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Mark thought that he was in love a lot, growing up. He’d feel as if he was in love with people after speaking to them for a day, he’d declare about how in love he was with a random celebrity every few months, and the cycle repeated. Mark fell in love with everybody. He loved every boy he met and half of the girls he did. That was just the way he was.
But as he got older and got hurt by others or was the one who was doing the hurting, he realised that love wasn’t that tingly feeling, the butterflies in the stomach or wanting to be around someone all the time.
Love is a quiet trust, it is affection built out of familiarity. Love is really, really, really knowing someone -- and wanting a life that has them in it, not because of what they can do, but because of what they are.
To Mark, love is made out of the human embodiment of the sun that is Lee Donghyuck.
Mark feels love whenever he sees Donghyuck smile. He feels it whenever he sees him laugh and his nostrils flare up. He knows that he’s in love when he misses Donghyuck when he isn’t there with him and is put at ease when he walks into the room.
Mark’s thoughts are interrupted by a spray of cold water to the face, and he falls back against the grass, groaning. He raises his hands to wipe the liquid away from his eyes, and feels someone grab his hand and pull him back upright.
It’s Donghyuck.
The boy’s eyes are filled with excitement and wonder, a big grin sitting on his lips. Mark can’t even say anything until someone behind Donghyuck shoots water at the back of his head. A voice who Mark recognises as Jeno shouts gleefully, “Headshot!”
Donghyuck yelps and whips back around, pressing the trigger of his pathetically small water gun, but to no avail. The gun is out of water.
Mark cranes his neck to see what’s going on on the battlefield. Jeno is holding his humongous water gun above his head, his finger on the trigger as he charges towards where Mark and Donghyuck are on the grassy patch. In the distance, Renjun had Chenle in a headlock as Jisung repeatedly sprayed water into his face with Chenle screeching at the top of his lungs and Mark vaguely hears him scream about how Jisung is a traitor and that he’ll be getting his revenge when they get back home. Jaemin was lying on the ground a few meters away from them, his arms and legs splayed out as if he was dead.
As Jeno gets closer towards them, Donghyuck curses under his breath and throws his tiny water gun to the side. He sidesteps around Mark and ducks down behind Mark, wrapping an arm around the waist of the older boy.
Mark hears Donghyuck giggle beside his ear and Jeno comes to a stop in front of the pair, giant and fully loaded water gun still in his hand. He lifts his gun up and takes aim at Mark’s face. “Hand over the traitor, or else.” Jeno says. He attempts to sound stern and demanding, but his voice breaks halfway through and a smile spreads across his face.
“It was an accident!” Donghyuck whines and pulls Mark closer towards him. Mark laughs, knowing Jeno, Donghyuck probably had accidentally sprayed Renjun in the ear or something.
Jeno shakes his head and nudges his water gun to signal the both of them to stand up. “Mark’s a traitor too.”
Mark’s eyes widen and he chokes on air. He raises the both of his hands in fake surrender. “What did I do?” He splutters out.
“You abandoned our team!” Jeno complains, his index finger threatening to press down on the trigger at any second. Of course, it’s not as if Mark had purposefully abandoned their team, all he wanted was to take a two minute break. He just got distracted along the way and started to daydream about Lee Donghyuck.
“And, he-” Jeno uses his other hand to point an accusing finger at Donghyuck. “Committed the worst act that the whole of human history has ever seen!”
“I said that it was an accident! I swear!” Donghyuck yelps from behind his shield that is Mark Lee. Mark reaches over to grab his water gun and stands up, taking aim at Jeno before rapidly pressing on the trigger, sending jets of water at Jeno’s face.
The boy yelps and bends down, and in Jeno’s moment of shock Donghyuck grabs Mark’s hand with his own before running across the field, dodging Renjun’s attempts to spray at them and narrowly avoiding Chenle, Jisung and Jaemin who were wrestling on the ground.
The two found shelter and shade from the blistering summer heat under the tree, and Donghyuck slumps against the thick bark, panting. He still doesn’t let go of Mark’s hand.
It isn’t long until Donghyuck catches his breath though, as he flings his arms around Mark’s shoulders. “My hero! Whatever could I have done without you?” He sighs dramatically, his arms draping Mark’s frame.
Mark laughs, and he reaches up to intertwine Donghyuck’s fingers with his before putting his arm around his shoulders instead. “Very funny. What did you even do?”
“Well, I might or might not have shot Renjun in the balls. Accidentally. You know how Jeno is with him.” Donghyuck defends himself and Mark chuckles, the two of them flopping to sit on the green grass and humming when they see Jeno run towards Renjun, ready to be reunited once again.
Donghyuck sighs dramatically, and leans his head on Mark’s shoulder. When Mark turns to look down at him, the younger is staring right back at him with his big eyes. Mark swears that his heart melts right there and then and he smiles, leaning down to press a kiss to Donghyuck’s forehead, strips of his wet brown hair sticking onto his skin.
Donghyuck giggles and shifts so that he’s sitting closer to Mark. “What was that for?”
Mark shrugs and rests his head against the tree, a small smile involuntary spreading across his lips as they watched the rest of their friends annihilate each other with water. It was the summer break. Summer meant water fights with their friends. Summer meant ice cream dates with Donghyuck, where they’d attempt to be like those old school couples in romcoms and kiss over a shared milkshake. Summer meant the sun, and that meant Donghyuck.
He uses his thumb to rub small circles into Donghyuck’s skin. “For fun. I just like kissing you.”
“Oh, looks like someone’s being a sap right now.” Donghyuck says in that snarky tone of his. “What did I ever do to deserve it?
“Nothing.” Mark mutters softly. He looks at Donghyuck once again. “Absolutely nothing.” Mark can’t help but part his lips and lean in to close the distance between them, and Donghyuck lifts his head up to meet his lips, letting go of Mark’s hand only to hold the back of his neck gently.
Mark knows he’s in love when he doesn’t get overwhelmed whenever they kiss. He knows all of Donghyuck’s edges and curves like it’s his own. He knows it’s love when he no longer has to worry about whether or not he was a good kisser. He knows that Donghyuck doesn’t care anyway.
Mark realised he was in love after a really bad virus finally reached him. It made him feel and look like complete shit, but Donghyuck was the one who had stayed by his bedside and took care of him. Mark had guessed that it was because, after all, they were dating. Things like taking care of your partner when they were sick was kind of a given, but Mark didn’t expect Donghyuck to clean up his puke. He didn’t expect Donghyuck to help him into his pajamas or to wipe his sweat away or to put in the amount of effort which he did. Donghyuck said that it wasn’t a big deal, but to Mark it meant everything to him. That’s how he knew that Donghyuck was in love too. It’s how he found out what actual love felt like.
Donghyuck is the first to break away for air, and he leans his forehead against Mark’s, their warm breaths mixing with each other’s. “W-What’s that for?” He asks again, but this time his voice is softer.
Mark finds his hands running over Donghyuck’s red lips. The way his eyes shine whenever he looks at him, how his lips are in the shape of a heart and how he glows whenever the sunlight shines down on him, everything about Donghyuck is beautiful.
“I love you.” Mark breathes out, the warmth in his chest is blossoming so fast and the way Donghyuck is staring at him doesn’t help at all.
A delicate smile crosses Donghyuck’s lips as he blushes. “I love you too.” Mark thinks it’s cute how Donghyuck still gets flustered whenever he says those three words.
The couple untangled themselves from the positions they were in and sit side by side, their bodies pressed up against each other and their fingers intertwined as Mark runs his thumb over Donghyuck’s knuckles.
Their peace is interrupted when Chenle and Jisung stumble towards the two of them, soaked from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet. “Donghyuck!” Jisung groans as he and Chenle came to a stop in front of Mark and Donghyuck.
“Donghyuck, you have to help us!” Chenle half whined and half grumbled. “Renjun and Jeno are destroying us and Jaemin refuses to do anything!”
Donghyuck shook his head and got up to his feet, groaning as his stretched. He turns to look back at Mark and he winks. “Looks like I’ve got some work to do. See you later, honey. ” Donghyuck finishes the sentence off by blowing a kiss towards his boyfriend before sauntering off into the battlefield. Chenle and Jisung don’t know what to say.
Mark moves his hand in a waving motion to shoo them away and his two younger friends run off, joining Donghyuck in pelting Jeno with spritzes of water.
Watching Donghyuck scream and yell and laugh with that big smile of his in the midst of the action is enough to make Mark happy. For him, love is a quiet inner peace. It’s a feeling that life without Donghyuck is insignificant and impossible to imagine. It’s the idea that spending the rest of his life with him is inviting, not terrifying.
Mark was probably in love with Donghyuck before he actually realised, but he couldn’t tell how long for because he was completely lost in the human enigma that is Lee Donghyuck.