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Look, it’s not Jaemin’s fault. He falls a little in love with all of his friends. Yeah, he's that kind of guy. He’s that person who looks at his friends like they are the love of his life. Maybe they are, and it’s not Jaemin’s fault that his friends are all the coolest, most amazing and beautiful people to ever exist. He can’t be blamed for being a little infatuated with them.
When he was in his teens, naive and unaware, it was hard to differentiate between his usual liking his friends and liking liking his friends. As in, he didn’t know if what he wanted was to kiss their cheeks with platonic fondness or if he wanted to smash their lips together and kiss until they couldn’t breathe.
Then he realized that no, he only felt that confusing way for Mark Lee, his best friend, the one who had been with him since they were kids.
Then he realized that no, it wasn’t confusing, actually; he definitely wanted to kiss Mark so fucking much that their DNA would have to change in a way that made them beings that don't need oxygen so they can just keep kissing.
Then Mark moved to Canada and they stopped talking for years.
And now, Mark and his mother are sitting on Jaemin’s mother’s favorite couch. Jaemin is just standing there like an idiot, barely processing that his mother is excitedly telling him something about the Lee family being back for the summer and oh, Jaemin, don’t you remember Mark? You used to go everywhere together!
Mark has changed a lot. He has earrings. Earrings that are shiny and tilt as he turns to look at Jaemin. Mark smiles at him, and Jaemin can’t think because Mark is there and he’s hot and Jaemin doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Suddenly he feels like he’s 15 again, bothered and confused and wanting to— God, what a way to start the summer.
…
Jaemin started to call Mark his boyfriend-not-boyfriend at the age of 17 because their friendship was… not very friendly. Or, well, it was friendly, perhaps too much. Not that it mattered or that any of them realized, of course; it wasn’t until a couple of years after that Jaemin even began to understand his sexuality.
When Mark still lived in Korea neither he nor Jaemin dated anyone. They held hands all the time and went on dates and kissed each other’s cheeks. There was this tension every time they were together for too long (which happened quite frequently) and Jaemin just felt too strongly about Mark. Mark, who was his neighbor, his best friend since forever, the boy who bought him chocolate bars just because and kissed his forehead every chance he got.
Mark, who is back, and whose mother has Jaemin and his mother over at least twice a week to have dinner together.
The house across Jaemin’s street has always belonged to Mark’s family. When they moved, the house was empty for months, until some students moved in, and ever since then that’s how things are: the house will be rented to students during the school year and then empty during the summer break, getting ready for the new flock of students that will come and stay until the next summer break. This break, however, the house is full; of the Lee family, of their stuff, of their plants and their dog, of the noise their instruments make while being tuned and of the music they make when being played by whatever family member decides it’s time for art.
It’s weird, Jaemin thinks while sitting in the living room of the Lee household, how familiar and yet strange this place and this family are to him. It’s also awkward because Mark’s mother insists that Mark should keep Jaemin company while everyone else mind their own business before dinner is ready. Jaemin offered to help, but his mother and Mrs. Lee refused, telling him to go play with Mark, as if they were still kids who spent all their time in the backyard getting muddy for fun.
So, this is what Jaemin has to deal with three days per week; sitting on the loveseat with Mark watching crap TV in the most uncomfortable silence to ever exist. Sometimes Jaemin is lucky and the armchair is empty and he can have a break from Mark Lee. But that remains a rare occasion, because Mark's siblings take all the other seats on purpose so Jaemin has no other option than the loveseat.
What do you talk about with your childhood best friend that you haven’t seen in six years? Whom you had a big gay crush and who’s now hot and handsome? But still somehow cute just like years ago? Like, what do you even say?
This will be a long, long summer.
…
“And I told him hey I don’t think hot dogs are worthy of such a big deal, you know? Because honestly what even was that advertisement? It was like they were announcing the Olympic games or some shit like that but it was just hot dogs,” Jaemin babbles into his hands, where he’s hiding his face so he doesn’t have to see the reactions of his friends while telling them the last interaction he had with Mark. “And then we had a conversation about hot dogs for 15 minutes until one of his sisters, Molly, took pity on us and told us to go set the table in silence.”
Silence. Silence is his only response, interrupted only by the sound of Donghyuck slurping his smoothie. Jaemin looks up and sees Renjun looking back at him with an expression that mixes the same kind of pity from second hand embarrassment that Molly felt last night with mild disgust at his poor and failed attempt at conversation. Donghyuck is clearly stopping himself from laughing, swallowing his smoothie dangerously fast. Jeno, who was there to see Jaemin go through his awkward early teenage years, just nods and pats his hand with a compassionate smile.
“So you’re telling us,” begins Renjun. “That this Mark guy is so hot that you just didn’t know what to do and therefore started acting like a big, awkward and clumsy disaster who can only babble random stuff?”
“Basically,” Jaemin clicks his tongue.
At that, Donghyuck stops abusing his straw to guffaw. Even Jeno chuckles. Jaemin can’t blame them, to be honest. Jaemin knows he’s embarrassing. He has always been.
You see, Jaemin has a reputation. He’s smooth, he has nerves of steel, he’s cool and collected and it’s a widely known fact that the most he will ever react to anything with is a raised eyebrow, if he reacts at all. Na Jaemin doesn’t get nervous, he doesn’t blush. Certainly, Na Jaemin does not act like a big, awkward and clumsy disaster who can only babble random stuff.
Ah, if the people from high school saw him now. They might even start thinking of him as a human being and not an ice prince born in a dimension where emotions are a thing of the past, like everyone thinks right now.
“I’m surprised he managed to talk to Mark at all, actually,” Jeno comments, smiling. “He used to be so shy.”
Jaemin snorts. “That was before I realized how amazing I am, so there is no need to be shy around others. It’s the others who should be shy around me.”
“See, he’s even trying to hide behind his facade of ego,” Jeno huffs. Damn, cons of still being friends with a guy who has known him since they were 11. “Mark and Jaemin used to date.”
This immediately interests Renjun and Donghyuck, who look at Jeno for more information about that little detail Jaemin forgot to mention. Jaemin groans, munching on a stolen fry from Jeno’s plate.
They are having lunch at the new fast food place that just opened a few days ago. The food tastes exactly like what you can get in any other of these places in any other country. That is, unhealthy, addictive and probably made of synthetic stuff humans are not supposed to eat but do anyway. What is important here is not the taste or possible future consequences that eating this crap will bring. They just opened, they have special promotions, and that is something that must be exploited, future health problems be damned.
“We didn’t date,” Jaemin clarifies.
“They didn’t make it official but like, we all knew they liked each other,” Jeno explains. “No one asked any of the two out on dates because everyone knew they were pretty much dating. You know, you were cute together.”
“Okay,” Donghyuck says, looking with a calculating expression at Jaemin. “So why aren’t you stuttering your way straight into Mark’s heart where you belong? You sound like you’d like to get back with him.”
“I can’t get back with him because we were not dating.”
“But you want to.”
“I mean. I mean, I wouldn’t mind?” Jaemin clears his throat, but before he can say anything else Renjun slams the table.
“Oh my God, you’re blushing,” he points out, laughing.
“Shut up,” Jaemin hisses. “Would I date the fuck out of Mark? Probably. Yes. He’s hot as hell and I kind of want to get to know him again after all these years. Will I do anything about it? Fuck, no. That’d be awkward and I don’t know if he likes guys because he certainly didn’t seem to back then.”
Jeno rolls his eyes. “That was years ago. You didn’t even know you were gay but look at you now being all—”
“ And,” Jaemin interrupts. “I… Okay, I will admit that he makes me nervous and I want to scream everytime I’m around him,” he pauses, scanning his friends’ faces, “but I also want to disappear every time he looks in my way.”
“So, what are you going to do then? Just be a miserable gay mess three times a week when you’re dragged to his house for dinner?” Donghyuck scoffs.
“Obviously. But like, in a way he won’t notice. Whatever, enough Mark talk for the day, let’s discuss something else.”
“I’m dropping by one of these days to say hi to Mark,” Jeno warns. “He was my friend too.” And then they move onto the next topic: the fight Renjun had with his sister two days ago.
The rest of the day Jaemin keeps getting distracted by his strategy to prevent Mark from noticing how nervous Jaemin is whenever the other is around. This is it. Jaemin will avoid Mark. He can’t notice anything about Jaemin if Jaemin is not there.
Easier said than done, of course, since Jaemin has to sit down next to him to watch TV until their mothers remember that they need to stop happily chatting and start yelling orders to get the dinner done, but hey, it can’t be that difficult right?
…
So. Avoiding someone who lives across the street is hard. Avoiding someone you have to eat dinner with several times during the week is even harder.
Jaemin is mature enough to admit he didn’t think this through. He’s not mature enough to stop even now that he realizes his plan is a failure though. Yes, avoiding Mark is hard and he probably looks ridiculous fighting with one of Mark’s brothers over who gets to sit at the farthest corner of the table (which is, obviously, the farthest from where Mark sits), but he’s not stopping until his mother calls him out on his bullshit.
There are moments where Jaemin really can’t avoid Mark, however. Because he’s just the right amount of mature, Jaemin sucks it up and interacts with Mark. Even if he wants to smash their faces together, which in turn makes him feel awkward because poor Mark just wants to chat a bit about boring stuff like decent people do and here Jaemin is mentally drooling over him.
“People still watch this show?” Mark asks, bemused. “We watched this when we were like ten or something, and it’s still being broadcasted? Dude.”
Jaemin snickers at Mark’s wide eyes and shocked expression. Tonight is not dinner night; Jaemin came home just to find Mark sitting on the living room couch watching soap operas, the sound of female voices muffled and distant from the kitchen. Jaemin went to say hi to his mother and Mrs. Lee, who were supervising Seung, one of Mark’s brothers, while he baked what looked like a very complex (and quite burned) cake. Jaemin didn’t bother to ask why the Lees were cooking here and not in their own kitchen because honestly? This is exactly how things always were with the Lee family around.
“I remember you had the biggest crush on the protagonist’s best friend,” Jaemin comments, watching with amusement the way Mark’s cheeks blush slightly.
Mark snorts. “You say it as if I was the only one. You also thought she was pretty.”
“Not as pretty as you,” he teases, surprising not only Mark, but himself as well.
Back in the day, this was their normal. Jaemin teasing, Jaemin flirting, Mark responding, Mark getting flustered. Seems like not only their families as a whole are falling back into old habits when it comes to the other, but Mark and Jaemin seem to do the same without realizing.
However, the moment is over and Jaemin feels too self-conscious and awkward. He also feels like an asshole because he’s spent all this time trying to avoid Mark for reasons he can’t even remember anymore. And now he’s back to flirting and— why did he even want to avoid Mark in the first place? Avoiding Mark will prevent Jaemin from looking at Mark’s beautiful face, and that in itself is a punishment. Mark coughs and looks away, laughing nervously before saying something random about the TV show— ah, right, Jaemin is avoiding him because things are weird between them and it makes Jaemin feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Okay, yes, good enough reason to continue with his not quite perfect but still useful plan.
…
“Hey, Jaemin—”
“Oops, sorry, Mark, gotta go. I have a meeting!”
“A meeting? But it’s the middle of summer—”
“Work takes no vacation!”
“You don’t even have a job—”
“Nice chat, okay, bye!”
And Jaemin passes Mark and keeps walking until he’s three blocks away from their street. It starts raining, and he doesn’t have an umbrella because he didn’t plan to go anywhere once he arrived home. But Mark was right there and Jaemin can’t think straight around him so he ran away and now he’s soaked and pathetic but he’s not complaining because he kind of deserved it.
…
“Mark, your mom says you have to pick up your brother from his violin class,” Jaemin informs, standing in front of the closed door of Mark’s room.
The door opens, revealing a smiling Mark. Jaemin freezes. Blinks. Oh. Um, whoa. Well, that wasn’t there the last time he saw Mark four days ago. Yeah, four days ago Mark’s eyebrow was definitely not pierced.
Pierced ears, pierced eyebrows. Long fingers with shiny rings. Hair that looks so soft. Smile that is so pretty and directed right at him. Jaemin wants to crawl into a hole and sob until he’s nothing but ash.
Horny, gay ash.
“Looking good, bro,” Jaemin blurts and flees the scene.
…
They’re at the Lee house when Mark sits next to Jaemin, a book in his hands. Jaemin is in the backyard, slurping a smoothie as a compensation for helping Molly unload the groceries from the car. He would have helped anyway, but she offered to make him one of her famous drinks and well, only someone with bad taste would say no.
“This is for you,” Mark says, shoving a book into his hand.
Jaemin observes it with curiosity. He looks at Mark’s shy smile, and then back at the book.
“I think you might like it. I mean, it sounds like the kind of thing you’d like. You used to read a lot of this genre. Romance. And uh, your mom said all of the books on the shelves of the living room are yours and they are also romance so I thought…” Mark shrugs.
Jaemin sets the glass down and opens the book with both hands. He carefully inspects the cover and reads the summary. He smiles. Yeah, it’s exactly the kind of thing he’d read.
“Thank you, Mark. Yes, it’s definitely something I’d read— something I will read.” He touches the words on the cover, smiling further. “Thank you, really. It’s such a nice gift. Can I ask what’s the occasion? Or you just can’t stop thinking about me so you end up buying stuff that reminds you of me?” Jaemin jokes, and almost chokes on nothing when Mark nods eagerly.
“Yeah. I guess that must be it. I bought a copy for myself too, though. Sounds like an interesting book.”
Okay, so remember Jaemin’s plan of avoiding Mark? To hell with it. He’s about to risk it all and go down that dark, awkward road called reminiscence because he’s ridiculous like that. And damn, Mark is hot and handsome and still so easily flustered. He’s also so kind and so nice and he was Jaemin’s best friend once. Jaemin would be lying if he said he doesn’t want Mark back into his life.
If only they could move on from the uncomfortable stage that they are stuck in. The stage that makes Jaemin make bad choices…
“Why don’t we read it together?” Jaemin suggests, before his brain decides it’s time to be stupid once again. “You have a copy, I have a copy…”
“Like when we were younger,” Mark realizes, chuckling lightly. “We used to read together all the time.”
“Yeah,” Jaemin nods, his smile turning soft at the memories of them buying the same books so they could form a two-member book club where they’d spend the afternoons in one of their rooms reading, eventually discussing for hours whatever thoughts they had about the text.
“So? Want to go back to our old ways?” Jaemin smiles.
Mark looks at him with a grin, the look in his eyes the same Jaemin grew up with; excited, eager, so damn fond and only for Jaemin to see. “Of course.”
…
Jaemin doesn’t want this to end.
Reading with Mark is always blissful and quiet. They don’t speak, and they don’t listen to music. They just sit together and get lost in the story, each with his respective book.
Most of the time they stay at Jaemin’s house because Jaemin’s mom is always in the garden or in her room, so it’s pretty silent. Sometimes, Jaemin’s mom goes out with her friends, or to her knitting class. Jaemin and Mark sit on the couch in the living room and read for hours until they get hungry and have to get up to eat (and to talk about the progress they made that afternoon).
Other times Jaemin claims Mark’s bed and Mark takes the desk chair. Jaemin likes this arrangement more than his couch because Mark gets stiff and uncomfortable after a while and ends up getting on the bed to sit next to Jaemin.
Even less often they go to the park, or to coffee shops, or to public libraries, but they tend to forget the books and talk for hours. Mark tells Jaemin all about his time in Canada, and Jaemin tells him all the things that he missed out while being away. It’s weird at first; Jaemin doesn’t want to make Mark feel left out, and Mark’s face shows that he also feels the same. There’s also the unspoken issue of why they never tried to stay in touch.
They are walking home from Jeno’s apartment one late afternoon, and it’s such a familiar scene that Jaemin wants to turn around and freak out in the nearest convenience store he can find, away from Mark’s gaze, away from these feelings that are alike the ones he had back in high school, but he also wants to bump his shoulder against Mark’s. 14-year-old Jaemin would have laughed and taken Mark’s hand in his, and isn’t that a weird thought?
“I think I just didn’t know how to be away from you,” Mark says suddenly.
“When you went to Canada?” Jaemin guesses. It took them a few weeks of avoidance and awkwardness but they are falling back into old habits more with every minute they spend in each other’s company. Guessing what goes in the mind of the other is one of those habits.
Mark smiles. The air is warm and the light is soft, a combination of orange and pink that you can only experience at this particular time of the day. Around them, their peaceful neighborhood is starting to settle for the day; the smell of homemade dinner and yellow light coming from the front windows. It’s the same as when they were younger. It’s the same as it has always been, and the sentiment between them is somehow familiar like their teenage years, and yet so different. It’s not quite the same, but close enough to make Jaemin nervous.
And eager. Hell if he knows for what.
“You were always there with me, and suddenly you weren’t, and I was in a different country and I wanted to talk to you so bad but… it was strange, I guess, not being able to just cross the street and let myself into your house to tell you all about my day.”
Jaemin nods. “You were always so close, and then you weren’t, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was confused.” he admits. “And it was easier to not do anything, to leave things as they were. I didn't want to try anything and ruin the friendship between us.”
“Exactly,” Mark chuckles, leaning closer to him to avoid a couple of kids running past them. “But I think it was worse. I mean, look at us now. We made it weird by not trying.”
“At least we admit it,” Jaemin says with a pained smile that Mark returns.
“So, I have a few suggestions for what we should read next…”
That’s just how it is, Jaemin supposes. Awkward and just like old times. They walk back home, feeling the warm summer air. They read book after book, and Jaemin doesn’t want it to ever stop.
…
They go for ice cream. They hang out with Jeno and Jaemin’s friends, and with Mark’s friends. They read. They are sent to the supermarket last minute for missing ingredients. And Jaemin finds himself unconsciously reaching out to touch Mark’s earring more times than he can count.
It’s more comfortable around Mark now, and the need to run and avoid him is shrinking, leaving space for Jaemin’s awareness: what a stupid, ridiculous idea was avoiding Mark, and how foolish he was. But that’s life: Jaemin made mistakes, and he moved on.
Mark is playing the guitar, humming softly. Jaemin doesn’t recognize the melody, but to be fair, he’s too distracted by Mark’s beautiful face to really pay attention to the sounds. Mark comes from a family of musicians, so he’s always around instruments, and Jaemin has many memories of Mark making music, but somehow he knows this exact moment will stay with him in a more vivid way than all the other times he appreciated Mark in his element; the piercings that reflect the light of the shitty old lamp on Jaemin’s desk, the way Mark looks holding his guitar, sitting on the floor under the window.
This older Mark in Jaemin’s room, the one place they spent so many afternoons in when they were kids, the one where they returned to after school to retrieve whatever Jaemin forgot before heading out to one of their friends’ houses. It’s so familiar and yet so strange, like most things are now, Jaemin realizes.
“You know, we came back to Korea because Seung and I want to finish our degrees here,” Mark informs, still distracted with his guitar.
“Hm? Why Korea, though? Does it have a better program?”
“Nah, I think it’s pretty much the same in my case.” Mark looks up at him and smiles. “I don’t know, I just wanted to come back. I like it here.” He shrugs.
“So… if you stay, you’d be the ones in your house and not some random students like every year?”
“Yup.”
“Oh,” Jaemin nods, not bothering to hide his grin at the thought of having Mark (and Seung, right, yes, obviously also Seung) around for a long while. “You’re not asking for my opinion, but I like the sound of that.”
Mark chuckles, focusing on his guitar again. “I was hoping you would. Pretty awkward if you wanted me gone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, why would I ever want you gone?”
And maybe he sounded too offended, or too honest, because Mark’s gaze leaves his instrument and searches for Jaemin's eyes. Jaemin doesn’t know what any of them are expecting to happen when they lock eyes for several intense seconds, but he knows he doesn’t want to stop looking at Mark. It should be unnerving, but damn, this is Mark. Things with Mark are amazing and easy and comfortable, and Jaemin has always liked him a bit too much.
When Jaemin goes back to read his book and Mark continues playing his guitar, the world is the same as before. But Jaemin and Mark are not; there’s something different in Jaemin’s chest, and he intuits that Mark feels it too. If asked, he couldn’t explain how or why, but he knows that whatever they were looking for in the other’s eyes during those seconds, they found it, and they liked it.
…
Jaemin’s life could be summarized in feelings and emotions; age 8 was all awe and eagerness because his mother got him a puppy and the Lees would be at his house even more than usual so they all could play with the dog.
Age 11 was also great. It was one of the best summers of Jaemin’s life; they went to visit his grandparents and his grandad took him camping, and Jaemin couldn’t stop staring at the stars bleeding in the horizon. That year was a year of laughter. It was the year when Jaemin started forgetting to let go of Mark’s hand to cross the street and they just continued walking, their hands locked. It stayed like that until the moment Mark left years later.
The year he turned 13 was not so great. Or it was. Or it was bad for a while and then not— well, Jaemin can’t remember very well. He remembers, however, those two sad, anxious months where he and Mark refused to talk to each other. They had a petty fight, the kind that only 13 and 14 year old boys can have. God, he doesn’t remember the reason that sparked their fight, and he can’t remember how they made up either. Two months of silence passed on both ends, and it was so easy to go back to normal. Kind of like what is happening over the summer number 21 of Jaemin’s life.
And then there was the time when Jaemin was 15. Oh, how to even describe that emotion? It was a fluttering thing in his stomach at the sight of Mark. It was a sensation of familiarity, and newness at the same time. It made him both embarrassed and confident. Jaemin felt like it was too much but at times it felt like too little. And it was confusing. And it only ever happened when Mark was close.
Now there’s this summer, when Jaemin is 21, and he feels like he’s 15 again, with a mess of emotions and feelings that not even the most experienced therapist could decipher. Except that Jaemin is not 15 anymore, and he knows what was going on that year right before Mark left, and what’s going on right now.
He takes Mark’s hand in his before they cross the street, and he doesn’t let go when they are on the other side.
…
They stay inside for the day. Jaemin is leaning against the armrest of the biggest couch in the Lee house, with the back of his knees on Mark’s lap and his feet almost on the other armrest. Mark is scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other on Jaemin’s thigh, and Jaemin is walking that fine line between losing himself in a book and therefore forgetting his surroundings, and being unable to focus on anything but Mark’s warm palm.
Mark lets out a low laugh, and Jaemin ends up forgetting the book and focusing on the hand— which is a sensation he likes too much, so he decides it’s safer to focus on Mark and whatever that made him laugh.
Noticing Jaemin’s confused expression, Mark explains, “I didn’t think we’d end up like this when I just got back.” He squeezes Jaemin’s thigh lightly. “You were so distant and I thought you hated me.”
“What?” Jaemin gapes. The thought of feeling anything but the weird, fluttering sensation in his stomach whenever Mark is around is simply impossible. “God, no. Why would you even think that?”
“You were avoiding me. Like, all the time. You couldn’t even look me in the eye,” Mark chuckles, but it sounds forced and his smile is stiff, and oh, look at that, it’s the consequences of Jaemin’s actions! They are called: Mark is hurt because of your damn fault, you idiot.
This is a crisis: Mark is hurt, Jaemin is blushing. Two of Mark’s siblings are fighting in the backyard and Jaemin can hear faint yells. Mark and Jaemin should probably go and stop the murder that’s just waiting to happen, but Jaemin doesn’t want to let go of this awkward and yet cute moment. So he just turns the page of his book and snorts, trying to keep calm.
He doesn’t think it’s a very convincing act, but Jaemin has always been stubborn. “I was just… in awe, I guess, by how hot you are now and I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself so I avoided you.”
The smile Mark gives him is wide and lights up his face. The fluttering thing in Jaemin’s stomach is rebelling, making its existence well known to the point that Jaemin starts thinking he won’t be able to breathe if Mark keeps looking at him like that.
“You like me. Oh my God. Dude, you like me,” Mark gasps.
Jaemin should probably deny it, right? Yeah, maybe he should, but… but this is Mark. His best friend, his best person, Mark. It’s easy to simply exist around him. Jaemin tried to avoid him before, and it was a mistake, and doesn’t Jaemin own himself at least this? A bit of honesty? It’s been years, and the fluttering thing in his stomach is getting stronger, so what’s the point in denying anything, especially when Mark is looking at him with such bright, excited eyes?
“Well,” Jaemin starts, also smiling. “Yeah, Mark, I do.”
“I was also screaming and panicking internally when I saw you,” Mark admits, both of his hands resting close to Jaemin’s knees. “You are handsome and— and your voice.”
“We used to kind of date when we were younger, I think,” Jaemin points out.
“Oh, definitely. We totally dated but were a pair of fools and never made it official.”
“So let’s make it official this time, what do you think?” Jaemin rests a hand on one of Mark’s, laughing lightly, feeling confident and sure like he does when Mark is there. “Let’s go on a date. An official date.”
Beaming, Mark leans closer and closer and whispers, “Fuck, finally. Yes, I’d love to.”
And then he kisses him, and it’s soft, and it’s warm, and it’s just Mark and Jaemin, like it has always been.