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Three French hens…
Dejun stares at himself very hard in the mirror.
The Xiao Dejun List of Things Not To Notice Right Now Lest They Become A Big Problem
- That he is inadvertently re-enacting the meme from WikiHow with the guy pointing at himself in the mirror
- The missing button in the middle of his shirt (When did that happen? And how?)
- The smear of mascara on the mirror’s surface
- The special dandruff shampoo in the shower caddy
- The jumbo box of condoms he found while
snoopingaccidentally rummaging through the cabinet under the sink
Some of the items on the list would not pose a problem to Dejun on a normal evening. The smear of mascara, for example, or the dandruff shampoo. Even the missing button would categorise as more of a mild irritation than a Big Problem on a different night, or in a different person’s apartment.
Unfortunately for Dejun, this is not any other night. It is the sixteenth of December, the last night of the school term before everyone takes off for winter break. Tonight, the sixteenth of December, is not any other night because tonight—just hours ago, in fact—all the Communications majors had a party to celebrate the end-of-term. And at that party, Dejun felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Na Jaemin and Lee Jeno looking at him with expectant smiles.
We’re about to head out, start winding down. Would you like to join us?
(Dejun would say matching smiles, except Jeno’s smile was sweet and refreshing as a summer peach and Jaemin’s was sharp and predatory like… a winter… pineapple?
He can’t think of a predatory fruit. But the point stands. Jeno, sweet; Jaemin, terrifying.)
Dejun followed them out of that party like the proverbial lamb to slaughter. He trotted down the street, onto the bus, and up their building stairs without once considering the Implications until their apartment door closed behind him, leaving Dejun very much alone with Jeno and Jaemin.
Fortunately, Dejun is a very quick thinker in a crisis. The moment he realised what very, very deep Implications he had gotten himself into, he blurted out, “TOILET,” and darted into the room Jaemin pointed out before the latter could finish saying, “The door on the left.”
The problem lies in the fact that Dejun is extremely nosy by nature. His first order of business in any new bathroom he visits is to root through all of the cabinets, look at the labels of all the products, and make character judgments of the owners based on his findings. Without thinking, he did the same to Jaemin and Jeno’s bathroom. Big mistake. Very big mistake on Dejun’s part.
You see, Dejun self-narrates to his reflection, we have lost the ability to be impartial. The mascara smear on the mirror isn’t just a fact of life. Instead, it’s a visual prompt that conjures a whole mental image (and/or fantasy) in Dejun’s head of Jeno getting ready for the night out.
Fantasy-Jeno leans over the sink applying eye makeup. He has to put his face a half-centimeter away from the mirror because he’s so near-sighted without his glasses. The blind little mole face he makes as he concentrates (in the very same mirror that Dejun looks into now!) wields devastating levels of charm. It makes Dejun think about being around Jeno while he gets ready. Thinking about being around while Jeno gets ready is exactly the kind of domestic shit that makes the blood rush to Dejun’s ears.
Back in present reality, Dejun pushes a sharp sigh through his nose. He uses his thumbnail to scratch the mascara off the mirror. Focus, DJ. Stay in the zone. Don’t think about Jeno and his cute eyes and how sleepy and soft they probably look behind his glasses in the morning and his cute nose pressed up against the mirror and whatever cute, dumb face he makes when he puts on eye makeup and whichever curse words he uses when he accidentally stabs his eyeball with the eyeliner—
A knock at the door derails his train of thought (which is just as well, since it was rapidly unspooling anyways). Panic flashes through Dejun’s chest. It makes his voice break as he calls, “Occupied!” He scowls at himself in the mirror. ‘Occupied?’ Seriously? What?!
Jaemin’s voice comes through the door. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course, just…” Dejun hastily turns on the sink tap. “Just washing up. I’m so-o-o-o sweaty from the bar, like just crazy sweaty. I get sweaty when I drink.” He pounds the heel of his hand against his forehead a few times. That doesn’t quite feel drastic enough, so he mimes slamming his face into the edge of the sink as well.
Jaemin replies, “Okay, well, I’m putting the kettle on. Do you want some tea?”
Tea is good, right? Dejun thinks wildly. Tea is probably safe. He would agree to just about anything to make Jaemin walk away from the door. “Sure, thank you.”
“Okay.” After half a pause, Jaemin adds, “Oh, and there are deodorant wipes in the heather cosmetics bag. You can use as many as you need.”
Dejun straightens and stares at his reflection in despair. “Crazy sweaty,” he mutters to himself. “What the fuck?”
Something—maybe the light glinting off a falling drop of water, or maybe a tiny and evil pixie who wishes Dejun ill—catches Dejun’s eye in the mirror. His focus shifts to the shower behind him in the reflection. The subtle flash of the gold label on the black bottle taunts him from the caddy, cruel in its mockery of his stupid little gay heart.
In his routine snoop inspection of the bathroom, he poked his head into the shower to inspect the labels of the products within. Upon spying a bottle of anti-dandruff shampoo, he took a closer look for research purposes (he may be proud but he is also vain, especially about his hair [#JustLeoThings], and scalp health takes precedence over saving face). His investigation naturally led him to pop the lid and sample the bouquet of the shampoo’s fragrance (one has to take their personal scent profile into account when considering hair products!). He was devastated to discover that the smell of the dandruff shampoo perfectly matched the crisp, clean, herbal scent of Jaemin’s hair.
Dejun turns around, casting despondent eyes on the shampoo bottle in question. The devastation comes not from knowing Jaemin struggles with a dry scalp (who doesn’t in this economy?) but rather from the butterflies that erupted in his stomach at the smell itself.
The olfactory senses are innately linked to the creation of memory. Dejun’s brain runs wild with all the potential memories that it could innately link to the smell of Jaemin's shampoo. For example (just for example!), coming into the bathroom to take his contacts out at the end of the day while Jaemin is showering with said shampoo, filling the air with its subtle fragrance, and mirror is all steamed over. Or, another example (just for the sake of being thorough) could be sitting on the couch with a good book and getting a noseful of that smell when Jaemin curls up against his shoulder. Or—just to make it a round three—turning over in the morning to hide his face from the sunbeam that always comes through the crack at the bottom of the blinds and catching just a hint of that shampoo in the pillowcase.
Dejun shakes his head like a dog to dislodge the fantasies. He needs to focus, hence the list of Things Not To Notice Right Now Lest They Become A Big Problem. He absolutely cannot afford to psych himself out tonight of all nights.
This brings Dejun back to the epicenter of his nerves: the Implications. Jaemin and Jeno have something of a reputation—both independently and as a duo—of being… How to put this delicately… sexy.
On their own, they’re each a veritable honey trap. Jeno has his boy-next-door thing going on and Jaemin may be the only guy in their year with a retirement fund and a bed frame.
The unique thing about Jaemin and Jeno is that—if one believes the rumors—they come as a package deal. Everyone knows that nothing is sexier than two sexy people having sex. As such, Jaemin and Jeno (and Jaemin-and-Jeno) feature as the subject of three-quarters of the inter-major gossip. Dejun knew Jaemin and Jeno before he ever heard the gossip but he’s only human (and one extremely susceptible to some good-ass gossip at that). The whispers about the open nature of Jaemin-and-Jeno’s relationship fanned the innocent, warm flames of his crushes on the two into a raging inferno of confused lust.
Even after being exposed to the illicit rumors, Dejun hardly dared to think of being with Jaemin and/or Jeno in anything but vague terms. Just associating the abstract concept of sex with either of them brought a blush to his face. It’s only natural that Dejun would have some performance anxiety now that he’s been so abruptly faced with the Implications.
Yes, the Implications are definitely giving Dejun some stage fright. That and, of course, the cartoonishly massive box of condoms he happened across under the sink.
Dejun isn’t a prude. Although he would never judge, he grew out of his squeamishness and embarrassment about condoms a while ago. He doesn’t flaunt his condoms like some people he could name (Renjun) but he doesn’t wear sunglasses and a hoodie to buy them, either (Mark). He’s condom-cool.
But— The thing is—
These condoms are flavored.
Flavored! Dejun groans, dropping into a squat on the bathroom floor with his head in his hands. On their own, flavored condoms would be kind of quirky but nothing to cause inordinate stress. It’s the size of the box that has Dejun in crisis mode.
It’s massive. Truly gargantuan. Dejun thought flavored condoms were something one bought in a pack of four or six for a laugh. He can’t understand what use someone would have for seventy-two assorted tropical-flavored condoms.
Where Dejun’s logic cannot reach, his imagination will forge ahead. Do Jaemin and Jeno have massive sex parties? Tropical island-themed orgies? That conjures an image of Jeno in a coconut shell bra and Jaemin posed wearing nothing but a suggestively-placed bunch of bananas. He wonders what he did to lead him to this predicament: socially trapped in an orgy den of Implications with two insanely hot sex fiends.
Dejun has officially failed at not allowing these little things to become Big Problems.
No. No. He came this far. He will not be stopped by a sinister box of condoms. Dejun crawls back over to the vanity and pulls himself up by the edge of the sink.
Fixing his reflection with a stern glare, he slaps his cheeks with both hands. “Get a grip, Xiao Dejun,” he growls, jabbing his pointer finger at the mirror. “They invited you here. You are sexy as hell. They think you’re sexy. And you’re gonna go out there and have a th–” He almost chokes on the word but pushes through, “—a threesome and be a sex god and live up to all of their expectations.” He nods firmly, emphasizing it with a power-snort.
With that, he unbuttons his shirt down to the missing button (thank god being rumpled is in fashion right now), gives his pits a quick wipe down with Jaemin’s deodorant wipes, slicks down his eyebrows, and goes to the bathroom door.
He takes one last deep breath with his hand on the doorknob. “Let’s get it,” he whispers. “Tits up.”
When he enters the living room, he half expects to walk into a red-and-black velvet draped pit lined with pillows and other surfaces to sex on. The reality is a college apartment not dissimilar from Dejun’s own. Two bicycles take up most of the floor space. The couch has the look of a hand-me-down. The mugs of tea on the dinged-up coffee table don’t match, nor do the coasters (a Jaemin touch, Dejun imagines) scattered across said coffee table.
Jeno looks up from his phone and smiles his patented Jeno Smile. “Hey.”
“Hey,” says Dejun past his heart pounding in his throat. “Where’s—”
“Jaeminnie is in the kitchen,” explains Jeno, gesturing vaguely in what must be the direction of the kitchen. “I was just looking for a good playlist to put on.”
Project confidence, thinks Dejun. He strides into the room, sits right next to Jeno on the couch, and holds his hand out for the phone. “I’ve got just the right thing.”
Jeno surrenders the phone easily. Dejun searches up his own account and hits play on his playlist entitled ‘👅.’
A slight pucker appears between Jeno’s eyebrows as silky-smooth R&B starts to play through his Bluetooth speaker. He huffs half a laugh.
Frowning, Dejun asks, “You don’t like Rihanna?”
“No, I– Rihanna is good.” Jeno smiles at Dejun. He has to lean back a little so his eyes can focus on Dejun’s face. Dejun might have sat down a little close.
“I thought it was right. You know, to set the mood.”
Jeno blinks. He takes a breath to reply when Jaemin makes his re-entrance, holding yet another mismatched mug, and interrupts by saying, “Dejun. I put a little honey in your tea. I hope that’s okay.”
Dejun backs off Jeno a few inches to lean forward. “Honey’s lovely.”
Jaemin hands him the mug with a kind (and perhaps slightly concerned) smile. “A little honey always soothes my stomach. Are you feeling better?” He sits on the other side of Dejun. This puts Dejun close enough to both of them to feel their shoulders touching him on either side at the same time. It’s a lot. It’s very overwhelming.
Fuck. “I’m fine, really,” he rushes to assure Jaemin. “I shouldn’t have gone before we left the bar. What a rookie move, I totally popped the cork.” His two hosts nod sympathetically but don’t say anything to offer Dejun a conversational tugboat away from this topic. Unable to let a pause happen right after he talked about his bladder, he continues babbling. “You know how it is with beer. All those bubbles. Ha ha.” Fuck!!! Dejun takes a huge swig of the tea to shut himself up.
It backfires in a big way.
Dejun’s failure to anticipate the tea being at boiling point temperature sets off a series of events straight out of a slapstick routine. He scalds his tongue—badly. The shock makes him jolt. The sharp movement causes tea to slosh over the side of the mug. A tidal wave of blistering-hot liquid cascades over the back of Dejun’s hand and into his lap. This, of course, elicits a high-pitched scream from Dejun. Dejun’s scream sets off a chain reaction of panicked yelps from his hosts. Jeno shoots up off the couch to get a towel and nearly falls on his face when his leg clips the edge of the coffee table on the way out.
The pain receptors in Dejun’s hand have lost part of their communication with his self-preservation instinct because Jaemin has to pry his fingers away from the mug. “I’m so sorry!” Jaemin gasps. “I should’ve warned you.”
“It’s okay,” Dejun says through gritted teeth. He wonders if it would damage his sex appeal if he were to shed a manful tear.
Meanwhile, Jeno returns with the towel and starts to rub at the stain in Dejun’s lap. “Here, let me—”
“Dab, don’t rub,” Jaemin cuts in, putting one hand over Jeno’s and guiding him to pat Dejun’s crouch with the towel.
Although Dejun mentally prepared himself to have their hands near his dick, actually having their hands near their dick so abruptly (and without any kind of foreplay!) and in such an unfortunate fashion makes something in his brain snap. With an overly-loud laugh that’s all nerves and absolutely no humor, he pushes their hands away.
“I’m not a sex god!” he shouts.
Jaemin and Jeno stare at him, caught off-guard by the outburst.
“I’m sorry,” Dejun continues, “and I’m so flattered that you invited me here and are interested in me that way—and please don’t get me wrong, I’m interested. I’m— I’m very interested in that way. In both of you. And I thought, hey! Get out there and have the sex-venturous, wild and crazy, one-night-stand threesome! Why not? Hendery is always telling me I need to get outside of my comfort zone.
“But it’s all a front. I’m not sex-venturous. I’ve never had a th—” The word chokes him up again. He forces it out. “—a threesome. I haven’t even had that many twosomes. And while I respect and have even implemented the one-night stand model once or twice…” Dejun takes a deep breath. “I’m a sensitive man. And I think having a one-night stand with you two, in particular, would really hurt my feelings.”
With his confession purged from his system, Dejun flops back against the couch cushions. He feels a little winded. How many kilocalories does being emotionally vulnerable burn per minute?
A dreadful, stunned silence follows Dejun’s speech. Jeno and Jaemin exchange a look across Dejun. Even caught in its crossfire, Dejun can’t parse out what it means (especially not after delivering such an exhausting monologue. He might need to replenish his blood sugar). Not for the first time, he thinks the two may share some kind of telepathic link. His heart pounds. He eyes the slim gap between Jaemin and the coffee table and starts to map out an escape route.
Then, Jaemin laughs and says, “Well, that explains the music, at least.”
Before Dejun can commence his plan to move back to China, change his name, and start a new life, Jeno chides, “Jaemin.” He puts a hand on Dejun’s arm and squeezes gently. “Dejun…” Dejun looks up, face hot. The calming properties of Jeno’s smile soothe the anxiety flaring in his chest before it can send him fleeing for the toilet again. “That’s all totally fine with us. We didn’t invite you here to have a threesome.”
“...You didn’t?”
Jaemin moves to sit on the edge of the coffee table across from Dejun. “We invited you here because we like you and want to get to know you better.”
Dejun realises that he may be an idiot.
“But,” he splutters, “the Implications—”
In yet another act of mercy, Jeno cuts him off. “Well,” he says, sheepish. “We’re not entirely innocent. We are interested in you.”
“We are,” Jaemin affirms. “But we don’t want a one-night stand, either.”
Dejun’s brow furrows. “Oh?”
Jeno laughs, soft and (daresay?!) affectionate. “We want to date you.”
The eyebrows reach for the sky. “Oh!” Dejun finds himself suddenly hyper-aware of Jaemin’s hand on his knee, Jeno’s on his arm, and the tea-soaked denim rapidly cooling in his lap. “That’s great, then. That’s— That works, that’s good.”
Smiling a knowing smile, Jaemin takes the tea towel from Jeno with a quick thank-you kiss and hands it to Dejun. “I’ll get you a new cup of tea.” He starts to stand, hesitates, and then bends again. Tipping Dejun’s chin up with his fingertips, Jaemin leaves the gentlest, loveliest, most Jaemin-ist kiss on Dejun’s lips. And, oh, how that kiss lingers like the sweetest tangerine, cardamom, nutmeg happiness even after Jaemin leaves the room with Dejun’s (now half-empty) mug.
Just when Dejun thinks he might take flight thanks to Jaemin’s kiss, a squeeze around his bicep brings him back to Earth. He looks over to see Jeno looking at him with hopeful puppy dog eyes. “Can I kiss you, too?”
Dejun cannot nod fast enough.
Jeno kisses are every bit as sweet as Jaemin kisses but in a completely different way. If Jaemin kisses are like a warming cup of tea with just the right amount of honey, Jeno kisses are like freshly baked gingerbread. Jeno’s kisses have a smoother kind of sweetness, soft and slow and comforting, like brown sugar and molasses. Then, Jeno’s hand comes up to cup the back of Dejun’s head and that’s when Dejun gets to feel the cinnamon-ginger-clove bite of Jeno’s kiss. It’s a figurative and literal bite—or, in this case, bites—as Jeno nips at Dejun’s bottom lip. That is approximately when Dejun’s brain melts and waterfalls down his spinal cord.
(Dejun has to approximate due to the aforementioned issue of his brain melting and waterfalling down his spinal cord.)
In the middle of Dejun being kissed senseless, the couch dips on his other side. Surprised, he pulls himself away from Jeno.
Jaemin smiles that sharp smile of his. “Don’t stop on my account,” he says. His voice sounds lower than usual. Dejun might even say it’s next to a purr.
“Sorry, Nana,” says Jeno, letting Dejun go with one last squeeze on the back of his neck (as if he doesn’t know that even just that is enough to make Dejun go weak at the knees). “Couldn’t help myself.”
“You never can.” When Dejun turns to look at Jaemin properly, he finds Jaemin very, very close. The latter tips his chin to the side, indicating the coffee table. “Your tea.”
Dejun clears his throat before speaking but his voice still cracks when he says, “Thank you.”
Jaemin nods, still wearing that amused smile of his. (Dejun would never admit this aloud but he loves it when Jaemin smiles like that, as if he’s laughing at some joke that only he has heard.) Dejun nods, too, to acknowledge Jaemin’s nod, and then they’re both just nodding in silence, inches away from each other’s faces. Jaemin whispers, “Are you gonna drink it?”
Dejun keeps nodding until what’s left of his melted brain starts working again. Then, he shakes his head instead. He draws Jaemin in with a hand on his cheek and kisses him full on the lips.
Since it may actually be impossible to catch Na Jaemin off-guard, Jaemin responds by slipping his arm around Dejun’s waist and somehow finding spare room to slide closer. On the left, Jeno presses himself all along Dejun’s side, hooking his chin over Dejun’s shoulder to nuzzle into his neck like the little puppy Jeno is.
(Dejun wonders if this is what being in a threesome is like: just feeling like the melty cheese stuffing in the center of a hot little panini.)
Jeno makes a quiet noise and Jaemin withdraws just far enough to move past Dejun and kiss Jeno with his arms still twined around Dejun’s middle. If Dejun thought kissing Jaemin and Jeno was bliss, watching Jaemin and Jeno kiss is almost (almost) better. They look perfect together.
It’s the first time Dejun hasn’t felt uncomfortable while watching two people kiss. Even the wet little kissy sounds that usually make his skin crawl send entirely different zings up and down his arms. He thinks there may be some truth behind his telepathy theory.
The best part is that they’ve invited him to be part of the unbridled chemistry on display. Jaemin and Jeno, who are so flawlessly matched to one another that they may actually be fated soulmates, think that Dejun (Dejun!) could be the missing piece in their dynamic.
Then, Dejun thoroughly ruins the whole vibe by saying, “My favorite condom flavor is citrus, by the way. But I can probably choke down a banana or mango.”
Jeno leans his forehead against Dejun’s temple, laughing, and Jaemin kisses Dejun’s cheek. “I take it you looked in the cabinet under the sink,” says Jaemin.
“No, no, no, I mean…” Dejun shifts, plucking nervously at one of the buttons on his shirt. “I mean, yes, yeah. I did look and I saw the— The— You know—”
Jaemin shakes his head. “Shh, shh, shh,” he hushes, turning Dejun by the chin to peck him on the lips. “It’s fine, everything’s fine.”
“I mean, I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for why you have such a large quantity—”
Jeno coaxes Dejun’s face towards him, cutting him off with another kiss. “You can ‘choke’ one down, huh? But I thought you weren’t a sex god?”
Dejun’s face flames. He would think of a very good comeback but finds himself completely incapacitated. At this close distance, Dejun can smell Jaemin’s shampoo and see the mascara smudged at the corner of Jeno’s eye. He absolutely cannot be expected to be witty when his heart is fluttering like this.
His connection to the telepathy must already be coming online because Jeno and Jaemin’s expressions soften at the same time. One by one, they each lean in to give Dejun another kiss, first Jeno—soft, warm, sweet—and then Jaemin—bright, sharp, comforting. Dejun thinks they complement each other perfectly.
They proceed to take turns kissing Dejun stupid for the remainder of the night.
(Not that it’s that hard.)