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He’s sat on the couch, knees folded up to his chin and the heels of his feet are touching the back of his thighs. There’s something heavy on his chest, a rock that sits uncaringly on his respiratory tract, a rope that pulls at his throat — tighter and tighter.
The door to their apartment swings open and the crinkle of plastic bags are heard.
“Donghyuck, at least remember to-” Renjun cuts himself off when he sees the curled up position Donghyuck was sat in. He glances up at his housemate and watches his face fall.
Once, twice.
“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Renjun asks, softly. Donghyuck nods.
When is it not?
-
Donghyuck doesn’t remember his childhood with Mark vividly — of course he doesn’t. He met him when he was five, too young to even know the difference between butterflies and moths.
What he does know is this: Mark Lee has always been kind, and he’s always been patient. Even beside Donghyuck, with his frustrated noises and exasperated sighs, Mark was nothing but patient and kind, lending a hand and letting Donghyuck steal food from his lunch box.
He remembers fingers sticky with melted popsicles and the sweat beading down his forehead as he found home in the playground near their school.
“That’s mine,” Mark points at a rubber band on Donghyuck’s wrist. Donghyuck glances at the elastic band and frowns. He shifts so that Mark cannot see the rubber band anymore.
“So?” He asks, petulantly. Always petulantly.
Mark purses his lips, round nose scrunching up in distaste but he lets Donghyuck have it.
Like he always does.
-
Renjun pulls Donghyuck’s palms towards himself and squeezes his fingers.
It’s unfair to tell him that everything will be alright, eventually, because Donghyuck knows it won’t. And Renjun didn’t know Mark well enough to tell him that.
So they sit in silence like that, with Donghyuck’s figure trembling every once in a while.
-
It starts in high school. Donghyuck doesn’t understand the teen high school romances shown on screen because really, nothing felt remotely similar during that period of time.
He’s thirteen when he realises he likes guys, and he’s sixteen when he realises he might just very well be in love with his best friend.
It’s a thought planted into his head at first, just random ideas here and there. It’s a seed that only begins germinating in the corners of his brain. Like a money plant, it clung to walls of his mind and grew, unrelenting and refusing to detach.
He denies it, tells himself that he does not want to kiss Mark, that he doesn’t want to hold his hand underneath the table during lessons, that he doesn’t want Mark to cup his cheeks and look at him like he’s his whole word.
It’s easy to deny at the start, but the plant grows and he cannot escape it now. His subconsciousness hates him, because dreams he’s never had before start playing in his head while he’s asleep. It’s mostly innocent, but it feels like a sin burnt into the back of his eyelids when he wakes up, tears in his eyes.
He thinks this is around the time he decides to implement strategy one. Avoidance. He has enough friends to just avoid Mark forever and never look at his face ever again, but they’re always together, attached by the hip.
They walk to school together, even if Donghyuck’s still jittery from his dreams. He’s afraid that one day, Mark will look at him and realise all the thoughts he’s been hiding underneath the nervous picking of his nails.
And then he’ll leave, a disgusted frown on his face.
Recruited love has never been a continued thought to his fantasies, it is an event that will never arrive, no matter how much Donghyuck prays.
So he starts by texting Mark, tells him that he’s going to walk to school alone because it helps him think easier. Mark tells him they can still walk together, and that he’ll be silent so as to not disturb Donghyuck’s ‘thought process’.
Donghyuck rolls his eyes and dismisses him with a joke.
He starts walking to school alone. It’s an odd feeling, after spending almost all your life walking to school with someone in the darkness of the morning, lamp posts flickering from depleting energy.
It’s a suffocating feeling but being with Mark makes him feel like he’s being strangled so he puts up with it.
When Mark calls him to ask if he wants to study together, Donghyuck declines with a poorly veiled excuse. Mark can probably see through him, Donghyuck can tell because he, too, understands Mark like that.
He stops initiating meetings with him, and leaves him on read because it’s just easier like that.
They go a week without speaking at all. Walking past each other in the hallways does not warrant a wave and none of his friends question him.
Guilt consumes him. He doesn’t think of Mark any less, especially when he’s halfway to sleep and his brain helpfully supplies the image of Mark, emotions carved onto his face.
There is sadness, frustration, and then hatred.
Even as he’s lying on his bed, phone in his hands as he tries to search for anything to distract him, dread pools in his stomach.
It falls onto his muscles and there’s a sizzling sound in his ears as the acid melts his stomach.
-
“I’ll have to put away my things,” Renjun says as Donghyuck’s head falls on the back of the sofa. He releases his grip on Renjun’s fingers.
Renjun stands up, pats his head once and brushes through his hair. Donghyuck shuts his eyes and exhales.
-
It takes one more week from Mark to come knocking at his door. It’s annoying. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Mark where he lived.
Maybe they shouldn’t have been friends from the start, because Donghyuck really, really hates this.
He pulls the door open, unsuspecting, because why would he ever consider that Mark Lee was standing on the other side of it?
He is, though, dressed in a simple shirt and denim jeans with his hair ruffled in the way that Donghyuck can tell means distress. He looks nervous, but there is a determined fire in his eyes.
Donghyuck’s not a psychic, but he has a premonition that he’s going to die one of these days. His breath hitches and something pulls at his chest in all directions, trying to rip his lungs apart.
He’s going to die one of these days, and it’ll be entirely Mark Lee’s fault.
“You’ve been ignoring me,” Mark states. Donghyuck clenches the doorknob underneath his fingers. He tries to hold a poker face.
“I haven’t,” Donghyuck replies, trying to keep his voice from trembling. From inside the house, there is a shout.
“Who’s at the door?” His mother calls from the kitchen. Donghyuck grimaces as his stomach clenches uncomfortably.
“Look, I have to go-” Donghyuck tries but Mark shakes his head.
“You’ve been avoiding me, why?” Mark asks, and there’s vulnerability sewn into his voice this time. His eyes have always been expressive but for once Mark looks like he’s hurt.
Donghyuck’s made Mark feel a lot of things, anger mostly, but hurt?
There’s something stabbing his chest repeatedly, guilt or dread, he cannot tell apart. But it hurts and Donghyuck just wants it to stop.
“I haven’t,” Donghyuck whispers, meekly. It’s not convincing at all, and they both know it.
“Did I say something wrong? Or do something wrong?” Mark asks, eyes flickering to meet Donghyuck’s own. The breath is punched from his lungs.
Two weeks of avoiding Mark Lee has done nothing to quell his feelings. He can pretend all he wants but there will always be Mark sitting at the back of his mind on a chair like a throne, like he belongs there. Donghyuck shuts his eyes, tries to shake the thought from his head.
“Look, I’ll-” Donghyuck cuts himself off when he hears pacing from behind him and his mother comes into view.
“Oh, Mark!” She calls excitedly. And then she glares at Donghyuck like he’s personally committed fifty crimes. “Invite him in, what are you doing?”
“Oh, no, we were just about to head out.” Donghyuck laughs nervously. “I forgot about it so I’ll need to get changed, sorry, I’ll go.”
He turns and pushes past his mother, not sparing a glance at Mark. He jogs to his room, heart wriggling out and up his throat. He almost chokes on something.
There is fear, mixed with guilt and pain. It swirls in his stomach like a witch’s cauldron and Donghyuck just wants to puke.
He pulls out his clothes, though, because lying to his mother is one thing, but if he goes through with his lie then it’s technically not a lie, right?
He pulls a hoodie over himself and shrugs the hood on, not bothering to comb his hair. He pads down the hallway quickly as he sees his mother conversing with Mark casually.
He pauses by the corner, not wanting to step into his doom so quickly or easily. From his position he can see how Mark’s eyes shift ever so often, perhaps nervously.
He looks ethereal like this, in plain clothes and his hair tousled nicely. Almost unattainable, ironic really.
His mother chooses that moment to turn behind and Donghyuck resumes walking, pretending that he hadn’t been standing there staring for a solid minute.
“Are you coming home for lunch?” She asks and Donghyuck glances at Mark, who shrugs and averts his eyes.
“Yeah,” Donghyuck replies. Slowly, he slips shoes onto his feet and takes one step out of the house. Then another.
The door closes behind them as his mother waves goodbye, but mostly to Mark. He feels as if he’s been thrust into a wolves’ enclosure and left to fend for himself. In a way, he really is.
The silence returns, the kind that's never happened between them.
“So,” Mark clears his throat as Donghyuck shrinks further into his hoodie. God take him out of here.
Donghyuck starts walking first, out of the hallway and into the lift, he presses a button.
It’s muscle memory, really, his brain’s not functioning.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Mark states, again. Donghyuck doesn’t defend himself, but he doesn’t agree either, He traces his eyes on the floor as the lift doors open. “Have I done something?”
Donghyuck tenses as the lift starts moving. He could say yes, right here. He could say yes and put the blame for the strain in their relationship on Mark. He could do that, and it’d be so easy. But he knows Mark doesn’t deserve it, because really, it’s Donghyuck’s fault.
He wanted to apologise, but that seemed a little too close to a confession. And that was not an option. It was never an option.
“No,” Donghyuck says just as the lift doors open. He starts walking. “I’ve just been having a hard time.”
It’s not entirely a lie.
Donghyuck should be good with lies, but this is difficult. Something about the constant feeling of the grim reaper behind him paired with his frying nerves and impulses. He wants to get out.
He takes a seat on a bench while Mark pauses, glancing at the empty seat next to Donghyuck. He ends up not sitting beside him.
“You know you can tell me about it, right?” Mark asks, a tentative hand reaching out to place on Donghyuck’s shoulder. The latter tenses, and tries not to flinch from the touch.
“Yeah,” he whispers in reply even if his mind is currently doubling back from laughing. Tell Mark about what? His internal struggle with his sexuality and falling in love with his best friend?
Mark paces until he’s sat beside Donghyuck. The hand leaves his shoulder and Donghyuck breathes.
“Are you sure I haven’t done anything?” Mark asks, cautiously. Donghyuck hates this cautious bubble around them now. It feels like swimming in slime of thick viscosity, like he can’t pull his legs out of it no matter how much he wants to.
“Yeah,” Donghyuck says quietly. “Apart from your really lame jokes.”
Mark lets out a careful laugh and Donghyuck sends him a smile, which he promptly regrets because Mark is looking at him, more relaxed than he had moments ago. His heart crumples like a paper ball and floats around his chest, bumping the walls of his rib cage.
He turns away quickly and stares at the floor. He allows himself one last indulgence, and lets his head fall onto Mark’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck whispers quietly. He feels like a kid again, having stepped too far in for a joke. It feels the same, but now those feelings bite him back tenfold.
“It’s fine,” Mark whispers as his hand curls around Donghyuck’s waist. He shivers.
If only Mark knew what he was apologising for. It wouldn’t be so fine then.
-
Renjun tugs Donghyuck to his chest. “What happened today?”
“It’s stupid,” Donghyuck murmurs.
“You’re always stupid,” Renjun mocks. “Tell me.”
“He called me pretty,” Donghyuck whispers. “And then he cupped my cheek.”
Renjun is silent. Of course he is.
“How do I recover from that?” Donghyuck whispers, tone filled with frustration. “Why must I feel this way?”
-
Things get back to normal after that — or, as normal as Donghyuck tries to pretend it is.
There is a sick feeling when it comes to loving your best friend, the thoughts that you sometimes cannot help, the zoning out as you stare at their hands, or their lips, the never ending cycling that is your hopes rising and crashing when you see him looking at a girl with hope-filled eyes.
There was a sick, sick depression that compressed Donghyuck’s lungs when Mark got his first girlfriend. And there was an even worse sense of relief when they broke up.
The weight of friendship toils behind him wherever he goes. It’s hard to be a good friend when you’re constantly overthinking your moves and their moves.
So, Donghyuck is only a little relieved when Mark graduates and leaves for Seoul, leaving Donghyuck behind.
They stay in contact, even though Donghyuck tries to find ways to run from everything. He spends time with his friends but Mark is always there, in the chime of a notification in his phone or just in the back of his mind’s eye.
Absence must really make the heart stronger because Donghyuck has never felt like this for someone before.
He wants to lie cuddled in Mark’s arms, like back when they were kids and things were so much easier.
It’s this yearning that eventually makes Donghyuck make the worst decision of his life, and that is to apply for a university in Seoul, the same one that Mark attends.
The art course he’d been eyeing was there, of course, but he’d always thrown the place in the back of his mind because the thought of being in close proximity with Mark again scared the living hell out of him.
But he does it anyway, because he’s tired of this — of thinking of Mark all the time, of feeling disgusted by himself, of wanting to wash the feelings off of himself with soap and water.
He gets in, of course, because his art has always been phenomenal if not driven by loneliness. He’d almost wished he hadn’t, so he wouldn’t have to face Mark there, with the excuse that the stars just didn’t line up for them, blah blah.
He finds an apartment nearby and meets Renjun and Jaemin, who become his friends almost immediately. Apparently sharing the same experiences brings people closer.
And so that leaves him to the present, where he occasionally has mental breakdowns on his couch with only Renjun and Jaemin to tie up the loose ends.
“Donghyuck, I’m not saying this because I want you to panic or anything.” Jaemin says as the three of them sit around the couch after he’d gotten home. “But don’t you think it’d be better to confess?”
“No,” Donghyuck says almost immediately but Jaemin holds a hand up.
“Donghyuck, it’s been what? Five, six years? Don’t you think living like this is painful?” Jaemin asks. Donghyuck cannot reply to him with a steady voice because Jaemin is someone who actually gets it.
Donghyuck rolls over and presses his face to the cushion.
“You’re always really good at giving advice so I hope you’ll think about this one.” Jaemin says as he pats Donghyuck’s side. “Confessing will make things easier. I think, at least it gives you the chance to move on. If you’re going to sit here and think about it and let it destroy your life, then I think it’s better to just get it off your chest.”
“Even if the worst happens, we’re still here.” Renjun nods. “I mean, I doubt we could replace Mark but we’re still something, right?”
Donghyuck snorts into the cushions.
But he concedes.
“Yeah.” He says quietly to the ceiling. “Thanks.”
-
Donghyuck hugs a cushion to his chest, back against the couch of Mark’s apartment. He’s going to do it today.
He decided just a second ago.
It’s a Friday, which leaves him two working days to cry after he confesses. It’s going to be okay.
Except it’s not and Donghyuck feels like he’s sixteen all over again, the urge to run away coded into his muscles. He’s never told anyone much about how much he liked Mark, just the basic context for Renjun and Jaemin to follow when Donghyuck needed to talk about it sometimes. It feels like he’s dying inside.
Maybe today he will die, and the grim reaper behind him will finally collect the soul from his rotting body. He’s been waiting years, it’s only fair.
“You’re being quiet,” Mark comments as he sets down the food. It’d be easy to go with a joke, to continue this conversation and play along like a stringed puppet. Like he’s done for years.
But six years worth of pining and the squeezing of his chest has brought him up to this moment.
“Remember when I was sixteen?” Donghyuck asks, squeezing the pillow tighter when his throat closes up. Mark freezes.
“Yeah…” Mark says slowly. It’s not something they discuss often, mostly because Donghyuck avoids it like the plague.
“Remember when I apologised?” Donghyuck asks, voice growing smaller. He inhales, tries to gather his courage. He squeezes the pillow tighter.
“Yes,” Mark nods. He slowly puts down the chopsticks he’d been holding.
Donghyuck smiles bitterly before the edges of his lips fall downwards. “I’m sorry, again.”
“What? Where’s this coming from-”
“I like you,” Donghyuck announces. The words are ripped from him like pieces of his own flesh. Words that he’d never thought he’d be able to say.
Not after the feelings he’d buried so deep into him that everything was sputtering out now. Magma always finds its way out from a volcano. Block a crater and it creates another cone.
Mark looks stunned before he tries to laugh it off, “I like you too, of course.”
“Not as friends,” Donghyuck pressed firmly. Tears prick at his eyes but he inhales rapidly and presses his lips together. “I like you, as in, I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since we were sixteen. And I’m sorry for that.”
Donghyuck rubs at the side of his eye.
“I’m sorry I’ve never been able to be a proper friend because every time you do something you bring my hopes up. I’m sorry for liking you and ruining our friendship. And I’m sorry you’ll have to carry the weight of my words now.” Donghyuck exhales. He doesn’t look up from the floor. “And I know you don’t like me.”
He brings his head up as a single tear falls from his cheek when he blinks. “I know you don’t like me, and you’ll never feel the same, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over you if I don’t say this now.”
“I’m sorry if it burdens you,” Donghyuck whispers. “I never wanted to feel this way either.”
Donghyuck finishes as he clenches his fists tightly. Who was he fucking kidding? This wasn’t okay.
He glances at the clock and tries for a small smile. “I think, it’s time I go, I have a meeting with Renjun, and all, y’know.”
He drops the pillow, and does not look at Mark once. There are tears that blur his vision but he does not brush them away, not yet.
He pushes himself up, but tight fingers grab onto his arm and the force pushes him back down to his previous seat. Mark kneels in front of him, eyes watery and wide as he stares down at Donghyuck. There are tears that cling onto his eyelids.
“Who says,” Mark whispers, his voice is rough. Donghyuck shakily exhales. “Who says I don’t like you?”
His words die on his tongue as he stares at Mark. Trembling hands reach out to cup his cheeks. Donghyuck is frozen.
“Don’t do that,” Donghyuck chokes out, a small strangled sound that makes Mark cup his cheeks firmer. Maybe this is how he dies, underneath Mark Lee, who has become the North star in his life.
“You’re my favourite person in the world,” Mark admits and something shatters inside of Donghyuck. Translucent tear drops roll down his cheeks as the stinging in the back of his eyes intensifies until it’s no longer bearable. “So don’t apologise for liking me, because I want you to.”
Donghyuck makes a strangled sound at that, which would have been embarrassing but he’s already a complete mess so what now?
Mark laughs, a little watery and shaky but it’s a laugh. Donghyuck stares at the way his lips stretch, the tiny teeth in his mouth. Something floods in his chest and he wants to look away, but Mark is looking at him too and so he can’t break away.
Years of instinctual glancing away when the other looks, broken down just like that.
“You’re not lying?” Donghyuck asks, sniffling lightly as he wipes his tears with the back of his sleeves.
“No, why would I?” Mark asks, lifting Donghyuck’s face up. “You’ve always been my favourite person in the world, it just took me a little longer to realise why.”
Mark flushes then, hands slowly falling from his cheeks to brush over his ears and then neck. It’s cold, but Donghyuck’s always loved winter more than summer.
“When?” Donghyuck asks, hands limp in his lap. He’d never expected a confession, he’d never expected acceptance.
Neither had he seen a rejection, this was just a confession to get it off his chest.
It worked, not in the way he intended for it too though.
“This past year,” Mark admits. His lips fall into a pout. “I’m sorry you’ve been liking me for years, it feels unfair.”
Donghyuck snorts and shoves him away weakly. “It fucking is.”
He laughs before he chokes on his tears.
Mark pulls Donghyuck into his lap, arms wrapping around his waist protectively. “I’m sorry I didn’t realise sooner.”
Donghyuck shakes his head and buries his face into Mark’s neck. “It’s okay.”
Death leaves his back, and the stone is gone. Donghyuck shifts himself closer to Mark’s body.
He melts into his embrace.
-
“Guys,” Donghyuck calls into the house. Jaemin and Renjun immediately stand up from the couch, offering open arms.
He stumbles into them blindly and plants a kiss on the cheek to both of their faces. “Thank you.”
“It went well?” Jaemin asks, looking relieved.
“Better than that,” Donghyuck laughs, squeezing the both of them together. “Thank you.”
-
Donghyuck places a cup of hot chocolate in front of Mark before he throws himself into his side, snuggling right up to him.
“Why are you so clingy?” Mark whines. Donghyuck laughs, planting a kiss onto Mark’s neck.
“Because,” Donghyuck murmurs against his skin. “I can.”