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Marks having a midlife crisis in the middle of psychology. And this time it’s actually his and his stupid brain’s fault that he’s in this mess right now.
He had no idea why he said he can bake; actually he’s really bad at baking—in fact, all kinds of baking/cooking—anything to do with using a stove or oven is a bad idea when it involves Mark Lee.
He can’t even cook a sunny side up without scrambling it. And that’s like the world's easiest thing to do.
So in short—Mark is fucked.
Renjun from SNU ASB
Hey Markel sparkle !! Thank you for offering to make the cupcakes this time !!
I usually have a specific person doing it but he’s not available right now cause he’s actually studying for a big test coming up. I forgot to tell you the main detail though, you have to bake enough cupcakes for 500 people, I hope you don’t mind since you offered to help! But let me
or anyone else in asb know if you need help !!
Oh yes, Mark was definitely and utterly fucked.
☁
Though Mark is a terrible person to have in the kitchen and whip up anything, baking cupcakes shouldn’t be hard right?
They shouldn’t be.
All you gotta do is add some eggs and a bag of flour and BAM, you got yourself cupcakes.
Mark’s standing in front of the island in the middle of his kitchen getting ready to bake with the pink apron Johnny bought when they first moved in but then his brain started to suddenly turn the cogs and bring up the fact he’s really bad at cooking.
Mark didn’t know how he’s gonna manage this one. How he was going to go on with this without burning the cupcakes or the kitchen down. So he decides to do the easiest thing he does know when he has a problem.
Using Naver.
Grabbing his phone from the counter in front of him, he opened naver to type in: How to bake cupcakes .
And holy fuck, the amount of recipes there were.
Upon seeing recipes after recipes, mark decided: He had no fucking idea what he had to do. Everything seemed too complicated or was asking too much of the reader trying to make a simple batch of cupcakes to do all this extra shit that mark didn’t understand. What the fuck does fold in air bubbles mean? It’s literally liquid. Why does it need air? Why the fuck do you need 20 ingredients for ONE batch of cupcakes.
These were answers mark needed to know NOW.
Maybe Mark should just go to the nearest supermarket and go buy 20 boxes worth of cupcake mix. That’s the easiest option right? Right.
But now that he thinks of it, it’s probably a good idea since he had to buy a lot of cupcake liners and pans anyways. It’s killing two birds with one stone.
Mark was going to take off the baby pink apron and head to the supermarket because it seemed like the easiest answer to his problem, but then it dawned on Mark that he had to make multiple flavors of cupcakes and not just one flavor.
He groaned. Cause do you know how much good flavors of different cupcake mixes there are?
A lot of fucking money.
Fuck what hell was he thinking of offering to bake for the Fundraiser.
He can’t even whip up a plate of jajangmyeon to save his life, and it’s not even hard! What the fuck was he going to do.
“What are you doing standing there”
Mark turned to see his hyung, well not just any hyung. Jaehyun Hyung. He was Johnny's friend mostly but the older also liked hanging with Mark sometimes. Jung Jaehyun was actually a sophomore in undergrad school, he’s in it for the undergraduate business certificate. He’s pretty loaded but lives as if he’s a bum or a struggling college student.
Jaehyun, believe it or not, is trying to take his fathers position of Jung electronics, a pretty big company out here in korea. They’re as big as samsung and that’s really saying something.
Usually Jaehyun isn’t there to watch Mark break down over something as simple as making cupcakes.
But of course, Jaehyun hyung had to be there. Watching him wallow in his despair. “Um-” Quickly, Mark grabs the whisk that’s in the cup of other utensils and waves it in the air, in circles as if he was whisking the air.
“I’m baking.” Mark gulps.
Jaehyun looks at him for a long moment before opening his mouth before being cut off by Johnny. “Hey man, why aren’t you in the room yet, I thought we were gonna start playing pub- What is Mark doing?” Johnny asks with a little panic in his voice as he turns to see Mark in the kitchen with the pink apron on.
“I’m ba-”
He gets cut off by Jaehyun, “He’s baking supposedly” Jaehyun points his thumb at Mark while laughing. “B-but why? You’re a horrible cook” Johnny says as Jaehyun laughs harder. Mark groans before rubbing the back of his neck, “I possibly, maybe told Renjun that i would bake 500 cupcakes for the fundraiser we’re having for club rush”
Johnny’s eyebrows go up as Jaehyun's laughter decreases into a cough. “You’re old man,” Mark said suddenly as Jaehyun glared. “At least I’m not the one who has to make and frost 500 cupcakes for next friday’s fundraiser!” He argued back after his coughing fit.
Frosting . Mark forgot about the frosting.
How the fuck was he going to pipe frosting when he has chicken scratch as for handwriting. Let’s not mention how he shakes when he’s trying to do anything that involves making a pastry or food item pretty.
“Aw man! I have to frost the cupcakes too! What the fuck” Mark puts his head in his hands as he starts whining. Mark is so fucked.
“Mark, why did you agree to bake cupcakes? You can’t even make a proper sunny side up without scrambling it”
“You can’t do that! That’s the easiest thing to do!” Jaehyun yells in the back
Mark groans a “I know” as he hides his face in his sweater.
“Hyung, Help me I wanna do good and be reliable!” Mark says after, he takes his sweater off his face and his flush has gone away a bit.
Johnny and Jaehyun look at each other before saying, “Why don’t you buy cake mix and premade frosting?”
“Because I wanna actually make something without fucking up or at least it tastes like i tried! I don’t want to take the easy way out” Mark really wants to seem like he was good at something. Or more like good at cooking since he isn’t the best cook. He just wants to try and do something right without taking the easy route out and it not turning out good.
“Wait why didn’t renjun ask his usual person who bakes?” Johnny asked suddenly, turning to Jaehyun as if he knew who baked the cupcakes. Jaehyun just shrugged as he walked farther into the kitchen away from Johnny to grab a cold soda.
“Renjun said that he was studying for a big test, So he wasn’t available this time,” Mark waved off.
Johnny hummed as he caught the drink Jaehyun tossed at him, before tapping on the drink and walking out the kitchen. God, if his hyungs weren’t gonna help him, then who was.
Mark was so fucking fucked. God. Help me.
Jaehyun started walking out the kitchen towards the stairs before saying, “Check out Haechan’s Kitchen and see if that helps”
Well, maybe he had hope.
☁
After three days of contemplating his choice of how to make the cupcakes, and after many many failed attempts of making cupcakes by himself or just by the recipe online, Mark decided to check out this Haechan’s kitchen . He trusts Johnny hyung, and if Johnny hyung trusts Jaehyun hyung, then Mark trusts Jaehyun hyung.
So mark grabs his phone and opens the Youtube app, and goes to the search bar and searches up:
Haechan’s Kitchen…
Many suggestions following that name popped up. But he only wanted one video, one on cupcakes. So naturally when he saw chocolate cupcakes, he clicks on it since. You know. Cupcakes.
Pressing the first video, a cute boy with bright purple tips pops up and he’s whining about something, surrounded by ingredients. It then cuts off to him leaning on the island with everything clean and nothing infront of him.
“Hello everyone!” He says in english. Oh, he knows english? “As you see on the title, this is a video on making chocolate cupcakes! But obviously it’s not just a boring old cupcake recipe, it's a fool proof recipe since it seems like a lot of people struggling with baking or cooking seem to find my videos.” He states.
He must get a lot of people who struggle like Mark then since this video has 5.4 million views and thousands of comments.
“I decided to redo this video since I came up with a much simpler recipe than the previous very ambitious and “hard” recipe.” He says with air quotes. “But this recipe is pretty easy, we’ll be cutting the whole process into two parts. Wet and Dry ingredients so make sure you have two separate bowls for the wet and dry!’ He smiles before poking his cheek, winking. “Alright let’s get started, If you’re new here, Hi, My name is Haechan and I'm the host with a viewer rating of 37.5% and this is Haechan’s Kitchen!”
The video then transitions to his “opening”, which was just a really cute air transition to a pale yellow screen with hangul writing Haechan’s Kitchen and as well as english under it with a sunflower growing out of the ground beside the name before it the little scene was blown away by air.
His first impression of Haechan was that he was extremely attractive. Like wow. This man can be a model or be his first and only husband. But that’s just an analogy, Mark’s not seriously considering the fact because he’s korean, he might maybe live in Seoul. Or the fact that he could run into him any given time on the street and have a kdrama kind of story and they live happily ever after.
No he’s not thinking that at all.
Then Haechan is back and he has a few things in front of him, a food scale, milk and a lemon. On the side is sour cream, eggs, and what seems to look like vanilla extract, something dongyoung hyung uses a lot and oil.“Okay now before we get into this recipe, I’m going to list the ingredients and the measurements so you all can get prepared to do this. So you can either pause the video or listen to me talk for the next two minutes about some tweets you sent me recently. But don’t worry, I’ll have the ingredient list still up!” He watches as he pulls up the sleeves of his dress shirt and then claps his hands. Haechan has really pretty fingers.
“This recipe is just 11 ingredients that we all should have! So for you first timers shouldn’t worry too much. And don’t worry about the buttermilk, we’ll make some right here just make sure to bring out milk and a lemon.”
Quickly Mark pressed pause as he got up and started grabbing the food scale ingredients from the kitchen. Surprisingly they had cocoa powder, mainly because Johnny likes inviting his boyfriend Dongyoung over and Dongyoung likes making mug cakes. He had everything but buttermilk, but as Haechan stated, they were going to make some somehow.
Going back to his phone, he decided how the fuck was he going to prop up his phone, and not to mention the fact he’s fucking blind. So Mark decides to run and grab his macbook to have a bigger screen to look at— and not because he found this haechan attractive. No sir.
Mark types in youtube and finds the video before pressing it and quickly scanning the video to 1:45 before resting his arms on the island watching him.
“Now to these twitter questions! Some of you had a lot to ask and some were really sweet.” Haechan said as he scrolled through his twitter. And not gonna lie, Mark found haechan so enduring and he’s only 2 minutes into this video. He just looked so cute with his purple hair and his black apron on looking cute and comfy.
“Okay from @hanuelkim they asked what if you don’t have a food scale at home” Haechan looked up and grinned. “That’s easy! I put two types of measurements for a reason, cups and grams/milliliter. So just in case you don’t have a food scale you use measuring cups, and if you don't have those but have a scale, you use the grams/milliliters!” Wow, he knows how to cook and was thoughtful too. He’s the whole package!
Mark watched as Haechan read more questions for a minute more until he put his phone down and grinned, “I’m assuming we are all ready here since you’re here watching me, am I correct?” he stops talking as if he’s waiting for a reply and then quickly says, “Of course I’m correct, I’m a whole genius!”
Mark laughed out loud, bouncing on his feet a bit as he watched haechan laugh. “Okay, okay we have been waiting too long and it's already five minutes in, I’m so sorry for those of you who just wanted a fool proof recipe. Let’s get started” The transition appeared again and Haechan had various ingredients infront of him and a big bowl.
“Okay so we are going to start with the wet ingredients first since we gotta still make the coffee that’s gonna be mixed into this mixture, but everything has to be room temperature!” He explains.
Why does it have to be room temperature?
“ You may wonder why it had to be room temperature right?” He asks as Marks nods as if he was really talking to him.
“Well, what happens if you add something hot to milk or eggs?” Haechan asks. Mark just shrugged because he was horrible at cooking so how was he going to know.
“It starts cooking the egg or it can curdle the cold milk, which will make the mixture clumpy and that is not what we want! So let's get started on the buttermilk.” Haechan gets his food scale before grabbing the milk carton and a lemon.
Mark notices eggs on the side so he brings his eggs out and places them on the counter in a small bowl so they won’t break.
“We will use a separate bowl for now since we need the sour cream to not get as cold as it is already. So now since we only need 120 milliliters of milk, I’m doubling it since i don’t know, maybe you guys are gonna make two batches or will use another recipe of mine, since all my cupcake bases are this.” He says as he places the bowl on the scale and starts pouring 240 milliliters of milk into his bowl. Mark pours his milk in the cup that’s currently on the food scale and measures 240 milliliters.
“Now grabbing a tablespoon, I’m gonna squeeze this lemon into it and then pour it in the milk” He watches and does the same thing Haechan is doing; squeezing the lemon in a tablespoon and pouring it in the milk. He makes sure to follow everything Haechan is doing to not fuck up, even mixes the milk and lemon juice with the tablespoon.
“Pushing that aside to warm up lets put in the sour cream, eggs, and oil in.”
Mark follows along, putting 60 grams of Sour cream, two eggs and 80 milliliters of oil inside another bowl.
“Let's leave this as we warm our water for our instant coffee.”
Mark pours water into his teapot and places it on the stove to warm up as he listens to haechan talk about the coffee flavor. “I really like this purple brand—I’m not gonna say the brand since I’m not being sponsored but you can find this at any supermarket. But you can use any flavor of instant coffee that you like! These are your chocolate cupcakes!”
Mark hums happily as he listens to Haechan talk. He has such a nice voice, it sounds like he’d be great at singing or something.
“Some of you newer people probably are thinking why is he putting coffee in it? Well because we are not using actual chocolate but cocoa powder, the coffee is going to bring out the cocoa flavor as well as the vanilla flavor forward when you bite into this really good moist cupcake!”
This man is so smart. He must run a bakery or something if he knows what the hell he’s talking about in the kitchen.
“Okay now grab your mug or whatever and pour one packet of instant coffee in it so when you pour the hot water it melts instantly.” Mark does as he says and mixes the coffee as haechan does, deciding that’s how he’s making his coffee in the morning since it does melt the coffee easier and places it aside.
“It’s been a while so your buttermilk should be buttermilk and your eggs and sour cream should be room temperature, now we will put the buttermilk in and mix for a bit. “ He pours the buttermilk into the bowl and starts using the whisk.
“Now some of you guys might be scared to whisk this but I got a tip I always use. So I take my trusty whisk and break the egg yolks with it before placing it in the middle and simply whisking small circles in the center and you can watch it all combine, the oil is going to stay on the sides unmixed cause- obviously it’s oil so once the middle is mixed large enough you can try and whisk the oil in.”
A shot of the bowl and haechan mixing the mixture shows what he was talking about, making this so much easier. “Ah, so that’s what he was talking about.”
He again follows as haechan places the bowl on the food scale and measures out 20 milliliters of coffee and 10 milliliters of vanilla extract and little by little haechan whisks in the two liquids.
“Okay that’s basically half of the recipe done guys! See, I told you it was fool proof! All that’s left are the dry ingredients which aren't hard at all!”
By the end of it, Mark has a bowl of chocolate cupcake mixture and it doesn’t taste disgusting.
He has a bit of trouble finding the best way to pour the batter until haechan speaks.
“I usually take a ¼ cup of scoop until it's a little under the standard amount of the cup and I add it to my tins. Your cupcakes should fill it about half way if you’re doing it right. But like i said before, these are your cupcakes! You do what you want with them.” So mark does what haechan says, filling the cupcake tins half way before placing them in the oven for 16 minutes.
Mark pauses the video for the remaining time until he gets bored and starts playing the video again.
“Now if you want frosting, click the “i” icon for the recipe, and if you want more cupcake recipes, there is a link to my cupcake playlist! And don’t worry, they all are foolproof other than the cupcake recipe that has “The best” in front of it!”
The timer went off meaning the cupcakes were done. Mark gasped as he grabbed the silicone mitten and walked to the oven as haechan continued talking about different playlists.
Mark then stood there as he took out the cupcakes and did his little dancy dance due to the fact he made cupcakes and they’re not burnt! “Between all of us the real reason I redid this was because my brother jae actually is a horrible baker himself. He just wanted to bake something for his boyfriend without my help and I thought this was the easiest and he did too. So if my diasterious brother can do this, you can too!”
He really was a beautiful caring creature wasn’t he. But Mark also thanks Jae for making Haechan remake this video and making it simpler.
Haechan talks about more things on his channel before grinning again, “And that’s all for today, I’m your host Haechan with a 35.7% viewer rating and this was Haechan’s Kitchen, I’ll see you next wednesday!”
The video transitions to his end “credits” and the song Good Days by SZA was being sung by an unfamiliar voice. This plays for a minute before it cuts off to haechan talking to someone behind the camera.
“Bro you can’t get that side, that’s my bad side, this is my good side” He says as he turns back and places his leg on the counter, popping his butt out and turning to look back at the person behind the camera before promptly bursting into laughter with another voice or voices joining in.
Mark may or may not be crushing on Haechan with a 37.5% viewer rating, the host of Haechans Kitchen .
☁
Mark decides to use the recipe(s) from Haechan’s Kitchen, so he makes a list of what he needs for the other flavors and the frosting, before walking out to his car. As he’s opening his car, his phone is ringing with notifications.
SNU ASB
Renjun
Hey guys, just wanted to check in on how
everything is going!
Just let me know if you’re going to use any of your
money so the association can reimburse you!
You
Oh I am, I’m actually omy to buy
some supplies, I’ll lyk the total
for it during class tmr
Taeyong hyung
Right now I’m getting the ingredients for the milk
bread so it won't be more than 56,000 won
Jaemin
Okay that’s good! Me and Renjun were kind of
worried since donghyuck couldn’t make the cupcakes
this time around, but i'm glad you offered a mark!
Jungwoo hyung
Omg mark is making the cupcakes!??!?! I can’t wait to
Taste them.
Winwin hyung
Donghyuck couldn’t make them this time :((
No offense mark but donghyuck is amazing at baking
or just anything that has to do with an oven or stove
You
Ah it's fine hyung, i'm not that great in the kitchen
so it doesn't hurt me lol
Jeno
Wait-
Taeyong
What do you mean
Runjun
Mark lee did you offer to bake 500 cupcakes
even though you’re terrible at baking
You
Maybe
Jaemin
MARK HYUNG
You
DON'T WORRY I GOT IT UNDER CONTROL
Jungwoo hyung
Yes you can do it !!
You
thanks hyung
Jeno
Well i guess we have no other choice min
Jaemin
Well obviously, we literally have two days till said day
Winwin hyung
I'm sure it won't be that bad
Renjun
Even if there was a problem we don't have time to change it
We all each are in charge of different things and someone can't
put on more than they already have.
We just have to make sure we all have our count of 500 pastries we
were assigned, i trust you guys.
And with that, Mark started his car and drove off to the market with the radio.
☁
It’s when Mark is barely opening his trunk that his notification on youtube goes off, meaning Haechan from Haechan’s kitchen has uploaded a new video. With quickness, Mark grabs all the bags with one hand and runs to the elevator of his and Johnny's apartment complex and runs right in, pressing number 4 for his floor.
Once he gets to his floor, he opens his door which was the one other door of this floor and throws his bags on the ground before he runs to the couch and opens the macbook.
He types in Youtube and then presses on the most recent upload in his subscriptions.
Q&A time with Haechan from Haechan’s Kitchen
And the thumb nail is Haechan with the obvious picture of him doing some short of aegyo.
He presses the video as haechans face close to the camera lens pops up.
“ Is this thing on channie? Is it? I don’t see the red light- Oh there it is!” The transition to his opening comes in making Mark frown.
He wanted to look for a bit longer. Just a tad bit longer.
Haechan pops up again but sits back in a chair, in a different setting, not his usual spot in the kitchen.
Mark only knows this because he didn’t binge watch all some of his most popular videos and maybe some of his older videos for the past day or two.
“Hi guys I’m Haechan with a 37.5% viewer rating and this is Haechan’s kitchen! You guys may be wondering, oh my god it’s been forever since you’ve recorded in your room! Or why is he in the bedroom? I just wanted to do a Q&A today and if you follow me on twitter @fullsunkitchen then you probably sent me some questions that I asked for this morning!”
Fullsunkitchen on twitter? Oh yup Mark’s gonna follow him right after this video is over.
“ Sungchan-ah printed out a lot of questions and put them in his top hat ” He watches haechan raise the top hat up from off the ground and then into his lap. “ And I’ll be picking someone questions from it !”
“ Be careful hyung, i put some funny ones in there ” someone says behind the camera. Haechan looks up and wrinkles his nose.
“ And is that supposed to scare me ”
“ No. Just giving you a warning hyung” The same voice says. Haechan laughs before looking at the camera and pumping his fist in the air.
“ So let's get started !”
Mark waits patiently as haechan starts talking about something that happened that day, making him laugh from where he's sitting on the couch.
“Hey what cha watching there markie” Johnny suddenly says, making mark jump. Mark looks behind him and curses. “Shit, you really scared me hyung!” he cries out as he holds his chest.
Johnny rolls his eyes as he clasps his hands on Mark's shoulders. “Again, what are you doing?” Mark didn’t say anything but was looking at the laptop. Johnny looked on the side to see what he was watching before he looked at Mark smirking.
Mark’s eyes were trained on the screen before him, watching the one and only Haechans Kitchen, it’d been at least a week since he found out about the youtuber but Mark seemed like he was already hooked.
When Mark made cupcakes two days ago, he was surprised they came out so well. Almost too well. Too familiar too. So he connected the dots from when Jaehyun took a bit to come up to his room to start their fortnite match and it wasn’t rocket science that he gave Mark the channel to help him out.
“Oh you know watching youtube” Mark finally says distractedly as Johnny laughs silently. “Okay markie, i'll leave you to it. By the way Dongyoung is coming over, so you know the drill” Johnny mentions as he walks away, mark humming in confirmation.
“ How old are you? Well I just turned 20, meaning I’m pretty young! So some of you are my sunbaenims! And maybe i'm your hyung/oppa !” he laughed; what a pretty laugh he has.
“ This one says, Why did you start this channel ” He looked up with a thoughtful expression before answering, “ Well originally, I started this channel at age 12. It was both for documenting my experience in baking and cooking as well as just a hobby for me to do. A lot of you know I’m only doing this for fun since, well. I live quite comfortably .” Haechan said with a small smile.
Mark sighed in admiration. He was god looking, smart, good at cooking/baking, AND rich. Really was the whole package he was.
“ So when I started this channel I didn’t have any intention to grow it as much as it is now, and I only did because a lot of people wanted to know how I cooked/baked so well at a young age. So I changed my name and started doing tutorials- I guess you can call it. But as everyone knows, I enjoy this so much. My parents actually want me to open my own restaurant so it wasn’t a bad choice of me picking this as my job .” He finished off with a cheesy smile before he started talking about everything he gains (money wise) he donates it to different places. Wah.
He watched haechan pick another one for the nth time. “ Do you have any siblings? Yes! I do, Some of you older viewers who have been watching and keeping up with my life on twitter and instagram know I have an older brother and a younger one! two in fact- well three adding my brother's boyfriend since he is family. But some of you know Sungchannie here is my brother who just recently decided to help me film! ”
“A nd for the final question is do you go to school still? And the answer is Yes! I study at SNU actually so if any of you who are newer and see me around campus don’t be shy and say hi! ” Mark's heart stops as haechan keeps talking and everything becomes white noise.
Holy shit
☁
“So let me get this straight- the guy you have a crush on- is a youtuber and comes here. To this school” Jisung says as Mark, Jisung and Chenle sit in the Cafeteria.
Mark gives them an affirmation hum and nod as he sips his food shake. Chenle looks at Jisung before shaking his head. “And why does that matter?” He says as he gives him a confused look. “It doesn't-”
“But you’re talking about it like it does hyung”
Mark groaned and got up from his seat, “Shut up guys, I’m leaving.”
Chenle cackled as he watched Mark walk away. “You care too much, look at you avoiding the subject!”
“Am Not!” Mark yelled as he turned a bit to yell out, “I'm just going to class, I don’t want to be late!”
“Sure! Well, then see you tomorrow at the club rush!” the two freshmen yell as Mark walks to the room where asb holds their meetings. Technically he isn’t wrong, he has his next class here. Which is asb. The class he’s taking for being in asb.
He walks in and sits in his spot before groaning, setting his head down.
He was really thinking too much about this. It’s not like he’s going to magically run into lee Haechan on campus because he said he went to SNU, the school he’s enrolled in currently trying to finish his senior year and going to graduate school.
The odds of him running into him are slim since how many students are here in the school, not to mention everyone’s different schedules, it would be hard to run into him.
Why is he so worried anyways though. Mark had no idea who this kid was!
Just a regular 20 year old doing things Mark can’t, like cook!
Which he does a graceful job at.
Can his brain just stop.
“Okay guys I hope you brought your receipts cause we will be reimbursing you for the stuff you bought, which mainly is just gonna be the ingredients , and a pan or two if you bought one!” Taeyong hyung says suddenly, everyone in asb getting up and standing by the table hyung was sat at with jung woo hyung.
“Mark! How’s the cupcakes going!” Renjun says, scaring mark since he popped out of nowhere. Mark laughed nervously and turned to renjun, “It’s going well, I think I perfected it well. I just gotta make the cupcakes tonight, hopefully I can get most of them done today so I can continue making them before the club rush starts tomorrow” He says.
Another thing he had to worry about.
Renjun smiled as Jeno walked up, wrapping an arm around him and giving him a small peck on his head. “Hi baby, Hey hyung” Jeno says as he clasps his hand with Mark, doing the bro hug. “Yo whats up jeno. What are you making?” Mark says as he pulls away from the hug.
“I’m doing croissants which are really easy,” Jeno says with a smile. Renjun rolls his eyes before smacking his check. “Sure they are mr. i dont know how to fold dough” Renjun laughs as jeno stutters.
“H-hey! I found out anyways, Haechan’s videos helped me!”
Mark perked up at the mention of haechan. “You watch him too?” He asks.
Renjun and Jeno turn to look at him before laughing, “of course I do, why wouldn’t I?” Mark blushed before shrugging and getting up to get his reimbursement,
“Hey markie!!” Taeyong hyung suddenly says as he watches Mark walk towards him and Jungwoo hyung.
Taeyong was basically president for the Seniors and Jungwoo the treasurer, while xiaojun hyung was the secretary. So because they were the seniors, they handled all the money.
“Hi hyungs, you guys look like you got sleep” he says as they laugh, taking the recipes out of his hand and looks at it before writing it into the book of receipts before ripping it out and stapling it together and handing it to jungwoo, “Hmm seems like you got everything under control mark-ah” Jungwoo says as he looks at the receipt.
“Yea I kind of had help so it wasn’t that hard. Oh thank you” Mark says while scratching the back of his head before bowing as he was handed the 70,000 won. “I believe in you mark! Fighting!” Taeyong says with his fist up as Mark walks back to his desk, smiling at taeyong.
As he sat down there was a tweet from haechan’s twitter
@fullsunkitchen: guys if any of you are having doubts right now, Just know you got this!! I know you do. And I do as well since i have a test tmr and im scared but speaking into existence im acing it!
Mark smiles before replying
Replying to @fullsunkitchen:
@Marklee99: you got this, I'm sure you studied well. Thank you for the encouragement!! Fighting!
Maybe Mark does got this.
☁
Okay maybe Mark doesn’t got this.
Mark had just came home from all his classes and has decided he has no fucking idea what he’s doing. Although he’s made these cupcakes more than once.
So like always, he's currently sobbing in the middle of the kitchen at 9 pm at night.
“AYYEEE lets get this party started- oh lord what the fuck is going on” Mark looks up sniffeling as Ten, Johnny, Jaehyun, and Yuta pop up from the entrance of the kitchen. Obviously ready to drink and watch some kdramas. But now, they’re watching Mark cry and sniffle.
“Just baking cupcakes but realizing i'm not going to make all of them in time. No biggie” mark laughs watery. Tears started slipping out again before wrapping his arms around his face.
Ten’s mouth stayed agape as he looked at Jaehyun and Johnny. Yuta then walks in and grabs a bright green apron and starts tying it behind his back. It’s quiet as everyone looks at him before he looks up in question. “Well- aren’t we going to help him?”
“Oh yes-”
“Obviously”
“I just wanted to drink but alright” Everyone turns to Jaehyun before laughing out loud.
As everyone starts putting on their apron, Mark gets up, wiping his face with his rag before bringing them into a hug. “Thanks guys, I really was stressing, I only have like 48 out of 500 cupcakes done and I was panicking’ Mark says as he sways them all around.
“We were gonna end up helping any mark,'' Jaehyun said suddenly as Johnny nodded in agreement.
‘Right, you act like you can't ask for help” Yuta snorted
Okay, maybe Mark was overeating just a tad bit thinking he could do it all by himself.
“You’re right, thanks again guys” Mark said wiping his nose.
They stood there looking at each other before jaehyun said, “Okay yuta and ten you do frosting cause yall like making shit pretty and we three will make the different flavors. We’re making 5 different flavors and 100 cupcakes of each got it?” Everyone nodded in agreement before yelling team and breaking out in different groups and taking different ingredients.
…
It’s 1:30 am and they’ve been making cupcakes for the past four hours and they’re barely half done. They have around 200 more cupcakes to do but everything is going quite well.
Everyone has no problems other than mark forgetting how to work a food scale or how to mix something without spilling half of the mixture out of the bowl. But then Mark notices the way Jaehyun was making the cupcakes.
He seemed as if he knew the recipes quite well.
“Hey hyung do you bake often?” Mark asks as he's whisking his dry and wet ingredients together.
Jaehyun glances at him before smirking and shaking his head, “Nah, I’m not really the baking type.” With that he went back to mixing his mix before grabbing the disposable cupcake tins and putting in cupcake liners and putting as many tins on the flat pan as he can. He does this both quickly and somehow knows how many fit.
“But you seem like you know what you’re doing,” Mark says with a confused face.
“Ah, that’s because I help my little brother sometimes. He usually is the one baking for renjun’s fundraisers”
Mark coughed, he didn’t realize he didn’t know this about his hyung since he’s known him.
“You have a little brother?”
“I actually have two, a step and blood related, but yea i usually help one of them with baking since he’s really set on opening his own bakery soon and has a youtube channel.”
“Oh really! That's cool, well I'm glad you’re helping then, since it seems like you’re really familiar with this!”
Jaehyun hums in agreement as he pours the mixture in the tins after organizing them. Mark glances around as he sees Johnny taking out the finished ones and putting in the ones that have been done and closing the oven putting in a timer. He watches as Yuta pipes the frosting and Ten both decorating and making said frosting for each cupcakes.
He’s never been more thankful for his hyungs more than now.
☁
“Mark where are you? We have 15 more minutes to set up and cupcakes are usually our go to main attraction” Jaemin’s voice says through the phone speaker
Mark shifts his bag before taking out his airpods and placing them in his ear. “Hey can you hear me? Yea? Okay, well me, Johnny, Jaehyun, Ten and Yuta hyung are coming with the cupcakes, we’ll be at the spot at 5!” Mark says as he closes his trunk and tries to catch up with the olders who were walking to the grass field where SNU’s club rush was being held.
“Again Thank you guys for helping. Im sure if you guys didn't come in when you did I probably would have burned the apartment complex down” He laughed as the others laughed nervously.
Johnny turned, “I thank the lord every minute for us coming when we did” Everyone bursted into laughter as they made their way to the booth that was Visual to the open eye. It was a white and blue stand with the words
SNU ASB Sign up if you’re interested ! Cupcakes, Pastries and more!
“Mark! Hyungs over here! Quickly we only have 10 minutes to set and five minutes before students start getting in line!” Jeno said as he quickly grabbed a box of cupcakes from yuta.
Everyone quickly started to help unload the cupcakes and place them in their stands in the individual spots as taeyong hyung writes down the flavors on a card and places them in front of the cupcakes.
By time they were finished, there was a long line of customers waiting to buy a treat.
“Wow mark, your cupcakes look amazing, professional even. Did you pipe these yourself?” Jungwoo hyung then asked as he gave a paid customer his treats. Mark blushed and laughed a bit, “No , Yuta and Ten hyung helped a lot”
It seemed like everyone really liked them because by 3 pm, all the cupcakes were gone, meaning it took 3 hours to sell everything out. Aside from the box of extra cupcakes they made for asb.
Taeyong hyung yelled as Jungwoo counted all the money, “Oh my god this is the most we’ve ever made. Holy shit.”
Everyone cheered as they started dancing, their hard work had really paid off. If anything, everyone thought that they were going to have a lot of leftovers, but they didn’t. The students at SNU cleaned them out.
“Well let's celebrate with these extra cupcakes we brough!” Ten yelled suddenly as everyone grabbed a cupcake.
Mark heard various compliments as they looked at the cupcakes in their hands. “It’s so pretty I don't know if I wanna eat it,” Shotaro suddenly said, who was experiencing his first year of college. Mark pat his back as a thank you as everyone took a bite and instantly moaned in delight.
“These taste so good, they almost taste as if donghyuck had made them”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Mark grinned as everyone praised him but it was cut short when a familiar voice had butt in. “As if Donghyuck made what?”
Everyone turned to see Lee Donghyuck, Renjun’s go to cupcake caterer. As well as the host with a 37.5% viewer rating , Lee Haechan.
“Holy shit”
Lee Haechan was standing there in his full glory, beautiful glory, bright glory as he questioned the group. “Oh hey duckie, we’re just eating the cupcakes that Mark here made with your recipe from your youtube channel.” jaehyun said suddenly.
Everyone then turned to mark who flushed brightly. Looking everywhere but Haechan’s eyes, he nodded. “Yea, I’m not the best baker, or cook. But jaehyun hyung recommended me you and it was a big help”
Mark's eyes were trained on the ground, so he didn’t see the flush that went down haechans neck. “O-oh thank you! I guess? I mean, I'm glad it helped you! I originally did that series for jaehyun hyung because he's always trying to make taeyong hyung something for his sweet tooth.” Haechan suddenly says, not noticing jaehyun trying to stop haechan from talking.
Mark looked up to see haechan with a light flush on his cheeks making him look more cuter. “Ah really?”
Donghyuck smiled brightly as he nodded.
Everyone laughed as they realize
d what was going on here.
They both found each other attractive.
☁
“Today on MH Kitchen, we are making bibimbap since mark hyung here has been complaining you guys have been suggesting hard things to make!”
Mark laughed on the side of sungchan as donghyuck started to make funny faces towards him.
It’s been a couple months since the club rush. Almost a year to be exact. Within those couple months, marks found out that donghyuck actually had the biggest crush on the older. Donghyuck had seen him the previous year during the club rush and decided he was worthy enough of being his crush, but obviously he never made a move because well, he didn’t exist to mark. So imagine his surprise when he found out his crush watches his youtube videos and used his own recipes because he's a terrible cook.
Donghyuck was hooked.
But it took around 5 months for them to ask the question.
WIll you be my boyfriend?
Of course Mark was sweating balls while Donghyuck was seriously wondering if he should smash a cake in marks face and ask him out when it slipped one night that Mark would rather be called donghyuk’s boyfriend instead of boy space friend.
“So here’s my boyfriend, Minhyung Lee!” Donghyuck suddenly said, breaking Mark out of his thoughts. He laughed as Donghyuck imitated loud screams and was jumping around.
Walking into the frame, he smiled and gave Donghyuck a small peck on the lips before turning to the camera and waving. “Hello everyone. Tis I. The man, the myth, the legend. Mark Lee”
The rest of the video went on as Donghyuck had Mark make the rice and cut some carrots and pickled radish up while Donghyuck explained what kind of bibimbap the viewers could make and telling them that they’re also making dipping sauce too.
While cutting the carrots, Mark stole small glances at donghyuck with bright eyes.
He didn’t realize 9 months ago he hadn’t realized that Jaehyun Hyung was Donghyuk's step brother. Or the fact he basically gave him clues that he was his older brother.
..
“Hyung why didn’t you tell me lee haechan from haechan’s kitchen was your brother!” Mark exclaimed that night after coming home from club rush.
Jaehyun shrugged as he walked into the kitchen towards the fridge for a bottle of soju. “Mark, I kind of told you. I told you his channel. And said I had a brother who usually makes videos of him cooking” He sipped his grape flavored soju, staring blankly at mark.
Mark shook his head, “You know I’m slow as fuc-”
“Donghyuck literally said he redid it for his brother Jae” Johnny suddenly said as he popped out behind him, grabbing a bottle of soju as well. He stood by jaehyun and twisted the cap open, sipping at it as jaehyun humed in agreement. “If that wasn’t the biggest hint for you, I don’t know what was”
Mark stood there, before grinning.
Johnny looked at Jaehyun before looking back at mark. “Why are you smiling?”
“This means I was bound to run into him anyways.” Mark says with a small smile as he grabs his phone, which rang, and walked up the stairs.
“You actually met him hella while back so i don't think you both remember” Jaehyun yelled, but who was really listening? Mark wasn’t.
…
“Hyung why’d you stop cutting the pickled radish?” Donghyuck asked with a face.
“Oh nothing baby. We’ll cut this out.”
Donghyuck smiled and continued with the video. By the end of this video, Mark received compliments on his cooking skills. Since, he was able to make an omelette without burning it or the kitchen.
Maybe now Mark wasn’t fucked anymore. He seemed content now that he was learning from his boyfriend. The man who cooks for a living.
“Mark hyung, you want to make some jajangmyeon with me?” Donghyuck suddenly said after the video. Mark nodded and started pulling out the ingredients.
Volunteering for the Fundraiser wasn’t as bad as he thought.