Archive of Our Own

Mark was in the middle of graphing out the statistics of his department's latest marketing tactic when his supervisor introduced their newest intern to him. The subject of interns was often bemoaned between his coworkers in the break room because incompetence seemed to be a requirement for their hiring, but Mark never really paid them any mind because he was plenty capable of taking care of his tasks without shoving off the work to someone else, thank you very much.

Mark, placid because his deeply-rooted exhaustion was satiated from his twenty-minute power-nap during his lunch break, turned away from his blinding computer screen and toward the intern, and promptly wanted to die.

"Fancy meeting you here," Donghyuck greeted with a sunny smile.

The shock that pulsated through Mark's body left him utterly incapable of responding, so he looked toward his superior for a way out—or a way forward because right now, Mark could not handle the reality of his situation.

"Donghyuck-ssi's going to be interning under us for the remainder of his semester, so just watch over him and make sure he knows what he's doing," his supervisor said before slipping back out the cubicle.

"I haven't seen you since your graduation," Donghyuck said as he made to lean against the wall of the cubicle.

"These walls are paper-thin; don't test your luck with their stability," Mark warned.

"That's the first thing you have to say to me?" Despite his frown, Donghyuck complied as he moved to stand by Mark's desk. "Anyways, why didn't you keep in contact? Renjun-ah spilled the beans and told me you disappeared from the face of the earth all through-out college."

Mark was deeply uncomfortable with the topic of his college years because they were most definitely the darkest years of his entire life, and not even the mortifying ordeal that was his do-the-do talks—plural because they happened on separate occasions—with both of his parents could compete with those four hellish years.

Mark laughed awkwardly, and tried and failed to chase away the memories of his first frat party, his first black-out-drunk one-night stand (yes, it, unfortunately, happened more than once), and his first, and thankfully last, caffeine-pill-ridden-Turkish-coffee concoction that powered him through his final paper, due in ninety minutes, as he said, "Well, I was kind of busy."

Donghyuck rose a brow, clearly unimpressed. "And yet, here I stand, a senior-year college student, with a flourishing social life."

Mark turned back toward his seventy-percent brightness computer screen because it was easier on his eyes than the criminally cold judgment Donghyuck sent his way. "Anyways, your work should be pretty light for now since we're nearing the end of our current project." He downloaded another copy of the market's PDF and pulled up his email, meticulously typing in the letters and numbers Donghyuck drawled out to be his own. "Just work out any kinks people might've missed, and email me your copy once you're done."

"Aye-aye, Canada," Donghyuck said on his way out, offering Mark a mock salute as his final parting.

When Donghyuck's footsteps were muffled under the sounds of wheezing computers and rowdy coworkers, Mark slammed his forehead against his desk and yearned for the sweet release of death.

Getting to the source of Mark's chagrin with Donghyuck would be like pulling teeth: excruciatingly painful and did absolutely nothing for any persons involved. But, well, Mark was also a man who self-inflicted those profound emotions of regret, so he often reminisced on the times he was the human equivalent of a slab of cardboard. 

Mark's first year of high school was relatively quiet; he was the top of his class, and consequently of his year—not the entire school, however, because the seniors were brutal with their self-study sessions—and he kept to himself because apparently being smart meant he was a know-it-all, but he would argue that he was not a know-it-all because he still—after being alive for sixteen entire years—did not know how to interact with anybody who wasn't thrice his age and praising him for his meticulously crafted research.

Mark's second year of high school was not quiet. And it wasn't because he decided to change and focus more on building bonds with his classmates rather than the financial bonds his father had encouraged him to invest in early.

Donghyuck was, in Mark's own words, an enigma. Because when the freshman's name and note-worthy antics had made it through the school's extensive grapevine, it had only been two weeks since the new school year had started. Mark hadn't been able to make a real social impact until the first semester's finals, and suddenly everyone was aware of the quiet kid's astounding ability to be wholly disconnected from his peers.

Mark was...in awe. He had watched from the sidelines as Donghyuck enraptured the masses, and could feel himself being pulled into the spectacle that was Lee Donghyuck. It wasn't long until Donghyuck took notice of his quiet existence.

"I haven't seen you around," were Donghyuck's first words to Mark.

Mark, socially inept and suffering from acute anxiety, had replied with, "Because I'm not in your class."

Donghyuck had risen his brows—not in a demeaning or unimpressed manner like the present—but in a surprised and imploring suggestion. "Then why are you always standing outside the classroom?"

Mark had wanted to point out his contradiction with a Then you have seen me, but he realized that would be rude. He, instead, said, "Because you're loud," before realizing that was even ruder. He then promptly left the classroom and cried behind the courtyard's trashcans for the rest of lunch.

When school let out, Mark was re-routing his usual path to class so that he could avoid the stairwell most freshmen used when an arm suddenly draped itself across his shoulders. He turned toward the intruder with an expression he knew was put-out because Donghyuck laughed and backed away with his hands raised.

"I figured you wouldn't like me yelling out to you, so I snuck up on you," Donghyuck said. "Did it backfire?"

Mark felt his body go rigid because he was determined to not mess it up a third time. "I don't care either way," he settled with and felt relief flood his chest for not being a total social screw-up.

Donghyuck grinned and jerked his thumb behind himself. "A couple of my friends were thinking of going to a PC cafe; you game?"

Mark was not, in fact, game because the last trending game he had played was Flappy Bird, and he was unable to get past ten flaps.

"Sure," he said.

And Mark wouldn't say that sparked a noticeable difference in the way he interacted with other people. But the seventy-odd other meet-ups that Donghyuck and crew invited him to certainly did. 

It was during one of those inconsequential hang-outs that the usual routine of silent gaming punctuated by menus being ordered and exclamations echoing through tightly secured headphones was disturbed.

"It feels like yesterday when you were just some painfully awkward kid who didn't know how to use in-game voice chats, and now, look at you." Donghyuck motioned to Mark's ramen-slurping figure, victory screen a flashing brilliance before him, with a flair of his hand. "I couldn't be more proud."

Mark set his finished bowl of ramen down and moved on to the loading screen for another skirmish. "You're a terrible influence; finals are next week, and I'm sitting here eating three bowls of ramen in thirty minutes while screaming at strangers over a video game."

"It's good to unwind. Stress makes you forget, you know, so even if you cram, you'll probably just forget anyways."

"Hence why you study over a long period of time, Donghyuck."

"My methods have brought me this far; why should I change for convenience's sake?"

"Hey, less stressing me out about my future failing grade and more supporting, please," Jaemin said frantically.

It was after that afternoon's-gone-evening meet-up that Mark really pondered on the change Donghyuck had brought him. Because the fact of the matter was that Mark didn't feel any different. He was still socially inept when it came to stressful situations, he was still the top of his class-year-school, and he was most definitely still the human equivalent of a slab of cardboard.

Mark startled when Donghyuck suddenly pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, slick with oil and teenaged adrenaline.

"Lee Mark," Donghyuck cooed. "Have the finals finally taken priority over me?"

Mark blinked dumbly and parted his lips to say something along the lines of They always have, but that would be lying. Because Donghyuck, the enigma himself, had suddenly become the top priority in Mark's life during the school year.

"I think you should worry about yourself," Mark said as he adjusted his bag strap before moving around Donghyuck.

Donghyuck wasn't too pleased with Mark's answer, but that didn't stop him from pestering Mark all the way back to his home, all throughout finals' week, and until the very last day of their semester break.

Mark's third and final year of high school was eye-opening. Because Donghyuck and crew had firmly rooted themselves into Mark's life, and suddenly Mark was no longer the top of his school or even his year. He was still diligent enough to be the top of his class, and he was unquestionably still too socially awkward to address his feeling of admiration-gone-affectionate.

It was in the little moments that Mark noticed something was amiss with himself. Like when Donghyuck got handsy and touchy-touchy, a habit that Mark had learned to get used to, and Mark's body suddenly felt like it had been left out to bake in the long-gone summer sun; or when Donghyuck broke out in song in the middle of a session, honey-soft voice cooing gently through the voice chat, gaining whoops and hollers from friends and strangers alike, earning Mark's dry-mouthed attention; or when Donghyuck stared and stared at Mark to gain his attention without really asking because Mark was weak enough to cave in every single time, receiving a satisfied grin and a coy, "never mind, hyung," sending Mark into a silent fit of "never again."

"What would you do without me, Lee Mark?" It was a question Donghyuck often asked because they both knew that the end was near.

"I don't know," Mark always answered because it was the most honest thing he could scrounge up from the depths of his anxiety-coiled mind.

Donghyuck reached over to Mark and brushed aside his fringe, which had grown long enough to obscure his vision half of the time. "As a parting gift, I'll give you some advice: nobody will take you seriously if you keep wearing those ridiculous glasses."

Mark fiddled with the curled ends of his glasses' arms, watched the lens hover above the bridge of his nose, watched as Donghyuck's amused expression wavered between blurred and not-so-blurred. "I'd rather wear these than poke an eye out with contacts."

"Don't say I didn't warn you, Canada."

"I admired you, you know," Mark blurted because his thoughts had been churning, and his brain had been whirring, and, suddenly, he had to spit out his insignificant, molten feelings before they set his heart aflame.

Donghyuck stared him down, brow raised in a not-too-friendly friendly manner. "Why's it past tense?"

The spring heat was swelling up within Mark's chest, and he swore to this very day that he was in the middle of cardiac arrest when he managed to mutter, "Because I found out you're annoying."

"Rude." There was a deliberate, thoughtful pause, and Mark, honest to God, wanted to vaporize from existence. "Why'd you suddenly bring that up?"

Because I like you, burned a hole through the roof of Mark's mouth, but he contained the blistering emotion with a noncommittal hum and a simple shrug of his shoulders.

Donghyuck wasn't satisfied with the answer, obviously, but he allowed Mark his first and final pardon as he stood from the blazing hot bench they sat upon and said, "We should probably head back."

Mark was reluctant to do so, but when Donghyuck held his hand out expectantly, Mark accepted his fate and trudged back to the graduation ceremony.

So, the moral of those pitiful memories was that Mark could not and would never be able to get rid of Donghyuck. Because Donghyuck had seared his presence into Mark's life so seamlessly, so naturally, and Mark was too weak to push him away. 

"I finished editing your mistakes, Lee Mark."

"Five other people are working on this, you realize."

"I see you still have a stick up your ass." Donghyuck dropped a stack of freshly-printed-warm papers held together by a single, valiant paperclip. "Has my sense of humor washed away from you during those lonely five years of yours?"

"It never stuck in the first place." Mark looked down at the daunting pile before meeting Donghyuck's gaze once again. "I thought I said to email me the copy."

Donghyuck's defiant grin grew wider, obviously pleased with Mark's observance. "You did."

Mark felt his shoulders slump in silent defeat and began thumbing the corners of the significantly cooled off papers. "Thank you, Donghyuck. I'll get back to you when I have another assignment for you."

"Oh, thank God, you do remember my name."

Mark felt his lips curl into a wry grin. "Hard to forget when I heard it less than three hours ago."

Donghyuck's wandering fingers trailed the edge of Mark's desk, and Mark watched the movement with keen eyes. "I guess college didn't burn the sass out of you, huh?"

"No, and you have no one but yourself to blame."

Donghyuck snatched his fingers away, and Mark listened as his footsteps went toward the exit. They paused, and the cubicle's walls creaked under whatever weight Donghyuck dared to place upon them. "Make sure to read my note," he said before his echoing footsteps trailed away.

Mark felt his lips tug down into a despairing frown as he looked down at the freshly printed paper (title page, 12x15, 2-inch border, Times New Roman 15 pt. font) and grimaced at the chicken-scratch that glared back at him in all its neon yellow highlighter glory:

Steps to Stop Looking like a Trust-Fund Kid (aka, A Little Bitch).

Suddenly, Mark's deeply-rooted exhaustion was back with a vengeance.

Mark had to work overtime due to Donghyuck's bold stunt. It wasn't so much the fact that Mark had to go through all twenty-five pages of the PDF report in search of the mistakes Donghyuck had so generously highlighted, colored in, and pasted post-it notes to, but rather the fact that Mark's contacts had been so offended by the sheer amount of brightness that he had to remove them and squint at the seventy-percent brightness screen that lay a mere 2-inches away from his eyes.

By the time Mark was able to leave the office, the janitor had already finished his rounds on the entire floor and had offered Mark a pitying look.

The next day didn't fare any better.

"You mean there's nothing for me to do?"

Mark paused from packing the appropriate materials into his bag—spreadsheets, graphs, reports—to scrub at his face. He wasn't sure if Donghyuck was genuinely upset that the day would hold no fruition of labor for him, or if he wanted to gain another rise from Mark, but instead of it being three in the afternoon, it was eight in the morning, and Mark could not be further from the patient saint act he managed to pull out of his ass yesterday.

"We're reviewing our marketing strategies in a meeting and then putting them to practice by sending the unfortunate souls that work below us out into the world." Mark zipped up his bag and pressed the obnoxious velcro he was so utterly fond of in his middle school years back into place before looking toward Donghyuck. "So, no, there's nothing for you to do today." 

"Unless...?" Donghyuck prompted because he could read the taunting curl of Mark's lips so disgustingly well.

"Unless you want to try to talk big in front of our manager over the material you've spent a little less than four hours on."

Donghyuck held his hands up in mock surrender.

Although Mark also, admittedly, talked big, he was still essentially the rookie of the team. So, being that he was only a mere step above the incompetent intern that he was the previous year, his team had yet to actually trust him with a role that would bring them potential humiliation: presenting their strategy. Because everyone attending the meeting knew that when push came to shove, Mark had the speaking skills of a third-grader whose confidence stemmed from the fact that he thought he knew how to pronounce photosynthesis.

So, when all was said and done, and he handed off the material they had all labored over for the past three months, Mark was shoved into the corner of the big centerless conference table to gaze longingly at the lucky bastard that won the rock-paper-scissors match.

"I see we aren't needed here," Donghyuck said from the corner of his mouth as they both watched the group set up the screen-projector.

"We're the back-up," Mark said as an excuse. Because he really didn't need to be reminded of his irrelevance when the manager was currently staring him down with his nose raised.

"I don't think they share your sentiment." Donghyuck knocked his knee against Mark's when Mark lost whatever bravado he had been barely keeping together. "Well, at least you're not alone."

"Being as important as an intern does nothing to comfort me, you know."

"And what's with this place's prejudice against interns? We're the company's future employees; the least they could do is make us feel welcomed."

"You didn't ask about the intern before you, did you?"

Mark could feel Donghyuck's inquisitive stare on him like an itch, like a curious insect trying to irritate the shit out him by ghosting the shell of his burning ears. "Should I have?"

The group was moving to stand in front of the successfully projected presentation, Lucky Bastard greasing up his gears of showmanship, and Mark muttered, "Find out for yourself."

The meeting was a smash, of course, and Mark was immediately tasked with handing off the product to the salesmen downstairs while the rest of his team began making orders for online stocks.

"This seems awfully below your line of work," Donghyuck mused inconspicuously, eyes wandering the empty hall they walked down.

"They told me to do this because I have to babysit you." Mark clicked in the button for the elevator and watched the numbers overhead blink in and out of existence, teetering on going out altogether. "The last time they let an intern handle the website, we spent an entire week trying to recover our account because he had the bright idea to change the email and password."

"Was he the guy before me?"

"No, he was the guy before me."

Donghyuck sucked in a breath of air, and Mark knew that he had finally understood. 

Mark would never call himself a master businessman, especially since he'd only been working in the hell-field for a grand total of two years—one year part-time, the other full-time—and had yet to step out of his comfort zone from behind the computer screen. He was the one who finalized the ideas others had already created, so he couldn't say with confidence that he was creative enough to establish a business himself. He also couldn't say that he would be able to help a person branch their business out since he had arrived when the company already had their tactic down: different product, same formula. 

That being said, Mark got it. He was an unknown risk in the great soul-sucking machine that had grown ten-stories too tall since its establishment, and the upper-management didn't know what to do with him. So, they decided the best course of action would be to tie him down with the newest intern in hopes he would be able to make something of Donghyuck. But the fact was, Mark was utterly powerless when it came to Donghyuck; while there was his past (past, it had faded away; no longer current, alright?) infatuation to consider, there was also the fact that Donghyuck was...an immovable hardass. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing; it was just that Donghyuck needed a lot of coaxing and convincing to do anything that was of even mild inconvenience to him. Which was fine. Mark had dealt with him once before, what was one more time in a much more mature setting?

They had passed off the product to the first unfortunate salesman that crossed their path and were on their way back to their floor when Donghyuck suddenly grabbed Mark's wrist, halting him from pressing the elevator's button.

"What?" Mark asked when Donghyuck yielded no explanation.

"Let's go to a PC cafe," Donghyuck said with no lead-up, no context, and Mark was suddenly back in his first year of high school and replying with, "We don't clock out until six."

"I meant now, Lee Mark," Donghyuck said with an exasperated sigh. 

Mark snatched his wrist from Donghyuck's grasp, rubbing the irritated skin tentatively. "You may have nothing to do getting back, but I do." He pushed in the elevator's button, and the cart trembled under its own weight, breaking off the brief and heated glare Mark stared Donghyuck down with.

"How do you know that?" 

Mark felt his face twitch with a twang of irritation, but he decidedly ignored Donghyuck's question because the truth would very well be his breaking point.

The hard advertisement push for the limited-edition product line proved a success, and the CEO rented out a restaurant for the departments involved to celebrate. Because although three departments don't sound like a lot, there were a grand total of twenty people in the sales department, ten in the design department, and the marketing team brought up the rear with their mighty group of seven. The other thirty people present were surprised that Donghyuck had managed to make it even a single day without pissing off the whole team at least once, much less three weeks. Mark decided to play ignorant about his own mild annoyances because they were, admittedly, personal.

When the speeches that the leading three spokespersons reused each time they made a hit were finished and when the toasts were made, the dinner went along smoothly. Mark mostly kept to himself during the occasions because if sober Mark's speaking skills were at a third-grade level, tipsy Mark's wasn't even on a measurable scale.

Warm and tipsy and awkward, Mark moved his cushion in the corner and settled comfortably against the wall where he presumed he wouldn't be moving from until the dawn of the next day. He watched his coworkers—acquaintances and strangers alike—as they mingled and drank together with an upbeat cheer that seemed lost to Mark every time he was faced with adversity greater than returning people's hellos. Though, he found comfort in the few faces in the crowd that looked like they couldn't be fucked to look any more thrilled than if they were watching paint dry.

But, by far, the one who caught Mark's eye was Donghyuck. Loud and coy when sober, Lee Donghyuck was boisterous and obnoxious—but charmingly because their department and a handful from the other two were captivated by the tales he waxed on about, by the flaunting movement he dared in the narrow aisle separating tables, and most certainly by his voice. Though the alcohol pronounced itself in slight mishaps, the lyrics he crooned were hypnotic and every bit as gentle as the days spent in PC cafes after school.

Cradling his glass to his chest, eyes intent on Donghyuck's unfaltering figure, Mark felt that coil of anxiety slip away as the night grew old with him.

Mark didn't know when he had fallen asleep, but suddenly he was being hauled up from his little corner and watching with blurred vision as someone knocked back what was left in his cup. Lots of hands were touching him and moving him and patting him on the back, "good work" ringing throughout the toasty little restaurant until, suddenly, the evening air was cradling him back into a half-way sober state with fingers of ice.

"See you guys Monday!" he heard his supervisor say in parting, his figure already disappearing into the surrounding shadows.

Mark stood there for a moment, unable to comprehend what his thirty other coworkers were doing and what his role in the grand scheme of things was, before turning around and walking the path home.

Mark awoke to the smell of musk and the aftertaste of pungent bile. It was a familiar scene reminiscent of his early-to-mid college years, but he wasn't too sure why he would be suddenly reliving his college days. His apartment was relatively clean, especially his bedroom—or, at least, clean-smelling because he made a habit of spraying every square inch of the property with glade because the only time his upstairs neighbor wasn't on his blissful ass smoking a joint was when he was, presumably, at work. So, smelling anything other than Apple Cinnamon or weed was an instant red flag for Mark.

Unfortunately for him, any sense of urgency was a far-away dream because he was despairingly disorientated. Which meant he probably got more than five hours of sleep, and that in itself was concerning because his next-door neighbor's newborn baby was the alarm clock that woke him up at midnight and then again at six.

Mark groused and rubbed a heavy hand over his stubbornly shut eyelids. He coaxed them into opening with a hard rub and stretch, and then the morning light blinded him.

He wasn't in his apartment. Which, in hindsight, shouldn't have been surprising. He had no memory of making it home last night, and he had never gotten around to telling anyone where he lived in case of emergencies like these, so it should've been obvious that he would be taken to someone else's place.

The only problem, however, was that he was quick to find out that he—after a long, hard stare at his blurry, photobombed high school graduation photo—was at Donghyuck's place.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

Mark turned his face into the couch's cushion and groaned.

"I see you haven't become a morning person."

Mark couldn't refute the truth, and he wasn't by any means trying to sway Donghyuck away from that utterly valid observation, but his incapability to rise with the sun wasn't the entire reason for his dramatic bemoaning.

He really, really did not want to deal with Donghyuck first thing in the morning.

Mark jolted when he felt Donghyuck's cold fingers prod at his exposed skin, his shirt having rucked up during his earlier fit. "Come on. Take a shower, eat some breakfast, and get the fuck out before my roommate finds out you barfed all over his bed."

"Just kill me already..." Mark muttered, mortification paralyzing him.

"That's a crime, and I don't feel like going to jail until I pay off my tuition. So." Donghyuck placed a hand on the other side of Mark's torso and crept ever higher, fingers melding against the faint outlines of his ribs, wrists catching on the hem of his crinkled office shirt. 

Mark was wide fucking awake, and he very nearly stopped breathing when he felt Donghyuck's lips brush against the shell of his ear to whisper, "Get off my couch, Mark."

When Donghyuck pulled away, when his footsteps wandered away from the living room, when his searing imprints no longer electrified Mark's nerves, Mark rolled off the couch and stumbled out the front door with his shoes in his hands.

Monday was an event Mark dreaded because time just seemed to make history ever richer in its mortifying ordeals.

Armed to the teeth with frayed nerves and half-assed excuses, Mark approached his cubicle and waited for Donghyuck's inevitable arrival.

It wasn't until Mark was three hours into fine-tuning the blueprint of the newest project when he realized he'd yet to be disturbed by anyone other than his supervisor. Which wasn't the worst thing to happen, by far, but the longer Donghyuck delayed his entrance, the greater Mark's need to vomit out far more than apologies for Saturday's abrupt escape grew.

It wasn't until lunch rolled around when Donghyuck made his sudden appearance.

"Did you miss me?" was the first thing Donghyuck had to say to Mark, all grins and pompous entrances.

"Did you get my email?" Mark replied.

"I sent you my draft an hour ago."

Mark pointedly looked down at the empty corner of his desk, which had since become the submission area for Donghyuck's printed out work.

"Through email, genius."

Mark startled so severely he nearly fell out of his chair.

"I'm insulted you had such little faith in me."

"Sorry, I've been working with you for the past month." Despite his quick-witted response, Mark was still reeling from the fact Donghyuck had finally decided to follow through with his instructions. Because Donghyuck was, and he could not stress this enough, an immoveable hardass. But then, he got to thinking and realized that Donghyuck must have finally seen how pointless his pettiness was. Or, rather, how inconvenient it was; waiting for a minimum of twenty pages to print out from a shitty, clunky Dell printer from the age of floppy disks would test anyone's patience.

"Anyways, you eating here, cafeteria, or going out?" Donghyuck asked, leaning a thigh against the edge of Mark's desk. 

"What does it matter to you?" Mark asked back because wariness was beginning to override his earlier surprise, and, honestly, he wanted to be the stubborn hardass for a change. Donghyuck made the role look entertaining, at least, but now Mark just felt like an ass with a stoked up case of arrogance.

Donghyuck rose his brow, mild expression of—to Mark's utter shock—recognition blooming across his gentle features. "Well, I was going to join you, but now I'm starting to think my company's unwanted."

Mark could very well fall into hysterics at the absurdity of the completely mundane situation; Donghyuck never followed the norm, after all. 

Mark looked toward his seventy-percent brightness computer screen and scrolled through the three-paged draft Donghyuck had sent him. "Unfortunately, you'll have to eat by yourself today. I've gotta finalize your submission."

Donghyuck released a slight hum, and Mark waited for the tell-tale steps of retreat to echo throughout his cubicle. 

Instead, far beyond Mark's expectations, who was admittedly painfully numb in the skull, Donghyuck parked the curve of his ass on the entire corner of Mark's desk and crossed his legs purposefully. "You've got twenty minutes, Mark," he said, something remarkably short of an explanation.

Mark stared at him for a moment, face twisted into an expression he couldn't mentally map out, before turning toward the dazzling bright draft that awaited his expertise. 

"Hey," Mark said hesitantly.

"Yeah?" Donghyuck said, eyes trailing the path up to Mark's twisted expression of contemplation.

"Did...did something happen?"

Donghyuck cocked his head to the side, suitably coy—if a little perplexed by Mark's inconspicuous approach. "I'm surprised you noticed my haircut; it's really only a trim, to be honest."

Mark felt his shoulders slouch because Donghyuck was, frankly, not good for much. "Why are you treating me like a superior at work that you're trying to butter up for a slim chance at earning a raise?"

"Hey, woah, I'm not that big of an asshole to you."

Mark rose a brow.

"Okay, so maybe I did haze you for an entire month—"

"Why would you haze someone when you're the rookie?"

"Well, Mark, you were mean to me even though I was the one who helped you get social skills, so excuse me for retaliating."

Mark swirled his chair around to face Donghyuck. "I was mean to you? In what universe would I want to be 'mean' to you, Donghyuck?" He felt childish, spitting out the word "mean" like it was a genuine insult—like it was something that could cut deep enough to make those irrational, big fat infant tears spring forth.

Donghyuck threw his hands up in the air, face twisted up with a flair of irritable exasperation. "I don't know, Mark! You were the one who was treating me like a perfect stranger on my first day, so, naturally, I thought you had grown up to be an asshole!"

"I was only acting like that because—!" Mark stopped and matched his heartbeat with his laboriously deep breaths.

"I was only acting like that," Mark began again, voice slow and steady, as though Donghyuck had finally become hard of hearing at the ripe age of twenty-two, "because I was trying to be professional. It's not like I was purposefully an ass to you just because I'm your superior; I was staying out of our supervisor's suspicion by showing the newbie how things worked around here."

Mark's carefully considered explanation seemed to take away the ridge of Donghyuck's shoulders, but his face still held itself tight with agitation.

"What more do you want from me, Donghyuck?" Mark sighed warily.

"Are you sure that's the only reason?" Donghyuck said, tone scathing. "Last night's confession seems to say otherwise."

Mark's gut flared up in that way it used to when he was a kid and suffering from extreme distress, churning and bubbling over with something more than acid.

"What do you mean?" he said numbly.

"'I adored you more than anything, Hyuck,'" Donghyuck said, and Mark, honest to god, felt the acid making its way up his throat. 

"To be honest," Donghyuck continued, pointedly ignoring the pasty white color of Mark's blood-drained skin, "I already knew you had a crush on me back in high school. I'm just pissed you were able to get over me so quickly."

Mark, dumbfounded and tongue-twisted in every sense of the way, laughed an unhinged laugh and actually fell out of his chair.

"Oh, now you've fallen for me?" Despite the spiteful furrow of his brows, Donghyuck crouched down to level his gaze with Mark's, and Mark did not want to be so utterly emotionally exposed right now. 

Mark flinched when the fingertips of Donghyuck's outstretched hand moved to push up his glasses.

"You looked better with contacts."

"I wasn't looking for your approval."

"No. But it seems you've taken my advice, yes?"

Mark was sure his face was bruised over with that overwhelming heat of shame. He pulled away from Donghyuck's lingering fingertips and stood from the floor, wiping away the thin layer of undiscovered dust he'd gained from the fall, microscopic and insignificant. "I no longer have those feelings for you, Donghyuck," he began, meeting Donghyuck's skeptical gaze, "but I hope we can continue to work together peacefully."

Donghyuck's face wasn't nearly as twisted with rage as before, but the grip he had on Mark's hand as he pulled himself up was enough to have Mark's blood pounding back into his numbed fingertips when he drew away.

"You're still a coward, I see," Donghyuck said.

Mark wiped his hand along the material of his pants. "Not even college could change that, Donghyuck." Because the fact of the matter was that Mark had always been a stubborn hardass. Donghyuck just happened to be unyielding and ruthless with his methods—enough to have Mark reconsider himself. But then he was left relatively alone during college, and now he'd cowered back into the shell he lived in during high school.

"I guess I'll have to change that."

Mark startled and met Donghyuck's poised gaze. "What?"

"Well, if I'm to be honest between the both of us, I don't quite understand how you could stop loving this." His hands framed themselves against his waist as he turned to-and-fro, eyes intent on Mark's stunned appearance. "Did you forget, or were you never aware?"

Mark was baffled by Donghyuck's self-assured response—by the absolute audacity Donghyuck had to try and appeal himself to Mark. As though that would actually work and rekindle the flames of his awkward, long, long forgotten teenaged adoration.

Mark, though he would like to dash Donghyuck's hopes of arising any reaction short of appropriate from him, did not stop staring at Donghyuck's display. Because he was exhausted. Slower, dimmer than he would ever dare to be while fully alert. His eyes weren't actually lingering because Donghyuck was provoking him—it was because it had been so long since Mark had looked at Donghyuck, and Mark wasn't equipped with the mental capacity that came with seeing a waspishly coy kid grow into a cocky-confident man. He's socially estranged from his other high school friends, and he hadn't witnessed his own second puberty with unbiased eyes. It wasn't (entirely) his fault.

"Hey," their supervisor warned, his face peeking into Mark's cubicle with narrowed eyes. "If you're done handing off your draft, Donghyuck-ssi, then you should get back to configuring your assigned numbers."

"Aye-aye, sir," Donghyuck said, retreating from Mark's placid figure with swaying hips.

Mark watched him leave, dread coiling deep within his gut.

"Hey, Mark—"

"No."

The fingers that traced the soft outlines of his ears halted. "I haven't said anything yet!"

Mark—finished emailing himself the updated draft—shut down his computer, and stood from his chair. He listened as Donghyuck backed away from the groaning wheels of Mark's desk chair and ignored the persistent stare Donghyuck pinned him down with.

"What is it?" Mark sighed as he folded his arms into his backpack's straps.

"I realized neither one of us actually got to eat lunch today—"

"That was your decision."

"Will you let me finish?"

Mark adjusted the straps hugging close to his shoulders, and nodded approvingly at Donghyuck.

"Like I was saying, we didn't get to eat lunch today, so I figured why not go out for dinner tonight?" Donghyuck's smile spelled out innocence, but his cocked brows and trailing gaze said anything but.

"I can't stay out too late," Mark said because it was the truth. The doors of his complex tend to shut themselves, and it'd become a terrible habit of his to just let his slam close. Mark didn't feel like dealing with his neighbors' complaints when he allowed the knob to slip from his grasp at god knows what hour in the evening.

"Dinner at your place?"

Mark felt his face twitch into an expression of some sort—something drastic enough to have Donghyuck laughing heartily.

"Alright, sugar hips," Donghyuck conceded, making Mark's face twitch into something painfully similar to a scowl, making Donghyuck laugh even harder. "You don't have to repay me now, but just know that you owe me a meal."

Mark heard the velcro of his backpack crease against the cubicle wall Donghyuck backed him into. "I didn't force you to stick around," Mark said haughtily, though he hadn't the courage to face Donghyuck's meaningful stare because they were close. Far too close.

"No, but you did keep me waiting," Donghyuck cooed, the familiar heat of his fingertips gliding along Mark's jawline. "It's common courtesy to treat a patient man, no?"

"If that's the case, you owe me more than money can buy."

Donghyuck chuckled, and Mark felt whatever sliver of bravado he had in a chokehold slip away as Donghyuck's warm breath fanned and curled against his skin. "I'll be willing to pay off that debt. If you'll have me." Donghyuck's fingertips slipped down Mark's neck and danced along his collarbone.

Mark jolted and finally met Donghyuck's gaze, deep, soft eyes drowning away the rising wave of adrenaline. The waxing sea of emotion drawing Mark further into Donghyuck's unfathomable gravity, his fingers twitching upon his thigh as rationality and impulsivity warred against one another.

The haze, the dangerous trance Mark had nearly fallen into, was broken when the velcro got caught on the cubicle's wall when Mark leaned toward Donghyuck.

"Woah, there," Donghyuck said as he teetered Mark back into a balanced stance.

Mark, skin hot with shame, tugged himself away from the wall—wincing when the velcro gave way with a shredded rip—and stumbled around Donghyuck's outstretched arms. "I've, uh, I've gotta go," he muttered as he made a beeline to the exit. Donghyuck allowed him to escape without halting him, and Mark was back in high school, darting away at the slightest hint of an opening.

The thing about two stubborn hardasses encountering a conflict was that neither one of them was willing to yield to the other's methods. 

Mark refused any and all of Donghyuck's attempts at making him "less of a coward," or so he called his needless flirting. Mark didn't see much of a point in Donghyuck's persistent behavior; it was evident that Donghyuck didn't share the same affections Mark held toward him, so why torture Mark by rekindling the passion of his old adoration?

Because Mark wasn't that much of a liar, and he could safely say that Donghyuck's courting attempts were having a much greater impact on his emotional stability than he would like to admit to anyone that wasn't himself.

They were in yet another company dinner because they had yet another success in sales after working hard for yet another month. It turned out Donghyuck's participation in the drafting and accounting had sped their progress along swimmingly, and, no, Mark was not at all bitter and jealous that Donghyuck was receiving all of the credit after he had been the one to give Donghyuck pointers on how to be more efficient with his time. Mark wasn't that petty. Not in the least.

He was only sitting in his designated corner and waiting for the sun to announce their departure; he was most certainly not sulking as he gazed on at Donghyuck's dominance in any and all social interactions he encountered.

"I see you've forgotten how to socialize."

Mark pressed himself further into the corner as Donghyuck approached him. "Why are you doing this to me?"

Donghyuck kicked a spare cushion next to Mark and cozied against him with a fresh glass of soju clasped in his palms. "I noticed you haven't had anything to drink yet. It's gonna be a long night if you stay sober, you know."

"I could always leave," Mark grumbled.

"You finished dinner two hours ago."

"I'm waiting for my food to digest."

"Walking speeds up the process."

"Donghyuck, I think it would be in your best interest to leave me alone tonight."

The glass of soju was suddenly being pressed against Mark's knuckles, cool and inviting. "I'll be honest and say I just wanted to see you drunk again."

"I appreciate the honesty, but I would sooner go into voluntary cardiac arrest than be drunk around you." Mark rapped his knuckles against the glass tentatively before unfurling his fingers and pushing the drink away with his palm. "You should go back and hang out with the party animals. I think they want to hear you sing again."

Donghyuck set the glass beside himself before moving to lean his head atop Mark's stiff shoulder. "I wanna see what it's like to be a social recluse," he murmured as he hugged Mark's arm to his chest.

Having another person's body warmth swelling up within his chest was a long-forgotten feeling for Mark; the year he had been officially hired for the company was a lonely one. And it wasn't because his coworkers still scoffed upon his presence because they all remembered that one time he somehow managed to make the scanner bluescreen with a single click of the button, but instead because of his lack of mental maturity. He had been stuck in that weird, space-altering time-frame of semi-independent college student to totally and utterly living alone adult and having no one within the immediate vicinity to make sure he didn't accidentally set himself aflame, whether physically or mentally. 

To say the least, Mark was too busy creasing duct tape over the torn seams of his life to play nice with the people who had equivalated him to less than useless the previous year.

"You're thinking too loud, Mark," Donghyuck said as his warm, warm fingertips rubbed away the creases in Mark's brow.

Mark felt the heat coiling in his core spread to the tips of his toes, to the roots of his hair, all-consuming and unforgiving. "I've meant to ask you this," he began with a cautionary glance toward Donghyuck, "but is calling me by only my given name your way of being nice to me?" 

"Your mind gives itself quite the workout."

"Donghyuck." Mark sighed through his nose. "Please, just answer the question."

As Donghyuck hemmed and hawed, Mark took notice in how comfortable Donghyuck was around him. Despite there being a five-year separation between them, Donghyuck was content with picking things back up right where they left them; he seamlessly crinkled back the dog-eared pages of their lives and thumbed through their interactions with fond ease. Water-stained, stiff with neglect, the story between them was worn and torn at the edges, and yet Donghyuck treated it all the same: fools who tip-toed around the obvious.

"I wondered what it would sound like," Donghyuck said after an endless minute.

Mark met Donghyuck's lingering gaze curiously when his lips paused in their message.

Donghyuck's eyes were back to that mooning sea of unfathomable emotion, something on the tip of Mark's tongue, but the aging night and his own incompetence kept the truth from his knowledge. "What do you think?" Donghyuck whispered. "Does it sound nice, Mark?"

Mark didn't know what to think. He couldn't think. Not with Donghyuck's eyes on him, and certainly not when he was pinned by an obviously loaded question like that.

Mark looked away. "It sounds fine," he muttered. 

A honey-coated voice like Donghyuck's always sounded nice, and Mark was no more immune to it than anyone else in the restaurant.

"Should I go back to calling you Canada, huh?" Donghyuck's fingertips pinched a portion of Mark's cheek and tugged. "Would that get your head out of your ass?"

Mark didn't stop Donghyuck's petty attack because he was pretty sure he deserved it. Speaking the words that'd stung the roof of his mouth in high school would be the only thing to satiate Donghyuck's persistent curiosity, and Mark couldn't find it in himself to spill such a lie—such an untruth. Because the past couldn't possibly find a place in the here and now. 

They may have reconnected, but Mark would never go back to who he was before, even if Donghyuck would say otherwise.

Mark made it through the dinner with not a single drop of liquor, a tangible form of liquid courage that ran his body ragged.

"See you guys Monday!" their supervisor said in parting, and Mark had just enough wit in him to respond with a wave and incoherent, "Later."

The midnight chill did nothing to rouse him from his engraved exhaustion. Mark surrendered to the moon's quiet coaxing by turning around and walking the path to his apartment.

He made precisely two and a half steps before warm, warm fingers were clasping his wrist.

"Were you really about to leave a drunk person to fend for himself?" Donghyuck's drink-heavy breath wafted in from behind Mark, and Mark turned despairingly toward Donghyuck's grinning face. "And here I thought you were a good person, Mark."

"You're tipsy, Donghyuck," Mark said placidly. "You can always take a bus to your dorm if you honestly feel unsafe."

Donghyuck tutted and stepped in beside Mark, matching the intentionally slow steps Mark took easily. "You're so not a romanticist."

"You've known me for two years, and you're just now figuring that out?"

"Hey, I didn't know you liked me for the first year."

"Neither did I."

Donghyuck laughed, loud and pleasant, filling in the quiet city night. "We're two halves of a whole idiot, Mark."

You're not an idiot, Mark wanted to say because it was true. Donghyuck may have slacked off in studying and didn't have perfect scores all across the board, but he was far from an idiot. Because his actions were deliberate and calculated. It was all a ruse to live a life most convenient to him, and Mark would never not be in awe of how structurally sound Donghyuck fundamentally was.

But Mark would also never bring himself to inflate Donghyuck's ego more than it already was, so he, instead, said, "Ignorance doesn't constitute as intelligence."

Donghyuck's fingertips brushed against Mark's. "We're two halves, then."

The walk home was far less burdensome than Mark had predicted, and somewhere along the way, Mark found himself...enjoying Donghyuck's company. Like they were back in high school and walking home from a long afternoon at a PC cafe, tomorrow's stresses lingering far beyond their hopelessly joyous minds.

It was when they took ten steps too many that Mark realized that Donghyuck hadn't taken the necessary turn to go back to his dorm.

"What is it, Donghyuck?" Mark asked because Donghyuck was as sly as he was obvious.

"Can I have some honesty from you, Mark?" Donghyuck asked.

Mark swallowed past the rising adrenaline. "I suppose it's only fair."

"Why won't you confess?"

Because I don't like you.

"Confess what?" Mark said instead because the untruth deserved to stay hidden, buried within his blazing heart.

Donghyuck's gaze didn't turn into that deep, rich sea of emotion, his brow didn't raise in that manner of mild judgment, and his fingers didn't map out their blistering touches against Mark's skin.

Donghyuck smiled. It was a sad smile, and Mark was too stunned to immediately right his wrong.

"Why was it past tense, Mark?"

I adored you more than anything, Hyuck.

"Because..." What more could there possibly be? It was over, the passion had faded, and his feelings were no more. There was no need to draw out such a pointless discussion; people changed without rhyme or reason, but how could he explain to Donghyuck? To Donghyuck, who looked nothing short of wretched, and it astounded Mark that he held that much power over one person. Over the one person he, for the longest time, well and truly believed was the unattainable dream of his desires.

Mark blinked down at the wavering fingertips held before him. 

"Because," Mark began, "you're annoying.

"Did you know," he continued, rushed because those warm, warm fingers were retreating, "that annoyances aren't necessarily bad? They could be something that someone just has to put up within their daily life, and they'd have to learn to live with it. And then once that reluctant truth has settled and faded, it could become a source of curiosity for a person: Why does this annoy me? And then, maybe, that question would lead them to an investigation on the annoyance. And then, an even bigger maybe than before, that would be the only thing a person could focus on."

Mark swallowed back the rising bile. Speaking was never his strong suit.

"And, maybe, possibly, the annoyance I've been focusing on has turned into a source of...affection."

Because he could never say he liked Donghyuck.

He loved Donghyuck. So deeply, so profoundly it ached, all warm and tight in his chest, suffocating and obnoxious.

Mark slowly drew his gaze up. First, Donghyuck's fine-pointed loafers, then the hem of his untucked button-up, his crumpled collar, and then—

Donghyuck's smiled stayed, and the sea of emotions spilled forth from his eyes as blazing hot fingers imprinted their touch onto Mark's palms.

The contact was brief, but, as Donghyuck turned to return to his dorm, Mark felt that coiling of adrenaline, of teenaged anxiety, slowly untangle itself from his constricted breath.

"Mark, I am this close to not being a broke college student anymore; will you please marry me?"

"I've already told you my requirements for marriage; you've gotta have at least six digits in the bank."

Donghyuck groaned, and Mark tacked another mark on the ever-growing list of Donghyuck's proposal attempts.

 卌卌卌卌

Mark, comfortably slouched into his and Donghyuck's couch, typed out the results of the marketing team's strategy and emailed their manager the final statistics.

"You're looking at me," Mark stated.

"Just admiring the fact you're finally not wearing glasses," Donghyuck said as he slid onto the cushion beside Mark.

"My lens mysteriously cracked"—he gave Donghyuck's suspiciously inconspicuous form a side-eyed glare—"so I figured I may as well set up an appointment to get an eye exam."

"What, to see if you got even blinder?"

"Donghyuck, if you're only going to slander my financial decisions, I suggest you leave so that I can work in peace."

"Speaking of financial decisions." 

Mark finally gave Donghyuck his full attention when the silence dragged itself on for far too long. He watched as Donghyuck rummaged around in his outfit's various pockets before staging a gasp and lifting up his cap to reveal—

"A ring pop, huh?" Mark said breezily. "That's the first thing you decided to spend your full-time paycheck on?"

Donghyuck ripped open the package and presented the ring pop to Mark. "Will you, Lee Mark, take my hand in marriage?"

Mark offered up his right hand. "No ceremony until you've paid off your tuition."

Donghyuck's face broke out into a grin as he said, "Deal!" before hastily slipping the plastic band over Mark's ring finger.

As they leaned in for a kiss, Mark thanked Donghyuck for having the foresight to get rid of his glasses before their blocky rim ruined their first kiss.