Work Text:
Mark has gone to school with Donghyuck for six years. Six. They’ve passed in hallways, sat across the aisle from each other in class, and shared a quidditch pitch for six years. In that time, they have shared exactly zero genuine smiles.
Sure, there have been mocking smiles, the result of Donghyuck landing a perfect jelly-legs jinx on Mark while he’s walking in the great hall. Hurt smiles when the insults go too far. Fake smiles when Professor Moon has them do demonstrations in Defence class.
But never a genuine one. Not the one Donghyuck gives his friends when they save him treacle tart when he rolls out of bed too late to catch breakfast. Not the one Mark gives his teammates when he catches the snitch. Not even the polite one they both offer to acquaintances in the halls.
So why did Lee Donghyuck just sit down across from him in the Great Hall like it was routine, with a smile the size of Professor Lee’s potion stockroom spread across his obnoxious face?
“Have you been hexed?” Jeno breaks the silence that had settled in while Mark tried to kick his brain into gear. Mark pretends the look of genuine concern on Jeno’s perfect face is for Mark’s wellbeing, and not potentially-cursed Donghyuck.
God, he hadn’t frozen so badly since Donghyuck wingardium leviosa’d him directly into the Great Lake in the middle of November.
Donghyuck laughs, and any semblance of brain function immediately ceases again. He’s never heard that laugh so close, and for a second his heart aches with the sincerity of it, the volume, as if Donghyuck is comfortable sitting there. At the Gryffindor table. Across from Mark.
Donghyuck leans across the table, careful not to breach etiquette and put his elbows on it, and says around a smile, “I’m not cursed.”
“Then why are you here?” Mark says, as rude yet detached as he could possibly manage. Jeno kicks him under the table.
He was always saying they should get over their petty feud. Be friends. A little healthy competition is fine, but they’ve gone too far. Mark laughs in his face every time. That’s why Jeno is the Gryffindor head boy and Mark was nearly sorted into Slytherin.
“I’m here,” he looks directly into Mark’s eyes, and a sparkle of light from the enchanted ceiling catches his eye and makes it look like liquid gold for a second, “because we are having a practice match tomorrow, and I need an adequate seeker to play against. You in?”
Mark looks around for someone, anyone, else that Donghyuck could be talking to, intense eye contact be damned. Jeno, for his part, is staring into his pumpkin juice like he was divining the secret of what, exactly, was going on. There is nobody.
After a solid minute of making a fool of himself, no Slytherin holding a camera had jumped out and told him he was being punk’d yet. However, the smile on Donghyuck’s face was beginning to fade into the lukewarm version he’d offered him in front of professors. For some reason it makes Mark uneasy.
So, unthinkingly, he responds, “I’m in if Jeno is.”
“Jeno?” Donghyuck looks at him expectantly, and Mark feels his shoulders loosen away from the pressure of Donghyuck’s direct attention.
“Yeah, sure,” he smiles, the traitor, “Jaemin already mentioned it to me, I was planning on at least watching.”
Donghyuck stands up, smiles one last time, and says, “Great. See you tomorrow at four, then.”
All Mark can do is watch the elegant swish of his robes as he walks away, back straight, hair perfect, strides long and even, and hope to Merlin that he dies in his sleep.
-
Mid-morning chill has turned into a syrupy warmth, sun blinding Mark momentarily as he walks towards the pitch, Jeno chatting away beside him. Behind them, their brooms trail lazily, a handy piece of charm work Jeno had developed in fourth year.
“How are you doing that?” Mark blurts, short-wiring at the thought of where they were going. Mere proximity to the quidditch pitch makes his hands shake, his tongue go heavy, and his heart pound.
“Doing what?” Jeno looks over, puzzled, eyes the perfect picture of innocence. “The brooms?”
Mark runs a hand through his hair, which is quickly becoming frizzy due to the humidity, wishing that he knew what hair potion Donghyuck used to always keep his so soft and shiny looking.
“Acting like we aren’t marching off to some Slytherin death match, where they’ll break our bones so we can’t play for the house cup.”
“Because my boyfriend is on the team,” Jeno says as if it's the simplest thing in the world. To him, Mark supposes, it is.
Suddenly they’re next to the changing rooms, and Mark doesn’t have time to reply before Jeno pushes open the door, revealing the clamor of a group of rowdy teens. He picks out a shrill laugh as Chenle’s, a sixth year Slytherin. It dawns on him that because it’s a practice match, they’re just sharing one locker room.
Without any time to fully process that, Lee Donghyuck walks in front of him, robes undone and revealing his worn under-shirt along with a tan, delicate collar bone that Mark has never seen before.
He rips himself away and tries to search for Jeno in the small crowd, but all he gets is various boys in various states of undress. Fuck. Even more surprisingly, it isn’t just Gryffindor and Slytherin, but a mixture of all four houses.
His usual locker is surrounded, thankfully, by people he is friendly with.
“Mark,” Renjun calls him over, “we saved your locker.”
“Thanks, Renjun,” Mark walks over on weak legs, trying to get the image of Donghyuck’s bare neck out of his mind. Why is it such a revelation to him that he has skin? That’s all it is. Skin. Everyone has it.
He zones back in to the conversation just as Yukhei, a seventh year Hufflepuff, stops talking. Blanching at the expectant look on Yukhei’s face, he just smiles and nods lightly. Evidently that is good enough for him, because he walks over to his usual group of friends with an even broader smile than usual lighting up his handsome face.
“I heard Taeyong is refereeing,” Renjun looks sideways at Jisung, a sixth year Ravenclaw. His massive crush on the Care of Magical Creatures professor is practically legendary, and true to form his cheeks lit up Gryffindor red.
Mark finishes pulling on his kit, and by the time he’s done, most of the players have made their way out of the locker room. Only a handful of people remain. Among them is Donghyuck, lingering near the exit, fiddling with something in his locker.
Trying to remain calm, Mark walks towards the door, hoping Donghyuck doesn’t pay him any mind. He’s practically halfway outside, safe, when a hand gently grasps his shoulder. Jumping, his hand reflexively goes to his wand, but then he remembers the way Donghyuck had smiled at him the day prior and relaxes.
Plus, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hex Mark in such close proximity to his friends.
“Relax,” he teases, “I was just going to say good luck. But if your reflexes are that fast on the pitch, I guess you won’t need it.”
Mark stumbles for a second before the spinning wheel in his brain settles on, “Um, you too?”
“Oh, I know I won’t need it.” Donghyuck grabs his broom, because for some reason he couldn’t leave it outside with the rest of the brooms. Probably scared someone would snatch his expensive new model. His voice even reverted back to the arrogant tone it usually seeps.
Good. Arrogance, Mark could deal with. Wishes of good luck? That’s a whole other quidditch match.
-
The game passes in a whirlwind of Donghyuck’s bare forearm, his cologne on the wind as he streaks past Mark, good natured insults carried across the pitch with some voice-enhancing charm. It throws Mark off of his game.
So when they’re tied, and he still hasn’t caught the Snitch, that’s his excuse. Donghyuck’s hair in the sun, and his blinding smile, and his good natured insults. Good. Natured. Biting, vicious, and low-shooting he’s used to. But a playful tone… It must be a strategy to disarm him.
He won’t let it work.
Fortunately, his suspicious staring at Donghyuck pays off when the Snitch gleams golden behind him, buzzing around the field like a hummingbird. As subtle as possible, he starts flying towards it, shouting out half-hearted trash talk like that was his purpose of getting closer.
He’s so close he can almost feel it in his hand when Donghyuck realizes and veers downwards, and suddenly they’re both spiralling towards the ground, the Snitch swooping just out of reach until they’re dangerously close to the ground.
Mark reaches out, the grass barely below his feet. Donghyuck reaches out too, and they collide, Donghyuck falling off of his broom and on top of Mark. Their brooms, miraculously untarnished, lay on either side of them.
The first thing Mark registers is Donghyuck’s weight, solid and warm on top of him. The second ting he registers, moments later, is that his arms are pinned above his head, and in his hand is the Snitch. On top of his hand is Donghyuck’s hand.
For a few terrifying moments, all he can do is stare into Donghyuck’s wide eyes. Then Chenle is right next to them, shouting something.
“You can’t move! Not an inch!” he frantically gestures to the Snitch, and once the buzzing in Mark’s ears subsides he realizes why.
Taeyong has to come down and decide who grabbed it first.
Donghyuck’s thighs cage Mark’s hips, his chest eye-level and so close that he can practically count his heartbeats. The flush in his cheeks could be accounted to the heat of the day or the thrill of the game, but the tremble of his hand against Mark’s own says otherwise.
“It’s a tie,” Taeyong says, causing Mark to jump, nudging Donghyuck slightly. The thighs around his hips tighten, and Donghyuck’s jaw clenches like it's taking him a great effort to not say anything.
Instead, he simply says ‘okay’, and stands up.
Mark blinks against his surprise. The Donghyuck he knows never would’ve just given up. He would’ve fought tooth and nail to be the winner, to come out on top. It’s the Slytherin way. And when he offers Mark a hand up, well… he must be cursed.
Mark takes it anyway.
-
Lost in thought, Mark takes longer than usual to change, telling his friends to go to the Hall for dinner without him. By the time he’s done, most other people had had the same idea. Only Yukhei and Donghyuck remain.
When he realizes, he tries to rush out, but by the time he shoves everything in his bag Yukhei is bidding them both a goodbye, and suddenly the changing room is the size of a storage closet and Donghyuck is eight feet tall, blocking the only exit.
He decides to wait it out, hoping that Donghyuck will just leave without giving him a hard time. Before, Donghyuck would have no qualms with hitting him with a quick body-bind and leaving him there for a few hours. But new, possibly-cursed Donghyuck does things like smile at him and offer him a hand up, so… who knows.
“I was surprised when Yukhei said you agreed,” Donghyuck’s voice is a little too loud, and it echoes throughout the room in a way that makes Mark jump.
His locker slams as he closes it, just in his under-shirt and tight black jeans now, his bag held loosely in his hand like he’s planning to put it down. He does. Then he sits on a bench, cross-legged and sideways, and gestures for Mark to come over.
“Agreed to what? To play?” Mark asks, confused, because unless Yukhei had Polyjuiced himself as Donghyuck, then the other boy was the one who had invited him.
“To talk,” he says, tone still light, though the area around his eyes creases with confusion.
“To talk?”
“Are you feeling okay?” Donghyuck frowns, the genuine concern on his face making Mark’s heart stop. He rubs the back of his neck, sheepish, all tan skin and lean muscle, and Mark walks over to take a seat because if he doesn’t sit down soon his legs may give out.
Then it dawns on him. When he’d smiled and nodded at Yukhei before, he was asking Mark to give Donghyuck a chance. To talk. And he’d agreed.
“Okay.” Mark takes a deep breath and steels himself. “What are we going to talk about?”
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Donghyuck breathes it all out like one word. A flush rises on his neck to his cheeks, and Mark tries really, really hard to not find it endearing.
But then he thinks of all of the pain and embarrassment Donghyuck had caused him over the years. Hexing him to cough up frogs, leaving him bruised and bloody after practice duels, sabotaging his potions. Making fun of him in front of everyone in the Great Hall, levitating him into the Great Lake, throwing a Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes stinkbomb into his compartment on the Hogwarts Express.
Years of fighting couldn’t be erased with some smiles and a friendly match of quidditch.
“You have to be cursed, right?” Mark asks incredulously, scanning Donghyuck’s face for any trace of insincerity. Instead, he just looks kind of wounded.
“What?”
“You have to be cursed to think we can be friends,” Mark clenches his fists, restless, “or you’re even more stupid than I thought.”
Donghyuck draws in on himself, but his eyes harden, and his face starts to morph into an almost-glare. Mark finds himself missing the smile, and the thought just makes him even angrier.
“Seriously, after all of these years,” Mark continues, “after you rejected my friendship because I wasn’t good enough,”
He flinches, and tries to interrupt, “Mark-”
Mark flinches a little at the truth in the ugly words he’s letting escape, six years worth of hurt pooling in his stomach and making his words venomous. “No. You looked down on me, and then spent years antagonizing me, and now you want to be friends ?”
Fed up with being shut down, Donghyuck gets up and makes to walk away like the coward he is. Mark sees red. He’s about to speak up when Donghyuck stops, drawing himself up to his full height, and looks him dead in his eyes. “Don’t act like you’re a saint, Mark. Because you’re not.”
“Then why do you want to be my friend?” Mark seethes, “Do you think I have something to offer you? Want to use me? Bribe me like you probably do everyone around you, just so they’ll stand you?”
Donghyuck draws his wand at this, any trace of compassion gone from his face. In its place is a schooled mask of indifference. The trembling of his hand once again gives him away. “I guess I was wrong to think you were mature enough to handle this.”
“What? Your pathetic attempt at manipulating me?” Mark stands, drawing his own wand, and crowds Donghyuck closer to the lockers.
“What could you possibly have to offer me? What could I want from you?” Donghyuck looks him up and down like he’s a Mandrake, every word poisonous and appearance disgusting.
Mark raises his wand to cast a hex, any hex, but Donghyuck is faster. He casts an expelliarmus , palming Mark’s wand and shoving it into the loop of his jeans smoothly. Now wandless and completely at Donghyuck’s mercy, he deflates a little bit.
“I should go,” Mark reaches for his bag. There’s no point in fighting. No point in trying to be friends. It didn’t happen in first year, and it won’t happen now.
“Without your wand?” Donghyuck raises an eyebrow, expression skillfully disdainful. Damn Slytherin confidence.
Mark steps towards him, a hand out, the closest to asking he’s willing to get. “I should go.”
“Or you could stay a little longer,” Donghyuck takes a step towards him, and then another, until Mark’s back is against the lockers and Donghyuck’s wand is poking into his chest. “Let me explain, and I won’t hex you until you’re bald, covered in spots, and coughing up slugs.”
“Back off,” Mark breathes carefully, the tip of the wand nudging his sternum with every breath. Donghyuck drags it up to his neck slowly, lightly, until it sits under his chin, and it takes every ounce of his willpower not to shudder.
Up this close, Donghyuck looks nervous, the cracks in his mask more visible. Mark glares at him, and if looks could curse Donghyuck would be writhing on the floor by now.
“Why are you so scared of making amends?”
“Why do you want to?”
“Because I’m not a child anymore, Mark,” Donghyuck’s practically shouting now, “Because we have all of the same friends, and all of the same classes, and I’m sick of looking at you and-”
“Looking at me!” Mark interrupts, incredulous, and somewhere underneath his rage he’s embarrassed that that wounded his pride so much.
“Looking at you and pretending I don’t want to-”
“What? Hex me?”
“You really are insufferable-”
Mark pushes himself forward into the wand, and Donghyuck doesn’t budge, “Hex me then. Do it. You always were a coward, though, huh?”
“Looking at you,” he’s yelling now, worked up over being interrupted, and Mark decides to do it more.
“I bet you’re not used to people talking over you, huh,” and Mark’s about to continue, because Donghyuck just keeps opening his mouth like he’s going to say something, and Mark’s already yelling so he can’t get much more aggressive from here, but he can’t.
Mark has gone to school with Donghyuck for six years. Six. They’ve passed in hallways, sat across the aisle from each other in class, and shared a quidditch pitch for six years. In that time, they have shared exactly zero civil conversations.
So why does it feel so right when Lee Donghyuck pushes forward and kisses him, effectively shutting him up?
It’s angry, and harsh, and the handle to a locker digs into Mark’s shoulder. Donghyuck lowers his wand in favor of caging Mark against the lockers, their bodies pressing together from shoulder to thigh. It’s a perfect reflection of their relationship, all heat and aggression, except usually it isn’t so pleasurable.
After a moment, Donghyuck draws back and rests his forehead against Mark’s. “Looking at you and pretending I didn’t want to do that.”
There is a lot to unpack there, so Mark settles for kissing Donghyuck again, running his hands through his hair and down his back to wind around his hips. When Donghyuck pulls back to kiss his neck, the full force of the situation hits him.
He tries to stay angry, he really does, but it is hard to be mad at someone who has their thigh between your legs and their lips on your neck.
“How… ah, how do you go from hating someone to,” Mark takes a gasping breath when Donghyuck nips at the right spot, “this?”
“I never really hated you,” Donghyuck says between kisses, “not really.”
Mark pulls back, determined to talk this over before he’s too far gone to have any rational thoughts. He’s dangerously close already. “So you hexed me all of those years because you thought I was so hot?”
Shocked, Donghyuck laughs, sharp and quick, and Mark twitches to kiss him.
“I was jealous of you,” he says, voice strained like he’s admitting it under pain of death.
“Jealous?”
“Can’t we just kiss again?” he says half-seriously, nudging his thigh upwards again. Mark has to close his eyes and take a long, calming breath in order to not give in. “Fine. It’s just that you were as good as me.”
“What?” Mark says, because apparently he can only speak in one-word sentences now. Lee Donghyuck has officially reduced his brain to mush.
“You show up to school after knowing about magic for what, a month? And you’re just as good as me at the things I’d been learning my entire life.” Donghyuck scans his face for some emotion, and Mark carefully tries to look encouraging. “So I was jealous.”
“What changed?” Which is an improvement, because it’s two words instead of one, even though Donghyuck’s hands have strayed to his hips and are currently toying with the hem of his shirt.
“I realized how powerful we would be if we worked together,” Donghyuck says, voice firm and unwavering, and Mark surges forwards and kisses him again, bruising but gentler, somehow.
They break apart, and Mark can’t help but ask, “When?”
“When what?” Donghyuck has finally gone kiss-stupid, and Mark feels accomplished.
“When did you realize?”
He flushes, and presses a kiss into Mark’s sweet spot before answering, “Remember when you, um, fell into the lake?”
“ Fell ?”
“Some Slytherins were teasing me about having a crush on you,” he mumbles, “so I panicked.”
“And levitated me into a freezing lake ?” Mark says, voice hysterical, and thinks that if they are going to do this it is going to be very, very taxing on his mental state. Even if the kissing is phenomenal.
“Look, Mark. I like you, and I think you like me too,” once again, he nudges his hips upwards, causing Mark to flush bright red, “and if you don’t, that is fine. I won’t pressure you into anything. But I’m not fighting with you anymore.”
Mark thinks about not getting to tease Donghyuck anymore. And the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes how silly their pranks had gotten over the last few months. Instead of anything harmful, they were actually kind of funny.
For a solid week, Donghyuck had convinced Mark he’d been in love with Jeno, using fake Amortentia. Mark had transfigured Donghyuck’s hair Gryffindor red and gold. They’d sent childish hexes and spells flying, sure, but no curses, and nothing painful.
Somehow, without Mark even noticing it, things had changed. And now instead of being relieved without Donghyuck, he’d be bored without him.
Mark thinks about how Donghyuck’s eyes crinkle when he smiles, and how the room feels brighter when he laughs. He thinks about how ugly jealousy is, and how hot angrily kissing is, and how hard it must have been for Donghyuck to admit how he felt.
He kisses him again.
-
When Donghyuck and Mark walk into the Great Hall holding hands, catching the tail end of dinner, their friends let out a collective long-suffering sigh of relief.