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One night Mark asked him, “I’m going to go through the herbology syllabus this Saturday. Do you want to join me?”
Renjun raised his eyebrows to that question. Not because it was odd that Mark proposed for them to spend their weekends studying (instead of, well, doing fun stuff at the nearby village, maybe?) as it was a normal occasion. But because Mark actually asked. Usually, Mark would just be waiting in front of Hufflepuff’s dormitory entrance first thing in the morning, a bright grin on his face as he had with him his puffy blue and golden book bag, before he would drag Renjun to whatever silent corner they came across first.
Not that his proposal changed anything, mind you, because Mark just had to be very clever and announce his plan on the night before the study appointment was to commence.
That, and the fact that Renjun had just finished pulling a five hours marathon of cramming for their history of magic tryouts caused him to itch from the desire to throw Mark an unexpected curve ball, by acting all annoyed and sulky like an upset child. But the moment Renjun decided to do so, before he could even jut out his lips and cross his arms in defiance, Mark cold bloodedly cheated and rigged their game of social interaction so that he could crown himself as the indisputable winner.
Without hesitation, Mark quickly grabbed Renjun by his shoulders, leaned in, and planted a loud smack of a kiss on Renjun’s cheek. He didn’t even have to wait to see the result of his action, that lucky lad, as Renjun was instantly reduced into a bumbling mess that could only sputter out three set of words, repeated over and over and over again. Yes, Okay, and All Right .
To Mark’s cloying “I don’t want to study alone, please?” Renjun could only swat his hands in front of his face, trying hard to push Mark away, like he would to an annoying mosquito, while in the same breath trying to hide the shy grin that’s starting to bloom on his lips.
Unfair, unfair, this is so unfair.
Though to be fair , Renjun does find it amusing, that he could clearly see Mark’s soft and whiny side slowly getting unearthed the more time they spent being together. And truthfully speaking, he kindda likes it.
_
Turns out, Mark’s I was actually a we. We, as in Mark and Jeno, who were already waiting prim and properly for Renjun to arrive at the Ravenclaw tower at ten o’clock in the morning.
“Did you have a good night sleep?” Mark asked in a chipper tone when he picked him up from the entrance, and to that Renjun began to mull over a question in his head, ‘what sort of unknown force is affecting him that he’s able to act this… jolly?’
But he shouldn’t have worried all that much about it, because with just one swing of the heavy marble door, Renjun was faced with said ‘unknown force.’
And it was sunlight streaming through ceiling-height glass windows looking like pillars of gold. Its rays, so bright and defined they felt like they could be strummed like strings of a guitar, bounced against the crystal chandeliers hanging on the tall ceiling and the heavy blue velvet curtains to create little tiny spots of pearlescent light that danced just like fireflies.
“Holy moly.” Renjun whispered with what was left of the air in his lungs, after it was pushed out of them in his initial awe, “you live in a palace!”
“Do you like it?” Mark said, his sense of pride lacing thickly around his words, before he took Renjun’s bag out of his grasp so he could carry it for him. Usually, Renjun would let out some sort of formal refusal in the form of ‘you don’t have to do that,’ followed by a short game of tug-of-war to stop Mark from doing something he was completely capable of doing himself. But this time, Renjun was too occupied in marvelling the peculiar still life paintings placed in between every gold rimmed windows to care.
“Why are you talking like you own this place.” Jeno half-shouted over the low hum of conversational white noise from where he was, sitting on the communal study area at the corner of the common room. “Don’t believe him when he says his parents helped in the renovation of the towers,” and to cap off his witty remark, Jeno shot Renjun a cheeky wink and stuck his tongue out to a very visibly unamused Mark, “he’s a really bad liar.”
“Good morning to you too Jeno,” not wanting to add fuel to the simmering sparks of ember, Renjun cut through the precarious atmosphere with a light hearted greeting.
But unlike him, Jeno seemingly was not able to do the same, when he went ahead and grabbed Renjun by his arm and pulled him to sit on the free spot right beside his.
(Oh who was he kidding, Jeno knew, but he enjoyed hearing the sound distress coming out of Mark’s throat too much that he just didn’t bother to try.)
“And to you, Jun-ie,” he beamed, giving Renjun his 2000 watts smile that almost rivalled the blinding golden rays that came from behind him. The sound of Jeno calling him by a never-before-heard nickname was enough to cause Mark to shout an exasperated ‘ok that’s it!’ before he lugged Renjun around so he now sat on his side of the table. “You, stay here, and you,” he said while pointing at Jeno with an impressive amount of venom inside his glare, “stay on your lane.”
To be honest, aside from the initial bumpy road caused by Mark’s cry-baby tendency, the rest of the study session went without any hitch. Well, there was the occasional harmless bickering over the snacks and food that Renjun brought from the kitchen, but as he knew all three of them are major eaters, he made sure that there was enough sandwiches and cakes to go around without the need for Jeno and Mark to enter into a fight to the death over the last piece of glazed donut.
Just like that, before they knew it, they’ve gotten through two thirds of the year’s syllabus, the sun has completed its course through the sky for the day, the common room was empty of any living soul but the three of them, and the grandfather clock has just finished letting out its eleventh chime, signifying the fact that the two little birds and one little badger have maybe, studied for a little bit too long.
“Thankyou soooooo much Jun-ie,” Jeno breath’s was hitched when he spoke next, when he leaned on the chair to stretch his back and arms so far the ancient wood cracked under his weight. It was just because Mark was kind enough to keep him balanced with his foot that he didn’t topple over completely, “I don’t think I can do this without your help.”
“So when you said ‘I don’t want to study alone, what you really meant was ‘I don’t want to study alone with him’, am I right?”
To Renjun’s accusation, Mark could only scrunch his nose and mumble a sheepish apology. Besides, the fact that Renjun was so intellectually spent he’d been resting his head on Mark’s shoulder for the last half hour, was a clear enough indication that he was too tired to listen to whatever excuse Mark has in his sleeves.
Instead, he felt Mark tugging on his sleeves, before he softly whispered, “come, I will walk you to your room.”
Surprising Mark, and himself too (because he’s never thought that he could give away such a childlike display of behaviour), Renjun let out a high pitched whine and thrashed about in a show of discontent, “I’m tired! I don’t want to waaalk…” followed suit with a long burst of exaggerated sobs.
In front of him he could hear Jeno bursting out in laughter and coughing out words of his observation in between his struggles to inhale, “oh my god! He’s taking after you!” But Renjun didn’t care much for that, because the sound of Mark flustering to find the right word to respond to this odd phenomenon was a much more amusing thing to focus on.
“I mean, I,- we um… have some floo powder if that’s, maybe, a better option for you???”
“This is a new sweater, stupid. No floo powder!”
“You can’t possibly ask me to carry you down five flights of stairs?”
“Oh wow… are you calling me fat?!”
Their silly argument was cut short when Jeno’s fingers creeped into their peripheral vision, his fingernails tapping against the lacquered wooden table as a way to gather their attention, “you can crash in our room?”
That statement shocked Renjun so much it caused him to immediately drop his bratty front and exchange his pout into an excited grin. Wide eyed, teeth bared, lips stretched kindda grin. It seemed that Renjun was already planning on steering the conversation so that it would end with Mark asking him to spend the night at the Ravenclaw tower, and Jeno’s quick thinking probably had saved him from having to go through another ten minutes of yelling silly nonsense at each other.
“May I?” He knew he didn’t really have to ask Mark for his permission. Because if Mark has his unsolicited kisses on the cheek as his way to fluster Renjun out of his mind, Renjun has his glistening-eyed puppy plead. Renjun made sure to bite on his lips first before slightly jutting them out to make sure they gain a little bit of those rosy red hue that he knew Mark could never resist.
And it worked. Of course it did, with Mark only semi-exhaustedly nodding his head, “yes.”
_ _ _ _ _
Three times.
Renjun tried to walk up the stairs to the boy’s side of the dormitory three times, and failed.
Emphasise on the word three, tried, and failed.
“I think it’s better if I take you down to the infirmary…” Mark’s tone, when referring to Renjun’s stubbornness, has gone from sounding worried, to angry, to annoyed, and finally to pity over the course of thirty minutes. At this point, hovering above Renjun who was lying down with his arms over his eyes, Mark sounded certifiably sorry.
It all started simple enough, with the three of them walking up the stairs so they could get ready before retiring for the night. Jeno said he has a spare sleeping bag and had agreed to lend it so that Renjun could sleep on the carpeted floor of their dorm room. But just as he was about to say thankyou, Renjun suddenly found gravity to cease on working and he found himself barreling down the tight spiralling stairway, before stopping after his bum skidded against the common room’s cold marble floor.
With his hand pressed against his forehead, Renjun waited for his vision to stop swimming. But then he quickly realised that the sight in front of him was not caused by any brain concussion. It was really happening. On the stairs, where there used to be stone steps, the base was suddenly covered in nothing but a gray-ish stony slab of a smooth surface. And slowly, ridges started to rise up from within the flat stones, going from small ripples into defined edges and finally, there it was again. The stairs.
“Oh my god are you okay?!” Both Mark and Jeno shouted as they came running around the bend on the stairway, along with several other Ravenclaw students who probably wanted to know what was causing such a ruckus.
“What the hell was that?” Renjun’s puzzlement came in a disoriented sounding mumble. It took him a good five seconds of groaning out the soreness that’d started to spread around his legs before he allowed Mark to help him back to his feet.
“I never thought I’d live to see it happen,” a pajama clad third year Ravenclaw kid chimed excitedly from between the small mob that'd suddenly formed around the boy's tower’s entrance. And when the kid noticed that a dozen pair of eyes were now suddenly trained on him, he only looked around like everyone else was suddenly turned to green-skinned aliens, “what? Don’t you know? That was the ancient mechanism set to stop girls from entering our dormitory.”
“Last time I checked I’m not a girl,” Renjun snorted, pushing himself away from Mark so he could inspect the stairs more closely. He then tested the stairs’ integrity with one foot, shifting his body weight little by little before he took three complete steps onto it and looked around to the small group of half asleep students in confusion, “I don’t get it. This never happened in my do- Oop!”
Once again, Renjun plummeted down to the ground. Not even the walls were willing to help him, as its previously ridged surface instantly turned smooth the moment his hands landed on it, resulting in his arms pathetically flailing around in a hopeless attempt to find purchase before they were abruptly stopped when his face was firmly planted onto the stone-stairway-turned-deathly-slide.
Renjun could hear people’s sharp intake of breath and even imagine how their nose would crinkle in a grimace when the exceptionally loud thud of his head hitting the ground resonated through the common room.
“Oh god that sounds painful…”
The pain that shot through his forehead was so sharp he could almost taste it. Like ripples of something tangy and yellow (?) and how the air would smell after a thunderstorm. Cracked ozone. But no worries, his concussion didn’t mess up his senses, it was just the blood trickling to his mouth from the tiny cut his teeth made on his upper lip.
“Ok, that’s it. No more games, I’m taking you back to your dorm myself,” Mark said in a huff as he once again had to bent down and grab a defeated Renjun by his arms, hoisting him up and not letting go until the wobbles had stopped going through his jelly-like legs.
“No.” Renjun himself was surprised how adamant he sounded. Even if he did seem to be on the brink of tears, he bravely used Mark to propel himself back to the mouth of the tower. This time, it was no fun and games. This time he came to fight. “I’m not going to be defeated that easily.”
“Renjun I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I already have, so why not just go along with it?”
He will race up the stairs before the magical mechanism could even notice that there was some trespasser going up on its steps. ‘Fast like a tornado, light as a breeze, fast like a tornado, light as a breeze,’ Renjun repeated those phrase in his mind while bouncing around on his feet in preparation for his daredevil stunt.
The promise of further bruising and cuts did not daunt Renjun in the slightest though, because the sound of people cheering for him deafened him from hearing Mark’s warnings. And the fact that if he could pass this obstacle he could sleep in the same room as Mark, blinded him from seeing the utter hopelessness of his effort.
He felt Jeno’s palm slapping onto his shoulder and it acted as the finger that clicked the trigger.
And off he went! Hopping three steps at a time up the narrow stairway!
But sadly, when the entrance to the dormitory was just upon his sight, the stairway literally pulled the rug from under his feet and off he went! Sliding down the spiral slide on his tummy like a backward flying Superman and the cheers quickly fizzled out into a cacophony of hissing winces.
And all those stupidity led to his current condition. Lying prone on his back as he’s probably completely scrambled his inner ear liquid to prevent him from ever getting back on his feet for the rest of the night.
Mark, the ever patient Mark, grumbled his way through the still growing crowd of students and exasperatedly shush them away back to their respective rooms before enlisting Jeno’s help to carry the finally surrendered Renjun to the sofa.
“I don’t think I can walk… I’m not even sure if I can sit without throwing up,” was his long overdue answer to Mark’s offer for taking him to the infirmary. His head hurt, his back ached, the ringing in his ears sounded more like a siren of an ambulance than a simple tinnitus, and all Renjun wanted to do was to snuggle into a warm blanket and hope that sleep would take away all the pain caused by something as silly as ‘trying to spend the night at your boyfriend’s dorm room.’
He then heard a few ruffles and shuffles, the sound of Mark and Jeno whispering to each other. One sounded way more intense than the other and even in his lessened cognitive state, Renjun perfectly knew what was happening. The two of them were arguing.
All of a sudden, he was awashed with a crippling feeling of guilt. His stubbornness has not only caused an unnecessary ruckus, but it’d also inconvenient his two dear friends. And so Renjun steeled his resolve and thought that hey, even if his nausea really ended up turning into a torrent of vomit shooting out of his mouth, at least it won’t happen inside a common room that’s not his own.
“Mark? You know what? I think I can do it. I’m already feeling a bit better anyway,-”
Renjun’s pitiful struggle to bring himself to sit on the sofa was put to a stop when Mark softly patted him on his shoulder. “No, no it’s better if you stay.”
Mark must’ve saw the confusion fogging up Renjun’s eyes from his sudden opinion change, as he then knelt at the edge of the sofa so that Renjun could listen to him more comfortably while he explained the plan he had for the night,
“You can just sleep here,” Renjun was just about to speak out his disagreement when Mark sharply shushed him and continued on, “I will accompany you, don’t worry. Jeno will bring his sleeping bag down, it’ll be fine.”
“Oh god no, that’s too much of a fuss! I cannot sleep on a sofa anyway, I won’t be able to move my neck tomorrow.”
To his poor attempt of shimmying himself out of the unwanted situation, Mark only rolled his eyes and let out a long, tired sigh. He then ignored Renjun’s little sounds of protests and barked a few tasks for Jeno to run. “Go get a blanket. And pillows! No need for your sleeping bag, our little princess over here needs way more luxurious amenities.” And just like a loyal squire of olden times, Jeno wordlessly swivelled on his feet and dashed out of the room to complete Mark’s order. Which was a miraculous sight in and on itself.
Renjun would’ve let out an exasperated groan to Mark’s snide remark if only he didn’t turn to give him a wide smile and a quick peck on his cheek, “isn’t this the sleepover you want so much?”
Could Renjun stay mad at Mark after he did? Probably, if he gave it his all. But then it meant that he would have to ignore the warm feeling that was spreading around his body, starting from his beating heart, travelling up to the tip of his fingers and down to his little socks-clad toes. He loved feeling that sensation too much to sacrifice it for the chance of gaining the upper hand to Mark and his antics. And so Renjun gave in, smiled, and returned Mark’s sweet gesture with one of his own. Propping himself up with his elbows, he tilted his head up and kissed the tip of Mark’s pinkish nose.
There was a moment of silence, when Mark was probably trying to regain his bearing after finding himself in the receiving end of Renjun’s utter adorableness (they’ve been a thing for almost a month and yet Renjun often found Mark doing a mental reboot everytime he did anything remotely cute). The next time he spoke, Mark’s voice sounded shrill, like a nervous mice, and it caused Renjun to involuntarily let out a laughter.
“D,- Do you think you can get up and sit on the floor for a while? I need all the sofa cushions I can get.”
Nodding, Renjun used Mark’s outstretched arm to help himself slide down onto the floor, and he leant on the sofa while he silently watched as Mark went on to build some sort of makeshift bed on the empty spot in front of the fireplace, using cushions and throw pillows that he collected from the corners of the deserted common room.
This might not be what he’d hoped to happen when Jeno offered him to stay over at the Ravenclaw tower. But somehow, it turned to be something even better.
_ _ _ _ _
Twenty minutes have passed since Mark turned off the central lighting in the common room, leaving only a few ambient spots to still allow for people to navigate the space without tripping over the numerous furnitures, but nothing too bright that it might cause any discomfort to their sleep.
Twenty minutes have passed since they exchanged goodnights and respectively tried to guide themselves into their own dreamland.
And that meant twenty minutes where Renjun had laid there on top of the collage of soft cushions in mild discomfort, shutting his eyes harder than necessary as if it would somehow help him fall asleep any quicker. But however hard he shut them, Renjun could somehow still see the low fire dancing in the fireplace, how the golden windowsill and the polished marble floor would glint with each flicker. And however hard Renjun tried to shut his eyes, it brought him no escape from the sound of Mark’s breathing that rose and fell interchangeably with the crackle of the burning logs. Something calm and soothing that was a complete one eighty from his own unregulated breathing.
He was then so glad when he found out that Mark also struggled in his effort to fall asleep, when Renjun felt his fingers softly swiping across his forehead, tucking the strands of his unruly hair to the back of his ears.
Because then there was no longer a need for him to pretend anymore.
“Mark?”
“Hm?”
Mark didn’t seem to be surprised when he heard Renjun’s voice seeping through the still night air, even though he was caught doing something that he probably thought was being done to a sleeping person. He even was still able to take all his time to give Renjun’s earlobe a small pinch and successfully eliciting a half-hearted hand swish from his victim.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Obviously.”
To punish Mark on his unnecessary witticism, Renjun upped his hand swish so that it became a potent swat on Mark’s arm. All done with no intent to harm, though, as even the recipient of that slap only reacted with a ringing laughter.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” Mark said, before capturing Renjun’s hand with his own and keeping them safe inside his grasp to prevent him from executing any other shenanigans. “Why is it? Do you feel any pain? Do you want to throw up?”
He never intentioned for Mark to grow any more worried over him, so Renjun quickly shifted their conversational topic by grabbing onto Mark’s soft and puffy quilted duvet and shoving it onto his face, “no, no I’m good. It’s just that your blanket smells different.” Seeing that Mark’s eyebrows were starting to scrunch in confusion, Renjun raised his finger and added an extra explanation, “don’t get me wrong, it smells nice. But it’s just… different.”
“You can’t sleep because you use a different smelling blanket?”
Renjun only silently stared at Mark for a long beat after he said that, before he dramatically shook his head and sighed, “sometimes I wonder why you were placed in Ravenclaw in the first place.”
Silence fell upon them after Mark’s amused chuckle fizzled to a stop. Silence that was filled only with the faint sound of nails clacking against each other, and the phantom argument going animatedly inside Renjun’s mind regarding something in relation to their sleeping arrangement. It was then only a matter of to do or not to do. To ask or not to ask.
But then Renjun took one glance of Mark sleeping on his back right beside him, just one slight glance, and the argument was won when a voice inside his head shouted,’ why the hell not!’
“Mark?”
“Hm?”
“Is it okay if I…” his attempt at trying to spew out the sentence in one smooth delivery was thwarted when Mark tilted his head and gave Renjun one of his cool, couldn’t be bothered look. It also didn’t help how the low fire burning behind them was causing his features to glow and dance around like something not from this world. Wonderfully ethereal.
“Is it okay if I hug you?”
The sound that escaped from Mark’s throat could be best described as a combination of a hiccup, a dying gasp, and a wet chortle. But the expression on his face was a way more telling clue as to what he was feeling at that moment. Utter and complete shock.
“You want to what?”
“Cuddleee. I want to cuddle. Is that okay?” Renjun said in what he and Jeno coined as ‘Mark’s crybaby voice.’ And seeing how it instantly swept Mark off his leg, leaving him helplessly crawling on the ground and seeking for some semblance of sanity, Renjun decided that he would adopt it and use it for his own gain from now on.
“But why?”
“Because I can’t sleep if I don’t hug something.”
Much to his surprise, instead of melting into a messy puddle of blubbering yeses like he always does, Mark opted to slap a spare throw pillow onto Renjun’s face and nearly smother him to unconsciousness as he yelled for Renjun to, “just use this then!”
It would be a lie for Renjun to say that he wasn’t in the least bit disappointed. That tensed up string that was hoisting up his heart snapping from the unforeseen let down and embarrassment of Mark’s rejection and he felt it getting tossed around inside his chest cavity as he huffed and puffed his way to turn his back away from Mark.
Renjun clutched the pillow near his chest and used it to muffle his dejected mumble, “well goodnight then, I guess.”
Once again Renjun shut his eyes, even tighter this time. Trying to will away the dread of his silly hopefulness before it settled on the back of his eyelid and exchanged the multicoloured stars with the image of Mark grimacing at him for requesting something that was a bit too much, maybe, for him to discern at this stage of their relationship.
But as those things always goes, the more Renjun tried to discard it to the back of his mind, the quicker he felt that blush of embarrassment crawling up his cheeks. He was so glad he had his back on Mark, because even in this low lighting, Renjun would’ve still looked like a blinking stop sign at a foggy intersection.
Renjun wasn’t hoping for much. Or even for anything, truly. Because Mark’s not one who would voluntarily backtrack onto some social faux pas he did and seek for any sort of redemption (there was also the possibility that Mark didn’t realise that his rejection has caused such a negative effect on Renjun). So Renjun decided to just let it all go with one long exhale and snuggled his way into whatever comfortable position he could get with his hips hurting like an arthritic grandpa’s would on a rainy day. Which was why, when he heard Mark called his name, Renjun felt his heart getting pulled to the bottom of his stomach to swim in between the corrosive acid.
“Renjun?”
‘Too late,’ Renjun thought, opting to ignore the tugging of his heart by fully investing himself on his 'already fallen asleep' act and gave Mark nothing in return but an unmoving set of cold shoulders.
But when the haphazardly thrown together bed began to shift and he felt Mark’s hand placed carefully on arm, Renjun decided that he was such a bad player in this game. Such a bad player, that even without any prompting or even a meep of apologies, Renjun rolled his way back to Mark’s expecting arms on his own accord.
‘Tomorrow,’ he told himself, ‘tomorrow I will learn to say no to his cheap tricks.’
But right then, all he needed was someone to hold to while he willed himself to fall asleep, and Mark was his best bet to have that.
_
Mark was being uncharacteristically silent when Renjun was trying to find his way to a comfortable sleeping position, throwing his limbs this way and that before he settled on a spot he decided he could stay in for the next six hours or so. Head resting against Mark’s chest, one arm crossed over his torso, and one leg thrown across his knees. All that and Mark was suddenly turned into his very own living and breathing fluffy bolsters.
“Are you okay?” Renjun asked to quell the worry that’d started to creep into his mind, that Mark was doing this out of remorse and not a genuine willingness. But it was kicked out of the window so quickly when Mark then also began to shift around and adopt a more relaxed stance in response to being cuddled to the inch of his life.
“Never been better.”
His pajama felt soft against Renjun’s cheek, and his hand that’d begun to brush idly through his hair smelled thickly of the sea, they proved to be the right amount of familiar comfort needed for him to feel at ease in this uncommon place. The night was so still that Renjun could pick up the faint pulsing of Mark’s heartbeat, transferred through the soft cartilages of his ears and crawling to the rest of his body. Something repetitive, something predictable, not unlike the beating of his own heart that was slowly adjusting to the tempo and growing calmer with each passing second. Sure enough, soon after, sleep came upon Renjun with a vengeance. It felt as if he was struck head on with a freight train filled to the brim with liquidised Panadol.
But still, Renjun could feel and remember a few things that happened before sleep completely took all of his senses away from his grasps.
One, was the feeling of a soft kiss on the top of his head.
And two, was Mark faintly whispering to him his goodnight wish for the second time in that night.
“I love you.”
Renjun’s mind, who was by then already in the middle of its shutting down process, could only wonder on one thing in return,
‘That’s an unusual way to say goodnight.’
_ _ _ _ _
(Mark promised Renjun that he would wake them up super early in the morning. Way before everyone else do so they could tidy everything up and get the common room to look like how it did before all the crazy shenanigans happened.
But fatigue caused by their study marathon, Renjun’s minor head concussion, winter’s cold air combined with a fluffy duvet, a low burning fireplace, and a warm body to snuggle to, left the two common room crashers to sleep way past the beeps of Mark’s alarm clock.
They were woken instead by the sound of Jeno’s laughter.
To be more exact, Jeno, and ten other kids who let out a sound ranging from polite snicker to an all out guffaw, when they saw these two painfully smitten love birds with limbs that looked so entangled, they couldn’t even begin to comprehend which belonged to who.)