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It is 3 AM when Lee Donghyuck, holoracing champion and quite possibly the fastest man in the sector, wanders into Mark’s garage.
“You’re still up?” Donghyuck yawns around the words as he ducks under the half-open door of the enclosure, and Mark can hear the way that sleep drapes itself over his syllables, lends a softness to the honey-sharp of his voice.
“Had to repair the holoracer.” He leans over to tighten another bolt, and the soft sound of Donghyuck’s feet across the metal plating runs in time with the clinking of tools. “You weren’t exactly gentle with it during today’s race.”
“Rude.” Mark swivels around, and Donghyuck is pouting as he rummages through the lower section of a cooling shelf. “I tried my best to be nice to our baby. And besides…aha!”
Donghyuck pulls an ice-pack (penguin print, probably a gift from Jeno during their last skirmish-drive) from the mess of tools and waves it triumphantly with his free hand. “I didn’t get away scot-free either.”
The sub-zero air is still spilling out of the cooling shelf, sneaking its way under Mark’s heavy jacket and up the back of his neck, but Donghyuck is completely unfazed. He’s wearing sleep shorts and a shirt that Mark had mysteriously lost two weeks ago (mystery solved?), and there’s a flash of warm color as he pushes the ice pack under the thin cloth and against his side.
It is decidedly like him, Mark thinks, to be completely oblivious to the dropping temperatures in the garage. To be warm beyond reason as he squares the corners of his mouth in a way that brings the dimple in his right cheek to the surface. Donghyuck has always been golden.
“You’re staring.” Donghyuck closes the cooling shelf with the heel of his foot, and Mark turns back to the holoracer. Metal under the palms of his fingers, decidedly silver and rigid and not at all warm, where did I put my wrench?
“You should be more careful next time. That crash was nastier than most.”
“It wasn’t my fault! It was that loser, Jung?” Donghyuck hisses as he adjusts the ice pack, voice closer than before. “He tried to overtake me.”
“You’re racers, Donghyuck. It’s literally all you do.” Mark remembers watching Donghyuck push Jaehyun’s holoracer into the track wall, cringes internally at the phantom sound of metal against metal. Right after they’d installed new thrusters, too. “And now the holoracer is scratched up again.”
“That’s why I have you to fix it, my favorite mechanic and lifelong friend.” He turns around again as Donghyuck singsongs his way across the room, free arm extended as he does a half turn. Even now, ten years older and several inches taller, past lost races and empty pockets, Donghyuck is still full of motion, unbelievably so.
Streaking through the dusty streets of their home planet, a wrist wrapped around Mark’s forearm as they’d rushed to watch trucks race along a dusty circular path as children. Clinging to the driver’s seat of the first car Mark had ever repaired, chest filling with glee at the thrum of the motor. Jumping over the barricade when they’d hastily bid for Donghyuck’s holoracer. He is golden skin, hair like spun bronze, and Mark often struggles to comprehend the beautiful sense of it, how Donghyuck is most alive, most clear, when barely visible in the blur of motion.
“So, what exactly are you fixing?” He’s settled into the seat beside Mark, legs bouncing against the footrest. A deep, somewhat absentminded part of him takes a moment to appreciate how Donghyuck’s shoulders fill out the worn fabric of his shirt, how the rest of it drapes over his frame and ripples with each movement. Pantomiming the life within his limbs and bones.
“Sort of…everything?” He can trace the moles on Donghyuck’s neck as he leans in closer to take a look, and Mark feels like the sound of metal against metal and new exhaust pipes crunching against magnetic rail strip. Why are their knees touching ? “Everything needed fixing.”
“Yes, I can kind of tell.” Donghyuck deadpans and shifts in his seat, wincing. “I mean, what are you doing now?”
“Recalibrating the engine.” Mark takes a moment to praise the gods above (and possibly Jung Jaehyun) for their intervention, because this is something he can think about, something he can focus on. Tools in contact with the calluses of his palms, blueprints and fuel lines and metrics almost engraved into the lining of his eyelids. Precise and measured and not wobbling in the swivel chair next to him, dangerously luminescent in the dim light of the garage before dawn. “Whenever the holoracer’s center of gravity gets thrown off, like in a crash, I have to make sure that it’s realigned before you race again so that you can go as fast as possible without compensating for tilt.”
Donghyuck blinks at him. “I understand, but I also don’t.”
“This is your holoracer. Aren’t you supposed to know at least a bit about it?”
“I know what you mean, just not with those words!” Donghyuck pauses and cranes his neck to check on the holoracer, suspended by wires near the back of the garage, before turning back to him. “I partially take it back. I think I know what you mean.”
“Here.” He pulls the engine closer and rotates it towards Donghyuck, moves his fingers gently from wire to wire, valve to valve. “When you shift the gear, it all comes back to this spot. If it isn’t properly charged, you might tip off balance when the engine uses too much power.”
Then, inexplicably, Donghyuck aligns their knuckles, presses the pad of his thumb into Mark’s index finger, and pulls their hands down towards the engine. Warm skin and slight bones, nails gently clicking against his own as Donghyuck thumbs over the metal surface. “This part?”
“Yeah, there.” He pulls his hand from Donghyuck’s grip to reach for the calibrator, aligns the tool with the engine’s ports and resolves to ignore the possibility of holding Donghyuck’s hand, had he been holding hands with Donghyuck—
“That’s the calibrator, right?” And Donghyuck is helping him slot the linking wires into place, and the line of his shoulder connects all too cleanly with Mark’s upper arm. He sort of wants to cry.
“Mhm!” It comes out as a strangled squeak, and he thumbs the calibration sequence into the keypad like a prayer. 2-4-6-1-7-his-arm-is-warm-against-mine, Donghyuck’s hair smells like strawberry shampoo . He’s never smelled like anything else, Mark realizes, even after all this time. Even through the grease and synthetic smell of the garage, the constant scent of gasoline at the holotrack.
The engine beeps thrice in quick succession, and he puts the calibration tool away. “Done.”
Donghyuck whistles, scrapes his chair across the floor as he turns against the mechanism of the swivel. “I’ll try not to crash too hard next time, now that I know how it works.”
“Please.”
He stretches in response, back a graceful arc against the dim lighting of the garage, and Mark turns to fetch the exhaust pipes he needs to work on, obviously . They’re bent in all the worst ways, somehow, and he really needs to get to bed before dawn if he wants to make it to Donghyuck’s race in time. Next to him, Donghyuck’s eyes are already fluttering with sleep, still feather-light amidst his drowsiness.
He’s halfway through straightening the first exhaust pipe when Donghyuck yawns, scoots his chair closer to Mark’s right and slowly, perilously, aligns his body with Mark’s own. It feels almost surgical, too precise for Donghyuck’s speed and bluster, then alarm bells are going off in his head as Donghyuck leans and leans and leans into him , head soft and warm and gold onto the surface of Mark’s shoulder.
“Can you still work like this?” Donghyuck’s voice is muffled, soft and sweet and distorted around the press of his cheek against the thick jacket, and his words slur together with each warm exhale against Mark’s neck. “I’m sleepy.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Just don’t...move too much.” Mark briefly considers changing his name and moving galaxies to save face. Alternatively, he could take Donghyuck’s admittedly identical surname and marry him on the spot. He settles for focusing on the second bent exhaust pipe, and Donghyuck settles against his shoulder and closes his eyes.
In, out, in, out, and the sound of Donghyuck’s breathing punctuates the rise and fall of his chest, the fuzz of his hair against Mark’s jaw, and he can’t stop looking, can’t keep himself from glancing as he moves from one pipe to the next. Because there is often so much life in Donghyuck, so much movement beneath his skin, graceful and wild and something that disassembles the very handiwork of Mark’s being, moves him to write poems and sonnets in testament to the idea of Lee Donghyuck in motion.
But now he is resting against Mark, maybe because of Mark (a small part of him dares to dream), and it is an otherworldly sight. Soft around the edges with sleep, the corners of his lips pulled upwards in a gentle slope. Lines and angles and mechanical harmony in ways that defy tools, defy plans and constructs and anything Mark could ever begin to comprehend.
And it is this breathing, the gentle motion of his back and neck, that rivals the brutish bending of his wrench, the metal against metal of his work, because Lee Donghyuck has always moved, has kept moving since they were children amidst dust and dreams whispered beneath shared blankets. Because Donghyuck drove his holoracer with an attitude, flipped off Jung Jaehyun after their collision earlier in the day, and often forgot to refuel during pit stops. Because Lee Donghyuck is quite possibly the fastest man on their planet, in their sector, maybe in the galaxy, and he is still against Mark’s shoulder.
Perfectly still, at rest, asleep. The rhythm of his breaths steals Mark’s from his very lips.
“It’s amazing of you, by the way, always fixing my stuff.” Donghyuck has shifted his position, and Mark feels the gentle movement of his lips even through the thick padding. “Our stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“This. The holoracer. My old car.” His eyes stay closed as he speaks, and Mark tracks the line from his eyelashes to the slope of his nose, where hair falls gently over his forehead in shades of copper. “Everything, really.”
“Oh.”
When had he begun? Tinkering with scrap parts in the junkyards around their hometown, learning to weld and assemble with whatever Donghyuck could find? Scraping together money to buy a functioning motor, loading it into the rusted chassis of an old motor so that he could watch Donghyuck rocket over the hill behind their compound? Sneaking out of their tiny shared dorm to watch mechanics work on holoracers in the dead of night, mirroring movements until they became his own, became Donghyuck’s too, in a way?
He loved it, the feeling of putting together, taking apart, understanding the overlap between the two. Because while Donghyuck ran and drove and rode the thrill of going faster and faster, he’d found a home in the parts behind his motion, in the constant whir of the engine amidst sound and brilliant speed. Finding the lines that connected things, wire to wire and valve to valve, examining the intersections and junctions of every piece.
And when he looked at the invisible lines of his history, the blueprints and diagrams of the past years? They all led back to Donghyuck. Intertwining and weaving, motion unceasing towards him.
Donghyuck, who moved so fast and so often that his footsteps had begun to run in time to the beating of Mark’s heart. Donghyuck, who defied wires and valves and carefully weighted levers, who made him feel like every nut and bolt inside him had decided to mutiny all at once. Donghyuck, face wedged into the crook between Mark’s shoulder and neck, drifting into sleep and, for once, completely still.
He bends the last pipe into shape and pushes it to the side. It is 5 AM.
“Donghyuck.” It comes out as a whisper, and he rolls his shoulder lightly. Donghyuck doesn’t respond.
“Hyuck, I’m going to bed, okay?” He makes a small noise of complaint in response, and Mark files it away for later to yell into his pillow. After a moment, he continues. “Good night.”
As he slowly eases Donghyuck off his shoulder, gets up to leave, something wet and heavy hits the floor. It’s the ice pack.
“Seriously? You’re just going to leave like that?” Donghyuck is straightening up to match his height, a warm bronze flush spreading over the apples of his cheeks, and god why is he so pretty— “No kiss on the forehead? Hand-holding? Anything?”
Mark is fairly certain that he’s overheating. Or that he’d died in a horrific track-side accident, and this is his eternal, lovesick-motorist themed purgatory. “What?”
“I’ve been flirting with you for the entire night!” He palms at the back of his neck, and the dimple is back in full force. “I even came down in shorts. And your shirt. Barefoot .”
“Why would you do that?”
“ Because I like you! And we’re both stupid!” Donghyuck pauses and reconsiders, and even the sides of his neck are flushed. “Or maybe just me because you can fix engines and stuff, but—”
Some small and delusional part of Mark wrenches all rational thought away and takes control. “Wait, you like me?”
Donghyuck blanches, honey under weak sunlight, and the edges of his oversized shirt commiserate with secondary ripples. “Uh…okay good night!” Then he is running out of the garage, past the cooling shelf and through the half open door, and Mark follows, laughter pooling in the pit of his chest.
Because he has always followed Donghyuck, through the streets, onto the track, down the stairs in the middle of the night. Footsteps in line with the rhythm of his heart, with his breathing, always in motion, even when still. It is second nature to follow, so, so easy.
He catches up to him halfway down the corridor outside their garage, tugs at his wrist like Donghyuck once had, and they are both laughing, breathless in the dim light of the city at dawn. And even here, Donghyuck has not stopped moving, laughter in the hollow of his back, a natural bounce in his step, beautiful, beautiful motion, and Mark’s chest is so full of things that he cannot wait to set free.
“Did you mean it?” It comes out in a rush, and there are pieces inside him, pieces of him, that have shaken loose because of it all. He is holding Donghyuck’s wrist, and their knees are almost touching in the tight space of the corridor. So many parts and connections coming undone, flying back together, and Mark thinks that yes , he is beginning to understand the alignment of things, the overlaps and intersections.
Donghyuck is glowing. “Of course I did. I do . It’s you.” Then he dims, and there is less movement beneath his skin, a quietness in his eyes. “Is that okay?”
He realizes, not for the first time, that Donghyuck is warm beyond reason, like glazed honey beneath his fingertips. Bronze and amber against the palms of his hands, glinting in the half darkness. And even in the silence, he can hear the phantom of his laugh, the temperate melody of his voice over the years, undistorted by the motion of things come and gone.
In the darkness, Donghyuck is golden, golden as his palms find the junction between jawline and neck, tilting his head upwards to close the distance. Moles across the bridge of his nose, eyes loving, unceasing, in the light of the city coming to life. So, so warm, and he follows.
It is 5 AM and Mark finds Lee Donghyuck, holoracing champion and quite possibly the fastest man in the galaxy, completely still for the second time that night.