Chapter Text
Mark was spacing off.
He knew that he should be paying attention to whatever the teacher was talking about, but he just stared at his legs as he kicked them back and forth, his feet hardly grazing the ground. He wanted to be productive like everyone else. He just couldn't.
He knew that Chris and Woojin didn't think he was stupid.
But he felt stupid.
Mark liked to run around and dance. He had been in dance classes with his Uncle Minho, Felix, and Hyunjin since he learned to walk, and it was the one thing he felt good at. He liked music. He hummed to himself to bring order to the buzzing of numbers inside his head during math lessons, and sometimes they calmed down long enough for him to do his work. When they didn't, he got help from Woojin. He just focused on getting by in school, even though he was only in second grade. He often despised how much longer he had to go.
"Psst! Mark!"
"What?"
Lucas had passed him a torn corner of a sheet of notebook paper with just a smiley face drawn on it in pencil. Mark grinned and drew a combination of lines to make a cool, three-dimensional S. Lucas marvelled at it when he handed the paper back.
Mark glanced at the clock. He got to leave in only twenty minutes. He prayed for it to pass quickly.
Luckily for him, it did, and he was quickly able to sprint from the room, backpack hanging off one shoulder, and find his usual seat on the bus.
Soon, a familiar smile appeared beside Mark, smiling to show his missing front teeth. "Hi, Chenle," he greeted with a smile.
Chenle returned the greeting and started rambling about his school day. Frankly, Mark didn't want to listen, but Uncle Ji made him promise to take care Chenle whenever he could. He was like his younger brother or something. Mark really liked to hang out with Chenle's cats, too, so he had learned to put up with his presence. He wasn't even annoying some of the time.
"How was your day?" Chenle asked after a while, turning to him.
Mark shrugged. "Boring."
Chenle pouted. "You always say that."
"Well, it's always boring," he grumbled, slumping down in his seat.
"Come on, we're almost there," Chenle beamed, pulling on his hand. Mark stood and took Chenle's hand in his to lead him safely off the bus, feeling like he could finally breathe when he ran into his dad's arms. Chenle could be suffocating with his sheer volume at times.
Donghyuck walked past Mark without a word to Uncle Felix before turning around and putting on a voice that was almost too nice, especially for him. "How was school today, Markie?"
He hated when he did that.
Donghyuck seemed to go out of his way to antagonize him, but no one else seemed to notice, and only told Mark to calm down when he decided to say or do anything in response. No one could tell that he was being mean. They all thought Mark was crazy. He huffed in response, clenched his fists, and bolted towards his apartment building. He only felt better when he was able to lay face down on the couch.
"Hey, kiddo," a soft voice resounded from somewhere else in the room. "You doing okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Make sure you eat a snack," Woojin advised, patting his head before returning, presumably, to his office.
Mark was glad neither of his parents had the time to listen to his problems. The one thing he hated more than having all these problems in the first place was people pressuring him into talking about them. He was also grateful for his lack of homework. He kind of wanted to go to the studio with Uncle Lix, since he didn't seem to be very busy, but then he might bring Donghyuck. He could go with Uncle Hyunjin, but he had just finished adopting a four-year-old child the day before, so he probably didn't want to go anywhere. That left Uncle Minho, but he was always trying to choreograph important things. Mark sighed in frustration.
Whenever Mark felt sad, frustrated, or any negative emotion, for that matter, the feeling seemed to morph into anger that made his skin itch and his face burn. Usually he was pretty good about dancing when he was upset, like Uncle Minho had taught him too, but sometimes he forgot. Mark noticed that he was getting angry, though, so he just remembered what his teacher had told him. He moved to sit on the ground and took in deep breaths through his nose, not allowing himself to move into he knew he wasn't angry anymore.
Mark eventually opened his eyes and wiped away the angry tears that had slipped out. He was calm. He felt hollow, but he figured it was better than the alternative.
There was a knock on the door that shook him out of his head. "Woojin?" he called. "Someone's at the door!"
"It's Uncle Minho and Chenle," Woojin responded.
Mark padded over to the door and opened it. Chenle had changed out of his school uniform, which made Mark remember how awful and constraining his was. He let them in, rushed to his room to change, and returned. Uncle Minho had gone to talk to Woojin, so Mark made his way over to where Chenle was sitting in front of a box of toys.
"Let's play together!" Chenle enthused. "Please?"
Mark didn't love to play with Chenle. He was a baby, after all, only in kindergarten. Still, Mark found him cute and fun enough that it wasn't a complete waste of his time. And Chenle almost never made him mad. Chenle was energetic, but he seemed to like Mark, so he never got argumentative. He appreciated it.
"My string is moving around," Chenle said, stopping his construction of a mismatched tower of blocks, holding up his pinky.
Mark remembered being told about Chenle's soulmate bond. Mark didn't know what his is yet. He didn't care much, either. All he wanted to do was graduate from school and get Donghyuck to shut up for once in his life.
Uncle Minho soon walked out of the office, ruffled Chenle's hair, and opened the door for someone who hadn't even knocked yet.
Uncle Hyunjin walked through the door slowly, carrying a small child in his arms, who he was staring at intensely.
"Why did he have to be named Jisung?" Uncle Minho asked. The child - Jisung - had wide eyes and, frankly, he looked terrified to be there. He hid his face in Uncle Hyunjin's chest.
"He's already four," Hyunjin said. "We can't change it at this point."
"Dadda is Ji and the baby is Sungie," Chenle said, not looking away from his finger.
"But I call him Sungie," Minho argued.
"Get over it," Hyunjin said with a laugh.
"Dad," Chenle said, walking towards Uncle Minho.
"Yes, Lele?"
"My string," he continued. He pointed towards Jisung, who had since separated himself from Uncle Hyunjin enough to look at Chenle.
Hyunjin squinted at Chenle, and looked back at Jisung. Jisung held up his hand. "String," he said simply, pointing back at Chenle.
Uncle Hyunjin carefully placed Jisung down on the ground, and he approached Chenle slowly. Chenle quickly wrapped him in a hug, and Mark expected Jisung to cry out of terror, but he didn't. "Soulmate," Jisung mumbled. Chenle nodded.
Hyunjin let out an ugly, loud sob, and Minho had his nose bridge pinched between his fingers.
"What am I supposed to do with this information?" Minho voiced, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "Sungie? Yeah, I need you to come home. No, I'm not mad. I'm sure Woojin and Felix would appreciate you sending their husbands home, too. Okay. See you at home, babe."
Minho hung up the phone and looked down at Chenle, who was now rushing back to play with Mark, unaccompanied by Jisung. He looked back over to the youngest child, and he had hugged himself to Uncle Hyunjin's legs.
"Is Sungie going to play?" Chenle asked.
"He's scared," Hyunjin explained. He turned to Minho. "I don't know what happened to him with his biological mom, but he's scared of everything. I mean, it's understandable, but I'm worried."
"If he's comfortable with Seungmin, he can learn to be comfortable with anyone," Minho answered with a smile.
Mark played with Chenle some more, who sometimes rushed over to talk to Jisung again. Soon, Chan arrived home, and Mark hugged him begrudgingly. Uncle Ji, Minho, Seungmin, and Hyunjin talked quietly in the kitchen. Soon, Uncle Changbin and Felix joined them, meaning that Mark was now burdened with the presence of his least favorite person on Earth.
"Hey, Markie," Donghyuck drawled as soon as his parents were out of the room. Mark felt his face heating up in frustration, so he just continued running his toy cars along the hardwood floor. Just ignore him.
"You never told me how your day at school was."
His tone didn't sound as annoying, so Mark decided to answer. "It was boring."
"Really? Nothing dramatic happened?"
"No, Hyuck, now leave me alone," Mark spat.
Donghyuck smirked. "There's nothing to get angry about, Markie."
Mark stood suddenly, kicking the toys out of the way as he stormed into his room. Chenle called out for him, but he didn't look back. He would hurt Donghyuck if he had to be around him any longer. He didn't want to.
"Daddy, Mark is ignoring me!" he heard Donghyuck screech through the door. Evidently, his claims didn't take him very far, because no one came into his room. He sat down on the floor and tried to breath, but he could still hear Donghyuck's complaining. He stood and paced, stomping along the ground.
The door soon creaked open.
"Hey, Mark?"
He looked up to see Chan, who was smiling at him lightly, but he looked disappointed. Mark hated when he looked disappointed. He averted his eyes.
"Can you tell me what's wrong?"
Mark didn't speak.
Chan sat down on his bed and patted the space next to him. Mark didn't sit beside him. "Hey," he repeated.
"Hyuck makes me mad," Mark said finally. "He uses a mean voice with me, and… and it makes me feel stupid."
"Do you know if he does it on purpose?" Chan asked.
"Yes," he said stubbornly. He wanted to scream at Chan for never listening to him. No one thought Mark was ever justified in his feelings. "He wants to make me mad."
"Well," Chan said. "I think it would help if talked it out with him."
Mark huffed angrily. He knew he was starting to yell, which always made things worse, but he just didn't care. "I don't want to talk to him. Or look at him. Or think about him."
"Okay."
He looked skeptically back up at Chan. "Everyone will go home now, okay? And I won't make you talk to Hyuck."
Mark smiled gratefully.
He stayed in his room until Woojin came in to tell him everyone was gone, and that he was making dinner. Mark came out to the living room to clean up his toys, but found that Chenle already had (save for blocks that spelled out a messy 'Chenle'). He finished picking up and turned on the TV to watch Pokemon.
He always could pay attention to that. Even though listening at school was a daily battle he hardly ever won, things that he liked were able to grab his brain and not let go. Even music class was able to do that, and sometimes English and reading, but the other subjects were fleeting. Of course, he didn't think about that as he watched the brightly colored characters on the screen.
"Mark?"
He didn't glance away from the TV. Woojin's voice was fuzzy background noise.
"Hey, Mark?"
He didn't turn.
Mark registered a heavy sigh from behind him and was quickly attacked with tickling, jerking his attention away from the show and towards Woojin. Chan turned the television off and they all sat down to eat dinner.
"How was school?" Chan asked.
Mark shrugged. "How was work?" he asked, not giving an answer.
"It was productive," he said. "Your Uncle Jisung and Uncle Changbin got a lot of work done, too."
Mark looked up at Woojin for an answer. To be honest, he didn't really understand Woojin's job, but Chan said he managed their music production company, so he figured it was at least important.
"It was okay," Woojin answered. "Stressful. Today was stressful."
Mark wanted to apologize for being stressful. He didn't. He just stared into his food, eating a little more before asking to be excused. Chan's face flashed that same dejected expression as he allowed Mark to rush off to the living room to suck himself back into the show he was watching. It allowed him to ignore Woojin and Chan's hushed whispers of "anger issues" and "worried about him". They didn't talk about it with Mark. He was a thing to be worried about, talked about behind his back, managed when Donghyuck stepped too far. He stared harder into the screen, ignoring the lump that started to grow in his throat.
-
He missed all but one.
Mark missed all but one problem on his math test.
After Donghyuck's most recent torture, Mark had grown a lot more motivated to pay attention to his studies. However, he tended to just focus on focusing, leading to him using all of his energy to stay still and look attentive instead of actually gleaning anything from the lessons. Chan had kept his promise of not making him interact with Donghyuck. He had hardly seen him at all since that day. He'd also hardly seen Chenle, though, because he spent a lot of his time with Jisung now they knew they were soulmates. That meant Mark just spent a lot of time with Lucas.
"I failed," Lucas said after they'd been dismissed, shoving his test into his backpack. "You?"
"Me, too," he complained.
A failed test meant you had to get a parent signature. That meant Mark would have to look into his dads' eyes and hand them something he was ashamed of. It meant Chan would give him that same disappointed face. He didn't know if he could take it.
He sprinted to the bus to take his normal seat, and was happy to see Chenle come and sit next to him. "Hi, Mark!"
"Hi," Mark said. "How was school?"
Chenle shrugged. "It was good!"
He didn't rant. Mark found himself missing it, because he didn't want to be left alone with his thoughts, but he said nothing.
None of their parents were waiting at the bus stop. Mark heard sirens going off in his brain in the tone of Donghyuck chanting "Markie!" much too loud for his liking - that is, audible at all. He squirmed uncomfortably at the nickname.
"How did you do on your math test, Markie?"
Mark's fists clenched around his backpack straps. Chenle tugged on his sleeve, but he couldn't find it in him to move. He stared at the ground. "Hm?" Donghyuck asked. "How did you do?"
"Let's go," Chenle stressed, pulling harder.
"Leave me alone, Hyuck," Mark said quietly. It was hard not to yell.
"You would answer me if you did well," Donghyuck teased.
Mark looked up at his taunting face.
"You failed, didn't you?" he asked, eyebrows cocked up in mock concern, pushing his face right into Mark's line of sight.
Mark saw red. He clenched the front of Donghyuck's uniform shirt, pulling him up off the ground. It was easy, since Mark was a year older and much larger than him. The cruel shine in Donghyuck's eyes disappeared, replaced with some unfamiliar emotion. Mark threw him back down on the ground, and Chenle pulled him away, hard, causing Mark to hit the pavement.
Before Donghyuck could regain his bearings, Mark scrambled up and sprinted to his apartment building, already feeling that his palms were bleeding. He threw open the door. He could feel hot tears on his face and he just wanted to hide in his room forever, but, unluckily enough for him, Chan was sitting in the living room. He turned to Mark and his eyes went wide with concern.
"Oh my God, kiddo, what happened?"
Mark sobbed, wordlessly throwing his bag to the ground, taking out his test, and shoving it against Chan's chest, leaving a print from his bloodied hands on the white paper. He bolted to his bedroom before he could see Chan's expression.
He sat down on the wood floor and tried to breathe.