Chapter Text
They sit like that for a handful of slow-moving seconds.
Donghyuck keeps his face buried in Mark’s neck until his breathing evens out, soft and slow and steady, and that’s when it hits. That’s when Mark feels the pain in his knees, the pools of cold water against his skin, the stickiness on his palms and the ache in his chest—
It’s not simple. It’s not simple at all.
It’s wrong.
The shame that had been so carefully poised at the back of his mind tips forward, spills hot down his neck, leaves him breathless, and something like a strangled scream claws up his throat. His hands are on Donghyuck’s chest, pushing him roughly away, and he’s scrambling backward until he hits the shower wall.
Donghyuck blinks, long and slow. “What—”
“I have to go,” Mark gasps. His fingernails scrabble uselessly against the tile. “I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have—” He manages to get to his feet, and he’s pushing open the shower door before Donghyuck can say anything. He finds his t-shirt in a heap on the floor and tugs it over his head. Water trails from his soaked hair and seeps into the collar, and his breathing is rough and shallow in the room’s crushing silence. He thinks about looking for his glasses, wonders if maybe they got stepped on, wonders how he’ll possibly explain it—
“M-Mark, what are you doing?” Donghyuck’s voice lilts in that way it always does when he’s confused, and Mark doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to think of profanities pressed into his neck and that hot, trembling breath—
“I’m sorry,” Mark whispers again, because he can’t think of anything else to say. His stomach twists in on itself, and he feels his fingers start to shake. He won’t look at Donghyuck, he won’t, he can’t.
“What the fuck are you sorry for?”
Mark wonders what he should say to that—wonders how he can encapsulate what he’s feeling into a single neat sentence that won’t leave him sobbing against the tile—but all he can do is curl and uncurl his fingers as a familiar nausea climbs into his mouth.
Because it’s not just about him anymore.
It’s not something he can bury under cold bathroom tiles in the dark. It’s not something he can shake off in the middle of the night, a quiet sob hanging in the back of his throat and unblinking eyes trained on the ceiling. He can’t pretend anymore—pretend like it’s not happening, pretend like it never existed to begin with—because he pulled Donghyuck into it with his own two hands. Regret burns hot on his lashes and sits heavy on his tongue.
He can hear Donghyuck get to his feet. “I swear to God, Mark Lee, if you’re suddenly feeling bad about this—”
“Of course I feel bad, Donghyuck.” He means for it to come out forceful, but it ends up as a choked whisper. “I knew this was wrong; I don’t know why I even…” The tears spill then, and he hates himself for it, for all of it. “You’re my best friend.”
There’s a loaded pause. “So?”
“So it’s not right.” Mark’s voice catches on a sob, his breath hitches, his chest aches so much he wonders if he’s dying. “We can’t… We can’t be like this, not with the way things are—”
“Right, and that only hit you after you came in my mouth, I guess.” Donghyuck shoves past him, pushing him with enough force to make Mark stumble against the wall. He’s pulling his hoodie over his head and yanking his shorts on before Mark can say anything else. “Get out of my room, then. I don’t want to see you if you’re gonna act like this.”
“Hyuck, I—"
“I should’ve fucking known.” Donghyuck’s voice is softer now—too soft—and Mark knows that tone like he knows the pattern of his own breathing. It’s Donghyuck turning in on himself, folding his emotions into tiny tissue-paper slivers that he can tuck into the back of his mind. It’s the Donghyuck who smiles cardboard-stiff when cameras are around and he hasn’t slept in two days. It’s the Donghyuck who flinches when vicious comments flood the internet, but then laughs hollow and choked like a man drowning when Taeyong says don’t let them get to you.
Get to me? It’s the Donghyuck who scoffs and rolls his eyes, even though Mark can clearly see the way his fingers dig into the couch. It takes a lot more than that to take me down, hyung.
It’s Lee Donghyuck, the professional. Lee Donghyuck, the idol. Lee Donghyuck, the boy who pretends like it never hurts at all to exchange his entire adolescence for cookie-cutter fame.
And God, Mark knows him so much better than that.
“Hyuck—”
“It’s my fault, really.” His arms are folded now, slate-gray hair clinging to the sides of his face as he leans against the bathroom’s doorframe. “This is a very Mark-esque move, after all.”
An emotion, vile and nameless, sits acrid on the back of Mark’s tongue. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of a hand. “Wh-What is that supposed to mean?”
He watches as Donghyuck grips onto the sleeves of his own hoodie with a ferocity that leeches the color from his knuckles. “It means that you’re selfish, Mark. Do you really think that you can just fucking take and take because you’re the company’s golden boy? Did you ever once”—the word catches in his throat, and Mark can see tears poised on his lashes—“did you ever once stop to think about…” Donghyuck shakes his head, and his lips purse into a thin line. Mark feels like he’s swallowed glass as he watches him rub angrily at his eyes. “Forget it. Fucking forget it.”
And Mark doesn’t know what to say when Donghyuck acts this way. He didn’t know then, all those years ago when they were roommates and Donghyuck would positively seethe—and he doesn’t know now, standing in front of him as an adult with his heart lodged somewhere in his mouth. Because Donghyuck’s words always carry a little bit of truth. They wouldn’t cut as deep if they didn’t.
He tries again anyway, because he can’t think of anything else to do. “Donghyuck—”
“I said forget it.”
And in the time it takes to blink, the bathroom door opens, Mark is pushed into the pitch-dark hotel room, and the door slams behind his back. Johnny doesn’t flinch at all under the heavy duvet, and Mark is sure that he’s only pretending to sleep. He thinks about running to him, crouching next to his bed, and begging for advice. Because maybe he can’t handle this alone, maybe he can’t handle the gravity of everything he’s done. Maybe he needs someone to place an arm around his shoulders and tell him that he can fix this.
But then again, it wouldn’t be fair to ask Johnny to lie for him.
So he opens the door with trembling fingers, steps into the hallway, and shoves the guilt down as far as it will go.
◧
He’s not sure what he expects when they get home.
He knows that Donghyuck won’t apologize—he has nothing to be sorry for, really, and he’s the type of person who would rather claw and scream and seethe than admit that he was wrong. Mark admires that quality in him—he always has—because he’s the polar opposite and he knows it. He knows he’s wrong, he feels wrong, and it bubbles to the tip of his tongue in every waking moment.
When they finally reach the dorm and their suitcases thud to the ground in the living room, Mark reaches for the sleeve of Donghyuck’s jacket. There had been nothing but radio silence during the plane ride, and Mark feels something familiar twist in his stomach. It’s the same burning regret he always feels when he fights with Donghyuck, and he worries that he’ll choke on it if he doesn’t say something.
Donghyuck merely shakes Mark’s hand off and drags his suitcase to his room.
Taeyong raises an eyebrow. “Again?”
And Mark isn’t sure what he means, so he stands in the middle of the room with his hand grasping at empty air.
Taeyong reaches over and pushes Mark’s arm down to his side. “You guys are fighting again?”
“We’re…” Mark knows that he can’t explain it. He can’t bear to see Taeyong recoil in disgust, to see Johnny and Taeil and Doyoung stare at him with unabashed aversion, to see Yuta and Jungwoo avoid him like he’s contagious. And it sets in then: the panic, the absolute terror—he’s crawling in his own skin, he’s ruined everything—
“Dude, are you okay?” Johnny’s voice, coming from a thousand miles away.
“I’m tired,” Mark chokes out, and he scrambles for the handle of his suitcase. “I need to go to sleep. I… I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s fine.” He hurries down the hallway and lets the bedroom door fall shut behind him. He waits for the sound of approaching footsteps, but when he hears none, he sags against the wall. His suitcase topples to the ground with a clatter.
It’s not wrong. It’s simple.
A strangled sort of laugh rises to his lips. How had he believed that so readily? How could Donghyuck pull him along so easily with those hands, that voice, that mouth—
And it’s a little terrifying, how quickly he falls back into it—how heat flares down his spine at the memory of Donghyuck’s fingers in his hair, his lips on him, his gasps in his ear. How his entire body aches for it, even now, even when his mind is whirring and an endless stream of no no no no no no is clawing its way across his tongue.
So he cries again, pressed against the drywall with his knees pulled up to his chest. He cries because he wants it; he cries because he doesn’t want it, because he hates it, because he needs it. He cries because he knows he’ll never recover from it, not with the way it’s searing itself into his very bones.
They’re Mark and Donghyuck, after all. Donghyuck and Mark. Set on a collision course—the fiery kind, the explosive kind, the kind that destroys entire planets in the time it takes to blink.
◧
A day passes, just a single cycle of the sun rising and setting, and Mark starts to feel worse in a dozen different ways.
Donghyuck doesn’t speak to him for the entire twenty-four hours, but he laughs with Taeil and plays games with Johnny and bites out sarcastic remarks to Doyoung. To anyone else, it looks like he’s carefully carved Mark out of existence, and the gaping, human-shaped hole left behind doesn’t bother him at all. He’s Lee Donghyuck, the professional. Lee Donghyuck, the idol. Lee Donghyuck, the boy who pretends like he can’t see Mark stitching himself back together with aching hands.
But, of course, Mark knows him better than that.
He sees every glance thrown his way when Donghyuck thinks he’s not looking. He sees the blush that sits high on Donghyuck’s cheekbones when they make eye contact for half an instant. He sees the way Donghyuck lingers before going to bed, the way his hand hovers over the doorknob and his lips part, and Mark holds his breath because maybe Donghyuck will turn around this time, and maybe he’ll say that everything is okay.
But he doesn’t, and Mark feels like a fool for even thinking it.
So he pushes open his own bedroom door and lets it shut behind him with a soft click. Doyoung is already fast asleep, phone in hand and headphones threatening to spill onto the floor, and an odd sort of ache climbs into Mark’s throat. He wonders what Doyoung would say if he knew. Reliable, steadfast Doyoung with wit sharper than a knife—Mark doesn’t want to think about how it would change him. He doesn’t want to think about his eyes turning cautious and his voice turning soft. The way he’d meet with Taeyong, one hand on his shoulder, just to throw Mark a worried glance from across the room—
It’s too much, and Mark collapses onto his bed with a sigh. They’ll never know, they can’t know. He’ll shove it down and down and down until he forgets what it ever felt like. A year will pass, and then two and three more, and eventually he’ll forget how Donghyuck’s mouth tastes. He’ll forget the way his breath feels against his neck and the way his hands grip hard enough to bruise. He’ll forget the way his name sounds on Donghyuck’s tongue, desperate and breathy and wanting—In every waking moment, he’ll do his best to forget.
But his unconscious mind isn’t so generous. He’s just buried his face into the pillow when it hits—the memory of Donghyuck’s lithe fingers in his hair, tugging just enough to sting. He frowns into the pillowcase. He knows where this is going, and he’ll be damned if he spends another night curled up on the bathroom floor, so he reaches for his bedside table and grabs his headphones with shaking hands. The music helps a little, soothing the edges of his frazzled nerves, and he lets out a breath of relief as he pulls the blankets up to his chin.
It only takes a second, or maybe even less, because he can’t hide from the darkest depths of his own mind. The dream rolls in heavy like storm clouds, and he’s got Donghyuck pinned to the bedsheets beneath him. He’s a mess already, silver hair tangled and pupils blown wide, and Mark can easily see the trail of hickeys snaking underneath his shirt collar. He had never stopped to think about how Donghyuck might look covered in bruises, but they’re striking against his pretty skin. He wants to leave more, wants to feel Donghyuck tense against his mouth.
Mark, Donghyuck gasps. His eyes flutter closed and he draws in a shaky breath.
Yeah?
I know you want to do it. Donghyuck’s hands wander lower, until his fingers hook around the waistband of Mark’s jeans. Mark can feel every inch of him, every line, plane, and angle, hot as a branding iron through his clothes. I know you want to fuck me.
He doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, but the words send a jolt of electricity down Mark’s spine. His fingers curl into the bedsheets on either side of Donghyuck’s face. Hyuck, no—
Want you to, Donghyuck murmurs. His lips are at Mark’s throat, he’s catching the skin between his teeth, he’s drawing whimpers from Mark’s mouth. Want you to fucking ruin me.
Mark wakes up suddenly enough to leave him dizzy. The sheets are tangled around his legs, his sweat-soaked hair is stuck to his forehead, and he can feel each breath tearing ragged and sharp through his chest. He yanks the headphones from his ears and throws them to the ground. Music still spills through them, fuzzy and soft like cotton stuffed in his ears, and he claws the blankets back with shaking hands.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” It’s Doyoung’s voice, clear and sharp like he’s been awake for hours. “But I’m here if you need anything. I shouldn’t have to keep telling you that, of course, but…” He trails off and raises a brow.
Mark flinches and digs his teeth into his bottom lip. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s never just ‘nothing’ with you two.”
Something washes across Mark then, part shame and part unadulterated terror. “What two—”
“You say Donghyuck’s name in your sleep, you know.” Doyoung rests his chin in his hand. “It’s annoying as hell.”
“I-I don’t, I mean, it’s just—” Mark fumbles for something to say, but every excuse withers in his mouth like flowers past their prime. He can feel his fingernails digging into his thighs. “Sorry.”
Doyoung snorts. “Apologizing to Hyuck would probably be more effective, but thanks anyway, I guess. What are you guys fighting about this time?”
He can’t tell Doyoung, he can’t even begin to explain, so he shakes his head harder than he needs to. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Doyoung rolls his eyes, but he’s quiet for a long time. Mark figures he’s waiting on him to elaborate, and his lips purse when Mark refuses to say anything else. “Well, you aren’t obligated to tell me. Or anyone else, really.” His tone turns a shade sharper. “But remember that this affects all of us. It’s not just about you. You guys aren’t kids anymore, so please stop acting like it.” With that, he rolls over and shoves his headphones back in his ears.
Mark feels ice sneak into his limbs, and he’s stuck frozen to the bedsheets for a handful of minutes. There’s a ringing in his ears and a hole in his chest, deep and aching and raw around the edges. Of course he and Donghyuck aren’t kids anymore—that’s something that he feels more than he sees. He feels it in the way he aches down to his teeth, in the way Donghyuck’s eyes linger on him far longer than they should, in the way petty arguments build into conflagrations that burn them both to the ground. They’re not fourteen, stumbling and awkward and bickering over convenience store lunchboxes. But Mark almost wishes they were, because fourteen hurt a lot less.
He lets out a breath and clambers out of bed, though he’s not sure where he’s going. Something itches underneath his skin, writhing and demanding to be heard, but he shuts the bedroom door behind him and wraps his arms around himself. He’ll ignore it this time and next time and the time after that, because he isn’t fourteen anymore, and he has responsibilities that stretch across the globe and back. He isn’t fourteen anymore, and neither is Donghyuck, so they’ll work it out even if it takes weeks, months, years.
Mark’s insides twist into a knot at the thought, but they’re Mark and Donghyuck, after all—maybe it’s time for them to mitigate the damage done by their collision course.
His bare feet drag across the hardwood, and he finds himself in front of Donghyuck’s bedroom door. His fingers curl into a fist, he raises his hand to knock, and it’s as if Donghyuck is standing directly next to him because his words suddenly ring clear in Mark’s head.
“It means that you’re selfish.”
It’s suffocating to think of, like a necktie pulled against a starched collar, because there’s no way that he’s selfish. Donghyuck was always the one to set limits—the one to take breaks, say no, and drop opinions on camera with a snarky grin. But Mark was the one who gave and gave and gave until his throat scraped raw from crying, and he had to ignore his mother’s phone calls because they hurt too much. Mark was the one who dangled on puppet strings for years because he thought he wasn’t good enough—a scrubbed-clean Canadian Christian with foreign syllables stuck on his tongue and pipe dreams in his head. And Donghyuck knew that. Donghyuck had been there.
There’s an anger in his blood now, so he frowns at Donghyuck’s door and knocks three times for good measure. He doesn’t get an answer, and that only irritates him more. He reaches for the knob, turning it easily and shoving the door open. Jaehyun is there, sprawled across his bed with the blankets pulled over his face. Donghyuck’s sheets are rumpled but he isn’t in them, and Mark can see his phone half-buried under the pillow. He huffs and pulls the door closed. Donghyuck is probably in Johnny’s room, playing video games and eating cheap junk food, and Mark scoffs under his breath. The anger that he feels is a quiet kind, the kind that festers deep under his skin until he transforms it into scathing lyrics that bleed across empty pages. It’s the opposite of Donghyuck’s caustic shouting and seething, but he knows it’s still just as effective when he throws it directly in Donghyuck’s face.
So he pulls the door closed and heads down the hallway with his fingers in tight fists. He’s just passing the bathroom when sounds from within make him stop short—the clatter of things striking the floor and profanities muttered under someone’s breath. His fingers fall slack at his sides, and he takes a step backward. “Are you okay in there?”
The noises stop instantly, and he imagines the person on the other side of the door holding their breath. He’s sure it was all an accident—half-empty containers stacked too high on the bathroom counter that none of them were willing to throw out—but the lack of response sets his nerves on edge. Mark frowns and reaches for the doorknob. “Is everything—”
“Go away.” It’s muffled and thick with tears, but Mark knows that voice better than his own.
“Hyuck?”
“Go away, Mark Lee.”
And Mark almost retreats, because he knows the pitch-dark fury in that tone. He can see Donghyuck’s eyebrows resting low over teary eyes, can feel the thorns that dig into his chest when Donghyuck spits epithets in his face. He knows this Donghyuck, this wildfire side of him that no one else gets to see, and he’s never been good at placating him. But he tries, because they’ve seen each other at their lowest, and Mark feels a sudden, poignant sadness replace the anger in his veins. “Donghyuck, open the door.”
A pause. “Fuck you.”
Mark hates the way it sends electricity down his spine, but he shakes it off and twists the knob. It’s locked, of course, so he tugs at it with a sigh. “Hyuck, please—”
“Don’t you dare say ‘please’ like that to me.” He can hear the acid in it, burning miniature holes through the door. “I don’t fucking owe you anything.”
The sadness curls in the pit of Mark’s stomach. “I never said you did.”
“Then just…” Donghyuck draws in a breath, but it hitches and shudders in a way Mark has heard a hundred times. “Just go.” It’s softer, but only by a little. It’s that softness, though, that makes Mark stay. It’s the way he can feel Donghyuck’s vulnerability seeping through the spaces where the door meets the frame. Because he knows this Donghyuck, too. He knows this torn-to-pieces, paper-thin side of him that no one else gets to see, and he’s always been good at putting him back together.
“I know I don’t have any right to, but…” Mark draws in a breath of his own. “I miss you.”
He’s met with silence. It’s a harsh kind of quiet. A painful kind.
“Donghyuck, I miss you.”
He hears the lock turn, and the door swings open on creaky hinges. Donghyuck’s eyes are bloodshot, the tear tracks on his cheeks glisten harsh yellow in the bathroom light, and the containers from the countertop are strewn on the floor behind him. He doesn’t say anything, but he lowers his gaze when Mark doesn’t look away.
Mark takes a step forward. Donghyuck instantly takes a step back. “Can… Can I come in?”
Donghyuck shrugs and pushes the door open wider. Mark steps gingerly over a bottle of makeup remover, and Donghyuck lets the door fall shut. There’s nothing for a long while, just the sound of Donghyuck’s hitching breaths and the constant drip, drip, drip of the faucet.
Mark clears his throat. “I…”
“You’re a bastard, you know,” Donghyuck whispers, and Mark’s head jerks upward in surprise.
“What?”
Donghyuck meets his gaze then. It’s steely and fierce, but there’s an uncertainty behind it. There always has been. “You’re a fucking bastard.”
And Mark wants to ask why, wants to ask how Donghyuck could possibly be hurting more than he is, but the sadness climbs up his throat and snatches the words from his mouth. All he can do is watch as fresh tears gather along Donghyuck’s lashes.
“You’re really not going to say anything? That’s really how it’s gonna be?” Donghyuck scoffs, and Mark knows that he’s managed to fuse anger and sadness together into something that’s purely and uniquely his. He wishes that he could feel emotions as strongly as Donghyuck does—all at once like a hurricane—but instead he feels drained, hollow. It seems strange that emptiness hurts so much.
“What do you want me to say?”
Donghyuck’s expression crumples like a house of cards. His hands are on Mark’s chest, pushing and shoving until Mark’s back is pressed against the counter, and Mark can’t fight back. He doesn’t want to. He’s always been helpless in the face of Donghyuck’s wrath.
“Say you hate me!” Donghyuck shouts. His hands grab fistfuls of Mark’s t-shirt. “S-Say that you’re fucked up for wanting me like you did!” His words are halting and breathy, and tears run off his chin and seep into Mark’s collar. “Push me away and tell me I’m not good enough for you!”
And Mark was prepared for so many different things—the fury, the tears, the violence—but the self-doubt sinks into his gut like a physical blow. “Why would I ever say you aren’t good enough for me?”
Donghyuck’s fingers tighten in Mark’s shirt, and he tugs at the fabric until it threatens to tear. “Don’t you dare fucking patronize me, Mark Lee,” he hisses. “Don’t you think I know? I fucking know what I look like next to you, the company’s goddamn golden boy who’s never made a mistake in his fucking life.”
Mark can’t breathe, suddenly, and he wants to claw at the invisible noose around his neck. “W-What the hell are you saying?”
“You think you can just take and take and take without asking me how I feel? You think you can just use me to get off like some cheap whore and then pretend it never happened? Because of course the industry’s picture-perfect Mark Lee would never sleep with his sidekick best friend”—he shoves at Mark’s chest again, but there’s nowhere else for him to go—“would he?” Donghyuck’s chest is heaving, and his eyes are bright with the raw sort of fury that could bring entire countries to their knees. “I was stupid enough to think we fucking had something after all these years—”
And this hurts more than Mark ever could have prepared for. It’s an ache that tears his ribcage open and claws his insides into tattered ribbons. It’s a stifling agony, sharp-edged and vicious—because how could Donghyuck ever think that he wasn’t enough? How could Donghyuck ever compare himself to Mark, when Mark spent his entire adolescence hoping to be like Donghyuck? He reaches to wrap his fingers around Donghyuck’s wrists, and he feels the grip on his shirt slacken. “Hyuck,” he breathes. But what can he say—what can he possibly say?
“Don’t call me that.” Donghyuck’s voice shakes.
Mark swallows, but a sob still rises in his throat. Something inside of him topples, shattering against the ground into a million irreparable pieces. “Donghyuck. You’re… You’re everything I ever wanted to be. Th-This doesn’t make any fucking sense—”
“Save it.” Donghyuck drops his hands from Mark’s shirt, and Mark can see him turning inward, folding in on himself the way he always does.
But Mark won’t stand for it this time because they’re not fourteen anymore, and they can’t shut each other out until the storm passes. Mark and Donghyuck, Donghyuck and Mark—they are the storm, raging in a flurry of beating hearts and shared pain until they drown. So Mark grabs Donghyuck’s shirt collar in shaking hands and stumbles forward until his back is pressed against the wall. And he kisses him harder than he should, harder than he needs to, and oh, he’s so afraid of drowning.
Donghyuck claws at his hair, gasps against his mouth, and Mark thinks he’s afraid of drowning, too, because he clings to him with a fierce desperation. He rakes his fingernails down Mark’s back and catches his lip between his teeth like he’s trying to tear him apart. He pulls away just enough, just enough to gasp “I fucking hate you, Mark Lee,” and Mark knows he doesn’t mean it because he’s said it a thousand times before.
So Mark kisses him again, slower and deeper, and he feels Donghyuck’s body go limp against his own. He can taste salt—maybe his tears or maybe Donghyuck’s—but it doesn’t matter because Donghyuck needs to know. He needs to know that Mark can’t think of anything else, that he can’t take a breath without thinking of Donghyuck’s mouth on him, that he can’t close his eyes without seeing miles of honey skin—so he pulls away and tries to speak, but Donghyuck wrenches the air from his lungs.
He’s so pretty like this, with silver curls tangled atop his head and tears shining in his eyes. His skin is flushed dark, his lips are parted, and Mark feels warmth pooling in his chest. “You’re…” The word catches in his throat, so he swallows and tries again. “You’re really beautiful.”
Donghyuck blinks several times before his eyebrows lower. “Stop.”
The reaction catches Mark off guard, and he fumbles for a few seconds. “S-Stop what?”
“I won’t fall for it this time,” Donghyuck says. He takes a step back and folds his arms across his chest. He hunches his shoulders, lets out a harsh sigh, and fixes Mark with a hard stare. “I’m not gonna get on my knees for you just because you compliment me and cry about how much you want it. I thought…” He frowns, swallows, looks away. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
Mark feels his hands start to shake. “I did, I-I do, of course I know—”
“If you really think I’m okay with some friends-with-benefits bullshit that you’ll regret in the morning, you’ve seriously misjudged me. I deserve more than regret from you, Mark.”
Each word aches a little more than the last, and Mark thinks he might throw up right there on the bathroom tile. Because how can he explain that it’s not Donghyuck he regrets, and that he cherishes him a little bit more than he probably should? How can he tell him that it’s not wrong because it’s Donghyuck—it’s wrong because it’s them, because they grew up together in a polished bubble made of fragile glass facades? He lets out a breath, but Donghyuck still won’t look at him. “I’ve never… God, Hyuck, I don’t… I don’t regret that it was you.”
Donghyuck keeps his eyes trained on the ground. Mark sees his lips part like he’s about to speak, waits for the words that’ll carve a hole in his chest—but they never come, and they’re left standing in a heavy sort of silence that feels as wide as the universe.
Mark clears his throat, though it doesn’t do much good. His voice is still paper-thin when he says, “I regret it because it’s us.”
Donghyuck does look up then, and Mark can nearly see the impenetrable wall that he’s built in his head. “What the fuck does that mean?”
And Mark can feel the tears again, climbing hot up his throat. He swallows hard and tries to keep his gaze steady. “I… I think I want this, but… We can’t, you know we can’t—”
“We can’t what?”
“We can’t… We can’t do whatever this is, whatever this thing is between us—” And he wants to put it into words, wants to take the suffocating, heart-wrenching longing in his chest and spin it into something that Donghyuck can make sense of—but how can he, when the very nature of it makes no sense?
“There’s nothing between us.” The words are cold, frozen and sharp at the edges, but they shake just enough—just enough for Mark to know that he isn’t alone in this. Donghyuck has always been a myriad of things, but a good liar wasn’t one of them.
“You know that isn’t true,” he whispers.
He sees Donghyuck’s fingernails dig into his palms, and it’s a long time before he speaks. “So what? You don’t regret that it was me, but you regret that it was us, and you want whatever this is, but you don’t want whatever this is? Just fucking spit it out; I’m not going to stay in here all night waiting for you to explain yourself—”
“I think I’m—" Mark begins, but the words in love with you don’t slip from his tongue. They’re stuck somewhere between his heart and his mouth, and he feels his stomach fall through the floor. The air becomes too thin to breathe. A ringing picks up in his ears, sharp and tinny, and he’s suddenly desperate. Something is tearing through him, hot and inexorable as wildfire, and he thinks he sees the same thing trapped behind Donghyuck’s eyes. He thinks he feels it when they touch, thinks he hears it when Donghyuck tells him how simple it should be. It’s the same force that put them on their path to collision, the same force that always knew this would happen in a world-shattering shower of sparks—a cruel force, Mark thinks, but who is he to deny the will of the universe? “I think…that maybe I’m in love with you? I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never been in love so I guess I can’t know for sure, and it probably doesn’t matter because it’s not like we can even… There’s just—there’s just something that I can’t…” The words are tumbling from his lips, and he knows he isn’t making any sense, but he stops short when he catches sight of Donghyuck’s face.
His eyes are wide, his lips are parted, and he’s staring at Mark like it’s the first time he’s ever seen him. He makes a few aborted attempts to speak, until all Mark hears are sharp intakes of breath that die in his throat. And Mark starts to think that maybe he’s made a mistake—maybe the wildfire in Donghyuck’s eyes meant nothing, maybe the way he leaned into his touch and gasped in his ear meant nothing—but then Donghyuck takes a step forward. He lets out a heavy breath, and the expression on his face is one that Mark knows well: fear.
Donghyuck is afraid.
And he’ll never show that fear to anyone else because he’s Donghyuck, and Donghyuck likes to piece together patchwork suits of armor that he can hide behind when things get hard. Even here, even now, Mark can see the way he clings to it and refuses to let it go.
But Mark knows him better than that. He always has.
“Hyuck,” he breathes.
Donghyuck shakes his head. He swallows once and then twice. He wets his lips, his hands come up to rest on Mark’s shoulders, and all Mark hears is a soft, “I really fucking hate you, Mark Lee,” before he kisses him.
And Mark knows he doesn’t mean it because he’s said it a thousand times before, so he digs his fingers into Donghyuck’s waist and kisses him back. The edge from before is gone entirely, and the sweetness of it melts down his spine and leaves him boneless. He reaches up to trail his fingers along Donghyuck’s jawline, and he feels it when Donghyuck sighs against his mouth. He feels it when Donghyuck slides his fingers into his hair and lets his tongue glide along Mark’s lower lip. And his body reacts to it before his mind has caught up, because he hears the breathy whimpers in the back of his own throat, and he barely registers the pads of his fingers pressing harder against Donghyuck’s jaw.
And he thinks that maybe Donghyuck is just as lost in it, because he tilts his head further and lets his tongue catch against Mark’s teeth. He tugs at his hair, arches his back until their chests are pressed flush, and kisses Mark like he never wants him to breathe again. Mark thinks he would be okay with it, drowning in Lee Donghyuck until he forgets what air tastes like, because it’s him, because it’s them, because this was always meant to happen—
And who is he to deny the will of the universe?
◧
They leave early the next morning, though Mark can’t remember what for—a tour, probably, and he wonders why they bothered to come home for only a day. He has just enough time to clean out his suitcase and repack, and he’s sure he’s forgotten a handful of things by the time the front door locks behind them. But his brain feels like a lump of cotton stuffed between his ears, fuzzy and unfocused, and he barely makes it to the van without tripping over his own feet.
He feels a hand on his elbow just as he’s about to step inside. He looks over his shoulder to see Yuta eyeing him with raised brows. “Are you okay? You look like you hardly slept.”
Mark isn’t sure how to respond to that. He had slept for an hour—maybe two—because his brain had insisted on replaying the night’s events, over and over and over again until he could hardly breathe. His thoughts were an endless loop of Donghyuck—Donghyuck sighing against his mouth, pulling away and staring at him with heavy, guarded eyes. Donghyuck whispering I have to go to bed, and so do you, before pressing a fleeting kiss to the corner of Mark’s lips and slipping out the door. Donghyuck letting the door fall closed behind him, and the way Mark could hear him linger in the hallway far longer than he needed to.
But, more than anything, he thought of the way he had poured his heart onto the floor—raw, aching, desperate—and Donghyuck hadn’t said anything back. He thought of the way the word love felt on his tongue, the way it seared a hole through his very core, the way Donghyuck looked at him when he said it—like he was a stranger, like he’d never seen him before. So he spent the night with his hands twisted anxiously in the sheets, wondering what it all meant, wondering if he’d made a mistake, wondering why Donghyuck had kissed him breathless if he wasn’t willing to say it in return.
“I’m fine,” he murmurs, but he can’t look Yuta in the eye. “Just didn’t sleep a lot.” He climbs into the van without another word and sits as far from Donghyuck as he can. It’s not much—Johnny and Taeyong have already taken the front seats, and Donghyuck is pressed against one of the middle windows with his arms wrapped around Taeil’s waist, so Mark is left with a seat in the very back. He’s still directly behind Donghyuck, and several minutes pass with his eyes locked on that unruly silver hair. And he’s sure Donghyuck notices, because his shoulders hunch and he steals glances in his periphery, but he says nothing. So the knot in Mark’s stomach grows, larger and larger and larger still, until nausea sits sharp on the back of his tongue.
The plane ride could have been two hours or twelve—Mark isn’t sure where the time goes when he’s stuck inside his own head. One minute he’s strapped into his seat with Jaehyun asleep on his shoulder, and the next he’s dragging his suitcase into a hotel lobby at half past midnight. They crowd into the elevator, knocking shoulders and elbows and suitcase handles, and spill out into a dimly lit hallway seven floors up.
“Room assignments,” Johnny says with a cheeky grin. He has a pile of keycards balanced on his open palm. “Fight to the death. Winner gets to room with me.”
“Shut up,” Donghyuck mutters, reaching forward and swiping a card off the top. “We all know that I’m the only one you can stand rooming with.”
Taeil snorts and sidles up to Jaehyun to whisper in his ear. Jaehyun rolls his eyes and shoves him, but Taeil only doubles over in silent laughter.
Taeyong takes a step forward and snags the card from Donghyuck’s grasp. “You’re rooming with Mark until you two work out this little spat you’ve got going on.” He levels a pointed look in Donghyuck’s direction before shifting his gaze to Mark. “We’re not dealing with this again. Fix whatever the hell it is, and then you can go wherever you want.” Mark reaches for the card, but Taeyong snatches it back at the last instant. “Am I clear?”
And Mark won’t ever admit it, but he finds Taeyong intimidating in times like these, because he’s got a natural air of authority about him that none of them can argue with. It’s rare that he gets like this—eyebrows low and voice sharp as a scythe—and Mark feels guilt lodge deep in the pit of his stomach for bringing it out. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Sorry, hyung.”
Taeyong lets out a sigh, and Mark sees the exact moment when the anger dissipates and fondness seeps in. His eyes turn soft, one corner of his mouth quirks up in a half-smile, and he shakes his head. “Don’t apologize to me, just fix it. I know things are hard right now, but…” He trails off and drops the keycard in Mark’s hand. “You know how much we’ve got riding on this. I don’t want anything else getting in the way.”
“Yeah,” Mark says again, because he can’t think of anything better. “Yeah, I know.” He closes his hand around the card and drags his suitcase to the door. It opens on silent hinges, and he leans his back against it while Donghyuck hauls his luggage into the room. They stand like that—in a crushing, awkward kind of silence—until Mark lets the door fall closed.
Donghyuck clears his throat. “I’ll shower first, if that’s fine with you.”
Mark hums and raises one shoulder in a shrug. There’s still a knot sitting heavy in his stomach, so he perches on the edge of the nearest bed and watches in silence as Donghyuck rifles through the clothing in his suitcase.
“Oh,” he says softly, plucking something from a side pocket. “Thought you might want these.” He tosses the object unceremoniously, and Mark sees the lenses catch the light.
“Are those my glasses?” He scrambles forward on hands and knees until he can just make out the glasses nestled in the plush carpet. “Dude, be careful with those!”
Donghyuck scoffs and snatches them up from the ground. He climbs to his feet and strides to the edge of the bed, where Mark is still sitting on his knees with his fingers buried in the duvet. “You’re the one who wasn’t careful,” he mutters. He leans in closer—too close, so close that Mark can feel his breath ghosting across his skin—and hooks the frames over Mark’s ears. The glasses are so low on his nose that they nearly fall off, but Mark can’t bring himself to fix them. “I found them on the hotel’s bathroom floor, dude. You’re lucky they didn’t get stepped on.” He pauses then, with his face mere inches from Mark’s own, and Mark wonders if they’re thinking the same thing. He wonders if Donghyuck lies awake at night, twisting and turning in sweat-damp sheets as he remembers Mark’s hands on him—
But then Donghyuck takes a step back, and Mark can only watch as he snags a change of clothes from the top of his bag and shuts the bathroom door softly behind him.
And Mark can’t stand it, the way his throat closes up and tears prick the corners of his eyes. He can’t stand the way his heart climbs into his mouth and screams that he made a mistake, that he was stupid and misguided, that he ruined everything. Because what can he possibly say, now that he’s laid himself bare in front of Donghyuck? What can he possibly do, now that there’s no way they’ll ever return to what they had before? How can they continue on this precarious collision course when he has no idea what it all means?
So when he hears the water turn off, he clambers out of bed and makes his way to the bathroom door. He has to ask, he needs to know, because he can’t spend another night staring holes into the ceiling. But he hesitates at the last moment with his fist poised to knock, because it occurs to him that maybe knowing will hurt more than he’s prepared for.
But then the door swings inward and Donghyuck is there in boxers and an oversized t-shirt that he stole from Mark’s closet, hair disheveled and hanging in his eyes, and Mark feels pathetic. This is Donghyuck, his Donghyuck, the boy who held him every winter for three straight years when he missed home. This is Donghyuck, the boy who told him he was good enough, handsome enough, dedicated enough when he felt like he would snap on the end of the industry’s puppet strings. And it’s there again, that inexorable wildfire burning at the tips of his fingers.
“Why,” he starts, but it sticks in his throat. He swallows. “Why didn’t you say it back?”
Donghyuck blinks. “Why didn’t I say what?”
“You know…” Mark pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, but he’s not sure what else to do with his hands. “I said—"
“You said you think you’re in love with me.” Donghyuck’s voice is a shade sharper, and he turns his gaze to the ground. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and the knot in Mark’s stomach doubles in size. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that?”
Mark feels ice creep up the back of his neck. “I mean, I wanted to tell you because I thought maybe you felt the same—”
“For God’s sake, Mark Lee.” It’s barely above a whisper, but when Donghyuck looks up, Mark sees it again—the wildfire, the force that led them to collision, burning until he feels like it’ll tear through his skin. “I don’t live my life in half-sure uncertainties like you do, you fucking idiot. I know I’m in love with you; I’ve known it since we were sixteen. And you know what? It scares me, it fucking terrifies me, because I know you. You’ve never been sure of anything; all you ever do is doubt and doubt and doubt until you make yourself sick—” He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, and Mark can see the tears pooling along his lashes. “So how do you think I felt, huh? When you told me you wanted me, and I thought we actually had something, and then you just—” He shakes his head. He draws in a handful of shaky breaths. “If you’re not sure, I don’t want to hear it. We can forget it ever happened—”
“I can’t,” Mark chokes out. His fingers shake at his sides, so he clasps his hands together. “I can’t forget. I-I can’t close my eyes without thinking about you.” And maybe, he thinks, that’s all love really is. This gaping hole in his chest that only Donghyuck can fill, this blatant desire on the tips of his fingers that only Donghyuck can sate, this constant noise in his head that only Donghyuck can quiet—maybe it’s never been anything else. Maybe he’s never been more sure of anything in his life. “I’m in love with you, Lee Donghyuck,” he whispers. The knot in his stomach starts to dissolve. “I’m in love with you, and it scares the shit out of me.”
He hears Donghyuck’s sharp inhale. He watches Donghyuck reach up and wipe the tears from his eyes with shaking hands. “Nothing to be scared of,” he says after a long while. “You and me, me and you. We’ve always been this way.”
And that’s when Mark understands.
It’s not wrong. It’s simple.
It’s simple because it’s Donghyuck; it’s simple because it’s them. It’s simple because Mark needed him when they were fourteen, and they stumbled over their own feet and bickered over convenience store lunchboxes—he needed him then, and he needs him now, living together in their polished bubble made of fragile glass facades. It’s inexorable, a wildfire that rages through them both, so he won’t try to fight it. Not anymore.
He reaches for Donghyuck’s waist, pulls him close, wraps his arms around him as tight as he can. Donghyuck buries his face in Mark’s shoulder, and they stand like that for seconds that stretch into minutes, and minutes that stretch into eternity.
“Hey,” Donghyuck whispers. It feels like it’s been hours since either of them have spoken, and Mark startles at the heat of Donghyuck’s breath against his neck. “We should go to bed. Early day tomorrow.”
“Y-Yeah.” Mark nods and drops his arms from Donghyuck’s waist. “Sure.” He watches as Donghyuck pulls away, pads across the room, and throws back the duvet. Heat curls in the pit of his stomach, because he knows he won’t sleep with Donghyuck’s pretty skin pressed against his. He swallows back the want that rises wild in his throat, steps out of his jeans, and places his glasses on the bedside table. It’ll be another long, cruel night, but he supposes he’s grown used to those.
The bed is cold when he slides under the covers, and a shiver wracks down his spine. Donghyuck’s eyes are on him, deep and dark, and he’s at Mark’s side in an instant. He snakes an arm around Mark’s waist, hitches a leg over his hip, and buries his face in his chest. And it’s way too much all at once, because Mark’s heart threatens to tear through his ribcage, and he thinks that maybe he’ll die like this, with Donghyuck’s body warm against his own.
“We’ve shared a bed a million times,” Donghyuck murmurs. “So this isn’t really any different, is it?” But Mark can feel the way his fingers dig into the small of his back, and it sends electricity all the way down to his toes.
“It’s different,” he manages to choke out. “You know it is.”
Donghyuck merely hums and curls his fingers underneath the hem of Mark’s t-shirt. His hands are hot against his skin, and Mark bites back the gasp that threatens to spill past his lips. Donghyuck trails his fingers along Mark’s spine, soft and slow, before tilting his head back to press his lips against Mark’s neck. It’s a gentle thing, barely-there, but then he does it a second time, and Mark feels the almost imperceptible sting of teeth on his skin. He can’t stop the gasp this time, high and breathy as it tumbles from his tongue, and Donghyuck hums again. “Are you sensitive here?”
Mark’s first instinct is to deny it, but it’s Donghyuck, and Donghyuck always knows. “Y-Yes,” he whispers. And he thinks that maybe it’s what Donghyuck wanted to hear, because he does it again, harder than before, and a shudder races along Mark’s entire body.
“Can’t mark you up here,” Donghyuck says softly. His breath is white-hot along Mark’s neck. “People might see.” His hands go back to toying with the hem of Mark’s shirt, and Mark knows what he wants before he says it. “Can I take this off?”
Mark doesn’t trust his voice, so he nods mutely and moves to sit up. Donghyuck takes his time, bunching the fabric in his fingers and letting his knuckles graze against Mark’s skin as he moves. And when the shirt is off and thrown to the ground, Donghyuck only stares with dark, dark eyes. Mark feels his gaze like molten lead dripping hot down his shoulders, and he wants. He wants with the intensity of a thousand hurricanes, but he holds back for Donghyuck—because the last time was Mark taking and taking, taking and regretting—and Donghyuck deserves so much more than that.
So when Donghyuck climbs into his lap, Mark rests his hands lightly on his waist. And when Donghyuck leans closer, until his lips are only a hair’s breadth from Mark’s, he closes his eyes and focuses on the feeling of Donghyuck’s soft exhalations against his mouth. This time, he wants Donghyuck to know. He wants adoration to seep through the very tips of his fingers until Donghyuck can feel nothing else. He wants every kiss, every breath, every movement to be worthwhile and grounded in the knowledge that he’s loved.
“Donghyuck.” Mark lets his eyes flutter open, and Donghyuck is staring at him with something so raw and so genuine, he feels his chest constrict. “Hyuck, I love you. I love you so much, a-and… I want to do it right this time. I want you to know—”
But Donghyuck cuts him off by pressing his lips to Mark’s own, and it’s there again—the sweetness, the gentleness that knocks the air from his lungs, and their tongues meet on a shared sigh. It’s feather light when Donghyuck’s fingers thread through Mark’s hair, and when Mark reaches to cradle Donghyuck’s face in his hands. Donghyuck moves closer until their chests are pressed flush, until Mark can feel every plane and angle of his body hot through his clothes. And when he pulls back to breathe, he’s struck speechless by the way Donghyuck’s eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks, and by the way his pretty lips part on the softest sigh.
“I love you, too, Mark Lee,” he whispers back. His eyes open, he blinks long and slow, and his mouth curves in a gentle smile. “I always have.”
The warmth that floods Mark’s system nearly makes him cry, so he kisses Donghyuck again because he’s no good with words and he knows it. But he thinks that Donghyuck understands, because he whimpers soft and high into every kiss, and his body goes boneless against Mark’s chest when Mark slips his hands beneath the hem of his t-shirt.
“You can take it off,” Donghyuck gasps. “Wanna feel you.”
The shirt is on the floor in the next instant, and it’s Mark’s turn to stare. He’s seen Donghyuck shirtless more times than he can count, but nothing compares to this—Donghyuck breathless and in his lap, with a pretty flush trailing all the way from his face to his chest. “Jesus Christ,” Mark murmurs. He lets his fingers glide from Donghyuck’s collarbone down to his waist. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
Donghyuck ducks his head, and it’s so unlike him to be bashful that it catches Mark off guard. “I’m not much compared to you.”
“Stop it,” Mark breathes. He leans forward to press his lips along Donghyuck’s neck, soft and gentle. Donghyuck’s breath hitches and stutters in his throat. “You’re stunning in every way.” His lips reach Donghyuck’s collarbone, and he freezes as he remembers the image his unconscious mind had conjured—this skin covered in dark bruises, Donghyuck’s eyes half-lidded as he begged for Mark to ruin him—and his fingers dig into Donghyuck’s hips of their own accord. He feels Donghyuck stiffen under his hands. “Wanna mark you up so bad,” Mark murmurs. “Is…Is that okay?”
He hears it when Donghyuck swallows. “Y-Yeah.”
And Mark wastes no time pressing his lips to the skin and catching it between his teeth. The sharp “ah” that falls from Donghyuck’s mouth stokes the fire in his veins, so he does it again and again and again, until Donghyuck is whimpering and pulling at his hair. And he’s about to pull back, about to admire the way red and purple bloom across his chest, when Donghyuck rolls his hips down in one fluid motion. The contact sends pleasure sizzling up Mark’s spine, and a sharp hiss leaves his mouth just as Donghyuck whines and collapses against him.
It’s such a pretty sound—Donghyuck whining high in his throat—so Mark rocks his hips up as hard as he can, just to hear it again. Donghyuck’s fingers tighten in his hair, and he whines long and loud against Mark’s neck. “Again,” he gasps. “Again, please.” And Mark has never been able to deny him in any capacity, so he digs his fingers into Donghyuck’s hips and pulls him forward, rocking up against him long and slow and drawn-out, until Donghyuck’s whines devolve into breathy, gasping whimpers. He’s raking his fingernails down Mark’s back and trembling in his lap, and Mark can feel heat coiling low in his stomach.
“H-Hyuck.” He releases his grip on Donghyuck’s hips, and he can see the angry red outline of each of his fingers. He wonders if they’ll bruise later, wonders if Donghyuck will ghost his hands over them and think about this—he swallows and reaches up to card his fingers through Donghyuck’s hair. “Hyuck, baby—” It slips from his tongue before he’s able to catch it. He feels Donghyuck tense, feels his breath stutter against his neck.
“Wh-what did you…”
Mark draws in a shaky breath, and something like panic stirs in his chest. “Sorry, can I…can I call you that?”
He feels Donghyuck’s teeth graze against his skin. “Say it again.”
“Baby,” Mark breathes, and he hears the whine in the back of Donghyuck’s throat.
“Y-yes, again.”
And Mark feels bolder now, with Donghyuck gasping prettily against his skin, so he tightens his fingers in Donghyuck’s hair and dips his head until his lips ghost along his ear. “Donghyuck, baby,” he whispers, catching his earlobe between his teeth, “tell me what you want.”
“F-Fuck,” Donghyuck gasps. He rakes his fingernails down Mark’s back again, hard enough to sting, and the pain mixed with the profanity leaves Mark shaking. “Want you to—” He exhales once, harsh. “Want you to fuck me.”
The words hit harder than Mark would have imagined, a hundred times harder than dream-Donghyuck in his unconscious fantasies, and he aches down to his teeth with how much he wants it. But it’s not about him, really, so he pulls back and loosens his grip on Donghyuck’s hair. He lets his fingers skate along his cheek, his jawline, until they hook underneath his chin and lift his face from where it’s buried in Mark’s neck.
His eyes are teary, pupils blown wide against dark irises, and his hair sits in damp, tangled curls against his forehead. He’s splayed across Mark’s lap, hard and leaking through the thin fabric of his boxers, with darkening bruises littering his shoulders and chest. The inexorable wildfire flares through Mark’s body again, because Donghyuck is utterly flawless, and maybe Mark was always meant to notice.
“God, you’re so pretty like this.” He leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together, and he feels Donghyuck’s trembling breath against his lips. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Completely sure,” Donghyuck whispers. “Never been more sure of anything.”
And Mark wants to do it right this time, so he keeps his eyes locked on Donghyuck’s as he trails his hands lower and lower. He listens for the soft sigh that slips past Donghyuck’s teeth when Mark tugs at his boxers and finally touches him. He feels for the way Donghyuck’s muscles tense, for the way he rocks against Mark’s hand like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He watches for Donghyuck’s eyes to slip closed, and when they do, he buries his face in his shoulder.
“So pretty,” he breathes. “So, so pretty.”
Donghyuck’s back arches at the praise, and a sharp whine catches in his chest.
“You like it,” Mark murmurs, trailing the tip of his tongue along Donghyuck’s collarbone, “when I tell you how pretty you are.” He tightens his grip around Donghyuck just enough, just enough for him to hiss and grind his hips down hard.
“Mark, please—”
And Mark knows what Donghyuck wants, he knows where this is going, but a sudden rush of self-doubt saps all of his confidence. His hand stills, and Donghyuck blinks down at him, chest heaving and eyes bright.
“What—”
“I…” He digs his teeth into his bottom lip, and he hates the way anxiety rests heavy in his stomach. “What if I’m no good at this?”
Donghyuck tilts his head to the side, and Mark half-expects him to laugh. But he doesn’t, because he’s Donghyuck, and Donghyuck always knows. “I’ve never done this, either,” he says softly. “But I know that this is good”—he lets his fingertips trail along Mark’s spine—“and I know that this is good”—he leans forward to press his lips against Mark’s own—“and I know that there’s no one else I’d rather be with. And that’s enough for me.”
And Mark thinks it’s enough for him, too, because it’s Donghyuck—because it’s them. So when Donghyuck hooks his fingers around the waistband of Mark’s boxers, he lets him tug them off. And when Donghyuck slips from his lap to fetch a tiny bottle from a pocket of his suitcase, Mark quirks a brow and watches the flush creep up Donghyuck’s face.
“It helps,” he mutters, closing his fingers around it and climbing back into Mark’s lap. “When I’m alone and I think about—” He sucks in a breath and looks away.
Mark skims his fingertips across Donghyuck’s thighs. “Think about what?”
“This,” he breathes. The cap clicks open, and Mark’s breath hitches when Donghyuck pours the liquid over his own hand. “You. Us.”
Something molten and aching stirs in Mark’s stomach, climbing up his chest and wiping his mind blank. And he can only watch as Donghyuck works himself open with his own fingers, spread across his lap with his other hand digging into the sheets. He makes torturously slow work of it, dipping his fingers in until he whines, only to pull them back out with his eyes screwed shut and harsh gasps falling from his mouth. And Mark wonders if he could do it better, wonders if he could render Donghyuck boneless with his fingers alone, so he grabs the bottle with shaking hands and flips it open.
Donghyuck freezes and fixes Mark with a dark, half-lidded stare. “Wh—”
“I want to try,” Mark whispers. He reaches for Donghyuck’s waist, pulls him closer until their chests are pressed flush, and holds his breath.
Donghyuck is silent for several long seconds, but then he nods and loops his arms around Mark’s neck.
The anxiety returns for half an instant, and Mark hesitates. “Please tell me if I hurt you.”
Donghyuck’s eyes are so, so dark, and the look on his face makes Mark feel like the skin is melting off his bones. “I will.”
And Mark almost feels stupid for hesitating, because this is Donghyuck, his Donghyuck, the boy who tore him apart and pieced him back together with his own two hands, so he swallows and slides two fingers inside without wasting another instant.
“Oh, God.” It’s quiet and small, and Mark wonders if he imagined it, but then a shudder snakes down Donghyuck’s spine and he says it again.
“Is… Is it okay?” Mark murmurs.
“It’s—” Donghyuck’s voice breaks, and he rolls his hips down hard against Mark’s hand. A low moan tumbles off his tongue, and the sound steals all the air from Mark’s lungs. “It’s so fucking good, God, please—”
And that’s all it takes for the anxiety in Mark’s chest to dissolve. He presses in harder, deeper, until Donghyuck is trembling and clinging to his shoulders. He adds another finger, and something alarmingly like a sob tears past Donghyuck’s teeth.
Mark’s limbs freeze in panic. “Hyuck, baby, am I hurting you?”
“Ah, God, no,” he whimpers. He leans forward to press open-mouthed kisses along Mark’s jawline. “Just don’t—don’t wanna come like this, not without you—”
Desire zips through Mark’s veins, unchecked and wild. “Sh-should I stop?”
Donghyuck nods with his lips still hot against Mark’s jaw, but he whines sharp and high when Mark pulls his fingers back. His teeth catch at Mark’s skin, over and over again until Mark knows there will be bruises he can’t hide. “Please,” he whines. “P-Please, Mark, don’t make me wait—”
And it’s only then that Mark realizes how hard he is, how he aches with every movement of Donghyuck’s hips against his, how he needs Donghyuck like he needs air to breathe. There’s no guilt, no shame, no voice shouting in his head—there’s only the two of them, reduced to a series of electrically charged points set on a collision course.
It’s evident that Donghyuck feels it, too, because he wastes no time. His fingernails dig hard into Mark’s shoulders as he lowers himself down and down and down, and Mark’s mind fizzles out into a hazy blackness. It’s too much—the way Donghyuck clenches white-hot around him, the way his entire body tenses and shakes—and Mark’s eyes screw shut as a broken moan slips past his teeth.
“Jesus Christ, Hyuck,” he whispers, reaching out blindly for something—anything—to keep him grounded. His hands find Donghyuck’s thighs, and he’s met with a breathy, desperate whine. He opens his eyes to see Donghyuck’s pretty features twisted in obvious pain, and a bolt of anxiety skitters down his back. “H-Hey, do…do we need to stop? Donghyuck, we can st—”
Donghyuck shakes his head hard. His hands are sweat-slick against Mark’s shoulders. “It’s…” He exhales once, quivering and soft. “It’s good. I’m fine, it’s…it’s good.”
And Mark would rather die a thousand deaths than see Donghyuck in pain, so he cradles his face in his hands and lets his thumbs ghost along his cheeks, his jawline, his lips. “Focus on me.” He feels Donghyuck sigh against his mouth. “Just relax and focus on me, baby.” He kisses everywhere he can reach—Donghyuck’s nose, his chin, the soft skin behind his ear—until the tension seeps from Donghyuck’s muscles.
And then Donghyuck is moving, rocking slowly against him, and Mark is sure the universe stutters to a halt. He’s sure that every ounce of meaning has been drained from everything he’s ever seen, everything he’s ever heard or done or felt—because nothing could possibly matter more than this. Nothing could matter more than the way Donghyuck feels around him and the way his back arches into Mark’s every touch. Nothing could matter more than the moans that roll off his tongue and the bruises he presses into Mark’s skin. Nothing could matter more than Donghyuck—the way he gasps Mark’s name over and over again, sliding his fingers into his hair and begging for more, more, please, God—
The coil of desire in Mark’s stomach burns wild, and his nails dig crescents into Donghyuck’s thighs, his hips, his back. And he wants to taste him, wants to feel his breath hot against his mouth, wants to swallow down the way he says his name— “Kiss me,” he begs.
Donghyuck obliges instantly, and it’s not desperate in the frenzied way Mark would have expected. It’s a slow desperation, the kind that seeps through skin and bone, heavy and undeniably fierce. And Mark can’t help but to arch into it, to savor the way Donghyuck moans and shudders against him, to catch his tongue along Donghyuck’s teeth and melt at the way he whimpers.
And it’s not long before Donghyuck’s hips stutter and his muscles tense. His fingers tug at Mark’s hair hard enough to hurt, and a strangled gasp catches in the back of his throat. “I…” He inhales sharply. “Ah, God, I… T-Touch me, ah—”
Mark wants it to be good for him, wants to pour every second of every day into the pursuit of it, so he strokes him gently, slowly, until Donghyuck is gasping hard against his mouth. He grips his waist with his free hand and guides his hips down, again and again, and the way Donghyuck sobs his name wipes every other thought from his brain. There’s only this, only them, finally giving in to their inevitable collision course.
So it’s only right when they fall apart at the same time with stuttering breaths and shaking hands. It’s only right when Donghyuck keens against Mark’s mouth and tells him how much he loves him, adores him, needs him. It’s only right when Mark’s muscles sizzle with electricity and he can think of nothing else—only Donghyuck and his hands, his lips, his skin, his voice—And he can only hope that Donghyuck knows, can only hope that he managed to press every ounce of adoration into his skin with trembling fingers.
But when Donghyuck pulls back to stare at him with teary eyes and parted lips, he can see it—the way the adoration is returned tenfold. He can hear it in the way Donghyuck laughs, soft and breathy and a little dazed. He can feel it in the way Donghyuck leans in to whisper soft “I love you”s against his shoulder. And Mark thinks that maybe the inexorable force between them stops holding its breath, if only for a second. Because they’re Mark and Donghyuck, after all. Donghyuck and Mark, set on a collision course—the fiery kind, the explosive kind, the kind that destroys entire planets in the time it takes to blink.
And who is he to deny the will of the universe?