Chapter Text
To love and be loved
is to feel the sun from both sides
At age thirteen, Mark Lee auditions for a Korean entertainment company. Just like that. On a whim. He doesn’t even know what has gotten into him, but it’s just - there’s something. A pull, right at his heartstrings. A voice whispering in his ear, telling him that this could be it, this could be the big thing in his life, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t go for it.
So yeah, he doesn’t mean to, really. He just has the day off from school, and instead of spending it studying or hanging out at a friend’s house, he goes for a walk through the city. He sees the poster, runs back home to get his guitar, sings a song by Bruno Mars. He’s sweaty, and his voice cracks halfway through, and he thinks that that’s probably it. School starts again tomorrow anyway.
He gets in.
Two months later, he leaves behind his family and his language and everything he’s ever known, everything he’s ever had, for the promise of success, getting to live for his passion, and something else tugging at his soul. He arrives in bustling Seoul 12 hours later, and everything is new and foreign and he wants to take the first airplane back. Or cry. Or maybe both.
He does neither, however, because before he can seriously start entertaining the idea of going to the closest counter and asking the person behind it to please get him back to Canada please thanks, he’s picked up by a chauffeur and brought to the SM building. The hours after that pass in a blur, and he doesn’t remember how he got to the - his - bunk, or to his room or the dorm for that matter. He’s exhausted. He has no idea how he’ll get through this. This time, he does cry, afraid of what may come.
After his first day as a trainee, filled with so much information that he feels like his head is going to explore and dancing until his muscles are so so sore, he cries again.
It gets easier, though, eventually. Of course it does. He’s placed into SM rookies, a project with the company’s trainees that haven’t debuted yet. There are a lot of them, and it takes him awhile getting to know them, and there are people he wouldn’t have dreamt of becoming friends with - or acquaintances, or something in between - back in Canada, but there’s not a lot of other options as they sit with him when they have lunch and help him with his Korean and maybe he’s glad to have met them. They all share a dream and it’s nice, helps with the bonding (Taeyong once called it team spirit.)
Taeyong, overwhelmingly beautiful with a chin that could cut glass, who laughs cutely at him the first time they meet and nags him about getting enough sleep, is the heart of the trainees, both loved and envied by all (in a good way, they tell themselves. In a totally healthy, competitive way. It’s true - most of the time), making them strive to become as good as him, maybe better. Mark grows fond of him quite quickly.
There’s also Irene and Seulgi and Wendy, and they’re nice, sweet, with the way they fuss over him when they meet him in the corridors, patting his sweaty hair down until it looks at least somewhat acceptable, and he gains the privilege to call them Noona at some point. He’s not Jisung though, he doesn’t enjoy being babied as much anymore, so he doesn’t hang out with them as much as he knows he could, even though it could help strengthen their bond. It doesn’t matter, not really, he’s happy with this, a relationship that’s tentative but pleasant.
There’s Jeno, with his crescent eyes and kind nature, and Mark just can’t help but feel comfortable around him, seeking him out at times. They hesitantly form a friendship, one that grows stronger as they stay behind together and sneak out to go get ice cream together, as they watch movies and talk boys talk. Jeno is his first friend (one his own age) in SM.
There’s Jaemin, too, who’s Jeno’s actual best friend, Mark learns. And it would’ve made him bitter - because he wanted a best friend - if Jaemin hadn’t been so incredibly nice. A little bit obnoxious, loud, but above all incredibly friendly. He appreciates it, but it also exhausts him, and he doesn’t do it on purpose, but he himself notices that he spends less time around the two boys when they’re, well, together.
One evening, he walks past one of the music rooms on his way to the exit, when he hears the piano, and he can’t help but look inside. There’s Jaemin, eyes closed, hands flying over the piano keys, and he looks so genuinely content and serene, like an angel almost. Mark can’t help but be attracted to it - in a totally normal I-want-to-be-a-part-of-this-atmosphere-way. It’s a thing - can’t help but walk inside. That night he learns what Jaemin’s voice sounds like when he whispers, how his actual laugh sounds - soft and pure. He has two friends after that.
There’s Yuta, who’s Japanese and joins him during Korean classes. He had been a footballer before he came to SM, and sometimes when he dances, his moves both effective and sharp, Mark imagines him running on the field and making goals. He can see it. Yuta has got a bright smile, loud laugh, but he clings with the other Japanese trainees, and it sucks because he seems like he could be a friend, an older brother maybe, but that’s just the way it is.
(Years later, Mark would curse himself out as he pushes Yuta off his back, begging him to please go cling onto someone else . Thirteen-year-old him is right though; Yuta is a good friend. A good brother. A good person, most of all.)
There’s Jaehyun and Johnny, who both speak English, who have an air of familiarity around them just for that reason. And Jaehyun is funny, with dimples and an objectively handsome face, and they hit it off almost instantly, but it’s Johnny, who has been a trainee for forever, Mark goes to when he needs help with his Korean or feels homesick. It’s Johnny who quickly takes the role of big brother upon himself, staying behind sometimes to practice their rapping together and making them Ramyeon when they get back to the dorms at 3 in the morning, telling him stories about Chicago and the life he used to have. Johnny has spent most of his life as a trainee. Mark can’t help but look up to him.
At SM, almost every day is spent the same way. Studying, training, doing your very best. The dusty, obscured dance studios become his home more than their first dorm will ever feel like, in his first few years in Korea, and it’s where he eats and dances and laughs, and sometimes cries, and sometimes falls asleep until Johnny comes to get him. It’s dark and it’s claustrophobic at times, but the SM basement becomes his place.
It’s in one of those stuffy practice rooms that he meets the sun.
(...)
People are added to SM Rookies continuously, filling up the practice rooms and talking and singing and dancing and fighting. There are new faces to be discovered constantly, and Mark likes to observe, likes to look at the way they approach other trainees, shy and awkward, notices the way they grow into themselves, showing a bit more of their personality every day.
(People disappear too, sometimes. Nobody talks about it, but Mark hears Yuta crying the night Hansol decides to leave.)
So even though he’s fourteen and a baby, at some point, when Seulgi and Irene and the other girls - and after that Yeri - debut, he becomes an oldie, kind of. Not like Johnny, or even like Jeno and Jaemin, but still knowledgeable in the trainee life. It feels good, in some way that is tinted with just a little bit of darkness, to stand above older trainees. He never says it out loud, tries not to think about it, and eventually, the little superiority complex disappears. Jaehyun, years later, tells him they’ve all experienced it at some point.
So yeah. New trainees. New people that become familiar faces that become acquaintances that become friends, sometimes, with time and patience.
There’s Doyoung and Ten, who are both talented, very very talented in their respective passions, and it makes him envious before he realizes that it shouldn’t, because they’re them, and he’s Mark Lee, and they're all just trying their best.
(It kind of helps that Doyoung nags a lot and Ten is nothing if not awkward, too. Makes them a bit more human.)
There’s Yeri who is always happy, and if Mark hadn’t looked at the boy beside him in 6th grade and thought wow he’s cute and then is this how some boys think about girls , then maybe, possibly, he could’ve had the biggest crush on her. But instead, they become ‘buds’, as Yeri calls it, and when she gets to join Red Velvet as their fifth member, and debuts on the stage beside them, excited and blinding and ready to conquer the world, Mark is so happy for her he cries.
(And maybe a bit because he wants that too and he longs for something he’s never had, but mostly because he’s happy for his friend.)
And then there’s Donghyuck.
Loud, confident, boisterous. Touchy. Sunshine personified. He comes into the studio for the first time and introduces himself and everyone loves him and Mark, for some reason, can't help but loathe him immediately.
(...)
There’s been rumors of a new sm boy group going around the corridors for a while now, and Mark doesn't believe it, doesn't want to, until he's called up to the office and suddenly there's so much talking and so much to do and prepare for, and then Mark Lee is recording a song and filming a music video and standing in the spotlights for the first time.
He debuts with Taeyong and Jaehyun, and also Ten and Doyoung, and they’re nice in the way an acquaintance is nice and in the way your classmate is nice. He’s gotten used to the awkward friendliness at this point. It’s just a phase, he knows. One most of them have to work through in order to become closer (though it was never like that with Donghyuck, but he’s different). It’ll get better with time.
(It does. They become friends).
And Mark gets to be on stage - really on stage, with a song he helped write himself - and he’s happy, delighted, but a little piece of his heart hurts and tugs and screams this isn’t it and we’re not there yet . He tries to ignore it, for now. He raps, dances, does his utter best. He lives.
(...)
For a while, Mark thinks he hates Donghyuck.
Donghyuck, who is loud and who screams and makes friends with Jeno and Jaemin and everyone else effortlessly, who has a beautiful singing voice and he’s good, and he knows he’s good, and who calls him Canada and Mark himself doesn’t even know why it bothers him so much, and maybe it has to do with the fact that Donghyuck just came stumbling into his life one day, and Mark wasn’t ready, wasn’t prepared to look the sun right in the eyes and get blinded by him in the middle of a dim practice room.
He just ignores him, for now, even though he really can’t because they get put together for everything - SM says they have chemistry, but they don’t. Donghyuck just likes to aggravate him and Mark gets irritated too easily, and it looks cute on camera but it really isn’t. It’s annoying. Donghyuck’s annoying.
And then they debut together with NCT127 and they have to, at least, be cordial to each other, and maybe you can become friends Taeyong tells him one night when they’re sitting in the kitchen together, and Mark nods his head but also thinks no thank you . Johnny makes a remark about it once, about how he thought they would be best friends, being the youngest and all, and Mark stays quiet because how can he explain to him that the two of them just don’t match, that they’re just too different, not a good fit. That they’ll never be friends.
Donghyuck - he’s Haechan now, but he refuses to use that name - is loud and bright, made for the entertainment industry, with a voice like an angel and the personality of that neighbor kid that you think is kind of annoying, but you think it in a fond way. He knows where to find the cameras and how to move his body, and Mark is jealous, not of him but of the ease he possesses, the effortlessness behind it all. This is what Donghyuck has always wanted to do, what he craved for even. Everything in his life led to this.
He, Mark Lee, passed an audition totally by chance, because it was that or doing math homework, and he sang a song but now he raps, and he’s still awkward though his dancing has been improving, and he thinks this is what he’s always wanted, but there’s still something missing.
(Someone.)
They're total opposites, an endless contrast, and it just won't work, Mark thinks. They don't perfectly fit together like Renjun and Donghyuck and Jeno and Mark do. There's scarp edges and ridges and paper crumbling as they're pushed closer to one another.
(That's just the beauty of it all.)
But maybe Mark is dumb and he thinks he knows about the world when he really doesn’t, because, against all odds, they become friends. Close friends. Somehow. Mark tells himself it’s because they’re always forced together, and he doesn’t miss the way Johnny rolls his eyes and mutters under his breath, but he ignores it. It doesn’t matter.
It’s just - the thing is - at some point, he starts to seek out Donghyuck’s touches and starts teasing him back. They end up rooming together, and then they debut again in DREAM. And suddenly Donghyuck, who was nothing, or who Mark tried to see as nothing, becomes everything and he can’t even get himself to be mad about it, welcomes the feeling even.
They somehow end up together, like this, and Mark is happy about it, thinks this is it , no way it’ll get better, and even though the tug at his heart is still there, and whenever he sees Donghyuck sprawled on the couch, his shirt riding up to reveal the moles on the small back or when he laughs about a joke Mark tells him or when he tries to respond in English, words coming out softly, his lisp coming through, it pulls a little harder, aches a little more. But, well, he’s had to have reached the limit of his happiness, right?
Right. Donghyuck is his friend. That’s all there is to it, that’s all Mark wants there to be. He’s fine like this - they’re good like this.
And then, totally unexpected to no one but them, they fall in love.
(...)
To Mark, Donghyuck feels like sunlight.
Even in the middle of the winter, when Seoul is dark and cold, when snow falls down onto the streets and you can’t go outside without five layers, but they do it anyways, snacking on melona, holding hands with beanies pulled low onto their heads as they travel the smallest, quietest streets of Seoul, even then Donghyuck feels like a ray of sunshine.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that he’s always - physically - hot, and maybe Mark whines about his cold hands just so the other boy will entangle their fingers, softly stroking his thumb over the skin on the back of Donghyuck’s hand, delicate and honey-colored. And maybe Mark is utterly smitten, but who can blame him really.
Because even late at night in their room, when they're sitting on Mark’s bed, cross-legged, singing and playing the guitar while a muted studio ghibli movie plays in the background, because they were watching it but they’re young and the guitar was sitting right there and Mark would never, could never, say no to the one shining brighter than the North Star. Even then Donghyuck is anything, everything. He’s Mark’s North Star.
And maybe it's just the way the moon shines down onto the curve of his shoulder, his hair looking like a halo, or the way the laptop screen illuminates the slope of his nose and his eyes so beautifully, and when he smiles it’s so softer, softer than any other smile Mark has ever seen, and it’s just for the two of them, and Mark has to close his eyes because god it’s too much, and Donghyuck’s beauty pains him at times, and he wishes he could stay in this moment forever. Or maybe it's because Donghyuck, after everything, because of everything, is Mark's.
In those moments, Mark imagines himself wrapping the boy up into his arms and hiding him and never letting him go back into the cruel world, and then he tells himself he can’t do that, because Donghyuck has - is - the kind of beauty that enchants people, makes them happy, and how could he possibly take that away from the world? So he lets him venture into it, voice rich and full and he stands next to him and raps, and dances beside him, but most of all he looks and longs and thanks his lucky stars that Donghyuck is with him.
(He never has to worry about that. Donghyuck will always come back to him).
(...)
Donghyuck loves like he dances and sings and lives. Fully, without hesitance or doubt, sure of himself and the space he occupies and the things he cares about. He loves loudly, obviously, he touches and screams and makes gestures until it’s something people grow accustomed to, until they can’t help but accept it. He shoots people looks, daring them to go against him, and grabs hands and tilts up his chin, telling the world i won’t leave so you better get used to it.
He walks into the room and brightens it up immediately, he hugs people firmly and lets his hands linger on the small of their backs. He has no problem saying the words i love you out loud, or to accept them.
Mark used to think it was the only real kind of love, used to think that his love wasn’t enough, didn’t mean anything, wasn’t worth it, compared to Donghyuck’s.
His love is just.. there, for lack of a better word. It’s a constant in his life and the ones of the people he loves. Mark loves tenderly, the way he plucks the strings of his guitar, the way he smiles when he’s backstage, Chenle hanging in his lap, Jeno and Jaemin playfully bickering about the last cookie. The way he looks at Donghyuck late at night, when it’s just the two of them and the moon and the souls of people long ago looking down upon them.
Mark loves silently, the way he carries Renjun to his room after a busy day, the way Johnny once did for him, tucking him into bed and leaving with a kiss to his forehead. The way he buys Yuta’s favorite milk at the 7/11 down the street, because the latter insists that it tastes better, that it tastes like the milk he drank as a kid, and how can Mark possibly refuse him a piece of home? It’s in the way he goes with Johnny when they’re touring in America, the two of them prowling around the city and bathing in the familiarity of home. For his birthday, Mark gifts Johnny a picture he took of him against the skyline of Chicago. He’s bathing in faint lights of the buildings behind him, eyes closed, head tilted up. He looks at peace.
Mark loves deeply, the way he has a secret playlist, in his Spotify library, hidden and locked, for everyone he cherishes, with songs that remind him of them, of memories they have together and memories he wants to have with them. Jaemin’s is filled with classical piano music, Doyoung’s with OST’s he sings early in the morning, when he’s making coffee and the birds sing back and Mark is so goddamn happy that he’s his friend.
Donghyuck’s one is the longest; the one that's most listened to, too. It's what he holds on to when he’s with SuperM in a hotel far away with Lucas snoring next to him, or Donghyuck is Haechan, and with the Dreamies, and Mark’s heart aches for him, and for them all, but most of all for him. Those are the times he listens to that playlist.
And most of all, even though it might not be noticeable, Mark loves utterly and completely, with every fiber of his being. He loves always, forever. Donghyuck is his forever.
(...)
At age eighteen, Mark Lee can’t imagine a world without his sun. Greatest thing is; he doesn’t have to.