WIP Amnesty -- Domestic married Renhyuck + OT7 ensemble

[renhyuck]

Dropping a WIP Amnesty instead of my WIP Wednesday this fine week. I'm pretty sure I started this shit LAST YEAR. It's never going to be finished. It's time to set it free.

The doorbell rings at six pm, right at the scheduled official Facebook event (™) time they’d set, and absolutely not at the expected time they’d assumed.

Renjun is in the middle of trying to determine which bottle of wine to start off the evening with, and Donghyuck is lounging on the couch trying to stop Flurry from sticking her paws on his mouth, and neither of them are ready for visitors.

"Oh Christ," Donghyuck groans. He’d just gotten comfy — had let Flurry onto his chest with the assumption of having time to brush her fur off his clothes. Flurry takes the opportunity of him opening his mouth to extend her claws slightly, digging them into his jumper and attempting to knead the fabric. "Renjun, can you get the door?"

"Can you get it yourself, dear husband?"

The tone of voice he uses drips with false sweetness, that same old trying wheedle Donghyuck into getting up so he can spend more time perusing their wine cabinet (kept well stocked by the ridiculous amount they’d received as wedding gifts. Even a year later Donghyuck is still pulling out bottles with affixed cards from Renjun’s auntie’s best friend’s daughter, wishing them a happy marriage.)

"Flurry is sitting on me," Donghyuck says. He boops her on the nose and she shuts her eyes, lazy, fluffy tail flicking into the air.

"Take her with you then."

The doorbell rings again.

Somehow Donghyuck ends up with a cat in his arms as he greets Jisung and Jaemin — telling them they're dreaming if they think he's gonna let them give him their coats. It's snowing outside, just tiny little flakes, and when they take off their boots there's a small puddle left on the hardwood around the soles.

"You left your Christmas decorations up," Jisung says, trying desperately to untangle his scarf and ending up looking like a kitten caught up in a ball of yarn.

"Every day is Christmas if you believe hard enough," Donghyuck replies. Jaemin snorts, reaching over to rest a hand on Jisung's shoulder and helping him unwrap himself with a practiced gentleness.

"You keep telling yourself that," he says, tugging at the end of Jisung’s scarf. Jisung makes a noise of surprise but he acquiesces and allows Jaemin to take it, cooing as Flurry lets out a soft meow.

"Hello girl," he murmurs, reaching over to scratch her behind the ears. “How do you like your new house? Are your dads taking care of you?”

“She owns the house,” Donghyuck says with a laugh. Against his chest, Flurry starts to purr, eyes shut as she lets Jisung pet her. She’s always been affectionate — always happy to receive pats from anyone who’ll come near her, the first to greet their guests with a meow and a chitter — and sometimes Donghyuck worries she loves Jisung more than she loves him.

“As it should be.”

“I’ve got a gift for you,” Jaemin says, after Donghyuck has put the cat on the ground and Jisung has followed her through to the lounge like a child after the Pied Piper.

“Please don’t tell me it’s wine,” Donghyuck says. Jaemin grins at him — million dollars, sparkling teeth and glittering eyes. He’s so pretty Donghyuck might have hated him in another life — as it is, here and now, he loves him with all his heart. His best friend, the one who’d picked him up countless times when he’d shattered.

“It’s not wine,” Jaemin affirms. He holds up a bag. “Figured you had enough of that. A better housewarming gift for you.”

Donghyuck catches the edge of a picture frame as he takes the bag from Jaemin, tugging at it and laughing. “Is it a framed headshot?”

“Shut up.” Jaemin says. The tips of his ears are a little red, and when Donghyuck pulls the picture out of the bag he understands why.

Jaemin has been a hobby photographer since he was a teenager — he’d done the shots for their wedding happily, and Renjun had had to threaten violence for him to accept any sort of payment at all. The shot Jaemin had framed and gifted to him was from the wedding reception — one Donghyuck hadn’t even known he’d taken.

The reception had been in a great big ballroom — one of those old style mansions with seashell white walls and crystal chandeliers, mid-afternoon sunlight streaming through the massive windows. In the picture Donghyuck and Renjun are standing on the balcony together, Donghyuck with a glass of champagne in his hand, Renjun with the world in his eyes, and it stops him dizzy, because he’ll never be tired of seeing the way Renjun looks when he’s happy.

The way Renjun looks when he looks at him.

“Sorry it took so long,” Jaemin says. “I kept getting caught up at work. But I’d been meaning to show you this one for a while.”

Donghyuck grips the frame so tight he’s scared he’ll break it for a second, and something wells within him, because he still can’t believe he’s married to Renjun. The boy who’d sat across from him in History class, the boy he’d thrown up on when he’d tried to ask him out to prom, the boy who’d sat with him in the ER for four hours when he’d broke his arm, the boy who he’d shared everything with. Donghyuck has been in love with him since he was seventeen, and though their lives had diverged a hundred times it was like there was some invisible leash between them — some magnetic force that always brought them back together.

Fate. Renjun would call it fate.

“No,” Donghyuck says. He looks up at him and smiles. “It’s fine. Thank you, Jaemin.”

Jaemin grins, because he, best of anyone, knows how sappy Donghyuck is deep down. Bone deep belief in true love, in soulmates, in all those things you were supposed to give up when you were fourteen.

Donghyuck opens his arms and Jaemin comes to him, still cold from the outside, pressing his face into his shoulder, his smile read in his words. “You’re so easy, Donghyuck.”

Jeno and Chenle do arrive on time, and Mark is hilariously late — Donghyuck answers the door just as Renjun is pouring a second round of wine to find him standing sheepishly on the front doorstep, flurries turned into a full on winter snowfall, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Here I was thinking I’d finally gotten rid of you,” Donghyuck says, as he watches Mark take off his boots and add them to the pile of shoes near the rack. He doesn’t doubt someone will try to take someone else’s shoes — it happens every time they have a get together. Jeno will message the group chat and ask who took his shoes, and sometimes it will be Jisung, and sometimes it will be Donghyuck, and then other times he actually has them for once, they just look funny because he got mud on them, or forgot he changed the laces.

“Haha,” Mark says, exhaled, flat. Not a real laugh. “You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

“I know, I’ve been trying since kindergarten,” Donghyuck says, which he has. When he was four he’d buried Mark up to his neck in the sandpit and left him while they were all called in for lunch. He got in trouble for that one. Mark has never let him forget it.

“And you’ll never succeed. You’re stuck with me now, dude.”

“You just haven’t seen me try my hardest yet,” Donghyuck says. Mark snickers, and as they walk back through to the living room he’s stolen from him by Chenle, who shouts his name and throws his arms up, causing Flurry to jump from where she’d been sleeping on Jisung’s lap, eyes wide open for a second before she settles back down.

Renjun is in the kitchen, and once Donghyuck has gotten Mark a beer from the fridge, he joins him, wrapping a hand around his waist and pressing a kiss to his forehead as he leans over to peer at the food he’s attempting to assemble.

“You all good?” Donghyuck asks. It all smells divine. They’d prepped most of it and split the work earlier today, but Renjun always likes to add his own little flair, and for that Donghyuck becomes hands off. He’s the better cook of the two of them, but Renjun’s passion for food is unmatched, and by now they know how to work around each other when it comes to being in the kitchen.

Still, Donghyuck he can’t help but reach over to pick over a single noodle from the bowl in front of them, sticking it in his mouth and licking his lips, earning a less than impressed look from Renjun.

“Fine,” Renjun says, then his face melts. “It’s so good having everyone around again.”