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Jeno is shy. Was shy, once.
So shy in fact that Mark didn’t even realise Jeno was inside him until he was bracing himself on the edge of the kitchen counter, head spinning as it screamed at him, FOOOOOOOOOD! HUNGRY! a whole week after they’d merged.
But that’s for later.
After the now-defunct Life Foundation's rocketship crashed in East Malaysia in the early 00s, symbiosis has pretty much assimilated into modern society. There were twenty specimens aboard that ship, five of which are now the property of the wealthiest labs around the world, but fifteen had escaped, making their homes in—well, think the X-Men, or as Jeno likes to mutter to himself when he sees them on TV, the Stupid Stupid Very Stupid Jocks Club. The team was formed in New York City after a threat of alien invasion in 2010, and is made up of human/symbiote matches willing to defend and protect Earth.
“Are you saying I wouldn’t protect Earth?” Jeno says, jumping out of the end of Mark’s hand and knocking against his laptop screen, where Mark is typing up his final essay for AP World History. The finish line has never smelt so sweet, and Mark just knocks Jeno aside with his other hand, ignoring Jeno’s offended yowl. He’s so close.
“I told you to do that slowly,” Mark says reflexively, pushing his glasses up his nose bridge. Jeno has slithered back into his skin, and Mark can feel him sulking somewhere in his brain, most likely his hypothalamus, which Jeno favours because it makes him ‘feel good’ (“Do I want to know?” Mark asked the first time, and Jeno mumbled a quick no, and a minute later, added, but don’t freak out if you suddenly pop a boner). In a half-hearted attempt to placate Jeno, Mark says, “And don’t be a baby, I know you’d protect Earth but it’s me holding you back.”
I have made your pathetic human body invincible, Jeno tells Mark, but no, no, you’re right, you wouldn’t want to do that.
Mark has to hold himself back from smirking. “So, it’s definitely not about you being scared, right? You’re in no way intimidated by the big popular symbiotes who used to tease you on your planet for being scrawny?”
Jeno sniffs. Why would you even think that? You have to go to college.
You, not we. Jeno is always timid when he refers to Mark as you, as though acknowledging that Mark was once just Mark—that there was a time when every cell in Mark’s body wasn’t married to Jeno’s, and Mark had dreams of his own, to go to college, to meet his soulmate, to travel, in that order—will mean that Mark will decide he doesn’t want Jeno anymore. But never, not even in the beginning, did Mark not want Jeno.
We worked too hard to throw that all away for a bunch of glory-seeking musclebrains, Jeno continues.
There’s that we again. “I worked hard, Jeno,” Mark says, tiredly clicking on yet another page of Google Scholar results for ‘life foundation corruption symbiote host death’ (“That is not a real sentence, Mark,” Jeno comments from where he’s resting on Mark’s shoulder, “I think you do not know how to use the English language correctly.”
“Rich coming from someone who takes over my fingers to add ‘YEET’ to the end of every text I send,” Mark says dryly, still bitter over yesterday’s ‘Thank you so much for the job offer, Mr Kim! I can start the Monday after my last exam YEEEEEEET.’ He didn’t get a reply.
“…Touché.”)
I helped! Jeno insists.
“I—” Mark cuts himself off. It’s a hill he’s died on before, trying to convince Jeno that feeding him key dates from World War II during the one pop quiz Mark couldn’t study for, absolutely does not make up for Jeno constantly spreading his goo form (Don’t call it that!) out over Mark’s desk, feline-like in the way that he bats at the scritch-scratch of Mark’s pen (ANNOYING! I’M TELLING MOM WE’RE GONNA DROP OUT! Yes, again, even though she never believes us…). Having a symbiote pretty much means Mark has photographic memory, but he doesn’t allow Jeno to help him in school. Feels like cheating, almost. “You helped, Jeno. Thank you,” Mark says, instead.
Jeno doesn’t reply, but Mark senses him preening under the praise. Predictable, Mark thinks, fondly.
The story of how Mark found Jeno (I found you! Jeno always insists. It’s a sore spot for him) is, to put it this way, not the kind of story he’d tell someone he’s trying to impress. If he told anyone he has a symbiote, he’d leave it at that.
“You’re the reason why smart kids get their heads dunked in toilets,” Jeno tells him one day, when he’s feeling particularly offended over the incident.
“You know what, I don’t need this from you right now,” Mark says, narrowing his eyes at Jeno as he tugs on his hoodie. It smothers Jeno, who’d sprung out from Mark’s chest to make intermittent barbed remarks at him, and he quickly slides out from beneath the hem, spitting out lint from between his sharp teeth. “I had to tell my mother that I have a—I have you. I wasn’t counting on doing that anytime soon. I wasn’t prepared.”
(Mark’s mom had scheduled him for a surprise check-up at the local hospital after he started taking to chewing ice while studying. It wasn’t like he could tell her that no, he doesn’t have an iron deficiency, just a symbiote who really likes the cold, so he went along with it until the nurse gave him a hospital gown and told him he was going to have a chest x-ray. NO! Jeno had screamed at him, NO X-RAY! IT HURTS, MARK! AND THEY WILL FIND US! IF THEY DIDN’T ALREADY!
Mark had no choice but to drag his mom into the change room and give her the 2 minute version of How Mark Found Jeno During Summer School. I found him! Jeno said, too apprehensive to come out and tell her himself.)
“She laughed, Mark!” Jeno whines, “She laughed at me!”
“She laughed at the story,” Mark points out for the nth time, “It’s a funny story. You make fun of me all the time. Also can you like, go inside, please? The nurse is gonna wonder who’s in here with me.”
No sooner than Mark’s said it, Jeno starts silently pulling himself back in. Mark bends down to tie his shoelaces, and feels Jeno wrap himself around Mark’s wrist in the form of a hand, hidden by his sleeve. What if she doesn’t like me, Jeno whispers, so quietly Mark barely catches it.
She’ll like you, Mark directs at Jeno, reaching under his sleeve to stroke his thumb against Jeno’s sticky hand. No one could ever not like you, Jeno.
And the story?
The school during summer is odd. Mark bypasses his locker after his mom drops him off, the squeak of his Nikes almost deafening as he heads down to Lab 3, where he’ll be spending the next six weeks. The hallway is so empty it seems full, humming with activity like the thick of a forest. A bead of sweat runs down Mark’s spine.
“Hey, man!” Jaemin calls out from where he’s perched on a benchtop, feet on the stool he should be sitting on and books sprawled out behind him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Why?” Mark says urgently, pulling up a stool at the bench next to Jaemin’s. “Are there ghosts in this school I might’ve seen?”
Jaemin’s sputters a laugh at Mark’s seriousness. “I’m kidding, Mark. What’s got you so worked up?”
“I dunno,” Mark says, emptying out his backpack onto the table. He finds an apple underneath his laptop case, a sticky note pasted to it: Don’t be too hard on yourself, sweetheart! Have fun and work hard :) - Eomma. He smiles to himself. “Just being here, I guess.”
The teacher hasn’t arrived yet, and there’s only one other student in the room, a sleepy kid with blue hair matted down by a beanie. He’d shot Mark a relieved/weirdly excited look when he’d entered and saved him from talking/flirting/whatever it was with Jaemin. Not many people for remedial Bio before twelfth grade apparently (and Mark suspects that the third kid—Jisung, he recalls—is a sophomore only here to fast track his credits), but Mark’s grades had been hanging on by a thread last semester, right before he came down with a fever so bad he couldn’t even take the exam. (He also suspects that Jaemin had flunked the subject in solidarity with him, but every time he brings it up Jaemin just bumps his fist again his chest and raises it to the sky, saying, “Bio is my passion, God just made me suck at it.”)
“We’ll make it fun,” Jaemin says, stretching out his leg to poke Mark’s arm with his shoe.
“That’s what my mom said—”
“The whole school to ourselves? Imagine what we could get up to,” Jaemin says with a grin, dropping onto his stool as the teacher walks through the door.
“—Nevermind. I need to focus, Jaemin. I’ve never failed a subject before,” Mark says, running a hand through his hair. He turns away from Jaemin, not bothering to reply to his snarky “Riiiiight, forgot your ego’s in tatters.” The teacher is writing out WELCOME TO SUMMER SCHOOL on the whiteboard, the final nail in the coffin.
And Mark sees a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, alerting him to a rather large wad of chewing gum stuck inside the sink of his lab table. Mark grabs his ruler out of his pencil case, eyes focused on the teacher running through their syllabus as he absentmindedly reaches out to scrape off the pastel blue gunk. He can feel it catch quite easily, meaning it’s fresh. Gross. Surprised at that, Mark looks at the end of his ruler, only to find the chewing gum has disappeared. He leans his stool over to check if it fell into the sink but there’s nothing there.
“Are you okay, Mark?”
Mark glances up to see all three people in the room staring at him funny. He drops the ruler. “I’m okay, just a little hungry,” he deflects, “Can I have my apple?”
The teacher raises an eyebrow, slowly turning back to the whiteboard. “Fine, this time.”
Mark just shrugs at Jaemin, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him yet, and grabs his apple.
He takes a generous bite.
It’s like his stomach sings.
“It was a very good apple,” Jeno agrees, lips pursed as his head bobs up and down, “Our mom makes the best apples.”
“She doesn’t grow them herself, Jeno,” Mark says, cracking open a Harry Potter novel over his blanketed knees. He’s been rereading the series with Jeno, which seems fruitless at this point since they argue every night over their Sorting (Jeno insists he’s a Hufflepuff even though Mark has identified as a Gryffindor since forever but they can’t be in two different houses ‘cause how the fuck would that work, Jeno?). “And she’s my mom,” Mark adds, because he can never resist making a cheap jab at Jeno, not when he’s such a goddamn baby.
Jeno’s face darts towards Mark’s until their noses are touching, and he snaps his teeth at Mark. That stopped being menacing a long time ago, and now Mark thinks it’s kind of cute that Jeno has more than 32 teeth and his eyes are permanently glazed over, blacker than black. The humanesque face he learnt to manifest always earns him a cooed, “Our Jeno Lee is so handsome, isn’t he?” from Mark’s mother, and Jeno’s eyes will curve into a smile as she pats his head (“You know she’s only saying that because mothers have to, right?” Mark teases later, knowing full well she’s right.)
“You mistook me as a piece of chewed-up chewing gum, remember? Your heart looks very apple-like right now,” Jeno murmurs, his front teeth scraping over Mark’s bottom lip. An electric-hot shiver goes down Mark’s spine, a feeling that doesn’t get a chance to bloom before Jeno is pulling back, moving down to snuggle into the crook of Mark’s neck. “Now read to me, before I eat you.”
On a balmy Saturday morning, Jeno makes himself known.
Jaemin had invited Mark to a pool party that night so Mark planned to sleep in, but his body clock drags him out of bed at 7AM, and he meanders downstairs to grab some water. He leans his weight against the kitchen counter as he downs a glass, mind wandering to tonight. Mark wouldn’t exactly call Jaemin Na his best friend, but he’s the closest thing he has to one. He has to share him with a lot of people, which is hard, when Mark can barely get out of his own head long enough to keep up with who’s dating who and who fell out with who and oh my God, did you hear who got caught making out in the janitor’s closet yesterday?
Mark’s placing the glass into the sink when he hears it. A soft please from—from—where was that? He whirls around, holding out the glass as a weapon. “Mom? You there?”
Not Mom, the voice whimpers, food, Mark, we need food. Please!
Mark winces, pressing the back of his hand against his forehead. “How do you know my name?” he asks, mildly afraid of the answer he might receive.
WHY DO YOU NOT EAT, MARK?! the voice has started to screech, and the sound drills so hard into Mark’s brain he keels over. FOOD, WE NEED FOOD, WE ARE SO HUNGRY, SOOOOOOO HUNGRY!
“Did you—” Mark rasps, “Did you drug me?”
He barely gets a chance to make out a mumbled we do not hurt us, Mark before, somehow, his legs drag themselves to the fridge, an arm stretching out to throw it open. There’s a short, frustrated scream in his ears, and then Mark’s slamming the door shut and carrying himself to the living room.
“Ahhhhhh, what is happening to me?!” Mark yells, as he kneels down in front of his mom’s cabinet of prized French crockery, reaching underneath it to feel for something—something metal—he pulls his hand out, palm opening to reveal a key. He gasps. “How did I know that was there?!”
Panicking, Mark tries to curl his hand back into a fist, but his fingers continue to disobey him, jamming the key into the last drawer.
Mark’s mom finds him like this: cross-legged on her shag rug, assorted Hershey’s wrappers scattered around him, mouth smeared in chocolate. He grins up at her, as whatever’s in his brain coos at him, thank you, Mark, oh you are so sweet and we are so sorry, please do not say we are bad. I promise we are good, Mark.
“Finally found your secret stash,” Mark says, holding up the key to her astonished face.
(Very soon after their visit to the hospital, the pantry transforms into—“What is this, fucking Willy Wonka’s?” Mark huffs. He gets a flick on the back of the head immediately. Meanwhile, Jeno has unspooled from Mark’s abdomen, reaching out for a pack of Reese’s.
“Language, Minhyung,” his mom says, “I am simply accommodating our new family member. Plus making sure Jeno won’t want to eat any people. We can’t have that on our hands.”
“Sure,” Mark says, watching Jeno fill his cheeks with three Peanut Butter Cups at once. That can eat people? “What the frick are you doing, Jeno, storing that for winter?”
“Don’t be jealous, Minhyung,” Jeno says airily. He glides out of the pantry and sidles up to Mark’s mom. “Mommy,” (“Dude!”), “We also like popsicles. Especially the green ones. We think they are lime-flavoured.”
She pinches his cheek, and he confidently nuzzles against her hand. And excuse me, where was this Jeno when Mark had to spend three whole hours stroking Jeno’s head, letting him nibble on his fingers and reassuring him that his mom won’t hate him? “Of course, darling,” she agrees.
“Mom,” Mark calls out as she walks out of the kitchen, “Mom! You know I hate lime!”)
Mark doesn’t go to Jaemin’s party that night. Instead:
“What are you?” Mark says, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, squeezing his jaw between his fingers. “Am I possessed?”
No answer. But there’s something, the same kind of crackle he’d felt walking through the corridor the first day of summer school.
“Was that too harsh? Okay, is someone here? Is someone inside of me? I heard you before. You can come out, I won’t hurt you.”
I know you wouldn’t. You are nice.
Fear? Excitement? crawls through Mark, but he smiles. “Am I?”
Mark feels something again, and he knows it didn’t come from him. It’s tacky, warm. He leans against the counter-top, watching his cheeks fill pink. A minute later, he receives a reply, besides, it would only be hurting yourself as well.
“Why?”
Because I am a part of you and you are a part of me.
Mark’s eyebrows pinch at that. He looks into his eyes, and doesn’t see anything but himself in them. But there’s an answer, he knows this. He just has to think— “You’re a symbiote. Oh my God, I have a symbiote.”
As soon as he’s said it, there’s a simmering beneath his skin, coming up to the surface. Blue starts to cloak his body, slithering over his bare shoulders like he’s being given a hug. The colour starts to shift, back into Mark’s skin tone, save for his face. It isn’t his, but a boy, no older than him, with dark eyelashes and a small, kittenish smile. The closer Mark looks—and it’s still Mark, his reflection moves with him—the less human the face seems, but still, he’s more pretty than monstrous.
“We are Jeno,” he says, going a little wide-eyed—okay, so he heard what Mark thought. “I did, and thank you. I like this face.” And that too.
Jeno, huh?
“Jeno. And Mark. Jeno and Mark. Us.”
Ignoring that. I haven’t heard of you before. Are you like, a rogue symbiote?
“It’s a sensitive topic,” Jeno says quickly, “We will talk about it later.”
Later… If you don’t mind me asking, why me?
“We are a good match.” Mark can feel Jeno nervously wringing his hands, all the air of a baby animal, and Mark’s torn between poking fun at him or trying to figure out how to reach out to calm his hands from in here. Jeno instantly freezes. “Okay, the truth is, I’ve been going through people since I landed on Earth. Even your friend Jaemin, for a day, and that day was spent doing a lot of—well, you know him. The Internet is a strange place.”
Thanks for that mental image.
“I saw you, through him. And I wanted you.”
You wanted me?
“But you were a really hard person to get a hold of. You always seem to be in a rush and I was not fast enough. Jisung Park was the closest I got to you after Jaemin, and I was ready to give up and stay with him. He figured out I was in him and we lived together in mutual apathy through the term. It was a good deal. And he knows I left him for you, by the way. Last week, in class.”
Wait. Back up. Are you telling me The Case of the Disappearing Chewing Gum was you?
“Sensitive topic,” Jeno says, through gritted teeth.
Haha! Alright, let’s go back to the part where you said you wanted me.
Jeno’s face falls even harder, lips pursing. “I do not wish to talk about that anymore, Mark.”
And because Mark may not ever get to ask again if Jeno decides to eat him whole and move onto another host: Out of pure scientific curiosity, can a symbiote have a crush?
“I know what that means,” Jeno says, tone bordering on a whine, “You are teasing me.”
I just think it’s cute. Kinda weird, but cute. I honestly don’t know why you’d want me of all people, but you have my permission to stay.
“It isn’t like you had much choice,” Jeno retorts, but he’s beaming as he says it.
Jaemin also doesn’t go to Jaemin’s party that night, ditching halfway through to visit Mark. Mark’s lying on the jut of rooftop above his bedroom when Jaemin comes over, staring up at the grey sky and making idle conversation with Jeno about what he’d been up to since he came to Earth. There isn’t a lot Jeno will tell right now, but he especially likes talking about his time in Alaska, in the cold, how he’d felt when he saw snow for the first time.
“Who’s up there with you?” Jaemin calls out, as he climbs up to Mark.
“My symbiote,” Mark shoots back, only saying it because he knows Jaemin won’t take him seriously.
Right on cue, Jaemin says, “Don’t try to be funny,” though he laughs anyway. “You’re not cool enough to have a symbiote.”
“What if your symbiote’s also not cool,” Mark says, giggling at Jeno’s offended scoff.
Jaemin settles in next to Mark, sighing as his head hits the warm tile. “That would make sense,” he says solemnly. “Hey,” he says, after a moment, “where’s your telescope?”
“You remember that?”
“Of course I remember,” Jaemin says, patting Mark’s wrist. Inside, Jeno bristles (Jaemin is weird, we don’t like Jaemin, he thinks, to which Mark replies, We do like Jaemin because he’s my friend. Jeno shows Mark an image of him nodding in acquiescence? with the saddest puppy-dog eyes Mark’s ever seen). Mark doesn’t even know where his telescope is, his childhood obsession with outer space taking a backseat after middle school. And he doesn’t get a chance to think about where it might be before he’s being pulled out his head (You like space? I have been to space, Mark!) by Jaemin distantly tapping his hand.
“You’re not here to talk about stars, are you?” Mark says, twisting to the side to grin at Jaemin.
Jaemin groans. “Nope. So, you had to have heard about what happened in the janitor’s closet the other day, right?”
“Yeah,” Mark says. He couldn’t not hear about it, when the principal gathered all thirty students stuck in summer school and told them that, under no circumstances, were they allowed to make out on school property, especially not where poor freshmen can walk in on them.
“That was me. And Jisung Park. I made out with Jisung Park.”
Yay! Jisung is how I know what a crush is! He has a big one on Jaemin! I do not understand that but I am happy is Jeno’s reaction, while Mark’s jaw just drops.
“But he told me he doesn’t like me anymore.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Mark says.
“Yeah,” Jaemin sighs, “So I need your help.”
Which brings us back to Mark’s final paper for AP World History. We are happy to report the fact that he made it this far means that Mark definitely passed remedial Bio and with flying colours at that. Jeno was a different symbiote back then, and Mark often mourns a time when Jeno would actually stay silent when Mark needed to concentrate or would quiz him without begging for a Ferrero Rocher every time Mark got a question right.
“You were more obedient when you had a crush on me,” Mark says as he hits confirm on Turnitin. He rolls his neck back, relishing in the pop, and pokes at a gooey Jeno coiled in his lap.
Bold of you to assume I ever had a crush on you, Jeno murmurs, a sleepy tendril coming up to jab Mark’s cheek. Also bold of you to assume I am anything but a good boy.
“Who taught you that,” Mark says, a broken record at this point. “It was Jisung, wasn’t it?”
I am not a tattle-tale. Mommy’s coming upstairs, by the way.
She bursts in not a moment later, out of breath and clutching a large, thick envelope. Mark’s eyes widen. “Mom? Is that—”
“Yes! Open it!” she pants, tossing it to him. It lands on Jeno, who immediately melts out from under it, taking up his human form and holding the envelope in his own hands.
“Can I, Mark?” Jeno asks, batting his eyelashes.
“Fine, only ‘cause my hands stopped working,” Mark says, heart in his throat as Jeno tears through the paper, pulling out the first sheet.
His eyes scan over it. They immediately well up with tears, which is about the worst reaction Jeno could’ve had because Mark and his mom nearly faint then and there. Jeno wordlessly hands Mark the letter, and proceeds to touch his face with his fingertips and inspect them, seemingly confused as to why his eyes are leaking.
Dear Mr Lee, Mark reads.
Congratulations! I am delighted to offer you admission to New York University for the Fall 2018 semester.
“Holy shit,” he breathes.
“Holy shit,” Jeno agrees.
“Holy shit,” says Mark’s mom.
“Language, Mom,” Jeno says, very serious about it.
We are Mark and Jeno, and this is our origin story.
(It takes a while to get to their dorm room at NYU because Jeno has to make a stop at the vending machine to pick up a chocolate bar—“For comfort, Mark! I am going to be homesick tonight!”—even though their mom had packed him an entire suitcase of his favourites. By the time Mark gets up to the third floor, his roommate's already decorated their door, a sun sticker surrounded by some little stars.
Mark hesitates in front of the door, apparently for so long that Jeno has to discreetly reach down to turn the doorknob himself. His roommate is kneeling on the floor, lifting a neatly-folded pile of jeans out of his open suitcase.
He twists back, dark hair curled delicately around his pierced ears. He smiles, wide and beatific. “Hi, you must be Mark. I’m Donghyuck.”
Oh, Mark, Jeno says, sounding as dazed as Mark feels, we want him. We need him.)