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“You look well,” Renjun greets after spending a minute of looking at Mark through the glass.
Mark laughs slightly as he rests the plastic phone against his shoulder. “So do you.”
He returns it with a chuckle, like always.
Their greetings are always the same—Mark picks up the phone the moment the guard removes Renjun’s cuffs, and holds it against his ear, then he’ll wait while Renjun gives him a once over through the glass before picking up his own.
Renjun can never decide if the consistency is something he’s thankful for.
“I heard Jeno got convicted,” Mark says, starting their conversation for the month.
Renjun hums. “He did. Jaemin rang the other day and told me,” he replied. “It was bound to happen, what with everything he was running from. Surprised it took as long as it did.”
“Jeno is cunning, he knew what he was doing much better than you did,” Mark replies, tone light-hearted and full of mirth.
He rolls his eyes good naturedly. “Yeah, yeah.”
“How is Jaemin?” he asks, tone a bit more serious. “He calls you regularly, right? How’s he holding up?”
“I mean, as good as one could be after finding out your ex-fiancé is a criminal,” he joked. “Jaemin plans on visiting him once things settle, which should go okay. He has some practice dealing with loved ones in prison,” he referred to himself with a silly pat on his shoulder.
“A childhood best friend and an ex-fiancé are kind of two different ballparks, Junnie.”
Junnie. It’s a nickname he hated growing up, too cute and soft for his line of work. Now, in an orange jumpsuit and bulletproof glass between him and Mark, the endearment tugs on his heartstrings in all right ways for all the reasons he hated.
If he were the same person he was a few years ago, he would have scoffed at how soft Mark made him.
He shrugs in response to Mark, not quite trusting his voice.
“Maybe I should call him,” Mark continues. “Give him some pointers on handling a fiancé in prison.”
“If you’re looking for an excuse to rekindle your friendship with Jaemin, that is a terrible one,” he replies bluntly, morphing his expression to that of unimpressed. “Just call and ask how he’s doing. Lord knows he needs someone to talk to that isn’t me or his family.”
Another chuckle. Another pull on his heartstrings.
“Always the wise one, Junie,” Mark gives him an amused look.
“And for the record,” the words are coming out of his mouth before he thinks them over, “we never made never made it to the fiancé stage, let alone the ex-fiancé one.”
A wistful expression replaces the other’s previous amused one. “No,” his voice is quiet, “I suppose we didn’t,” his words lead to the first silence of the conversation.
Renjun thinks he sees longing and regret dancing in Mark’s eyes, but he dismisses it as his eyes playing tricks on him. Some part of him prays it was his just his imagination. It wouldn’t be good if those feelings were actually there. Too many things to unpack in a place they shouldn’t be unpacked. At a time, in both their lives, that would be very inconvenient.
“How’s Johnny-hyung?” Renjun asks, half unsure if this would lead to another quiet spell. “The business doing well?”
Mark clears his throat. “Yeah. The studio is doing great. They, uh, expanded recently—added a darkroom, y’know, to develop film, and a new shoot space.”
He notices the way the other avoids his first question, but doesn’t push. “Maybe you should talk about that to Jaemin,” he responds. “He’s still a freelancer.”
Mark seems to perk up at this. “Really? The studio is looking for new hires right now. Do you think he’d be interested?”
“Worth a shot,” he leans back into his metal chair, acutely aware that half the visiting time has passed. “Having something to focus on, it might be good for him.”
“Look at you,” he laughs, “giving me pointers on how to rekindle friendship from behind bars.”
Renjun throws his head back with a laugh. “Someone has to, Mr. Socially Awkward.”
Mark giggles and brings way to the second quiet spell. Their second is always the shortest, usually a small lull in their conversation.
“Johnny’s good,” Mark eventually says, voice quiet but full of adoration.
Renjun pretends not to hate it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, uh, we moved into a new apartment recently. It’s got a nice view of the skyline.”
Now that surprises him. It must be written all over his face because Mark rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.
“Yeah, uh, turns out I don’t mind living in the city as much as I thought?” he lets out a ‘haha’, a telltale sign of how awkward the other feels.
“I tried to convince you for all our lives and could never get anywhere with it,” he feels the smallest bit jealous but he refuses to let the conversation die now. “He’s a miracle worker.”
“He really is,” Mark beams, seemingly oblivious to Renjun’s inner turmoil. “I was hesitant, and I still want to live in the suburbs one day, but the he apartment hunted, was incredibly nitpicky, until he found a place I would like.”
“A god-send,” he adds on, not even pretending. Johnny was always a better person—a better match for Mark—than he will ever be.
Another adorable chuckle, the kind Renjun’s heart remembers and helplessly does a skip when he hears it.
It leads to their third silent spell, their last before the conversation concludes. Renjun swallows thickly, thoughts racing around trying to make his last few moments count. Somewhere between it all, he looks away from Mark, prompting concern from his visitor.
“Are you…” the words are flying out before he has a chance to stop himself, “are you going to propose to him?”
The question clearly takes Mark by surprise, so much so he almost drops the phone and fumbles to get a hold of it again. “What?” he splutters. “I mean, I’ve thought about a future with him, but proposing—”
“Does he know you’re here?” he presses on, not caring if he’s interrupting or getting slightly worked up. “Does he know you come here, every month?”
“Of course he does,” Mark finally finds his bearings. “He knows I visit. I tell him every month.”
“And he’s just fine with this?!” his tone raises and his tightens hard on the plastic phone. It earns him a look from one of the guards.
“Why wouldn’t he be fine with it?” Mark asks once he calms down slightly.
“You’re telling me, your current boyfriend—one you have thought about having a future with—is okay with you visiting me—your criminal ex-boyfriend? The same ex-boyfriend you thought about a future with. The one you actually went out and bought a fucking ring for!” he faintly hears his chair toppling behind him as he stands.
“Calm down inmate,” the guard warns him, picking up his chair and pushing him back down into it. “Do it again and I’ll cut your visit short,” the guard’s tone is gruff, letting him know he’s serious and not afraid to follow through on the threat.
Renjun closes his eyes and takes deep breaths. His death grip on the plastic phone doesn’t loosen. When he opens his eyes again Mark is still looking at him and this time, Renjun can’t pretend anymore that the wistful expression is just his eyes playing tricks on him.
“You bought me a ring,” he repeats. “Everyone, including Johnny, knows that.”
“He’s fine with it,” Mark quietly says.
“Is he?” he challenges. “Or have you just convinced yourself that?”
Something in Mark’s eyes shifts and Renjun knows he’s hit the nail on its head.
“What do you want me to do, Jun? Cut you out of my life completely?” he runs a hand through his hair and, yet again, Renjun feels his heartstrings being tugged at.
A fourth silence washes over them and effectively breaks their routine.
Renjun bites his lips, contemplating everything that lead them to this moment. He thinks back at all the trouble he brought Mark, all the pain, all the lies. The frequent ‘I have to go see Jeno about work things,’ and ‘I have night shift, baby, I’ll be back in the morning,’ when really he was out selling drugs and committing a drive-bys.
He thinks about Johnny, who suspected his moral character from the beginning but never overstepped because he cared and respected Mark too much. He thinks about how Johnny held back an ‘I told you, he was bad news,’ in favour of holding Mark while his life crumbled apart after his conviction. He thinks of how good a person Johnny is.
And, through all his thoughts about Mark and Johnny and his sorry excuse of a life, he thinks about Jeno. Jeno, the leader of the gang. Jeno, one of the gentlest gang members Renjun’s ever laid eyes on. Jeno, his best friend, who told him that if he loved Mark, he’d let him go and not get him tangled up in their mess.
He thinks about how selfish he was and dismissed Jeno’s suggestion.
All his thoughts lead back to himself and how bad of a person he is. He doesn’t doubt that, if he was a better person, maybe, just maybe, he and Mark would have made it.
And so, he squares his shoulders and resolves to do at least one good thing by Mark. “Maybe you should,” his voice is tight, an obvious indicator about how much he hates the idea of Mark cutting him out, but he stands his ground.
Greif comes over Mark’s face and, for a moment, Renjun wonders if he, all this time, still made Mark’s heartstrings tug too. He commits this final image to memory.
“Don’t come back here, Mark,” he hangs up the phone and turns to his guard. “I’d like to go back to my cell.”
He doesn’t look up and allows himself to guided back to his cell. He leaves Mark, everything they were and everything they weren’t in the visitation room.
Jeno transfers to his prison a year later and Renjun briefly wonders how stupid the system is to have placed them both in the same block and assign them to the same room.
He tells him about Jaemin and everything the spoke about while Jeno was at his other prison. “He’s going to be showing up a lot more now, since both of us are here,” he finishes off. “He’s coming next week.”
“And things are good between you?”
Jeno smiles all soft and genuine and, for a moment, Jeno looks like Jeno and not the gang leader he’s been for most of his life. “Not yet, but we’re getting there.”
There’s a bittersweet feeling that tugs on Renjun’s heartstrings. Despite that, he returns Jeno’s smile and is happy that least one of them made it.
Years later, Renjun’s sentence is complete and he walks out of prison a free, thirty-seven year old man.
After saying goodbyes to Jeno, with a promise of visiting soon, a guard tells him someone came to pick him up. That confuses him, his family disowned him after his conviction, and Jaemin is away on a business trip, so it can’t be them. The guard insists again that someone came to pick him up, so, despite his confusion, he reroutes his steps away from the main entrance and to the visitor parking lot.
The visitor’s parking lot is in direct line of the sun in the afternoon. The light reflects off the cars, making it hard to even look at. Like he expected, it’s is blinding but the sun feels good on his skin so he lets it slide.
He blinks rapidly as he wanders further out into the lot. When his vision finally clears he stops in his tracks.
A rush of emotions tug at his heartstrings in a way they haven’t been tugged on in years.