with Dr. Kwon this semester and she’s like, my academic idol!” You pointed at him accusatorily.

“And Dr. Li is mine!”

You waved your arms in front of you, shaking yourself out of the academic envy-induced frenzy you’d gotten worked up into. “We’re getting off-topic. We’re here to catch Dr. Magic, remember?”

“Right…” He took a deep breath, turning back to the conspiracy wall.

As Renjun studied your work, you studied him. You had a strand of fairy lights clipped up above the conspiracy wall for light and ambiance (mostly ambiance), and they now lit his features from the front. He didn’t have a baseball cap on today, leaving his brown hair to fall over his forehead, down past his eyebrows and just into his eyes. He blinked and shook his head slightly. A piece had presumably been bothering him. The curving slope of the bridge of his nose, his lips, his chin that he still had one hand propped up to hold, a finger tapping against his cupid’s bow like a metronome. You listened closer, curious if it would be mimicking the beat of his heart. The tapping was just slightly slower than his heart, and would stop if he found something that he took particular interest in, then start back up when he moved on again.

Not that you were going to tell him, but you were double motivated to find Dr. Magic now. Seeing Renjun under your venom was going to be a reward all on its own. You understood full well why he felt like he needed to ask you as part of an exchange like this, but he seemed to greatly underestimate his own selling value. Which was good for you. This was a win-win-win in your eyes.

Thinking of the deal made you curious, though. He had that request ready to go almost like…

“So, do you want to be petrified by a basilisk, too?”

Renjun didn’t take his eyes off the wall. “Already have been.”

“Really?”

“My friend Mark is a basilisk. When he had just gotten his powers a couple years ago and couldn’t control them, he kept accidentally petrifying his human roommate. So I figured out when it was most likely to happen, invited myself over and hid his sunglasses. It was strange, being able to think but not speak, see but not blink, and telling my muscles to move and not having them obey.” He casually detailed what sounded like one of the most horrifying experiences ever to you, leaning in towards a specific post from November. “But it only lasted one minute and twenty-nine seconds.”

You stared at him with both admiration and alarm. “You manufactured an opportunity to get petrified.”

“I knew he wouldn’t do it if I asked. He’s a wimp. That, and he couldn’t do it on command at the time, even if he did agree.”

“Have you had your blood drank?”

“Yup.”

“Been flying?”

“How so?” His eyes flicked over to you for a second, and you were glad that you had relaxed again with the more casual conversation.

“With a gryphon, phoenix, take your pick.” You shrugged.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have a list for this stuff or something?”

“Written down, no. But I suppose I have a mental list.”

“Poisoned by a wyvern?”

“Would have to find one first.”

You felt your eyes bug out of your head. “You want to be poisoned by a wyvern? You know there’s no cure for that, right?”

“Yes, I took the same class that you did on them last spring.” He reminded you tersely. Your head jerked back minutely, surprised for a second that he had noticed, remembered, and brought it up. The two of you didn’t have a spat in that class, taking an ‘ignore and pretend the other doesn’t exist’ approach that semester when you could, and hadn’t mentioned it since. Seeming to realize what he’d done, Renjun rushed to move on, “So I also know that there’s no cure because they went extinct hundreds of years ago.”

“Supposedly.”

“You think they’re still out there?”

“Maybe.”

“Hm.” He stepped to the side to read over the next post from the first week of December.

You scoffed. “Okay, coming from the guy who believes in aliens.”

“We haven’t explored all of space. But we know what habitats wyverns lived in, and they’re not there anymore.”

“They could’ve adapted, gone somewhere else,” you tried to argue. “I’m not exactly splashing around the ocean right now, am I?”

“Where did they go, then?”

“I... I don’t know,” you admitted, holding yourself by your arms protectively.

“Hmph.”

You tightened your grip, swallowing hard against the lump threatening to grow in your throat. “I just don’t want to believe they’re gone, okay?”

“So this isn’t a scientific hypothesis, but some rosy daydream?” Renjun’s disapproval of the lack of academic rigor in your argument was clear in his tone as his eyes never left your wall, following a red string up to your next connection for Dr. Magic.

“I don’t want to believe that wyverns went extinct because that means that sirens could too! Alright?” You finally snapped, hands squeezing tightly around your biceps as your claws came out with the raw burst of emotion. “I know that Magical Conservation was just some class to you, but I had to sit there and take notes on how exactly the native habitats of sirens—me, my friends, my family—are shrinking, and could theoretically lead to our extinction, and then write a discussion post on it after like it was some intellectually stimulating bit of information. So yeah, maybe I like to imagine that there’s still wyverns out there somewhere, because it gives me a modicum of hope that after everything, there could still be sirens, too. Sorry that that’s not academic enough.”

The image of Renjun that you had been yelling at in front of you was wavering as tears swam in your vision. He’d turned around to listen, mouth parting as he seemed to immediately realize his mistake. The human nodded regretfully, running a hand through his hair before finally picking his words.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to be so dismissive. I-I misread the tone of the discussion. Sirens aren’t wyverns, and you won’t meet the same fate they might have. Siren advocacy and conservation groups are making huge progress. The world now is a lot different than it was hundreds of years ago,” Renjun said, and you could hear both the remorse and firm belief in his tone. “And who knows, maybe there are still some wyverns out there. I could be wrong... it’s been known to happen before.”

You took a deep breath, your claws receding back into your fingers and just leaving your normal fingernails. As you looked down at your arms, though, you let out a sigh.

“Damn, I got myself.” You clicked your tongue in your throat regretfully, spotting a few drops of what looked like molten silver metal welling to the surface where you’d punctured your skin.

“Ooh,” Renjun winced sympathetically. “Do you have some… bandages?”

“Even better, I’ve got running water.” You started towards the door, then noted that there were no footsteps behind you. Turning back around, you looked at the human knowingly. “Do you want to watch, Renjun?”

He perked up. “Please?”

“Come on,” you jerked your head, holding your arms level as you shuffled towards your kitchen.

Thankfully, you hadn’t been nearly deep enough to get your scales, just the skin overtop. Turning the kitchen faucet on, you grabbed one of your sleeves, then looked at your classmate imploringly.

“A little help, Junnie?” You nodded towards your other arm, where the end of your sleeve was getting close to your blood.

“Oh, sure.” He surged forward to help you roll up the other one.

“I know you know this but be careful not to touch my blood,” you reminded him, finally pulling up the sleeve you’d started on well enough. Siren blood was a neurotoxin to humans—and not the fun kind like your venom, but a proper ‘kill you in an excruciatingly painful way’ kind.

“Uh-huh, got it.”

A couple drops on your left and a drop on your right had run down to your elbows, and you just managed to catch yourself so that they dripped into the sink and not onto your counter (or gods forbid, Renjun). Looking over to make sure he was watching, you stuck your left bicep under the stream of water first. The ocean blue scales that peeked through your skin shimmered in the kitchen lights directly above your head. Thankfully you hadn’t come anywhere close to nicking one of those. That would’ve actually hurt. Within a second of touching the water your skin had meshed itself back together. You turned your arm to rinse off the blood, then brought it back out to show that there was no scar left. Doing the same with the other, it healed just as quick, no mark left behind to indicate that anything had ever happened.

“Yep…” Renjun breathed out as you grabbed a hand towel and went to dry off your arms. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that.”

“How many does that make?” You giggled.

“What?”

“How many creatures have you seen magically heal themselves? What number am I?”

“You make me sound so…”

“Like a common MCS whore?”

“I was going to say clinical, but damn, tell me how you really feel, Y/N.”

Both of you laughed, and you put the hand towel back.

“You’re the first siren,” Renjun answered your question genuinely anyway.

You hummed as you mulled this over. “I’ll take it.”

He made a dramatic motion of wiping sweat off his forehead, and you reached forward to smack his forearm. You two laughed again.

After a bout of comfortable silence, your eyes settled on him again, still thinking about exactly how you’d accidentally stabbed yourself in the first place.

“I forgive you, by the way,” you said. “I don’t think I said that.”

“You didn’t.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

“You really mean all that? You think I’ll—we’ll be okay? Sirens?”

“Of course I mean it. Or I wouldn’t have said it. It’s the most scientifically plausible. I did take that Magical Conservation class seriously, you know. I know it couldn’t have meant the same thing for me as it means to you, but I did my final paper on siren conservation projects in the Arctic. The progress that’s being made there is incredible. I-I don’t want to tell you about your own species’ problems, obviously, but—”

“I did mine on siren conservation in the tropics.” You let out a dry chuckle at the flawless symbiosis. “You can tell me about your paper sometime, Renjun.”

“And I’d love to hear about siren conservation in the tropics.”

“Ah, ‘a meeting of the minds.’” You did your best impression of Dr. Li, thinning your voice out to sound like an elderly man, which garnered a smile from Renjun. “Isn’t this what our professors always wanted?”

“Uh-oh. We’re giving them exactly what they want.” He shook his head ruefully. “Quick, you need to start yelling at me about something.”

“Well you need to say something obnoxious first.”

Another gentle lull in the conversation, and you watched as Renjun looked around your apartment a lot more carefully than when you two had first entered. Your destination then had been solely the conspiracy wall, but now he seemed to be really taking it in.

“So why don’t you have like… a fish tank or something?” He asked.

“Because that would be cruel! Imagine if someone kept you in a 2-foot by 2-foot box!” You jabbed a finger into his chest accusatorily.

He held his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. That was a stupid question.”

“I’m glad you said it, because I was about to.”

“So why don’t you reply? To the posts.” Renjun asked curiously, back to trolling the message boards for new Dr. Magic posts. You two were holed up in your second floor study room again. “You’ve been tracking Dr. Magic so closely, you’re getting to these posts before they do, and you can help all these students, too. So why don’t you just reply instead?”

Yours and Renjun’s search for Dr. Magic had been going on for a month now, and he’d been proving himself useful. He’d finally convinced you to rule out Dr. Li as a suspect when he found a message board post made from a school computer while Dr. Li was away at a conference giving a presentation. Confirmed to be done at the exact same time. So you’d found another wrong person, but you still didn’t feel any closer to the right person. The remaining people felt like they were going to turn out to be dead ends, and there was nobody good to rule in either.

Spring break was coming up in a few weeks, which meant that commencement preparations would be starting, which meant that the colleges would be announcing who would be chosen to carry their banners, which meant the actual students who were going to be chosen would be told at least a week or two ahead of time. Every time you thought about that you wanted to bite something. Maybe there was some ancestral link between sirens and werewolves. Another paper waiting to be written.

“They don’t want me. They want Dr. Magic.” You told Renjun, hating the irritable edge in your voice when you addressed him. You weren’t upset with him, you were just anxious in general. He didn’t deserve to have you take it out on him.

“Right. Sorry…”

“No, Renjun, I’m sorry,” you sighed, taking the wood pencil out of your mouth that you had been gnawing on. “I just want to get this Dr. Magic stuff over with before midterms because you and I are both going to get super busy studying for midterms, and then no matter which one of us gets picked to carry the banner, that’s going to suck up a lot of time preparing for commencement too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you though, sorry.”

He offered you a small smile. “It’s okay, I get it. It’s another deadline. But it’s a group project, remember? We’ve got this, Y/N.”

You nodded. “Yeah, I know. Just feeling the pressure. I’m going to get something from the vending machine. You coming?”

“No, I’ll keep chugging along.”

“Okay. You want anything?”

“Nah. Thanks, though.”

“Alright,” you nodded, standing up and rolling your neck out. “I’m going to stretch my legs while I’m up, so I’ll be a few.”

“I won’t sound the alarm then.” He gave you a two-fingered salute as you headed to the door.

You meandered around the second floor, taking your sweet time to get to the stairs. There was a vending machine on the second floor, but it had a limited selection. The good snacks were all in the vending machines on the first floor, by the collaboration zones. Your back cracked all on its own as you plodded down the steps, and you let quiet groans with each one, until you finally landed on the first floor. There was a noticeable hum to the first floor, which only increased as you neared the two-thirds of the floor that was taken up by the collaboration zones. The vending machines were on the boundary of the bookshelves and the open spaces filled with tables and TV monitors and so many students.

Stopping in front of the drinks machine first, you mused over the options for a moment. Picking out your preferred seaweed-infused iced tea—an option you only saw sirens and the really hardcore human health-nuts drink—you then sidestepped to the snacks. It took you just a second to select a pack of mini peanut butter sandwich cookies. Neither peanut butter nor peanuts themselves were in the regular diet of a siren, but Renjun sometimes had the cookies on him for one of his werewolf friends and you’d picked up a taste for them. You would’ve never considered even trying them before hanging out with Renjun. Being an MCS major, you didn’t like to admit it, but your social circle wasn’t very diverse species-wise. You had your siren pod, and you were very happy sticking with them, thank you. Renjun, meanwhile, seemed to be best friends or friendly acquaintances with everything except a wyvern. You knew plenty about other species, after all, you excelled in class. But practical experience, you were finding you seemed to be lacking in. Maybe you should start your own Renjun-esque bucket list. Something to consider after finding Dr. Magic.

Taking a step back over to the drinks machine, you made the split-second decision to get Renjun’s favorite non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic drink. Honeydew melon soda. He had already said that you didn’t need to get him anything, but you wanted to.

“Hey, Y/N!” A cheerful voice greeted you, and you spun around, your two drinks and bag of sandwich cookies in hand.

You already knew who it was going to be, smiling at the familiar face of Ten. He was not only another siren, but specifically a siren from your pod, ocean blue scales and golden eyes matching your own. You threw your arms around his neck to give him a hug. “Ten! Ah, hey!”

“Are those… peanut butter?” He looked at the snack in your hand suspiciously.

“Uh, human study buddy,” you brushed off his concerns nonchalantly.

“Right, gotcha.”

The two of you usually hung out a lot—about as much as you and Renjun were together now, you figured—but since your spare time had been taken up with putting the search for Dr. Magic on full throttle, you were blanking on the last time you’d seen him. The beginning of the semester. Oh shit, you felt so guilty now.

The apology immediately started spilling out of your mouth, “Gods, I am so sorry we haven’t hung out, I wish I could say it was classes, or even research or something, but I’ve got this project. I can’t even really explain it without sounding crazy but—”

“Woah, Y/N, it’s okay,” Ten reassured you with a laugh, the same bright smile on his face as always. “I know how you get when you get really into one of your projects. Just let me know when you’ve finished it, and we can hang. Or if you ever need a break from it, too. It’s fine. If you weren’t a little crazy and obsessive, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you.”

He ruffled your hair with a snicker for good measure, and with your hands full of food, you couldn’t fight back, just huff and try to duck out of the way. But he was genuine about his sentiments, which really did make you feel better.

“Thanks, Ten. I’ll get in touch soon, I promise. I think I’m almost done!” You told him proudly.

“Soon in normal person time or soon in Y/N time?”

“Me time…”

“That’s what I thought. I’ll see you in six months then.”

“I’m not that bad!”

“Remember when I wondered aloud if sirens at the North and South poles were related, and you ended up spending our entire winter break researching that?”

“It only took four weeks!”

“You said it would be a quick search.”

“Exactly! People will dedicate their entire lives to that kind of research! I vastly condensed it!”

He shook his head fondly at the memory, elbowing you gently. “Get back to your project so you can finish early again and we can hang out soon, okay? And scoot, I’m trying to use the vending machine. You’re always in my way, I swear.”

You playfully pretended to block him, laughing as he nudged you out of the way with his shoulder. Starting back off towards the stairs, you turned around to give a cheery, “See you, Ten!”

“Bye, Y/N!” He waved to you with one hand, punching in the vending machine code with the other.

In better spirits having seen your friend, you traipsed up the stairs with extra pep in your step. Except Renjun wasn’t in your study room. Huh. Well, nothing in the rules saying a guy can’t take a bathroom break.

Setting his melon soda down next to his laptop, you plopped back down in your chair and kicked your feet up on the table. You ripped open your peanut butter sandwich cookies and cracked open your tea. The cookies were sweet, and while you didn’t have any oceanic reference for what peanut butter tasted like (you were told that “nutty” was a flavor profile unto itself, which wasn’t very helpful), you had decided that you liked it.

Waking your laptop back up, you saw that you had a new email, and shot up in your seat when you saw the subject.

dr_magic2303 replied to a post.

8 minutes ago.

Holy fucking shit, 8 minutes ago. While you were in the library? They could still be there. You looked around frantically. Where the fuck was Renjun when you needed him? Shooting to your feet, you snatched your phone from the table and rushed to throw the door open. Into Renjun’s face.

He stumbled back, holding his face as he let out a string of curses.

“Shit! Sorry, Junnie!” You didn’t sound all too sorry as you bounced on your feet, antsy to get a move on with your search. “No time for an ice pack though. Dr. Magic just replied to that dragon post we had bookmarked eight minutes ago. Which means that they’re probably still in the library! We need to go look for them right now!”

You took off in the direction of the desktop computers on this floor, keeping your voice at a fervent whisper-yell. The second floor computers were their favorite, according to the IPs.

“I know!” Renjun hurried after you, still clutching his nose. “I saw the email, and I tried to call you, but you left your phone in the study room.”

Checking your phone, you did in fact have a missed call from Renjun from 6 minutes ago. Well shit.

“So I went to go get you, but you weren’t at the vending machines, so I came back up to the study room and then nearly got my nose broken.”

You looked over your shoulder at him with wide eyes. “You went to get me? Not look for Dr. Magic on the freshest lead we’ve ever had? When they were quite possibly around the corner?”

The two of you had arrived at the desktops, and there was nobody in sight. One was awake, on the account login screen, the other two asleep on the ancient screensavers. You let out a heavy sigh, looking over at Renjun.

“I went to get you because this is your thing, not mine. I don’t know, I’d figured you’d want the satisfaction of taking the mask off them.”

You nodded. “Thanks, Junnie. Next time, though, just get them.”

“And how about you keep your phone on you?”

“So we both fucked it up.”

He gave you a one-shouldered shrug. “There’s still three more floors, Y/N.”

“Right, come on. You take the first, I’ll go up to the fourth since I smacked you with the door.”

The other floors were busts, and when you finally met back up with Renjun in your study room, you were glad to have your cold bottle of tea waiting for you. Knocking back a third of it in one go, you let out a noise of relief. Renjun had already opened the soda you’d gotten him.

“Thanks, by the way.” He held it up gratefully before taking a sip.

“You’re welcome.”

“And, I’m sorry. That I let Dr. Magic get away.”

“We don’t even know what floor they were posting from yet. They’ve could’ve been on the fourth floor and would’ve been gone by the time you got there anyway.” You brushed away his apologies. “Or they could’ve been on the second and been a psycho and you would’ve been a poor defenseless human all by yourself.”

“Oh, right, without my big strong siren to protect me.” He scoffed. “Woe is me.”

“Exactly,” you laughed, shutting your laptop. “Anyway, I’ll take a look at the IP later. Who knows, they might not have even been in the library. Might’ve been one of those rogue VPN posts.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked over you packing up your things. “You heading out?”

You nodded, zipping up your bag and tossing it onto your shoulder. “Prior arrangements. Sorry to cut this short, completely forgot about it when we agreed to meet up.”

“You’re so popular.”

“I know!” You mimicked his sarcastic tone, holding the door open with your foot as you stopped in the threshold. “Oh, hey— the midterm in MCS Linguistics. It’s my only one this semester, I’ve just got papers in all my other classes. Do you want to study together for that?”

“Yeah, sure, sure.”

“First session Saturday? My place for lunch?”

Renjun grimaced, presumably remembering your typical stock of pantry items tailored to a siren’s food preference. “I’ll pack a lunch.”

“Cool. See you in class, Junnie!” You waved to him cheerily as you took off for the faculty advisor meeting with Dr. Kwon that you were going to need to run across campus to be on time for.

“What is it?” Renjun set his book down where he was sat across your coffee table from you, an inquisitive eyebrow quirked up at you.

“What? Nothing.” You bit down on your lip, eyes boring holes into your computer screen.

“No, it’s not ‘nothing.’ You’ve been staring at me ever since I got here, while also refusing to make eye contact with me. What? Something in my teeth? My hair look bad?”

Normally that would’ve made you chuckle—he was wearing a backwards baseball cap again today—but you just bit down harder on your lip and shook your head.

“Now you’re refusing to talk?” He scoffed. “Did you get hexed or something? I can’t believe you’re refusing to talk.”

“No, I can talk,” you insisted. “What uh, what’d you get for number four? On the review packet?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still stuck on number four. Y/N, I’m almost done, and there’s twenty-five questions on this.”

“I’m not, I finished and went back, it was just one that I didn’t—”

But Renjun had grabbed your computer and turned the screen around, and you knew he could see that you had only done the first one. You buried your face in your hands, your skin prickling uncomfortably with shame. Your friend’s sigh was audible, but surprisingly, the next thing said wasn’t a string of derision. Instead, you heard the shuffle of clothes against your rug, and then he was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee with you.

“Y/N, what’s going on with you today? Or, not today, the past couple days? You weren’t all there in class yesterday either. I left it alone then because it was Dr. Hyun, and nobody is ever all there for her classes but— what’s wrong?”

You slowly shook your head.

“You can’t tell me?”

You nodded.

“Okay. Is it bad? Like, dangerous?”

You shook your head.

“Alright, that’s good.” The relief was audible in his voice. “Is it family? Or, pod?”

You shook your head.

“School?”

You nodded.

“Alright, yeah. A lot going on. Is it like burn out?”

You shook your head.

“So, new stuff?”

You nodded.

He put an arm around your shoulders. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I know you already had a lot. Getting this midterm over with will be one more thing off your checklist, right? That’ll open a spot for this new thing.”

With a sniffle, you nodded.

“Ah, but you’re not going to be any good studying like this.” He sighed again, dropping his arm from around your shoulders and his presence shifted away from your side. “Come on, quick field trip. Then we’ll come right back to the MCS Linguistics grind. Sound good?”

You finally took your hands from your face to look up. Renjun was standing right next to you, offering you a hand. You tentatively put yours in his, and he tightened his grip to pull you up to your feet.

The two of you ended up in a froyo shop down the street from your apartment. You gleefully picked a gummy shark off the top of your swirl, biting the head off first before tossing the rest in your mouth. Renjun lifted a meticulously curated spoonful of froyo and toppings to his mouth, satisfaction on his face as he tasted his perfect bite. You watched in amusement as he went to start creating his next scoop that had the precise ratio of yogurt and every single topping he had chosen—each partitioned to their own area atop the froyo. You decided to save your second big gummy shark for last, and took a big spoonful from the melting edge of your froyo.

“Why not me?” Renjun asked abruptly, his gaze still on the dessert in front of him.

“Huh?” Your jaw dropped. How could he have known what—

“You haven’t asked me if I’m Dr. Magic. Why not?”

Ah, Dr. Magic. Of course.

“You were my first guess, and the first person I ruled out back in like September,” you admitted with a shrug.

His head snapped up at that. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re such an arrogant, neurotic overachiever that you’d want credit if you did all this. You wouldn’t use an alias.”

“Oh. Huh.” Renjun looked between you and his froyo, a sheepish smile coming to his face. “Strangely, that makes me feel better.”

You watched a dollop of froyo fall off your spoon and plop back into your cup. “And I nabbed your IP address off your laptop the first time we hung out in January and double-checked it with every Dr. Magic post. Just in case.”

“When I was in the bathroom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course you did.”

“Were you taking it as an insult to your intelligence that I had apparently not considered you as an option?”

“Maybe…”

You laughed, and laughed, and laughed. You laughed so hard your sides hurt, there were tears in your eyes, and you genuinely started wheezing. Renjun pretended to roll his eyes, but you saw the smile on his face and knew what he was thinking: success, no more mopey siren.

Once you had enough air back in your lungs to talk, you pointed your spoon at him firmly. “See? Just proving my point. You want people to know you’re smart.”

He crossed his arms. “As if you don’t.”

“Oh, I definitely do. But I know I’m like that.” You put a hand over your chest, looking him dead in the eye. “Do you?”

With your head screwed back on the normal amount, you and Renjun were able to dive back into your study session at your apartment. Several hours into it, though, you noticed Renjun blinking like way too much and constantly rubbing at his eyes. It was to the point where it was distracting for you.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” You asked bluntly.

That immediately burst the Renjun griping dam (which was really held together with tape and prayers anyway). “The screens hurt my eyes and human blue light glasses don’t do shit and no fairy has let me try theirs out. I know I should probably just take the plunge and buy them but I really can’t justify the price and—”

“Try mine.” You stood up, walking over to a display shelf on the other side of the living room.

“You have a pair? Why? Sirens don’t—”

“You collect magical experiences. I collect magical things.” You said nonchalantly, grabbing the pair of silver frames from where they sat between a phoenix feather (a gift) and a small wristwatch that would tell the correct time until it was put on, then it would be set on the time and date most significant to the wearer in that moment until it was removed. Walking back over to him, you held them out to him insistently, “Here, try them.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Renjun gingerly took them, sliding the arms over his ears and the frames onto the bridge of his nose. The pair you had was a little older, admittedly. You’d picked them up at a novelty shop, so they had some retro charm to them. An older style of frame, thicker lenses. But you thought it added a quaintness to their look. Especially on Renjun, he just looked downright adorable in them.

You sat back down to watch with your head in your hand as his brown eyes blinked from behind the thick lenses, and he looked around your living room like a newborn woodland animal. His face had already relaxed, and he turned his focus down to his laptop screen next, messing with the brightness up, then down. After that, he took out his phone, doing the same with that device.

“Well?” You prompted him, though you truly would’ve been content with watching him look around as if he’d been born colorblind and it were his first time seeing in color. Which, you had an enchanted pair for that too, but he wasn’t colorblind to your knowledge.

The human looked at you, a giddy smile stretching across his face. “They’re perfect! Thanks, Y/N!”

His hand reached up to take them off, but you stopped him.

“Keep them—”

“No, these had to be so expensive!” He protested immediately.

“Just for a week or so,” you finished your sentence pointedly. He was cute, but not that cute. “Make sure you really like them before you buy, okay? If you end up hating them, give them back. If you like them and buy your own pair, you can give them back whenever yours arrive in the mail.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I’m using them. Superior siren eyesight.” You tapped next to one of your eyes for emphasis.

“Thanks for not rubbing it in or anything.”

Scrambling to dial Renjun’s number, you put your phone on speaker as you fervently flicked through all of your Dr. Magic notes. You’d been laying in bed binging some mindless baking competition to numb your brain from all the studying you’d been doing when an email notification had popped up alerting you to a new Dr. Magic post.

“Y/N?” Renjun answered the phone, sounding utterly confused. “What’s—”

“New Dr. Magic post. I ran the IP and they’re in our city!” You blurted out.

“Okay… Well we already knew that, right?”

“Yeah, but this is an IP in our city that they posted from at midnight on a Saturday. Not any of the school computers.” You hit CTRL + F, typing in the string of numbers to quickly cross reference it with your extensive list. “This could be their IP. Like, their actual one, from a personal computer.”

“Oh, yeah. Could be.”

“Can you give me a little more enthusiasm here, Junnie? Did I wake you up or something? It’s only—” You stopped like you’d just walked face-first into a brick wall, eyes locked on the search result.

“Yeah, only quarter after midnight,” he scoffed.

You clicked the next arrow on the search bar, but that was the only match. 1/1 results.

“Y/N?” Renjun called for your attention. “You there?”

You hung up.

Not wanting to lose your nerve, you pressed the doorbell over and over insistently. You could hear the complaining tone of the occupant before his words were even audible.

“Christ, I have neighbors, you know?” Renjun swung open the door with a scowl. The human was in a big, slouching hoodie and pajama pants. His hair was stuck up in a couple different directions, making you think he might’ve just woken up. Except behind him, you could see that his kitchen light was on, and a couple books and his laptop were open on his kitchen table. Late night studying. And the fact that you’d just talked to him on the phone fifteen minutes ago.

“Can I come in?” You requested, fidgeting with the sleeve of your cardigan.

His face immediately softened. “Yeah, of course.”

“Sorry to just show up like this,” you said as you took off your shoes by the front door before following him further into his apartment.

“It’s okay.” He stopped you two in the kitchen, picking up a colorful, patterned cardboard box. “Uh, I was just about to make a midnight snack. Pizza bites, you want some?”

“I… don’t think I’ve ever had them.”

“Perfect, you can try one now then.”

“Mm,” you made a non-committal noise, leaning against his kitchen counter to watch him pour out the frozen food onto a baking sheet.

The oven beeped, and he put the tray in before pressing a couple more buttons.

“So, I was thinking about the Dr. Magic stuff. Not the IP stuff but like… What even is your plan for when you do find Dr. Magic?” Renjun asked as he put the remaining pizza bites in his freezer.

“What do you mean?”

He leaned against the countertop across from you, though in the narrow space of his kitchen, you were practically knee-to-knee. “Like, say we finally find out who they are, we run up to them in the library or on campus or something. Then what? What are you going to do? What are you going to say? You’ve done all this, and I know why you had to. I get it. But, do you know what you’re going to say to them?”

“Probably something along the lines of…” You trailed off, giving an exasperated sigh. Dropping your chin to your chest, you groaned, “Gods, I don’t know.”

“Hey, that’s why you got me. So you can bounce ideas off someone, do a dry run.”

“I thought the words would just come to me, and now that I’m trying, I can’t—”

“It’s fine, Y/N. Let’s think about why you did this. I know it’s really hard to put into words. I mean, I know why you did. I get it. It’s that need to know. Not because you can, but because you have to, right? It’s curiosity in its rawest form. So obviously it’s not going to be some schmaltzy ‘haha I caught you’ spiel or anything.”

Looking up from the kitchen tile to Renjun’s eager features, you shook your head in disbelief. “You’re still helping me… when I know it’s you, Junnie.”

He tilted his head to the side, a comical noise of confusion coming from his mouth, “Uh?”

“I know it’s you, and you know that I know that it’s you.”

“You already ruled me out, because I’m an arrogant—”

“Junnie, you made a post on the forums from your laptop. No VPN. When you knew I was still tracking Dr. Magic’s IP on every post they made, and that I had your IP. That’s not a whoopsie that you make unless you want to be caught.”

The human crossed his arms over his chest, but otherwise seemed entirely calm about being caught. “And you didn’t come in here guns blazing now that you’d caught me, either. Why?”

“I didn’t know how to say it. I mean, you’re right, I only did all this because I needed to know.”

“And now you know.”

“Why now? Why just give up now?” You asked with a shake of your head. “You started posting as Dr. Magic back in August, and I came to you in January. You knew everything I was doing; you could have cruised through the rest of the semester and I’d have never caught you.”

“You wanted to find out who it was by midterms. One less thing on your plate.”

“And now I know…”

“So how does it feel? Finally catching Dr. Magic?”

You wrinkled your nose and sighed, “Bit disappointing. I was right on my first guess.”

“And you immediately dismissed me out of hand for being an arrogant, neurotic overachiever on your first guess,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I didn’t really know you then. If I’d known you then like I know you now, I would’ve known as soon as I saw the first post.”

Renjun batted his eyes teasingly. “Aww, Y/N…”

“Doctor underscore magic two, three, zero, three? Twenty-three, oh-three? That’s your birthday, Junnie,” you deadpanned.

“Right.”

Pushing off the counter to stand up straight again, you said, “Anyway, you did help me find Dr. Magic. So, my turn.”

“Oh, no, you seriously don’t have to do that. I rigged the deal—”

“Yeah, about that.” You took a step forward. “How did you think that was going to end up for you, anyway? Were you going to sell somebody else out as Dr. Magic and hope I wasn’t going to talk to them? Spit in your mouth first and ask questions later?”

“I was thinking on my feet.”

“Maybe think laying down next time, Junnie.”

“Ouch.”

“Anyway, come on, you’ll want to sit down for this.” You grabbed his wrist, pulling him towards the living room.

“You don’t need to feel like you have to do this,” he reassured you.

Stopping the two of you in front of the couch, you turned to face him with a smirk. “Believe me when I say that it is going to be a treat unto itself for me to see you under the effects of siren venom. M’kay?”

Renjun’s surprise was evident on his face. “Oh.”

You stepped closer to him, delicately placing a hand on his chest. “Now unless you want me to literally spit in your mouth, I’m going to have to kiss you, to administer the venom.”

His eyes flicked between the hand you had on his chest and your face as he replied. “I’m okay with that—the kissing—if you are.”

“Renjun, I’ve been ready to eat you alive since you said the words ‘I want to experience siren venom for science’ to me.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. So why don’t you sit?” You guided him with the hand against his chest to sit back against his couch. Swinging one leg over his hips, then the other, you lowered yourself onto his lap. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded, tentatively settling his hands on your thighs. “Is this okay?”

“More than.” You smiled, looping your arms around his neck. “Now, a couple things, before we get started.”

“We haven’t started?”

“You’ll know it when we do.”

“Right.”

“I know you think you know what siren venom is like, but whatever scientific articles you’ve read, or documentaries you’ve watched, or slides you’ve studied under microscopes in lab, cannot actually prepare you for what it’s like. Which, I imagine is why you want to experience it for yourself.” You smirked down at him as you watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down with a gulp. “So before I actually dose you up with it, I need you to tell me what you’re actually okay with doing and what you’re not. Because once you get my venom in you, you’re going to want to let me do anything and everything to you, up to and including kill you, remember?”

“Well that’s off the table.”

“Good to know,” you snorted, running a fingernail down the nape of his neck. You felt a shudder go through him. “Is this okay?”

“Y-Yeah.” He seemed to be fighting to keep his eyes open. You halted your motions to let him think, and watched in amusement as he blinked his mind clear.

Once enough time had passed, you prompted him, “So?”

“I think just kissing,” Renjun answered. “Like, making out, or whatever. If you want…”

You snickered. “What part of ‘eat you alive’ was I unclear about?”

“The ‘eat’ part, actually. How literal is that?”

“Guess you’ll find out,” you teased. Then, you focused again as you sat back a little. “Okay, making out. Making out means different things to different people. So… we know kissing’s on the table. Tongue?”

“Yeah.”

“Teeth?”

“Where?”

“Waist up. You got somewhere you don’t want them?”

He took a moment to think about this. Then shook his head. “No. You can use them. Anywhere.”

“Same goes for you. Hickies?”

“Giving or receiving?”

“Both. You first.”

“Both are okay. You?”

You were already zeroing in on his neck and a small part of his collarbone peeking out from under his hoodie. “Same. Touching over clothes?”

“Okay, as long as you don’t think it’ll be too much with the venom…”

“Oh, Junnie, everything is going to be too much.” You grinned down at him.

His breathing had picked up pace as the two of you were talking. “You? The touching?”

“Good. Great. Touching under clothes?”

Renjun squirmed underneath you, but maintained your eye contact. “Just under my shirt.”

“Smart boy,” you said approvingly. “Me too.”

“Is that it?” He asked quietly, eyes now flicking down to your lips.

“I think so…” You looked around the room to buy a couple extra seconds of thinking time. When you hadn’t come up with anything else, you looked down at the human below you once more. “Ready, Renjun?”

“Yes.”

You took one final look over him like this, how much he already wanted you before he’d even gotten any of your venom in him, and dragged the tip of your tongue over your bottom lip instinctually. His heartrate jumped, and you wondered if it was fear—if the motion had reminded him perhaps of a hungry predator—or need. Or maybe a bit of both.

But you couldn’t tease him nor yourself any longer, swooping down to connect your mouths. You started off with just a couple light, closed-mouth kisses, to ease him into it. You heard him inhale quickly through his nose, his grip on your thighs tightening minutely. Swiping your tongue across the seal of his lips, you were delighted when he immediately parted his mouth in response, his tongue seeking yours out. You hummed contentedly into his mouth as you started stroking a fingernail down the back of his neck again. At the same time, your venom was beginning to mix in with your saliva, being passed onto Renjun.

Once his jaw started going slack in the kiss, and his hands slowly slid off your legs entirely to rest lamely at his side, you deemed him plenty dosed up. Consciously, you blocked off your venom glands once more. When one particularly drawn-out scratch down the back of his neck finally elicited a noise from him, an involuntary whine, you felt something in you snap. You needed more of that.

“So this is what siren venom feels like…” He mumbled breathily, letting his head loll back against the couch cushion as you kissed a path down his jawline and neck. When you felt his breath hitch in his throat over one particular spot, you decided to take your time there, sucking and nipping a mark into his skin.

When humans were… locked in a lover’s embrace, they let off a certain perfume distinguishable only to sirens—which was what made them the favored prey of sirens for so long. A human under the influence of siren venom? Delectable. And every human’s was unique too, so Renjun under the influence of your venom? Absolutely addictive.

With each kiss you stole from his lips, every nip you left on his neck that you then soothed over with your tongue, you got another taste of it. A sweetness that came with a bite, like ginger candy.

Renjun was still talking, though, his vocal cords vibrating under your lips. “My-My heart’s beating so fast, and I’m so warm—that’s so the ocean water doesn’t feel cold, of course—”

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

“Oh. Right.” He closed his mouth, looking up at you with glassy eyes, waiting. Gods, he was so pretty like this.

You crashed your lips back on his, a mess of teeth and lips and tongue as he tried to keep up with you. But you knew that your venom was in full effect now, every single one of his nerve endings was approximately three and half times more sensitive. So you were sure it was all a little overwhelming. But he was definitely trying his best, kissing sloppily into your mouth with hungry, desperate whines.

Pulling him back off with your grip in his hair, you traced a thumb over his kiss-swollen bottom lip, cooing over how fucked-out he looked like this. “Oh, baby. Oh, poor Junnie. What’s wrong? Can’t even kiss me properly because it feels too good? Baby’s overwhelmed with just a little bit of kissing?”

He opened his mouth wider, darting the tip of his tongue out to brush against the pad of your thumb. You pushed the finger in his mouth, groaning as he immediately closed his lips around it. “Gods, you’re perfect, Junnie.”

Taking your thumb back out of his mouth just to grab his chin with the same wet digit, you attacked his lips with yours again. Ginger candy. His hands that had been lamely resting at his sides the entire time now fumbled at something in the area where your hips met.

“What? What are you trying to do, baby?” You asked, leaning back to look down. He was grabbing at the hem of his hoodie, unsuccessfully yanking it up towards his head as part of it was stuck under one of your thighs.

“‘m too hot. Please…” He panted, dropping it as he looked up at you pleadingly.

You nodded slowly in understanding, knowing that one of the effects of the siren venom was an increase in body temperature, not to mention what you two were just doing. The collar of another shirt was visible underneath the sweatshirt. “Okay, Junnie, we can take your hoodie off. But only the hoodie. Your other clothes are staying on, understood?”

He nodded quickly, hips bucking up against you. Sweat was beading up on his forehead, his hair getting stuck to the damp skin. You shifted back on his lap so that none of the sweatshirt was under you anymore, grabbing the hem and reaching behind him to yank up from underneath him as well.

“Sit forward for me, baby?” You requested in his ear sweetly.

Renjun obliged as best he could, leaning forward to get his back and shoulders off the couch. You pulled the hoodie up over his head, tossing it off to the side, leaving him in a black t-shirt that certainly couldn’t be helping much either. But having that heavy layer off seemed to provide some relief for him, as he let out a sigh, falling back against the furniture again.

You giggled as you settled back into the crux of his lap again, lacing your fingers together behind his neck. “Is that better now, Junnie?”

He shook his head, and you arched an eyebrow curiously.

“Oh? What’s wrong, then?”

Renjun tugged gently at your cardigan where it had shrugged down to show one of your shoulders. “Please?”

Pulling your bottom lip in between your teeth, you thought this over. You had a tank top on under the cardigan, and both of you were still wearing everything else. Not to mention that you were starting to get a bit warm too. Sirens ran naturally cooler than humans, so you were sure that to him, you felt practically refreshing right now, but you honestly were a bit hot for a siren’s tastes.

Giving a contemplative hum first, you finally relented, “Alright, Junnie. But just my sweater. Everything else stays on, because we didn’t talk about that before the venom, do you understand?”

He rushed to strip you of the knit cardigan, his mouth following his hands’ path down your skin. First on your shoulder, then down your arm. You let the garment drop on the floor behind you as he kissed back up along your shoulder, then over the fabric of your tank top until he got to your collarbone, and finally the hollow of your throat. Fondly stroking the back of his head, the pleased purr that had started in your chest turned into a surprised moan when he licked a long stripe up your throat.

Holding his face in your hands so that your noses brushed, and your lips barely ghosted over each other, you let your breaths mingle in the meager space afforded. Renjun ended your little anticipation game quickly, kissing you tongue-first, and you kissed him back just as eagerly, sucking on his tongue with lewd, wet noises. He moaned into your mouth, his hands grabbing at your waist for purchase first, then slipping and curling into the material of your shirt, bunching it in his fists.

Slowing the pace of your kisses, you eventually sat back, appraising the state he was in. You affectionately ran a hand through his hair as you took in his blown pupils, kiss-swollen lips, and pink cheeks. “Junnie? How are you feeling? Need a break?”

You hadn’t given him another dose of venom since the initial one, which wasn’t very large to begin with. But this was his first time experiencing it, so you wanted to check in. He should be just past the peak of it by now, starting to come down but for all intents and purposes still very much intoxicated. Siren venom wasn’t meant to last very long, after all, it took an adult human less than a minute to drown.

“Need you…” He insisted, arching up towards you.

Indulging him in one, two more feverish kisses, you pulled away once again. “I know, baby. And you’ve been doing so good for me. So I need you to tell me if you need a break. Okay?”

“’kay.” He agreed before you sealed your mouth over his again.

Kissing down from his mouth to just under his jaw, at the same time you trailed a finger down the center of his front until it got to the hem of his t-shirt.

He nodded fervently before you could say or do anything more. “Please… please…”

“Shh, shh, shh,” you quieted him down gently. “Doing so good for me, Junnie. The best.”

You slipped your hands under his shirt, just to stroke his waist. His muscles tensed under your touch, and he let out a sound of satisfaction. He grabbed at your thighs again, but you couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at reciprocity or to have something sturdier to ground himself to than your flimsy tank top. The corner of your lips quirked up as you pressed a couple more kisses down his neck to hover your lips over his pulse point, content to start a new mark there as your hands continued to explore under his shirt. It was when you gently raked your nails down over his pecs that you got the loudest moan out of him yet, and you groaned in response.

“Gods, you’re perfect,” you nuzzled your nose into Renjun’s neck, then pressed a couple relatively chaste pecks to his cheek. “Just perfect…”

Taking your hands back out from his shirt, you silenced his whine at the loss of contact by slotting your lips together once more. You cupped his face with one hand, using the other to take one of his hands off your leg and lace them together, palm to palm. This seemed to make him content once more, especially when you brought your connected hands up to the back of the couch, pinning his behind his head. He squirmed under you, letting out a familiar noise of pleasure into your mouth and squeezing your hand tightly.

You knew the venom was well and truly starting to wear off when Renjun began keeping pace with your slow, lazy kisses, his mouth not as sloppy but no less delightful as it moved in tandem with yours. The thumb of the remaining hand on your thigh started to stroke over your skin, and the hand that you were holding gave yours a gentle squeeze. You gave him one, two last lingering kisses, drinking in the dwindling taste of ginger candy while you could, Renjun matching you beat for beat.

Unlacing your fingers and dropping your hand from his face, you drew back from him. Before you could say anything, though, Renjun grabbed you by the back of the neck and pulled you in for one more kiss, sinking his teeth into your already tender, over-kissed bottom lip. You gasped into his mouth, which gave him the perfect opportunity to intertwine his tongue with yours again on his apparent mission to try to kiss the breath from you. A nigh impossible task for a human to do to a siren, but it definitely felt like he was succeeding. He was crushing his lips against yours so hard you were worried about him drawing blood—not because you would mind the pain, but for fear of his safety if he got a direct hit of your blood in his mouth.

In the back of your mind, you were desperately trying to remember if you had maybe accidentally opened your venom glands a second time later on, but just drew a blank. That wasn’t something you did unaware, it wasn’t automatic, it had to be done on purpose. Then, for a brief moment, you were worried about secondary wave syndrome—some humans break down siren venom in two phases instead of one, and the second one almost always kills them if they’re not brought to a human medical doctor for treatment—and you started running through the symptoms as well as the nearest human emergency rooms in your mind. Burst capillaries in the eyes, refusal of food and water, the hospital three blocks over should have an ER, right? But the kiss didn’t feel like when he’d been intoxicated on your venom before, this one felt deliberate, in control. He was in control. You let out a small moan at the thought, and Renjun’s lone hand on your thigh tightened in response.

Once he finally let you go, you both sat there in silence for a good few seconds, you still on his lap. You stared extra hard at the whites of his eyes. They looked normal. He seemed… normal.

It was rare for either of you to be speechless, much less the both of you.

“Well…” you broke the silence. “That was siren venom. You should drink some water. Stay right here, I’ll get it.”

You climbed off of him, heading into his kitchen. Looking at the oven, you were wondering how the timer hadn’t gone off in that entire time when you saw that it wasn’t on. The words ‘TIMER SET?’ were flashing on the screen at you, and the preheat hadn’t been started either. The pizza rolls had just been slowly defrosting on a pan in the cold oven. You couldn’t help but laugh, reaching into his fridge for his Brita filter then securing a couple cups from the cabinets.

Walking back into the living room, you handed the human his cup of water and remained standing as you took a sip of yours.

“You didn’t start the oven, for your pizza rolls,” you informed him quietly.

“Wh— oh, shit,” Renjun groaned, tipping his head back. “I guess I don’t get to give you your first pizza roll tonight.”

“That’s okay.” You dropped onto the couch next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

“So… that was siren venom,” he breathed out, then took a long gulp of his water. Definitely not second wave syndrome.

“That was siren venom,” you confirmed with a laugh, fondly brushing a piece of sweaty hair off his forehead.

“You were right… I was not prepared,” he admitted with a laugh, taking another drink.

“So do you think you would’ve let me kill you?”

“Yeah. I would’ve given you my credit card info, bank password, spilled all of my friends’ worst secrets, let you kill me, killed someone else if you asked me. God, that was…” He said with wide eyes, shaking his head. But there was a familiar glint in his eye as a smile cracked across his face, “Incredible.”

“Glad you think so,” you giggled, patting his chest. “Now don’t become a venom junkie, okay? I couldn’t live with myself if you did and it was my fault.”

“I won’t. Not really what I meant anyway.”

You grinned slyly at what he seemed to be implying, that it might not have just been the siren venom, but that it was you and your venom that made it so incredible. Like how every human had a slightly different essence, every siren had a unique chemical signature in their venom. It’s why using it non-consensually nowadays would be extremely stupid (as well as just an immoral thing to do and also a crime)—it can be matched to the siren in a lab like DNA. In addition, anecdotally, every siren’s venom was said to produce a slightly different high, but no mass studies had backed that up. You were inclined to believe the stories, though.

Renjun was still a bit hazy, though, still riding the high of the venom, so you decided to tuck a conversation like that away for another time.

“So why did you pick Magical Creatures Studies? Other than you’re insane?” You redirected the topic to a more neutral one.

Renjun didn’t seem put off at all about this jump. “When I was a kid, my family traveled around a bunch, for my dad’s job. I got to meet a lot of different kinds of beings, some of them became my best friends, and I never wanted to stop learning about it all.”

“What does your dad do?”

“Government job,” he answered, suddenly interested in picking at his nails.

You furrowed your brow thoughtfully. “Wait a minute… Huang Renjun. As in, your father is Ambassador Huang? That we’ve had to write papers on in class?”

Ambassador Huang was the first human ambassador sent on diplomacy trips to outside nations of magical creatures post-integration. His trips had largely been considered a monumental success, and credited as a big driver behind the huge uptick of immigration that your city has been seeing from outlying areas in the past couple decades. You’d hardly gotten through a single contemporary MCS class without directly learning about him or at least hearing his name. And you’d apparently been going to school with his son for four years and just pumped said son full of your venom and made out with him while he was high on your venom.

“Yeah…”

“Dude! What the hell? You didn’t think to mention that at some point?” You asked incredulously.

“And sound like some uppity nepo kid bragging about my dad? No thanks,” Renjun snorted.

“Yeah, maybe not like day one but like… I don’t know, before I used my venom on you!” You nudged his arm teasingly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I just venom-ed Ambassador Huang’s son!”

“Oh my God, could you not call me that?” He snapped at you. “This is why I don’t tell people! Because now I don’t have a name anymore, I’m just Ambassador Huang’s son.”

You immediately realized your mistake, your stomach dropping as you heard the hurt in his words. “Renjun, I’m—”

“Just go.” He demanded, standing up from the couch and putting distance between you two again. “We both got what we wanted, right? You found out who Dr. Magic was, and I experienced siren venom. That’s all this was, so you can go. You don’t owe me anything else.”

You clenched your jaw, setting your cup on the end table beside the couch. Picking up your cardigan from the floor with as much dignity as you could, you pulled it back on. Neither of you said another word as he watched you stalk over to the front door, shove your shoes back on, throw the door open, and slam it closed behind you.

Drumming your fingertips along your keyboard, you squinted at the flashcards on your screen. You were in a sour mood, which had persisted ever since you’d left Renjun’s last night feeling used.

Ten was next to you at your picnic table outside the student union, finishing up a pencil portrait sketch of one of his other friends—one of the CompSci majors you’d paid to write your browser extension, actually. Dejun, a dragon, whose slit pupils, many bejeweled earrings, and a singular fang poking out from under his top lip featured prominently in the portrait. The sketch was part of Ten’s midterm portfolio check-in for one of his classes. Midterms were literally this week. Like, right now. You forced your sharp teeth further into the wooden pencil in your mouth.

“You’re going to ruin your cuspids like that, Y/N,” Ten chastised you calmly, rubbing at a line with the pad of his ring finger to smudge it before flipping his own non-mangled pencil around and continuing to sketch with the graphite.

“I’ll grow another set,” you grumbled, but took the writing utensil out of your mouth nevertheless.

“And have no teeth in the meantime. Real sexy siren stuff. Sure to lure all the hotties to their deaths looking like GamGam missing her dentures.”

“Shut up!” You shoved his head away, earning a loud peal of laughter from your friend. “As if you’ve been pulling anybody yourself. You’re literally a siren art major covered in tattoos that he designed himself, more piercings than a dragon, including nipple rings, and you haven’t been on a date in… what, almost a year?”

“So we’re both disappointments to the good siren name, huh?” He held up his hands in surrender, still grinning. “Just a couple of poor, celibate sirens doomed to be disgraces to their species forever…”

“Can you not yell that to the entire courtyard, dude?”

“What? Not announce very loudly that you haven’t been with anybody in exactly four—”

You lunged to cover his mouth before he could publicize precisely how long it’s been since you’d hooked up with someone. Ten immediately broke down into laughs behind your hand that was covering his mouth, his shoulders shaking even as you smacked him on the back of the head with your other hand.

“Gods, what is wrong with you?” You hissed at him. “You’re a menace to society. And me.”

When you’d finally let go of his face, he said through a couple more chuckles, “Hey, you could easily do it back to me.”

“Why would I want to do that? And the fact that you’re suggesting it makes me think that you want me to do that, which makes me want to do it even less. You freak.”

Before your podmate could respond, you caught sight of a figure approaching your table head-on. Setting your jaw, your body immediately tensed. There was no mistake, Huang Renjun was walking straight towards you. Ten seemed to have noticed the shift in your body language and mood, as he didn’t say anything further, quietly going back to his sketchbook as you watched Renjun get nearer and nearer.

“Y/N,” he said your name quietly, stopping not quite at the end of the table beside you, but next to the end of the bench across from you.

“What do you want from me now, Renjun?” You replied bitterly, pretending to return your hands to your keyboard as if you were going to refocus on your studies.

“Uhm, to talk, I guess?”

Ten interjected, “Do you guys need a second? I can go—”

You held him in place with a hand around his wrist, your voice curt, “No, Ten. Stay. This will be short.”

Your friend lowered himself back down into his seat.

You then set your hard gaze on Renjun. The marks you had left on his neck were still visible above the collar of his t-shirt. Moving your eyes from that to his face, you cocked your head to the side. “What’s in it for me? You established that our relationship is purely transactional, remember? We apparently just use each other. You scratch my back, I spit in your mouth, quid pro quo.”

“Okay, I’m going now,” Ten declared, wrenching his arm from your grasp to grab his sketchbook, pencils, and backpack before taking off.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I don’t see you like that at all, I just... I got defensive and snapped. It’s not an excuse, but still, I want you to know that I don’t mean anything I said. I’m sorry.” Renjun shifted uncomfortably on his feet, but you could see the genuine remorse on his features.

You breathed in, then out.

“I’m sorry too,” you sighed, letting your voice relax back to the natural softness that it held around Renjun. “You’re your own person, aside from just ‘Ambassador Huang’s son.’ I’m sorry for treating you like anything other than Renjun.”

“It’s not that I’m not super proud to be his son or anything, I think he’s really awesome. He was my hero growing up; still is. I mean, I’m going into the same field as him. Kind of. You know? It’s just because we’re going to be doing the same kind of thing, I want to be able to be looked at for what I do. Good or bad.”

“Bad? You plan on using your degree for evil, Renjun?” You teased, scooting over on the bench seat to take Ten’s previous spot and freeing up a place for Renjun to scoot in beside you.

“I could,” he played along, gladly taking the seat offered.

The two of you made eye contact, then burst into laughter at the same time.

“What?” He questioned in mock offense. “I think I’d make a great evil dictator, personally. You don’t think so?”

“Not at all, you’d be great at it.”

“Thank you. My friends don’t take my threats so seriously.”

“Which will ultimately be their downfall.”

Renjun looked back out at the campus in front of you two, his voice turning serious again, “But, seriously, I mean, I don’t want people having all these lofty expectations for me and then be disappointed when I don’t change the whole world, nor do I want them making things easy for me because they know my dad.”

“That’s fair. Unattainable, but fair to wish for,” you nodded in understanding.

“Ugh...” He slumped forward, dropping his head into his arms atop the table.

“Look, Renjun…” You rested one hand on his arm as the other rubbed up and down his back supportively. “You can’t change who your dad is, and you said it yourself, it’s not like you’re ashamed of him either. So don’t brag, and don’t be a dick when somebody brings him up either. Just do your best to show people who Huang Renjun is. And if they still don’t get it, that’s their loss. Because I already know him, and I think he’s pretty cool.”

Renjun sat back up to look you in the face with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “You’re such a cheeseball. Aren’t sirens supposed to be alluring and enchanting?”

“Shut up! I will drown you! See how alluring I am when you’re under a siren call,” you huffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’m kidding.” He grinned at you, nudging your shoulder with his. “That really did make me feel better, thank you, Y/N.”

You smiled back. “You’re welcome, Renjun.”

The two of you kept smiling at each other for a moment before he broke the eye contact, looking down at his hands then shifting his gaze back to the courtyard.

“Uhm, while we’re airing stuff out about last night...” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Yeah, Junnie?” You tilted your head to the side, watching as his cheeks started flushing.

“I don’t think I ever said thank you. I kind of popped off on you right after... everything. But thank you, for taking care of me before, during, and after. It didn’t even occur to me to talk about what we could and couldn’t do beforehand. Thank you for that, and for getting me the water. And... all of it in between...” His ears were bright red too at this point, but he managed to look you in the eye as he gave you his genuine gratitude.

You nodded in understanding. “You’re welcome. I’m glad that you felt cared for during all of it. In addition to, you know, everything else you felt.”

“Mm, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Studying his face curiously, you said, “You look like you want to ask me something else.”

“Well, I feel like you still weren’t very clear on the ‘eat me alive’ thing.”

You rolled your eyes. “Gods, Junnie, I’m not going to actually eat you—”

“I mean...” Renjun took a deep breath. “I kind of always feel like I’ve got a little bit of siren venom in me when I’m around you, Y/N. My heart races, and my skin is warm, and everything is just better when I’m with you. I want to see you when you’re not around, and when things are hard for you, I want to make everything better. I like you, and between the Dr. Magic deal, and our stupid academic rivalry, and what we did last night, I don’t know what I am to you, but that’s how I feel.”

If someone had told freshman you that Huang Renjun would ever say words like that to you, you’d have laughed in their face to the point of tears— or slapped them. And yet, in that moment, you weren’t surprised in the slightest. It was the most natural, beautiful, delightful, perfect thing that could’ve happened. Just like you leaning over to give him a modest, near-demure kiss on the cheek, absolutely beaming at him as you pulled back.

“I like you too, Renjun,” you admitted.

His eyes went wide before a broad, tender smile spread across his features and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. He let out a drawn-out sigh of relief, “Ohh, that’s one weight off my chest for this week.”

You laughed in agreement. “Me too. Actually makes everything feel lighter.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said, squeezing your shoulder. “So how much do I owe you?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to invoice Dr. Magic. For the browser extension, and the color copies, and whatever else. How much do I owe you?”

You tapped a finger against your chin, pretending to think before a smirk pulled across your lips. “Mm, should be exactly the price of one nice dinner and a movie.”

“Dinner and a movie? Just how many copies were you making?” He asked with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

“A nice dinner,” you reiterated. “I paid those CompSci majors fairly for their time.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Friday night after your last midterm, you were knocking on Huang Renjun’s door. The two of you had seen each other this week for your Linguistics in MCS class, but had been utterly locked into academic mode and hadn’t met up aside from that. So, per his invite, you were here in your “midterms best”— i.e., the pajamas you had been wearing at your own apartment since submitting your last mid-semester draft earlier today. You’d been told this wasn’t going to be a fancy affair.

Judging by the pajamas that Renjun had also answered the door wearing—giving you vivid déjà vu to the last time you were here—you were dressed appropriately for the occasion. He led you in by the hand, informing you there was something he wanted to show you in the kitchen.

You came to a stop in front of a plate piled high with small, pillow-shaped pieces of dough, some with bursts of red sauce leaking out of them. You couldn’t help but let out a sputtering laugh. “Pizza rolls? Did midterms scramble the egg on your face so bad that you missed the part where I said nice dinner?”

You might not have ever eaten pizza rolls, but you knew what section of the grocery store they came from.

“I can’t even tell what that was supposed to be… You’re so beautiful…” He was staring at you with a look of pure adoration, and surprised you by giving you a fleeting peck on the cheek, gone as soon as you’d realized what he was doing. Your hand instinctually came up to brush at your skin, almost in disbelief, as he went back to explaining his plans for tonight. “Anyway, I didn’t get to give you your first pizza roll the other night, and I figured that the last thing you actually wanted right after midterms week was to go out to some hoity toity place and be out at the movie theater really late, right? So, I’ve got pizza rolls, peanut butter cookies, your seaweed tea, and like way more snacks and candy and stuff. So we can chill and watch whatever movies you want tonight, unwind from midterms. And then next weekend, we’ll do your nice dinner and go to the movie theater. Think of it as an IOU.”

A fond smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as you nodded your approval. “Mmm… you’re right. This is great, Junnie. Thank you.”

Set up on Renjun’s couch with the assortment of snacks—pizza rolls included—and your first movie chosen, you settled in next to him, knee to knee, under the same blanket as the two of you ate. You decided that pizza rolls weren’t that bad (you still liked peanut butter sandwich cookies better), convinced Renjun to try some of your ocean flakes again—a favorite snack of sirens, which he’d already tasted on one occasion at a Dr. Magic hunting session and hated—to similar results, and finished off a bottle of seaweed-infused tea by the time the first movie was about a third of the way done. At this point, you were pretty satiated food-wise, and set your empty drink bottle on the coffee table to sit back on the couch.

Linking your arm with Renjun’s, you rested your head on his shoulder as he was still finishing up his plate of pizza rolls. “That was good, Renjun. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I call dibs on little spoon first, by the way.”

“Damn.”

Once he was done eating as well, you laid down to eagerly take your promised place as little spoon. Renjun stayed partially propped up against the arm of the couch so he could see the TV as you were nestled back against his chest, one of his arms slung over your waist. Your fingers played with his under the blanket absentmindedly as you got used to your new place, with him, in his arms.

“Renjun?” You said into the quiet. The only noises were coming from the TV. The movie was nearly done, just a couple little resolving scenes after the climax left. You’d seen it plenty of times before—both of you had, it was a favorite that you’d discovered you two shared earlier in the semester—which was why you’d picked it, an easy watch that you both liked. But nothing that required your full attention, so you could talk or miss scenes if you wanted.

“Yeah?” He responded just as softly.

“This is really nice. Hanging out, just us. No school, no Dr. Magic.”

“I know. Almost doesn’t feel real.”

“What? That we’re hanging out without trying to kill each other?”

He let out a couple laughs, catching your hand that had been playing with his under the blanket and lacing your fingers together. “I think there’s definitely some people that would be shocked to see us right now. But I meant more-so that we don’t have any schoolwork to do right now, and that the whole Dr. Magic thing is finally over. Other than the dinner that I owe you.”

“Oh… I owe you… I-O-U…” you sounded the words and letters out slowly. “I get it now.”

“God, you’re perfect,” he sighed dreamily, brushing your hair away from your face to press two kisses to your temple in quick succession.

You turned over to face him to properly protest, “Hey, I didn’t grow up around humans, you know that, right? I just came here to go to school! I moved here like, two weeks before our first day of freshman year—”

“I’m not making fun of you, Y/N!” He promised, sandwiching your hand between both of his and squeezing it tightly. “I respect how difficult it must have been for you to acclimate to the new culture and city when you moved, and so suddenly, on top of starting school. I just love y- love when you do that. Genuinely, I’m so charmed by it. Endeared. Bewitched. Whatever word you want to use. It’s something I never noticed until this semester, when we started doing the Dr. Magic stuff together. Despite knowing you for so long, in the department, in classes.”

“You know what I never knew about you before this semester, Junnie?”

“What?”

“That you were such a softie,” you snickered fondly. “I thought you were all textbooks and GPA and flashcards and whatever.”

The human ducked his head bashfully. “It’s something I’ve been working on this year.”

“Between this and Dr. Magic, I think you’ve been doing pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

“So, why did you do it, Junnie?” You asked curiously. “Not be a softie, I mean, but…”

“What? Be Dr. Magic?” He clarified, to which you nodded. “I didn’t mean to make a persona like that, really. I had to pick a screenname, and the guys had jokingly called me that a couple times when I helped them out with some problems. That’s all.”

“I know why you started the account. Knowledge. That’s also why you didn’t get the credit. You just needed to know. Though, the story behind the name is cute,” you pinched his cheek, and he tried to deter your hand with his shoulder half-heartedly. “I mean more like, why were you hiding your IP and using VPNs and stuff before you even knew that I was trying to track you down? In the fall.”

“I made the first couple posts from the school computers just because I like to do my work there, I wasn’t trying to cover anything up. Then I pictured what I’d do if I found someone posting like I was on the forums. And I would’ve tried to find out who they were. So I started covering my tracks a bit more intentionally after that. Didn’t want any groupies rolling up on me.” He pinched your side teasingly with the last sentence, and you slapped his hand away with an eye roll.

“Oh shut up!” You scoffed, ignoring his hands as he tried to pull you back towards him again.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m sorry,” he apologized through his chuckles. “If anything I’m your groupie, I swear. Your number one fan from the moment you showed me your conspiracy board.”

“Mm, fine.” You scooted closer to him, letting him wrap his arms around you once more. “Glad we got that cleared up.”

Renjun shifted to lay on his back, and you easily followed the move to snuggle in mostly on top of him, resting your head in the crook of his neck and your hand on his waist, fingers innocently smoothing over a patch of skin above his hipbone where his shirt had ridden up. It sounded like the credits were on by now, but you didn’t really care about picking another movie as Renjun hummed along to the familiar song that played over the scrolling names. You’d sing along too, if you were alone at your own place. But now you didn’t dare even hum like the human with you for fear of what it could do to him. Renjun’s voice was plenty lovely enough though, even just this casual little bit humming. You’d see if you could get him to sing for you properly one of these days. If an opportunity came before graduation. Who knew what your days would even look like before then.

Gods, graduation. You felt like you could shrivel up and die just thinking about it. Not to mention that you hadn’t even told Renjun that you’d—

“Hey. What are you thinking about?” He suddenly asked, his disapproving tone clear.

You gulped. “How could you tell I was thinking about something?”

“For one, you’ve got your bad thinking face on.” He pinched your bottom lip. “You pout. It’s very dramatic. You look very concerned.”

“I have different thinking faces?”

“Yeah, you look different when you’re studying. I’ve seen you do plenty of that to know the difference. And you’ve got a third face when you’re contemplating. Usually you do that one when you’re looking at menus.”

“I didn’t know I was apparently an open book.” You covered your face with your hands in embarrassment.

“It’s cute, Y/N. You’ve got a cute face, and you make cute facial expressions with it, don’t cover it up.” He gingerly grabbed your hands to encourage you to take them off. “Except I am worried about what’s making you make your bad thinking face right now. What’s wrong?”

With a sigh, you pushed up into a sitting position. Renjun followed your lead curiously, a thoughtful frown on his own features as he watched you pull your knees to your chest.

“Renjun, I need to tell you something.”

He regarded you with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “Okay… go for it.”

Nervously, you smoothed out some wrinkles in your pajama pants as you confessed, “Uhm, Dr. Kwon asked me to carry the banner at commencement. I said yes.”

“I knew that.”

“What?” You looked up at him in disbelief.

“Well, since it was midterms already, I figured that if they’d picked me, they would have asked me by now and since they hadn’t, then they must have picked you. I was just waiting for you to tell me so I could tell you… Congrats.” Renjun grinned brightly at you, reaching out to rest his hand on your arm.

“You’re not upset?” You asked trepidly.

“We’re not petty little freshmen anymore, Y/N. No, I’m not upset. I’m proud of you, you deserve it.”

“So did you.”

“Not any more than you did.” He shook his head firmly. “So would you just accept my congrats already?”

You gave a small, shaky smile. “Thank you…”

“There we go.”

“This is what I was so freaked about… when we went to get froyo.”

“You were afraid of me being mad at you for being picked to carry the banner?” Renjun asked incredulously.

“I didn’t know how to tell you!” You defended yourself. “And now I have to do the commencement practices, on top of senior capstone and my extracurriculars…”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ew, commencement practices. So glad I didn’t get picked now, actually.”

“And that was so convincing, Junnie.”

“You remember what you said to me when we got froyo?”

Scrunching your face up, you struggled to think back to the exact conversation you had that day—you’d been really stressed. “Uh, ‘exactly two gummy sharks on mine please?’”

“Well, yeah, your hyper-specific froyo order—”

“Throwing stones at black kettles much?” You teased.

“Excuse me?” Renjun’s eyes went wide.

“Is that not—? I really thought I got it that time.”

“Did you mean to say ‘throwing stones in glass houses’ and/or ‘the pot calling the kettle black?’”

“…Yes.”

He turned very serious as he went to tenderly cradle your face in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you in like two seconds after I finish what I was saying, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” you agreed weakly, wishing very much that he’d just do it now instead of making you wait. He then let your face go.

“When we were talking about wanting people to know that we’re smart,” Renjun clarified. “You said that we’re both like that, and you knew that you were like that. And then you asked me if I knew that I was like that. I had tried to swear up and down this entire time that I was doing all of this—the needing to be the best—for myself. But it wasn’t. I’m like that too. That’s kind of what Dr. Magic was, me taking a step back from needing everyone to know I was the smartest person in the room. A quasi-experiment, to see if I could do it.”

“I think that after graduation, maybe we both chill on being the smartest person in the room, and try to just spend a summer working on that magical bucket list of yours?” You suggested.

“Oh?” He perked up at this. “Really?”

“You ever seen a werewolf shift?”

“No…”

“That sounds like a ‘not yet’ to me.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He confirmed with a conspiratorial grin that mirrored the one that you could feel across your own face. “You know how sirens can’t get dosed up on their own venom?”

“Yeah…” You nodded, wondering where he could be going with this.

“Well, I know a witch with a proprietary love potion blend that I think we might be able to modify to produce similar effects.”

“Fascinating.” You thought on this for a second, very quickly running through your knowledge of potion properties to imagine what it could be. “Two-factor blood potion?”

“Yes. But we’d put your venom in it instead of your blood so it wouldn’t kill me.”

“That could work…” You mused. “Speaking of, I should really give you a full dose one of these days.”

He breathed in sharply. “That wasn’t a full dose?”

“Nope.”

“Holy shit…”

“Have you ever watched a phoenix reincarnation?” You added another suggestion to your joint summer bucket list.

“Have you? Wouldn’t that literally blind us?” Renjun questioned, something akin to genuine concern on his face now.

You shrugged. “Allegedly. It’s never been recorded in a lab setting, so who really knows.”

“I think we’re going to get each other killed before we can get our PhDs,” he declared with a fond smile and shake of his head.

“Hey, the betting pools said we’d kill each other by junior year, so I think we’re doing well for ourselves.”

“Do you think we can collect on those bets when we graduate and we’re both still alive and have all of our limbs?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

“Oh my god, come here,” Renjun groaned deliriously, kneeling to grab your face with two hands and crash his lips to yours. You curled your fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him down with you as you fell back against the arm of his couch, still connected.

Yeah, you’d drive off that burning bridge when you got there.

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[rrxnjun]

portrait of a blank slate. huang renjun

pairing: huang renjun x fem! reader genre: college au. fluff, smut, and the tiniest bit of angst. warnings: swearing, alcohol, angry man renjun, very bad dialogue, this is the most un-renjun fic i've ever written, dry humping, a heavy makeout session, unfinished blowjob word count: 5.8k playlist: no specific one this time but i listened to a lot of keshi while writing this, so have this playlist of mine to fit the vibes a/n: inspired by that one tweet describing how someone's art professor met his wife the same exact way, lost the screenshot and also the og post im so sorry!

turns out all it takes to save a life is a bad, bad college party, a few shots and a weird, magical coincidence back in a girl's dorm room.

It’s hard to believe that Huang Renjun is currently finishing up the art portfolio he needs for his summer internship program after procrastinating and angrily stomping at every single bad stroke of his paintbrush for the last few months.

Because he’s not.

He’s looking at the canvas with stern eyes, the smudges on the white linen so messy he could cry just by looking at them, and the more he tries to save the disgrace currently scribbled in front of him, the worse it gets and makes the levels of frustration in him turn into rage and fury, because let’s be honest– what is Renjun’s primary emotion if not anger. 

And he tries hard to fix it again, he really does– he sighs heavily while doing so as he takes a smaller brush and tries to paint on a few hairstrokes to the portrait of Frida Kahlo he wants to execute– and in honest reality, it doesn’t even look half as bad as it does in the poor boy’s eyes when he takes a step back after holding in his breath and carefully piercing together the artwork. Maybe if there was someone else in the room– everyone but his annoying roommate Donghyuck, because that fucker always manages to make things even worse– they could talk him out of it, offer some words of consolidation, even, hype him up and tell him that with outsider’s eyes, the canvas looks beautiful and very well put together. But the truth is that there’s no one present right now, not a single soul in what feels like the whole campus right now, that could ease Huang Renjun’s frustration from what seems to be art block, when he throws the paintbrush to the wall (he’ll worry about the stain of acrylic paint later, when he gains consciousness) and puts a fist through the middle of the painting.

If he was a character in a comic book, his hand would go through the canvas and create a quite satisfying hole. He’s a real person, though– a weak one as well, to be quite honest– and his fist is stopped by the stretched-out fabric, making his hand bounce back, but now stained with all shades of brown and tan, which somehow only makes him even more mad and turns him into a furious animal roaming around free and causing uttermost chaos in his all true sense.

Nothing can stop Huang Renjun when he opens the drawer he keeps all his artwork in, taking out all the graphite sketches and colored pencil drawings, and then the next one containing the watercolor paintings and various other acrylic paintings done on expensive sheets of paper, stacking all of those onto one pile in the middle of the table. Not one thing is safe– except from the digital artworks he keeps in his iPad and his big A4 sketchbook he forgot about in the heat of the moment, since he keeps it on his nightstand– when he takes the big, heavy stack of art and runs, chimes towards the entrance of his and Donghyuck’s miniature dorm room, luck only standing by his side once in this whole evening when his said roommate opens the door and clears the way for him, looking at the poor boy with mouth agape in a slight shock.

“What the fuck are you doing right n–”

Donghyuck doesn’t get an answer. When he asks stupid questions, Renjun doesn’t tend to pay him much mind, settling on not engaging with the discourse if it doesn’t make much sense, so Hyuck should be used to the ignorance– he thinks this was a very valid question to ask at this moment, though. If he was curious enough, he’d even follow his roommate down the hall and watch him in his endeavors only to find out what’s the intention behind his angry stomping and the fierce look on his face. The truth is, though, he doesn’t care all that much.

That doesn’t stop Huang Renjun, though, as he chimes down the hall of the boy’s dormitory, kicks the glass door open (thankfully not the actual glass part, because that would for sure be expensive) and practically runs the rest of the way towards the bins at the end of the street, dumping the papers into the bin (forgive him for not recycling in his current state of mind) before he angrily kicks the poor object twice for good measure and turns on his heel, slowly, but still as angrily making his way back to his dorm room by stomping all the way up until the entrance.

The dorm guard doesn’t even ask for his dorm ID like he usually does– Renjun must have been quite memorable as he ran out of the building with 5kg of artwork of various sizes in his arms– but the truth is, the man isn’t as old and he saw the boy going out just a few minutes ago, so he doesn’t think it’s necessary. Renjun would appreciate the memo, although, when he remembers that the man always asks for the dorm ID, especially on the nights out when he comes back slightly intoxicated and too disoriented to look for the little slip of paper in his pockets, and on the nights when he forgets his dorm ID as well– the man was set on letting him sleep on the front porch of the dormitory once and it took Renjun 15 calls to get ahold of a sleeping Donghyuck and another 15 of him walking down the hall in slippers and pajama bottoms with his roommate’s dorm ID in hand before he could warm his bones from the cold slowly seeping into his bones on the January night– and that whole thing makes Renjun somehow even more angry at the whole situation.

And so when he comes into his room again, Donghyuck now sitting on his bed still in his outside clothes (something Renjun hates and would murder for), and his eyes land on the damaged canvas still waiting for him in the corner of the room, he wastes no time in opening his window and throwing it down from the second floor, not really caring where it ends up or if he’s gonna get a fine for violating one of the dormitory rules– to never throw stuff out of the windows..

“Dude, what is–”

“Don’t ask.” Renjun huffs as he closes the door and peels his clothes off, taking a towel that’s still hanging from the top bunk of their bed and aims towards the bathroom door. A true tantrum can only end in a cold shower, and that’s what Renjun’s gonna do as he washes his dreams down the drain and ends up silently crying himself to sleep tonight in agony.

It’s hard to believe Huang Renjun is currently at the best college party since the days of ‘megaparties’ of Johnny Suh, the senior that’s slowly halting his party performance due to stilling in life. Renjun was dragged to Lee Jeno’s party by his roommate Donghyuck after he mourned in his bed for approximately two days before it got too much for the poor gemini, promising and honestly thinking that alcohol is truly the best solution for the poor boy’s misery. Again, it’s hard to believe Huang Renjun is currently at the best college party of the year when he listens to the loud EDM music piercing through his eardrums and he swears he catches a glimpse of a couple dry humping on the couch.

Because he’s not.

He’s at a college party, sure. He’s also getting some alcohol into his system– because why not, am I right? He’s not the one paying, and that’s always enough of a reason to drink. Is it the best college party he’s ever experienced, though? Absolutely not.

It’s quite literally the worst party he’s ever been to. The music is too loud and the whole house smells of cheap vodka, people are pushing each other around and with the amount of alcohol in his system, the whole room feels like he’s on a boat, his stomach weak and his eyes hazy. Renjun must admit Hyuck’s therapy skills are kind of paying off– because at least now he’s not thinking about the wasted opportunity of a summer scholarship and is instead looking into the eyes of his cute classmate from History class across the room– but at the same time, he’s not thinking much of anything in this moment, and the glint of your eyes is the only thing he can focus on when you get closer.

That might be a good or a bad thing– depends on how the encounter goes. There’s a fine line between the amount of alcohol that’s just perfect for Huang Renjun to get rid of his usual shyness and speak to other, much more attractive human species, and the amount of alcohol that’s just perfect for Huang Renjun to black out and puke on the floor, efficiently making it impossible for him to chat up the cute classmate he’s been eyeing the whole semester and ruining his chances of ever being seen in a good light in front of the said person ever again. He prays intensely that he hasn’t crossed the line yet when you open your mouth and speak to him in the crowded kitchen.

“Renjun!”

“Y/N!” he tries to mimic your tone, a flashy grin settling onto his face when you approach him first. You two aren’t strangers, after all– you’ve sat together in class during various exams and also accidentally bumped into each other in the cafeteria, but what were your courageous attempts in making conversation with him and efficiently trying to make him more interested in you didn’t lead to your desired goal of getting invited out by him, instead leading him to think you’re just that friendly to everyone and not just him, making the chances of him taking the next step that much slimmer. Not tonight, though– he really must have had too much to drink.

“How are you?” you ask, clearing your throat as you bump into someone and decide to shift closer to Renjun, making the boy’s breathing hitch in his throat.

“Wonderful,” he gasps, and for some reason, the response laced in irony makes an excited laugh escape your throat, and the more he listens to your bubbly giggle, the more he wishes he did music instead of fine arts, because maybe if he was competent enough, he could mimic the sound in one of his songs and replay it over and over even when you’re not around. 

“That sounds very genuine,” you note, which makes the boy laugh in return, making him wonder if maybe he could have the same effect on you– if you’re smiling wider now because of the sound of his laughter, or if you’re just amused at something completely else. 

It’s pathetic, really– the gloomy boy that was trailing to this party behind his roommate Donghyuck is nowhere to be seen now, instead replaced by the cheap imitation of a ray of sunshine that you brought out of him only with the magic of a few words and the few drops of alcohol on his tongue.

“Oh, trust me, it was genuine,” he teases, and you only nod to his attempt at masking his obviously saddened composure from before.

“Having a rough week?” you ask, and you sound truly interested– something Renjun hasn’t found in the tone of his roommate when he insisted on dragging him here– and maybe that’s the reason why he just shrugs and decides to come clean and be honest with you. You seem like that kind of person that wouldn’t make fun of his troubles, the kind of person that would genuinely want to help– although he’s not seeking counseling tonight, he figures he can talk a bit about his shitty mood if it means that it gets the conversation flowing.

“A rough life, actually,” he snickers before he sees you eye him with a concerned look, “just joking,” he adds before he retracks back and fixes his initial answer. “Some things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, so I’m kind of moping around for a bit.”

You seem to feel empathetic towards the boy, nodding and pouting at his confession. “Well, I hope things get fixed for you, Jun,” you mumble, tone of voice encouraging– and maybe he could dwell at the caring nature of you a little longer, only if it wasn’t for your use of a nickname for him that just oh so sweetly rolls of your tongue and Renjun wishes he could legally change his name to the nickname so he could listen to the way it sounds forever– scratch that, to the way it sounds from your mouth forever, which means he won’t change it, just so it’s reserved for you and only you to say.

“What about you, though?” he finds himself asking in the midst of his inner screeching.

“Me? I’m great, totally fine, having the time of my life,” you emphasize, the over-the-top expression on your face making the boy burst into laughter as you wave your arms around as if to show him your surroundings. “I am a party person for sure, you know, so this is perfect,” you joke, and Renjun seems to get the memo. If he’s being honest, he’s not sure he’s ever seen you at a party before– not that he goes to many himself, which might honestly be the reason, actually– you could just be at different parties in different times that hadn’t overlaid, but by the way you’re currently tensely sipping at the alcohol in your hand, he figures you’re not too familiar with the scene of college partying.

“Who forced you to go? Was it your roommate?” Renjun remembers the girl from another one of his classes– you two were always walking around together and often got to class at the same time. Figuring out that you two lived together wasn’t as difficult, and she surely seems to be the more extroverted one.

“No, actually,” you say, eyes glimmering when he seems to remember the girl you share a room with, “to my surprise, honestly. It was another one of my friends– Na Jaemin, not sure if you know him– but the moment we got here, he disappeared and left me alone to deal with my thoughts,” you click your tongue and Renjun finds himself totally mesmerized with you– amazed with everything about you; the way you talk, the way you lean on the counter and watch him with stars in your eyes (which might just be the reflections of the kitchen lights, but don’t tell him that), the way you slightly lean into him when he cracks a joke and earns a laugh out of you…

“They always do that,” Renjun scowls, “they drag the introvert in and then force them to survive on their own…” he shakes his head in disappointment, clearly distraught over the situation. 

“Exactly! But if you ask them to come with you to a picnic, or to the library, they decline the offer. So much for being good friends,” you roll your eyes. Renjun finds himself smiling, and although he must admit that as every other college student, he himself would decline an invitation to a library if anyone asked, he’s like 99% certain that if it was you uttering out the question, he wouldn’t miss a heartbeat before joyfully jogging there with you. 

“Ask me next time,” he blurts out, a poor attempt at flirting, “I wouldn’t say no.”

And it seems like tonight is the night where you suddenly get the last kick of courage needed when you talk to Renjun– maybe fueled by his coy smile when he said the previous comment, maybe just acting out on pure hormones– tonight's the night where he breathlessly takes your offer, still not thinking much of it, but igniting a curious spark in his own heart nonetheless, when you scratch the back of your neck in the last residue of anxiety, scrunching your nose at him and mumbling under your nose, barely heard above the loud music resonating through the living room. “Do you wanna sneak into my dorm room, then?” 

Renjun almost chokes at your question– visitors in the dormitory are only allowed until midnight and as far as he’s aware, the clock is well after 2 AM right now, and he’s a male visitor, which is even more off the bounds in the eyes of the fierce woman guarding the entrance of the girl’s dormitory building. The more he stares at you, the more you seem to translate his silence into disagreement, which you panically try to undo with even more rambling. “I- I mean, since we both kind of hate this party and I think that if I drink more, I’m going to puke all over myself, so… My room is on the ground floor, so you can just climb in, if you wanted to. My roommate went home for the weekend, so there’s no one there, and we could– I mean, we don’t have to, honestly, but it’s kinda cold out and I thought we could both use a place more silent, ‘cause I really wanna head back now, but I don’t want to stop talking to you, y’know, and I don’t know if–”

“Okay, I’m down,” Renjun nods, efficiently shutting up your rambling, and when there’s a very apparent relief flashing over your face, he finds himself smiling in endearance at your antics, going as far as ruffling a hand through your hair in whatever kick the alcohol mixed with adrenaline gave him before you have him dragging his feet out of the house, both of your feet shuffling towards the campus.

The walk isn’t long, but he finds himself enjoying it. The condensation coming out of your mouths at the chilly weather serves more to the atmosphere when the both of you giggle out at absurd jokes and gossip, your voice breaking into soft hums when you sing a song under your breath in moments of silence that somehow feel both kind of awkward, but also kind of pleasant. He drags you by your hand to the other side of the sidewalk when a car passes by and you jump in surprise, eyes wide and glossy, mouth a little agape in an open-mouthed grin when his fingers stay intertwined with yours and you adjust your purse on your other shoulder, clearing your throat before you try to nonchalantly continue on with the conversation.

“I’ll go inside now,” you announce when you get to the girl’s dormitory building, breaking apart from the eager boy and coming closer to him when you confide the secret, “I’ll turn the light on in my room when I get there, so make sure to look out for the window. I’ll help you in, don’t worry,” you smile at him, and before he has a chance to reply, you disappear behind the glass door with a pep in your step. 

Renjun finds himself sighing– now is the moment when he should realistically get relief, the moment when he’s supposed to relax for at least a second and prepare himself for whatever might happen in your dorm room– but when he slowly walks over to the left wing of the building and squints at the dark squares of windows, he wonders how in the hell he’s gonna climb in. Escaping out will be an easy task– the windows aren’t that high up– but coming in will be the problem. He guesses it’s the same with the whole situation– he bets the easiest part of the whole evening will be jumping out and running to his own room– how to survive the night in your presence and not go completely insane, he doesn’t know and wishes he had a manual to before he agreed to do this in the first place.

When the light goes on in one of the rooms and you wave at him from the inside, he finds himself involuntarily jogging towards the window, gears in his brain turning faster than the speed of light when he reaches the wall and you grin at him, opening the window and offering him your hand. 

“If you grip the edge of the window and give me your hand, you can get in easily,” you say, watching as the boy cautiously looks around himself and scratches the back of his neck, mentally calculating his next movements.

“Have you done this before?”

“No,” you bashfully shake your head, “but my roommate did it twice, so I don’t think it’s that hard,” you note and nod at him, waiting for him to finally take action. 

Renjun finds himself doing what he’s been told– and even though he huffs and almost falls over to his back (which would kill him, he thinks, since his physique is very close to a turtle’s), victory fills his veins when one of his legs finally ends up in your window, his body stumbling forward and almost toppling you over when the warmth of your room welcomes him as he lands on top of your desk. 

“Welcome,” you laugh at him when he shakes his head in disbelief and takes off his coat, dropping it on top of the wooden table and watching you close the window behind him, so the cold doesn’t get in. 

“That’s one way of inviting guests over, I guess,” he teases you, watching as you roll your eyes at him and go over to one of the beds. Renjun notices the room is different to the one he shares with Donghyuck– you and your roommate have two beds instead of a bunk one, the table is right under the window and you get a little more space over-all. You turn on the little lamp kept on your bedside table, and the boy watches you with interest as you cautiously walk around your own room as if it’s your first time seeing it, reminding him a little of a deer in the headlights, clueless and suddenly out of ideas.

Renjun finds himself laughing at your behavior– he finds himself endeared by it, the way you play with your fingers in nerves and try to think of anything to do in the intimacy that suddenly envelopes you when you invite someone over to your dorm room in the middle of the night– and when you aimlessly end up standing in front of him, your big eyes even bigger and glossier than before, he snickers at the state of you and shakes his head.

“Okay, so I know I was the one who invited you over, but now I’m kind of helpless in what we should actually do and all…” you giggle, a little embarrassed when you bear your eyes into his, your body subconsciously slotted in between his legs, his position leaning on the edge of the table allowing you and inviting you to do so. 

“You’re cute,” he laughs at you, and before you have a chance to question him about the compliment, he has you silenced abruptly by his next actions.

“What do you–”

His hand is gripping your jaw and he leans into you, the newly found courage and affection towards you having him drunk on more than the alcohol, but also your whole presence– the way your hair smells when he’s this close to you, the way you pull the sleeves of your sweater further down when you don’t know what to do with your hands, the shyness in your gaze now that you have him in your cage– and his lips act on themselves when they press themselves against yours, soft but firm, tasting the strawberry juice mixed with vodka off your mouth, a surprised gasp against his lips more than enough to invite him even further in.

He feels your fingers tugging at his shirt and your skin growing hot under his touch, leaning back from you a little and finding you looking at him with a thousand different galaxies in your eyes, enough of a confirmation to him, but he’s a man– he still needs it vocally, when he grins lazily at you. “Was this one of the things you thought about when you invited me over?”

“Maybe…” you tug at your bottom lip with your teeth, a clearly battled grin trying to settle its way onto your lips.

“You should’ve just said so, then,” he smiles when he leans into you again, a little more confidently this time and kisses you again, again and again.

You stay under the window for a while, lips pressed hard against each other as you try to learn the curves of each other’s mouths by memory, lazy hands threaded into his hair and an arm around your waist now, steadying you in place. Foreheads pressed against each other when you break away for air, giggles resonating through the room when his lips make their way towards your neck and the softness of his hair tickles your skin, fingers threaded when you tug him towards your bed and you watch him kick his shoes off before you follow him onto the soft mattress.

His head falls into your pillow and you straddle his lap, your hair falling into your face when you look down at him from your position, the newly found dominance in your position charging you with unexplainable energy, and Renjun can’t help but smile at you sweetly when your eyes meet and you eagerly lean down towards him, fingers once again intertwined with his, hands laying next to his head. Your breath fans his swollen lips that you once again find yourself attacking, the contact overwhelming you and making it hard to breathe. Who knows how long the both of you have wanted to do this but never had the courage to– it’s a miracle that it’s even happening tonight.

And with the built-up desire, you act instinctively– hands breaking away from his when you grip his cheeks and give him one last peck, lips now traveling down his jaw and neck instead, having the boy shivering under the contact, your actions slowly but surely driving him crazy when you find his sweet spot and you get a satisfied gasp from him, a reward for your tonight’s efforts.

His hand grips your hip, and something about the burn of his fingers even through the fabric of your jeans makes you move on instinct, earning yourself a sharper hiss this time that doesn’t make you stop, however– quite the opposite, actually– as you break into a wide grin at the very evident effect you have on him, your movements slow and painful, but still having him harden under you.

Goosebumps appear all over your skin when his cold fingers capture the skin of your stomach when he aimlessly tries to find a place in your body to ground yourself, but the more he answers to your movements, the more encouraged you get. He tugs you back down so you’re facing him, which does nothing to halt your painful pace as he drags out yet another kiss from you. 

“If we don’t stop now, it’s gonna be really hard for me to do so later,” Renjun huffs into your ear, which only gets you more excited.

“Who said I want to stop?” you ask him, fingers trailing up his side over his shirt, yet still making him fire up and flush in his cheeks. “Do you want to stop?”

“Do I look like I wanna stop?” he snickers, shaking his head in utter disbelief, hand traveling dangerously close to the cup of your breast.

“Let’s continue, then,” you muse, peeling yourself off him only the slightest amount, hands dragging themselves down his body until you reach the waistband of his pants, gently dragging the fabric down until he’s left in front of you only with a tent in his underwear, big eyes curiously and breathlessly watching you in your actions. He could be a gentleman and tell you you don’t have to, tell you to stop and come back up and that he will pleasure you first, but the more he watches you as you palm him over the thin fabric of his boxer briefs with the dangerous doe eyes of yours, the less he wants to do just that. In all reality– who is he to deny a blowjob from you? Or anyone, for that matter?

His whole body shudders under your touch, actions careful, but so painfully satisfying. Renjun watches your face with his bottom lip trapped between his teeth, the reality of it all sobering him up and making him aware of each shift of your body, each centimeter your fingertip travels against his skin, each motion that slowly makes a bundle of nerves appear in his stomach. It only gets too much for him when you lean on your elbows, nails gently pricking the skin of his thighs as your mouth hesitantly greets his dick, and he feels like a virgin again when his eyes peel off you just in case he finishes just by watching you blowing him off like a highschooler at his first blowjob, forcing himself to watch the ceiling instead.

Eyes traveling all over your room– the closed window opposite of him, the bed on the other side of the room, the walls above your bed– he gets lost in the galaxy drawn on a piece of paper that’s plastered right above your pillowcase, and another graphite sketch of eyes bearing right into your soul, as if they were watching him in the act, and another one, of a deer that looks through the shade of the trees, before it hits him.

“Oh my god what the fuck–” he gasps, and his tone must have sounded too different to the satisfied moans that have been spilling out of his mouth up until now, because you abruptly stop your movements and your gazes lock, your eyes completely mortified.

“Am I doing something wrong?”

“Oh– Oh god no, fuck, you’re doing amazing, trust me,” apologies spill off his tongue at your distressed state, “it’s just– where… where did you get these?” he asks, pointing towards all the drawings taped all over your walls that he failed to notice in the heat of the moment before.

“Oh,” you cluelessly hum, eyebrows furrowed, “I found them spilling out of a trashcan close to the boy’s dorms when I was walking to class one morning, and they were so pretty I had to take them.”

“I– you like these?” Renjun asks, full of strange surprise and genuine curiosity. You’re now sitting back on your heels and looking at the boy with big eyes, still slightly clueless and very much in a weird state of distress– because why would a man ask you about the random artwork on your wall in the middle of a mindblowing blowjob?– before you nod with a slight pout, agreeing.

“Well, I wouldn’t have decorated my room with them if I didn’t like them, y’know… Why are you… why are you asking?”

“Oh,” Renjun repeats again, a dumbfounded look taking over his soft features before he sits up on the bed and scoots closer to you, a weird sense of euphoria spilling out every vein of his body when the held-back dopamine is released into his system. A wide grin appears on his lips before he stares into your eyes with a milky way mirroring behind his eyeballs, glittering orbs haphazardly gliding over your face before he reaches your lips again, pecking them one, two, three times before you break away and look at him with furrowed eyebrows, a slight crease right in between them.

“What are you–”

“I think I’m gonna literally cum just at hearing those words, Y/N,” he blurbs out before he kisses the tip of your nose again, completely endeared and close to a happy boy under the Christmas tree, and while you may enjoy that look on him, you’re still slightly confused. Huang Renjun sighs almost a little too dreamingly and smooths the wrinkle between your eyebrows with a careful swipe of his thumb, still not giving you any explanation.

“Renjun, I’m afraid I’m not quite following why this is so important to you right now,” you mumble, having your partner laugh airly– just as if all his worries escaped through the window and you fixed his life with a few drawings plastered on your wall.

“Those, dear Y/N,” he points towards the papers stuck to your walls, eyeing the specific one he worked for 3 hours on and kind of mourned the morning after he realized he threw it away, months of practice and art that maybe wasn’t even that bad in the first place ending up in the trash because of a fit of rage, “are all mine. Mine as in, I drew them… And then threw them out in the middle of a slight mental breakdown.”

You look at him for a few heartbeats, eye contact never breaking before you avert your gaze towards the artwork on the walls– it takes you a few seconds before it hits you– and you gasp, hurriedly looking back at the artist in front of you, stars glimmering in your eyes now as well, matching his excitement. “Oh my god, are you for real?”

“Yeah.”

“You drew all of these?”

“Yeah,” he nods again, breathless.

“This is an insane coincidence,” you snicker, and Renjun didn’t know he had it in him– maybe it’s still the effect of alcohol that slips off his tongue when he speaks– but he cages you in his arms as he kisses you again, a whole new world appearing in front of him when the cheesiness meets the comfort of your walls.

“You’d call this a coincidence?” he hums. “Maybe it was fate.”

Earning himself a sharp laugh, almost mocking him as you swat his shoulder, you fall back with him towards the mattress, and while the heated moment might be gone, you don’t mind at all. Renjun looks at you with a certain softness in his eyes, a pride swelling in his chest, and for a moment, it’s true and you truly did open up a new reality for him and changed his life forever, fixed all of his problems, if you will, because the appreciation it takes for a girl to tape up at least 20 of his messy artworks onto her wall after finding the stash in the trashcan on her way to class might just be the encouragement he needed to keep going with the craft. 

It’s hard to believe that this shitty party actually brought him somewhere– not only to your bed, but also to your life, to a beginning of something new and a restart in something he thought he’d forever be giving up on.

“So… Do you need those back? Because I kinda like them here,” you giggle, and the crinkle of his eyes is enough of an answer to you.

“You can keep them. I’ll just draw new ones you can look at,” he muses, stealing another kiss from you and squeezing your hip, having you squeal against his mouth.

“Now, to get back to what we were doing before–”

[niki-phoria]

YOU ARE IN LOVE, TRUE LOVE

pairing: renjun x gn!reader (no pronouns used) genre: fluff word count: 232

includes: established relationship, reader can cook

renjun has never felt like this before. his mind races almost as quickly as his heartbeat as he watches you parade around his kitchen without a care in the world. you’re still wearing his t-shirt - a sight that still makes his cheek flush an embarrassingly deep red. 

his lips quirk upwards into an unconscious smile as he continues to watch you prepare breakfast for the two of you. sunlight shines in through your opened blinds, casting a golden glow across the entire room. the pleasant aroma filling the dorm is seemingly only made better by the fact that it comes from your food. 

renjun is only broken away from his thoughts when you slide a plate across the table towards him. you softly chuckle at his surprise as you slide into the chair across from him. “what’s on your mind?” you murmur.

he smiles, quietly shaking his head. reaching across the table, renjun takes your hand into his own. you intertwine your fingers together almost unconsciously; his thumb rubs small shapes into your skin. “you’re my best friend.” 

renjun can feel his heart beating rapidly in his chest when you smile at him. your flushed cheeks mirror his own as you lean in, pressing a chaste kiss against his lips before you settle back into your seat once again. “i love you, jun. you mean everything to me.”

“i love you too.”

notes: i'm sorry fics have been taking so long recently, i've had horrible writers block for the past few weeks :// but i promise i'm doing my best !!

if you enjoyed this fic, please consider leaving a like, comment, feedback, or rebloging !! and if you want to support me, consider checking out my nct dream masterlist <3

[haesunlover]

long to be home. (intro)

pairing: huang renjun x female!reader

series genre: fluff, angst, suggestive, eventual smut

word count: 2.1k words

chapter warnings: fluff, light angst, reader is an aspiring writer, renjun being the best bf ever, mark talking about his dick for a second, nothing else really.

the page on the computer screen remained blank, like your thoughts as you tried to remember any childhood memories. you threw your head back groaning, trying to rattle your brain for any sort of progress. giving up, you opened the facetime app on your computer and dialled the only person who can help in this scenario.

"hey sexy," your high school best friend says as she answered the phone. "to what do i owe the pleasure?"

just hearing her voice instantly made you burst into tears. "i'm trying to write but i am fucking clueless. i'm trying to put together my childhood but it's so blurry. i can see it but i can't at the same time. it's so stupid but i'm so fucked. my brain is absolutely fried." you blurt out, holding your head in your hands.

"woah, wait. is this about your show that you're writing? the one about your life?" lia asks, confused and concerned at this sudden outburst bringing the phone closer to her face.

you nodded your head, pushing your hair away from your face and now properly looking at the camera. "yes. i'm like.. stuck. i'm not getting anywhere cause i can't remember all the details." you huffed after taking a deep breath in, trying to calm yourself down. "i'm getting so frustrated."

lia nodded her head before pulling a naughty smirk at the camera. "you know what i think?" she asked.

"what?"

"i think you need to come home. you've been gone for too long and can't remember anything. you need a memory refresher. and a holiday to come see me." she said, looking pretty proud of her suggestion.

you let out a chuckle, shaking your head at her. "i'd love to but i can't just drop everything and come over."

confusion flashed over lia's face. "why not? don't you have like a whole month off? and doesn't renjun get a two week break soon?" she asked, making a very valid point.

you thought about it. a trip back home to australia with your boyfriend and getting to see your best friend after four years. sounds great in theory but.. "i mean, i'm not sure. i don't know if i'm mentally rea- '' you started to talk and tear up but was cut off by the sound of the keypad to the apartment being used. 

"shit, i gotta go. i'll keep you updated. talk to you soon!" you quickly exclaimed, shutting the lid of the laptop. you quickly wiped the tears away from under your eyes and smoothed out your hair as if you weren't about to rip it out moments before.

"y/n? you here, my love?" you hear your boyfriend, renjun, call out for you. you quickly jump out of the desk chair and walk out into the living area to see him and the rest of the dream members. 

"hey guys, i'm sorry for staying for so long. i lost track of time. i'll head out now so you guys can rest up after working hard today." you explained, jolting your fist in a little 'fighting' sign as you look around at them all.

mark shook his head and asked, "what are you talking about? it's movie night! it's my pick tonight. plus rina will be over soon."

your face dropped a bit, knowing that you weren't in the right headspace to be around the boys. you just wanted to go lie in your own bed and contemplate the previous conversation you had with lia.

renjun's eyebrows furrowed as he scanned your face, coming closer and grabbing your hand. "have you been crying?"

feeling called out, you mirrored his expression. "no? what makes you think that?" you ask defensively.

his face remained firm, giving you a look that showed he knew you were lying. "your nose is red. that is such a tell tale sign for you crying."

you muttered a quiet 'shit' under your breath and tugged his arm that was still attached to your hand towards the front door. "can we go on a walk please?" you say, the room falling completely silent out of nosiness and concern. renjun silently nodded and followed you out of the front door and into the elevator.

the elevator ride down was silent. it was silent until the two of you walked out of the lobby and down into the street. "should we go to the park?" renjun asked, squeezing your hand that he has not let go of since he first grabbed it. you nodded, slightly swinging your hands together. 

after walking quietly for about five minutes, the two of you reached the park and sat on a familiar park bench that you and the boys go to often.

renjun let go of your hand and grabbed a seat first, putting his arm over the back of the bench as if he was inviting you to cuddle into him. you flashed him a shy smile and sit next to him, throwing your legs over his lap and snuggling into him.

he has yet to say anything. he's learned over the year of being with you that you'll open up when you're ready and not to rush you. 

it took a few moments before you found the courage to speak up, "i want to go home."

"but we were just at home?"`

"no. 'australia' home."

"okay."

you stared at him, puzzled. "that's it? you're okay with that?"

he nods his head, grabbing your hand. "i'm okay with it. the real question is are you okay with it? are you ready to go back?"

and that's exactly why you're stuck. you had thought about going home a lot recently, even before lia brought it up. the last few years in australia were life changing to say the least. you knew you'd go back eventually and face the past but not this soon. but over the last few days, you've realized it's something you must do in order to move on.

"honestly, renjun? no, i am so scared. but it's something i need to do." you answered, shakily while leaning on his shoulder.

you felt him nodding his head with a small 'mhm..' vibrating through his body. "may.. may i ask what's brought this on all of a sudden?"

you turn your head up to look at him, faces close together. "i've been trying to write but it's almost like i have writers block. except with my childhood memories. i can't seem to remember a lot. it started a few days ago. i thought about going home once. but then i thought about it again and again. then i called lia.. and she suggested the same thing. i think it's time. it's kind of bittersweet, thinking about going home. part of me longs to go back home but the other part is scared shitless." you rambled.

renjun peered down at you, looking between your eyes. "alright baby. it's no problem. we'll go back to the dorms and figure out the logistics soon."

you nodded at the start of his suggestion but looked at him confused as he finished it. "soon? why soon?"

he smiled and leaned down, kissing you softly. he put his free hand on your chin, holding you as you kissed. renjun then pulled away, "i don't know about you but i hear the playground calling our names." he said with a childish smile plastered on his face.

"i am so in love with you." you mumble, staring at him lovingly. you quickly looked around the park, making sure there was nobody around before laughing and jumping off the bench to run towards the playground. "last one to the swings is a rotten egg!"

by the time you two got back to the apartment, the lights were off in the hallway. only the tv light could be seen shining from the living room. you guys walked into the room and saw that the group were already about halfway through the movie and mark's girlfriend, also one of your closest friends, had joined.

spotting a spare seat next to mark and rina on the three seater couch, you let go of renjun's waist that you were previously holding and head towards the couple quietly. rina lets out a small sound of surprise as you fit yourself into the couple's cuddles. "hi, my rainbow. where've you been?" she asked as she leaned over and gave a quick kiss to your cheek.

"yo, why did my dick twitch a little?" mark mumbled, watching the two of you. both rina and you rolled your eyes at him. renjun walked behind the couch, heading to the only free seat in the room on the beanbag but not without smacking mark across the head first.

you couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity of them, knowing mark meant no harm. "renjun and i were at the park, having a chat." you explained, nuzzling yourself into rina. your friend shifted in her seat, turning her full attention to you.

"shit, what about?" she asked, pulling the blanket away from mark and onto your legs instead.

"well, we wer-"

"oh my god, here we go again. can you guys talk in another room please? you do this every time you see each other. the two of you literally talk for hours." chenle groaned, throwing his head back before looking at the pair of you. there were mumbles of agreement, even from your boyfriends.

giggles fell from both yours and your friend's lips as the two of you push off the couch and into the kitchen to talk. rina pulls herself onto the kitchen bench and you mirror her action but onto the kitchen island. "alright, spill." rina says, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl next to her.

"i'm going back home to australia for a while." you say, scanning rina's face. 

she stopped peeling her banana and slowly nodded, thinking about what to say. "okay.. and am i invited?" she asked, taking a bite of the banana.

you looked at her confused at apparently her only thought. "you don't have anything else to say? any advice? am i being crazy?"

"well shit, if you're going back there then you'll need moral support. which will be me!" she exclaims cheerfully.

you thought for a second. you two had been talking about going on vacation for awhile and she is actually incredible support. it'll also give rina a chance to go back home too. "i mean, i don't see why not? renjun and i decided on going during his break. would mark be okay with that?" you asked. rina quickly shoved the rest of the banana in her mouth, letting out a muffled 'let me ask.'

she jumped off of the kitchen bench and walked back into the living room with you not too far behind her. "mark, wanna go to australia with us?" she asked quite loudly over the movie. the room erupted in noise, some of the boys talking amongst each other and others trying to talk to you two girls.

"shit, i didn't know i'd cause that much of a fuss." she awkwardly mumbled, returning to her seat next to mark.

chenle spoke up loudly over the noise, "why are you guys going to australia?" he asked looking between you and rina. you groaned, walking to the lightswitch and turning it on so you can actually see everybody properly. you grabbed the remote off the table and quickly paused the movie.

"me and renjun are going back to australia to go sort things out. some family things." which wasn't entirely a lie, "rina wants to come because we've been planning a holiday together long before renjun and i even started dating. she'll also be going home to australia so obviously she wouldn't go without mark." you continued to explain.

it was jeno that spoke up next, "well, can we come too?" he asked softly next to jaemin. the two of them both showing you a very similar innocent, boyish look. you look at renjun, silently asking for help. 

he pushed himself out of the beanbag and made his way over to where you were standing by the tv, "well, how about we go, just us, for the first few days and then the rest of them can join us later?" 

you nodded in approval, look at everyone else to see if they give the same approval. everyone was showing some way of saying yes. it was jisung who spoke up next, "where are we even going?"

"we're going back to my hometown on the gold coast." the room erupted in noise again, but this time in excited chatter. whilst everyone was talking, you turn to renjun with a half excited and half scared look on your face.

"i guess this is it. i'm going home."

[lee-aveyourmark]

pov: you're doing grocery shopping with nct dream

∘.∙°. masterlist Warnings: mentions of food and eating; physical affection - hugs, kisses, everything to make you cringe

mark Constantly brings up the other Dreamies when finding foods that remind him of them. It's sweet to see how much he cares for them, but when he's stopping every 30 seconds to give a backstory for an item that catches his eye, it's not hard for your pout to come out. Will shut himself up and exert some self-control when he notices your furrowed eyebrows. Nevertheless, you two still end up buying some snacks for the other Dreamies. Likes to share one side of his wireless earphones with you. However, you begin to walk ahead once he's turned up the volume and started grooving to the beat a little too passionately. Your calls for him to stop fall upon deaf ears, and it takes a light pinch to the nape of his neck to remind him that he's at the supermarket with grannies watching him busting moves. Some shopping trips are confidence builders for Mark as you encourage him to avoid premade meals and buy fresh produce to cook with. Giggles and hugs you tightly when you concede to buying more eggs than normal so that he can practice his sunny side up's. Takes pics of you two in front of the safety mirrors and develops an album on his phone from the number of similar photos.

renjun Sings to himself while shopping, and also harmonises along to whatever you're singing without knowing that he's doing so. Spends a considerable amount of time debating different options for each item. Maybe a little too much time, because by the time you've reached the seventh item on your shopping list, you're yawning and thinking about your cosy bed. Is not afraid to ask workers where certain things are. Is also drawn to demonstrations of new kitchen appliances more than food samples. Often ends up overbuying, either because he overestimated the amount needed or because there were many dishes that he wanted to try making but they all called for different ingredients in small amounts. Gets deeply offended when you ask some stranger for help in grabbing something from the top shelf. Literally scoffs to himself, rolls his eyes, places his hands on his hips and glares at you and the stranger from afar. Gives you the silent treatment for two minutes before breaking because he forgot what was the next item on the shopping list which was in your possession. Also breaks when you slide your hand into his and do not let go even when he tries to walk in the other direction.

jeno Judges everything in consideration in reference to Jaemin. Choosing what cut of meat to get? Jeno thinks Jaemin said that this cut was best for its price point. Not sure what brand of matcha powder to buy? Jaemin mentioned one time that this certain brand has a really nice kick, so you should probably get that. Scratches the back of his neck when you put the chosen matcha powder back with an adamant shake of your head, reminding the samoyed that this Jaemin is also the same Jaemin who drinks coffee with six shots of espresso. Most of your shopping trips are done after 11am because Jeno just... loves sleep. If it's before midday, he's shuffling down the aisles in slides and slight bedhead that he tries to cover up with a hood. He's also still bleary-eyed and stifles a yawn while tugging on your sleeve to help him navigate through the store without bumping into anything. Becomes more awake once he munches on some samples. Pushes the cart leisurely with one arm and holds your hand with the other, gently stroking your knuckles. Sneaks candids of you picking things off the shelves and comparing items. Seeing you bite your lip in deep thought makes him want to kiss you so bad, but he'll wait until you're alone. He'll also save the pics for later when he misses you and needs a reminder of home.

haechan Takes turns pushing the cart, but sometimes he'll have a mind of his own and force you to push it against your will while he runs off. There's a 50-50 chance of him making a small toddler cry by smiling at them. Will always opt for the spiciest option there is, and argues that it's the right choice. Tries to convince you by reasoning that you should just learn to eat spicier or dilute your portion with water. When threatening to break up with him because of his stubbornness, he reluctantly swaps for one spice level below and then two upon catching your glare. Picks a random item off the shelf every 5 minutes and makes a cheesy pun about it to flirt with you. More often than not, you just shake your head and continue walking down the aisle with a smile. Suddenly stops you and grabs your face with his hands, staring at you intensely for a brief moment before leaning in with puckered lips. The whine he lets out after you push him away attracts the attention of everyone in the aisle. The only way to get out of the spotlight is to give him a quick peck which turns his whines into a squeal of satisfaction. Proceeds to cuddle his head into your neck while browsing the next two aisles, only retracting when you complain that you can't feel your shoulder anymore.

jaemin Every shopping trip is also a date. This man will convince you to wear a couple's article of clothing to receive coos from elderly women. Will also feed you all the samples there are to offer before trying them himself. Falls head over heels for you for the 138th time when your eyes light up and eyebrows raise in delight at how tasty a sample is. Proceeds to buy half the store's stock of that item. Then, he falls for the 139th time when you push the shopping cart with him, fawning over how cute your hands look next to his. He slips one hand between the space of your two so that your arms are intertwined, before adorning the biggest grin on his face when you link his arm with yours and rest your head on his shoulder. Will buy the ingredients for whatever dish you wanna eat later that day because he's self-assured that he can make the dish. Whenever he lets you pick out groceries, he'll never oppose your selections that go against his personal preference. Instead, he'll try to appreciate your selections or help you fix the dish's taste if your choice turns out to be unfortunate. Peppers your face with kisses once you two return to the car because he found all of your shopping mannerisms adorable, and holds your hand while driving back home.

chenle Probably the only member who'd do groceries in the actual morning. Because Chenle knows what he's looking for, grocery trips average around 30 minutes. That's including time for you to browse and select snacks that weren't originally included on the shopping list. Will go on a rampage and nonstop brag about you when an old lady comments on how sweet your relationship is. Has such a soft spot for the elderly and for children to the point of paying for their groceries if there's a cute family or a lonely grandpa waiting in line behind you two. Also likes to act as your sugar daddy, nonchalantly allowing you to toss two tubs of the most expensive brand of ice cream that the store has to offer into the shopping cart. Shares his music with you, but doesn't seem to be bothered with you listening when he accepts a call and starts talking with a cousin. Continues shopping after the call ends as if nothing happened, asking for input about certain grocery items. Bursts into laughter when he sees you standing stock still with awkwardness written all across your face, your cheeks as red as the bunch of tomatoes in his hand. Can't stop cooing you because of how cute your face was, and soothes you by buying your favourite drink from the cafe next door to the grocery store.

jisung Snacks, snacks and more snacks. 90% of the time Jisung asks you to go to the grocery store with him, it's because he's looking for snacks. Careful but confident when choosing snacks. However, ask him one question about buying actual groceries, and he'll spiral into a deep internal conflicting monologue about the 10 different brands of the one item you're looking for. Nevertheless, you let him and his snack connoisseur antics be because most of the time, his selections turn out to be pretty good. Pops along to whatever song the grocery store is playing, even if it's some old trot tune. Falls behind when stumbling upon a childhood ice cream, proceeding to become lost. Has to roam all the aisles twice before finding you. You're extremely confused when he approaches you with tears in his eyes and hugs your shoulders tightly. Shyly waves to all the toddlers who stare up at him in awe in passing, reaching out with a blush when he misinterprets the child's extended hand for a high-five. Uses his massive hands to bring the groceries to and from the car, and feels proud of himself when he only needs one trip to haul them out.

[f4irys4n]

nct dream p♡rn links pt2

lee mark

backshots

giddy up

huang renjun

playing with you

he’s obsessed with you

lee jeno

he loves to please

dreamies dorm couch

lee donghyuck

keep your face down

wake up call

na jasmin

making him late for practice

be good for me

zhong chenle

eye contact

you taste so good

park jisung

magic fingers

back off tour

please make sure you log into your twt on the browser or it’ll show up as the tweet doesn’t exist <3 some links also may break over time due to account or videos being deleted/removed !!

[xrenjunniesx]

when they reject your offer for movie night so you do it with wayv instead

friendgroup!nctdream

this was requested! it was requested along with another idea which I’m still considering on doing, not sure if I have enough ideas for it but we will see!!

[renjunplanet]

n sei q tipo de pedido vc espera mas pensando mt num renjun com ciumes

[22:37] w/renjun

atenção. escrevi e reescrevi tantas vezes que no final saiu algo bem gay baitola boiola, tem muitas palavras no diminutivo e um injun manhoso

huang, que estava sentado no sofá de braços cruzados, apenas desviou o olhar para a televisão. fingiu assistir o programa de televisão aleatório que passava só para te ignorar de propósito.

— sério, renjun? vai mudar essa carranca ou tá difícil?

sem resposta.

e o motivo dessa estranheza toda? com certeza foi te ver conversando com jeno a noite toda sem dar atenção para ele.

renjun nunca foi do tipo de demonstrar chateação e tampouco ciúmes no relacionamento, mas não quer dizer que não sentia. hoje por exemplo, após voltarem do apartamento de chenle, ele ficou totalmente estranho do nada.

— quer saber, foda-se. se tu quer continuar com essa birra toda, que tu continue sozinho porque eu cansei. — jogou as mãos para o ar em redenção e foi em direção ao banheiro. estava cansada do dia exaustivo, havia trabalhado a tarde inteira com papeladas, além de ter passado a manhã toda na faculdade. de combo, tinha esquecido do convite dos amigos então logo após o trabalho teve que se arrumar correndo para se encontrar com eles.

claramente não queria ganhar mais um bônus nesse dia corrido e sabia que discutir com renjun não levaria a nada além de uma briga desnecessária.

tomou seu banho e foi para o quarto, encontrando o namorado na cama com uma carinha triste e arrependida. facilmente teve seu coração amolecido e se rendeu a conversa que antes queria evitar.

— você vai falar comigo agora, injun? — perguntou ao se deitar ao lado dele. recebeu um aceno com a cabeça e um abraço tímido como resposta.

— me desculpa... — ele disse baixinho, com o rostinho sob seus seios e um biquinho nos lábios.

— ah, amor... me conta o que aconteceu... — você levou os dedos aos fios macios, fazendo um cafuné gostosinho no namorado que te apertou ainda mais no abraço.

— me perdoa, por favor. eu sei que fui infantil, mas é que... — ele suspirou tenso, fechando os olhos com firmeza tentando não se chatear com o ocorrido de mais cedo.

— mas é que?... — instiga renjun a te responder.

— mas é que eu não gostei nenhum pouquinho de te ver de brincadeirinha com o jeno...

— hã?

— você e ele passaram a noite toda conversando e trocando risinhos um com o outro, não gostei nenhum pouco de ver ele de sorrisinhos pra minha namorada. — disse enquanto fazia carinho em sua cintura, com a carranca de mais cedo voltando de novo.

— é sério isso? — você suspirou cansada, soltando um riso fraco.

— é sério. — renjun se levanta e fica de frente para seu rosto — você ficou o dia todo ocupada, mal teve tempo pra mim, dai quando a gente finalmente tem um descanso e um tempinho de lazer pra ficar entre a gente e nossos amigos você preferiu ficar maior parte dele junto com o jeno e os olhinhos sorridentes dele...

— nossa... sinceramente... eu nunca pensei que teria esse tipo de conversa com você, jun. — você riu, achando graça do rostinho do namorado.

— eu tava com saudades... e me senti deslocado... perdão, amor. — renjun diz envergonhado, voltando a te abraçar, dessa vez com o rosto escondido entre seu pescoço e ombro.

— tá tudo bem, bobinho. só não faz mais esse tipo de coisa, quando isso te chatear fala comigo, tá legal? — você segura a carinha dele e faz um carinho nas bochechinhas.

— tá...

seus lábios vão de encontro com os do namorado, num selinho gostoso de boa noite.

— me desculpa de novo...

— tá tudo bem, agora vamos dormir!

— tá bom — ele ri.

[cinnajun]

ᵕ̈ ೫˚∗: can i have a hug? | hrj

summary | a series of routines between you and your boyfriend, renjun, shortly after moving in with each other.

genre | huang renjun x fem!reader. non-idol! au. angst with a cute ending, renjun is a bit protective

warnings | a lot of self doubt, jaemin’s girlfriend is awful and mean, y/n and renjun overset boundaries (if that’s a thing)

wc | 3.7k

a/n: renjun is the love of my life and i would do anything for him even w the military cut amen thank you god also suhyun isn’t based off anyone

TO BE HONEST, it would be a lie to say you weren’t expecting this. Despite that, there was a glimmer of hope, an all-consuming glimmer, that made you believe your moving into Renjun’s apartment would be more than it actually was.

Renjun values his alone time, and you know that. You’ve respected it for your whole relationship, and, honestly, it wouldn’t be too far off to say you held the same sentiments. You would even say that was half the reason you both fit together so well.

When you first brought up moving in together, you’d suggested separate bedrooms, claiming it might be better for both of you. It was Renjun who rejected the idea, saying it would just drive a wedge between you two and how much you hung out.

You were overjoyed then, but not so much now.

Glancing at your clock, which read 1:03 am, you were upset that you couldn’t fall asleep. You were exhausted, with your eyes hurting at every movement and your limbs stuck to the mattress, but closing your eyes and letting your mind run made everything worse.

You were on the left corner of the bed, and Renjun had squared himself all the way to the right. He hadn’t so much as touched you, only offering you a small “good night” and a smile. He’d fallen asleep quickly, too, as he always did, not giving you a second thought.

Renjun wasn’t very touchy (and, once again, you weren’t either). Still, a part of you had also hoped that he’d initiate even the slightest bit of skinship, whether it be hand-holding or even the slightest bit of proximity between you two. But, no, he was at least a foot away from you, maybe more, tucked into himself.

As you were realizing, it felt…bad. Even if he normally slept like this, even if you both weren't big into skinship, it felt awful. It felt like he was afraid to touch you, uncomfortable with touching you, even though you lived together.

You’d get over it, soon enough. You knew Renjun loved you—he’d let you move into his apartment, for free no less, for god’s sake—but, in little moments like these, it’s hard to wrap your mind around.

-

Usually, you like hanging out with Renjun’s friends. They’re a fun group of people, always having something to bicker over or joke about, and you never leave without laughing until your cheeks hurt.

Tonight, though, was terrible.

Jaemin had invited his girlfriend—a rare occurrence from him, as they’d only started dating recently—and he had no issue with any sort of affection, even in front of so many people. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, practically dragged her onto his lap, and hugged her for nearly the entire night, all of which were things you would hate to happen to you.

Still, you couldn’t help but compare them to how you felt now.

Meanwhile, the rest of Renjun’s friends were going on and on about your new living situation, poking fun at how you came in the same car and left in the same one. Haechan particularly teased you both, referring to you as the first married couple in the relationship. At one point, he assumed a mocking old-lady voice, asking “when are you planning to have kids?” which drew a long sigh from both you and Renjun.

Unfortunately, the lovey-dovey jokes on top of Jaemin and Suhyun made you want to drive a drill into your skull more than ever.

You were particularly quiet on the ride home, staring at the moon from the car window. You wondered if the moon felt lonely orbiting the Earth, in the way you somehow managed to feel lonely in the most loving relationship you’d experienced in your whole life.

Of course, Renjun picked up on your quietness almost immediately. “Are you feeling okay?” he had asked, linking your pinkies together as he drove. The touch, as simple and as common as it was in your relationship, sent an uncomfortable sensation down your arm.

“I’m okay,” you replied, trying to sound as chipper as possible. “They tire me out.”

He didn’t press more, humming in response. You knew he didn’t believe you, but Renjun also trusted that, if something was wrong and you didn’t share, you would know how to handle it.

When you got home, you practically slid into bed almost immediately. Your skincare routine was cut short and you put on your warmest pajamas, mostly in hopes that they’d make you feel more loved at night than Renjun did.

You were in bed before him, but, once again, you couldn’t sleep. Instead, you kept your eyes closed, even when Renjun was talking on the phone with Mark in a hushed voice, even when he pressed his hand to your forehead and told Mark “no, she doesn’t have a fever,” even when he crawled into bed next to you (yet still so far away) and whispered a quiet “good night,” even though he thought you were sleeping.

-

You thought things wouldn’t get worse than they already were. You convinced yourself this was temporary, this was okay, that you’d get over it soon enough.

Renjun’s friends had other plans, though.

Living with him meant seeing them a lot more. Renjun held a lot of importance to making sure his friends knew you, and that you knew his friends. Skipping out on their get-togethers often would make him upset, and you didn’t want to make him upset.

Hanging out with his friends, however, was starting to make you upset, ironically enough.

Somehow, Mark had come upon a large amount of very illegal fireworks (his friend Johnny had given them to him, which upset Haechan a fair amount, for some reason). Now, you were sitting in Chenle’s backyard—his huge, multi-acre backyard—lighting them off.

The only issue was Jaemin inviting his girlfriend again, and them being all over each other, as per usual. You and Renjun were sitting next to each other, sure, but you were about half a foot apart and hadn’t touched each other since Renjun helped you onto the ledge you both sat on.

The moment Jaemin and Suhyun arrived, she was sitting in his lap, and he was whispering stuff in her ear, and she was marveling at the colors, and Jaemin was looking at her like she was the world. The only issue was that you knew that you’d hate it, once again, but you couldn’t help but yearn for what they had, what she had.

Mark dropped his phone onto the grass once a big group of fireworks went off, evidently done recording that round. He looked at Chenle, saying something to him (which you couldn’t hear), just before running off towards where the rest of the fireworks were.

As silence overtook the group, Suhyun turned towards your ledge, suddenly staring you down. It made you more anxious, and it took everything in you to stand your ground and not twiddle your thumbs in discomfort.

You began to open your mouth to comment on the fireworks, but Suhyun filled the silence before you could.

“So you two are dating?” she asked, looking between you and Renjun. He looked over at her, giving her a wary look you could only describe as his signature just-shut-up look.

“Uh, yeah,” you nodded, wondering if she’d miraculously forgotten that you both were introduced to her as a couple. She hummed in recognition, nodding and biting her lip. She looked as though she was plotting something, a certain emotion you couldn’t pinpoint flashing behind her eyes.

With the small upturn of her lips, she asked, “For how long?”

You weren’t looking at him directly, but you could’ve sworn Renjun rolled his eyes at her question. He looked annoyed that she even decided to speak to you, hell, he just looked annoyed.

“Three years,” he replied. Usually, when someone asked how long you’d been together, he was excited to answer, as if he was proud of the length of time. Now, he looked unhappy and angry, like he wanted nothing more than for Suhyun to shut up.

“Really?” she suddenly replied, her eyes widened and her brows lifted. This whole situation was off-putting; more often than not, when people responded to “three years” with “really?” their tone of voice was impressed, but hers felt surprised in a not-so-kind way.

You heard Haechan, who sat next to you, suck in a breath, like he was going to start speaking, but he never got the chance.

“Sorry, it just doesn’t look like you guys even like each other.”

The words were nails screeching on a chalkboard, a violin’s strings violently snapping in the middle of the song, a hammer flying through a glass door.

Your stomach tightened, and you tensed immediately. Without skipping a beat, Renjun said, “Excuse me?” with the most malicious tone you’d heard out of him in a while. She shrugged, looking back towards Mark and Chenle. Jeno hopped off the ledge instantly, looking back at Renjun and Haechan before jogging out towards the two stragglers.

“Hey,” Jisung suddenly piped in from his blanket on the grass, face contorting into one of apprehension. “Maybe let's talk about something else.”

Jaemin looked a bit shocked, his eyes widened and his mouth slightly ajar, but he didn’t try to say anything. In the tense silence, Haechan let out a loud scoff, drawing you to look at him. He had the same expression as Renjun—intense dislike, maybe even hatred—and you felt like you were missing something.

“What the fuck do you know?” Haechan spat, crossing his arms. “Just because they aren’t making out every second of the day doesn’t mean they don’t like each other.”

“What I want to know,” Renjun began with a tight voice, and, suddenly, you were scrambling, realizing he was very upset by the question, and Renjun was not easy to deal with when angry. You put your hand over his, cringing at the unconsented touch, but still hoping it would help in the slightest. “Is why you think you know anything about my relationship when you’ve met my girlfriend once before today? I suppose I’m not following.”

The sort of politeness in his voice was one you were accustomed to. When he was especially upset, he took on a sort of condescension, yet he lowered his chin to look up at whoever he was talking to. Jaemin, definitely not thinking straight, jumped to Suhyun’s defense at the sight of Renjun’s offense.

“Dude, chill out,” he said, visibly tightening his arms around Suhyun’s stomach. “She didn’t mean it like you think she did.”

Suhyun looked towards the speed-walking Mark, Chenle, and Jeno, puffing her lips out into an unassuming pout.

“No, I think she did mean it like that. Just like she’s meant everything else,” Renjun replied, and then the blame had shifted.

“Renjun,” you whispered, squeezing his hand. “It’s fine. Just ignore it.”

Instead, he ignored you. Haechan did too, apparently, coming to Renjun’s defense.

“I guess she didn’t mean it, though, huh? When she called Mark a loser, or when she told me to go waste my time pining over another one of my friends.” He laughed dryly, rolling his neck in a circle. “Get a grip, Jaemin. Holy shit.”

“Guys.” Mark “the mediator” Lee appeared, but he’d shown up all too late. Renjun returned your hand-holding, but he did so to pull you off the ledge with him. Abruptly, you were exiting the firework hang-out, Haechan following close behind.

“Guys!” Mark called out once again, but Renjun didn’t look back, not until you were in the car.

-

Upset Renjun had made things worse at home.

When you’d gone to bed, he opted to stay up with Haechan in the living room. You’d never seen him so worked up, not like this. Part of it made you feel good, feel loved, but the other part of it made you feel worse than before.

You knew the reason she’d said that was your lack of couple-presenting activities, or, more simply, PDA. She hadn’t heard an ‘I love you’ or anything similar once, and, if you had to guess, the first time she’d seen you touch Renjun was when you were trying to calm him down.

In a way, she was right. It was bad to even consider it, but she was kind of right.

The sound of your front door opening and closing was loud, but you were glad Haechan was gone and Renjun was coming to bed. Taking one last look at the moon, you squeezed your eyes shut, curling into yourself. If you were lucky, sleep would come easy tonight, but this was one of the unluckiest nights of your life, so far.

Renjun opened the door to your bedroom a little too roughly, but he closed it very gently, so as not to disturb your fake sleep. There was the sound of clothes rustling, of belts being taken off and sweatpants being put on, but it seemed like he would be bypassing his usual, extensive nighttime routine.

Instead, he got under the covers right beside you, tugging you into his chest. Your eyes flew open, followed by a small “Renjun?” that escaped from your throat.

“Go back to sleep,” he mumbled into your neck, causing goosebumps to sprout down your arms. “I love you. Good night.”

And, for the first time in about two weeks, you fell asleep with ease.

-

Nothing had changed. You were hopeful it had, after that night, but once Renjun calmed down, everything was the same, and you were back to feeling the sinking feeling in your stomach all too soon.

There was something that had shifted, though, and that is how you ended up sitting across from Mark at a small cafe in the city. He was nervous, you could easily tell from the way he spoke to the way he walked. When he texted you, he was sure to inform you that this was about Renjun and Jaemin, nothing more, nothing less.

“I don’t know what to do,” he sighed, putting his head in his hands. “They’re at each other’s throats, even though this should be something they get over easily. Hyuck is taking Renjun’s side, and so is Jeno, but the rest of us are pretty much neutral. It’s causing a lot of drama. I don’t know.”

“In the kindest way possible,” you began to respond, taking a big gulp of your coffee. “The problem here seems to be Suhyun and not Jaemin or Renjun.”

“I guess so, but…was the comment really that bad?”

In a burst of sudden discontent, you frowned. “I think…I think the issue is that she was a little too right.”

Mark furrowed his brows, suddenly confused. “I mean, right about what? You and Renjun orbit each other like…like two colliding stars, or something—god, that was a little cringy of me. But, seriously, I can’t see how she was right.”

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you decided, at the moment, Mark was someone you could trust. He would know how to drag you out of the situation you were in, you were sure of it. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“Renjun and I, like, barely even touch each other. The last time we even kissed was three days ago, and it was only because he was going to be gone for a long while. It’s like…moving in with each other made us afraid of each other,” you lamented, looking down at your hands. “We share a bed, but he sleeps as far as he possibly could from me. Like, the other night, I felt uncomfortable even holding his hand. We are stepping over boundaries we had set like two weeks into our relationship. I guess Suhyun must’ve picked that up somehow, but…I don’t know.”

Mark was quiet for a minute, and, when you looked up, he seemed to be deliberating something. “That’s why you’ve been so out of it, then? Not because you're feeling bad or something is going on at work?”

“…Yeah, that would be why.”

“I get it. It makes sense now, why he got that angry and why things have been weird. I’m not saying I like Suhyun, she seriously is awful, but it makes sense.”

“What—what should I do?”

Mark thought for a minute more, tapping his chin. “Okay, here’s our plan. I break Jaemin and Suhyun up using Jeno, and you ask Renjun for a hug. How about that?”

-

You and Renjun used to ask each other for hugs a lot. Back in the first year of your relationship, it was commonplace for you both, and the answer was always yes. Then, during your second year, there was less asking and more just-doing. The third year brought a weird type of hesitation that came with living with someone else for the first time, not in the way of a roommate, but in the way of a lover.

You didn’t expect to be nervous to ask Renjun for a hug ever.

You were coming home from a movie you’d planned on seeing in the Cinema weeks in advance. You were quick to shed your wet raincoat, hanging it on the hooks next to your front door. Your shoes came off and you stretched your arms out, glad to be inside your warm apartment and no longer out in the rainy cold.

This was when you decided you’d ask Renjun for a hug. Even if you were so nervous you could die, you would ask him for that hug, no matter what.

When you put your purse down, you began hyping yourself up internally, screaming at yourself to just go for it, that he was your boyfriend, and you’d done much worse than a hug before. So, with a brave pivot, you stared at Renjun with conviction, and he stared back with confusion.

“Yes?” he asked, dropping the keys in the little bowl you had for them.

“Can I have a hug?” you forced out, ignoring how your throat tightened and you oddly felt like crying. He stared at you for a moment, before his mouth turned up into a big smile.

“What? You don’t have to ask me for a hug, loser,” he said, approaching you. He drew you into the allotted hug, rocking you back and forth with him. “We stopped asking so long ago. What prompted that?”

“I don’t know,” you lied, squeezing his waist as hard as you could. You couldn’t lie—Renjun gave very good, very warm hugs. He smelled of wood and the ocean, like the quiet beach town you’d both fantasized about living in. His sweaters were always warm and soft, engulfing you into a blanket-like embrace.

“You could…hug me more, you now. Maybe at night, and stuff. Like couples in a movie,” you suggested, burying your face into his neck. Renjun suddenly went quiet as you rocked around the room.

“Oh,” he finally erupted, squeezing you back. “Oh, I get it now. That was it.”

You didn’t say anything, even as Renjun erupted into a fit of little giggles. Through his chuckles, he said, “God, we are so stupid. I thought you were about to break up with me. I thought I’d done something. No, we were just being dumb. I have to tell Mark.”

“We aren’t dumb, we just respect each other too much. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Renjun unwrapped his arms from your waist, taking your face into his hands. “I guess, but not when it was driving us severely apart,” he mused.

Gently, Renjun pulled you into a kiss. It was reminiscent of the first few kisses you’d both shared, all of which were well-timed and disgustingly romantic. It was slow and soft, with no ill-intent behind either of your actions. It was filled with unspoken love and minty undertones, the softness of his lips and the warm feeling of his hands on your cheeks.

When he pulled away, you couldn’t help but feel a bit blue. You’d unknowingly deprived yourself of your boyfriend for so long under the guise of “respecting his boundaries,” and now you just wanted to spend your time with him eternally.

“I love you,” he spoke in a sing-songy voice. It was much happier than the last time he’d told you he loved you.

“I love you too,” you replied with the same tune, smiling like an idiot. “Also, Mark is going to try to break Suhyun and Jaemin up.”

“Thank god,” Renjun breathed out, leaning his forehead against yours. “Did you know she practically harassed Chenle to set them up? She’s seriously awful. But, I’m going to text him to wait, so I can make out with you in front of her right before Jaemin leaves her for good.”

“I’d hate that,” you laughed. “Maybe we can hold hands or something.”

“No, she’s going to have to sit and watch. Just to prove a point.” Renjun planted another short kiss on your lips, pulling away for good this time. You followed after him, realizing he was just going to start dinner and wasn’t going to do anything special. “You can have a hug whenever you like, my dear. Just say the word, and I’m there.

thank you for reading!

[dojunie]

into you; hrj [sneak peek]

[★]; YOU LIKE HUANG RENJUN MORE THAN YOU’VE PROBABLY LIKED ANYTHING IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Sure, you've only been more than friends for like, two weeks— a title-less thing that has you hanging out nearly every day but still hovering in the gray space between people who kiss sometimes and something a little more concrete— but it didn’t take you long to realize that he's pretty much everything you've ever wanted. What you’ve got going on with him right now is perfect in its own way, even if you find yourself almost overwhelmed with how much you like him these days… but considering that Renjun seems perfectly fine with the way things are, you’re not really gunning to tell him that.

(Though, after an incident at a party has you blowing up on your ex for a less than savory dig at your relationship— however unofficial it may be— you might not have to tell Renjun anything at all.)

info;

huang renjun x fem!reader

college au but no learning is going on

oneshot

genre/about; friends-who-kiss-sometimes to lovers, semi-established relationship but much pining is to be had, mc is Smitten, the full fic will have nsfw elements

teaser wc; 1k / full fic wc; 8-10k…ish (5k already written, woo, short fic era incoming)

[a/n: here is a very brief peek into a renjun fic that came to me in a fever dream, the one i’ve been working on non stop for like four days straight!!! renchins and others pls leave your thoughts in the replies or send me an ask, i beg]

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YOU'VE SIMMERED DOWN EVEN FURTHER BY THE TIME YOU'VE GOTTEN INSIDE HIS APARTMENT AND TAKEN A LONG, HOT SHOWER; scouring both the party and Jihoon’s touch from your skin, the nearly burning water is a welcome cleanse from the nights earlier events. (Though, if you’re being completely honest, the reason your face is so warm isn’t only because of the heat.)

Upon opening the front door and hustling inside, not a second had passed after toeing off your shoes off before Renjun spun you around kissed you.

And it wasn’t— It wasn’t rare for him to kiss you first. You didn’t want to make it seem like you had to chase him down for a smooch. But Renjun, as you’d guessed from his personality even before you started dancing around each other like this, was much more reserved than you were. He chose his moments for affection purposefully; a hand held here, a kiss on the cheek there, or (on more delicate occasions) a press of his lips against yours, mainly whenever you’d drop you off late at night, a quiet goodbye whispered against your mouth.

So it wasn’t rare but it wasn’t an exact science either, which is precisely why you didn't know what was happening until it was already over. The giant, dopey smile on his face only served to explain that he’d known exactly what he was doing by surprising you like that, and you held back the urge to launch yourself at him.

“That was my thank you,” Renjun started airily, teasing but still looking a little pink around the edges himself, “For trying to fight someone twice your size on my behalf. No one’s ever done that for me before. However, I would be very happy if you never did it again, because if you got hurt I would be very mad. Do you understand?”

You only stared at him. Your lips were tingling. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured. “Do you want to shower first?”

“…Yes,” you said lowly, finaly finding your voice. God. “Yeah. You take forever.”

“Well then I’ll get you something to change into,” he said. Then, terrifyingly, he leaned in as if he was going to kiss you again— but right when he was close enough for your eyes to cross, waiting, waiting, unwilling to not be ready this time— “What are you waiting for?" he whispered. "You’re blocking the closet. Go.”

He laughed when you ran, cursing him the whole way. 

Once you were out, sufficiently clean and doused head to toe in Renjun’s clothes (despite the fact that after like, the tenth time you’d been here, you brought a change of clothes to keep in his closet for spontaneous nights exactly like these), you found yourself both alone and introspective for the first time since the Jihoon incident. It was only expected that your mind would wander to how you got yourself to this point in the first place, draped across the couch of a guy you hadn’t even known the name of three months ago—

And it had started as a seating chart.

Seating charts were always a risky game. You could either be stuck next to the too-loud or the too-quiet, the cheaters with wandering eyes or the chatty kids who didn’t understand that class wasn’t only for socializing— or you could be put near an angel, someone would end up changing your life in a way that you never would have expected from that first day of classes. 

Thankfully, in Chinese Literature 201, it was the latter.

Renjun was a Language Study major; the pretty guy with soft brown hair, a pair of big silver glasses perched on his face and a sweet little smile to match— the quiet student who sat across the aisle from you in the lecture hall. Being dismissed by row after collecting your midterm practice grades meant that, out in the lobby, he had a front row seat to catch you pulling your hair out over your less than desirable grade— and seemingly out of nowhere, he tapped you on the shoulder and asked if you wanted a little help. Grateful (and frankly terrified by the idea of failing Chi Lit and having to take it again if you bombed this midterm), you’d taken him up on his offer: three times a week in the Sulim Library from 6 to 8PM.

The rest was pretty much history.

You got to know him outside of just flashcards and extra assigned readings, learned that he liked to sing and did ballet for four years in high school and hated the taste of matcha anything. You learned who his friends were and what he liked to do on campus. Renjun wasn’t like any guy you’d— actually no, scratch that, he wasn’t like any person you’d ever met before. He was quiet, but he wasn’t shy. He was able to shut you up with startling accuracy; an ability your friends even found miraculous when you told them after the first few tutoring sessions, a dumb smile on your face and swinging your feet, that you’d finally found someone who could argue better than you could.

Renjun could bring a smile to your face by saying your name alone. He was nice and he was sweet and he was thoughtful, but he had a temper that matched yours and the most endearing frustrated face you've ever seen on another person.

You often left his side feeling almost ill with awe that one person could be so… perfect. As awfully mushy as that sounds.

Thankfully, after a few weeks of woo-ing him with your roguish charm, when you bit the bullet and told him you liked him, he replied with a smile and a challenge— because Renjun was nothing if not focused on the goal of actually tutoring you— he told you that if you passed the midterm with a grade of B or above, he’d let you take him on a date.

Easy fucking money. There wasn’t a chance you were going to let this opportunity slip away from you. You studied so hard for that test that for nearly six days you only came out of your room to eat and pee. 

(You got a 96%— A big, beautiful red A+ on the midterm and a professors recommendation for your accompanying essay. Renjun only later told you that the alternative to a good grade was him taking you out instead, the prick; and he laughed so hard at the look on your face that you thought he was going to throw up.)

[a/n; crying screaming i'm so excited to post this lol]

[will put full fic link here when posted] [other works]

[dreamzencity]

Nct Dream reaction - Holding their hand for the first time

Mark

Be prepared for a lot of flustered giggles. Even tho he tries to hide his excitement you can see how the ends of his lips curl up into a flustered smile. He wanted to hold your hand for so long now and he doesn’t even want to let go of you anymore. Holds your hand so oft since that moment. Guiding you through a crowded place? He will gently take your hand to lead you. You’re anxious? He will hold your hand and gently caress the back of it with his thumb. You’re both on a date? He will gently press soft kisses on your knuckles.

Renjun

Tries so hard to look unbothered at first. But the moment you grab his hand his eyes widen a little and his heart stops beating for a second. Finally he lets out a little laugh and softly squeezes your hand with a happy smile on his lips. He loves the way your hand fits so perfectly into his and becomes addicted to that feeling right at the spot.

Jeno

Imagine his eyes going wide as he looks at you with a confused gaze. As soon as you see the look on his face you can’t help yourself but blush a little by his poor reaction. When you start to pull away shyly Jeno is quick to grab your hand and intertwine your fingers with his. „Don’t“ he smiles softly and you recieve a cute eye smile from your boyfriend.

Donghyuck

Haechan is very clingy with you and is used to initiate most of the affection in your relationship. So he is kinda taken aback when you suddenly intertwine your fingers with his while you both are currently outside for a walk. He’s literally so happy and smiley but can’t stop himself but to smirk cutely at you before pecking your cheek softly.

Jaemin

He always gets so so happy whenever he is able to show the world that the both of you are together. Doesn’t matter how. So when you take his hand into yours and rest your head on his shoulder during a movie night with the dreamies his smile gets so so so big. Literally such a soft boy- he starts to softly caress the back of your hand with his thumb and fanboys over how cute your hand looks in his.

Chenle

You both are sitting in a park after he came back home from a world tour with the other Dream members. You missed him so much and just wanted to be as close as possible to him- so you gently grabbed his hand while continuing to listen to his rant. He goes dead silent for a second and you already want to ramble an apology but chenle is quick to hold your hand a little tighter while he keeps on rambling bout the tour. Secretly his heart literally exploded the moment you took hold of his hand- but he would never admit that.

Jisung

He’s pretty shy- especially at the beginning of your relationship. So when you happily grab his hand while you both are watching your favorite tv show his cheeks heat up really quickly. He tries to contain his nervousness and excitement but when you look up at him with a playful cute knowing smile on your lips he can’t help himself but blush even more before squeezing your hand shyly.

[saturnznct]

your daughter gets her period | hrj

➸ request from anon; heyy I know you arent talking requests, but if you ever get the time... could you do a fic where jinghua gets her period for the first time? Like her mom had already told her about what periods were, but only renjun is around when she gets them. Please take care and i love your works <3

➸ note; thank u anon for requesting! i hope you like this <3

baobei - treasure

➸ word count; 1316 words

➸ jinghua; aged 12

➸ warning(s); periods, blood

nct masterlist

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ⋆✦⋆ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

‘You understand, baby?’

‘I think so,’ Jinghua, aged nine, mumbles, staring intently at the leaflet that she’d brought home from school.

‘It’s okay if you’re nervous or if you have any questions,’ you see her look of discomfit and uneasiness.

‘Wha… what should I do when it happens?’ she looks up at you, eyebrows furrowed.

‘If you’re at school, let your teacher know, but if you’re at home, come find me and I’ll make sure you’re all cleaned up and sorted, okay? It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.’

‘Okay, mum/mom. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, sweetheart. Let’s forget about it for now, okay?’

Three years later, Jinghua’s still waiting for it to come. A few of her friends have had theirs already, all excited and smug when revealing they had finally become a woman.

You were away for the weekend with friends when it happened to Jinghua. It was your first weekend away in so long, with Renjun watching over your teenage children.

‘Dad,’ Jinghua appears at the door to Renjun’s office, where he’s drawing away on his iPad. 

He looks up, locking his iPad, ‘hi Hua, are you alright?’

It had taken Jinghua a lot of will to approach her father. Once she’d noticed the blood, and managed to process her situation, she’d spent several minutes pacing in the bathroom, trying to muster the courage to go to Renjun.

‘Um,’ she can’t bring herself to make eye contact, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Okay,’ Renjun moves from the chair to the couch, patting the space beside him.

‘Oh, I probably shouldn’t sit..’

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

‘I-I would talk to mum/mom, but she’s not here,’ Jinghua starts, fidgeting with her fingers obsessively, ‘so I’m sorry..’

��Don’t worry, you can talk to me about anything sweetie,’ Renjun reaches a hand out to still her hands.

‘Um, I think… I think I got my period.’

Renjun freezes for a few moments, and he tries his best to pretend like his entire life didn’t just flash before his eyes.

‘Okay..’ Renjun doesn’t even know what to ask, ‘do you know what to do?’

‘I don’t know what to do about the blood,’ she murmurs, ‘and.. I feel a little sick.’

‘You’re okay, I’m going to help you,’ Renjun stands up, mind running at a million miles an hour while he thinks of all the things he’s done to help you over the years.

Jinghua sits awkwardly on the edge of the bathtub while Renjun rifles through the bathroom cabinets, finally locating the baby wipes. 

‘Can you clean yourself off with these?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Jinghua takes the packet, ‘but I need some pads.’

‘I know, Hua, I’ll go and have a look in your mum/mom’s drawers, okay?’

Renjun walks into your bedroom swiftly, wrenching open your underwear drawer and pulling out a tampon box.

‘Hua, your mum/mom only has these?’

Jinghua’s eyes widen dramatically at the sight of tampax box.

‘I don’t.. I don’t know how to use those.. and I don’t- I don’t think I want to,’ she stammers, tears springing to her eyes.

‘O-okay sweetheart,’ his mind races, ‘um, will you be ok if you hang on a few minutes while I run to the shop? I’ll buy you some pads and some chocolate and then I’ll make you up a hot water bottle.’

‘Please…’

‘Have a bath Hua, and when you get out I’ll be back, and we can sort you out, is that alright?’

Renjun’s heart aches at how shaken his little girl looks. She rubs her arm nervously, nodding her head, ‘okay, I will. Please don’t be long.’

‘I won’t, baobei,’ he holds her head while he kisses her forehead, an act that usually makes the girl cringe, but one that she welcomed today, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Renjun hurries over to the car, finding you in his contact list as quick as humanly possible and clicking the call button.

‘Hello Jun?’ You answer, ‘is everything okay?’

‘Not really,’ Renjun throws himself into the car, starting up the engine.

‘What’s the matter?’ you begin to worry, ‘do you need me to come home?’

‘I don’t think so, but, I don’t know what to do, Jinghua, she’s… she’s not my little girl anymore..’

‘Jun, what are you talking about? Are you sure everything’s okay?’

‘Oh, I should probably should have waited for her to tell you herself, but I just need advice, Jinghua just started her period.’

Your eyes widen, ‘really? Of course this happens while I’m away… is she alright?’

‘She’s a bit mortified that she’s had to tell me I think, I left her running a bath and I’m on my way to the store but I don’t have a clue what I should buy for her,’ Renjun pleads with you, ‘please help me.’

You laugh, amused at how out of his depth your husband sounds, ‘okay, just stay on the phone and I’ll tell you what pads to buy, and what else you’ll need.’

‘I’m just pulling into the store,’ Renjun parks up, speed walking inside.

‘Okay, so the pads, there should be two different kinds, one for normal and ones for nighttime.’

‘Yeah, I see those, but they all have different numbers on, how the hell do I know which ones-‘

‘Jun, it’s okay, those are just the sizes. Get her a two in the normal ones and three for the nighttime, get her a couple of each, those should last her the next two months or so.’

‘Okay, so the purple packet with the two on, and the dark blue packet with the three on,’ Renjun confirms aloud, throwing them into his basket, ‘ok, I’ve got them, what can I get her to make her feel better?’

‘Have a look around and see if you can find painkillers for period pain, they’l probably be in a pink box, with ibuprofen written somewhere on it.’

‘I think I got it,’ Renjun adds them to the basket.

‘Alright, now get her a couple of face-masks and quite a bit of chocolate,’ you add, ‘those will make her feel better.’

‘I think I have everything,’ Renjun heads to the self-checkout, ‘do I need to help her with the pads?’

’She should know how to use them, I showed her a while ago. Just make sure she has a heating pad for her stomach. Let her lay down for a while. Just please don’t make a huge fuss. Don’t tell the boys.’

‘Of course not,’ Renjun scans his card, ‘right, I’m heading back now, she asked me to be as quick as possible.’

‘Okay Junnie, look after her for me. I’ll pretend like I didn’t know.’

‘I promise I will,’ Renjun smiles softly, ‘thank you for this. I love you, I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

‘I love you too Renjun, I’ll talk to you later on.’

‘Bye, sweetheart,’ Renjun hangs up, hurrying back home to his other girl, thankful that the store is close to your home.

Jinghua is still soaking in the bath when Renjun returns. Renjun knocks softly on the bathroom door, letting her know of his arrival, before placing the contents of the shopping bag on her bed.

Jinghua comes down the stairs around a quarter of an hour later, hair damp and in a fresh set of pyjamas, clutching the bag of chocolates in her hand.

‘All sorted?’

‘Yeah,’ she nods quietly, still holding herself as though she’s embarrassed, ‘thank you, daddy.’

‘Please tell me if you need anything else,’ Renjun grabbed her hand, squeezing it lightly, ‘or if your hot water bottle goes cold.’

Jinghua smiles lightly, ‘I will.’

‘Love you, baobei,’ he kisses the side of her head, ‘I’m so glad you felt like you could come to me.’

‘Of course, dad,’ Jinghua pops a chocolate button in her mouth, before offering one to her father, ‘you’re the best.’