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I want to keep a straight face
It’s a secret, much as I love you
My heart is flying further away, faster than light
That's forever my destiny.
— Miho Komatsu, Kōri no Ue ni Tatsu Yō ni
When Donghyuck is four years old, he meets Mark Lee in the playground across the street on the morning before his first ever day of school.
They’re put together in the same class in kindergarten, in the only elementary school in this district of Seoul where Mark’s parents could manage to enrol him after a hurried move from Canada to South Korea, and it’s not fate, but it feels like it might as well have been, too.
When Donghyuck is twelve, starting his first year of secondary school, he stands up against the bullies who were making fun of Mark Lee’s accented Korean, and he almost loses his voice with how loudly he tells them off until they leave his best friend alone.
Mark is embarrassed after the incident happens, and he keeps mumbling about how he should’ve been able to defend himself on his own, but Donghyuck hugs him when they walk back home together and nobody ever dares to throw a mean comment in his direction again. They spend the afternoon together, playing games and watching silly videos on Mark’s old computer until they get too tired and decide to take a short nap on his bed. Mark’s parents find them drooling all over the same pillow three hours later, and the sight they make is so endearing that Donghyuck is allowed to stay the night with them.
When Donghyuck is sixteen, high school a smoother ride than he had initially believed it would be, Mark Lee becomes the youngest detective in Seoul to ever crack a cold murder case.
The press makes echo of his contributions to the Homicides Department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, and Donghyuck beams with pride at seeing how his best friend goes from spending hours on end devouring Sherlock Holmes’ novels to figuring out cases not even professional detectives had been able to resolve before.
Donghyuck’s own father — Lee Taeyong, a renowned private detective that made it big despite having to raise a son all by himself, whom Mark has always admired — congratulates Mark on his exceptional abilities at deduction, and then he treats them both to dinner at their favorite restaurant, and it all feels like the happy ending to a mystery best-seller. Mark still giggles at Donghyuck’s silly jokes, he still falls asleep on his seat next to him at school, and he still compliments Donghyuck’s voice if he accidentally catches him singing along to a tune playing on his speakers at home when he goes to visit without warning.
(Donghyuck is sixteen, too, when Mark Lee drops his ice cream cone all over the front of his new blue shirt on a Friday afternoon; his bright, starry eyes closing for a second in disbelief before he bursts out laughing at his own disgrace. And it’s then that Donghyuck realises that what he feels inside his chest about Mark might be something brighter than unwavering friendship, something burning hotter than admiration for his best friend’s intellect and adoration for the gentleness with which he handles Donghyuck’s highs and lows.
It is on that same Friday afternoon, when Donghyuck is sixteen years old and Mark Lee’s galaxy eyes meet his own, that he realises he’s been in love with his best friend for far longer than he can recall.
It’s then, too, that he promises to keep that knowledge a secret to himself, for he’d rather grow flowers inside his lungs than destroy the friendship he’s built with Mark throughout the course of their entire lives.)
When Donghyuck is eighteen years old, starting college with the excitement that comes with finally being able to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist, Mark Lee disappears without leaving a trace after walking Donghyuck home from the amusement park in which they spent the evening with their friends.
Mark doesn’t text him when he gets home that night, nor does he show up for any of his Criminology classes in university the next day, and the world crumbles around Donghyuck when he decides to go visit Mark’s flat just in case he’s fallen sick and is met by empty rooms and closed windows.
(For a split second, Donghyuck wishes that Mark’s parents hadn’t returned to Canada before the college year started, so that he could ask them where Mark is — so that he could feel a part of his family circle once again, if they didn’t hate him for being who he was, if there was a chance to fix everything.)
Donghyuck rings him a thousand calls, but they all are rendered useless; Mark’s phone dies by the time the sun starts setting on the horizon, and worry wraps itself tight around Donghyuck’s throat and makes it hard to breathe.
⋈
There’s a kid in Johnny Suh’s living room when Donghyuck comes barging into his studio apartment after uselessly waiting for two days for Mark to give any signals of being alive, and he’s so worried that, for a while, Donghyuck believes him to be Johnny’s son.
“Where’s Mark,” is the first thing he says after pushing past Johnny to walk inside the house, angry tone lacing his voice and wild eyes scanning the room as he looks for any hints of Mark being somewhere there.
And really, Donghyuck doesn’t pay the kid any mind, despite the way he squeals when he sees him and rushes to hide behind Johnny’s desk, too occupied waiting for Johnny to answer his question.
“I don’t know?” the older replies, and Donghyuck glares at him when he senses the slightest bit of insecurity in his answer. There are dark bags under Johnny’s eyes, and he looks almost as exhausted as Donghyuck himself does, and he would pity him if he weren’t so stressed about the situation. “It's true! I don’t know where he is.”
“Yes you do! Mark tells you everything, you fucking help him with his cases and all, don’t play dumb with me right now!” Donghyuck all but yells, and he has half the mind to punch Johnny square in the jaw for not telling the truth when he’s three seconds away from having a heart stroke.
But then the kid clears his throat from where he’s sitting innocently on top of Johnny’s desk, over the scattered papers and uncapped markers — Donghyuck doesn’t know how he’s so close to graduating as an engineer, with how untidy he’s always been —, and suddenly Donghyuck realises that Johnny is still too young and too single to have any kids of his own.
“Mark hyung told Johnny hyung and I that he had to go somewhere to solve a really difficult case,” the kid says, eyes wide behind round glasses, and now that Donghyuck is paying attention to him he’s dumbstruck with how much he resembles Mark.
“What, a case?” Donghyuck says, his brain struggling to catch up with the narrative, eyes narrowed into slits as he looks back to a very tense Johnny. “Who is this kid? And why does he look so much like Mark? Where’s the case, you have to know it, why didn’t he bring his phone? I was so fucking worried!”
“I,” Johnny makes a vague gesture with his hands, and it makes Donghyuck’s stress levels start to spike up once again, after the short-lived calm the kid’s words had brought him.
“My name is Lee Minhyung!” the boy interrupts them again, and Donghyuck is glad that he likes kids so much, for he would’ve snapped at him already if it were otherwise. “I’m seven years old, and Mark is my cousin! My mom always says that we look very similar because we both resemble my grandma! She says it’s all in the eyes.”
“Oh, you’re Markie’s cousin?” Donghyuck smiles at him, “Minhyung! That’s such a pretty name. But I thought Mark didn’t have any family left in Seoul, after his parents returned to Vancouver?”
“He does not! I arrived yesterday,” Minhyung beams, and Donghyuck doesn’t understand anything.
“Minhyung’s parents sent him here to spend a year in Korea to, you know. Become familiar with the culture and all that, while he’s still young enough to learn quickly, like Mark did,” Johnny explains, then, sitting down on the edge of his bed and rubbing circles into his temples with the pads of his fingers. “He was supposed to stay with Mark back in his flat, but his parents sent him here without warning and then Mark had to leave in a hurry and so he left him with me. But I’m not sure… I’m not sure he can stay here for long, Donghyuck, you know, with how hectic college is being for me this year and my landlord and-”
“Are you Lee Donghyuck?” Minhyung gasps then, pointing at him. “Mark hyung talks about you all the time! He said I’d get to spend a lot of time with you too, if I came to live with him.”
Donghyuck’s cheeks flush a light shade of pink, and the spark of a headache starts beating right behind his eyebrows as he tries to connect the dots inside his brain, struggling to grasp the implications that this situation has for him.
The truth is, he can’t remember Mark ever mentioning anything about a younger cousin, but again, they never really talked much about family because things were equally complicated on both sides for the conversation to be anything less than pointless. But Donghyuck, for as loud and mischievous and nonchalant as he is, has got a great sense of duty, and he’s made out of supporting Mark Lee with everything he can the main task of his life; so it should not really come off as a surprise when he proposes taking Minhyung home with him as a solution to their problems, much to Johnny’s delight.
“We’ve got a free room at home, anyways,” Donghyuck says, face serious as he talks to Johnny while Minhyung colors a drawing on the desk, “and my dad’s always liked kids, so he’ll understand. Minhyung is Mark’s cousin, after all. He’s practically family.”
Johnny pretends to think about his offer for a few moments before leaving to speak hushedly to Minhyung about it, and Donghyuck sighs as he checks his phone for any new messages from Mark.
His inbox is still empty, and so when Johnny comes back to tell him he can take Minhyung home with him and thank him for it, all Donghyuck asks for in return is for him to tell Mark to please call him soon — just so he can know he’s fine, just so he can hear his voice after worrying about him so much.
⋈
“So, where’s your boyfriend?” Renjun asks Donghyuck when he sits down next to him five minutes before their Research Journalism class starts, a barely concealed smirk pulling at the corners of his lips as he opens his laptop and waits for it to load.
Donghyuck’s cheeks flare red as he turns his head to stare at his friend with an indignant expression on his face, a whine already bubbling in his throat at the words that never cease to make embarrassment lick fire through his veins.
Donghyuck met Renjun on his first day of university, their story no more interesting than the fact that they ended up sitting next to each other on their first ever lecture. Renjun offered to introduce him to some of his high school friends that also attended their college, when their next lecture was cancelled, and in return Donghyuck introduced Mark and everything sort of fell into place just like that.
To this day, Donghyuck still remembers the way his heart skipped a beat before being sent into overdrive when Na Jaemin asked, voice proud and loud a mere five seconds after they’d told him their names, if he and Mark were dating each other.
He doesn’t remember what Mark’s reaction was back then, because he was too hysteric to pay attention to him, but Donghyuck answered him the same thing he tells Renjun right now, months away from their very first encounter, his voice pointed and his heart hammering against his ribcage just as fast.
“Mark is not my boyfriend,” because he would never like Donghyuck in that way; he’s his best friend, and best friends are not supposed to be in love, “and I have no idea where he is. I already told you he’s working on a case.”
“And he hasn’t called you? Or told you where he is, at least?” Renjun pushes, leaning back into his seat as he studies Donghyuck.
The skin underneath his eyes is a little bit discolored from lack of sleep, and his lips are full of the little wounds he’s given himself after chewing on them for too long — Donghyuck is driving himself sick with worry, and it makes Renjun ache for his friend.
“Johnny said it’s a dangerous case,” Donhyuck mumbles, then, eyes fixed on the empty notebook he’s got laid out in front of him, “and that he couldn’t risk being tracked through his phone. I just… I hope he’s fine. His little cousin is staying with me until he returns, so… I hope it won’t be too long until he’s done with it.”
The professor walks into the classroom then, and Renjun knows better than to push Donghyuck any more; but he too hopes it won’t be too long until Mark returns — hopes that he’ll come back soon to tell Donghyuck what he’d told him on a drunken night out a couple weeks ago, so that they both will get to be happy together in the way they all know they deserve to.
Donghyuck tries to get his brain to focus on the class, and at that, he fails spectacularly. There’s a single thought plaguing his mind, the same one he’s had ever since Mark left. Please be alright, please come back home safe. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if things end up turning sour.
⋈
Days keep passing by, and Mark Lee doesn’t come back home nor contacts him in any way, and Donghyuck’s heart aches so much that he fears it will come out bleeding from his pores one day. He keeps trying his best, for his dad and for Minhyung, whom he sticks with for the majority of the time so he doesn’t have to be alone in his room; for his friends, Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin, who try to take him out on as many occasions as they can manage, just to keep his head away from the overwhelming knowledge that Mark could be in danger, that he does not know where he is, that he cannot protect him anymore.
Mark Lee slipped through Donghyuck’s fingertips, and his heart doesn’t assimilate the fact that he can no longer hit Mark’s shoulder after a particularly bad joke that still makes the both of them burst out laughing anyways; that he can’t fall asleep on Mark’s couch watching a stupid action movie just to wake up in his bed when morning comes, in one of Mark’s hoodies, coddled in blankets while Mark prepares coffee for him. Now that Mark is gone, Donghyuck can no longer spend his days wrapped around his best friend daydreaming about holding his hand or maybe getting to kiss his lips, some day. But distance is one deep ocean, and it only makes Donghyuck realise how much he loves Mark, now that he’s got time to drown himself in the memories, now that he can look back in perspective.
Donghyuck sees Mark’s face on the people he crosses paths with on the street, and when he walks past the buskers in Hongdae strumming their guitars in tunes Mark would like to play along to if he were given the chance. He sees Mark whenever he enters a library and catches a glimpse of the newly released mystery novels he would surely love to read, the ones Donghyuck buys to try and distract himself from the overwhelming worry that is taking over his life, and the rope of longing wrapped around his chest tightens itself with every breath he takes.
(Donghyuck misses Mark with everything he’s got, but he doesn’t tell anyone about how he went back to his flat with the spare key Mark gave him after his parents moved out and took one of his pillows back home with him, just so he could wrap himself around it when he tries to sleep, the smell of Mark’s shampoo fading at the same tempo Donghyuck’s hopes of Mark returning to him start to wilt. He doesn’t tell anyone, because Mark and Donghyuck have always been Mark and Donghyuck — what they have is theirs, unique and unexplainable, the treasure Donghyuck cherishes the most.)
⋈
When Donghyuck is eighteen, Mark Lee disappears without leaving a trace behind and takes away his whole world with him. But three weeks later, when it all seems lost to Donhyuck, when he finds himself unable to think about anything that is not Mark, the phone on his father’s desk rings while he’s cleaning his office before he returns after a cold, busy evening, and Donghyuck’s world tilts on its axis once again.
“Hyuckie?” Mark Lee speaks softly into the speaker Donghyuck is holding up to his ear, and Donghyuck’s heart leaps out of his chest at the sound of his voice.
“Mark,” he breathes out, throat closing under the pressure of an invisible fist, and the room spins around him with the mix of emotions that wash over him after listening to him again. “Mark, is it you? Are you okay?”
“Don’t cry, silly,” Mark says then, the familiar sound of the teasing tone he loves to use on Donghyuck so much sliding through his veins in the form of pure relief, the most effective kind of soothing balm, and Donghyuck hadn’t even noticed when he’d started crying in the first place. “I’m fine, it’s just… I’m working on a really delicate case, Hyuck. How are you, though? Are you alright? Have you been eating properly?”
Mark’s tone is so affectionate that Donghyuck wonders for an infimum moment, as he tends to do sometimes, if there could ever be a chance that Mark feels what he feels so vividly inside his chest — burning hot longing that takes away his sleep on most nights, I need you here Mark Lee, the I want to be with you forever kind of love Donghyuck has kept a secret for years on end now.
He doesn’t allow himself to indulge in those moments, though — Mark is alive and well, and he’s on the other side of this call, and Donghyuck’s always been his best friend before he’s human in the first place.
“God,” Donghyuck cries out into the phone, taking a few seconds to recompose himself so he can bring his voice back to speak without it cracking, disbelief and indignation fighting relief and love, pure and unyielding love, for the front spot in his mind, “you’re such an idiot! I was so worried, you dumbass, how could you do this to me?!”
Mark outright laughs on the other side of the line, and even if he’d wanted to, Donghyuck could have never been mad at him for being the person he’s always admired. Mark Lee, the sharpest detective Donghyuck’s ever come across; the most dutiful person in the whole entire world, risking everything for the sake of the truth, for what he believes to be correct; the kindest, most loyal kind of friend, the unwavering wall supporting Donghyuck whenever the world comes crumbling down around him.
Mark Lee, the love of Donghyuck’s life; the one person he would die for, the one he wants to live for just to stay by his side forever, for as much as they have left on this Earth, anyways.
“Don’t laugh,” Donghyuck mumbles, sighing heavily as he sits down on Taeyong’s chair with the phone still pressed tightly to his ear. “I was scared, you know? You disappeared without leaving a trace! You could’ve told me you would be leaving or something, at least.”
“I’m sorry,” Mark responds then, and his voice is sincere. “It was all unplanned, really. Yukhei was waiting for me when I got home that night, and he said he needed my help with a very delicate case, and then he made me leave with him and leave my phone and, yeah.”
“Yukhei? Wong Yukhei?” Donghyuck frowns, his fingers idly playing with a stray paper he picked from the desk. “Are you in Hong Kong with him or something?”
“I can’t,” Mark sighs, and Donghyuck wants nothing but to smooth the lines that are surely wrinkling his forehead right now, with how tense he sounds. “I can’t tell you where I am, Hyuckie. I don’t have much time, but listen to me, okay? I’ll always protect you, I won’t ever let anything happen to you. I swear on my life.”
Donghyuck’s breath catches in his throat, and his grip on the phone tightens as his eyes are suddenly filled with tears once again — because Mark has no idea what he does to him, how much Donghyuck loves him, how he would walk to the edge of the world and jump into the void just for him.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” is what he says instead, and he hopes that Mark will not pick up on the way his voice sounds thick with unshed tears. “I never have. It’s always been me who’d beat up whoever tries to hurt you.” Please just come back home to me, I miss you so bad, please, please.
“I know you don’t,” Mark laughs softly, then, and Donghyuck wants to record that sound inside his brain forever, “but I’ll still do it anyways. Forever, okay? Please don’t worry about me, don’t worry about anything. I’ve got your back, Donghyuckie.”
And Donghyuck wants to tell him, wants to say it all; that he loves Mark, that he misses him, that he will always worry because he’ll never be able to exist without him, but the words die on his tongue as the call is finished then — no goodbyes, because they never say it, for they will always have each other by the time morning comes again.
“Markie?” Donghyuck calls out uselessly, and it echoes in the emptiness of the room. Against his ear, the phone line is dead, and he has to swallow back a sob when the tears finally start to spill down his cheeks, silver rivers across honey fields.
⋈
Mark still calls, sometimes, and it’s thanks to those little moments that Donghyuck slowly regains the strength that had been bleeding out of him since the day Mark left. He smiles brighter, he’s back to being his usual bubbly self, and overall things become better even if his heart still aches with how badly he misses Mark.
Mark does not call as often as he would like him to, but Donghyuck is always home when he does. Minhyung makes sure of it every time he leaves his building to cross the street towards the old cabin phone from where he always talks to him.
And really, it’s harder than he’d anticipated it would be, having a front row seat to the way Donghyuck’s heart breaks at Mark’s absence from his life, but there’s no other way for things to happen this time. It’s better for everyone to believe Mark to be gone — missing, dead, working on a case, whatever lie that’s still more credible than the truth anyways.
Because underneath Minhyung’s round glasses and innocent voice, Mark’s conscience is still intact, and if the people that tried to kill him with the drug that ended up making him shrink back into a kid’s body found out that he’s still alive, he’d be putting everyone he loves in danger — Johnny, Taeyong, Renjun and the rest of their friends.
Donghyuck, the person he loves the most in the whole entire world, the one he’s sworn to protect with his own life if things ever came down to that point.
Living with Donghyuck, Mark told Johnny when he rushed to his house after waking up in his new body, would be the only way for him to have a chance at finding out about the people who tried to kill him — Lee Taeyong is the best detective in the area, and so by being close to him Mark would be able to investigate and try to go back to his real self. And so their plan of him pretending to be Mark’s cousin had worked out, and Minhyung got to live with Donghyuck and be the second child Taeyong had never asked for but took good care of anyways, but with it came witnessing the way Donghyuck aches for him to come back and the dawning realisation that things might be different from what Mark had initially believed them to be.
Because Mark Lee has been in love with Lee Donghyuck for as long as he can remember — holding hands in primary school, napping together as they grew up, building a little world of their own always side by side; Donghyuck the Irene Adler to his Sherlock Holmes, the only person in the world able to see through him and win over Mark’s heart, even before he was old enough to understand what being in love was really like. And Mark — he’s always thought of Donghyuck as the unattainable cusp of his life; his very best friend who’d never spare a glance at him, too good and too bright to be caught, the Sun always shining one spaceship trip too far from his reach.
But then, living as Minhyung with the threat of discovery always hanging heavy over his head, Mark Lee sees the truth he would’ve never been able to deduct by himself, clear as the sky on a summer day. Donghyuck might love him in the same way Mark longs for him to do, and it only fuels him to try and search for answers harder and harder until he can regain his body and tell him what he’d never believed himself able to say — I love you, Lee Donghyuck, I’ve loved you all my life, and I’ll continue to do so, if you’ll have me.
Wong Yukhei, a young detective from Hong Kong that contested him on a case once and became his friend later, is the only one — besides Johnny Suh — who knows the truth about Minhyung’s identity. Mark told him everything through the phone on a quiet night in Taeyong’s office well past the time he and Donghyuck went to bed, and Yukhei had promised to keep his secret and help him as much as he could.
“You have to be strong for him, Mark Lee,” Yukhei had said back then, voice serious in a way that was novel for him. “If you want to keep him safe, he can never know, you can’t tell him anything.”
Mark knows that. He still cannot stop himself from calling Donghyuck, after seeing him fading away under the weight of the uncertain.
Donghyuk is his Achilles heel, but he will always keep a shield close to him, whatever it takes.
(“One day I’ll tell you everything,” Minhyung says into his voice-changing bowtie, “with my own voice. I’ll say it all, Donghyuck.”
Donghyuck does not know what it is that Mark wants to tell him — if it’s what he aches to hear so much, if he’ll finally get to call Mark Lee his, after a whole lifetime in love with him. But for now, he waits, because he’ll always have Mark’s back, just like Mark has his own.
“Call me again soon, Detective Lee,” he speaks teasingly against the phone mic, bottom lip held tightly between sharp teeth. “Take care of yourself, Mark.”
Later, when they’ve hung up and he’s walking quietly back to his bedroom, Donghyuck does not suspect a thing when he walks past Minhyung’s room, where he would find an array of piled up sweaters stacked under his blankets if he were to look inside.
He hugs Mark’s stolen pillow to his chest when he gets into his bed, buries his nose into the softened fabric and thinks to himself, please come back home soon, Mark Lee.)