Chapter Text
There are tons of things that make a team good, but the most important is always teamwork.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the thing that Donghyuck lacks the most.
He likes rushing head on into situations, eyes flowing eerie green, fingers twitching with electric star bolts, before Mark even gives them orders.
Sure, Mark winds up bruised and on the floor at the end of every practice session no matter how agile he is and how much he tries to figure out Donghyuck’s weakness, but he chalks that up to Donghyuck being an alien and having super strength. In the field, it’s always Donghyuck who comes back to the tower with scraped up knees and elbows and sparks flying off his fingers in anger.
“Dude,” Jisung says to Mark once Donghyuck’s stormed off after a particularly rough mission about two weeks into his time with the Titans, “You need to go talk to him. You’re the leader, aren’t you?”
Mark unbuckles his tool belt as slowly as possible until Jisung starts running impatient circles around him, a blur of yellow and orange. “Come on,” he whines, “You need to take care of it. He’s messing up everyone’s rhythm.”
“He’s not messing up my rhythm,” Renjun says coolly, floating towards the door back into the tower.
“No one could mess up your rhythm,” Jaemin chimes in, stripping out of his leotard with no shame. He leaves it pooled on the floor and strides towards the door after him, ass naked.
“Gross,” Renjun replies, and melts into the shadows right before Jaemin makes contact.
Mark sighs. He’s gotten used to the chaos of living with five other supers, but the addition of the sixth is making things difficult. Not to mention that every time he looks at Donghyuck he can feel the ghost of the kiss they’d shared on his lips and he flushes all the way to his ears.
“I’ll talk to him,” he promises Jisung, holding his hands up in surrender.
-
Finding Donghyuck isn’t much of a challenge. All Mark has to do is follow the sound of cement exploding as Donghyuck hurls star bolts at the railing that surrounds the perimeter of the roof.
His eyes are glowing bright green again, hair aflame, and Mark can practically feel the heat coming off him. He swallows the fear that jumps in his throat and takes a step forward, sidestepping some of the busted cement of the roof.
He clears his throat softly, knows that Donghyuck will hear it with his superhuman senses.
The other boy freezes midair, radioactive eyes locking with Mark’s. There’s rage in those eyes, and an underlying frustration Mark understands all too well.
Mark holds his hand up in faux-surrender. “Don’t stop on account of me,” he says, “Please, continue destroying the roof.”
Donghyuck’s chest is heaving, eyes bright with anger, but slowly, he sinks back towards the roof. The second he lands, he crumples onto the ground, legs folding neatly under him. “I will find a way to fix it.”
“No, you won’t,” Mark says easily, crossing his arms over his chest. “But don’t worry, Batman comes through when it comes to that stuff.”
Donghyuck scowls at him. “You’re an asshole.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Mark agrees, but then he steps forward, over the wreckage, and joins him on the cement-dust covered floor. “Do you want to talk about it?’
Donghyuck idly traces a finger over a cut on his forearm. It’s already beginning to scab over, healing being another one of his heightened abilities. He swallows, looking anywhere but Mark’s face. “On my planet, we are taught to be self-efficient. Working together as a team is rare. Why should I be held back by others when I could easily defeat an enemy on my own?”
Mark, who hadn’t been expecting such a straightforward and sensical answer, spends a second in silence trying to figure out how to reply to that.
Thankfully, Donghyuck continues on, “I have never had to worry about watching out for others. I haven’t had to wonder if my starbolts are hitting my teammates.”
Mark started this whole thing with Johnny. He has no idea what it feels like to have to do everything alone.
“You don’t have to do everything by yourself,” he says gently, bumping his shoulder against the other boy’s, “The benefit to working on a team is that you don’t have to worry as much. They have your back, Hyuck. You don’t have to watch out for them all the time. They can protect themselves.”
“I don’t want to hurt them,” Donghyuck says softly, “They’ve been nothing but kind to me in my time here.”
This, Mark understands wholeheartedly. “You won’t,” he says immediately, “They’re strong kids. They may not have been raised as warriors like you have, but they can hold their own.”
Donghyuck gets a strange expression on his face, and it takes Mark a second to register it as tenderness. It’s an expression he hasn’t seen on the alien before. Very quietly, he says, “Earth isn’t so bad.”
“Don’t tell anyone I said that, though,” he adds a second later, jokingly, a smile quirking on his mouth.
“It’s our secret,” Mark replies immediately, a smile of his own curving on his face before he can help it. Donghyuck’s grin is infectious, bright and beautiful like the sun.
In the orange glow of dusk, Donghyuck’s tanned skin looks even more golden and ethereal, his long lashes dark and glossy, his hair as bright as a flame. Mark catches himself staring, memorizing the full curve of his lower lip, the straight line of his nose, and forces himself to look away. The memory of the kiss they’d shared comes to mind very suddenly. Mark feels his cheeks go warm, tries very hard to think about anything else. Like the fact that Johnny’s not going to be happy when he gives him the bill for fixing the broken roof guardrail.
They stay on the roof until the sun sets completely, and then, shoulders brushing in a way that should be casual but feels anything but, they walk back into the tower together.