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It’s rare to come across a first time with someone you’ve known since you were fifteen, and by the time you think you’ve run out of them, you’ve run out of reasons to point them out.
The first time Mark kisses Jaemin, the kiss barely lasts for a second before he pulls away and pulls back into himself. Jaemin stays silent and Mark walks out and despite seeing each other the next day, and the day after, and every day for a long, agonizing while, they never talk about it—eventually, the need to talk about it disappears somewhere between dance practices and vocal lessons.
The first time Jaemin kisses Mark, years after the first time Mark kisses Jaemin, Mark has no room to back down. He remembers the feeling of being trapped, Jaemin’s hand on his neck, his fingernails digging into his skin. Jaemin traps him and Mark finds that, when the first urge to flee has melted away, down with the bitterness into Jaemin’s mouth, all that remains is the desire to press closer. So he does.
Like the first time, the real one, the one where Mark lost his mind and kissed Jaemin and ran, they never talk about it.
Only, this time, it opens the door for more. It’s Mark claiming that it would be more convenient to sleep at Dream’s dorm for the duration of the comeback and slipping into Jaemin’s bed every night. It’s Jaemin and his wandering hands and his restless feet and his knees that keep seeking Mark’s side, a strain on Mark’s shoulder where Jaemin rests his head whenever he is within reach.
It’s a plethora of first and new, and slight alterations of what was already familiar. Mark writes down some of them in his journal, skipping the ones that feel the heaviest and scribbling down the mundane in half formed sentences at 4 am—like the morning where Mark woke up with Jaemin, still asleep next to him, and his warm hand on the inside of Mark’s thigh, and how flushed that had made him, and how he had been unable to fall back asleep, waiting for Jaemin to wake up, expectantly, and how long the wait had seemed. That’s exactly how he wrote it down, letters merging together and ink bleeding on the page: I waited for Jaemin to wake up and when he did, everything fell into place. Maddening, that easiness between us.
The first time ‘more’ dissolves into the point of no return, Mark gets the urge to cry. Jaemin notices and goes soft inside of him, and they laugh, hushed, and Mark wonders if that’s what happiness is to him—inextricably linked with tears. Somehow, that’s a first that makes it into his journal.
The first time they go back to normal, Mark swears he feels something shift in the world around him, something in the wind that no one else seems to notice. Progressively, the Dream promotions schedule gets emptier, and there’s 127, there’s SuperM, there’s a ton of other projects sprouting up from nowhere and Mark can’t justify staying at Dream’s dorm anymore. He picks up his tee-shirts and his toothbrush and the earphones he keeps meaning to take back to his own dorm, his own room, and Jaemin watches, half-naked on the bed. An unforgiving sight. And Mark knows Jaemin better than that, he knows that Jaemin never shows himself undressed unless he has something to prove. He never shows himself naked unless he’s done with being vulnerable, unless he’s over Mark and under him, unless his palms are on Mark’s stomach or his heels are digging against Mark’s calves. It always has to do with JaeminAndMark, together. But Jaemin is lying on his bed, chest bare, looking at Mark, and Mark knows. But still.
Jaemin has always had everything handed to him on a silver plate. How could he understand?
Mark leaves after kissing Jaemin, not for the first time but maybe the last; and, yeah, that’s what he remembers thinking, this might be the last time I’m doing this.
⋆⋆⋆
Normal is too void of Jaemin to be anything but dull and Mark tries his best to remember how he managed before, when Jaemin was still unreachable, a fantasy he didn’t let himself indulge in.
Jaemin doesn’t call, doesn’t text, leaves on read every conversation he’s ever in and Mark wonders if it would make it easier or worse if Jaemin acted different from his usual self, if Jaemin had called him a coward to his face that day Mark packed his stuff and with it days and nights of intimacy, all of them careful, some of them purposeful, cameras pointing to Mark’s hands on Jaemin’s cheeks.
⋆⋆⋆
As it turns out, Mark was wrong. It happens again. A new comeback, late nights and early mornings, the pretense of convenience and Jaemin’s lips, his tongue, his fingers, the way he fucks into Mark at his own pace, the way his skin looks, so perfect that Mark has to scratch parts of it to remind himself that this is real, and when they’re done, when Jaemin hovers over him, disheveled hair and bruises on the base of his nape, Mark has to hold back from crying all over again.
⋆⋆⋆
Jaemin sits there, shoulder bumping into Mark’s, digging into his side in that same way it has since they were fourteen, fifteen, and all the years in between then and now. Jaemin sits there, warm and broad and solid and the scent of his fabric softener is the only smell Mark can pick up in the room. Jaemin sits there, hands on his thighs, playing with a loose thread from his pants, and Mark doesn’t have to wonder how his fingers would feel against his lips.
He knows.
“We’re experiencing a bit of a technical difficulty, ten minute break!”
Around them, the Dream members get up, groaning, sighing, laughing, quiet and loud, uncaring. Mark stays still. Jaemin presses closer.
“Hyung,” he says, quiet, in that tone Mark has only ever heard just above a whisper. A secret they keep from the whole entire world, just the two of them.
“Hm?”
Jaemin doesn’t answer. The room is loud around them, Chenle’s piercing laugh, unmistakable, resonating across the room. Mark wants to get up and leave, he wants to link his fingers together with Jaemin’s and lead them somewhere else, a place less bright, where the light is less harsh, more forgiving. His foundation is starting to itch, and Jaemin’s knee is jittery against his side. He attempts to stop the movement, running his palm up and down Jaemin’s thigh, caging his knee in his hand. Jaemin still twitches under his fingers. Unaware. Unbothered. All the same.
Mark tries to pretend he can’t see the lights assistant throwing insistent looks their way. The years of training in public image management bear fruit—he fails. How proud must his manager be. Mark Lee, the golden boy of the company. A responsible young man.
(But Jaemin, he never cared. He fell asleep on Mark’s shoulder and he slacked off during dance lessons and he sneaked out of their company at night and he never cared about any of it. He took the scoldings with a blank face when he got caught, and then he did it all over again.)
Jaemin’s lips brush against neck, sudden, soft. Dangerous territory.
Mark’s skin itches some more.
“Jaemin. Come on, let’s go drink some water.” He disentangles himself, looses warmth and a piece of his mind right there, on the couch, in the creases of Jaemin’s hoodie where Mark’s arm was just milliseconds before. To make up for it, he offers Jaemin a hand. “I’m thirsty.”
Jaemin takes it. His fingers slide across Mark’s wrist and Mark wishes he could bare his arm and lead Jaemin’s hand higher, keep his fingers on his skin for longer. He wishes he could ask for more than lingering touches. But not here, with a crew of unfamiliar people and too many unkind eyes, too many eager ears.
The thing is, Mark isn’t sure if there exists a place where he could ask and not break something in the equilibrium of how they work.
Maddening, the fragility of what they have.
⋆⋆⋆
Practice is exhausting, another night where the evening and the morning blend together. The window is open to let in some fresh air, to get rid of the smell of sweat and work, and outside it’s so eerily quiet. A reminder that they should be sleeping, like everyone else. Mark can’t afford to sleep.
Jaemin hasn’t taken his eyes off him for the past ten minutes but Mark pretends he hasn’t noticed. He can’t get distracted. He’s exhausted, sweaty and red in the face, but he keeps going. Jaemin has given up one or two hours ago, Mark doesn’t keep count anymore. He doesn’t try to get Jaemin to work harder, more. Jaemin stays with him when everyone else goes home, and Mark doesn’t know if it’s because what he lacks in investment he has to pay in overtime, or if it’s just another way he clings to Mark. A weird child who used to follow Mark around, an adult who still does so. His forehead isn’t shiny anymore, but the traces of sweat are still visible on his back. It’s a good thing Jaemin keeps his eyes on Mark, otherwise it’s Mark who wouldn’t be able to stop staring. Jaemin’s bangs are sticking to his temples and Mark wants to kiss him. Badly.
How unfair, that Mark is just like everyone else, a moth attracted to Jaemin’s light, suffocating him. Just another victim to his pretty face, when all Jaemin’s ever wanted was to be just another body in the crowd. Mark thinks he understands Jaemin the best among the dream members, precisely because Jaemin says out loud what Mark represses with guilt. He’ll never admit it, though.
Jaemin stretches. Mark forces himself to look away, unaware that he was looking in the first place. It often goes like this: he thinks he’s doing a good job at ignoring Jaemin until their eyes lock. The music is on loop, loud, oppressive. It’s stopped making sense. Mark’s left leg is a little stiffer than it should be, and it feels as if the more he tries to make his movements flow better, the stiffer he gets. Still, he gets into position. Forces his body to listen to him.
“Mark hyung.”
From the corner of his eyes, Mark can see that Jaemin is still on the ground, hands above his head. Relaxed. Impossibly tempting. Mark recognizes the invitation for what it is.
Behind cameras, when work is over and done, Jaemin takes his blinding smile and his soft eyes and hides them from the rest of the world. He stays like that, hidden behind masks and oversize hoodies and expensive sunglasses, until the next comeback, until the next camera shoved in his face, always asking for more pieces from him, always prying for the most intimate.
Jaemin hides and disappears for days on end, and Mark is allowed to forget, for a while, that there’s this expanse of skin peeking out from worn out tee-shirts that he’d like to put his hands on.
And then Jaemin comes back, and makes sure he doesn’t forget.
It’s the same as any other night, really. Mark loses parts of his mind and Jaemin steals the pieces from him before he can pick them up. Jaemin pulls him towards him and Mark pretends he’s better than the rest of them, that he can resist him. They’re both stubborn in their own way. Mark wishes Jaemin would use his energy for something else—Mark wishes Jaemin would get closer, would finally, finally, finally do something about the heaviness that sticks to them. A shadow on Jaemin’s jaw. Mark wants to sink his teeth in his skin and taste. Feed.
“Hyung,” Jaemin whines, insistent.
Mark does his best not to crawl. Who knows if he succeeds. How he ends up biting bruises on Jaemin’s stomach, mind dizzy from nerves and exhaustion and desire, makes little sense to his brain.
But things don’t have to make sense for them to exist.
Jaemin moans, low, pleading, and Mark forgets just about everything.
⋆⋆⋆
Mark has worked hard to get where he is now. He’s left behind all he’d ever known to come to a country where people around him spoke too fast in a language he barely grasped, and disapproved of his manners. He’s sacrificed countless nights to the goal of working harder, doing better, proving his worth.
And Jaemin, Jaemin walked into the company with his angelic face, smiled politely and his future was handed to him right there. Jaemin grew up in this country as a little prince, polite without trying to be, and an appearance that grants him even the forgiveness he doesn’t ask for.
Mark never resented him, except for the times he did. Handsome Jaemin, never hiding the fact that he only became an idol to comply with his mother’s wishes, charming and slacking his way into a dream and a way of life Mark had chased after ever since that day in Vancouver when he was picked among the crowd of other kids, like fate, a destiny opening in front of him. He didn’t resent Jaemin, except for the times when Jaemin remained quiet and closed off and unwilling to open up on camera, impossibly frustrating for the people around him—except for when Jaemin didn’t bother to hide his own resentment at having lost his youth to insane pressure and idol life, and, god, how that resentment resonated with the feelings that Mark kept locked inside his heart, afraid they would burn him whole at the tiniest spark.
Jaemin made him want to believe in parallel universes, ones where Mark could afford to be a little more like Jaemin, a little more free. Ones where Mark could separate resentment from desire whenever the feelings bloomed inside his chest, whenever Jaemin smiled at him a little too wide.
⋆⋆⋆
It’s not that Jaemin never has his moments; it’s that he never shares them, ever. Not with Mark and not with anyone else either, as far as Mark is aware.
Jaemin sees other people. That, Mark knows. He doesn’t know who, where, what exactly they do. Mark tries not to wonder if he shares with strangers the knowledge of how to pleasure Jaemin, the sensitive patch of skin on his neck, the way he likes it slow and intense.
Jaemin sees other people when Mark is away, busy on a world tour on the other side of the globe or just a few streets down, practicing a choreography for another unit, but he stops as soon as Dream gets a new project and he only takes back where he’s left off when Mark moves out again.
Mark wonders if Jaemin knows that he has no one else. If someone else has told him what Mark has always been too proud, too scared to say.
Jaemin feels heavy on his thighs, a trap closing in, a thorny flower with the scent to go with it. Mark is almost surprised he doesn’t feel a sting on his fingertips as he maps out Jaemin’s belly, tracing the lines of his muscles, closing a hand around his waist. Soft, warm. His fingers come out intact but Mark feels a thorn sinking in his side.
The burden of desire, ever present, lingering on Jaemin’s skin and sipping into Mark’s own. Infectious. Dizzying.
It’s as easy as that: Jaemin doesn’t ask, yet, still, it feels like Mark complies. That’s the excuse he hides behind: Jaemin doesn’t ask but Mark knows. Mark complies.
⋆⋆⋆
One night, in between two hours of quietness, during those times Jaemin’s bed seems somehow smaller than it actually is and Mark has to go over Jaemin’s side to avoid falling out of it, Mark asks.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
Jaemin is drafting a late night message for Bubble, carefully choosing between pictures that he spent an hour editing earlier. Mark thinks the pictures looked better before all the editing, when Jaemin’s skin didn’t look unnaturally smooth, and his eyes looked more tired. He thinks Jaemin has selected what might be the best picture for their fans, but Mark prefers the pictures where Jaemin smiles a little less, the ones where his gaze drifts somewhere off camera, those where he looks soft and human instead of sparkly and unreal. Mark doesn’t tell him all of that, of course.
“You know,” Mark trails off, gesturing to the phone in Jaemin’s hands, the state of his hair (messy) and the clothes he’s wearing (soft, covered in old stains that won’t come off even after being washed). “This.”
“I don’t get it, posting a message?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
Jaemin settles on two photos taken at slightly different angles. He looks good, of course he does. When he’s done posting, he turns to Mark.
“Hyung.”
It’s a weird thing, to resent someone you lov—to resent someone you desire. The same things that Mark likes the most about Jaemin, his aloofness, his unwillingness to give everything to a job that constantly asks for more, his handsomeness—those are what he dislikes the most, too, in a way. They’re a reminder of how different they are, and how sometimes, Mark can see a bridge between them that can’t be crossed.
“You’re sulking.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Shut up.”
Mark attempts to leave the bed, which, okay, isn’t exactly a well thought-out decision because outside of Jaemin’s bed, there’s nowhere to go for him here, and it’s too late to make the trip back to his own dorm.
Jaemin holds him back, yanking Mark’s arm so that he falls back into bed, right onto Jaemin’s chest.
“That hurt,” Mark points out, just to distract both of them of how willingly Mark had surrendered and cuddled back into Jaemin’s arms, lips brushing against his neck with every word. “It’s just that… It’s so fake. It’s weird.”
“It’s not. It’s our job,” Jaemin states.
“I know that, it’s just… I don’t like when I see this version of you displayed to the world. I like this version of you better,” Mark trails a hand across Jaemin’s jaw to emphasize his point. The skin there is a bit rough in places, a bit dry. Mark can’t remember a time when he didn’t want to kiss it.
“Well, I don’t like when you show the version of you that’s the closest to this one to our fans, too,” Jaemin says, quietly. “I feel like you’re sharing too much. I want to keep you, the real you, to myself. You lack some instinct of self-preservation, I think.”
"I don't even share that much."
It’s so unlike them to be so open. Mark’s hand stills on Jaemin’s cheek, feeling like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Jaemin takes his hand and kisses his wrist, and they’re okay again. Simple as that.
⋆⋆⋆
It’s nothing like a great gesture, full of tears and big words and life-altering declarations. Mark thinks it rather suits them.
“Hyung,” Jaemin says, in that same tone he always uses, and somehow Mark hears years of untold confessions and hopeful possibilities. And somehow, it’s enough.
He considers apologizing for a moment, but the words get stuck in his throat. Instead, he takes Jaemin’s head between his hands, squishing his cheeks. Easy, familiar. A rare gesture they share on and off camera. Jaemin encircles Mark’s wrists with his fingers, just applying pressure, waiting for Mark’s next move.
“I want you,” Mark says.
“Okay.”
“Exclusively.” He’s out of breath. The words come out shaky. Jaemin hesitates, his gaze dropping down for a millisecond before meeting Mark’s eyes again.
“Why?”
“Because it feels right. Because I want to.”
“What about what I want?”
“Well… What do you want?”
“Your time,” Jaemin answers, immediately. He isn’t meeting Mark’s eyes anymore, focused on peeling lint off Mark’s sweatshirt. His fingers graze against Mark’s neck with every move and Mark does an okay job at pretending it doesn’t light his skin on fire. At pretending he isn’t considering how easier it would be if he kissed Jaemin again and pretended like they didn’t need to talk. Like this conversation was over.
“You have it.”
Jaemin huffs.
“Not always.”
Mark thinks about being in Vancouver and looking at Jaemin’s contact in his phone, the call button, the impossibility of it. He thinks about the various pieces of clothing he’d forgotten in Jaemin’s room, all those times that were almost the last, that he’d never gotten back. He thinks that something is happening, something that his fifteen year-old self would have never thought possible. That’s what he says to Jaemin.
“My fifteen year-old self is freaking out right now.”
“Is that a yes?”
Jaemin is handsome off and on camera, he’s someone Mark has had to compete with all his life, someone who never took part in this made-up competition in the first place. Jaemin has been Mark’s lover for months, years, they never really kept count. Jaemin has been in Mark’s orbit since they first met and Mark thought how unfair at the same time as he thought I want him, in these simple terms, I want him.
Mark says yes and the concepts of normal and abnormal swap and if no one else outside of this tiny room notices, at least Mark thinks Jaemin does, at least his lips taste like he does and Mark kisses them again, and again, and again...