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Without Mark here, Donghyuck was struggling.
The first couple of weeks, it was manageable. The distance didn’t really set in until the second month when Donghyuck still haven’t heard anything from him. Not a letter, not a call, not even a simple text. And when he did hear from Mark later that month, it was because Mark has gotten injured and was allowed to make one phone call back home.
He was over the moon when he received that Facetime call, but when he realized the situation, Donghyuck wanted nothing more than to fly over to where Mark was and to take him back home. Mark had tried to cheer him up during the entire call and Donghyuck did try to be happy but it was hard to be when he really wasn’t. Donghyuck held his smile the whole time and the moment that Mark said goodbye, it nearly took all of his strength to not curl up into a ball on the cafe’s kitchen floor and bawl his eyes out.
He misses Mark so damn much.
While Mark definitely was not an outwardly affectionate person nor clingy, he had always allowed Donghyuck to be glued to his hip. Mark allowed him to throw himself all over the boy and smuggle him with so much love. Mark doesn’t pushes him away when he asks for hugs and kisses in public, Mark simply gives into them much to his delight. Donghyuck has spent every waking moment with Mark; every hour, every minute, every second.
Now that he isn’t, Donghyuck can’t help but feel the gnawing feelings of anxiousness everytime he turns over in his sleep, reaching for the said boy, only to find that his side of the bed is empty. And the emptiness just grows with each passing day.
It also doesn’t help that Donghyuck hasn’t heard from Mark since the last phone call that he made while at the med bay seven months ago. Mark had said that he would be back in six months, arguing that the mission they had wouldn’t take up that much time. But with the eighth month mark coming up, Donghyuck wasn’t sure when Mark was coming back. Or if he was even going to come back. And that scares him.
Ever chance that he got, Donghyuck would always ask Renjun if he heard anything from his boyfriends. But each time, Renjun would simply look at him with sad eyes and shake his head no. When this happened, Donghyuck would feel so bad that he even asked in the first place because he knew that Renjun wasn’t holding up any better than he was.
So as he taps away on his phone mindlessly during his lecture, Donghyuck feels like crying when he checks his notifications for the umpteenth time that hour for any calls or messages. But there wasn’t any. Caressing the photo of Mark that he had set as his current home screen, he lets out a shaky breath, his heart clenching painfully tight in his chest. He can feel the tears burning at the corners of his eyes, asking to be released.
Upon hearing the professor wrap up the lecture with his final announcements, Donghyuck hastily puts away all of his things and throws them into his backpack without a single care in the world. All he wants to do right now is to skip his next lecture and run home to cry into Mark’s favorite hoodie, one that is beginning to smell more like him than Mark.
Donghyuck hears Renjun concerned calls after him, the shorter boy hot at his heels, trying to give him some comfort but he doesn’t care. He’s been holding it in for far too long and Donghyuck knows that he’s at his breaking point. When Donghyuck breaks, it’s ugly and he knows it. The only other person that he allows to see him like that is Mark. Since Mark is gone and he’s the reason why he’s feeling like this, all that Donghyuck wants is to be alone.
But it seems like the universe has other plans for him though. And he finds it when he manages to push against all the other students and gets out of the lecture hall first.
There standing right outside his lecture is Mark, still in uniform, looking up at the same moment that Donghyuck does. A smile blossoms on Mark’s face once he spots him and Donghyuck all but just about short circuited.
Behind him, Donghyuck mind briefly registers the sound of Renjun still trying to call out for him, but the boy’s words dies once he spots his boyfriends standing right besides Mark. Unlike Donghyuck, Renjun lets out a happy scream and runs full force towards his lovers, throwing his arms around both of them. There’s a lot of crying and decelerations of love between the three of them. Jeno and Jaemin trying to soothe Renjun as he’s hitting them and yelling at them for taking too long to come back home.
Pulling his attention away from the happy couple, Donghyuck meets Mark’s eyes. When he sees the way that Mark’s eyes sparkle at the sight of him, Donghyuck doesn’t think for another second and runs towards him.
Mark catches him in his arms with ease and twirls Donghyuck around once before setting him back on the ground. He feels like he’s squeezing the living daylights out of Mark but Donghyuck doesn’t care. The tears that he’s been trying so hard to hold back earlier flows out of him like a broken dam. Donghyuck is pretty sure that he’s sounding like a dying cat right now but it doesn’t matter because Mark is back.
“Oh, babe…,” Mark sighs into his hair, arms still wrapped around his waist tightly. Then chuckling, he added softly, “It looks like the only thing I ever do is make you cry.”
At his words, Donghyuck wails even louder, clutching onto Mark like a koala bear. Words barely coherent, he stutters out, “I miss you so fucking much Mark Lee.”
“I know. I do too baby.”
.
Later that night after Mark has tried his best to stop Donghyuck’s tears and the both of them had shared enough kisses to make up for all of the lost time, they settled into their living room couch, wrapped up in each others arms.
Mark had fallen asleep the moment his head touched the couch with Donghyuck snuggly wrapped up in his arms. And Donghyuck didn’t blame him. He was just as equally tired, both mentally and physically.
As he lays there though, encased safely and in the comfort of Mark’s arms, Donghyuck allows the sound of Mark’s steady beating heart to lull him to sleep. And as sleep begins to find it way into his body, Donghyuck finds that this is what home is.
He knew that home was never just a place. Sometimes it was a feeling and sometimes it was a person. Maybe even both. And it was something that Donghyuck had been searching for all his life, until the day that he met Mark. Home was waking up every morning with soft, fleeting kisses covering his entire face and whispers of ‘I love you’ in between each one. Home was knowing that there was a set of warm and sturdy arms waiting to hold him after a long day of classes or work. Home was the late night cuddles and promises of tomorrows together and forever.
Home was with Mark.