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Compared to the buzz of the waiting room, the break room is blessedly silent. A room is of course only as silent as he makes it, and honestly, Haechan has never been much for silence. Its only other occupant is wearing the characteristic blue scrubs of the surgical residents paired with another characteristic yellow and black-patterned button-up that say everything about the person wearing it.
Mark doesn’t look up from his paperwork. “I’m not your resident, Hyuck,” he says, voice croaking slightly from exhaustion.
Haechan places a cup of steaming green tea in front of him and gently nudges it towards him to drink it. “I’m your friend, though,” he says and huffs haughtily just to be annoying. “And it’s Haechan.”
Mark expectedly rolls his eyes.
The residents’ table is a sacred place, Haechan was told earlier that day, a place a nobody intern like him would be so lucky to sit at next year if he made it. He of course slouches down in the seat across from Mark and crosses his arms. “Show me how to do a drop.”
“Ask your resident.”
“Or continuous stitches?”
Mark puts down his pen hard and gives Haechan that look that says he is seconds away from a truly Mark-like blow-up. Haechan always finds it fascinating when he gets annoyed.
“Anyway, so I heard some gossip,” Haechan says and sits up properly, folding himself closer to whisper conspiratorially. “This is legit hospital gossip.”
Mark sighs and picks his pen back up. “You’ve been an intern here for just about ten hours.”
“Technically, eight and a half,” Haechan corrects. “So, apparently Renjun who interns up in cardio overheard some nurses talking about a resident having a scandalous affair with an ER attending.”
He has known Mark long enough to read the minuscule purse of his lips. Mark doesn’t like it when people gossip which is why Haechan does it just to annoy him.
“Did they say who it was?” Mark asks.
Haechan shrugs.
Mark puts down the pen with a long-suffering sign. “So, you want to see a drop?”
-
He’s known Mark for many years ever since they were angsty teens with spots and after much pining and truly epic amounts of fights, they finally had their so-called moment the year before Mark got the job at Evexia General. He left with a wounded look, leaving Haechan with a feeling that maybe he had missed his moment.
Needless to say when the Evexia General emergency medicine internship opened up, he jumped at the chance to rediscover whatever he may have lost. And Mark was... is *cough* perfect.
He is serious and competent and when that one guy arrested, Mark tubed him in minutes. There is something about saving lives that is just cool and as the internship passes one shift at the time, Haechan knows that this is the only job he could ever have. Seeing steadfast hardworking Mark, who Chenle said cried during the dreaded first twenty-four hour shift, commanding a room and be an absolute rock star makes Haechan think that maybe he can be that, too.
The truly fascinating work doesn’t hinder his nefarious plan to seduce Mark again because he decided the day Mark left that the world was cold and boring without this, like, stupid guy who always follows the rules and overworks himself to reach a pinnacle of perfection that is attainable to maybe Jesus or Buddha. But that’s just Mark. And it’s why the sex was so amazingly great.
“It’s happening,” he tells Jeno near the front desk on Friday morning while he is checking a file for the next patient. “Tonight.”
Jeno is too busy staring at Jaemin’s ass in the ill-fitting nurse scrubs to respond and Haechan hits his shoulder with a closed fist.
“Ouch,” Jeno pouts and Haechan barely manages to duck the swing thrown his way.
“You ask him out and I’ll ask Mark out,” he says and holds out his hand.
Jeno is just about to take his offered hand when Jaemin walks over casually and all words seem to disappear from his vocabulary. Jeno’s eyes are huge and round and if Haechan was into that he totally would, but Nurse Jaemin is the only person that leaves Jeno speechless despite his shy demeanour so he will let Jeno suffer alone-ish until Jaemin realises how much of a catch Jeno actually is.
“Mark Lee has a boyfriend,” Jaemin remarks knowingly and sends Jeno a coy smile.
Right, so maybe Jaemin already knows about Jeno’s big gay crush.
“Wait, what?” Haechan says and stops contemplating Jeno’s love life, screeching back to his own. “I’m his best friend. I think I’d know if he was dating.”
Jaemin gives him a look.
“Haechan thinks they’re soulmates,” Jeno says gleefully and Haechan is never buying him any food ever again.
“We are!” He says firmly. “It just might be possible Mark doesn’t know it… yet.”
Jaemin pats him sympathetically on his shoulder. “By the way, Doctor Nakamoto is looking for you.”
-
There are three people he doesn’t fuck with (or three people he quickly learned not to fuck with) - Taeyong, the terrifying head nurse, and Doctor Suh who is the Chief of Surgery and as scary as he is friendly because he looks like he can kick Haechan’s ass five ways to Sunday. He also doesn’t fuck with the lunch ladies because they decide on the quality of his lunch break and he’s not that much of an asshole. But then there is Nakamoto.
Nakamoto is one of four attendings in the ER and the infinitely most scary one because he doesn’t think Haechan is that funny. Even Doctor Suh cracked a smile at one of his jokes one time. Haechan is funny, he knows he is funny, but every time he tries to lighten the mood Nakamoto arches an unimpressed eyebrow and the joke falls flat. Flat on its face. Dramatically.
He races towards exam room four and sees Nakamoto already through most of the exam that he should have been there for, but instead he was at the desk dreaming about Mark’s stupid shoulders. He opens the door quietly and mutters a ‘sorry’ underneath his breath, not wanting to interrupt.
“Go ask your resident for something else to do,” Nakamoto remarks without even looking up.
“But...”
Nakamoto is already talking to the patient and ignoring whatever excuse Haechan would have come up with.
He slips back out of the door and slinks away to find Doctor Jeong who has been his assigned resident since the first day. At least he doesn’t think Haechan is the scum of the earth, apart from when he asks stupid questions that he swore was important at four-thirty in the morning during their last night shift together.
It’s later that night and it’s a little quiet, so he takes the opportunity to complain to Mark who has come up from the surgical floor to finish the surgical backlog. Complaining about Nakamoto is a favourite pastime and Mark usually listens with one ear and does something else with the other.
“You’ve been here one week and you’ve already managed to piss off several people!” Mark has whirled around and actually looks angry.
Haechan almost collides with him.
“Learn just a little bit of respect, Donghyuck, and maybe the attendings won’t dismiss you!”
“It’s Haechan.”
Mark rolls his eyes so hard at his petulance that he actually has to rub his forehead afterwards.
“Do you really have a boyfriend?” Haechan asks and maybe the middle of the ER isn’t the right place to ask this but it’s what has really been on his mind the entire day.
Mark sighs and pulls them into the staff room. “Wipe that pout off your lips.”
“You like my pout.”
“Not enough to tell you about my maybe-boyfriend,” Mark says.
“Hah, so you do have one!” Haechan says with a triumphant smirk.
Mark points his index finger on Haechan’s chest. “Go apologise to Yuta.”
“And you’ll buy me food if I do?”
“If your angel routine works, I’ll consider it,” Mark says and leaves.
Haechan looks after him longingly and once again realises that scrubs really does nothing good for anyone’s figures.
-
No one does the angel routine better than him, of course. He has it down to a ‘t’, but unfortunately Nakamoto still remains extremely unimpressed with his efforts even though he does all the scuttle without complaining or rolling his eyes. Nakamoto still picks Jeno because Jeno is an actual angel and somehow, somehow, Nakamoto knows the angel routine is just that - a bullshit routine.
Jaemin probably told Taeyong who told Nakamoto, the snitch.
“He’s really nice,” Jeno says one day at the diner across from the hospital.
“God, just have sex with him then,” Haechan says with his mouth full.
“Ew,” Jeno says pointedly. “I don’t want to have sex with Nakamoto.”
“Na. Jaemin.” Haechan swallows the food.
Jeno flushes.
“Why are we even talking about our stupid attending when there is food right here?” Haechan mutters. “Food, Jeno! I haven’t eaten since last night.”
“You haven’t stopped complaining about him since last night.”
“Well, he sucks.”
“Who sucks?” Mark asks, sitting down across from Haechan with his duffel and civil clothes, hair hidden beneath a cap and his round glasses fogging from the cold outside.
“Me soon, hopefully,” Haechan says and winks.
Mark steals a fry.
“I’m just saying he could cut me some slack once in a while,” he continues on. “Nothing I do is ever good enough.”
“You’re not even a surgical intern,” Mark says and pulls his hands back when Haechan smacks them away from his fries. “Stop complaining.”
Haechan pauses. “You’re infuriating. Just because you’re oh so brilliant...”
“Stop,” Mark interrupts pointedly and checks his beeper that has started to go off. “Gotta go!”
“Need help?” Jeno shouts after him, but he waves him off, sprinting towards the entrance to the ER.
A tired-looking Jaemin takes his place and Jeno sits up straight in his seat.
Haechan resigns himself to watching the two communicate with a language he doesn’t want to follow and refuses to rise to the taunt when Jaemin comments on him eating a burger at six-thirty in the morning.
“I’m pretty sure I saw you drinking a quadruple espresso shot two hours ago,” he says.
“Oh that’s normal,” Jaemin says and distractedly removes a piece of lint from Jeno’s hairline.
-
“I know something you don’t,” Chenle gloats at the staff party that he invited himself to.
Haechan flicks his ear and downs the rest of his beer. “How much should I care?”
The cat-who-caught-the-canary look is not an attractive look on Chenle, it is however one Haechan is intimately familiar with. “Well, it’s about Mark.”
“Like you would ever rat him out,” he remarks.
“That’s true, but it doesn’t mean I can’t gloat.”
Haechan watches the ER attendings appear in the doorway, looking tired from their staff meeting. The pub is thankfully big enough that he only has to send them a pleasant smile as a greeting (the one he sends Doctor Moon is genuine - the one he sends Nakamoto less so).
Chenle continues to be a pain for the rest of the night, especially after they walk in on Jeno and Jaemin in the restroom looking far too indecent for a staff party. Haechan tries to bleach the image from his mind, which is thankfully helped by Nakamoto trying his gosh-darn hardest to hit on Mark - this of course requires an even greater amount of bleach to purge from his mind. He has had a hand on Mark’s elbow for at least twenty minutes, Haechan of course counted the minutes, and before that even brought Mark his favourite Lite beer because Mark’s a lightweight and everyone seems to know that.
A wet finger inches into his ear canal and he yelps in surprise, slapping Chenle’s hand away.
“Just trying to stop the deathly fumes coming out of your ears,” Chenle says.
“Why is Mark even here? It’s an ER staff party, not for people who are surgically adjacent hanger-ons.”
Chenle rolls his eyes. “What’s up, bro?” he tells a passing Renjun who also definitely doesn’t work in the ER.
Haechan is mostly drunk and being a pain in the ass when Taeyong gently but firmly calls him a cab and tells him to go home. “It’s fine,” he says, blanching at the thought of having to face Taeyong sober their next shift together. “I’ll go outside, sober up a bit.”
Taeyong pats his shoulder. “Good idea.”
The outside is quiet and coming from so much noise to complete silence makes his ears ring. He leans against the railing of the stairs for a moment, finding his equilibrium, and notices two figures leaning against a nearby car. Familiar figures.
“I don’t think we’re fooling anyone,” one figure comments.
The other one turns his head and runs a thumb along his cheekbone. “Suppose not.”
Haechan nearly slips when he sees Mark pulling at Nakamoto’s shirt collar into a kiss. It’s a kiss that Nakamoto enthusiastically returns. A familiar ritual.
The cab drives up, breaking the kissing couple apart and they both look back. Mark’s mouth forms a surprised ‘O’ when he recognises Haechan reaching for the door of the cab.
Haechan wants to throw up. He doesn’t look back when he passes them, not even able to start processing what he just witnessed.
-
He charges his phone in the morning, expecting something, anything. Other than a text calling him a bitch for leaving early from Chenle, there is only a few spam texts. He checks.
He is on the afternoon shift and he dreads going in, knowing who is covering the afternoons lately.
Nakamoto stares up at him from behind the computer desk when he arrives, an expressionless look on his face.
“Guess I know why you hate me now,” Haechan mutters just loudly enough so the secretaries don’t hear him.
“I don’t hate you,” Nakamoto says with an arched eyebrow.
“Sure you don’t,” Haechan says spitefully and turns on his heal towards the staff room.
Can’t believe you didn’t tell me, he writes Chenle before hiding his phone in his lap coat. He buries himself in cuts and stomach aches and decidedly doesn’t think about the hands around Mark’s waist the night before or the flush in his cheeks.
??? is Chenle’s reply to his accusation.
Haechan calls him from the restroom hours later. “I saw them up against a car outside the party!”
“So what!” Chenle replies flippantly. “It’s not like you didn’t suspect something was going on.”
“Not with him! With that Nakamoto!”
“He brings breakfast on his days off and Mark really likes him,” Chenle says and if his betrayal wasn’t bad enough, Haechan completely forgot that Mark rents the loft at Chenle’s big ass house and he has probably known the entire time, laughing at Haechan behind his back.
“Well thank God for the free breakfast!”
He hangs up and rubs his forehead. The phone vibrates in his hand, a text lighting up on the screen - ‘asshole’.
He rolls his eyes, figuring he at least deserves that, and goes back to work. He can feel Nakamoto’s eyes following him around from patient to patient as the night goes on, saying nothing and letting the silence say everything. It’s frustrating because he can’t figure out what to say or what to do.
“Get your head together,” Jaemin whispers when he messes up his fourth drop and the patient is starting to look vaguely green.
Haechan breathes out through his mouth and breathes in deeply through his nose and turns towards the patient with new determination. “Let’s do this,” he says cheerfully and concentrates fully on the veins in the patient’s arm.
The patient sighs in relief when it’s finally finished, but not quite as much as Haechan who has just managed to grow even angrier at the world.
“Let’s get coffee,” Jaemin mutters when they leave the small enclosure and grips his arm tightly so he can’t refuse.
They sit outside in the ambulance bay in complete silence.
“When did you know you liked Jeno?” Haechan finally says, breaking the silence.
Jaemin shrugs. “You want to talk about Jeno?”
Haechan doesn’t. Not really. He gets why Jaemin likes Jeno because he’s nice and kind and works really hard. What’s not to like? “I knew I liked Mark in ninth grade,” he says instead. “He was a year above me, totally annoying and a sucker for rules.”
“Let me guess,” Jaemin says slyly. “You were the opposite.”
“If he doesn’t like me back what was the whole point?”
He didn’t want to be in emergency medicine, but took it because it was the only spot open at the hospital. He never really wanted to go to medical school, but Mark challenged him to finish it and found out he was kind of good at it.
It was all for Mark.
Right?
-
The shift doesn’t seem to end. By 10 pm, there’s a lull in admittance and he drags his feet to the staff room where he doesn’t realise until it’s too late that somebody is already there.
“Ambush much,” he mutters beneath his breath.
Nakamoto closes the door to the ER and indicates for him to sit down at the round table to the side. He contemplates for a hot second to just shoulder his way out, but decides he is more curious about what Nakamoto has to say.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Nakamoto says and sits down in front of him. “Last night made me realise why.”
“Because Mark’s in love with you and not me?”
Nakamoto tilts his head. “No, that you would let a crush get in the way of how talented you are.”
Haechan laughs. “Hilarious! Can I go now?”
“I could teach you a lot if you would allow me,” Nakamoto keeps on softly, his large eyes kind. “I think you have a real talent for emergency medicine.”
“I thought Jeno was your protégé?”
“He’ll be a very good paediatrician one day. You on the other hand, I can see as Chief Resident right here in the pit.”
He stares. Nakamoto stares back and he looks like the evil attending boss that Haechan has created in his head, the one who didn’t think he was good enough or took it seriously enough... but the Nakamoto that is giving him a level stare, who just told him that he is good at something, is so unlike whatever image suited Haechan best.
“You’re very talented, Haechan,” Nakamoto says and gets up from the chair. “Don’t fuck it up.”
No one but his friends ever calls him Haechan. No one else takes it seriously.
-
“Listen up everyone!” Taeyong calls out from the desk. “The eight car pile-up is being redirected towards us.” There is a collective groan since it’s twenty minutes to shift change and Haechan really wants to go home and bury his head in the sand. “Jaehyun’s on triage!” Taeyong continues directing the staff. “Jaemin, I want Surgery down now.”
“Yes, boss,” Jaemin says and slides towards the staff phone on the wheely chair.
Haechan gives the woman he is treating an apology and runs towards his resident who is already giving Jeno directions.
“I want you in with Nakamoto,” Doctor Jeong says. “Whatever he needs, you comply.”
“Understood,” Haechan replies and feels the adrenaline starting to coarse through his veins. He turns on his heel and starts toward Nakamoto who gives him a small smile.
“Are you ready?”
“I won’t let you down,” Haechan says.
“Dispatch says there is a surgeon on site,” Taeyong remarks when they pass. “I’ll send in another one to take over when they arrive.”
“Thanks,” Nakamoto says over his shoulder.
Everyone gathers in the arrival bay.
Haechan ties off Jeno’s surgical gown, listening to the sirens approaching, and steps up beside Nakamoto.
Jeong steps towards the first ambulance and the two doors fly open, revealing Yang Yang who jumps out first and grabs hold of the gurney. “Twenty-six year-old male,” he shouts out. “Blunt force trauma to the abdomen.”
“Moon!” Jeong calls out and the doctor steps up with Jaemin following right behind him.
Triage continues on with the surgeons coming down to take those with open wounds and possible internal injuries.
Hendery jumps out of the next ambulance and his dirty clothes and cuts on his face instantly reveals how challenging his trauma was out in the field. His driver Winwin looks just as disheveled as he runs towards the open doors.
“Are you okay?” Haechan asks worriedly and looks inside the ambulance where a disheveled and dirty Mark sits hunched over a mostly open chest.
“Call surgery, stat!” Nakamoto shouts towards Jeong.
Mark lists off the patient’s stats and Hendery and Winwin pull out the gurney with some difficulty since Mark can’t be moved or jostled much.
Nakamoto looks slightly shell-shocked until Haechan jostles him into gear because the gaping hole in the patient’s chest won’t close itself and Haechan doesn’t know what to do.
“I promised her mom she wouldn’t die,” Mark says and despite his steady hands his voice is shaking slightly. “Her name is
Maria.”
Nakamoto runs his hand over Mark’s shoulders in comfort and begins the initial check-up while they’re rolling into the ER.
Doctor Suh, the chief of surgery, wanders into Exam Room One and does a double take when he spots Mark. Haechan helps him tie off his scrubs and pull on his gloves before he quickly goes to Mark’s side to help. “I guess I know why you’re late now,” he comments and pulls at the stethoscope around his neck.
“My phone broke in the crash!” Mark says. “I swear I would’ve called in late.”
“You were,” Yuta says slightly hysterically. “You were IN the crash?”
“Haechan,” Suh says after Mark is finally free from the open chest. “Give Mark a check up.”
“No problem,” Haechan replies and pulls at Mark‘s elbow who only goes after making both Nakamoto and Suh promise to be there for the patient through everything.
“It’s just that her mom went to another hospital and she made me promise,” Mark talks distracted while they walk towards an empty bed at the other end of the ER. His shirt is smeared with blood mixed in with dirt from the scene, making him look slightly deranged while he talks a mile a minute about the girl Maria. And then suddenly, he doesn’t talk at all.
Haechan sees the whites of his eyes, the deathly paleness of his skin, and reacts just in time to throw himself underneath him in an effort to break the fall.
“Help!” He screams desperately and reacts on autopilot, pulling Mark onto his side to prevent him from choking on the blood passing through his lips and onto Haechan’s pants.
“Internal bleeding,” Jaemin mutters and Haechan doesn’t hesitate to agree, pulling Mark’s shirt up to reveal a large darkening bruise near his spleen. A pair of waiting paramedics run towards them and help lift Mark up onto a hospital bed.
“Get Johnny Suh now!” Haechan hears Taeyong shouting somewhere but all he can do is hold on, praying that his stupid feelings getting in the way of their friendship wouldn’t be the end of… Mark.
He watches helplessly as Doctor Suh is pulled out of the elevator transporting Mark’s trauma patient and follows along like a zombie when Suh and Jaemin pull pull him onto a gurney.
“You have to tell Yuta,” Suh says, pressing the button on the elevator. “Tell him now!”
Haechan nods. “Okay.”
But what is he supposed to say?
He finds Nakamoto sitting on a whirly chair in the empty trauma room, writing down in a chart. “What was all the commotion about?” he asks with an open curious face.
Haechan wrings his hands and opens his mouth.
-
“Hey, so in ninth grade Mark decided he was gonna start skateboarding,” Haechan babbles from his spot beside Nakamoto in the awful waiting room. “And I told him how is he going to fit in one more hobby beside the soccer and basketball and get perfect grades ‘and’ be a skateboarder? And he just did it anyway… until he broke his wrist and couldn’t do anything…”
Nakamoto is sitting with his head in his hands and his shoulders have been shaking for a while. Haechan pretends he doesn’t notice, but he does… notice that is. Because he has been fighting his own tears ever since Mark disappeared into the OR and the only updates they’ve gotten so far is a stuttering Dejun who is the only other first year surgical resident besides Mark. He keeps saying ‘cautiously optimistic’ in a way that makes Haechan think he doesn’t know what’s going on at all.
What is even ‘cautiously optimistic’? Because Haechan isn’t it.
He sees interns, kitchen ladies, cleaning personal and doctors of every single department filter through asking about updates about this person who is always helpful and easy to laugh. Even Chenle’s parents who owns most of the hospital makes an appearance with a table full of home-cooked comfort food. Haechan has eaten his way through most of the wontons out of sheer nervousness and even though he knows instinctually that the most competent team the hospital has to offer is in the OR working hard, there is a sinking feeling in his tummy for every half hour Dejun doesn’t arrive with his ‘cautious optimism’.
“My point is,” he continues on, “that Mark can do anything he wants to. Even live.”
Nakamoto looks up, disheveled and red-eyed. “We don’t need to talk,” he says softly.
“I’m pathologically incapable of not talking.”
There is a hint of a smile on Nakamoto’s lips. “Tell me more about the skateboarding then,” he says and Haechan does.
-
He admits he has never seen Nakamoto out of his suit and tie or scrubs. The man he finds beside Mark’s bedside looks almost young in his sweatpants and oversized hoodie.
“Hey,” he says softly and hands him a coffee.
Nakamoto folds in on himself with the cup in his hands and lets the steam hit his face with a tired sigh.
Mark lies on the slightly tilted bed, softly breathing in slumber. There are still cuts and bruises from the crash, but the scar is hidden away beneath his white hospital gown. Everyone was told he will be fine and Haechan cried for an hour home alone in his bed. Not that anyone will ever know that particular fact.
“Are you off today?” Nakamoto asks.
Haechan shakes his head no. “Night shift.” He runs a comforting hand over Mark’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll stay here for a bit.”
Nakamoto’s hair is matted, hanging limply over his forehead. “I want to be here when he wakes up,” he says.
“I’ll be here,” Haechan promises and takes out a small speaker from his backpack. “I’ll play him some tunes and fetch him ice chips if he wants.” He shrugs. “We’re good.”
Nakamoto looks unsure but whatever his doubts are, he eventually does get up from his chair. “You can call me Yuta when we’re not a work. And I’ll call you Haechan. You know Mark never told me why you like the name?”
Haechan is strangely touched. “I’ll tell you one day,” he says.
It looks almost physically painful for Nakamoto to release Mark’s hand, like he would rather clean sores than spend another minute not touching him. But he does eventually let go, departing with a quick kiss to Mark’s forehead.
Mark sleeps.
And sleeps.
And sleeps.
He sleeps for so long that Haechan eventually dozes off with his favourite R&B artists playing in the background crooning about love.
In his dreams, he sees Mark running towards the crash, wincing from the pain of his own collision and throwing himself into the burning car. Maria had burn marks, Haechan remembers, and streaks of sooth were beneath her nose. Dream Mark disregards himself because he’s so good and pure and Haechan desperately wishes he could be that selfless and goddamn brave.
“Hyuck!”
He startles awake, blinking hurriedly to get his bearings, having forgotten for one blissful moment where he is and why he’s sleeping in an uncomfortable chair beside a hospital bed.
Mark looks pale and small but otherwise alert.
“Thank God!” Haechan exclaims. “I’ve been so worried!” He backtracks awkwardly. “I mean… we’ve been worried.”
Mark blinks up at him. “Who are you?”
He narrows his eyes. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“Is Elizabeth still queen?”
Haechan flicks Mark’s uncovered toes who moves them in annoyance.
Mark squirms around, still connected to several different tubes which makes his arms virtually useless. He’s also incapable of asking for help so Haechan moves the pillow around while he huffs in annoyance until he looks almost comfortable enough in comparison to before.
“I sent your boyfriend home to take a shower,” Haechan says off-handedly. “He was starting to smell from being plastered to your bedside the last two days. Little bit of rot and decay from unused joints. This is a hospital, you know, we have hygienic standards.”
“Does everyone know?” Mark asks meekly.
“If they didn’t before, they certainly do now.”
Mark’s face displays every emotion on his face just like Haechan knew they would. It shows fear, fear for Nakamoto’s future because it’ll go straight to HR now and it’s fear for the things they tried to keep a secret but was so horribly displayed for everyone to see.
But it wasn’t a secret, not the way Mark probably thought it was. Chenle knew, Jaemin, Taeyong, Suh…
“But the fact that you,” Haechan pokes Mark‘s shoulder with his index finger. “Didn’t tell me, your actual soulmate, is hurtful, Mark Lee. Hurtful!”
Despite the pain Mark must be feeling from Haechan’s gentle assault, his gaze is steady and unrelenting, just steady enough for Haechan to realise that Mark is mad. “You can’t be mad at me. Me and Nakamoto are practically besties now,” he comments.
Just because Mark was too busy almost dying to see Haechan’s undignified apology to Nakamoto…
“You hate him,” Mark says.
“Not really,” is Haechan’s honest reply. “I was just jealous.”
It hangs there nicely.
Elephant-shaped.
They never talked about why Mark left. Apart from his uncompromising ambition, they hadn’t ever really worked, not in the way that Haechan had dreamed about before they got together. All the fighting and stubbornness would vanish when Mark finally realised that Haechan loved him. But their fights got worse.
Sometimes Haechan forgets that the rosy tint of his memories covered the fact that Mark had sat him down on their last day together, the day before he left, and said that they should never have been anything more than friends.
“I don’t love you like that,” he said softly and Haechan, then nothing but Donghyuck, agreed.
“I forgot,” Haechan says to the bedridden Mark of the present. “For a moment I forgot that we don’t love each other like that because I…” he swallows. “Because I missed you and I need to be in your life. Because you make me a better person.”
Mark’s eyes are a suspiciously reddish colour and blinking rapidly. “I missed you, too.”
-
He’s playing hoops with Jeno a couple of days later out in the ambulance bay with a mostly silent Jaemin enjoying a smoke partially hidden behind a dumpster.
“So, you were never in love with Mark?” Jeno asks hunched over the ball and dribbling it against the concrete.
“A schoolboy crush,” Haechan grimaces. “Born out of admiration rather than…”
“Lust?” Jaemin helpfully comments.
“Yeah,” he sighs.
“I mean, there is something about him,” Jeno says and jumps with Haechan defending half-heartedly. “He’s-“
They all agree.
“Haechan!” Nakamoto calls from the sliding doors. “I’ve got a teaching case!”
Haechan throws the ball towards Jeno. “Laters,” he tells the couple and speeds towards Nakamoto.
“I want cases, too,” he hears Jeno tell Jaemin in his pouty voice.
The case takes up most of his workday and when he follows Nakamoto into the train and Nakamoto doesn’t complain, they predictably end up at Chenle’s fancy house where Mark lives and is currently resting.
Haechan notices that Nakamoto has a key but his train of thoughts run a mile a minute about possible solutions to the case.
Mark blinks awake from his spot on the couch covered in what appears to be dozens of blankets. A mountain of snacks has been placed on the table beside him and a highly concentrated Chenle is playing NBA on the television with his little white dog sleeping in his lap.
“Haechan followed me,” Nakamoto declares and crosses across the television to reach Mark’s side.
Mark’s dopey look of affection is enough for Haechan to realise that he is still taking a bunch of painkillers. Hopefully.
Chenle gags at the love birds and throws him a controller. Haechan catches it midair and sits down beside him. “Thanks,” he mutters.
“You’re still an asshole,” Chenle remarks without taking his eyes of the players.
Haechan shrugs.
“Sorry, I didn’t tell you.”
Nakamoto is busy caressing Mark’s face to care about their conversation and Mark is too busy blushing. With a little bit of distance Haechan thinks maybe… maybe it’s a little cute. Hell will freeze over before he tells anyone though.
“Maybe I deserved it,” Haechan admits. “Finally got my head outta my ass, though, if that helps?”
Chenle pauses the game and turns towards him with the dog peering up disgruntled at being woken. “Thank fuck,” he says. “The secrecy was killing me!”
“Me, too,” Mark pipes up from his new place in Nakamoto’s lap. “Almost literally.”
Haechan points accusingly. “Don’t joke!”
Nakamoto tightens his hold around Mark’s uninjured chest. “Yeah don’t joke.”
Chenle restarts the game and for the first time since Mark left him, Haechan finally feels okay again.