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(There is this ultimate question they’d ask: would you devote your whole life to something you cannot truly sense? And it’s like—they’d ask you this about love.)
The explanation of how they got together is not a long one, nor is it very special.
Donghyuck remembers things in sparks, short-lived bursts of light that hang before his eyes for half a second before dropping to the floor, snuffing out under his soles. Deconstruction will do that to you, the collapse of an empire you were meant to serve for much longer than you really did.
Muted and unavoidable, the work of two acts: NCT disbands, and Donghyuck finds a way to band together anyway.
Not with everyone, because some of the strings they’d wound around each other’s pinkies are stained black, or fraying, or barbed and drawing blood, but purity has always been a white-hot staple of NCT’S Mark Lee, and the string between him and Donghyuck is clean and seemingly untouched. A rope made of bones, it breaks and it heals, breaks and heals, breaks and heals—
Moving in together is not expected. Temporary, is what Mark says a few days in. A few weeks in. A few months in.
A few months in.
A few months in Donghyuck shoves his hands under his thighs and shifts his centre of gravity in the middle of their fifth rewatch of The Notebook, coming just close enough to kiss Mark on the corner of his mouth. A few months in, in the middle of their fifth rewatch of The Notebook, Mark’s lips part in surprise and his big eyes do a quick one-two of Donghyuck’s mouth, Donghyuck’s pupils. On three, his hand is climbing the wall of Donghyuck’s cheek, fingers digging in gently so he doesn’t fall, and his lips move in search of Donghyuck’s, brave and sure.
What they are is still up in the air.
What they are not is temporary.
When Mark looks at Donghyuck, he says he sees time. (Maybe that’s how Donghyuck knew the minute he’d sent himself off-balance that he’d be coming back for seconds, over and over again.)
Mark says Donghyuck is breath bouncing off the solid walls of an empty practice room, the squeak of borrowed new shoes before going up on stage, laughter in places you don’t look for, a hand that always pinches before it soothes, a hoarse throat, a bruised throat.
He says a lot of things like that, and Donghyuck’s not shy by nature, but he’d urge anyone to try remaining static in front of Mark, who says some days, every minute spent doing something else when I could’ve been seeing you made it harder to breathe, I think that’s why they call it killing time.
By no means is it an easy task.
Donghyuck wants to say things like that back, things that shroud Mark’s thinking in smoke for days and don’t curl out of his hair and off his skin in wispy tendrils, leaving before they’ve even left a lingering scent. But Donghyuck doesn’t know how to reciprocate, tell Mark that he’s his rock, his boulder, his mountain. That in the midst of a seismic shift, all Donghyuck knew was to reach for Mark’s hand because he knew it would be the only thing unshakable.
Feelings don’t rot with time, thankfully. For now, it’s enough to open a door and get sucked into a pocket-world free from prying eyes.
To call, “Home,” and hear, “Kitchen,” in response.
Mark stands guard over a bubbling pot, figure drenched in warm light. He’s got a phone in hand and his broad back to Donghyuck, socked feet standing confidently on vinyl squares. He isn’t exactly a better cook than he was at 14, 17, 20, but time has given him reason to shed uncertainty.
The only thing that really matters is that he tries for Donghyuck. He always tries for Donghyuck.
“Smells like food,” Donghyuck observes, arms engulfing Mark from behind. He stamps one, two, three kisses over the peak of his clothed shoulder, affection cresting dangerously in his chest when Mark clicks off a recipe and slides his phone onto the counter, layering their hands together over his stomach. A barely-felt kiss finds home on Donghyuck’s temple.
“Sorry I’m not Gordon Ramsey,” he says, fingers pinching the back of Donghyuck’s hand.
Donghyuck hums. “I like Minhyung Ramsey.”
Mark makes a skeptical sound while Donghyuck’s chin slots itself over his shoulder, heads pressed together. He can see the stubble on Mark’s jaw, thin flares of hair only noticeable to people who have the privilege to get so close to him. Donghyuck stops himself from nosing along the trail. Mark’s already somewhat of a risk in the kitchen.
“How was your day? Good?” Mark asks while adjusting the heat, patient and genuine in the way that makes Donghyuck want to run laps in the middle of summer, sometimes, like he could sweat all the restless want out of him so he’d never have to say a single word. Donghyuck is a very rational person, but liking someone is not about rationality. Liking Mark, especially, could never be about rationality.
He nods into the chiffon-thin veneer of sweat crawling down Mark’s neck, catching the whiff of rice wine and garlic settled in his shirt. “Better now.”
Mark’s laugh is more breath than sound, that age-old mix of disbelieving and fond Donghyuck never fails to elicit, and he hands off some of his weight to Donghyuck’s chest, a trust-fall of affection. Donghyuck reaches out to stir the pot from behind, one hand still wrapped firmly around Mark’s middle.
Easy has never been the best word to describe their relationship right from the very beginning, but he thinks he’d risk saying it from time to time now. Not reflexive, but learned simplicity—it’s a fact that fans the flames of pride in his chest far more than he’d like to admit.
How far they’ve come, how far Donghyuck still wants to go. The road seems never ending, and Donghyuck collects blisters on his feet like they’re trophies.
A bit of broth splashes onto his wrist, but he barely gets to react before Mark’s thumbed it away, skin tough but never enough not to be gentle. He’s probably going to be soaked in soup smells by the time they’ve left the kitchen, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. On hard days, he wishes for it to happen faster, the slow burial of outside-Donghyuck under home-Donghyuck, Mark-Donghyuck. It’s the one thing they don’t have to worry about—smelling like each other. No one to worry about would get close enough to be able to tell, anyway.
Mark nudges his arm up before it makes contact with steel, reclaiming the ladle while he murmurs something about burns and paying attention. Donghyuck lets him takeover without so much as a breath, instead taking the time to study the warmth pooling under Mark’s skin from the heat of the stove. It’s affecting Donghyuck, too, he can feel the prickle on his cheeks, the near uncomfortable dampness to his chest, but he doesn’t pull away.
When he gets to Mark’s eyes, they’re all lit up. It’s like looking into the window of a house, almost, like maybe if his eyes glow, so does everything on the inside.
“Look,” Mark says with a pleased little smile, scooping some of the liquid up and out of the pot, broth spilling over the edges. The vapour obscures the contents for a moment before Donghyuck can see what he’s found important enough to show, it’s a small cut of fishcake, edges softened and fallen away. “It’s like a heart! Cute.”
Feelings don’t rot with time, all they do is marinate, and it’s unfair. It’s unfair because when Mark looks at Donghyuck, he says he sees time, but when Donghyuck looks at Mark, he sees a world full of roses. It’s unfair, because being with Mark means having his eyes, seeing the beauty in every little thing. Mark takes pictures of their shadows when it looks like they’re holding hands when they can’t actually hold hands in public, he points out the phases of the moon in wonder everyday like they don’t run on a pre-determined schedule, he laughs at bad jokes and dots his sunscreen on in the shape of a smiley face and finds heart-shaped fishcakes cute enough to pull out and show Donghyuck.
And all Donghyuck can give back is a few memories, even when he gets to keep all of that, all of Mark, forever.
(Forever.)
“You’re cute,” Donghyuck says overly-sweet right into Mark’s ear because he doesn’t know how else to translate the twist in his ribs. It’s the first of many signs, of that something more he keeps trying to put his finger on. He kisses Mark’s earlobe and smiles when his shoulders spring up sensitively, shiver subtly running through his body.
They go to sleep later that night without changing. When Donghyuck wakes up, the sheets smell like garlic. And something more.
Historically, Donghyuck is touchy.
He likes being close enough to people that when he pulls away their skins stick together for a brief moment, bound by sweat and heat. He likes to cuddle and coddle and kiss and kiss, there is no line uncrossable, no better measure of intimacy. Mark says it’s his love language, Donghyuck says it’s just his language, the mother of mother tongues.
Historically, Donghyuck is touchy.
Words sting and scald easily because his skin’s been rubbed thin by how often he’s got it up against someone else’s. Jokes turn into jabs and jabs turn into arguments and arguments turn into stone-cold silence, and half of the time it’s his own fault for letting things get out of hand, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still burn.
So, he’s adopted a sort of lone-wolf rule for when he’s trapped in his head. It’s easier to not have to explain the inner workings and idiosyncrasies of what goes on in there to anyone and just sit down in one place surrounded by inanimate objects that can’t further aggravate him, still as deep waters on a windless day. Not the easiest solution, but a solution nonetheless.
It gets harder when something happens at work early on and he has to blaze through the rest of the day armed with nothing except his perfunctory politeness, which is about as effective a weapon as a double-ended spear.
Here’s the replay: Donghyuck is sitting at the table of a variety show, talk of his future solo endeavours turn to his past ties with SM, to NCT having been doomed from the start, to toddlers and toys and inevitable lifestyles. Donghyuck’s teeth speak more for him than his mouth does, bared balefully but somehow passed off as a smile, and they carry the rest of the day’s conversations as well.
Fast forward to the present, and he’s sitting on the couch staring at a turned off TV, face reflected back in the screen, dark and distorted. Maybe it’s some sort of twisted metaphor. Something about being doomed to be the spectacle forevermore.
Maybe this is what it means to have something then lose it and try to live life pretending you haven’t had a chunk of flesh melted out of your side. When you speak, you can’t bleed. When you stay quiet, you can’t hurt.
Donghyuck is not fragile, but if you are not fragile then you have room to be malleable. A few wrong words and he shrinks into himself like plastic near a flame, a few wrong thoughts and he spends days stewing in his own head.
Historically, Donghyuck is touchy, and Mark has found a way to be the balm to both those aches.
He enters the apartment fresh from work and trips into Donghyuck’s wallowing. It takes about three seconds of staring for him to toss the car keys into Donghyuck’s lap. “Go for a drive.”
Mark believes in miracles, but Donghyuck thinks he might be the biggest one of them all.
A mind reader, people-knower like no other. Donghyuck never seems to know what he needs, and Mark may be silly and gullible and endearingly easy to tease, but he isn’t oblivious or emotionally plugged like Donghyuck can be, sometimes. He knows how to read between the lines of a room, of a person.
Donghyuck fiddles with the keys and wonders when being a lone-wolf stopped sounding like the simplest solution.
Quietly, he asks, “Will you come with me?”
And Mark is probably tired, he’s got less colour in his face than Donghyuck’s used to and he’s tipping over in that way he does when his right knee is being a bit of a nuisance, his hair holds the shape of frustrated fingers and he’s got scrapped lyrics and dry beats written in the lines of his forehead, but he doesn’t confess any of this. Instead, he says yes and puts the shoes he’d just taken off back on because Donghyuck is hot-headed and selfish, but Mark never sees it that way, just as giving Donghyuck what he deserves.
Temper balancing on a tightrope, Donghyuck drives them to the edges of the city while Mark stares out the window as pins of light twinkle across more and more of the sky. He drives and drives with stinging hands and hard-set shoulders until they’ve reached a lookout point, and the tightrope widens until he has enough room to stop holding his breath and curling in on himself.
They sit in the silence, staring out at Seoul and all of its hidden vices that Donghyuck wishes he could run far away from at least once a day, and Mark doesn’t ask any questions because he’s learned they’ll go unanswered anyway. The radio sings a soft tune, Mark cranks it up a little higher, sliding down in the seat with a content sigh, despite everything.
Donghyuck has never wanted to be hard to love.
He’s never wanted to have skin so tough love bounces off instead of trying to seep through, so dense love says it’s tired of trying to come in and take root. He’s never wanted love to roll its eyes if he’s being difficult. He’s never wanted to be difficult.
And Mark has never made him feel like he is.
Slowly, he reaches for Mark’s hand, dimly registering that this is the first time they’ve touched in the last twenty-four hours, schedules only allowing for texts (thinking of you) and calls (thinking of you) and thoughts (you). Mark entwines their fingers without looking away from the sky, and it’s like the splitting inferno stuck in his chest falls to an ember-glow, fight melting into nothing. Their wrists pulse against each other, steady and rhythmic.
Donghyuck doesn’t know much about love, but he thinks this might be how it survives. In the dark. In the quiet. In the joining of hands.
He takes a deep breath and doesn’t let go.
“No, not that one, baby.”
The camera pans to another pair of shoes, images sticking every so often before jumping to a new cut. Donghyuck nods when it steadies, bringing the phone closer to his face so he can see through the rough pixels. Mark doesn’t replace things easily, and his six-year-old phone is a testament to this, crappy camera quality and all.
“Oh, actually, you might be right,” Mark muses, voice layered and spotty. Donghyuck just catches the price label before Mark switches the camera back to his conflicted expression. It was a little blurry, but he’s pretty sure there were three placeholders for numbers. “Does Chenle still like green? I feel like he might not.”
Donghyuck rolls over onto his stomach, leaning the phone against the soft body of the pillow before sinking his elbows into the mattress, face in hands. Mark’s been neglecting to shave, Donghyuck can see the stubbly shadow licking up his jaw even through the questionable clarity. He stops from doing something silly like reaching up to trace it.
“The only thing Chenle’s gonna care about is that you got him a gift in the first place, don’t overthink it.”
Mark nods, eyes still flickering between the different pairs off-screen. He looks down at Donghyuck for a second, expression brightening minorly. “You look nice.”
Donghyuck does not.
He hasn’t showered yet, a result of lazing around on a schedule-less day. His hair twists in rough ribbons and his whole face is patched in warmth, sweat and acne spots mixing in undesirable flares. But Mark’s lips quirk up anyway, and Donghyuck’s reminded that he’s never really cared much for looks. “Very huggable.”
Donghyuck pulls out a pout. “Don’t say that when you’re halfway around the world, you ass.”
Mark’s entire face lights up, brilliant and dancing with laughter, and it only subsides by an interrupting voice saying something in Portuguese. He holds up a finger to the screen before lowering it and attempting to find common ground in English. A few moments later, he’s bringing the screen back to his face, hand rubbing the exhaustion out of it. “Customer service guy. We’re dead set on the green?”
“I think they look nicer than the blue, yeah.” Donghyuck studies the angry streaks left on Mark’s cheek, willing them away with just his eyes. “You’re not getting anything for yourself?”
Mark makes a noncommittal noise, audio filling with movement as he stretches to grab the shoes from the shelf.
“I don’t really need new shoes, mine are alright.”
Chenle doesn’t need new shoes either, but Donghyuck holds back from shooting back with that. Needs and wants are very clearly defined in Mark’s vocabulary, set up with their own conditions for when to indulge. He hardly ever needs anything. He doesn’t need a new wallet whose leather hasn’t been worn down from the oils of two sets of hands, he doesn’t need a new backpack that doesn’t have part-time functional zippers, he doesn’t need a new phone that can hold more memories and make clear-cut new ones, and he doesn’t need new shoes with stiff, uncracked soles.
Mark’s a spender for everyone but himself. Three figures on a friend? All in a day’s work.
Donghyuck would spend lifetimes just looking at him if he was given the chance.
“Hyuck? Hey.”
Donghyuck snaps out of it, vision leaking hot-blue. Mark is a flame that doesn’t need to promise warmth to reel in admirers.
“I’m gonna go check out.” The screen shows the ceiling sweeping by as he walks. “Have you eaten dinner yet? I can call when I go get breakfast and we can eat together.”
“I could go for dessert,” Donghyuck offers easily. “I’m up for a while, just call whenever.”
There’s something special about being able to share a meal together, even if they’re not really together. It’s gotten a little pathetic how much he misses having a body around, available and warm to fall into.
He misses having someone to talk about nothing with. He misses picking apart all of Mark’s expressions; the creases around his eyes when he smiles, the thinnest of lines on his forehead when he raises his brows, the widening of his eyes when Donghyuck’s about to do something he definitely shouldn’t.
It’s sort of awful being in a relationship.
Donghyuck never thought himself as half of anything before, but he kept heating up pieces of himself and knocking them off, handing them over as the months passed by, and now he never feels quite whole without Mark.
The ceiling stops moving, and Donghyuck’s screen lights up with Mark’s face again.
“I miss you,” Donghyuck says before Mark’s gotten a word in. He curls his fingers around the phone, bringing it close. “A lot.”
Mark’s smile turns wistful. Softly, he replies, “Miss you more.”
Donghyuck shakes his head, unwilling to lose. “Miss you most.”
Mark’s eyes melt, noticeable even through the shitty camera, and he presses a kiss to two fingers before covering the camera with them. “See you soon, baby.”
The call ends with drawn out goodbyes, casting the whole room back into a cold wash, and all Donghyuck can do is stuff his face into the pillows and try not to scream into nothingness—it wouldn’t bode well for the memory-foam to tuck away the shape of his want. The shape of his need. (Donghyuck’s got a clearly defined vocabulary, as well.)
He waits for the phone to ring with his eyes closed and breath stifled, a silly promise in the back of his mind to look at absolutely nothing before he can look at Mark again.
Disbandment means they’re no longer under the umbrella of SM Entertainment, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to cross rainy roads and meet their fans on the other side. A relationship like that built over so many years exists only to bridge distances, not create them. To collapse those bonds would be to crush all the years they’ve put into giving out and receiving so much love.
Donghyuck doesn’t keep tabs on every single one of their members, that would be like trying to trap water in his fist, but occasionally he’ll stumble onto the remnants of a splash one member or another made. So and so went live specifically for such and such anniversary, things of that sort.
The connections didn’t fade—don’t fade—and the external ones help keep the internal ones afloat.
Exhibit A: Practicing together as Dream for the first time in three years for a reunion show highly coveted by fans.
None of Donghyuck’s relationships with Dream are corroded, fortunately, so it’s not hard falling back into that same banter without fear of someone being unable to take the weight. That same back-and-forth that helped spring them from one sleepless night to another way back when is still intact, and it’s probably one of the only balls of tangled strings that can co-exist without wanting to unravel.
They rely on age-old tactics to get through practice today, too, forming games out of what’s expected of them, half-assed versions of random play dances. Whose muscle memory is the strongest? Who can get to their position the fastest? First one to forget buys chicken!
By the time the first break rolls around, Mark is breathing hard on the couch, Donghyuck close enough beside him to feel the heat radiating off his skin. Honestly, he’s having just as hard a time, forgotten stitches sewing themselves back into his side for the first time in three years. But he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t take the few chances he gets to tease.
“Feeling faint? Should I keep 119 on standby?”
“You know what you should do?” Mark grunts, bending over in half to tug his shoes off. One of the staff members is coming their way with a box in hand. “Shut up.”
“Make me,” Donghyuck huffs, letting the couch swallow him as he sweeps his legs open. He can’t even make himself sound suggestive at this point, all his energy has burned into ash. This is what he gets for not keeping up with stamina-training, he supposes.
Mark snorts at the limp quality of his voice, accepting the box from the staff member. He flips the lid open before Donghyuck can ask any questions, answer ready in his mouth. “The shoes we’re gonna wear when we perform. My footwork’s feeling clumsy, it’s better to just practice in these to begin with.”
When he pulls them out, memories blink in and out of Donghyuck’s reservoirs of sore feet and soaked socks. They’re the especially cramped dress shoes that have never done any wonders for Mark’s wide feet, chafing the thin skin over his bones and leaving raw blisters in their wake. He used to complain about wearing them from time to time, not much in front of everyone else because he’d rather have walked it off than come across as whiny, but in the bubble of Donghyuck’s room late at night, everything was fair game—they’d sleep facing each other and bicker while recounting their days, fingertips touching between their bodies but never going further.
If he’s really going to practice in these shoes, it’s bound to leave him swollen and ice-hungry for days.
“I feel like you’ll regret this,” Donghyuck warns once Mark’s tied the laces and leaned back all the way, forehead gleaming with sweat. He already looks seconds away from dropping to the floor, Donghyuck doesn’t know why he’d push himself even more. (That’s a lie, Donghyuck knows. Donghyuck’s always known when it comes to Mark and his too-big, too-hard-working heart.) “I won’t be the one spreading aloe vera over your blisters when we get home.”
(That’s a lie, too.)
Mark rolls his eyes, bringing a leg up on the couch so he can twist comfortably into Donghyuck’s space, fingers slipping up his jaw, taking hold on his cheek, behind his ear. “Didn’t I say something about you shutting up?”
Kissing Mark is not new, but it’s different when Mark kisses like this, lazy, without heated intention, care fumbled and dropped somewhere on the way to Donghyuck’s mouth. It’s different when Donghyuck can taste the sweat on Mark’s upper lip, can feel his stomach lurch in that new way that isn’t their first kiss or their first time or anything else similar.
Mark kisses like he knows Donghyuck will kiss him back despite the lack of finesse, attention to detail, and he’s not wrong, especially when Donghyuck is high off feeling the string thicken between them, reinforcing their likeness.
Mark works himself to the bone for what he loves. Mark never gives anything less than 200%. Mark tastes like wood and paint because of the pencil he’d stuck between his teeth, stretching the sides of his mouth to improve his already perfect diction because the fans deserve more than perfect, even if it’s not completely possible.
Mark tastes like devotion, and Donghyuck’s gut recognizes its own.
It has him rising to land properly in his lap, still languid.
“So it’s like that?” Mark murmurs against his lips with a smile, flats of his fingernails rubbing lines up and down Donghyuck’s sticky, bare arms. He doesn’t respond, too caught up in treasuring all of Mark, slow and unhurried as can be, a little messy, a lot perfect, because it could never be anything less with Mark.
Mark, who tastes like wood.
He tastes like wood.
Donghyuck puts a name to what it is and lets his love splinter into Mark’s mouth, hoping it stays stuck to his insides strong enough that he feels the itch, that Donghyuck doesn’t ever have to say it out loud.
Breaking free slow enough to see their spit stretch and clip between their mouths, Donghyuck kisses the tip of Mark’s nose, avoiding his eyes entirely. Mark kisses his jaw, lips wet against the already damp skin, and it should be gross, but Donghyuck just laughs, a jumpy thing that sounds nothing like him. He can’t really control it, the massive feeling in his chest growing exponentially with every passing second, burning, burning, burnt.
“Are you always this good when you’re tired?” Mark teases, peppering the words down Donghyuck’s throat until he can rest his forehead against his shoulder, arms looping around his waist to pull him in tight.
Donghyuck’s all but forgotten the staff milling about in the other part of the room, about Dream eventually barging back in from their coffee run. It’s too hot to keep sitting like this, but Mark tasted like wood.
“I’m always good,” he breathes out at last, nose buried deep in Mark’s hair. “For you.”
(Not a lie.)
Not everything is singed after the split.
Donghyuck gets to have Mark, health that does not drastically fluctuate like the weather in mid-September, and a schedule that is largely flexible. The days don’t have to be so stiff anymore, he can roll over a few into the next week if need be or bend some over to accommodate other priorities. Some he can split down the middle entirely if he’s feeling overwhelmed, and others he can stretch out to evenly distribute the load.
It makes a world of a difference to set a career in motion that isn’t contingent on a small village sized group of people.
He can do things he couldn’t before, like spend an entire day working from home, writing lyrics that aren’t shot down the minute they’ve been uncovered. The apartment isn’t big, but two rooms for one couple means they have an office of sorts. Bonus points for working in the same field, there was little to compromise over.
Today, it’s Donghyuck’s turn to use it. Or, it should’ve been a full day of him using it, but honestly, he’s tired. His brain is starting to sputter, caught in a web of metaphors and wordplay and things that sound pretty versus things that don’t. He takes off the headphones, tips of his ears pinching with the final release of constant pressure, and his fingers pause the beat that’s been looping for an hour straight in search of meaning.
The phantom ringing fades slowly, and he leans back in the chair, staring at the ceiling until everything’s gone quiet.
Except something pushes through the quiet as his ears recalibrate to normal decibel levels, growing until it’s filled itself with the distant snap of guitar strings.
Mark.
He’s been home all day, too. The last time Donghyuck had wandered outside looking for an excuse to pass the hours by, he was in the middle of marathoning a set of movies he’d apparently been wanting to watch but hadn’t found the time to.
Sleep is definitely calling Donghyuck’s name, but his instincts will always answer to Mark first, and curiosity wins out, dragging him away from the arms of one melody and into another. He treks down the hall with padded feet and stops at the lip of the living room, leaning against a wall with crossed arms as he watches Mark, who’s seated at the edge of the couch, guitar on his thigh as he leans over the coffee table to scribble something on a piece of paper.
Donghyuck rubs the sleep out of his eyes with a knuckle, barely holding back from popping a yawn as Mark strums another few chords on the guitar lightly, testing out a few before he sticks to one and leans back over the paper.
There’s always been something magnetic about Mark Lee and his guitar.
Maybe it’s the way he doesn’t seem to realize how attractive it is, how sweet that he loves music enough to keep it as a career and a hobby and never grow tired of it. Maybe it’s the memories attached to it: attempting to write a song together as trainees, covering songs never to be released because it was fun and at least they weren’t using their hands and mouths to fight, dedicating time in the shower to perfecting his quiet singing voice because he’d noticed how Mark looked at him sometimes when they busked together, eyes like a needle, Donghyuck like true north.
Whatever it is, Donghyuck can never quite look away.
Mark strums the next chord a little too loudly, and his head whips around to the hall to check if the roar has drawn Donghyuck out in a few seconds, somehow, but his concerned expression slowly slides into a surprised one at already finding Donghyuck standing there.
“Hyuck,” Mark says, hand slowly going to the paper on the table. He flips it over without breaking eye contact. “You’re here.”
“I am,” Donghyuck replies slowly, smile tugging at his lips. “I live with you, remember?”
“I meant, like, why are you all the way over there if you’re done?”
Mark is acting just a bit odd, hugging the guitar to his chest closer than usual. Donghyuck casts a thoughtful look at the paper before starting to walk over to the couch.
“I was just listening.” He sinks down on the cushions, crossing his legs as he turns to face Mark. “What were you working on?”
Mark is, by nature, an awful liar. He just can’t do it. It’s adorable, actually. Tell him to act on-screen and he’ll find a way to give a convincing performance because it’ll most likely be for work and Mark is nothing if not a perfectionist. But in real life, it’s a lot less seamless, erratic threads of the truth poking up awkwardly.
“Stuff.”
Case in point.
“Hyung.” Donghyuck flops his head sideways onto the backrest, hoping to seem as pitiable as possible. “I’m tired, why won’t you sing to me?”
Mark’s composure visibly cracks, and a half-sheepish, half-nervous smile spans across his face involuntarily. The standing lamp in the corner of the room wraps everything in a comforting, lambent glow, and it’s enough to turn Donghyuck’s insides into fireflies. Mark makes the idea of cherishing someone feel whole, Donghyuck keeps every single inch of him in his pockets.
Casting a quick look at the downturned paper, Mark looks back to Donghyuck, laughing lightly as he fixes the collar of his shirt, gaze finally landing on his guitar.
“Okay,” he gives in with a funny little smile. “Alright, uh. I don’t have much, so…”
It’s a sheltered melody, simple like the gentle flicker of a handful of fire, soothing like the crackles that come from inside of it. But it’s only until Mark starts singing in that low, stretched-canvas-like voice of his that Donghyuck realizes why.
Mark sings about the future, about a tiny person unknown, about keeping safe and loving soft. He sings about everything he wants to be not for himself, but for them, for them to look up to and land safely in. A heart inside of a heart because he’d risk breaking his own to stop the same from happening to theirs.
The world is big, so we’ll start small, Mark sings, eyes closed as his ears flood pink, when you hold my thumb, I’ll show you it all. But until then if you need, it can just be us three: me, my baby, and our baby-to-be.
When he opens his eyes, he keeps them downcast, fingers flexing on the fretboard like he doesn’t really know what to do with them. Donghyuck doesn’t know what to do with his, either, they’re sizzling so wildly he doesn’t know if he should plunge them into cold water or press a brand over Mark’s chest in the shape of his fingerprints.
“I watched this movie,” he explains with a small laugh, shaking his head. “The parents had this special song for their kid, and I was like, I could totally do that. I—I want to do that. Obviously, I’d make another song for when the baby is actually born, you know. I mean, assuming there was a surrogate involved.” Mark covers his face with a hand, voice pitching up a little higher. “Not that I’ve been thinking about it! I mean, not with y—not that I wouldn’t with—but, you know.” He exhales into his palm. “Jesus. Sorry.”
Somewhere inside of Donghyuck, the big swelling thing stops growing, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like anticipation or restless energy or this big lead up to something—it just feels like a primordial knowing.
Donghyuck is in love with Mark.
There is no other explanation for it, really.
He unsticks himself from the backrest, gently tugging Mark’s hand off his red face, and he looks at someone he loves. Because Mark is unbelievably genuine and does things like write songs for his future children at half past nine, and he gets shy only when he’s caught, and he apologizes for having the world’s biggest, purest heart, and Donghyuck is so in love with him it’s scary, insides suspended, waiting for the words that’ll kickstart them again.
The thing about the business of love is that it isn’t very lucrative. You give with everything you have, spend hours dedicated to wanting and wishing and worshipping, and maybe you get love back, but that maybe, that uncertainty, that’s what makes it love. To give your heart away and be okay with the emptiness.
But Mark doesn’t hollow people out, he fills them in.
“We should just forget about—”
“We shouldn’t,” Donghyuck manages to choke out. Mark looks at him, regretful, as Donghyuck moves the guitar off his lap with one hand, the other still holding Mark’s. “Just.”
Mark laces their fingers together without thinking, eyes flighty, searching. “Just?”
Donghyuck should say it.
He doesn’t.
“Just come to bed, baby.” He looks at their hands, not trusting his eyes to keep the words a secret. He stands up, pulling Mark with him. Why do their hands have to fit together so well? It’s heartmending. “It’s late, we should get some sleep.”
“Hey.” Mark doesn’t budge when Donghyuck tries walking them back to the room, pulling him back in. “Honestly, we can forget any of that even happened, alright?”
And he might not be able to say what he should just yet, but Donghyuck can say this, finally welding their eyes together: “Honestly, I really don’t want to.”
Mark flushes. “Oh.”
Oh doesn’t even begin to cover it.
It takes three more nights.
Mark comes in on the third one after being held up at work all day, and even though Donghyuck hears him coming in and has spent nearly the whole day running through all the different ways to say what he wants to—because he really does want to, even if it may not come across that way—he ends up stilling under the covers, body going limp as the courage drains from it.
The lights flick on, then flick back off just as quick, the backs of Donghyuck’s eyelids flashing before returning to the dark. Mark’s feet shuffling across the floor are extra slow and careful, but that doesn’t stop Donghyuck’s heart from beating irregularly, loud and obvious in his chest.
There’s a bit of rustling here and there, then more footsteps, and then the bed is dipping under a familiar presence.
A hand brushes across his forehead, a whisper of a touch. Donghyuck doesn’t move even as the blanket is pulled up to his shoulders. In the quiet, a few sleepy seconds pass by. Then, a kiss to his forehead, full and lingering, thumb barely hovering over his temple. A small sigh.
The bed creaks lowly, resurfacing as it unloads a body from its edge, and Donghyuck knows if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll wait another day, week, month.
He opens his eyes, hand covering Mark’s wrist.
The moonlight flowing in through the window is just enough to make out the rough blocks of his figure, dark blues in various patches all over his body. Donghyuck watches the inky void of his mouth part, pearl-like teeth appearing out of nowhere.
“Did I wake you?” He whispers, apologetic.
Donghyuck shakes his head, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth because he wants to be deft with the way he pieces the words together, he can’t just blurt them out too soon, too fast, too incoherently. Mark sits back down on the edge at Donghyuck’s insistence, fingers threading through his hair.
“Why are you up, then?”
Donghyuck wants to become unstuck. He wants Mark. He has Mark, but he wants him.
(What they are not is temporary.)
Strung together like one big, whispered word, he pushes everything out into the darkness between their bodies: “I’m in love with you.”
Nothing happens. Mark’s fingers still. His breath fills up the shell of Donghyuck’s ears, slips down his dry throat.
Then, after what feels like eternities later, the shapes on Mark’s face finally move, shadow of his lips curving up, slow.
He whispers back, “I know.”
Something sputters back to life in Donghyuck’s chest, and a breath leaves him like a laugh cut short, sharp and strong. Of course Mark knows, nothing in the world has ever made more sense than him knowing. Not realizing he’d been holding his head just above his pillow, Donghyuck lets it fall back into the softness, swallowing all his nerves away.
“Say it back,” he insists quietly as Mark nudges him to the side, slipping under the covers to fit the lines of their bodies together.
Mark’s laugh lights up the whole room, the whole world. “I’m not allowed to make you wait for it?”
No! Donghyuck wants to hiss. Instead, he plays with the hem of Mark’s shirt, shrugging like he couldn’t care less. “I guess if you’re not ready, you know, it’s fine. Whatever.”
Mark’s grin doesn’t dim in the slightest, and he tips Donghyuck’s chin up, missing his mouth the first time and giggling before he kisses him properly on the mouth, a firm push of all the care he’s got stored in his body. “I’m whatever the total opposite of not ready is,” he pulls back enough to say, fond and sincere. “Of course I’m in love with you.”
Sometimes, you hear words you know you won’t forget even fifty years from now. Donghyuck physically feels of course I’m in love with you carving itself into his memory, a permanent reminder of forever. He grins, touching their foreheads together with a hand crawling up Mark’s shirt, honesty coating his tongue far too easily.
“Feels good,” he says, biting back a smile.
Mark’s eyes are bright crescents. “It does.”
(They’d ask you this about love, and you’d have to sit down somewhere quiet and wonder, feeling awfully sad, if you really lived in a world where there existed people who did not smell, touch, see, taste, or hear love.)