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These days, love is too cheap. The volume of customers increases, though – and Donghyuck might hate them all, but he is a businessman and a worker; profit shall be gained where the customer is willing to spend it.
He makes his way to the rooftop, steps slow and stuttering at the soreness after a night with one of his most demanding clients. However despicable the man may be, he pays well; the soft silk gown he wears to cover his bruised thighs, wrists and shoulders was his gift, as were the bruises – although Donghyuck bears it with no forgiveness, it´s a practical garment.
The climb through the last window and subsequent ladder is tortuous, but muscle memory keeps him up. It´s been years since Mark and him found the whorehouse while scavenging for leftovers and errand-boy jobs. Years since Johnny and Taeyong took them under their wing and kept them there as long as they could. Years since Mark discovered a hiding-spot and chose to share it with Hyuck.
Donghyuck remembers it like it was yesterday, though.
It was a winter night, air so chilled it pricked uncovered skin like needles and traveled down their throats like liquid fire. Back then, they were much too young for their bodies to be offered to clients – but one is never too young to be hungry, and therefore, they had to clear off their debt for food and shelter in little jobs for the brothel, sometimes cleaning, sometimes cooking, sometimes running errands, sometimes keeping quiet.
Mark woke him before dawn, pulling him up from his corner in the floor of the cupboard, where they slept when the owner was supposed to visit. Mark clutched the younger boy´s hand, bringing him in tow, all thin blanket, messy hair and droopy eyes.
The first thing Donghyuck saw was the sky. He´s never seen a sky quite like that one, so dark and vast, so boundless. He could only see a few stars here and there, yet the immensity was what left him speechless.
When you´re a kid trying to survive the streets, you live one day at a time, try to make the most out of it. You forget to look up – you forget that the world is larger than the alleys, flea markets and dirt. It´s bigger than you and even bigger than this city and its rottenness.
“I like it here, less people leaves more room for my thoughts,” Mark said into the silence.
“Why bring me? You know I won´t let you keep the view to yourself,” Hyuck teased him.
The older boy smiled. “Because only you can find me here.”
Oh, Donghyuck remembers blushing at that – and blaming it on the cold –, even back then. He remembers thinking he could get lost in Mark´s eyes, even if it meant losing the world he´d just found. He remembers snickering “I´ll promise you my sunrises, then,” even if he didn´t know what it´d come to mean.
“Stop teasing me, you moron,” Mark smacked him, a pretty pink tinting his cheeks.
“Never,” he giggled.
Donghyuck has kept both of his promises – and that stolen moment – sheltered between his skinny ribs, close to his heart.
He sits by Mark´s side on the edge of the rooftop, feet dangling into nothingness. They admire the skies above and the city below, sharing the kind of silence that brings soul and mind together in harmony.
Donghyuck has made a little habit of whisking trinkets for them whenever he can. Sometimes it´s a deck of cards, sometimes a coupon for breakfast after work, sometimes a postcard of a place they dream about visiting in the future, when their debt is paid off.
Today, he delights the older boy with a golden coin for their pouch of savings for their adventures. They are, after all, dreamers who walk on soil paths; wealth moves this world, they´ve had it clear since they were children.
“I want to play music someday,” Mark whispers as the sun rises over the horizon, soft orange and pink lights touching his cheekbones.
“Is there anything you don´t want to try, Lee?” Donghyuck digs his shoulder into his, noticing how broad it is, how much Mark has grown from the scrawny kid he met him as.
A little smile makes way to his lips. Hyuck hates the glowering summer days, but he´s glad for the dizzyingly hot night that brought them together – it´d felt like Destiny had chosen his life, but Donghyuck had managed to steal away a little treasure.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Mark whines into his shoulder, the heat on his face palpable through Donghyuck´s thin gown. He lets out a hearty laugh.
“Like I want to push you off the edge and take your place as Taeyong's favorite?”
The older boy gasps, a dramatic hand to his chest. “I´ll push you off, Lee Donghyuck!” he threatens, although the smile that splits his face does little to improve his intimidation skills.
It feels like a victory every time he earns that smile. That twinkle in Mark´s eyes.
When you meet the love of your life, they take your breath away, that´s what he´s heard. But Donghyuck thinks back to the night he met Mark, outside that dimly lit bar, the older boy dancing unhampered to the music that escaped through the walls, not minding that he was in a back alley or the moist air or the scorching heat – and Mark reminded him to breathe, in and out. He assured him he didn´t have to gulp desperately for oxygen with each breath, provided the safety that made it easy to welcome sleep and dreams again.
It´s not love, it´s so much more than that – and Donghyuck is happy to claim so.
After all they´ve been through together, after all the royals they´ve aided in being unfaithful, after all the things they’ve seen in the world in the name of love…they never think of what they have – what they´ve built – quite like that.
Calling it love feels too cheap. Too feeble, too quick, too uncertain. No, what they have is not love. What they have is tenderness and passion and something only they understand.
Donghyuck wouldn´t die for love, but he´d die for Mark. A million times over.
“We could always bribe someone to teach you,” Hyuck supplies with a shrug.
They have each other, through and through, with everything they are and everything they´ve gone past. It cannot possibly be only love.
Love is fragile. Empty. Hurtful.
Someone is the love of your life – before they make you mad or sad or lost, and you end up in a brothel. Believe him, he´s heard enough love stories.
“Why are you so proud of being a criminal?” Mark shakes his head, a dimple on his left cheek. Hyuck pokes it with his forefinger, flashes a cocky grin.
“Because I´m great at it!”
Donghyuck figured at a young age that loving someone meant to cut yourself open and keep the gash bleeding, feed your life off to the best bidder. But Mark didn´t hand him a knife and ask for his pain – he patched him up and stitched his wounds and wrapped his own skin over the tears on Hyuck´s.
Fondness, comfort, affection, care, desire, understating…they´re not the right words for what Donghyuck feels for Mark, but they are the closest.
“Such a scoundrel,” the older boy rolls his eyes.
“Such a prissy gent,” the younger replies. “You in or nay?”
Mark´s eyes drift off to the horizon again, the morning sun already out of its hiding place, the early rays of daylight exposing their nightly misfortunes. “Save it,” he says with finality. “I´ll need it for a real teacher, when we settle somewhere far away.”
***
For them, things had been easy and, at the same time, very hard.
For children in their kingdom, they´d been unlucky to be orphans. For orphans, they´d been lucky to find each other. For kids in the streets, they´d been the luckiest to be found by Johnny and Taeyong.
To Mark and Donghyuck, it always seemed as simple or complex as it was between them. When they fought, the city looked icky and overwhelming. When they were happy, everything turned prismatic. Their dreams became the strength to go through it all, ups and downs. Overall, they think themselves fortunate.
Of course, that wasn´t always their truth. There was a time when it felt like Destiny had made an astronomical ploy to mock them – to make them pay for Hyuck´s theft.
When they realized what their feelings meant, it was as if the world was ending.
Donghyuck knew since the moment he met Mark that he´d be different, that Hyuck would come to care and cherish him like no one else. For a time, it was only them and they were their only certainty – Mark had known. But knowing doesn´t erase the need for reassurance, especially when their job description at the whorehouse changed, and so many things with it.
Then Mark didn´t show up. It took Donghyuck an empty rooftop and emptier sunrise after so many years of meaningful dawns, to notice how much his increase of clients bothered Mark.
“I waited for you,” he said as he walked into the main floor, deserted except for a few workers this early in the morning. There was a tender smile on his lips and a question in his voice.
“Sorry,” Mark replied instantly, eyes focused on the front desk he was wiping with a rag, unnecessary as it was.
“Tell me.”
“It just slipped my mind.” And that bare-faced lie rung all the wrong bells in Hyuck´s brain.
Had it been anyone else, Donghyuck would have wrapped his fingers around his hand, asked through his touch What´s wrong? What can I do? Is it me?
But Donghyuck doesn´t lay a hand on Mark – not even a gentle one.
Mark and Donghyuck don´t hold hands, don´t touch, don´t let skin graze skin – not since they got to the brothel, tainted with lies, infidelities and so-called love. They´ve never thought being a whore is a sin, but broken people are like shards of glass; they hurt you with their wounds. Their clients often leave ugly stains and burdens and scars behind. Some people can carry them, and some would rather get rid of them before they take off the mask of strength and sensuality they´ve hidden beneath.
Some things you leave in your history, some things you bring with you.
Mark and Donghyuck never touch; they´d rather not cut each other with their collections of foreign wounds.
Had it been anyone else, Donghyuck would have never pleaded with his eyes or murmured a soft, strained “I´m smart, but I´m no psychic, Lee.”
“Am I just imagining it, Hyuck?” he asked in a whisper, rag clutched tightly in his fist.
It. Them. Did their jobs invalidate their feelings? Did their lack of touch or pretty words? Did their disbelief in love – pretentious, hollow, double-faced love?
Perhaps it was that way.
Perhaps the times they secretly snuck off to the market if only to get away from their dirty reality, or whispered their truths under star-dotted skies, or laughed quietly as they moped floors, or left little before dawn on muted feet to catch a string of music on a back alley – perhaps their stolen moments did not mean much to the world. But they meant the world to Donghyuck.
“I hope not,” he answered, a hand on the front desk, next to Mark´s. Because then I´d be imagining it too, was heard clearly, although not said out loud. Mark´s fingers tapped the wooden surface to the melody of his favorite song – the one he was dancing to on the summer night they met – and Donghyuck´s fingers followed him.
“You´re becoming popular,” he countered.
“There are so many things we want to try,” he argued back. Mark gave him a dimmed smile, but a smile, nevertheless.
Days went on that way. Donghyuck has always been a man of pragmatics. When Mark said it was settled, he took it. But their conflict did not end that morning.
Although Mark acted as usual every night, Hyuck saw it in the little things. How he pulled away when he leaned in, how quiet he was in the mornings, how his eyes followed him every time he guided a client to his assigned room.
But Mark didn´t say anything, and Donghyuck was running out of unspoken words and ambiguous things to do to prove it to him.
It was on a rainy morning when Hyuck braced himself and let the words his heart sheltered fall off his lips.
The rain was nothing more than a drizzle, the air dewy and misty. The cold has never been enough to keep them from their beloved morning ritual, but their beaten bones and joints always complain about rain after a fully-booked night of work.
Mark sat on his futon, halfway dressed, with only a pair of briefs and a worn blanket to cover his tender body, eyes lost in what could been seen of the city through their small window. Donghyuck wished he could smooth his fingers over the purple stains on his milky skin, soothe his worries like he wanted to.
Instead, he said with the utmost resolution he could muster, “I´m a whore, Mark.” The older boy gaped, raising from his spot – to do what, Donghyuck never found out. “My nights aren´t mine, it doesn´t matter who I waste them with. The person who matters is the one I want to spend my mornings next to – and I choose you every day.”
Mark bit his lip before giving Donghyuck a shaky smile. But what really convinced the younger boy was the look in his eyes, the happiness, the hope, the mutuality. He nodded his head.
“Let me take you to Taeil´s for lunch?” he answered. Not a mending gift – those are for lovers and their insubstantial showcase of feelings through wealth and presents and everything that means nothing. No, Mark and Donghyuck would rather show it through actions and time and companionship, not empty promises signed with gold.
Not quite usual reconciliation, but the one that means the most to them.
That´s when Donghyuck started thinking, perhaps, he didn´t owe anything to Destiny.
***
Unlike most occurrences in the whorehouse, it happens before dusk, with the sun still up in the sky and the main floor devoid of clients. Except for one: Lord Yoon, one of the most renowned noblemen in the region despite his lack of experience, his hands as ruthless and rough as his policies. Donghyuck loathes him.
“You took it, street rat!”
“I´m a whore, not a thief, my lord,” words ring as true as the fist holding him up by his shirt. He answers cordially, although the fire in his gaze is hard to misinterpret.
A loud crash makes Donghyuck´s head turn away from the nobleman´s searing glare, only to find Mark smashing a bottle of cheap booze on the edge of a table, glass shards shattering on the ground – and point it at the nobleman fisting the collar of Donghyuck´s thin shirt.
“Put him down,” he orders, voice so low it sends shivers down Hyuck´s spine, eyes so firm and menacing, that make him wonder how he´d never met this side of Mark.
Lord Yoon slowly places Donghyuck back on his feet, smoothes his rumpled shirt with a snicker. His expression screams trouble – and retribution. He leaves silently, but Mark and Donghyuck have lived on this side of the city for long enough, and they are no fools.
Everything comes with a price – even justice.
The second the nobleman is out the door, they hurry upstairs to the room with their futons and the few commodities they have.
It is jarring, when you can pack up your whole life in a single, worn bag.
But they learned to keep it simple, only a few clothes, maybe a gift or two from a client that they haven´t sold off in the market yet, and their pouch of savings. Any other belongings disappeared often, therefore, they never bothered with them.
“Why?” the younger boy asks out of curiosity, his voice not quite breaking the silence in the room, but sliding into rhythm with the hushed brushes of his hands working his clothes in his bag.
“I can´t let anyone hurt you. You´re my sky,” Mark whispers with certainty, busy with his own packing. There´s no fear or caution in his voice, only the habit of murmuring important things under their breaths, protecting them with their quietness and shared glances. He puts the frayed cord of his brown bag to his shoulder.
“Not your sunshine?” he teases with a smile that´s all too fond. His hands dig around the floor until he finds a loose tile. He lifts it, chipped nails scratching at its edges. With trembling fingers, he takes the small wooden box into his hands, gently touching the birthstone on the lid.
Mark shakes his head, his lips upturned. “Sky blue is my favorite color,” he says simply, as if that explains every question and feeling running through Hyuck´s veins.
“Sky blue sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy, day, night…?”
The older boy shrugs. Donghyuck understands that words do not speak full truths –but he doesn't need them to know, doesn´t need them to help the pink hues climbing up his cheeks.
Mark has been his rising sun and falling dusk, his blazing-work summers and snowflake-care winters. He´s been a new day and new start – and the familiar everyday-and-night certainty, too. He´s been the light he can always follow and the darkness that comforts him without a hitch.
The younger boy lets his fingertips graze the wooden box one last time before extending his arms in an offering. Not a gift, but a medium. A way to save all the things they´ll learn, carry them along their journey.
Mark brings the box close to his chest, cradles it like one would cradle someone precious. His eyes sweep over the birthstone once, twice, thrice – and then at Hyuck, liquid emotion in them.
“You remembered,” his voice trembles. Donghyuck shrugs.
There was only one thing Mark owned when Donghyuck first met him: a vibrant blue spinel-stone, hanging from a rusty iron chain. A gem of hope and renewal, the size of a berry and dirtied with time. A little jagged, a lot treasured.
The one thing his mother left behind.
The only thing Mark had tried to hold on to.
But life is cruel to children in the streets, and he had to sell it for a bit of bread he shared with the younger boy. Destiny took revenge on them when it brought that sneering merchant time and time again to their corner of the city, the stone shining in his cart, waiting to be hived off.
It took him seasons of hard-fucked nights to reach the price it took.
Of course Donghyuck understands when Mark calls him his favorite sky. After all, Mark is Donghyuck´s best day – the only day he wants to live in.
“You babble about your wish-list every morning,” Hyuck teases with a smile. Mark rolls his eyes, although the quirk of his lips betrays him.
“Moron.”
They are not ready to leave, Donghyuck realizes. They are not ready to take off from reality and step into a dream they´ve spent years working for. They are not ready to accept that letting go of all the bad, means letting go of some of the good and diving into the unknown.
But they would have never been ready enough either way.
Better sooner than later. Even if it means not returning.
Perhaps it is the nostalgia of leaving it all behind that makes Donghyuck´s eyes travel around the shabby walls and tattered floors with tenderness. Perhaps it is the relief that carries him downstairs with solid feet and the conviction that moving forward is not the same as running.
“Did you pick a fight with someone bigger than you?” Taeyong asks knowingly he sees them enter the little kitchen with their bags. There´s only enough space for one adult to stand properly, but Donghyuck feels as small as a child in his presence.
“We don´t pick fights – and everyone is bigger than us,” Mark pouts in response. Taeyong lets out a small laugh, shakes his head in the same way he used to whenever they brought the wrong ingredient or got asked silly questions.
“Cities and palaces make people seem small. Don´t let that deceive you, though.”
There´s a pang in Donghyuck´s chest. Mark and him grew up and into themselves in a world that tried to smother them, but Taeyong, the same Taeyong who gave them a last name and a family – as broken as it is – he always remained constant, strong and unrelenting as a pillar.
“Never come back, kids,” Johnny chimes into the conversation, gaze drawing conclusions, like he´s known them forever – because he has. He gave them their first non-stolen meal and non-temporary shelter, taught them how to use their body for sustenance.
“We´ll miss you,” Donghyuck admits with sincere eyes and not nearly enough words for his soaring heart.
“We´ll follow behind someday,” Johnny assures with a soft upturn of his lips, firm and quiet as ever.
Donghyuck knows he will never be able to give back all he was given. He settles for tight hugs, no tears and a promise to himself. Whatever it takes.
“Destiny bless you, kids,” Taeyong wishes as they exit, determined steps, wet eyes and dry cheeks, bags clutched close to their tired bodies.
They do not look back.
***
4 years later
Jisung sits down on the steps of his doorway, sweaty hair plastered to his forehead and dirty hands on his lap. Were it not for the unforgiving sun, his break time from his mom´s crop would still be hours away.
He takes in a deep breath, and the scent of fresh soil and leaves washes over him in a way that only happens during harvest time in farmer towns. He likes it – likes his life here, too.
People in town are almost always nice. Especially the couple two houses away, with the fruit farm; they have the best watermelons every summer – mister Lee blames it on his partner´s affinity for them. It is not unusual for Jisung to end up in their yard, giving a helping hand and sharing a meal with them, ending his afternoon with the other mister Lee teaching him something on his guitar.
Jisung likes them too, they´re a nice couple. Although, he´d never met anyone like them.
Whenever Jisung wakes early to visit his aunts on the town over the river, he catches a glimpse of them. For some unknown reason to him and his inability to wake up before dawn without a strong incentive, he always sees them on their roof, sitting on the tiles with their hands linked, feet dangling into nothingness. The first time, he thought it was a fluke, but he kept seeing them – when he woke up early enough to witness sunrise, of course.
They never said they were a couple, and, surprisingly, it´s not their touch that gave them away. It was the way they looked at each other, like they knew. Jisung has never seen another couple share looks like those, so full of something more than love.
He took to them since they moved in, with their interesting trinkets in a pretty wooden box, no explanations and eyes full of life.
He soon found out that they´re the kind of people who always have a story to tell and many more stores to live.
He doesn´t know how they do it, or where they go, but every couple of months, they dive into some adventure or the other, bring memories and smiles home with them. They´ve done so many things, too – he´s seen the postcards they´ve written on, of all the places they´ve visited – and he wishes he could grow up quickly and go on a journey himself someday.
Jisung isn´t sure where they came from – probably no one on town is – but he sees them smile so much, that he doesn´t really care about it. Nice people deserve to smile a lot.
“Excuse me,” a stranger clears his throat. The boy looks up to two men, one tall and well-built, the other shorter and with a face sculpted by Destiny herself if his beauty is anything to go by. He waits for the words that are sure to follow, wide eyes and gaping mouth.
“Johnny, you´re scaring him,” the smaller man scolds lightly. He turns to Jisung with a friendly expression. “Sorry to bother you, would you happen to know where we can find Lee Minhyung and Haechan?”
Jisung knows. Although he´s heard mister and mister Lee call each other by different names sometimes, those are the ones they introduced themselves with. It´s the first time he thinks there might be a reason.
“Are you nice people?” he asks, chest puffed out and shoulders squared like mister Lee taught him, even when he´s not feeling strong or confident. The men´s lips turn up, and he´s not sure if that´s exasperation or fondness in their eyes.
He hears a bright giggle behind him, turns his head to see his favorite couple smiling at him. The younger mister Lee is wrapped around the older one, touching wherever he can handle. They walk up to the boy, and one of them pats his head.
“Don´t worry, Jisungie, they´re the friends we´ve been waiting for.”