#renjun x reader

There’s something delicate about the way Renjun loves.

He doesn’t love loudly. No obvious declarations for everybody to hear, no possessive hands on your waist in public, no check-in texts every hour when you’re away.

When you first started dating, you barely noticed the difference between friend Renjun and boyfriend Renjun. Nothing much changed. You couldn’t help but feel insecure because you have been used to seeing dating and romance in the way they show it on tv: grand gestures, playful jealousy, I love yous shouted from rooftops. You have seen your friends doing cringey couple things like feeding each other in picturesque cafés, fit checks in their matching outfits posted on their social media, holding hands or linking arms with their boyfriends. Renjun never initiated anything like that. It brewed something bitter in the pits of your stomach and endless questions started to plague you: What if he didn’t really like you how you liked him? What if he felt forced to be in this relationship? What if he just didn’t know how to turn you down without losing you as a friend?

It’s just one of those days. The nothing-works-out kind of days. Every little thing annoys you and the doubts are louder than usual. You break down over nothing.

When you get home, it’s quiet. The door to Renjun’s study room is closed which means he’s still working. You’re pretty sure he’s working more as a freelancer artist than he would at a 9-to-5 office job, but he’s doing what he loves, so you would never tell him to quit. You place the takeout box you brought home on the counter (you take turns with that: Renjun cooking and you buying food, it’s a good system) and reach up to grab the plates, excited to dig into your favorite orange chicken after such a tiring day. Then it happens: a millisecond lapse in your attention, a wrong hold on the porcelain and the plate is shattered to pieces on the vinyl tiles.

Tears well up in your eyes. Not necessarily over the broken plate but because nothing seems to go right.

You hear a door open and rush to wipe your face but the tears keep coming. It’s like an avalanche. When Renjun sees you crouching down in the kitchen you’re sure you look like a mess: sweaty from being outside, tired from work, face red and swollen from crying.

“What happened? Are you okay?” He asks as he approaches you, slowly cataloging your surroundings.

He doesn’t raise his voice nor does he blame you when his gaze falls onto the ground. He kneels down in front of you, takes your face into his hands and wipes your cheeks with his thumbs feathery light.

“It’s okay,” he whispers and it only makes you cry harder. You’re practically sobbing when he pulls you against his chest, patting the back of your head while you’re trying to burrow yourself into his soft cotton shirt that smells like jasmine laundry detergent and something distinctly him.

You aren’t sure how long it takes for you to calm down but Renjun doesn’t rush you. He lets you take it at your own pace, holding you as long as you need even though you’re sure his knees probably hurt. When you slowly pull back, untangling yourself from his arms, he just presses a kiss on your forehead and helps you to your feet.

He doesn’t say anything as he pulls you into the bathroom, leaving the broken pieces behind in the kitchen, and sits you down on the toilet lid. He reaches into his sweatpant’s pocket and secures the strands of your hair away from your face. Your lips wobble at the realization that he keeps bobby pins and hair ties in his pocket for whenever you need it.

You watch him as he moves around in the small bathroom, retrieving a makeup wipe from your stash so he can clean your face from your foundation mixed with salty tears. He’s gentle even with that, never rubbing too harshly like he could hurt you otherwise. For a moment insecurity strikes again, gripping you tight, telling you that it’s nothing special, that he would probably do the same with all his friends but… honestly, it’s easier to imagine him slapping the wet wipe against Chenle’s face to do it himself than anything else.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Renjun asks, not pushing, not demanding but you hesitate.

You want to rant because complaining just for the sake of complaining has always been a great stress-relief to you. You want to tell him about the shitty new decision of the management that will give you extra workload for the same pay, about that rude dude on the subway not even apologizing after practically running into you, about the corner café running low on your favourite alternative milk option… but you don’t want to tell him about this ugly thought weaving its web all over your mind, about the little voices telling you that he doesn’t really care, that you’re just a burden, that he doesn’t really love you.

“Later. I’m starving,” you pout and Renjun smiles softly.

You eat the lukewarm takeout on the couch (even though Renjun is usually fussy about eating on easily stained furniture) while the TV is on mostly for background noise. He offers to do the dishes while you wash up. The hot shower helps, you can feel the water work the tenseness out of your muscles and soften your edges. You can feel yourself relaxing as you slip into your comfy nightwear.

By the time you finish, the kitchen is cleaned of any evidence except for the uneven number of plates you now have in the cabinet. Renjun looks up from his phone when you shuffle into the living room and the device is immediately put away before he turns towards you.

“Come here,” he calls for you as he opens his arms and you sink into his embrace like rocks sink into the ocean: deeply, like you have always belonged there. Your face fits perfectly into the crook between his neck and shoulder and if you close your eyes, you swear you can hear his heart beating.

“Bad day?”

“Mmh,” you mumble against the warm skin of his neck.

In his hold, you feel safe, content and light. You tell him about work, the subway, the café. Renjun listens, patient and understanding, his hand stroking your back. It reminds you how touch-starved you have been lately and guilt knocks on the door.

“Sorry,” you mutter as you sit back, wrapping your own arms around yourself as his fall back beside him. He looks confused.

“What for?”

You have a lot to apologize for: for soaking his shirt with your tears, for ruining his evening with your mood, for acting like a child. Eventually you settle on something simple:

“That you have to take care of me like this.”

Renjun frowns, he opens his mouth like he wants to say something but he can’t find the words. Silence stretches between you awkwardly and you’re ready to pull away, to distance yourself because… what if you ruined it all?

But then Renjun reaches out and he takes a hold of your hand, his thumb carefully caressing your knuckles.

“I’m not doing it out of obligation. I’m doing it because I love you,” he says like it’s that simple. Like it makes sense. Like that’s how it’s supposed to be: being loved unconditionally.

There’s something delicate about the way Renjun loves.

He loves quietly, softly, gently.

It’s in the way he goes out of his way to attend a ring making workshop to make couple rings for the two of you instead of just buying them. It’s in the way he’s reserved and not as comfortable with touches as you are but he will hold you to make you feel loved when you need it. It’s in the way he rarely says anything but somehow knows what you need: your comfort movie, your guilty pleasure, fancy coffee, your hair out of your face, his hug, his kiss, him.

His love is delicate. Not because it’s fragile. But because it’s precious.

END NOTES. header is from the rains in heaven behind film

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It is easy to fall in love with him, you have found. When the snarky comments fade in the quiet moments where it is just the two of you, hidden in a dark corner of the classroom while your classmates’ footsteps shuffle outside. All sound becomes muffled in that space, half-awake and barely stirring, dark like the morning before the sun rises, in between stiflingly quiet and overwhelmingly loud.

Your shoulders are pressed together and you can hardly breathe, not out of fear of being caught but of the strange familiarity that comes with being pressed up so closely against Renjun. His elbow rests on his left knee, his right hand supporting him by his side, and as he turns towards you to whisper in your ear, low and hesitant, it is all you can do to shake your head when he asks if you think you will be found.

”Good,” he murmurs, mischief and a hint of pride glimmering in his eyes, so bright that they are almost like a torchlight in the dark, and he turns away. You miss the heat of his breath against the shell of your ear, and you almost bring a hand up to your ear longingly before you catch yourself. You have only known him for a few days, and yet you are already missing his warmth.

You have only known him for a week, and already his speech patterns are becoming familiar to you. Subtle, timely snarks in between properly-held conversations, the pause he takes when he’s serious, the way his laughter is unrestrained and inelegant and unceasing.

His mannerisms become familiar to you too—the way he leans into the touch of his best friend, whose arms are around his neck, one hand comfortingly reaching up to hold his friend’s. The way he walks, spine straight and standing tall, even if he’s only a few centimetres taller than you, steps steady and assured.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him hesitate, but the confidence can be abrasive sometimes. He charges into things he believes in with full force, with a quick, biting tongue that shuts down any opposition, and it is only when you call him—Huang, always by his surname, there is another Renjun in the class—that he visibly stills. You can see the gears in his head coming to an abrupt, grinding halt as he recalibrates, tense fingers relaxing, the throbbing vein in his neck subsiding, his eyebrows detangling themselves from whatever knot they’ve worked themselves into.

A minute shift, but you catch it all the same.

He is the first to call you by a shortened version of your name. You don’t know why, but it seems fitting that he is the one, and your heart warms the second you hear it. You grow to become accustomed to it, to hearing that one syllable slip from his lips with such a casual tone that it should be banned, really, because who is he to be calling you like that? But you accept it, if only because it is him, and slowly everyone takes to calling you that name.

When people only he knows and you don’t know begin to call you with that name, you bristle at it. Nicknames should be earned, not taken for granted, but somehow it was fine when it was Renjun and he had only known you for one and a half weeks, and his name tastes odd when you aren’t calling him “Huang”. Eventually you decide it is better that they call you by that nickname, since there is some sort of twisted satisfaction you get from knowing that he talks about you to his friends.

It only takes a month before you realise what kind of person he is. Petty, selfish, full of complaints, Huang Renjun is not an easy friend to have. There are times where, out of the blue, he comes to you with resentment frothing at his lips like black smoke, the tendrils curling around his tongue and seizing his throat, the red blood vessels in his eyes pronounced. And because you will only ever be patient with him, you listen.

You listen to the complaints, some valid and some not quite so, and you’re torn between wanting to reply and giving him space. You will figure out an odd sort of rhythm in the future, where you can tell what he needs from what kinds of things he says, where you learn to cup his prickles with calloused palms and ask him what is wrong, when you learn how to tell his tells just from the slightest change in his gaze.

Huang Renjun may be expressive, but some things he keeps well-hidden, like the various grudges he harbours against completely innocent people. You’ll never quite understand how his mind works, but you have been (fortunately or otherwise) granted an unending well of patience to deal with him, and somehow the way he handles you makes handling him feel like nothing.

Huang Renjun handles you far better than you handle yourself, especially when you’re tired and overwhelmed and spiralling past your bedtime. Lying in bed, eyes almost sliding shut from just how tired you are, blinking painfully as the glare of your screen starts to give you a headache, you can’t help but feel comforted when he breaks down your problem and tells you his thoughts.

On the eve of your birthday, stressed from all the planning and disappointed that you can’t get the present that you want and unsure how everything is going to work out, he stays up late to walk you through it while you’re anxiously typing back strings of exclamation marks and question marks.

He takes the one thing he can do something about, the birthday present, and somehow helps your best friend to ship it from a country that’s 11 hours away by plane, and you only find out a month later when you actually receive the gift.

Between the two of you, you sign up for competitions together where you have to work together under what feels like—at least to you—intense pressure and time constraints, staying up late the night before to discuss your strategy over a call, bleary-eyed and half-asleep, yawning every other word, his hair mussed. He’s always wearing that dark grey T-shirt he swears he has multiple of, from his teenaged moody phase when he only wore things from a black-and-white monochrome palette, and you’ve come to recognise both his room and the sound of his voice.

That is how he slips into your life, all witty quips and a sense of humour that the two of you share, which means he always gets your jokes first and knows you better than anyone else. If it were anyone else trying to predict your moves or explain your actions you would be annoyed, but somehow if it is him then it is fine.

It is not the first time you have made exceptions for him.

Between the “study” calls that end up with you talking late into the hours of the night, the shared glances in class when both of you think about the same thing at the same time, and the conversations you share over repetitive canteen meals, Huang Renjun manages to burrow his way into your heart. He snuggles inside it, soft and warm and comfortable, like a squirrel finding a perfectly-sized hole in the bark of a tree trunk, and you cannot bear to ask him to leave.

The first time he likes someone else is quite early on, before the friendship is properly established, and you hear it from someone else’s mouth and your heart stops. You’re sure you do a terrible job of hiding it, prying immediately and asking suspiciously concerned questions and even going so far as to ask him yourself, and you’re honestly unsure how none of you realised that you had this big, fat crush on him all along.

It ends up being just a phase, and after a month or so of prying, poorly-concealed jealousy masked as friendly nosiness, he confesses that he no longer likes them. The way the relief washes over you, like a boa constrictor has just released its grip on your lungs, is inexplicable.

Halfway through the year you resolve to confess your feelings, deciding that after sixth months, it is impossible for you to continue being friends with him without telling him how you feel. It’s only when Chenle talks you out of it, offering to do reconnaissance and coming back to you with the heart-shattering news that he only sees you as a friend, that you put a hold on your feelings for a moment and take a month to distill the information into something more comprehensible.

You barely survive that month of reduced contact and emotional distancing from him, which is about the same time that you realise the emotional dependence you have come to have on Renjun. There’s something so easy about trusting him, about involving him in almost every aspect of your life, to the point that without him there you feel empty.

He has been so carefully and imperceptibly woven into your life that you could not find the loose ends to unravel the tapestry if you wanted to, and tugging relentlessly is only going to result in ripped heartstrings and ruined masterpieces.

You make it another month before you confess. It is a period of confused happiness, all the emotional complexity of the situation compressed and shoved down to the pits of your heart. Out of sight, out of mind. At least, that is what you tell yourself as you establish routines for conflict management—“I don’t need space to be left alone,” he tells you, “I’m not your mother. I’d rather we just talk about it.”—and you figure out safewords for when to talk seriously without being snarky or mean to each other, a safeguard against the bantering dynamic the two of you have developed.

In the three months of dating him you never go on one proper date, because his disapproving parents would never let him, and Renjun is not one to lie to his parents. Instead, you make do with covert glances and bus rides home and nudging your knee against his when you’re seated next to him, but nothing much changes from when you were just friends. There is a sort of paranoia in trying to keep it low-key at his request, and you can’t help but feel like you’re too obvious to keep it a secret.

Three months into dating Renjun, after a school trip that he wasn’t on, you end up breaking up. It starts with a perfectly normal conversation where he brings up feeling unhappy that you rarely contacted him while on the trip, and devolves into a lot of thinking on your part on whether the mental burden is worth the label, since functionally it has all stayed the same.

But even after breaking up, you’ve never been good at enforcing boundaries with Renjun, particularly, because he’s always been an exception. The texts he sends you are more dispersed, now, but there’s still something about the way he barely bothers to greet you before he jumps into it, like he’s picking up on a conversation you left off, that screams familiarity.

It’s exactly what he used to do before, and you would have replied with “good morning/afternoon/evening”, just to get a quick response from him before continuing with the topic at hand. Old habits die hard, you suppose, but loving Renjun is a habit you can’t decide if you want to break.

He does, of course, have his shortcomings, like not setting boundaries with anyone or being easily annoyed, holding onto small things and being too loud at inopportune timings, but they’re often overshadowed by the weight you’ve placed on his redeeming qualities, like his patience with you or his attentiveness, or his organisational skills and his determination.

Well. It is hard to stop loving someone. In a platonic capacity, you would use the word freely, but in a romantic capacity you would (secretly) also say you love him. In some complicated, indecipherable way, you don’t think you could ever stop loving him, even if he never knew how to treat you like a romantic partner instead of just his best friend.

—

general taglist: @slytherinshua, @wiishies

nct dream taglist: @kangtaehyunzzz, @raevyng, @moonkyeom, @lovesuhng, @dearlyminhyung, @zhongzn, @poenitentiamism

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Renjun really doesn’t want to be here.

Not in a mildly inconvenienced, I’d rather be in pyjamas way. He’s not exactly a dud. But in a someone skipped him in line, he paid an entry fee for the privilege of having his eardrums assaulted, and who even charges entry in the year 2026 kind of way.

He leans against the sticky bar counter; something cold and suspicious has glued his elbow to the surface, and he refuses to investigate what it is.

“Bro, smile!”

Hyuck—his best friend, tonight’s birthday boy, and the sole reason Renjun’s even out right now—throws an arm around his shoulders and shoves his phone in his face, camera app already open. The flash is on. Renjun shrugs him off. 

Hyuck’s brows furrow, then soften into something fond and deeply annoying. “Aww. Someone’s in a bad mood.”

A mood would be putting it lightly. Renjun stood in line for way over an hour, watching at least four different groups cut in front of him with the arrogance only people who have never been told no in their lives have. He didn’t say anything, because he is pathologically incapable of confrontation, even when his brain is begging him to. Then the DJ played the same song twice. In the same hour. Which almost sent him over the edge. 

Renjun might be in his twenties. He might technically be young. But he hates clubbing with a burning passion. It makes him awkward as fuck. He just doesn’t get it.

Why does everyone wear sunglasses inside? What are they protecting their eyes from since it’s dark? And what is he supposed to do with his hands on the dance floor? Hold his drink? But then he might spill it. Let them hang? Weird. Put them in his pockets? Maybe if he were a serial killer.

He exhales slowly. “Are you having a good birthday, buddy?” He asks Hyuck, because he is nothing if not supportive. 

Hyuck beams. “Sure am. Did you see that blonde dancing on me before?” He slaps his chest dramatically. “What a worldie. And she wants to meet me after. I’m a happy, happy boy.”

Renjun closes his eyes for a second.

Of course Hyuck is thriving. The club is his natural habitat. It comes easily to him the way breathing does to other people. He’s charismatic, magnetic, effortlessly social. The kind of guy who raises toasts, charms bartenders into free shots, and somehow always knows where to put his hands. 

Renjun, meanwhile, is standing three inches away from a trash can because it feels safer.

Hyuck hooks an arm around Renjun’s again. “Come on. One dance. For my birthday.”

Renjun looks toward the dance floor, where bodies move in a mass of limbs, sweat, and questionable rhythm. The bass thumps in his chest like a second, unwanted heartbeat.

“No chance.”

Hyuck pouts. “But it’s my birthday.”

Renjun really wishes he weren’t so supportive. Or that Hyuck weren’t so devastatingly charming. Maybe then he’d be spared the social death sentence that is dancing in public. But apparently, his personality flaw is loving his best friend too much.

He sighs, long-suffering and theatrical. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Hyuck gasps. “You love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

And then he’s being dragged.

The dance floor is worse up close. Much worse. It smells like citrus alcohol and feet. Why do people take their shoes off in clubs? Have they seen the floors? Jeez. Renjun stands there, stiff as a mannequin, trying to remember how humans move their bodies without looking like they’re buffering.

Okay, he tells himself. Just sway. People sway. You can sway. Trees sway. 

He attempts it, but his shoulders are too rigid, his knees are betraying him, and his hands—he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He never knows what to do with his hands! Do they go up? Do they go down? Should he do some gun fingers?

He closes his eyes briefly, trying to absorb the music. Instead, he overcorrects, takes one step too far to the left, and collides with something warm and solid.

A person. You. 

He feels it before he sees it—the splash, the sickening slosh of liquid meeting fabric. His eyes open in slow motion, dread unfurling in his chest until it fully fucking blooms at the sight of a very white shirt that is no longer very white.

It’s soaked. Right down the front. Right where he absolutely should not be staring.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Renjun blurts, hands hovering uselessly in the air. “I’m so sorry. Oh my god. I wasn’t looking, I don’t dance, that’s not an excuse, I just—fuck, I’m so sorry.”

Does he dab it? It’s on your chest. That feels… inappropriate. Does he not dab it? That feels worse. Why is knowing what to do with your hands so fucking complicated?

You blink down at your shirt, then back up at him.

Your expression goes slack for half a second and Renjun’s stomach drops. For one awful moment, he’s convinced this is it. This is where the night officially goes from awkward to ruined, where he becomes that guy someone complains about later.

But then, you laugh.

“Damn,” you say, shaking your head. “I really liked this shirt.”

Renjun physically cringes with guilt. “I swear I’ll fix it,” he says immediately. “I’ll buy you another drink, or a new shirt, or both. I’ll pay for your dry cleaning. I’ll Venmo you—”

You snort. “That seems… excessive.”

“I’m excessive when I panic,” he admits, which might explain why he gently takes your elbow and starts steering you through the crowd before you can argue. “Come on. The bar should have napkins.”

At the bar, Renjun leans forward, trying to get the bartender’s attention. “Napkins, please. A lot. Like… a significant amount.”

“You weren’t kidding about excessive, huh?” you murmur, leaning in beside him, laughing softly. “We probably need, like, two napkins, Dave.”

Dave, the bartender, slides over an aggressively thick stack anyway. Renjun grabs them and immediately starts dabbing at your shirt frantically.

“I’m really, really sorry,” he says again. “I’m a terrible dancer. Truthfully, I’m a terrible clubber. My friend dragged me out because it’s his birthday, and I was distracted because I think the DJ started playing the same song for the third time tonight, and I was just…in my head, and now I’ve ruined your outfit.”

You look down at his hands. Then back up at him. Your mouth twitches. “For someone who doesn’t dance, you make a memorable entrance.”

He winces. “I was aiming for invisible.” 

“Well, you missed me.”

Renjun looks up then. Really looks. And fuck.

His rambling. His panic. His obsessive apologising. All of it did make him miss you. But not just on the dance floor—he genuinely missed you standing right in front of him. Great. Not only did he spill his drink on someone, he spilled it on the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his entire goddamn life.

Genuinely. Fuck his luck.

Because he is also currently rubbing you down with napkins.

On your chest.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

Realisation hits like a slap, and his hands freeze, dropping the napkins. “I—sorry,” he blurts, mortified. “I wasn’t—I mean—I wasn’t trying to—fuck, I’m not a creep, I just panicked—”

Smooth, Renjun. Real fucking smooth.

You laugh again, easy and unbothered, and gently take the napkins from his frozen hands. “Okay, okay. I’ve got it,” you say, dabbing at your own shirt. “Relax.”

Renjun turns his face toward the bar like it’s suddenly the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. Anything to not look at you. A pink blush creeps up his cheeks. 

You lean forward against the bar, elbows planted, napkins now crumpled between your fingers. The silence stretches for half a second too long.

“And to think,” you say casually, “I waited all week for someone to spill their drink all over me.”

His neck snaps in your direction so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Kidding,” you cut in, laughing. “Calm down. You don’t have to apologise anymore. I know it was an accident.”

He swallows thickly. You see his throat bob. “I’m still sorry,” he insists. “I kind of… ruined your night.”

You wave your hand like you’re shooing a mosquito. “Meh. There’ll be more weekends. More clubs. More overpriced drinks.” You tilt your head, studying him. “Would you believe me if I said this isn’t even the worst thing that’s happened to me today?”

His brows lift. “Really?”

“Really,” you say, dead serious, then smile. “I’m Y/N. My friends call me the unluckiest girl in the world.”

Something about that makes his lips twitch. Even your name is pretty.

“Well, Y/N,” he says, clearing his throat, “I’m Renjun. The most awkward man you’ll probably ever meet.”

You look him up and down like you’re inspecting an item on clearance—head tilted, mouth pursed. “Hmm.”

He stiffens.

“Yeah,” you say thoughtfully, nodding to yourself. “You’re awkward. That tracks. Totally explains why you just started patting my tits with cocktail napkins.”

His eyes go so wide they look painful.

“I—” Renjun coughs, choking on absolutely nothing. “I wasn’t—I mean—I was just—”

The words replay in his head—patting my tits—and traitorously, his gaze dips before he can stop it. White fabric. Damp. A glimpse of pink lace underneath.

He nearly dies on the spot.

“I’m kidding, dude,” you cut in quickly, laughing.

He jerks his eyes back up like he’s been caught committing a crime, nodding too fast. “Right. Yeah. Joke. Funny. Good joke.”

You don’t miss the way his ears turn pink. Soft pink that creeps down his neck like he doesn’t know how to stop it. You study the side of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the way he refuses to look directly at you. 

“You weren’t kidding about that awkwardness, were you?” 

Renjun swallows. Mutters something that might be sorry or I’m the worst, impossible to tell over the bass rattling the bar.

You smile to yourself and place your hands flat on the counter, leaning in just enough to make him painfully aware of your presence.

“How about that drink you owe me?”

“Oh—yeah. Yeah, totally.” He straightens. “I wasn’t going to have another, but I can—I mean, I can order you one. What do you drink?”

He pats his pockets looking for his wallet. When he doesn’t find it, he pulls out his phone instead. You raise an eyebrow as he unlocks it—Uber app open. He fumbles, switching apps, cheeks fully flushed now. You have to bite your lip to keep from laughing.

“Uber already?” you tease. “It’s not even 1:00am.”

“I told you,” he says, finally meeting your eyes, “I’m a terrible clubber.”

“Clearly.”

You tilt your head, thinking, then grin like you’ve just decided to be a little bit evil. “How about this,” you say. “You order an Uber… and we get out of here. 

“Out—like—together?” He asks.

You shrug. “Well, you obviously aren’t having a good night, and my shirt is unfortunately see-through thanks to you.”

Renjun cringes again. If he could physically fold into himself and disappear, he would. “I’m so sorry,” he blurts, for maybe the fourth time.

“Honestly, dude,” you say, leaning closer so he can actually hear you over the music, “I’d do anything to get out of this club right now.”

Anything is a dangerous word.

Renjun’s mind starts sprinting in seven different directions. Leaving together means… what exactly? Sharing a ride? Talking? Sustained conversation with the pretty stranger whose bra he has accidentally seen and whose chest he has—God help him—dabbed?

He’s bad at clubs. Bad at strangers. Bad at situations. 

But.

He did spill his drink on you. He did ruin your shirt. He does, objectively, owe you. 

He clears his throat and glances at his phone, grateful for something to focus on. “The ubers are on surge.” 

“Good,” you say immediately.

Renjun frowns. “Good?”

“That means,” you grin, tapping the bar once, “we can have one more drink. You know. For the road.”

You’re already flagging the bartender, already ordering like this is a done deal, and Renjun realises—between the guilt and the nerves and the way you keep smiling at him—he doesn’t actually hate the idea.

“Okay,” he says quietly, mostly to himself. “One more.”

Renjun should probably not have had one more drink. In fact, you probably shouldn’t have either.

He really hadn’t been kidding about the Ubers being on surge, because one drink became two, and two became three, until his phone buzzed and he’d been matched with a driver. 

Just like that, he went from tipsy and soft-spoken to mildly panicked and mission-focused. 

He wasn’t just awkward. He was also anxious and painfully punctual, even under the influence. You found that… unexpectedly cute.

Before you can even think about ordering a fourth cocktail, his hand wraps gently around your elbow, and he’s steering you through the crowd toward the exit.

“Wait—” you laugh, stumbling a little as you follow. “Is he outside already?”

“Six minutes away.”

You couldn’t help it—you laughed harder. “God forbid we make him wait.”

“It’s rude,” Renjun insisted, completely sincere.

You snort. You vaguely remember him mentioning he was here for a friend’s birthday, and now here he is pulling a full Irish goodbye without a second thought.

Men. You don’t get that privilege.

You quickly text your friend that you’re leaving with a hot stranger, which is immediately followed by share your location right now. You do, rolling your eyes affectionately, and then you’re outside—cool air hitting your face as you wait by the curb, club lights bleeding into the street.

“Did that Drake song really make you emotional?” Renjun asks suddenly, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You groan playfully. “Oh my god.”

You can’t remember if it was drink two or drink three that made you confess that particular detail. Sometime at the bar, he’d asked what kind of day you’d had that made him spilling a drink feel so insignificant in comparison. Like the thought had been gnawing at him.

You glance over at him now, hands tucked into his jean pockets, expression open and a little concerned even as he tries to sound casual.

“Maybe,” you admit, rocking slightly on your heels. “It was a long day. Long week, actually.”

Renjun hums. The streetlight catches his face just right, softening the sharp edges of him, making his eyes look warmer than they probably have any right to be at one in the morning.

“Is that why you were looking forward to clubbing tonight?” he asks. “You said you’d been waiting all week.”

“You remember that too?” you say, surprised, a smile tugging at your lips. “God, you’re a good listener.”

His ears go pink again. 

“Do you know you do that?”

He blinks. “Do what?”

“That,” you say, nodding toward him. “Your ears. They turn pink when you’re flustered.”

He lifts a hand like he might cover them, then seems to realise how ridiculous that would look and lets them fall back to his side. “They do not.”

“They do,” you insist, stepping a little closer. “It’s… kind of cute. Actually—” you tilt your head, considering, “—kind of sexy.”

Freezing, Renjun’s thoughts scatter in every direction all at once. Sexy. You just called him sexy. He’s fairly sure no one has ever said that to him so casually, so confidently. Before he can recover, headlights wash over the curb. A car slows, blinkers clicking, the Uber logo glowing on the door.

You burst out laughing. “Oh my god. Did you order an XL Uber?”

Renjun freezes, lips parting. Then he bites his lower lip, hard.

“There’s only two of us,” you add, grinning. “You do know that, right?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So…?”

“It was faster,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Because of the surge pricing. It made sense at the time.”

You shake your head, still smiling. “You’re unbelievable.”

But inside, Renjun is deeply, painfully grateful. Because the way you said sexy—the way your voice dipped and the way your eyes held his like you knew exactly what you were doing—his body reacted before his brain could catch up. He hates how immediate it was, how his cock gave a sharp, betraying twitch, and he had to force himself not to shift his stance.

The last thing he needs right now is to be crammed into a backseat with you, thigh-to-thigh, your warmth pressed against him, your perfume filling his lungs, when he’s already fighting to stay composed. He’s trying very hard to be a functioning, respectful human being. 

Space is good. 

The driver rolls down the window. “Renjun?”

“That’s me,” he answers.

Honestly, he’s grateful for the interruption and the distance it promises. Except he gets in first. It’s not his fault. It was an automatic response from a lifetime of going home alone. A catastrophic oversight on his part because you follow him. You don’t make use of the middle row that the Uber XL provides. You open the same door and slip in beside him.

Fuck his luck.

Fuck his life.

This is somehow worse, more intimate, than being pressed thigh-to-thigh. He can feel your presence like heat radiating off a flame. Your knee angled toward his. Your arm resting close enough that if either of you moved an inch, you’d touch. His body is still reacting from before, still tight and hyperaware, still dealing with the aftermath of that single word you dropped like a match to gasoline.

Sexy.

He swallows, staring straight ahead. Because if he looks at you, if he sees that expression again, the slow confidence in your eyes, he’s not sure he’ll survive it with his dignity intact.

Almost like you can sense it, you lean closer. Your breath ghosts his ear, hot and tantalising, and Renjun feels the reaction hit him instantly. Straight to his cock.

“Are you okay?” you whisper. “The driver just asked if the address you entered is the right place.”

Renjun swallows again. He hadn’t heard a single word. He’s been… distracted. Preoccupied. Knowing full well his address is saved and he never messes it up, he still answers the driver in a pitch that’s embarrassingly high and noticeably weak. “Th-that’s right.”

You squint at him. He’s still staring forward. At nothing, because all that’s in front of you is a row of headrests.

“You okay?”

“Yep.” He says.

You hum softly, and the sound alone makes him turn his head. Which he classes as a mistake. A massive one. Because you’re close. So close that his gaze lands immediately on the unmistakable outline of your bra beneath your stained top. He’s noticed it already tonight, but now it’s right there. In his face. Shifting in his seat, his breath catches. 

You eye him sceptically. He’s being weird. And then you follow his line of sight, looking down, down your chest.

Oh.

Understanding clicks into place. Your lips twitch, just barely. He’s hard.

With the last drink still warming your confidence, you let a hand drift to his knee. Just resting there at first, innocent enough—or at least, that’s the story you tell yourself. Instantly, Renjun jerks back, eyes wide, and that tiny flinch makes your lips twitch again.

“You’re hard,” you murmur.

Renjun’s life flashes before his eyes. This might take the cake as the most awkward moment of his entire life. Somehow… this is Hyuck’s fault. And the club. And the dancing. And the drinks. And the DJ. Fucking DJs. He hates clubs. He doesn’t belong in clubs.

He shifts in the backseat. Only, the movement does nothing because it’s the backseat. Every time your fingers skim him, every subtle, teasing sweep of your palm on his thigh, he’s painfully aware of exactly how much your proximity—and your intention—is affecting him.

You giggle softly at the way his face burns crimson, but he doesn’t shove your hand away. 

“You know,” you whisper, leaning just a little closer so your breath brushes his ear, “I think it’s only fair I help you out with this little problem of yours. Considering you… patted down my tits.”

“Little?” Renjun repeats. 

Little? His cock? Absolutely not. No fucking chance.

Stifling a laugh, you bite your lip. Your hand presses a fraction closer, teasing him so that he swallows hard and shifts again. His pulse is loud in his throat as he looks at you. You’re enjoying this. That tiny smirk, the way your eyes linger on him, makes his stomach knot, his cock tighten further, and his brain scream in protest. 

Because this is so not okay. You’re in an Uber. Renjun doesn’t—Renjun shouldn’t—get turned on in an Uber. Not that you’re doing anything explicitly sexual yet. But the way you press closer, the comfort of your hand brushing against him, your teasing hums, your head tilted like you know exactly the effect you’re having…something is going to happen. He’s not going to stop you.

The risk of it—the sheer audacity of doing this here, in traffic, nightlife blaring—only makes his body betray him faster. Every inch you steal of his space claims him. He can feel himself hardening in his jeans, heat climbing behind his eyes, his pulse thudding loud enough he’s half-sure the driver can hear it. 

When he doesn’t protest, your hand slides higher, past the rough seam of his jeans, slipping where it absolutely shouldn’t. Christ. When your palm cups him through his boxers, you finally understand why being called a little problem bruised his ego.

Nothing about him is little.

He’s thick and swollen beneath the fabric, already leaking. You feel it. All of it. He exhales a sharp hiss when you give him a slow, testing squeeze.

“Shhh.” You lift your free hand to his mouth, fingers soft against his lips, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.

The driver’s stare stays fixed on the road and there’s a row of seats between you so you don’t think he can even see what the two of you are doing. Still, the act of silencing him, of teasing him like this, sends a warm, pooling slick between your thighs.

Slowly, so tirelessly slowly, you start to tug at his length, using the slick of leaking precum to glide your hand over him. Renjun whimpers before he can stop himself; you bite down on your lip when colour floods his cheeks and his wide eyes dart to the driver. 

“So sensitive,” you murmur, barely sound at all. “You’re shaking.” 

He swallows. “You’re going to ruin my five-star rating,” he whispers back, panic threaded with something dangerously close to laughter.

You smile against his cheek. “Want me to stop?” You slow your hand even more, the motion bordering on cruelty. Renjun shakes his head frantically. “Didn’t think so.”

You keep going, making messy work of his cock. You clearly know what to do with your hands, Renjun thinks. He squirms, biting down hard on his lip to smother the sounds you know are clawing their way up his throat. 

You know he has to be quiet. You know he probably wasn’t joking about that rating dropping. Still, it doesn’t stop you from wanting to hear him.

From wanting to swallow every meek sound. Own them. From wanting to lean in and lick the tiny bead of blood where his teeth have gone too far, right as he starts thrusting into your hand in time with the pace you finally let build.

His chest is rising fast now. His jaw locks, the muscle jumping hard beneath his skin. You watch the tremor roll through his stomach under the tight stretch of his shirt as you tease and stroke and play him right to the edge.

When his mouth falls open, and his eyes squeeze shut, you almost moan with him. God, he looks devastating like this. On the brink. 

The car hits a stoplight.

Uber slowing to a quiet idle, the driver shifts in his seat, glances at the phone mounted on his dash—and Renjun cums. Right when the engine is at its softest.

You’re already there, though—your free hand coming up fast to cover his mouth, your other staying exactly where it is, working him through every helpless pulse because traffic and city noise are not going to steal this from you.

And if the driver does notice?