Archive of Our Own ^beta

[NOW]

Mark can’t really remember the last time he wasn’t tired. 

It’s an odd feeling, constant exhaustion. At some point your body just starts to accept that it will function at 50% forever. Bone-deep is how they always describe it. Mark wants to argue that it’s not just your bones, but everywhere, your entire body crumples with the need to be curled up and held like a baby. Obviously, it gives you signs of its distress.

Mark knows all about the signs: the fuzzy vision, the headaches, the muscle pain, the trouble relaxing at all from the franticness of a worn out body.

Not that Mark gets given much time to relax.

He loves it, he does. Sometimes he’s on stage or listening to something he created, something that has his words on it and he understands his luck.

Or, not luck — Donghyuck has always hated it when he calls it luck — hard work. Sacrifice.

Sometimes, though… sometimes he wishes he was out, playing basketball at 3AM, sleeping, waking up after eight hours, getting his college degree like his brother did. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t in the practice room again as he tries to fix the angle of his arm when he turns. Wasn’t watching videos over and over until his dancing was acceptable.

The perfectionism runs in his blood, sitting there making sure each finger extends correctly.

He tries to ignore the growing pain in his skull. Tries to ignore the sweet siren song of sleep that chases him through every alley of the SM building. 

All at once he feels made for this and completely undone by it. 

He flexes his fingers again, eyes straying to the only other person left in the practice room — sitting on the chairs on his phone, head against the wall, hair fluffy like someone has just run their fingers through it.

In the middle of all this, somehow amongst all of that, this, everything that Mark has to deal with, in his overwhelmed, exhaustion-addled brain — in the middle of that, is Haechan. 

Donghyuck.

No matter what, there is always Donghyuck.

Always has been, always will be.

Mark looks at him for a long time. The only person left waiting for him, the only person who would. At some point Donghyuck looks up. The air between them fizzles, the distance, the aching. 

“Mel.” He says, not quietly, but not sharply either. It’s his new thing — never calling Mark ‘Mark’ or ‘hyung’ but some variation. Mark thought at first that it was just a bit for the cameras, but when has Donghyuck ever done things halfway, or just for fun? He’s pretty sure his contact name in Donghyuck’s phone is now some sort of variation on Milk. He grins like a fox every time he gets away with it, because he knows he’s the only person who can get away with it. Mark doesn’t know why he lets him. “Let’s go?”

Mark nods. Slowly. He thinks his muscles creak as he does it. He wants to say let me just get this right or five more minutes but he can't, not while Donghyuck is waiting. Not when he knows Donghyuck needs to rest. He packs up his stuff quickly and takes off his beanie subconsciously to shove it onto Donghyuck’s head. Fluffy hair. Fingers running through it. “You never dress warm enough.”

Donghyuck huffs. “And you don’t sleep enough, hyung, but here we are.”

Touché. Mark only sighs.

Donghyuck walks out, opening the door to leave and holding it, standing there for Mark.

He has no makeup on, the dark circles under his eyes pronounced and a mask pushed just beneath his chin. This thing — this other thing, something that isn’t exhaustion bubbles up in him. It makes him just a little lighter, just a little steadier.

Amongst all this: Donghyuck. Donghyuck. Always Donghyuck.

[THEN]

Mark doesn’t remember a lot about the blur of getting into the company, of his brother’s hands twisted tight in his hoodie whispering good luck trying not to let the jealousy show, of his mother wiping the tears off his face at the airport, of the size of Seoul when you’re small and dream-filled and can’t quite speak the language right. 

He doesn’t remember much of that. He doesn’t try to.

He remembers the room he was in when he met Donghyuck.

He wasn’t Haechan yet and he would never really be Haechan in Mark’s mind. Just as the only person to sometimes call him ‘Minhyung’ is Donghyuck, so Mark is the only one left in the company now who calls him Donghyuck. 

Sometimes, when Mark thinks about it, he narrows it down to this moment. Donghyuck becomes practically carved into his psyche here, here and here. Here. Age 14. Or—

“I’m Lee Donghyuck.” He says, bowing at a 90 degree angle. Mark does the same, albeit more stilted, unused to it. Donghyuck has round cheeks and fluffy black hair that is thick and long and shiny. He smiles with two slightly crooked teeth and cheeks that are rosy like apples.

“Mark Lee. Or, Lee Minhyung — sorry.” 

“Mm, I’ve heard of you. Golden boy. You have two names and an accent.” Donghyuck tilts his head curiously. “Did you just move here?”

“Yes. I am Canadian.” His voice is stilted, odd. Where in English he would say yeah, man, where are you from? Instead in Korean it’s formal and unsure, not wanting to make any missteps, thanking God that his grandma had insisted he learn. He can’t really read the sign above the door of the room they’re waiting in, but at least this boy – Donghyuck – is speaking slow enough for him to understand.

“Ah.” Donghyuck raises his eyebrows. “That’s cool. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” Mark doesn’t know if he’s meant to use Korean age or not, so he panics and tries again. “I was born in 1999.”

“Older than me! Well Mark-yah, you are apparently my new roommate!” 

Mark frowns, his grandma’s etiquette lessons ringing in his head. “Don’t you have to call me hyung?” 

Donghyuck smiles, easy, sweet. “Mark-hyung, then.” He sounds confident — a contrast to Mark’s obvious nerves. “I hope you don’t snore!”

He slips his hand into Mark’s, pulling him outside the meeting room towards their dorm. The world has seemed so unfamiliar for the past few days, and now he must walk into a room with two beds and learn to call it his own. He sits on the bed, fresh with new, unfamiliar sheets, and lets Donghyuck babble in his ear in Korean, seemingly talking about the other trainees (scary, old) and the which SHINee member is his favourite (Jonghyun) and how he misses the smell of the sea in his hometown (Jeju).

Donghyuck coaxes information out of Mark, asking short, simple questions which Mark thanks him for. He tells him about his older brother, about Toronto and New York and how crazy it is to be in an entirely new country. Donghyuck giggles a little at his accented Korean and Mark knows his ears have gone a bright reddish colour that he used to get teased for in middle school.

Mark gets redder and redder as Donghyuck giggles and runs about the room, tugging on Mark’s clammy hand to show him the practice rooms, and where they eat, and oh! this is Ten and Jaehyun and Taeyong and Mark isn’t thinking about how scared he is anymore.

Mark doesn’t think about how scared he is for a while.

Donghyuck is bright and sunny, with a voice like honey dripping down Mark’s throat. Donghyuck is incredibly talented, which both amazes Mark and also makes him feel like shit — does Mark even, really, deserve to be here? Does he deserve all this praise? Deserve all the compliments?

Donghyuck is cute, funny, unashamed of anything, unlike anyone that Mark had known back in Canada.

Donghyuck is, also, possibly, the worst person in the whole world.

By the end of Mark’s first year as a trainee at SM he’s hungry for it. He worked harder than he thought was possible. Figured out he wasn’t as good as a singer so works as hard as he can at rapping and dancing. By the end of his first month he had whispers of ace following him when he walked down the corridor.

He didn’t listen, he barely saw outside of his tunnel vision — the part of his mind that screams at him you need to deserve this. 

But, somehow, Donghyuck makes his way through his tunnel vision. Donghyuck who steals half of Mark’s t-shirts and grabs onto him even when Mark pushes him off and who does aegyo in every other sentence despite Mark making throw-up noises in reaction. Who kisses his cheek and strokes his hair and pinches and teases him and makes Mark feel a hot flush of anger every time he looks at him. Everyone notices the back and forth that Donghyuck and he have — the hyungs laugh and rib Mark, Johnny jokingly saying that it’s just because he likes you! Taeyong even comes up to him with wide, worried eyes asking if he actually, really doesn’t like Donghyuck and if he needs to talk to them both. That’s a sentence that strikes Mark dumb — all he can do is mutely shake his head and Taeyong ruffles his hair and leaves them alone. 

Even the managers notice, and tactically pair them up, so if Mark wants to stay late practising, Donghyuck must follow. Mark wants to ask the heavens what he did to deserve this. 

The thing is — Mark doesn’t hate him. Some days. But a lot of days Mark is horribly jealous over how easy Donghyuck seems to find all this, and bothered by being the subject of Donghyuck’s constant ridicule. He has to leave the practice rooms sometimes, running out into the road until a manager comes and pulls him back in by his ear, just because Donghyuck mocked him for the eighth time that hour. No one gets to him like Donghyuck, nothing is able to.

When the managers are gone, that’s when things change a little, when it’s just the two of them practising in the room. Donghyuck whines, leaning against the mirrors and banging his head against it to get Mark to leave. Sometimes he unplugs the speaker or threatens to start screaming so they can leave. Sometimes he steals his water bottle, his jacket, his flip phone and runs out so Mark has to chase him and they leave. 

Once, Donghyuck cried. It had been a long day — Mark can’t remember what day of the week, what month, he just knows that there was an assessment coming up, and he was working his ass off. It was coming up at 2 in the morning when Donghyuck, who Mark hadn’t noticed was quieter that day, had come over to Mark when he was mid-dance. He curled his hands in the bottom of Mark’s sweatshirt and started sobbing, started begging him to go to sleep, otherwise he was going to get hurt. Mark saw one tear slip down Donghyuck’s face and left the practice room quicker than ever before, hands hovering near Donghyuck like he could take it all back.

That face — almost-15-year old, teary Donghyuck — haunts him.

Still, the next day, Mark walks into the practice room and knows he won’t leave until late again. Not until it’s all perfect, not until he’s all perfect, not until he feels like he deserves this. 

Donghyuck avoids his eyes. Mark pretends he doesn’t care.

[NOW]

Mark looks up from his phone, hand turning pink where he holds the cold ice pack against his ankle, ignoring the piles of pillows on his bed where he was meant to elevate it. He could’ve sworn he’d heard…

Donghyuck bursts into his room a second later, eyes falling straight to his ankle.

“Are you okay, hyung?” He asks, his voice faint. “What happened?”

Donghyuck walks over to the edge of the bed, his fingers dancing over Mark’s skin, never touching, but close enough to make goosebumps rise on his skin. He presses them down then, pressing enough into the flesh for the dull ache to spread up his leg until Mark hisses. “Haechan-ah.”

Donghyuck lifts his fingers. Mark doesn’t know if it was his hiss or the use of his stage name that got him to stop.

“What happened, hyung?” Donghyuck repeats, not even looking at Mark’s face, but somewhere below it, scanning the rest of his body for a mark, an open wound, blood spreading out onto his clothes. Mark knows that look. Mark has been standing at the edge of a similar bed in a different room, standing, white like a sheet, as the doctors checked Donghyuck’s back and then his knee and then his neck out.

That same thing running around his mind that Mark knows is going around Donghyuck’s: what happened, what happened, please don’t be bad, please don’t be injured. 

I can’t do this without you. 

Mark sighs. “I just overworked it, Donghyuck-ah, it’ll be better by morning with rest and ice.”

“Again.” Donghyuck’s tone is unreadable, he’s still staring at Mark’s collar, like he’s looking through him. “Overworked it again.”

Frustration bubbles up in Mark, the way it always does with Donghyuck. That’s the problem with having someone who has known you since you were 14, known you through all of your worst and best and embarrassing. Mark understands every layer to Donghyuck’s words.

“Yes, again. What do you want me to say? You want me to say sorry?” Mark bites out, restraining himself from lashing out, restraining himself from hissing back that Donghyuck does the exact same thing. 

The other funny thing about knowing someone since you were an angsty teenager, is sometimes you turn right back into yourself — angry and sixteen — when you argue with them.

Finally, Donghyuck looks up and looks at Mark, not through him or around him but into his eyes. Donghyuck’s are shining. Mark almost gives up there. 

“I don’t want you to say sorry.” He spits out and, oh, Donghyuck isn’t just upset. He’s angry, Mark looks at his hands, which always give him away — his fingers are clenched so tight into his knuckles that the skin has gone a yellowish-white. “I want it to not fucking happen again. Why do you do this, Mark?”

“Hyung.” Mark corrects, and knows it’s the wrong thing to say, when Donghyuck’s mouth shakes with anger, his lips pursing. But at this moment, he doesn’t care, if Donghyuck wants a fight Mark will give him one. Every time Donghyuck has pushed Mark has always pushed right back. There is no one else who makes him feel this way. “You of all people cannot be the one saying that to me. Go away if you’re going to be like this.”

“‘Me of all people’ — there is only one person who’s not concerned at all for his health and that is you. Do not try to turn this on me when you are the one lying on this bed again. You are the one that has everyone running around panicking because you’re their golden boy and you keep working so hard and getting put to work so hard that you are going to break, Mark- hyung.” Donghyuck says, his voice like ice. 

There’s this long moment, where Donghyuck’s chest is heaving and he stares at Mark across the silent room. The entire dorm is quiet for once, no noise of Doyoung in the kitchen or Jungwoo screaming at a video game, there is only Mark and there is only Donghyuck and the space between them that constantly feels too far and too close at the same time. 

“Donghyuck—”

“And I’m not ‘being like this,’” Donghyuck says, throwing Mark’s words back at him. “It is hard to see someone you love drive themselves into the fucking ground.”

Mark sits up in the bed, forgoing putting his ankle on the pillow. Someone you love flickers at the back of his mind like he’s 15-fucking years old again and thinking about Donghyuck’s moles whilst he’s trying to sleep. He looks at Donghyuck, his shoulders sharp with tension and eyes boring into Mark like he wants to hurt him, like he wants to dig his fingers into him and never let go.

“What do you want me to do? I can’t help being in all these groups, I can’t help that I keep being put into more, what do you want me to do, Donghyuck? Give up? Leave?” 

Leave you is the unspoken word felt between the both of them.

“I want you to—” Donghyuck cuts himself off, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. When Donghyuck gets angry — really angry, not angry on a game show or part of the script, or playing into his persona — he always cries. Mark scrunches his hands into the sheets beside him to resist the urge to get up, bad ankle and all, and put Donghyuck’s face in his neck and hold him in his arms. Donghyuck sniffs, composing himself before dragging his palms down his face. “I want you to want to take care of yourself, hyung. I want you to tell them you need a weekend off, I want you to not spend endless hours in the practice room like we’re fucking 14 years old again, and I want you to not look like a ghost anymore.”

There is a long moment, taught as a string between them.

Mark doesn’t know what to say. He never knows what to say out loud without it coming out mushed up with everything else he’s feeling. That’s why you write music, Taeyong told him once. Because you can’t get it out another way.

Mark’s never felt it so bad before, that feeling that he just can’t get out. That itch he can’t remove from under his skin — the itch that only appears when Donghyuck has walked into the room, his cheeks flushed like they are now, hands fisting the pockets of his sweatpants.

It goes on too long. The intense feeling on Donghyuck’s face fades. Anger? Sadness? Disappointment? Even Mark can’t quite place what it was that he could see in Donghyuck’s eyes.

“Nothing?” Donghyuck’s voice is cold now. The tears in his eyes — gone. “You have nothing to say?”

“I don’t know what to say, Donghyuck-ah.” 

“Yeah, you never do.” Donghyuck spits out before hightailing it out of the dorm. Mark knows he’ll go straight to Renjun, so he’ll avoid the Dream dorms for a couple hours.

He sits in his room, ankle aching and chest aching too. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He can’t choose between pushing himself to knowing what he could be, and resting to spare the people he cares about.

The people he loves.

And when the door creaks open at two in the morning, and Mark is still awake rewatching the concert performance videos, he knows Donghyuck knows. He knows Donghyuck knows when he crawls into bed next to Mark, and presses the lengths of their bodies together, burrowing his head into Mark’s back before he can read what’s on it.

Mark switches the light off and tries to turn around, it’s hard to shift with his ankle up on a pile of pillows. After Donghyuck left Mark had put them up with a sigh, and booked an appointment with his physical therapist for the next time. Anyway, Donghyuck won’t let him move, head pressing down so hard on Mark’s back to stop him — like he’s trying to meld them together.

There were a few, rare times in the short years that he and Donghyuck roomed together when he would wake up, gasping from a dream filled with anxiety. Something silly like looming red billboards posted around the city of a picture of Mark and the word ‘failure’ written in big Korean characters that he couldn’t quite read all of before he woke up. The dream didn't change until he was about 18 and shifted into something less childish, but every time he woke, Donghyuck would end up crawling into his bed. The first time, Donghyuck had whispered that he used to do this with his siblings and they slept head-to-toe, then from the next one it was side by side.

Now— well now, Mark doesn’t know what it’s become. Donghyuck hasn’t slept in his bed since the night after he got home from the one tour that Mark missed with the dreamies. Where he held Donghyuck as he cried and cried and—

Mark feels a hand scrunch into his t-shirt.

“I’m sorry.” Mark whispers, stroking Donghyuck’s arm softly.

“I know. Go to bed, Mark.”

And Mark knows Donghyuck knows. And so he sleeps.

[THEN]

The worst blow up happens when Mark is almost-16 and Donghyuck is 15 and the summer is beating hot down their backs and they had both not placed as well as they wanted in assessments. It started on the way back from school, Mark waiting for Donghyuck outside the classroom as per usual, asking any student that walked out if they could please get Donghyuck because he’s late.

Donghyuck leaves the room, ignoring where Mark stands and walks down as fast as he can down the street.

“Yah!” Mark calls running up behind him, he yanks on his bag strap, pulling Donghyuck to a stop. “Oh my god, Donghyuck-ah, you’re late and then you won’t even wait? What the hell!”

Donghyuck turns to look at him, a sneer already curling around his smart mouth.

See, if Mark were older, he’d understand that this clearly isn’t anything to do with him. If Mark were wiser, he’d look at Donghyuck’s shaking frame and picked skin around his nails and deduce that Donghyuck probably had a bad day today. And that arguing with him isn’t a good idea.

But Mark isn’t older, Mark isn’t wiser. Mark is 15 and finds arguing with Donghyuck easier than breathing. Mark is 15 and all he knows about anger, all he knows about red cheeks and raw throats from screaming and banging your head into your pillow at night in frustration, he learned from Donghyuck.

So he picks at it.

“You’re seriously such a child sometimes, Donghyuck.”

“Shut the fuck up, hyung. I can’t— I don’t want to do this with you right now.”

Mark blinks, now that he didn’t expect. Donghyuck might not want to get into it, but a part of Mark knows that the only way Donghyuck will be honest with him is through this language of push and pull that they have, and the other part of him is filled to the brim with a burning hot irritation with the boy.

“You can. And you will. Why were you late? You know we get told off if we miss the start of practice? And you know I hate it when you swear.”

Donghyuck lets out a harsh laugh. “Oh fuck you.”

“Donghyuck-ah! God, now we’re really late for practice.”

Donghyuck and him are walking back at this point and at the end of Mark’s shout Donghyuck stops and shoves Mark’s shoulder with his own, bringing them to a stop. “Shut up, Mark!”

“Yah, Lee Donghyuck!” Mark shoves his hands against Donghyuck’s shoulders. The younger boy stumbles back and hits the wall on the other side.

Part of Mark is horrified, he doesn’t like fighting people. He doesn’t like hurting people. Part of him feels good. Part of him feels vindicated that Donghyuck pushes and pushes and pushes and never expects Mark to push back. He smacks at Donghyuck’s hand when he stumbles forward like he’s going to hit Mark. Mark’s not scared. 

“Don’t, Donghyuck-ah, don’t be stupid.”

Donghyuck wrenches back his hand again, his other fisting the front of Mark’s shirt. Mark grabs the front of his shirt right back.

Donghyuck kicks his legs out from under him, slamming them both down until they end up tussling on the floor. Donghyuck had always been a skinny kid, skinnier than Mark was at this point who had a year and an older brother on him. Mark also grew up with an older brother, he knows how to fight someone. He kicks back and manages to pin Donghyuck down, who tips his head back and looks up at the sky full of resentment, Mark hauls him to his feet. Their faces dusty, hair mussed up, Mark is angrier than he thinks he has ever been before.

“I said don’t be stupid, Donghyuck-ah!” Mark gives him a little shove for emphasis again, He grabs Donghyuck’s wrist where he raises his fist again. “What are you doing? Seriously, what the hell are you doing?”

Donghyuck pants as he tries to reach for Mark again only to get shoved back. “Just— I just want you to leave me alone!” 

“Well I can’t, you know I can’t, you know the company said I can’t so leave off.” Mark clenches his jaw. “And we’re so late for practice they’re gonna kill us, Donghyuck-ah, Christ!”

“Oh could you stop for one moment going on about practice? I’m sorry I was late. There. Are you happy? Are you satisfied, Minhyung? For fuck’s sake, the one person I thought would…”

Donghyuck trails off, and it’s then that Mark notices the way his eyes are shining, confirmed the next second when Donghyuck unsubtly wipes his eyes.

Mark doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to be — soft with Donghyuck. It’s something he takes a long time to learn. Part of him doesn’t want to be soft, how many times has Donghyuck made Mark’s life a living hell in the past two years? Isn’t he making his life a living hell right now?

But Mark had been taught by his mother and taught by his mother well — everyone is deserving of kindness.

And — well — Mark’s heart is twisting painfully in his chest, letting out a dull thud that sounds like the beat of worn trainers on the dance floor. He can be soft for Donghyuck. Even if his chest is heaving and he feels like his veins are filled with the fire of anger that Donghyuck incites — he can be soft for him. Isn’t that what he was always taught in the Bible? Treat others the way you wish to be treated. Love one another. For a moment, he feels the cold wood of the pews pressing into him.

He thinks of Johnny’s large, warm hands reaching over and patting his head, saying Mark, you’ve done well, he thinks of the aunties in the dorms pinching his cheek and asking if he ate enough, of his brother’s long and winding emails about his life at home after Mark told him he was feeling lonely.

He gets cared for when he feels tender-hearted.

Donghyuck lets out a pitiful sniffle that brings Mark back to the present. To Donghyuck.

Mark reaches out, slow, like approaching an animal, with his hand. Donghyuck looks at it warily, a hand raising as if to slap it away. Before he can get there, Mark sinks his hand into Donghyuck’s hair, the back of his neck, the soft sea of his baby hairs. He strokes his head once, twice, three times.

Donghyuck blinks owlishly at him. Something in Mark feels vindicated once more, the infamously quick Donghyuck left stumped. But Mark looks closer at the way his expression seems to smooth out, not looking so devastated anymore.

He strokes his thumb around the back of his head. “It’s okay, Donghyuck-ah.” He murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

He puts more pressure on the back of his head, because Donghyuck still hasn’t said anything. And then he does — well he just doesn’t even think, he pulls Donghyuck harshly against him, fitting his head into Mark’s neck, slightly taller because of his recent growth spurt. 

Donghyuck’s hands fix themselves at the hem of Mark’s school shirt, scrunching and twisting. He doesn’t cry, but he lets out a couple shaky breaths onto the skin of Mark’s neck.

Mark still doesn’t know what to do so he just lets Donghyuck crease his shirt and stands there in silence, his face rapidly pinking as he realises they are in the middle of a not-empty street. These people must have seen them fight. His cheeks heat; he pulls back.

“D’you wanna go?”

Donghyuck looks at Mark. Searches his eyes with his own. Then nods, to Mark’s unending, shaky relief. 

“Okay. Okay, let’s go, Hyuck-ah. We can get ice cream before practice, I won’t tell auntie Kim if you don’t.”

Donghyuck nods again, clasping the tail ends of his backpack. Mark reaches out, strokes his head once more, and then starts walking.

They amble in silence to the convenience store, and sit under the tree as they shove milk ice creams in their mouths. Mark shucks his sweater off to wipe Donghyuck’s mouth and then his own. They walk into the dance studio together, Donghyuck considerably lighter than before, and Mark doesn’t push them to stay late.

[NOW]

Mark feels the heavy layers of makeup that cake his face like a second skin, he waits behind the camera, watching Jeno for his solo, and then Jaemin, who leans against a wall and lowers his eyes seductively at the screen. Mark sits, humming, bored, when in his periphery he notices Donghyuck come and sit down.

He lets his mind drift, allowing a staff member to catch a couple behind-the-scenes pictures of him and Donghyuck sitting, waiting for their turn.

Mark swallows, finally caving and looking to his left where Donghyuck sits in another empty director’s chair fiddling with his hair that has been made hard with excessive hairspray with one hand, and playing a game on his phone with the other.

He looks gorgeous. Mark lets his eyes trail over the soft line of his shoulders, accentuated by the biker’s jacket they have him wearing, the slight eyeliner around his eyes is something that makes Donghyuck look particularly dangerous, Mark thinks. His eyes fall lower, down the long line of Donghyuck’s legs, his evil legs that plague Mark’s dreams. Mark thinks about how tan and smooth they look under his tight leather trousers.

This — desire is not a new thing, Mark knows it. He’s not stupid — he knows that he has wanted Donghyuck since they were teenagers, he knows that Donghyuck is so beautiful it's torturous. 

But they are in an industry of beautiful people, Mark knows it’s only normal to feel this way. His worst nightmare would be to make Donghyuck uncomfortable, or a whole group uncomfortable in the way of a silly bit of attraction. Donghyuck looks good though, and he knows he looks good, and he makes Mark want to get on his knees sometimes and pray to someone that isn’t God for once. Someone that would say something back.

Mark swallows and attempts to look away, only to realise that Donghyuck has already caught him looking. He looks violently amused, looking at Mark with a flush high on his cheeks and a tongue poked into his cheek.

“Like what you see?” Donghyuck says flirtatiously, subconsciously — or maybe consciously, fuck, Mark doesn’t know anymore — leaning back into the chair and spreading his legs. It makes Mark look down at his thighs again. 

See — Mark never really knows what to say. He never knows what strays beyond the carefully unsaid line of what becomes too much. He doesn’t know how much Donghyuck plays into the fans and how much of it is — real.  

Mark’s a terrible actor. It’s always been real to him.

“You look good.” And because he’s stupid, and he can’t help it, and he loves the way Donghyuck blushes like it’s the middle of summer in this freezing cold warehouse, he keeps going, “Fuck, you look gorgeous.”

Donghyuck’s mouth parts soundlessly on a gasp. “Hyung.” He says, light and airy, a tremor running through it. “Mark-hyung.”

Mark bites the inside of his cheeks so hard he almost draws blood, a thread of heat racing through him. 

Donghyuck shifts in his seat. “You… I mean, you know you look good like that as well.” He seems to steel himself, hopping off the seat and getting all up in Mark’s space. “Pretty Markie.” He says, reaching a hand out slowly. A hand that Mark has swatted away so many times, irritated by his own feelings and irritated by the fact that Donghyuck is so unbothered by the skinship that keeps Mark awake at night. He lets the hand fall onto his jaw, a bony thumb pressing onto his chin. “Look at this.” Mark knows he’s talking about the slight colour the makeup artist had applied on his lips, his noona giggling about how it brought out the colour of his eyes. It’s Mark’s turn to be short of breath.

“You’ll ruin my makeup, Haechan-ah.”

Donghyuck presses in deeper. Mark lets him. His thumb swipes at Mark’s bottom lip, causing them to part. Mark could so easily take Donghyuck’s thumb into his mouth right now — in front of everyone, for no reason, or just because he wants to.

He knows better, though. He always has.

“Donghyuck-ah. Stop it.”

Something flares in Donghyuck’s eyes, the brat in him coming out, his mouth opens and Mark knows it’ll be some irritating variant of make me so Mark decides to make him stop it another way. He shifts, standing and planting his feet, winding an arm around Donghyuck’s waist, pressing him against him. In his surprise, Donghyuck lets go of Mark’s chin and braces his palm against Mark’s chest to steady himself.

“I did tell you to stop.” Mark says, whispering in Donghyuck’s ear with a grin. He watches with a keen satisfaction as goosebumps erupt down Donghyuck’s neck. He lets his voice drop even lower. “Hm, Donghyuck-ah?”

It takes all the resistance in the world for Mark to not lower his mouth right there and then. To suck something pretty onto Donghyuck’s neck. He’s only emboldened by Donghyuck’ eyes, wide and dark and open, staring right at his mouth.

It carts him right back — a dark room, a stupid dare, a young kiss. Mark blinks. 

Before he can do something well and truly stupid, the photographer calls out for the next person and Donghyuck blinks hard, almost looking — disappointed? But then he’s shoving away from Mark and walking forward to get his solo shot. Mark flexes his hands once, twice, three times, trying to rid them of the phantom feeling of Donghyuck’s waist beneath them.

Donghyuck doesn’t look at him when he walks off the set, doesn’t look at him that night at dinner, doesn’t even look at him the whole time Mark is sat on the couch by Donghyuck when Doyoung and Taeyong decide they should all watch a movie together. Mark pretends not to notice how red Donghyuck’s ears are when their thighs brush on the couch.

Mark feels plagued — by feeling, by desire, by the sound of church bells ringing in the morning and a heavy weight on his heart — something he thought he had left in the past.

He gets himself off shamefully that night, palming himself through his boxers and moaning a name into a pillow, praying that no one next door can hear it. He finishes as quietly as he can, his body — ridden with shame and exhaustion — sends him into a fitful sleep.

If he dreams, he dreams only of Donghyuck.

[THEN]

Mark walks into Johnny’s dorm room in search of the game that he promised he’d lend Mark. The room is quiet, Mark doesn’t think twice before calling out in English: “Johnny?”

There's no response. He wanders through the room, before walking into the ensuite bathroom, calling out his name again. There, Johnny stands, naked. 

“Shit! Mark, sorry, I didn’t hear you in the shower.” Johnny is frantically pulling up a towel. Mark just stands there. His skin feels hot and uncomfortable, he yelps, jumping back slightly but he can’t bring himself to turn away.

Mark’s eyes trail down his abs and below that, examining the expanse of Johnny’s skin and muscles. Mark feels tight in his belly, heat racing around his body. He kind of wants to — suddenly, he realises what he’s doing, squeezes his eyes shut and bolts out of there. “Sorry, fuck!”

Mark runs through the dorms, heart pounding, before sitting on the floor by his bed. Thankfully Donghyuck isn’t in there. Mark’s not sure how he would face him. They don’t room together anymore but Mark knows they’re both too used to it to ever really let it go, frequently he’ll come back from a schedule to find Donghyuck lying in Mark’s bed reading a comic, ready to complain about his day.

Mark usually kicks him out, or ignores him. 

His thoughts circle away from Donghyuck and back to — Johnny. Mark buries his head in his hands, groaning, embarrassed and uncomfortably aroused.

It’s been nagging at his mind. This feeling. This otherness that hasn’t felt… normal. Or, not normal, but not like other people. He can’t stop staring at Johnny during the practices, can’t stop wanting to impress him, his cool, older, handsome hyung. He can’t stop looking at Donghyuck’s pretty eyes. Can’t stop thinking about Taeyong’s chest when he flicks his shirt up. Can’t stop… feeling the things he’s felt for girls for them as well. 

He doesn’t get it.

Well, he does get it. He’s not dumb. He kind of just doesn’t want to get it.

It’s hard enough being away from his family for so long, and tormented by devilish Donghyuck, and having to do a fourteen-step skincare routine and diet practice and working his body to the bone without being gay on top of that. Or, not gay. He still likes girls, he knows he likes girls, he still thinks about Jiyoung, the girl he made out with in a tucked in alley whilst Donghyuck waited just outside. He had walked out with flushed cheeks and a racing heart, Donghyuck had only looked at him, and then where Mark held fast onto Jiyoung’s hand with pursed lips and stomped off back to the dorms, not even sparing Jiyoung a glance. 

And Mark didn’t care. Mark didn’t care for much more than the soft scent of cherry blossom coming from Jiyoung’s clothes, how soft her long hair felt, and how gentle her hands were on his face.

So, he knows he likes girls. Just, maybe boys too. For some reason that Mark will only begin to pick apart years later, Donghyuck flickers through his mind.

He buries his head further into his hands, pressing his eyes against his fingers until he sees stars, until he can take it all back. What has he done? He leered at Johnny. Mark never wants to leave his room again. Maybe Johnny will never speak to him again. That feels like a fate worse than death. The only person who feels a little like home, the only person who he can really speak his mother tongue with. 

A tear slips out of his eyes as he crushes his face against his palms, knees up to his chest. 

After a minute or so of his lungs crushing into his ribcage with his own feelings a gentle knock sounds on the door, and someone slips into the room.

Mark can’t look up. Can’t face Donghyuck, or Taeyong, or Johnny, or whoever.

Someone sits by him, back leaning against the bed as well. Brings their knees up to their chest. Mark looks up. Johnny stares down at him, smiling softly. 

Mark puts his head back into his hands.

“What’s up, Mark?”

Johnny says it so gently. 

“I’m sorry.” He says miserably. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologising, Mark, why are you apologising?”

Mark chokes up a bit and looks up. “I don’t know.”

Johnny just looks at him, waiting. His eyes are so gentle with Mark, as they’ve always been.

“I don’t know how to stop feeling this way. Or making everyone uncomfortable. It…”

Mark thinks back to the manga he flicked through once, the one with one character who had talked about it, being bisexual. Mark knows the word. He suspects that…

“Whose feeling uncomfortable here? Mark. Look at me.” Johnny knocks their knees together. Mark slowly drags his eyes up to Johnny’s. He sees no admonishment, no discomfort, only something painful and understanding. “What are you telling me? You can tell me anything and I won’t say anything, or care, you know that, man.”

Mark swallows.

“So, what is it?” 

“I think I’m gay.” He blurts it out, and proceeds to bury his face in his hands the next minute. “Or, I like girls too? I don’t know. Um. Maybe bisexual?”

A warm, familiar hand comes up to rub his back, and then raise his head forward from his knees. 

“It’s okay, Mark. It’s okay.”

Johnny folds Mark into his arms and holds him. He rocks him like his mother used to do, and then Mark’s thinking about his mother and how she goes to church every week and how she might not like who her son is and Mark cries until Johnny’s t-shirt has darkened in a patch with his tears. It’s okay. Johnny won’t stop repeating it. 

Mark leans back, looks up at Johnny. His eyes hurt with how much he’s cried. 

Johnny reaches forward a moment and touches his hand. Mark hadn’t realised it had come up to clasp the cross that hangs around his neck, the one he never takes off. The metal is sore against the soft skin of his fingers, there are red marks patterning his hands where he holds it. 

He doesn’t say anything, only unplucks each of Mark’s fingers from around the cross.

“Mark, there’s nothing wrong with liking guys. You don’t have to be ashamed.” Johnny speaks so softly. He taps once at Mark’s necklace. The necklace his grandfather gave him when he turned ten, the necklace he’d worn ever since. But Mark gets what he’s trying to say.

Mark sniffs wetly. “Nothing?”

“Nothing. So what you don’t just like girls? So what that you like people, boys, whatever? Love is a beautiful thing, no matter what.” 

Mark musters enough energy outside of his breakdown to push at Johnny’s shoulder. “Corny, dude.”

Johnny just grins. “There he is.”

And then Mark is laughing. And things feel normal again, or as normal as they can when Mark feels as though a new part of himself has unfolded open, a little bit raw, a little bit tender. Like a bruise he doesn’t ever want to press on again. 

Johnny slings an arm around Mark’s shoulder, and he tries valiantly not to blush as he feels the warmth of Johnny’s body. “I’m always here to talk, man. Okay? And Taeyong too. I won’t tell anyone… but Taeyong is good to talk to about stuff like this.”

Mark nods, knowing that he will probably never be able to spit this out again to anyone ever. 

He thinks about telling Donghyuck, though. Donghyuck who is probably, now, his best friend but something in him just. Doesn’t. He stares at him that evening, during a silent moment over dinner — he thinks, now? Should I tell him now? He ends up staring for so long that Donghyuck ends up giggling nervously, slurping up the ramen he had made them. “Do I have something on my face, hyung?”

Mark blushed and looked down, embarrassed, grumbling that no, he didn’t.  

The moment passed. Mark left it.

So, he figured out he was bisexual at the tender age of 16. 50% of that was from walking in on Johnny and wanting to lick his abs, 50% was… that. And the other 50% was the fact that Mark dreamed every single night that when Donghyuck got all in his face, teasing him, Mark could press him against a wall and kiss him instead of fighting.

[NOW]

“Do you know you’re the only one left that ever calls me Donghyuck, hyung?

Donghyuck says it when dream are all together, lazing around on the long couches of the karaoke room, the room slightly dizzy with the amount of alcohol Mark has drank. Renjun doing another shot of soju right by Donghyuck, who, usually desperate for the mic, is lounging next to Mark, his head tipped back against the couch but slanted towards him. 

“What?” Mark murmurs, distracted by the way the pink lights fall against Donghyuck’s skin.

“Everyone calls me Haechan, except Doyoung sometimes, I guess, but you’re the only one who ever really calls me Donghyuck anymore.”

“It’s your name.” Mark slurs, happy and light with alcohol. He giggles. “Why wouldn’t I call you your name, Donghyuck-ah?”

At this Donghyuck cracks a smile too, though his eyes had been serious. When they stop laughing, Chenle and Jisung break out into a rendition of a Girls’ Generation song, Donghyuck turns to him once more. “Why, hyung?”

“Hm?”

“Why do you still call me Donghyuck?’

Mark blinks. He thinks about it slowly, softly. “You’ll forever be Donghyuck to me, Donghyuck-ah. Haechan was invented in 2016, Donghyuck is the strange kid I’ve known for far longer than that.” Mark smiles, knowing it comes out awfully fond. 

This doesn't even seem to really satisfy Donghyuck, who hums once and looks away. Mark tips his head curiously, waiting for the younger man to turn his eyes back to Mark. When he does, he seems a little angry.

“Donghyuck—” Mark starts, confused, and a little too drunk to bear Donghyuck not being happy with him, but Donghyuck has already stood up to sing a duet with Renjun.

It’s rare Mark and Donghyuck get this time off with Dream, whilst they all get to spend their off time together Mark and Donghyuck usually have something to catch up on for 127, or Mark is in more meetings about a solo album, or shooting a new interview, or going to a fashion show. The weird thing about being an idol is the things that people do for fun outside of work become work. Mark is grateful, always so grateful, but can’t help resenting slightly that he can’t go to a fashion show with a friend as Mark from Canada, but has to go as Mark Lee, the image, the idol, the ace. 

Mark just watches as Donghyuck sings with Renjun, by the end of the night they’re all drunk and the rest of the dreamies pile into a taxi to a club whilst Mark and Donghyuck stand outside, knowing they have to be up early tomorrow. Donghyuck is wrapped in a scarf, the bite of the winter wind ruffling his hair, he opens his phone.

“I’ll call us a car.”

Mark smiles, looks up at the glowing city, looks over at Donghyuck. “It’s half an hour back to the dorms, let’s just walk.”

Dongyuck looks up, surprised. Before hesitantly putting his phone away and plunging his hands into the pockets of his long puffer. They walk in silence for a minute, side by side down the main road. Donghyuck darts a look over at Mark after the silence has stretched on, causing him to almost trip over an empty soju bottle rolling over the street. Mark steadies him with a laugh.

“Haechan-ah, you drunk?”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes, straightening up with a giggle. “No hyung. If anyone should be asking that question it’s me — you know you’ve always been worse at holding your alcohol.”

“Dude, I threw up one time. We were eighteen! Let it go!”

“I was the one who scrubbed the carpet so no one found out about it, I’m not letting you forget it.”

Mark laughs, long and easy. He doesn’t always feel easy, but it comes much quicker when he’s with Donghyuck. The only one who knows what it’s really like.

“Yeah, alright, I guess that’s fair.”

They walk for a little longer, Donghyuck seems rid of his earlier anger and chatters about what they’re going to do tomorrow and how the new episode of his k-drama he’s watching isn’t very good.

“We’ve known each other for a long time, huh.” Mark says, once Donghyuck has finished talking about a ruined plotline.

Donghyuck smiles. “What, reminded of every other time I’ve ranted at you before?”

Mark cracks a smile right back. “Maybe.” He says cheekily. “Or maybe I’m just getting older.”

“Yah, you’re 25 . You’re already an old man.”

Mark pushes Donghyuck’s shoulder playfully, who stumbles and holds his shoulder like Mark seriously hurt him. “Hyung, ah!”

“Donghyuck-ah, seriously…”

Donghyuck laughs. “Some things really never do change.”

Mark wraps his coat tighter as a harsh wind blows. He smiles, letting out a huff of a laugh. “What, you teasing me? I doubt that will ever change.”

“Oh, you love it.”

“Hmm.” Mark says, remembering the long nights of turmoil when he was 14 of hating Donghyuck for that teasing, remembering when it turned into a soft form of affection, remembering when he understood that it was part of Donghuyck’s way of caring. “Wanna go in?”

Mark gestures towards a park, filled with trees that litter the ground with petals and leaves alike. Donghyuck walks in instead of saying yes, finding a bench underneath the large bough of a tree.

Mark sits next to him, close, to huddle for warmth.

“This winter will be our eleventh christmas together, hyung, you know that?”

“Hmm.” He hums again in affirmation. “That’s a long time.”

“It is.”

Mark watches a leaf fall to the ground. He watches it twirl and twist and falter, before landing where it was always going to land the entire time. He turns and looks at Donghyuck, stealing a glance at the way the cold has turned Donghyuck’s lips pinker than they usually are. Pink like they’ve been kissed. He speaks.

“You know that I’m happy it’s you that I have to do this with. All the car rides, all the tours, all the… exhaustion. There’s no one else I would rather it be. I don’t know if there’s anyone else it could’ve been.”

Donghyuck looks back at Mark now, his brown eyes so gorgeous and wide, the soft waves the stylist had curled into his hair earlier today falling softly over his forehead. “Me too. No one else.”

They both look away, shy.

Donghyuck says quietly. “There’s no one else I would do this with either. No one else.”

For a moment, Mark’s heart rate spikes, like he needs to say something, do something. But he’s with Donghyuck, familiar Donghyuck, he doesn’t have to fulfil any expectations with him. Doesn’t have to be the leader, the guide, the steady presence. He can just be Mark. He aches for the sudden urge to put his hands in Donghyuck’s hair and brush it. He settles for stroking the back of his head, once.

Donghyuck turns, surprised at the contact that Mark so rarely gives.

Mark smiles, letting the silence of the quiet park settle over them, the orange light of the streetlamps and the couples ambling down the pathway affords them quiet and peaceful anonymity. How few moments does he get with Donghyuck like this? Where they don’t have to be photographed or go somewhere or do something. He takes it in slowly.

He places his arm on the back of the bench, listening as Donghyuck starts humming. There’s nothing to Mark like his voice. He smiles at Donghyuck, listening to him sing lightly. They sit there, quiet and peaceful, Mark tips his head onto Donghyuck and stays there, watching the petals of the tree in front of him fall down slowly.

Eventually though, Donghyuck starts shivering and Mark stands up.

“Come on Donghyuck-ah, let’s go home.” 

Donghyuck stands, pink-cheeked, happy, quiet in the way he gets sometimes.

Mark sheds his coat to take off the soft green jumper he was wearing and pushes it into Donghyuck’s hands. “Put it on, Hyuck, you’re shivering.”

“Hyung, no, you’ll get cold!” Donghyuck protests trying to push the jumper back, looking outraged. It’s a side of Donghyuck so few get to see, all sweet as sugar. “Please, save the gentleman act for a girl, Mark-yah.”

“Brat.” Mark smiles at the return to Donghyuck’s normal antics. “Just put it on, you know I run hotter than you anyway.”

Donghyuck grumbles something suspicious so Mark goes one step further and retrieves his beanie from his coat pocket and shoves it onto Donghyuck’s head, ruining his perfect hair.

“Agh, Mel!” Donghyuck whines, but Mark notes that he doesn’t remove the beanie, just fixes it on his head so it looks a little nicer. “What is it with you and putting this beanie on me?”

“Maybe you just look sweet in it.” Mark grins cheekily.

Donghyuck blushes and looks away. “So corny, hyung.”

He smiles big and wide as they walk home, Mark walks beside him, chatting to him about a new song he’s working on and letting the evening settle in his stomach.

And then, outside the dorm, as both of them loiter to go upstairs, the lamplight sweet on Donghyuck’s face as he laughs, loud and lovely — Mark realises something. It’s a sharp realisation, but something that puts a name to the slow and heady rush that Mark feels when he’s around Donghyuck. It puts a name to that thread he has always felt, a name to the way that Donghyuck can make him feel in the extremes — ever since they were kids.

It puts a name to something that Mark has probably always known.

Since they were 15 and screaming until their throats were raw, since they were 19 sobbing over leaving each other, since they were 21 curled up in bed with each other, like two palms receiving communion, forever touching.

Mark is in love with Donghyuck.

[THEN] 

It took a while for Mark, when he was younger, to really understand Korean reality shows.

He didn’t get why it was met with encouragement and laughs when the forfeits would be to kiss each other on the cheek, to sit on each other and hug each other’s backs, flirting.

He wasn’t a good actor. God, he still isn’t. He didn’t take to it with ease.

He doesn't know how much of that came from church, or his middle school where acting a certain way would get you bullied.

It was all a little much for him — wasn’t really what he predicted when he realised he could sing and write and dance for a living.

The idea of fanservice always came in the form of light nudges from the staff, telling them to be more affectionate with each other. It wasn’t really fake, after training together they all knew each other well enough that it was pretty natural. But Mark didn’t view himself as a particularly touchy person, something he had to learn wouldn’t play out well if he didn’t at least — people would call him cold, or say that he didn’t even like his members.

So Mark gets better at it, he starts enjoying the touching, the way it staves off the touch starved feeling he gets sometimes, missing the affection of his family. He ruffles the dreamies’ hair, lets Taeyong and Yuta hug him in dance practices. He gets better at all of it

He never really gets good at it with Donghyuck, who keeps trying to kiss him.

They’re 17 and 18. Mark doesn’t even think he really knows how to please the fans like Donghyuck does. He doesn’t get the jokes as quickly, the Korean taking him a little longer to dissect. He doesn’t understand how far to take the fanservice, can’t help the heat under his collar and the blush on his cheeks, embarrassed when Donghyuck tries to kiss him again.

Or maybe it’s just because it's Donghyuck.

He couldn’t quite distinguish the lines like everyone else. No one kissed each other on the cheek back home and then just went about their day after — and they would definitely be called gay. Mark doesn’t know where he fits in this new world of affection like that being encouraged.

In the car ride home from filming Mark scrubs extra hard at his cheek, willing the flush to be rid of it where he can still feel Donghyuck’s kiss. Donghyuck watches the movement from where he’s sat by the other window, Jeno stuck between them and listening to his iPod. 

Donghyuck chucks the comic he was reading on the floor of the car, which Mark looks at disapprovingly. “What’s the matter, hyung.” He says in a huff, barely a question.

“Why’d you do that, man?” Mark whines, steadfastly staring out the window. He’s thankful Jeno’s got his headphones in and the other kids went in another car. “It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s funny.”

“Yeah, for you maybe.”

“Mark.” Donghyuck huffs, ignoring the glare he gets for the lack of honorific. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

Mark shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, they’re past this behaviour, now actually debuted and in two units together, they aren’t the kids they used to be. Mark taps Jeno on the shoulder, takes one of his earbuds and listens to the drone of a ballad, ignoring a now-sour Donghyuck for the rest of the car ride.

It comes up again that evening, having spent the afternoon recording for their new album. They’re all sat round the table, late that night playing games. Donghyuck even managed to wrangle two bottles of soju from the 127 dorm, which Jeno, Jaemin, Renjun, Donghyuck and Mark all share between them. Jisung and Chenle watched on, pouting, but Renjun hammered into them that they were definitely too young.

They were all giddy with it — teenage and doing something illegal. Mark knew he shouldn’t really be encouraging it, but with the pouting faces of four of his bandmates in front of him there was little he could do to stop it.

He’s sitting opposite Donghyuck in a circle now as they casually play games, nursing glasses of soju like they know how to drink. Jaemin’s face has gone pink whilst Renjun’s laugh is louder. Mark is just watching them, fondly, happily, in a slight haze of tipsiness.

He thinks Jisung and Chenle have gone off to play games, not as amused with their drunk hyungs’ antics than they are with each other.

“Let's play a game.” Renjun offers up, lifting his head from Donghyuck’s shoulder, where they were restlessly giggling, whispering jokes in each other’s ears.

“Mm.” Mark replies. “What shall we play?”

“A kissing game?” Jaemin says, wiggling his eyebrows at Donghyuck. “Aw, Haechannie’s going red.”

Donghyuck is red, blushing up to his ears, but all he does is roll his eyes and take another sip of his raspberry-flavoured soju. It’s always frustrated Mark that Donghyuck takes Jaemin’s ribbing with little talk back, but is such a devil to Mark. He doesn’t understand what it is about him that inspires such disrespect in Donghyuck.

Jaemin’s words then register in Mark’s alcohol-addled brain.

“No.”

Jaemin laughs, a little mean. “Come on hyung, I mean, you’ve kissed Haechannie before!”

“Not on purpose! He just keeps kissing me!”

Mark sees Donghyuck roll his eyes. “It’s on the cheek, hyung, it’s harmless, and I think a kissing game is a great idea.”

“Of course you do.”

For a second, Mark thinks he sees a glimmer of hurt in Donghyuck’s eyes.

Jeno, ever the pacifist of the group, speaks up over the moment. “What about we play a card game, and the two losers have to kiss.”

They all agree, Mark the most hesitant of them all. And of course, they pick a game that Mark sucks ass at. He tries his hardest, but it ends up that Renjun, Donghyuck and him are the last ones left in it. He slaps his card down, thankful that it was high enough that he should win the round. Donghyuck whines, dramatically falling back and placing his last card, one lower than Mark’s, who then grins triumphantly at Renjun’s pale face.

Donghyuck moans at the floor. “Nooooooo.”

Mark thinks he’s relieved, but he doesn’t understand why he feels slightly sick at the idea of Renjun and Donghyuck kissing.

Then, Renjun smacks down his final card, impossibly, it’s an ace, the only one higher than Mark’s king. His worried face wasn’t about losing, but for Mark. “Sorry, hyung.” He says, wincing. 

Mark looks at the card. Then everyone starts laughing. The room tips left slightly.

Jaemin giggles out, half falling on the floor, “Ah, Haechannie will finally get his kiss with Mark-hyung!”

“Yah!” Donghyuck smacks Jaemin’s arm.

He hasn’t really said anything. He looks up at Mark, nervous, eyes wide, so unlike Donghyuck’s usual behaviour that it brings Mark back to the moment.

He could just say no, humiliate Donghyuck right now and start miming being sick, walk out of the room, tell them all, as their hyung, that this is a stupid idea. 

Instead, he looks at Donghyuck, looks at his pretty eyes and his soft hair, and he mumbles: “Well, we’re not kissing in front of all of you.”

Donghyuck’s eyes go wide, his cheeks pink.

Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin whine but they get up, leaving the room and teasing that they’ll be back in five minutes and that they better actually kiss or it doesn’t count. And then there is a room, lights dim, empty soju bottles and cards strewn around, and there is Mark, and there is Donghyuck.

The silence between them grows. Mark bites his lip.

“So, um.”

“Hyung.” Donghyuck bursts out, a fake laugh sharply leaving him. “We don’t actually have to do it, we can just lie, it’s no problem.”

He doesn’t look at Mark when he says this, staring slightly beyond his shoulder, and then down at his hands. Mark doesn’t know why, or maybe he does and doesn’t want to think about it, but instead of accepting Donghyuck’s suggestion he just— 

“That wouldn’t be nice though, would it? Lying, I mean.” Donghyuck looks up like he’s about to say something else, so Mark keeps going in a rush. “We should just kiss.”

“Oh.”

“Unless, I mean, unless you don’t—”

“No. Um, no. It’s definitely better to be, um, honest. I mean, that’s what God says, right?”

Neither of them say anything to that.

Mark shuffles a little forward, on his knees like he’s in church. He’s close enough to Donghyuck to see a mole that hides itself underneath his chin.

He still doesn’t really know how to do this, him and Jiyoung only kissed a couple times before she broke it off for another boy who didn’t have to run away from school every day to go practice dancing until they bled. He lifts a hand up, his heart pounding ten times harder than it did for any of his kisses with her, and he places it on Donghyuck’s cheek.

His skin is smooth, warm and flushed from the alcohol, he settles his palm on his cheek, and feels when Donghyuck swallows. He’s looking up at Mark, eyes wide, and pink lips parted.

Mark overthinks it for a moment — for only a moment he thinks what the hell am I about to do, but instead of changing his mind he does what he always does, he commits and he—

He kisses him.

Donghyuck’s lips are warm, chapped, where they meet Mark’s in a long, chaste press.

Mark pulls away as fast as he kisses him, eyes wide and breath coming quick, he doesn’t know what he felt, what the thrill of exhilaration that ran through him means, why he can feel the weight of the cross hidden beneath his shirt heavier than it was before. He thinks about panicking for a second, listening to the giggles of Renjun in the other room, but instead, Donghyuck is palming his jaw and kissing him again.

The second kiss is more like how Jiyoung kissed him and also nothing like how she kissed him at all. Donghyuck opens his mouth against him, Mark responds again, kissing the other boy until they’re flushed and red and Donghyuck pulls away, skittering back slightly like he can barely believe it.

There’s no sound in the room, the edges of Mark’s sight going hazy at this feeling, what is this feeling—

“Donghyuck.” Mark croaks, and then the door is bursting open, three shrieking boys bursting through and laughing at their pinked faces.

Donghyuck starts laughing, joining in on their ribbing and pointedly not looking at Mark at all.

Mark lies in bed that night, something swirling deep inside of him, and cries himself to sleep. 

The next day, Donghyuck approaches him at practice, a casual hand on his arm, a sweet smile, Mark shoves him off — that feeling, that guilt wasn’t quite gone. Donghyuck stumbles back hard enough that Doyoung stands up and drags him away, exasperated with their antics once more. Mark ignores Donghyuck’s hyung that he whines at him across the room. In fact, he ignores Donghyuck all day.

Donghyuck does not approach him again for a long time.

[NOW]

Realising that he is in love with Donghyuck doesn’t, actually, change that much in Mark’s day to day life.

Sure, now he feels like he can’t breathe every time Donghyuck walks into a room — and they are in the same room a lot, Mark finds out through this unfortunate fact. And, sure, he catches himself actually blushing when Donghyuck acts like a little shit for the camera and does things like sit in Mark’s lap in front of an entire panel of a game show..

But, otherwise, not much changes.

Mark isn’t stupid enough to think that anything could ever come of it. He knows, in a way, that Donghyuck and him have some predestined thing, he knows that Donghyuck will be — here for the rest of his life. With him somehow. If there’s one person he couldn’t ditch it’s Donghyuck, the one that has known him the longest, been through almost everything with him.

Relationships between idols just don’t happen. Or they don’t happen in a way that has ever been expressed aloud, Mark has always had his suspicions.

He doesn’t think his being in love with Donghyuck changes much because, well, they’ve always been like that. A little strange.

He focuses in as the music for Fact Check plays again and they practise for their comeback. Mark dances the whole thing, watching his footwork, and making sure he doesn’t bump into Jaehyun again. The thrum in his bones is something like exhaustion, something like anticipation, he hasn’t looked at Donghyuck properly all afternoon, too nervous that he’ll come over and fistbump him, or backhug him, or something else that Mark emotionally cannot deal with right now.

It’s enough to be near him. To catch the faint scent of his cologne when they’re next to each other in the choreography.

“You’re acting weird.” Taeyong says curiously, dripping sweat down the hollow of his throat having come over during their break.

“He’s always weird.” Shouts Donghyuck from the other end of the practice room and Mark’s heart immediately kicks up a notch at the fact that Donghyuck can hear them. Mark tries to act normal and ignores him, lowering his voice to respond.

“What do you mean, hyung?”

Taeyong is still looking at him with those piercing eyes that feel like they can expose everything under your skin. Mark shifts his feet, hopes the weirdness isn’t the fact that he can’t pick up the choreography how he should.

“I don’t know. You seem distracted.”

Mark chugs down a bottle of water until the plastic crinkles under his fingers, idly watching the way Doyoung and Donghyuck play fight in the corner in order to avoid answering.

Taeyong notices. “What’s going on?” He follows Mark’s eyes to Donghyuck and Doyoung and Mark curses himself for being so predictable.

Taeyong’s brow furrows. “Is it Haechannie?” He says, low. Then, ever the leader: “I can have a word with him if you guys are fighting again.

“No, no, hyung — we aren’t… we aren’t fighting.” 

Mark doesn’t really know what to say after that.

Taeyong looks at him for a long moment. “Ah.” Is all he says.

For a moment — all Mark feels is blind, all-consuming panic. Like a phantom, he can almost feel the cross between his fingers, digging like it could draw blood. He thinks about his grandma, about the sick feeling he got when he was 17, guiltily watching gay porn like someone was going to kill him if they found him. 

That same shame is different now, eight years on, as Mark is different too. He’s had sex with men — done things with men — but never so that anyone in the group would know about it. It tis one thing to privately explore his sexuality but it’s another to be discovered as a world-famous idol who would be ostracised in Korea if everyone knew. He doesn’t know how anyone would react — whether he could be reported, or kicked out, or—

He stares at Taeyong, knowing he looks like a deer in headlights.

Then — like a miracle — Taeyong smiles, raises his eyebrow coyly. Something Johnny told him rings in his brain. “Ah.” He says again.

“He —” Mark still feels like he can barely breathe. “He doesn’t know.”

His voice is far away, dreamy.

Taeyong hums, sliding down the mirror-walls of the practice room, gesturing at Mark to follow, until they are sat side by side. Mark resists the urge to put his head between his legs and do breathing techniques. He hasn’t had to do that since he was 18. “I think I’ve waited for you to talk about this to me for a long time.”

Mark cranes his head up, surprised. Taeyong snorts.

“You may be a bit of an immovable object, Mark-yah, but not everyone is so unobservant.”

He swallows, resisting the urge to pick at the skin by his nails. Mark doesn’t know how obvious he’s being that someone else has finally picked up on it, he thought no one would ever know. Another strange thing about being an idol — about constantly being surrounded by people that have known you since you were 14 years old, is that sometimes you still feel like a kid at 25. He’s a grown man and still hasn’t looked anyone in the eye and told them — he guesses, at a point, it was easier to just think that it didn’t matter whether people knew or not. But he knows it does. God, he knows it does. 

“Oh. Well.” 

Taeyong laughs. “It is not the first time something like this happens, Mark, and it will not be the last.” His voice is gentle, his hand coming up to rub Mark’s thigh. “Good luck. Talk to me if anything becomes official.”

Mark mutely nods, resisting the urge to laugh, throw up, or start crying all over Taeyong.

He looks over to Doyoung and Donghyuck, who no longer are swatting at each other trying to steal the caps from each other's heads, but are now also sitting quietly having an intense conversation. Mark thinks there must be something in the air, because he swears Donghyuck looks up at him with emotion that Mark recognises within himself at this moment. Longing. Confusion. Something like hope.

With their eyes locked, Mark lets himself breathe for a moment. Donghyuck doesn’t look away. He never seems to.

The moment stretches, expands, almost breaks, Donghyuck still idly nodding to something that Doyoung is saying to him, their shoulders pressed together. 

Taeyong claps his hands for them to go again and Mark looks away. Heart pounding, he takes his position, categorising the exact place Donghyuck is in the room the whole time. When Donghyuck’s voice comes on over the speaker, Mark jolts, and he catches Jungwoo giving him a weird look.

Shit, he has got to get better at hiding this.

They practise for another couple hours, the time melting away as Mark turns his focus onto the dance.

“Hyung.” Donghyuck catches the sleeve of Mark’s hoodie in his hands as they’re about to leave, all packed up, the lights turning off. Mark doesn’t know what time it is. “Kimchi jjigae soon?”

Mark nods, easily, like this isn’t the most stressful thing he’s agreed to all year. “Tomorrow?”

Donghyuck shakes his head. “Can’t, I’m drinking with Doyoung-hyung. Day after?”

“Mhm.”

They end up in the same car home, Mark sits there, heart warm with the plans to see Donghyuck, to eat with him. He supposes at some point the feeling will settle, but it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

Donghyuck tips his head onto the window, across from Mark, a whole seat between them, as the night lights of Seoul peel past them.

The soft light looks gorgeous, running across Donghyuck’s face in patterns of red and blue.

Mark’s attention never strays far from him, the whole drive home. It’s not like he’s ever really been able to look anywhere else.

[THEN]

Mark finds out he’s debuting on a Monday, the meeting is short and the whole time Mark’s heart is beating so loudly he fears it will burst right out of his chest.

The 7th Sense — he’s doing it, he’s doing something. He’s going to record a song and debut and he’ll have something to show for all this hard work, he’ll have something to show for all the days where he’s fallen asleep at his school desk and woken up to another 5 hours of dance practice scheduled.

Donghyuck jumps on Mark when he gets into the practice room, along with Jeno and Renjun, squealing in Mark’s ear about the news.

Mark shakes them off nervously, but is bouncing with clear happiness, he looks at Donghyuck with apprehension of bitterness, they’ve been trainees this whole time together and Mark will be debuting without him, but Donghyuck only gives him a rare, sweet smile.

He finds out he’s debuting with 127 on a Thursday, sat next to Donghyuck — or Haechan, he’s meant to call him Haechan — clutching each other’s hands under the table. Mark feels like he can do this now, has the recording practice from the 7th sense but this time he gets to do it with all his hyungs. With Taeyong. With Johnny. With Donghyuck.

As he secretly dreaded, as he secretly hoped, he’s with Donghyuck.

He finds out about Dream on a Wednesday, the meeting room a familiar place to him now, no longer as nervous in the face of the director. Afterwards, they all clasp each other, hugging a crying young Jisung the most. Happiness bleeds out of all of them, joy to be debuting and working. Mark doesn’t think about the graduation system then, only nods at the interesting idea of a ‘youth team,’ about the fact that he’s going to be the eldest — for the first time he’ll be the hyung. The de facto leader in a way. He swallows, looking at the six others that will be in his team and runs straight to Taeyong for advice — how can he do it, how can he be the eldest after so long as one of the youngest? He’s not even the eldest in his family. 

Donghyuck sits with him that night, as the others noisily eat their japchae — Donghyuck murmurs, so quietly, so low, “It’ll be alright hyung. You’re gonna do great.”

Mark nods, looking at his food, trying not to let how much the words affect him show.

The next day, Jeno comes to him, and Renjun, all with reassurance, all with promises to help. Mark looks at Jeno in particular, someone so quiet, yet so calming in the face of such a noisy group.

It buoys him with hope, it steadies him with calm.

He finds out he has to leave Dream on a Friday, two years later, in the same meeting room where he was with six others, he now sits just him, the director, and the sinking feeling in his gut.

He knew he would have to leave, he knew that’s what he signed on for when he debuted with Dream, something they had to explain in each interview they went to, something they said so often that maybe it lost its reality to all of them. He knows Jisung has cried just thinking about it — so they specifically do not talk about the fact that they wouldn’t be doing this as a seven forever, that Mark would be the first one to leave. And that’s the crux of it, Mark doesn’t want to leave, he doesn’t want to leave at all.

For just a moment, he considers doing something so un-Mark, he considers arguing it — he considers begging to be left in, for them to change the system.

It’s too cruel — he realises now — too cruel to put a group of people together for years to bond like family to work tirelessly together since they were kids, and then rip one of them away from that. He wouldn’t be with them any more, but he would have to work vaguely alongside them — and that hurts most of all. 

But Mark Lee isn’t that kind of boy — man, now — so he nods, solemnly, once, and the director leaves him to the room with his thoughts.

He feels his phone buzz with a message, Donghyuck’s name he put into Mark’s contacts when they were 14 staring back at him.

16:28
donghyuck (soulmate!!!!)

How’s it going?? 

Mark can’t bring himself to reply, his fingers hover over the keyboard, but he ends up just putting his phone away.

Donghyuck — he hadn’t even considered Donghyuck.

He hasn’t spoken to the rest of Dream about what his leaving means because he knows it hurts — know they never realised how bad the idea of one of them leaving would hurt. 

He hasn’t spoken to Donghyuck about it on purpose.

He couldn’t imagine facing the size of their schedule alone — the only thing that makes it bearable is that they suffer together, is that they fall asleep on each other's shoulders in the car ride, allow each other to be as mean and tense as they want with each other because they both know where it comes from, sharing the tears and the fear as one.

Mark sits in his car back to the dorm, not knowing what to do with the well of feeling in his stomach. Would you like me to tell the rest of your members? The director had asked, and Mark had said no, that he would do it, but he regrets it now.

When he gets home, he goes down to Dream’s dorm and finds them all sitting in the living room talking to Donghyuck, who had clearly summoned them there. Mark doesn’t know what’s written on his face, but all of them suddenly look sombre.

“Hey guys.” He says, with what he knows is a weak smile.

“Hyung.” Chenle says, “What’s going on?”

Mark watches Renjun's eyes well with tears, ever the quickest of the seven of them. He goes and sits at his spot on the couch, fiddling with a rip in his jeans in order to not look at them. In order to not look at Donghyuck. He knows they have the tour with 127 together coming in the spring, he knows that he won’t be apart from him for long. But it feels like a cleaving of something, an understanding that they will never do both together ever again. Mark won’t be able to share in Donghyuck’s stress, only have to watch from afar, and see him whenever 127 have schedules, not be able to let him sleep on his shoulder in their early car rides, just the two of them.

“We knew it would happen.” Mark says, as calmly as he can manage. He didn’t cry when he left his family for Seoul, he didn’t cry when he debuted, didn’t cry when he won his first award — he won’t cry now. He’ll be the strong hyung he always wanted to be for them. “They’ve scheduled my official graduation, which will happen in three weeks.”

Predictably, many things happen at once. Jisung bursts into tears, Chenle squawks in outrage, Renjun starts to rub Jisung’s back, Jeno and Jaemin clutch each other's hands in support and Donghyuck — Donghyuck doesn’t say anything.

In fact, the most concerning thing, after Mark has hugged every one of them and dried Jisung’s tears on the side of his hoodie, and got them all to accept that unfortunately, they were serious about the graduation system and Mark is going to have to leave — Donghyuck still doesn’t say anything. And then, when the announcement has settled, Donghyuck gets up and walks out of the room without a word. Jeno’s eyes follow him with concern, moving from Jaemin’s side in order to stand up and go after him when Mark raises a hand.

“Let me go. I should go.”

Jeno looks at him warily. “Be careful, hyung.” And then, with a quick look at Renjun. “Be gentle with him.”

Mark’s brow furrows at the sharp look Jaemin cuts Jeno when he says it. Be gentle with him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mark looks down at where Jeno and Jaemin’s hands were intertwined, he sees how Jaemin’s fingernails have now dug into the flesh of Jeno’s wrist.

“Nothing, hyung, um, just go after him.” Jeno finally says, avoiding his eyes.

Mark nods, running down the corridor and up the stairs to Johnny and Donghyuck’s room.

He knocks nervously on the door. “Donghyuck-ah?”

The door swings open, and there stands a shirtless Johnny, he gives Mark a tense smile and slips out from behind him. “I’m gonna let you deal with this one man.” He says in English, and then lowers his voice. “Be nice, yeah?”

Mark was getting really frustrated with people thinking he was mean to Donghyuck. First Jeno and now this. “Of course I’m gonna be nice, dude, what the hell?”

Johnny gives him a terse look. “I know you’re nice, Mark, so does everyone, but you’re too hard on Haechannie sometimes.”

He has nothing to say to that, he can’t think of anything to say to that. Johnny leaves him like that, confused, with a soft pat on his shoulder.

Is he too hard on Donghyuck? Mark doesn't think so, but, then again, he’s gotten it wrong with Donghyuck so many times before. Donghyuck gets under his skin so easily that Mark knows he sometimes acts childishly, but Dognhyuck knows what he’s doing — Mark knows what reaction Donghyuck is trying to elicit out of him. It drives him crazy.

He puts thoughts of that aside for later — all he knows is that right now, Donghyuck isn’t okay, and fuck if Mark isn’t going to try his goddamn hardest to fix it.

He slips into the room, and sees a lump under the covers of Donghyuck’s single bed.

He kneels by the bed, not going for the covers yet.

“Hyuck?” He asks, gently. “Come on, Haechan-ah, come out.”

Donghyuck snorts. It sounds wet with tears. He comes out of the covers slowly, and he looks… miserable. Mark sits on the bed when Donghyuck scooches aside, he presses his hands to his red face, wiping some of the tears from his face.

At 18, Donghyuck doesn’t look much different to how he did at 16, 15, 14 — maybe Mark just can’t tell. But he feels as though Donghyuck looks especially young at this moment. Mark doesn’t even have a year on him, but it feels like more. Something stings at the back of Mark’s eyes, but he steels himself, he was serious about not crying, he refuses to make Donghyuck feel worse than he does — to make any of them feel worse. It was hard enough watching Jisung cry, to now see Donghyuck do the same is almost too hard, he almost breaks.

“We’re going on tour soon together, you’re gonna be sick of me, man.” Mark tries to joke, sitting in a dent on the bed where he guesses Johnny had been sitting before.

“I know.”

“You’re gonna want me to sit on the other end of the bus just so you don’t have to look at me any longer, Haechan-ah.”

“I know.”

“You’re probably gonna kick me out of being your roommate again, remember that food fight we had in—”

Donghyuck promptly bursts into tears. Mark is 19 now, he’s better at this, he shifts his hands into Donghyuck’s soft brown hair and tugs him forward until Donghyuck is sobbing a wet patch into Mark’s shirt. “That wasn’t supposed to make you cry more.”

Donghyuck laughs wetly for a moment into Mark’s chest, but the sobs continue and Mark stays there, holding him. He said he wouldn’t cry, but it’s getting more difficult the more Mark feels Donghyuck shake against him.

He’d just learnt how to be a good hyung to Dream, and now he’s leaving them. At this moment, Donghyuck gasping into him, it feels like the most unfair thing in the world.

“I always end up crying around you, hyung, I’m not this teary with anyone else.” 

“It’s okay, Donghyuck-ah. You can be teary with me.”

“Hyung.” Donghyuck says after Mark doesn’t know how long. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this without you. I don’t know why they’re making me.”

Something hot and sour suddenly sits in Mark’s throat. He’s so grateful, god he’s so grateful, for all that he gets to do, for being able to live as an artist. He has never resented it like he does now.

Mark ignores the damp stick of his t-shirt against his chest, he holds Donghyuck harder against him. Like he wants him so close he’ll just fall right into Mark’s chest cavity and stay there.

“I don’t know, Donghyuck-ah, but I know that you can. And you will.”

Donghyuck cries for another hour, until the two of them end up sitting in front of the TV in Dream’s dorm, all of them piling on top of Mark while they watch Zootopia. Mark ends up with Renjun and Jisung leaning on either side of him, Jeno sat with his legs on Mark’s lap, and Jaemin behind him, Chenle and Donghyuck sit in front of him, Chenle leaning back into the couch and Donghyuck hooking an arm around Mark’s leg. They sit like a prison around Mark, like they can keep him there.

Mark cries at graduation. 

[NOW]

Mark taps his foot under the table of the kimchi jjigae restaurant, the same restaurant Mark and Donghyuck went to almost every week when they were trainees. They don’t go so often anymore, their palettes maturing, and the ease of living in a dorm together has passed since they both moved out.

They’d made this plan, though — Donghyuck had made this plan, for them to eat at the restaurant once in a while, just like old times. But Mark had been waiting for half an hour and Donghyuck hadn’t turned up.

He eventually ate by himself, rankled by Donghyuck doing this, not answering his texts and calls. 

Mark ubers back to his apartment, pissed off, where he goes and sits down on his couch quietly, trying to not get even more upset. He shucks his clothes and goes to stand in the shower, letting the hot water beat down onto his head and shoulders. He watches a couple performances from the last few days in bed — freshly showered and trying to distract himself from how upset he is.

It’s just past two in the morning when Donghyuck finally deigns to respond to Mark's messages. He’d been trying to sleep, but it hadn't been going well.

02.03
donghyuck (soulmate!!!!)

shit i am so sorry hyung

mark-hyung im sorry

02.06
mark

You blew me off Donghyuck

What the hell

02.07
donghyuck (soulmate!!!!)

hyung i really am so sorry

i’ll make it up to you tomorrow?

or i can even come over now

i can explain myself at least

02.10
mark

Okay

Come over now then

Mark sits on his couch, crosses his legs and turns on the TV — casually channel-surfing while his heart pounds. He can still feel the anger thrumming through his body, alongside the sting of hurt. Mark had finally thought he had a bit of Donghyuck back, there had been something distant and fraught about them of late, along with Mark’s little realisation he hardly knows how to feel about. There he had been, sitting in their kimchi jjigae restaurant, waiting and waiting, and the man he’s in love with didn’t come.

Fuck, he felt 15 again.

What must have been about 30 minutes later Mark hears someone put in the code to his door and he stands. Donghyuck rushes in, pulling his mask down from his face, flushed and clearly nervous.

“Hyung.” Donghyuck takes a step forward, gives Mark a careful hug that he can’t help but return. He breathes in Donghyuck’s familiar smell, the smell of home. Donghyuck pushes back and looks at him — just below the eyes, like he can't bring himself to.

“I’m really sorry, hyung, Chenle and I were having drinks and then it got out of hand and we ended up at the club, I completely forgot.”

Mark looks at him, for a long moment, it’s not that good of a reason, but Mark can’t help but let it go. It’s Donghyuck, after all. “Make it up to me next time.”

“I will, hyung, I promise. Did you still eat?

“Mm. It was good.”

“I’m sure.” Donghyuck says, smiling. Mark can now tell that the flushed sheen on his face is certainly from the alcohol.

“How was it?” Mark asks, shouting out as he walks to his kitchen and grabs a glass and fills it with water. He puts it on the table in front of the couch, where Donghyuck has sat, folding his legs underneath himself.

“It was good.” Donghyuck takes a sip of the water, thanking Mark with another smile. “I, uh, I mean the reason it’s so late is I went home with someone.” He laughs. “Chenle did too, but I think it was a girl he was seeing before.”

“Ah.”

Mark doesn’t say anything else. He can identify the feeling in his belly, the hot surge of jealousy that he knows isn’t just, the way the anger rises again easily, with something that feels like betrayal. He shifts on the couch, once, twice, hears Donghyuck talk about the music that night, the sheer top he had made Chenle wear that looked great, but Mark can’t think about anything else. He hears Donghyuck get out his phone, laughing at a text Chenle has sent him but he can’t think about anything else.

“You slept with him?”

Donghyuck looks up from his phone, like he’s shocked Mark has asked. Mark hopes Donghyuck can’t hear the clanging of his heart from beneath his ribcage, hopes the despair he feels in his stomach isn’t written all over his face.

“Did you, Haechan?”

Oh, but anger comes quickly to them both.

“Why do you care?” Donghyuck asks sharply, likely noting that the tone of Mark’s voice isn’t kind. “Hyung, why do you give a fuck? Yes, I fucking slept with him, cause I’m an adult and I wanted to, now fuck off.”

“Do you like him?”

Donghyuck barks out a laugh, sharp and loud. “Oh, what’s this now?” He looks at Mark like he can peel back the layers of his skin, but Mark is so inexplicably hurt.

“You skipped out on our dinner plans to go sleep with this guy so yeah, I’m hoping you fucking like him.”

“Oh, language, hyung.” Donghyuck looks almost delighted, like he’s raring to fight with Mark, he bounds up from the couch, poking a finger into Mark’s chest. “And no, it was just a fuck. I met him in the club for God’s sake! I’ve already said sorry about dinner, which I am sorry about.” At this he looks slightly less angry, a twinge of guilt entering his expression.

Mark bites the insides of his cheeks, clenching his jaw. “I don’t like this Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck winds an arm around himself. “What don’t you like?” His words are so sharp they pierce right through Mark’s chest.

“It’s reckless!”

“What’s reckless? He signed an NDA just like everyone else does with the girls in the hotels, just like you have done in the past, Mark, so what about this is fucking reckless?”

“It’s — I just— I don’t like it!”

Mark knows he sounds like a child now, but he can’t do anything about the storm of emotion that’s welling up and pouring out of him.

“Oh? You don’t like it? Tough shit, Mark Lee! I can do what I want and I don’t need your god-given opinion on everything.”

Donghyuck doesn’t say it — eyes wild, chest heaving — but Mark knows exactly what this is about. You don’t know someone for 11 years without being able to read exactly what each of their words mean. It’s why Mark and Donghyuck have always been so good at arguing, because they know how to hit where it hurts.

“This isn’t about God.”

“Oh, isn’t it?”

Mark sees the thrum under Donghyuck’s skin, he sees the way his fingers are twitching by his sides. Donghyuck who prays quietly and privately alongside Mark and Doyoung before they perform, Donghyuck who stopped wearing his cross necklace when he turned 15 but still always prays with Mark and Doyoung, Donghyuck who Mark knows has an equally complicated relationship with God as he does, but one they never touch on. Just like Mark and the dreamies knew Donghyuck liked men when he casually brought up a guy he kissed in a round of Never Have I Ever, but they never talked about it.

Looks like they’re talking about it now.

“No, Donghyuck, it’s not.” The fight has bled out of Mark’s voice, replaced by the shock of what he thinks Donghyuck is insinuating.

“Fuck off, Mark — you know it is. That’s always what this has been about.”

“Donghyuck, Donghyuck-ah, look at me.” Mark steps forward, so they’re even further into each other’s space. Mark wants to raise a hand and place it on Donghyuck’s shoulder — he refrains. “That’s never what this has been about.”

Donghyuck takes a long time to answer. Mark watches his throat bob soundlessly.

“What has this been about then?” His voice is as hard as stone. “Why don’t you like it, hyung?”

“I just…” Mark pauses, lost for words once more. “I don’t know why. I guess I’m just worried about you.”

Donghyuck scoffs. “Not good enough. Leave me alone Mark, just leave me fucking alone!” His voice raises once more. “I don’t need you here, involving yourself in every part of my life — stood here, fucking torturing me all the goddamn time when you know what I have always really wanted.”

“No, I—”

“Shut up, Mark. You know.”

“I know?”

“Yeah, you know.” Donghyuck’s voice breaks. Mark’s heart is going a million miles an hour for a reason he can’t quite put a finger on. “You’ve always known and don’t pretend you haven’t.”

At that, Donghyuck looks up at him, tears welling in his brown eyes, before shouldering his way past Mark and out of the room, grabbing his bag and slamming Mark’s apartment door shut. Leaving Mark to stand there, knees wreck, barely able to keep himself upright. 

He sits on his couch, at three in the morning, and puts his head in his hands.

Mark thinks long and hard, over the deep well of pain in his heart, over the tangled web of emotions he’s always felt for Donghyuck: the childhood hate, the friendship, the trust, the love.

You know what I have always wanted.

[THEN]

If Mark thinks about it, really thinks about it, maybe he did know. 

Maybe he always knew.

[NOW]

Mark goes to the practice room late the next day, he had ignored all of the messages from his hyungs, the noticeable silence on the Dream group chat, he had ignored the big yawning chasm that’s opened up inside him ever since he was so stupid with his feelings.

He hates fighting with Donghyuck like that, has always hated it, going beyond the jokes until they’re hitting at the rawest, cruellest parts of each other like rabid dogs.

Mark drops his bag with a sigh, staring in the mirror at his hair sticking up in five different ways and the bags beneath his eyes. He puts his hand for a second on the floor of the practice room, bowing his neck until he feels a lick of pain down his aching spine.

He really needs to get some sleep.

Mark sighs, pressing play on the speaker and resuming position, he dances until his muscles are burning beneath his sweater, his feet pounding against the hard floor of the room. He closes his eyes at one point, losing himself in old choreography until he really doesn’t have to think about the impending doom of his own life right now, of the agony and exhaustion that wrecks him.

He opens his eyes, and, like a hallucination, like a dream — there sits Donghyuck.

Mark stands, parting, the rest of the song playing out on the speaker. Donghyuck has no mask on, just a thin white shirt and jeans, some lingering makeup from his schedule today. He’s leaning against the door of the studio, looking at Mark with no expression on his face.

Mark stares at him, trying to make sense of him being here. He should have gone to him, apologised to him, that was usually how it worked, Mark — the hyung, the elder — it’s his job. 

He fails Donghyuck so often.

“What are you doing here?” Mark says softly, the moment the song ends.

Donghyuck looks at him properly, mouth twisting. “That’s really where you want to start?”

“No, I mean — no. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want to, um, apologise.”

Donghyuck pushes his hands through his hair with a sigh, at once Mark notices how tired he looks. He had always respected how little Donghyuck complained, but part of him also wished that Donghyuck would talk to him. That they would talk, once, about what their job really forced them to do, what it forced them to be. He walks forward until Mark’s in front of him.

Once again, the brave one.

“Come on, hyung, do better than that.”

Mark shifts forward, until he takes one of Donghyuck’s hands into his own. He can do better. For Donghyuck, he must. “I’m really sorry, Donghyuck-ah. It was wrong of me, your life is your own and I had no right to involve myself. It was out of order and — and you deserve better. You deserve a better hyung, a better leader, a better friend.”

Donghyuck huffs out a sigh, but doesn’t remove his hand from Mark’s. “Don’t make this about you and all your imagined failings, hyung. I’ve already forgiven you for all your stupid shit about that guy. Come on. We need to talk about the rest of it.”

“What ‘rest of it’?”

The denial comes so easy to Mark, it’s like breathing, it’s like dreaming, it’s like Donghyuck sitting at the back of his practice room. He drops Donghyuck’s hand, walking over to get some water from the other side of the room, trying to ignore the way his hands are shaking.

“Oh, God, don’t bullshit me, Mark. Please.” 

Mark still can’t look at him.

“Donghyuck-ah—”

“Don’t ‘Donghyuck-ah’ me.” Mark may have tried his hardest, since he was 23, 21, 19, 17, 14 years old. But Donghyuck seems finally determined to have this conversation, he stalks across the practice room until he’s in front of Mark. His eyes, fixed and blazing, pinning Mark with his gaze alone. His heart beats so loud he can hear it in his ears. “We aren’t kids anymore — I know — I know what I’m doing being the one to say this. I know what I’m risking. But the thing is, hyung, is that I can’t take it anymore. Think, for once in your life, think, Mark. Why is it that — why can Taeyong-hyung hang off you in front of everyone but I can’t, why can you cuddle Renjun outside of just a room in the dark, why is Chenle allowed to sleep with people but I can’t—“ He breaks off. To Mark’s horror he thinks he sees tears in Donghyuck’s eyes. “Why is my question? Why can they do that, but I can’t? If we’re ‘best friends’ hyung, why? I’m sick of asking myself! Why can they do it but I can’t? Why am I different?”

Donghyuck’s voice has grown louder and sharper, his eyes rimming with red.

Mark can’t bear it, can’t bear Donghyuck’s sadness, can’t bear the heat in this practice room, can't bear the truth that yawns within him like a large pit in his stomach.

“Because!”

“Because what.”

“Because you’re different! You’re not like them— you— you’re different.”

Donghyuck’s face contorts with pain.

“How am I different, hyung? How?”

Mark’s throat closes up. How is he ever supposed to articulate how different Donghyuck is? How Mark sends every picture of the sky he takes to Donghyuck on kakaotalk, because the sun is in it and Donghyuck is like the sun. There has never been a more fitting name than Haechan for him. He is not the sunset, or the sunrise, not some half-conceived half-bright thing. He is the star which Mark revolves around like a useless, enamoured planet. Mark thinks about him every time he writes a song or when he closes his eyes at night or when Donghyuck tries to kiss his cheek and a thought runs through Mark’s head along the lines of only kiss me if you mean it. 

Mark isn’t in love with Taeyong or Renjun or Chenle.

So yes. Donghyuck is different.

But how can Mark ever possibly tell him that?

Donghyuck looks more anguished every second that Mark doesn’t reply. He seems to curl a little in on himself.

“Is it because…” Donghyuck chokes on a sob, Mark wants to hold him so badly he has to dig his fingernails into his forearms to stop from doing so, “Is it because I like men? Is it that? No matter how much you pretend it isn’t, is it God, Mark?”

He has never sounded so quiet. So heartbroken. Mark almost trips over himself to get to him, stopping himself be damned.

He doesn’t touch Donghyuck. He’s not sure that would solve anything right now. He just sort of holds his hands out in front of him.

“No. Donghyuck-ah, it would never ever be that. You aren’t… different to me because you’re gay. Never. Never, shit, Donghyuck, I—”

Donghyuck looks even more tired, but still somewhat relieved when he interrupts him. “Then what, hyung, please. Please, you can’t not tell me now.”

Mark vacillates. He can’t — he hasn’t got the courage to —

To change everything, to tell everyone, to be a person that has only existed in his dreams.

And he can’t…

That’s why you write music. Because you can’t get it out another way.

“Hyung.”

Mark looks up. He looks at Donghyuck, who stares at him imploringly — like this is the last chance he is going to give him. 

You know, you’ve always known.

At once his body burns. Out with it, it seems to say, it will not swallow you, it seems to say, love it, it seems to say.

“It’s because I’m in love with you Donghyuck. That’s why.”

For a moment, the world moves soundlessly around them. Mark looks at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck looks at Mark. And everything pauses.

A faint caw of a bird and the sound of a car brings Mark back to the moment. To the room. To Donghyuck’s jaw, dropped open.

“What?” It’s said in a gasp.

Mark’s mouth moves before he can even process it again. “I love you, Donghyuck. I’m in love with you. That’s why you’re different from them. That’s why you’ve always been different.”

He doesn’t know what effect he hopes his words will have, but it wasn’t for Donghyuck to drop to the ground, pushing his face into his hands, his sobs growing in frequency. Mark moves, kneeling in front of him, his hands encircling Donghyuck’s wrists.

“Donghyuck-ah— ‘m sorry, we can — we can just ignore it, stop crying, Hyuck, I—”

Donghyuck bursts out from behind his hands, and kisses him.

Mark responds immediately, kissing Donghyuck back with such force they both almost topple over, laughing into each other’s mouths before they are licking into them again. The last time Mark kissed Donghyuck he was eighteen and shy, it was clumsy and awkward and it is nothing like this.

The kiss is slightly wet, salty with Donghyuck’s tears, but Mark has shifted his hands into Donghyuck’s soft hair and is swallowing down his moans by kissing him so hard their teeth clack. Donghyuck moves from palming his jaw, to his neck, to clutching onto his shoulders like he can bring Mark nearer to him. Like he wants to meld them together tightly. Like he can’t quite believe Mark is real.

Mark barely knows what to think, only that he hasn’t been so sure of something in a long time. But still, he needs to know.

“You? Donghyuck — you?”

“Of course I fucking love you, Mark.” Donghyuck’s voice is wrecked, he kisses him once more. “I always have.”

Mark kisses him and kisses him until he’s half hard against Donghyuck’s thigh and the sun has started to go down outside the studio, when he pulls back, Donghyuck is lying on the floor with a dazed look in his eyes, cheeks flushed in a way that drives Mark so crazy he leans in to nip his neck.

“Hyuck-ah.” He groans, sucking until he hears Donghyuck make a pretty noise.

“Hyung, we have to go.” Donghyuck says breathlessly. “It is definitely too late for us to still be here.”

It feels like a dream, standing up and pulling Donghyuck up next to him, threading their fingers together and kissing him sharp on the mouth. He shoves his beanie again onto Donghyuck’s head, kissing him as quietly as he can in the taxi ride back to his apartment. They ride the elevator in silence, trying to keep their hands to themselves, and Mark is once more very grateful that they don’t live in dorms anymore.

He has Donghyuck all to himself.

Donghyuck shrugs his jacket off onto Mark’s couch and looks at him from across the room, the lights in his living room soft and warm on his skin. Mark can’t believe he gets to love him.

He almost trips over his own feet getting to the middle of the room so he can kiss Donghyuck again, their mouths moving gently, Mark’s body feeling thick and heady. “Donghyuck, mmf, Donghyuck-ah, we should talk.”

“Talking is overrated.” Donghyuck says, ignoring Mark completely and biting at his ear instead.

“Don’t be cheesy, baby.” Mark feels a shiver run down Donghyuck’s back at the pet name. “Okay, maybe talking is overrated.”

Donghyuck moans into his mouth again, walking them over to where Mark’s bedroom is. He tugs at Mark’s t-shirt until it’s tangling in his glasses as he tries to tug it off in haste. Donghyuck unbuttons his shirt as quickly as he can without tearing his mouth from Mark’s. 

“Shit.” Mark says, interrupted by another kiss, he can feel how hard Donghyuck is against him. “Are we rushing this? Hyuck, are we— I—” He moans when Donghyuck palms him through his trousers.

“I’ve been fantasising about this since I was probably 15, Mark, I’m ready if you are.”

The thread of longing that runs through Mark is so profound he doesn’t know what to do with it for a second. Then he looks at Donghyuck, who looks shy, cheeks pink at the secret he has admitted. He loves him more than he thinks he has loved anyone in his life. “Fuck yeah baby, let’s do it.”

“Shit.” Donghyuck moans at the pet name, reaching forward to pull Mark’s sweatpants down, they shed all their clothes until they’re in their boxers on the bed, no stranger to seeing each other over years of changing rooms and living together, there’s a new layer to it now. Mark gets to kiss every single one of Donghyuck’s moles until he moans. Donghyuck mouths at Mark’s abs in a way that makes Mark think he’s thought about it before. Mark can bite into Donghyuck’s thighs in a way he thought he could only dream of.

Donghyuck is moaning, loud and unabashed as Mark strips him of his boxers and bites the flesh of his thighs, ignoring how hard Donghyuck is against his stomach, cockhead pink and leaking.

“You want it, baby?” Mark says and Donghyuck moans, sifting his hands into Mark’s hair.

“Yes, god, I didn’t think — fuck, Mark!” Mark interrupts him by taking the head of Donghyuck’s dick into his mouth. “I didn’t think you’d — hng — I didn’t think you’d be like this.”

Mark swirls his tongue under the head of Donghyuck’s pretty cock, relishing the way Donghyuck’s thigh twitches where he has it over his shoulder. “I’ve thought about this for a while, too.”

Mark sucks him off as best he can — he’s only given head once or twice in his life, both throwaway club hookups that he didn’t tell anyone about, only when he was out with his home friends in Canada. There’s no shame for him in this, though, because it’s Donghyuck. Donghyuck, who he can be anyone in front of, who he can show anything to and know he will not run away.

Donghyuck moans start speeding up as Mark bobs his head faster and faster, using his other hand to play with Donghyuck’s balls. “I’m gonna cum, Mark, shit!”  

That’s all the warning Mark gets before Donghyuck is cumming in hot stripes down his throat. Mark pulls off and coughs a bit, grabbing a tissue from his bedside table and spitting into it, he turns back to Donghyuck and laughs at out fucked out he already looks, cheeks flushed as he dazedly stares up at the ceiling. Mark crawls over him, kissing up his chest and neck. “You’re too pretty for your own good, Hyuck-ah.”

“Mark.” Donghyuck says in a breath, finally turning up to him. “Will you please fuck me?”

Mark grins. “Respect, you brat.”

“Fine, hyung, will you please fuck me?”

Mark kisses him, letting Donghyuck taste his own cum in his mouth, usually something Mark would find dirty, but Donghyuck kisses back with such fervour that he doesn’t seem to mind. “Are you sure you can go again?”

Donghyuck pushes Mark’s shoulder, pinning him down to the bed and straddling him. “If it means that I get to experience what I’ve wanted for going on 10 years, Mark, I can definitely go again.”

Mark giggles, planting his hands on Donghyuck’s hips, thumbing at his hip bones. “I’ll be honest, I’ve never bottomed, so are you happy for me to top?”

Donghyuck grinds their dicks down together, punching a surprised moan out of Mark’s chest. “Fuck yes I’m okay with that Mark. Get the lube.”

Mark goes into his bedside drawer, thanking his past self for getting curious a couple weeks ago and buying some. He grabs the lube and a condom, turning back around to find Donghyuck lying on the bed with his hands out. 

“Can’t I prep you?” Mark asks, whining a little.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “It’ll be quicker this way, how many men have you fingered anyway?”

“A couple!”

“That sounds like ‘one’ to me. It will be quicker this way, anyways,” Donghyuck takes the lube from Mark’s hand and squirts some out onto his fingers, lying back on Mark’s pillows and spreading his legs, “And I just want you in me.”

Mark groans, crawling up the bed until he has a better view of Donghyuck opening himself up. He starts slow, with one finger, and Mark kisses his shoulders, his arms whilst he does. Donghyuck inserts another finger and then almost wails when Mark starts mouthing at his nipple.

“You like that?” Mark says, scratching his teeth at his nipple and enjoying the way Donghyuck gasps.

“Fuck! Mark, don’t do that or I’ll cum.” He’s pumping his fingers in and out of himself at this point, and Mark is so hard that he needs to be inside Donghyuck soon enough that he pulls back with a groan. Donghyuck puts another finger in, accepting a kiss from Mark as he winces to the stretch. He fingers himself for a little longer, Mark is so physically hard he thinks he might explode.

Finally, Donghyuck nods and Mark rips his boxers off at high speed.

Donghyuck looks at his dick and moans, throwing his head back. “Fuck you, Mark! I can’t believe you were keeping all this from me!”

Mark rolls his eyes, laughing when Donghyuck starts pouting. The expression slips off his face when Mark leans down over him, hooking a leg round his waist so his dick is lined up with Donghyuck’s ass. It hits Mark then and there, that he’s about to fuck Donghyuck, that they’re about to have sex and everything is going to change. For a moment, he worries, but then he looks at Donghyuck’s face. No longer pouting, he looks up at him, sweet and wide-eyed. He reaches a hand up to cup Mark’s face.

“Ready?” He says.

“Hey.” Mark says softly, brushing their noses together. “That’s my line.”

Donghyuck giggles, kissing him softly. “I’m ready whenever you are, hyung.”

In a way he always has been.

Mark’s eyes sting as he kisses him slightly harder, feeling as Donghyuck’s mouth drops open when Mark starts to push in.

“Oh fuck.” Donghyuck says in a drawn out moan as Mark bottoms out.

His hands are planted either side of Donghyuck’s head, shoulders shaking with the way Donghyuck feels around him, tight and warm and perfect. “Shit, Donghyuck-ah.” He moans, burying his face into Donghyuck’s shoulder. 

“Fuck, Mark, move.”

Mark draws his face back from Donghyuck's shoulder and pulls as far out as he can before pushing back in, he starts slowly, appreciating the punched-out way Donghyuck moans the whole time, jostling his body up the bed as he grinds slowly into him.

“Faster, Mark.” Donghyuck whispers into his mouth. “Come on, baby, do me like I know you want to.”

Mark moans as he fucks Donghyuck faster, watching closely as his face goes slack, he angles his hips up slightly until Donghyuck is wailing, hitting his prostate with every thrust.

“Shit, shit, shit, oh my god.” Mark says as Donghyuck seems robbed of speech, only punched out ah’s echoing from him.

Mark leans down to kiss him, pistoning his hips in and out at the same time. “I love you, Hyuck-ah.” He says, ever the classic, cheesy man in missionary.

“Fuck, Mark, I love you so much.” Donghyuck says, tipping his head back and moaning more than kissing Mark back.

He shifts, taking Donghyuck’s leg and pressing another wet kiss on the litter of hickies on his thigh from earlier, he places the leg on his shoulder using the new leverage to fuck down into Donghyuck, who responds with a broken moan.

He keeps fucking him, feeling the familiar tightening in his gut, he fucks Donghyuck harder, with shorter strokes, soaking up how pink and sweet Donghyuck looks beneath him. He watches as Donghyuck reaches for his dick, stroking himself quickly in time with Mark’s rhythm.

“Mark, hyung, shit — I’m gonna cum.”

Mark slows for a couple stroke just to torture him, letting Donghyuck’s orgasm almost run away from him, speeding up again when Donghyuck whines at him, smacking his chest in admonishment. 

“Shit, hyung, I’m gonna — I’m gonna cum — fuck!”

“Me too, baby, come on, cum with me, Hyuck-ah.”

Mark keeps fucking into him, his strokes getting sloppier as he feels himself reach the edge of his orgasm. Suddenly, Donghyuck’s leg starts shaking as he cums in long white stripes over his chest, trembling in the aftershocks as Mark feels himself fill the condom with one long stroke.

They stay like that for a while, sweating and panting on top of each other, before Mark finally pulls out, watching Donghyuck wince as he does. He ties the condom up and chucks it in his bin, then goes to grab a wet flannel from his bathroom. He returns to the bedroom, where Donghyuck is sprawled on top of the covers naked, Mark kisses him once, his eyelids fluttering open as Mark continues to clean up his chest.

Mark chucks the flannel to the side and retrieves his boxers, crawling up the bed to fold Donghyuck into his arms.

Somehow, despite them being similar sizes, he fits in them perfectly. 

“Mark.” Donghyuck whispers.

“Yeah?”

“You know I’m in love with you, right? I don’t think I said it properly enough. I… I love you too, I’ve loved you for a really long time.”

Mark hums, his heart twisting on the inside thinking about how stupid they have been. “I didn’t realise until later than you but I think I’ve loved you for a long time too, Donghyuck-ah. Longer than I will ever truly know. Maybe it was from that very first day.”

Donghyuck snorts, but Mark can hear the tremor in his voice. “What, my bowl cut just enchanted you?”

“It could have.”

Donghyuck giggles now, pressing a soft kiss on the inside of Mark’s wrist. Mark knows, then, that it is his turn to finally be brave.

“You know I’m in this, right, Hyuck? Whatever happens, this isn’t a casual fuck for me, I love you and I want to be with you in any way that you’ll have me.” Donghyuck presses his face into the crease of Mark’s arm, his bare back starts shaking against Mark’s chest and Mark leans down, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Baby? Talk to me.”

Donghyuck turns in Mark’s arms, his gorgeous face glistening with tears in a way that makes Mark so upset that he wipes them with his hands, resting them on Donghyuck’s cheeks. “It’s just all I think I’ve ever wanted to hear from you. Sorry, fuck, I’m just a bit overwhelmed.”

Mark kisses him, slow, soft, trying to make up for all the hurt he knows he’s caused. “Me too, I think.”

“Mark.” Donghyuck says softly, kissing the side of his shoulder. “Hyung.”

“I know, baby.” He squeezes Donghyuck a little tighter. He knows they should text someone, tell someone, make sure they have a plan of what they should do, but Mark really can’t be bothered with anything but the boy in his arms. “I love you, we have all the time in the world.”

Donghyuck falls asleep in his arms, the lights of the city flashing into the windows of Mark’s apartment. Mark holds him in the dark, feeling the soft sigh of Donghyuck’s breathing against him, and thinks about how silly he has been.

He’s known, has always known that Donghyuck was different, he’s been realising it in a slow, incremental way how truly different he was for a long time.

He’s not sure when he began loving Donghyuck, but he knows he always has in some way. It changed later for him than it changed for Donghyuck but Mark knows that now he has him he’ll do everything he can to keep him — everything he can to make it work. Mark kisses Donghyuck’s cheek as he sleeps, unable to fully realise that he has Donghyuck in his arms. That Donghyuck loves him back, that they are here, together. He falls asleep at some point during his thinking.

When he sleeps, he doesn’t dream. 

When he wakes, it is to Donghyuck.