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winwintea · 19 days ago

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yellow

PAIRING ↬ na jaemin x fem!reader (feat. zhong chenle)

TAGS ↬ angst, romance, lots of feelings, queer, bisexual people exist, idol x idol kinda but not really, im queen of jaemle nation fight me, happy pride month (it's august but idc every day pride month), also written in jaemin pov bc i hate myself (i'm never doing it again.)

WARNINGS ↬ angst

SUMMARY ↬ his favorite color is yellow. in color theory yellow is often used as a way to describe platonic relationships. because that's all na jaemin will ever have. platonic love.

WORD COUNT ↬ 3.8k words

AUTHOR’S NOTE ↬ just wanna let people know i do not hardcore ship idols, this is literally just a story and it's not a reflection of their actual selves. so like don't cancel me omfgjahds. i was so scared to post this, this fic has been in development hell for months but i promised @spacejip so....

PLAYLIST ↬ yellow - yoh jamiyama; boy bi - mad tsai; sofia - clario; sweater weather - the neighborhood; ghosting - mother mother; nobody - mitski

I ALWAYS KNEW I WAS DIFFERENT.

Even before I understood the words for it. I never settled, always switching between boy and girl, between friendship and longing for something deeper. Sometimes I’d catch my reflection in shop windows and wonder why my heart skipped when the boy with the crooked smile walked by, or when the girl with the sunflower dress laughed at my jokes.

I just couldn’t seem to decide, and well that was the problem I guess.

By the time I was nine, my mother had begun to notice my odd hesitations when asked about crushes and how I’d like to confess to a girl someday. One Saturday morning, as I dusted the trophies lining our mantel, she paused before me with a mug of coffee in hand “Jaemin,” she said, her voice soft, yet also nervous, “I think you like both boys and girls.”

Her words weren’t a question. She already knew the answer.

I nodded my head for confirmation. I’d never said it out loud before, but hearing her say it in that way made it real in a way that both terrified and relieved me. She set her mug down and reached for my hand, squeezing it gently. “I love you,” she whispered, “and you’ll always be safe with me.”

But then her expression shifted, “The world isn’t ready for boys like you,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “So let’s keep this just between us for now.” I studied her face. Not once did she ever look disappointed, but instead always carried a worrying look upon her eyes. Outside our front door lay a world that might not understand, or worse, might judge.

I learned early on to tuck my truth into hidden places and whisper it only in dreams. In daylight, I became good at smiling along, at telling half-truths and nodding when I should. But at night, I was reminded that being different was both my curse and my gift.

Then came Zhong Chenle.

Or, as I liked to refer to him as: the human megaphone

And, unfortunately, also the boy who would go on to ruin my life.

But I didn’t know that at the time.

I first met Chenle when I was ten. He moved into the house next door with twelve suitcases, a dog louder than he was, and a zero respect for indoor voice etiquette. The first time we met, he rang our doorbell and introduced himself. I opened the door to a boy with a bowl cut, wide-gapped teeth, and this blinding grin that made me forget how to speak for a full five seconds.

“Hi! I’m Chenle. I’m from Shanghai. You’re my new best friend,” he declared.

I blinked. “Uh… what?”

“You have a trampoline. I saw it. Let’s go.”

And just like that, we were friends.

Chenle didn’t knock on doors. He burst through them. Literally. The first week he lived next door, he climbed in through my bedroom window because he “wanted to see if it worked like in the movies.”

It did not.

He got stuck halfway in and kicked over my desk lamp in the process. He still insists that it was my fault, somehow.

He was loud. He was nosy. He told me his favorite animal was a dolphin “because they’re smart and scream a lot, just like me.” (His words not mine.) He drank milk like it was a personality trait and claimed he’d become a millionaire when he was older. He didn’t need to ‘become’ one though, cause he was already a millionaire. His family was completely loaded.

And I loved him. God, did I love him.

I didn’t know it instantly. It wasn’t the kind of love you recognize, anyway. At first it was just the comfort of having someone close. We spent years growing up like two peas in a pod. We had a standing Friday night ritual of junk food and horror movies that neither of us had the guts to admit scared us. We'd stay up until 2AM pretending not to be terrified, jumping at every creak and then laughing until our stomachs hurt.

Sleepovers blurred into weekends, which blurred into seasons. We built forts in my living room. We argued over Mario Kart so loudly that my mom made a rule that “no one named Chenle is allowed to enter the house after 9PM on weekdays.

By the time we hit middle school, Chenle had taken to calling me his “number one.”

“My number one sidekick,” he’d announce dramatically, throwing his arm around my shoulders while we walked home.

I’d snort, shoving him off. “I’m not your sidekick. You’re my sidekick.”

“In your dreams. I’m the main character. You’re the tragic subplot.”

He’d always grin after saying that, oblivious. I’d grin too, although maybe less oblivious.

Because at some point, in the middle of all the chaos and teasing and sleep-deprived laughter, something shifted. I started noticing things I shouldn’t. Like how his laugh had changed. I started seeing it differently. Or how his hands had gotten bigger, and when I ruffled his hair, my heart would do this annoying flipping thing like it was trying to escape my chest and launch itself at him.

That’s when I realized my first real crush wasn’t some girl who brushed by me in the halls, or a senior who looked cool leaning against lockers.

It was Chenle.

My best friend.

The boy who once tried to convince me that bees were government spies.

I hated it.

Not because I didn’t like him, like I clearly did. I hated it because it changed the rules of everything. How could I sit next to someone during a movie knowing my fingers are twitching to hold theirs? How could I hear “you’re my number one” and not wonder if it could ever mean something else?

Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I just laughed. I shoved him harder. I hid behind sarcasm and jokes and really long sips of soda whenever he got too close. I buried it. Deep inside my soul.

Because if I told him, I might lose him. And losing Chenle? That wasn’t an option. Not then. Not ever.

So I kept the secret. I played my role. I smiled when he made dumb jokes and called me his “ride or die.”

But part of me kept whispering: I love him. And he’ll never know.

In terms of high school cliques, Chenle and I were placed somewhere between semi-popular and beloved chaotic pests. We weren’t the jocks, but we were the ones who people invited to parties just in case they needed some crazy shit to happen. Mostly Chenle. I was more of a corner-wallflower-watching-me-spontaneously-lick-someone’s-arm kind of guy.

So when the whispers started about a new transfer student, I barely cared at all.

“She’s from somewhere fancy,” someone whispered behind me in the homeroom.

“I heard she studied abroad in like, five countries, so her family is like rich rich.” said another.

“Bro. She wears strawberry clips in her hair.”

Chenle perked up. “Strawberry clips?” he repeated, spinning in his chair. “That's either peak fashion or someone trying to start a cult. Either way, I respect it.”

“Calm down,” I muttered, not bothering to look up.

“No. You don’t understand. This is important. Fashion statements mean she’s either really weird or really cool. I need to know which.”

“You say that like you don’t own a hoodie with a dolphin eating pizza on it.”

“And that hoodie changed lives,” he replied solemnly.

Naturally, we got our answer when the classroom door creaked open and you walked in.

You weren’t like anyone I’d ever seen before. You didn’t just enter a room—you landed in it. Head held high, eyes scanning the class like you were appraising a room of overpriced art. Your uniform was regulation, sure, but somehow you made it look like it belonged on a fashion runway in Tokyo. And there, clipped into your hair on either side, were two fat, ridiculous plastic strawberries that glinted in the fluorescent light like they knew they were starting something.

I blinked. Chenle gaped.

You introduced yourself with a smile, and somehow your voice made the classroom feel warmer. It was terrifying. I immediately went back to pretending to read. Chenle, of course, did not.

“Hi! I’m Chenle,” he said as you passed our row. “Welcome to whatever level of academic purgatory this school is.”

You raised a brow. “Thanks? I think?”

“Don’t worry, I’m the unofficial welcoming committee,” he added, gesturing to himself. “And this guy next to me—” he kicked my foot under the desk, “—this is Jaemin. He’s cool, in a broody, possibly-vampire kind of way.”

I looked up. Just once.

You smiled at me. It was small, polite. You probably forgot it a second later.

I didn’t.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to sound like my throat had been replaced with sandpaper. “Nice clips.”

Your smile widened just enough to make me regret every life choice that led to this moment. “Thanks. They remind me not to take anything too seriously.”

Chenle clapped once, loudly. “See? ICONIC.”

You laughed. And just like that, you were in.

It was like watching magnets meet. You and Chenle clicked instantly. loud to loud, weird to weird, chaos to chaos. He made a joke, you added the punchline. You rolled your eyes, he rolled with it. If Chenle was a human sparkler, you were a box of matches, and every time the two of you talked, the hallway got a little brighter and a little more flammable.

“Have you ever tried wasabi KitKats?” he asked you once at lunch.

You didn’t even blink. “I ate three and hallucinated.”

Chenle gasped like he was witnessing true divinity. “I knew it wasn’t just me!”

That was day 5 of knowing you. On day 6, the three of us were grouped for a science project, and by day 7, Chenle had already given you a ridiculous nickname (I will not repeat it here on the grounds of secondhand embarrassment). You didn't even flinch. You just fired one back at him and kept walking like you'd been part of this dumb dance all along.

And me?

Well… I was there.

Reluctantly. At first.

See, I’ve never been good with change. New people throw off my rhythm. And you weren’t just new—you were disarming. The kind of person who could insult someone and still have them thank you afterward. You took up space, not in a loud way, but in a comfortable-in-your-own-skin way. The kind of confidence people fake. But with you, it was just… real.

So yeah, I held back. Answered your questions with shrugs. Laughed when it felt safe. You didn’t seem to notice. Or if you did, you didn’t push.

Which somehow made it worse.

Because then one afternoon we were all sitting on the floor of the library, fake-studying for a history test, and I realized I was laughing. Like, really laughing, because you’d just impersonated our history teacher’s monotone voice and Chenle’s laugh at the same time, and I genuinely thought I would choke on my own spit.

You looked at me like you’d just unlocked a new level. “See? He can laugh,” you said, triumphant.

And I hated how good that made me feel.

After that, it was just… us.

The three of us. A trio.

Lunch breaks became sacred rituals. You’d bring snacks, Chenle would bring gossip, and I’d pretend I wasn’t enjoying the way you both pulled me into your tornado of nonsense. We’d sit on the floor behind the gym building to escape the sun and the noise, passing chips and bad jokes like currency.

Group projects became borderline illegal. We got nothing done, but our PowerPoint slides had amazing content.

We had doodles on each other’s notebooks. Nicknames that made zero sense to anyone else. Inside jokes about pigeons and the government. You’d steal half my lunch without asking. Chenle would throw pencils at your head. I’d sigh and clean up after both of you.

It was fun. Too fun.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I started feeling like I was always walking a half-step behind you two.

It wasn’t anything either of you did. Not on purpose. But I’d notice the way you’d look at Chenle first when something funny happened. How he’d instinctively hand you the last piece of candy. How your conversations sometimes stretched on without me, like I was background noise to your main act.

And I hated that I noticed.

Because we were fine. We were good. I wasn’t jealous. I wasn’t anything.

…I was just—

There. On the edge of something I didn’t want to name. Laughing when you both laughed, trailing behind when the hallway got too crowded, watching as the space between you two narrowed by the day.

It was easier not to think about it. Easier to ignore the tightness in my chest when Chenle called you by a nickname he hadn’t used on anyone else. Easier to smile, make jokes, and pretend I was still in control.

Because if I thought about it too long?

I might start realizing things I wasn’t ready to face.

It starts slow.

Like a leak in the ceiling you don’t notice until there’s a puddle on the floor.

One day I’m sitting across from you two at lunch, peeling the label off a juice box, and I catch Chenle looking at you.

Not the way he looks at spicy ramen or a sale at the convenience store. No. This was different.

He looked at you like you were something to be memorized.

And I froze. Juice box half-peeled. Air caught in my lungs like a glitch.

Because I’d seen that look before.

In bathroom mirrors. In stolen glances. In my own eyes.

I started seeing it everywhere after that.

The way he leaned closer when you spoke. The way he remembered little things about you — your favorite gum flavor, how you hated when your sleeves got wet, how you always liked cinnamon on hot cocoa.

I watched you laugh at something dumb he said and lean into his space like it was yours to take. And he let you. Of course he let you.

And the part that broke me wasn’t just that he liked you.

It was that I did too. I liked you both.

Then came the sleepover.

Chenle’s living room. Popcorn everywhere. A horror movie on mute. You were half-asleep, slouched on the floor pillow. I was curled up on one end of the couch, scrolling through my phone and trying not to acknowledge the emotional chaos ongoing in my brain.

Chenle flopped between us, laughing at something stupid, his arm brushing yours like it had done a hundred times before.

And then… he leaned over.

Rested his head on your shoulder.

Didn’t say a word.

Just rested.

You didn’t move. You didn’t even blink. You just tilted your head a little, like it was normal, like it was okay, like this was something you both did now.

I couldn’t breathe.

I stared at the TV, pretending to watch, heart pounding. My mouth was dry. My skin felt too tight.

I don’t even know what I was jealous of. Him? You? The space between you?

Or maybe just the fact that I wasn’t there. That I couldn’t be.

That I was watching someone I wanted melt into someone else.

I stayed up that night after you both fell asleep.

Chenle was snoring like a lawn mower, limbs flung out like a starfish. You were curled up in a blanket on the floor, hair in your face, softly breathing. I sat in the dark with my knees to my chest and stared at the ceiling.

Because what do you do when the two people you love most are standing right next to each other, and you know you’ll never be enough for either?

I thought I was doing a good job.

Like pretending, keeping it together, or smiling when I was supposed to. Laughing when I had to. Memorizing the exact distance I could stand from you without feeling like my chest was going to cave in.

I told myself I could handle it. The trio dynamic, the shared jokes, the way you always seemed to look at Chenle a second longer than you did me. I’d made peace with being on the sidelines. Or at least, I thought I had.

And then you pulled out the gum. “Limited edition,” you said, grinning. “Spearmint. Only the cool people get a piece.”

“Guess I’m getting two,” Chenle announced, already reaching for one.

You swatted his hand. “You’re lucky you’re cute.” You handed out pieces one by one until the pack was nearly empty.

“Yo, toss me one?” I asked casually, too casually, already stepping forward.

You blinked, glanced down at the foil. Then your face shifted a little. “Oh,” you said, voice softening. “That was… the last one.”

It was in fact the end of the pack. Chenle was already unwrapping it, mid-chew, completely unaware of the tiny little earthquake that had just ruptured my insides.

“Wait,” Chenle said, catching the shift in the air. He turned to me, holding out the gum with a shrug and that easy, careless smile. “You want it?”

It should’ve been simple.

Say yes. Take the gum. Laugh it off.

But instead, I just… froze.

Because it wasn’t about the gum. It was never about the gum.

It was about how effortlessly he offered it to me. How kind he was without knowing it. How easy it all came to him with you, with everyone. And how suddenly, in that moment, I realized.

He’d always be the one who got the last piece.

Of everything.

Of you.

My mouth opened. Then closed. Then it opened again. I think I managed a smile. Or something that could’ve passed for one.

Then I turned around and walked away.

Didn’t explain. Didn’t joke. Didn’t look back.

Just left.

It started with a text.

[You]: lunch tmrw? chenle has music club. ur not allowed to say no. i’ll bring grape juice.

I stared at it longer than I should’ve.

Part of me wanted to ignore it. Part of me wanted to throw my phone into a river.

[Me]: if there’s no grape juice i’m suing

And that was that.

We met behind the gym, our usual spot. Same cracked tiles. Same half-broken bench. You were already sitting when I arrived, legs swinging slightly as you balanced a lunch tray in your lap. When you saw me, you raised a can in greeting. “Your gross purple sugar water, as promised.”

I sat beside you, trying not to let our knees touch. “Wow. A romantic.”

“Please,” you said, rolling your eyes. “I’m a walking rom-com. But like… the low-budget kind.”

I snorted. “So self-aware. I’m proud of you.”

And just like that we slipped into the rhythm again. Jokes. Teasing. You flicked a crumb at me when I said your rice balls were lopsided. I mimed choking on your soda when you tried to psychoanalyze my favorite potato chips. It was easy. It was safe.

Almost.

Because in the quiet that came between bites and laughter, I caught myself looking at you. Not like I used to, but with something softer. Sadder. Like admiring a painting you know you'll never be able to take home.

Your hair caught the light just so. Your lips were curled in that kind of smile people don’t realize they’re wearing—the kind that comes from being at ease, from knowing you’re seen.

And in that moment, it hit me all at once:

You were happy.

Without Chenle here, without the noise and the banter, you were still you. Still bright. Still strange. Still lovely in that way that made my ribs feel too small.

And for a brief, flickering second—I imagined it.

Us.

Just us.

Me handing you the grape soda. You laughing at my dumb jokes. No triangle, no third, no half-steps behind.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it?

It wouldn’t be real. Because I’d still be thinking of him too.

Still catching myself looking for his reaction when you smiled. Still waiting for his voice to jump into the conversation with something wildly unhelpful but weirdly profound. It was never just one of you. It was always both.

And if I couldn’t love you without loving him… Then I couldn’t love either of you the way you deserved.

You nudged my arm, snapping me back. “You okay? You’ve got that ‘I just composed a sad indie ballad in my head’ look again.”

I chuckled. “Just full of bad poetry and spicy tteokbokki.”

“Tragic,” you said, mock solemnly. “At least you look pretty while suffering.”

That made me smile. And hurt. At the same time. I looked at you again and something inside me settled. Quietly. Like dust after a storm.

This would be the last time we’d do this—just us. You didn’t know that, but I did.

Because I’d made my decision.

I loved you. I loved Chenle.

And I couldn’t have either of you.

So I’d carry that love the way you carry an old photograph—worn, soft around the edges, a little blurred. Beautiful. Untouchable. But still carried with you.

You tossed me a napkin as I stood up to leave. “You’ve got sauce on your mouth, drama king.”

I wiped it without looking and grinned. “Thanks. I live to impress.”

You laughed. And it sounded like every version of goodbye I’d never have the courage to say out loud.

Weddings are funny.

Everyone says they’re about beginnings—the start of something new, something shared. But when you're standing on the outside, watching it all unfold from behind a wall of hydrangeas and polite distance, weddings feel more like endings.

And this one?

This one felt like the final chapter of a book I dog-eared years ago, hoping I'd someday be brave enough to finish.

The ceremony was beautiful. Of course it was. Chenle’s family did everything big. There were gold accents, string quartet, lots of laughter that bounced off the walls. Your side was smaller, but no less warm. You walked down the aisle with your head held high. Like you did once before.

Even now, you refused to blend in.

Even now, you stood out.

And Chenle looked like he belonged nowhere else but at the end of that aisle. Nervous smile, fingers twitching at his side, eyes locked on you like gravity had chosen a new north. He looked the same, somehow. But older. Softer. Better. Because of you.

I stood at the back. Far enough away that no one would notice if I slipped out early, close enough to hear the vows. I told myself I was only there because he asked. “My number one,” he’d said with a grin. “You better show up, or I’m taking you out of the group chat forever.” Classic Chenle logic.

I hadn’t known if I’d wanted to come. But here I was.

You reached him. Your hands found his. The whole world seemed to still.

And me? I smiled. A real one.

Because of course it was you two.

It was always going to be you two. And I was okay with that.

heh

TAGLIST ↬ @lyvhie @aquaphoenixz @galacticnct @yizhrt @polarisjisung @multifandomania @spacejip @peterm4rker @viasdreams @mango-bear

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