𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺; renjun x dream

𝙚𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙮 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙧

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Chenle and Jaemin descended the stairs side by side and flinched at the sound of the door slamming after a supposedly devastated Renjun. Their boyfriends were all huddled in the kitchen and so they hesitantly joined them in order to share the weight of such a heavy atmosphere.

"What did you do?" Jisung nearly whispered as he stared aimlessly into nothing. The mug of tea in his hand released tendrils of steam to reach up and caress his cheeks in vain. Donghyuck, opposite him, had a morbidly similar expression on but sported red, puffy eyes to complete the look.

"What do you mean?" Chenle tried to play it off, "I didn't do anything, Ji. He got all upset again."

Jaemin scoffed and walked towards the fridge with a face as dark as thunder. His jaw was taught with constrained rage and he did seem to be quite restless. "You fought again? God-fucking-damn it, does anyone else give a flying fuck that someone so fucking special is running away just like that?!" He ripped the fridge door open and scanned the meagre contents briefly before throwing it shut irritatedly. "Am I the only sucker who actually fell in love with Renjun or are you all really good at dropping sentimentality?!"

"We can't do any more," Mark mumbled wistfully and clutched his tea tighter. "He was never ours to have, Nana. We just...didn't see it soon enough."

"Never ou—?!" the younger nearly yelled before rubbing his face and pointing a weary finger at him, "Never ours to have? Seriously? And suppose one of us hadn't cracked under the immense pressure of being a potential and totally threw this all away. What would we look like now? What would our dynamic be? I can't even remember what it was like when it was just you, me and Hyuck. Things change, Mark. Things move forward and people with it. He likes us, I know it!"

"Yes, well regardless of that he didn't choose us, did he?!" Jeno snapped and clapped his hands together to end that conversation there. The loud force of it made Donghyuck squeak, and it suddenly appeared as though he'd been re-invited into the chat after having been dormant.

"I'm not watching this," Jaemin pestered. "I'm not sitting here with all five of you acting like this was just some random opportunity we missed. He wasn't a lotto ticket guys, he was Renjun." As he said this, his eyes were firmly narrowed on Mark and he wound up marching straight over to the now weak-looking dominant to drag this further through the mud.

"Jaem, that's enough. You're acting like we didn't all get played!" Donghyuck hissed as he watched his lover grab the eldest by the collar and shove him hard against the countertop.

"It's you're fault!" The brunette cried out, heart racing at an excruciatingly sore speed and face so warm he couldn't even feel it. The backs of his eyes were raw again, and he'd believed there weren't any tears left after last night.

He'd been wrong.

"I'm sorry..." Mark mustered amongst his own pain. "I'm sorry, Jaem."

"I-If you hadn't played that dumb trick—" the younger tried not to sob, "then we wouldn't have ever met him. H-He'd be living somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else!"

"Let him go," Jeno tried to reason and attempted to pry the boy off, but failed all the same and earned a rough shoulder to the chest.

"He should never have lived here with us..." the brunette begged and whined and tightened his loosening grip on the fabric of the large shirt. "It was a mean joke, and we took it too far..."

Mark swallowed thickly and could even think back to the very moment Taeyong sent him a little, blue folder of applicants who wanted to live in the unfinished building. Faces of men and women that he'd have to turn down. The actor had only asked for them in confidence to scope out the type of people who'd live here in the near future. The type of ordinary people who had families and mundane lives, who went grocery shopping together and didn't wear masks even in the depths of summer without illnesses. He liked to torture himself with these imaginary scenarios before reminding himself that he'd never get that life back, and neither would his boys.

"Nana..." he croaked, placing a extremely tentative hand on the one bunching his collar, "I shouldn't have let Renjun in. I know that...but something told me it was a good idea. I...I believed that the whole time."

When he got to the second last file in the stack and found a rather bland picture of a foreign student wishing to live close to the college, he couldn't help but skim through the information a little. His face seemed cute, albeit the photo really was amateur and it didn't amplify any of his stunning features. But there was a rawness to it, like Renjun himself had wordlessly said 'this is me. Little old me needing a roof over my head'. Mark couldn't help but send it back to Taeyong and request that he let him come along.

How stupid he felt now. Believing in a trivial, fleeting idea that this boy was a blessing in disguise.

Jaemin stared at his boyfriend's blank yet mildly overwhelmed face and instantly felt a pinch to his heart and retreated quickly. "Say something."

"Like what?" Mark sighed and lowered a little along the presses behind him, looking smaller than usual in a way that made the whole group feel vulnerable. "You're right, and everyone knows it. I fucked up this time..."

"I mean," Chenle gushed a little hurriedly and looked around without any idea what to say, needing backup. "Like, it wasn't all your fault. We all played a part in this, didn't we?"

"Jeno and Jaemin broke our number one rule," Donghyuck sneered. "No sex with the potential until they're ours. You two couldn't keep in your pants!"

"Yeah, well Chenle told him we wanted to date him when he'd barely been here a month!" Jeno rebuked. "If we're gonna play that game, we may as well remind each other of all the shit we scared him away with!"

"Can we not do this?" Jisung murmured airily and rested his face against his arms which were folded on the table. "Does this relationship falling apart mean that he's going to come running back to keep us afloat? No. So stop treating each other like the enemy and remember who's always been here. How we've always gotten through everything."

In a way, they hated to admit that he was right...but he was. Each of them wanted to blame someone or something for this not working, but there was no logical answer that could account for all those memories and moments they'd created as seven. In the clockwork, burrowed deep within all the twisting cogs and bolts, something had made the foundation weak, and Renjun wouldn't address it.

Be it his mother, college, their lives and jobs, YangYang. He refused to create a solid ground for them all to stand on and this was the fruit of such ignorance.

"I love you guys..." Donghyuck suddenly uttered with a pale and pained face. "I don't want this to fuck it all up."

Even if Renjun didn't fit with their picture, the show had to go on.

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