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It starts, really, because their train seats are parallel to each other’s and they’re both within clear earshot of the couple arguing in the seats in front of them.
It’s one of those biting fights that began with something inane. Mark thinks it started because the wife wanted the blinds closed but the husband did not, and somehow it has spiralled into his faults as a father and his growing distance to their children.
The escalation induces enough whiplash that Mark wants to laugh in disbelief. He stifles it with his sleeve until it sounds like a cough instead—only to struggle all over again when he looks across the aisle and finds someone else not bothering to hide their own laugh.
It’s a little embarrassing, and it could definitely be more romantic, but this is how Mark meets Donghyuck: mid-giggle, making eye contact with Mark like this situation has always been an inside joke they shared.
In all the years after, that's how Mark will remember him—seated low on the train seat opposite Mark, not bothering to stifle a laugh, his eyes bright, his smile even brighter, everything about him golden in the slots of sunlight coming in through the windows, boyish behind the phone he’s unsuccessfully using to cover his mouth.
Mark has never thought of himself as the type to be so easily smitten. He’s a writer at heart, a poet of sorts, but he didn’t grow up much of a believer of love at first sight. He can be idealistic, a daydreamer, but he isn’t naive enough to remain the hopeless romantic he must have been when he was younger.
But later on in life he’ll look back to that first meeting and be certain there’s no other way he can describe what happened, what spell Donghyuck cast with one glance, what it was about the way he looked up at Mark, gaze conspiratorial, that made him feel in that moment like they were alone in their train car.
"Jeez," is the first ever thing Mark hears Donghyuck say. "I’m never getting married."
Mark looks around frantically to see if the couple in front of them heard this, only to realize a moment later that Donghyuck had spoken in Korean. When he turns back to Donghyuck, he’s met with a cheeky grin.
"Isn’t that a little extreme?" Mark can’t help but say, though he’s smiling back. "Never?"
Donghyuck shrugs. "Marriage doesn’t seem very appealing, is all. If you end up like that."
He jerks his chin forwards.
As if on cue, the husband throws his hands up in the air and stomps out of his seat.
"Yeah, but," Mark says, though he realizes it’s a lost cause. "Not all marriages end up like that."
"I’m not really willing to take the risk. Sorry." Donghyuck crosses his arms. "An expert on marriage, are you? Or just a romantic? A writer, maybe?"
Mark feels his face warm. "Bullseye."
"No way. You’re a writer?" Donghyuck’s eyes are wide as he leans back. "What do you write?"
"Uh—poetry, mostly."
"Can I hear some?"
Mark has met plenty of direct people in his life, but none of them have had the level of self-assurance that Donghyuck is armed with like a second skin. It’s attractive in a way Mark can’t explain, and when Donghyuck scoots over in his seat, patting the empty one beside him with that pretty smile, Mark doesn’t hesitate to cross the aisle and sit beside him.
They exchange names. Mark learns that Donghyuck is a year younger than him, born in Jeju Island but raised in Seoul. He’s in university, but he’s taking a break for this semester to satisfy his wanderlust.
All this Donghyuck says with less enthusiasm than he does most other things, as if he believes these to be the least relevant things about himself—except his family, which he speaks of with a softness that Mark immediately envies without rational thought. Envies because Donghyuck has a place to tether himself to, envies because Donghyuck wears softness so delicately, purely, that a part of Mark at once wants it for himself, too.
But everything else about Donghyuck is enthusiastic, like he can’t fit everything he wants into every second. Someone used to taking. It doesn’t, surprisingly, make him difficult to talk to; if anything, Mark has never had as much ease talking to a new person as he does with Donghyuck, their banter smooth and organic, a back-and-forth that leaves Mark feeling giddy over nothing special at all.
"Why trains?" Donghyuck is saying as they pull into the train stop. "You don’t like planes?"
"No, I like flying," Mark says. "It’s airports I don’t like. Not this time of the year. Too crowded. Loud. Not enough room to hear yourself think."
Donghyuck crooks a grin. "Sorry."
Nothing’s funny about it, but they both laugh, their shoulders brushing against each other’s.
"So listen, Mark," Donghyuck says. He says Mark’s name like it’s a song he wants to get right, the questioning lilt to it like he isn’t sure if he has the right pitch. He doesn’t strike Mark as a nervous person, yet Donghyuck twists his hands in front of him, leaning forward and back in his seat even though it won’t budge under his weight. "I’m gonna be in Montreal for about a day."
"I know. You told me."
"And see—I know we just met, but I really like talking to you," Donghyuck says. "I wish I met you earlier."
Me, too, Mark wants to reply, but it gets stuck in his throat. He nods instead.
"I know this is crazy," Donghyuck starts slowly, "but would you maybe wanna—I don’t know—get off the train with me?"
Mark goes.
He misses his connecting train back to Toronto and replaces it with a ticket for one in the coming morning, and he doesn’t regret it at all.
Montreal is cold. Colder than Toronto. Much, much colder than Vancouver. But Donghyuck never strays too far from Mark’s side, pointing out landmarks in downtown Montreal like he’s lived here all his life instead of being as much a foreigner in this area as Mark is.
He touches Mark a lot. It leaves heat travelling down Mark’s skin every time, his body reacting to Donghyuck’s touch like a wax candle does to fire. It leaves him feeling boneless and needy, and as they both quiet down upon entering the Notre-Dame basilica, Mark feels a similar hush when he looks at Donghyuck.
He’s a writer, and words are different, but he finds himself thinking that Donghyuck is the kind of person no artist could ever do justice.
Not because he’s beautiful, though he is—very much, that Mark finds his own breath catching in his throat when Donghyuck tilts his face up in the light of the stained glass and smiles at the ceiling, pretty and soft—but because Donghyuck is never stationary. He isn’t meant to be. He’s a restless moving force, a gust of wind in a still, empty field, knocking everything sideways yet patient enough, kind enough, to look back and wait to see if things will right themselves in the wake of his momentum. And they do—because Donghyuck magnetizes, drags people to their feet and pulls them along. A Pied Piper, though less cruel, less keen for vengeance as he is just keen to insert himself into any life that opens itself up for him.
Mark fears that it’s too late for him. Six hours spent with Donghyuck feels like too long already to be able to recover from this.
"Why are you travelling?"
They stand under the snowy awning of a closed boutique as they compare blueberry bagels from two different shops, shoulder to shoulder as people squeeze past them.
Mark shrugs. "Didn’t know what else to do. So I thought I'd travel. Figure out where I wanna be."
He says it simply, and hopes that Donghyuck realizes Mark is trying to say, I just don’t know what to do with my life right now. I’m lost. I’ve done everything right but I still don’t know where I’m supposed to be headed now that everything has been said and done.
Donghyuck purses his lips and thinks. "Isn't that kind of counterintuitive?"
"What?"
"Moving around when you want to find a grounding place."
"Isn't that what you're doing, too?"
"Is it?"
The traveling thing, Mark doesn’t say, was an idea from Johnny, a coworker from Chicago that has turned into an older brother figure for Mark. Johnny can be frustratingly indulgent, sometimes, prone to resorting to different self-care tactics in an attempt to improve Mark’s life.
There was something very much Johnny-like in the belief that you had to be lost before you can find yourself. Partly because it’s the sort of convincing bullshit that Johnny reads off Reader’s Digest or some other magazine that no person younger than sixty should be subscribed to, and partly because it’s the kind of idealism that Johnny, though saddled with plenty in his life to render him cynical to the world, trusts with pigheaded optimism whenever it applies to Mark. Johnny doesn’t believe in much, really, yet he has never wavered in his stubborn faith in Mark being able to get his life in some semblance of order.
Mark shivers abruptly when Donghyuck leans over to rest his head against his shoulder.
Without looking up at him, Donghyuck murmurs, "Life has a funny way of working out for hardworking people like you, Mark. You’ll be fine, you know? I’ve only known you for half a day, but I know in my heart you’ll be just fine."
For once in his life, Mark believes it.
Weeks of travelling and Mark has learned this much: all cities, no matter how crowded, how barren, how full, how empty, all look beautiful from a high vantage point when lit up at night.
He and Donghyuck sit across from each other on the Ferris wheel, but their feet slide forward until their ankles are touching, as if their bodies have already long forgotten what it’s like to not be connected.
Donghyuck stares out the window—but he’s not looking down at the city. Instead, he stares upwards like he’s waiting for a shooting star to breeze across the dark expanse of night sky. As he does, Mark tracks a constellation across the moles on Donghyuck’s face.
He blinks, and realizes Donghyuck is staring back at him.
"Hey, you," Donghyuck says.
"Hey," Mark replies, a little breathless. He looks out the window, then back at Donghyuck. "What are you waiting for?"
Donghyuck’s eyes twinkle in the light, like this, his head angled sideways, expectant. "For you to kiss me."
Mark, genuinely, had not been expecting such an honest answer.
"Come here, then," he says, and if his voice is shaky, too surprised, Donghyuck doesn’t give him enough time to dwell on it.
Weeks of travelling and Mark also learns this one tiny, specific thing: some people are made to fit against others, and when Donghyuck settles in his lap for the first time and kisses him, it’s the most found Mark has felt in a long, long time.
At eleven at night, their steps echo against the cobblestone in an empty Old Montreal street. The wind is biting against their exposed palms, but they can’t seem to let go of each other’s hands, tugging at each other and laughing when one of them gets pulled along.
Mark feels drunk, euphoric, and it’s because of this that he finds it in him to ask, "Why do I feel like I know you?"
Donghyuck laughs. "Thank you? I guess?"
"No, I’m serious." Mark shakes his head. "I feel like we know each other. Maybe we’re already together in another universe."
"I doubt it. I bet it’d take us forever to get together in other circumstances."
"What do you mean—"
"Think about it. You’d be so difficult and in denial."
Mark raises an eyebrow. "That is so not true."
"I had to ask you to kiss me."
"You could have kissed me first."
"Fair." Donghyuck’s smile is indulgent. "Wouldn’t it be cool if we find each other in every lifetime?"
"Do you think we would?"
"I think so."
Mark runs his thumb against the back of Donghyuck’s hand. "We don’t have forever in this lifetime."
"No, we don’t. We have tonight, though," Donghyuck says. "And each other."
Mark pretends to make gagging noises.
Donghyuck untangles their hands and shoves Mark.
Mark’s laughter echoes down the street.
The bed in their hostel room is creaky and barely fits both of them, but Mark finds that he doesn’t care.
"Hyuck," he murmurs. "Can we—are you—do you want—"
"Yeah," Donghyuck whispers back, twisting his hand around strands of Mark's hair. It stings, pulls Mark back into cognizance of the fact that this is real. "Yeah—yeah—"
They're a tangle of limbs from there, not quite an end where the other body began. Mark feels so, so alive, every nerve on fire. For all the time he has spent feeling lost, it doesn’t feel as if anything had come before this—before Donghyuck under him, their hands clasped together, their mouths on each other.
When Mark steps out of the shower, Donghyuck is still up, curled on one side of the bed with a hand outstretched towards Mark.
Mark takes it and lets himself be pulled into bed. "Can’t sleep?"
"Don’t want to. The night will be over too soon," Donghyuck says. Once they’re close enough to each other, he wraps himself around Mark, resting his cheek against Mark’s shoulder. "Can you recite your favorite poem for me?"
Mark hums. "I have a lot."
"Then pick one."
Mark lies there for a moment and muses. But Donghyuck stretches and Mark falls easily into distraction, eyes following the line of Donghyuck’s body.
"You’re so pretty," he whispers.
"And you’re half-asleep."
"Am not."
Donghyuck rolls his eyes, but there’s pink dusting his cheeks. "Flattery won’t get you out of reciting a poem for me."
"Wasn’t trying to get out of it." Mark sits up to tug Donghyuck into a kiss, seized by urge he doesn’t dare deny himself. "Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm. "
He kisses the corner of Donghyuck’s mouth, and travels downwards as he says more of the poem from memory, each word tasting new on his tongue when matched to the way Donghyuck reacts to each new syllable.
Against Donghyuck’s neck, he murmurs, "Let the living creature lie, mortal, guilty, but to me—" He smiles against Donghyuck’s skin. "—the entirely beautiful."
"You’re so cheesy," Donghyuck says, but he sounds strangled.
Mark laughs and leans back. "Hey, you were the one who asked me to get off the train with you," he says. "This is what you signed up for."
"For a night."
"Is that all?" Mark rolls on his side to meet Donghyuck’s eyes. "Just one night?"
"You’re leaving again tomorrow morning, aren’t you? Back to Toronto. I’ll be back in Seoul by next week."
"So?"
"So—" Donghyuck’s laugh is more of a scoff. "That’s a lot of distance for two young people who just met."
Mark finds Donghyuck’s hand and slips his own against it. Maybe a part of him is more of a hopeless romantic than he realized, because he says, "But it doesn’t feel like I just met you. There’s almost eight billion people on this planet and we somehow bumped into each other on a train. Who knows what else can happen?"
"Then promise me," Donghyuck says, and he sounds, for a moment, almost scared. "We’ll be back here a year from now."
This, Mark can do. He kisses Donghyuck. "I promise."
They find a corner on the train platform.
"Mark," Donghyuck says against Mark’s mouth, fervent, and Mark murmurs something back—must murmur something back, because Donghyuck says his name again, and again, and again, unable to stop either the kiss or the never-ending litany of Mark, Mark, Mark between each one.
Mark pulls away to breathe. He rests his forehead against Donghyuck’s and tries to remember this. "Yeah?"
"Don’t go."
Donghyuck clearly regrets it as soon as he says it. His eyes fall closed as he wipes his expression clean. Still, it’s too late, and just the one sentence alone is near enough for Mark to deliberately miss another train.
But they both have lives to return to, and Mark has to return to his one day earlier.
"Donghyuck, we have to—"
"I know. I don’t want to."
"Are you going to laugh at me," Mark says, "if I tell you that I—"
I really like you. I’ve known you for a day and it feels like I’ve liked you for years. Like I won’t come this close to love with anyone else ever again. Not like this. Not like you.
He doesn’t have to finish it. Donghyuck understands.
The day before, Mark had told Donghyuck that he didn’t like airports because they were too crowded and too loud this time of the year. A better truth would be that he hates goodbyes, and especially goodbyes concentrated in such a public space, when all he wants is to be able to do them in private, if he must do them at all.
He must, with Donghyuck, so he holds Donghyuck’s hand until he boards. He holds it until he absolutely can’t hold it anymore, immediately missing Donghyuck’s touch when he squeezes Mark’s hand one last time before letting him go ahead onto the train.
Mark doesn’t know how well a day-old love will survive distance—but he wants to believe that someday he won’t have to yearn to hold Donghyuck’s hand again. He’s never been a believer in love at first sight, much less in soulmates, but Donghyuck feels like the closest version of both that Mark has ever had.
Out the window, he calls out, "In a year, Donghyuck."
He doesn’t know how well Donghyuck hears him, but he gets a thumbs up.
"I’ll text," Donghyuck calls back. "I’ll even write."
"And call."
Donghyuck laughs. The sound carries well into the train. Mark has to smile. "Yes. Of course. And call."
Standing by himself on the platform, Donghyuck waves.
He smiles back at Mark, lit by morning sunshine, and it’s the loveliest thing Mark has ever seen.