Chapter Text
The puzzle of my heart broke and scattered
While I was exhausted, on my way home
I turned at the wrong street corner
And came out on a road I didn’t know
— Mildsalt - Jinsei wa Subarashī
The lawyer life, this Mark finds out when it’s already a little bit too late to change his career’s path, is definitely not even half as exciting as he’d once believed it would be.
The stack of papers piling up on his desk seems to keep growing by the hour. Awaiting to be read over, signed and sent, they stare back at him almost mockingly. It’s a tale of all the things he should’ve gotten done days ago—all the things that he cannot afford to keep stalling on, and that yet will still be waiting for him upon white-painted wood when he walks into his office tomorrow morning.
Then again, it’s not like Mark has any right to complain. He should’ve known that there would be not so many life-changing, transcendental cases coming his way before he decided to become a family attorney.
Thinking about it, Mark guesses that he did know what he was getting himself into when he accepted Kun Qian’s offer to join the law firm in which he works right now. What he did, in fact, not, was care about it.
Back then, Mark hadn’t cared about anything, really, so it leaves him right where he is today. The only thing he can allow himself to do about it is take in a deep breath through his nose, let it out slowly through his mouth, and repeat to himself, for the fifth time since lunch break now, that this all is exactly what he deserves.
If he were to be honest for the very first time in a long, long while, Mark would have to admit to everyone he’s fooled by now that dealing with pre-marriage agreements and divorce settlements hadn’t been his forever dreamed job when he entered Law School.
No. If Mark were to tell the truth—if he were to open his chest like he once did and never will again, willing and unafraid and with so much left to lose and still—, he would have to say that what he’d wanted was to, in some twisted manner not even he was too sure of, make it big.
And yeah, it might sound a little bit pretentious, a foreign nobody dreaming of becoming the next big thing in the American law scene. But, after growing up binge-watching crime series after crime series hunched up on the couch with his mom, and then developing an almost unhealthy obsession over the Ace Attorney games he would play over and over again on his Nintendo DS late at night when his parents believed him to be asleep, Mark guesses that he cannot really be blamed for harboring hopes and dreams pulled straight out of TV.
Life, though, does not always go as one would have expected, and much less how one could have dared to wish it would. Fate tends to take fatal twists, and the truth is sometimes ugly enough to wreak havoc in its wake once it decides to show itself past the thick layers of pretty, perfectly smooth paint plastered over it.
And really, Mark Lee should have never expected so much out of Law School and life after the bar exam, even if the circumstances had been the perfect breeding ground for precious dreams of happier kinds of perhaps. He should have never let himself go to sleep thinking that a better tomorrow would come, nor that happy-ever-afters were something real and not a flimsy fragment of imagination most people never get to experience, because living with expectations more often than not means dooming yourself to disappointments of great magnitude.
What he only realizes now that he can look back and reflect on his past steps, is that what he should have expected—the one thing he should have invested more of his time in learning instead of memorizing stupid laws he no longer gets to care about—, is, as always, the unexpected.
Nothing ever goes according to plan.
Mark’s life, Mark’s dreams and Mark’s wants—they were never a good enough exception for the cosmos to grant.
⚖️
Mark Lee grows up in Toronto, but it is in Chicago that he finds home.
There’s a metaphor in there, hidden somewhere between the moment in which he accepts the reality of the one quest he sets as a goal for himself and the one in which he sets foot on the faculty that will become his natural habitat for the next three years after that.
Thankfully enough, things are sometimes not-so-simple and others too simple indeed for fragile minds to understand—and so Mark just wakes up one morning and says: this is what I want, and does: everything it takes for him to become exactly that.
The journey to get there is not an easy one, but a head full of birds (as his mother says), too little to lose (in his brother’s words) and a childhood-brewn dream worth fighting for (just how his father likes to put it whenever someone asks where his little one is off to) are sometimes enough of a lead for a young man to decide to leave his house and his land in hopes of finding something better in the theater scenario he’d always wanted to stand on.
The play is not majestic, and Mark is not the best actor fate could’ve casted for the role—but the script he writes along the way towards his destination does not suck all that much and, in the end, everything goes a little bit like this:
There is a too cramped suitcase bursting at the seams with all the little pieces of his twenty-four years of life Mark manages to fit in there, a teary hug from his mother and a slap on the back from his dad at the airport, and a plane that doesn’t crash when it lands like Mark had feared it would.
There is a little studio apartment near the University of Chicago campus with a bed frame that creaks every time Mark dares to shift on the mattress and blank walls that hold no warmth for a boy who’s used to finding home round every corner he turns, and clothes thrown unceremoniously on the back of a desk chair, and an empty closet he fills in with hopes and dreams and then shuts closed so they will not fade away when he falls asleep.
And there is Mark Lee, Sociology graduate from the University of Toronto at twenty-three, who juggled an exhausting part-time job as a waiter at his neighborhood’s most popular restaurant for a year with preparing for Law School admission exams, and who never gave up because he’s nothing but stubborn when it comes to getting what he wants.
And what a goal it is, for a boy who taught himself that he’d have to leave home to make a dream come true: to make it big in the American law scene, become a name that someone will one day remember, and then return home with the king’s crown perched on his head; and to build a life for himself in the process—to find home away from home, despite the obstacles on the way and the ache rooted deep inside his ribcage.
But nothing has ever seemed unattainable to Mark, there has never been such a thing as impossible might be, and so this dream will not be, either.
And so, when he goes to sleep after the potential most tiring day of his life, there’s only one thought plaguing Mark Lee’s mind: that a new life will begin for him morning come, and how horrifyingly exciting it is, and how curious he is about what he will find the moment he steps into his first ever class at Chicago’s most recognised Faculty of Law.
(And the play is not majestic, and Mark is not the best actor fate could’ve casted for the role, but life is sometimes mean and some others kind enough to turn you into the happiest version of yourself you could have ever dreamed to become.
It’s good luck, then, that destiny and chance often tend to get along well enough to build a path one shall not ever regret having walked on.)
⚖️
By the time Mark Lee realized that he wasn’t, indeed, going to be the next big thing in the American law scene, he had already come to terms with the fact that he was okay with living a simpler life.
In all honesty, getting through the three years of Law School turned out to be a smoother ride than what he’d first been made to expect. Looking back on it, with his head resting on the palm of his hand as he stares out of the window by his desk at the law firm’s cubicle of an office, Mark thinks that he owes it all—the good and the bad, after all this time—to the friends he made right at the very start.
Admittedly, it was a good life that they had while still back in college. Mark can’t fight the wistful smile that tugs up the corners of his mouth when he reminisces about sitting next to Jeno and doing absolutely nothing during class, their drunken shenanigans at the obscure clubs Jaemin dragged them to at night, or the way in which Renjun would light up colored candles for them all before every single one of their exams, all while Donghyuck delighted them with the most snarky remarks.
An early mid-life crisis is not the sort of problem Mark can allow himself to indulge in right now—not when he’s got the scattered pieces of a broken heart still left to pick up, not when he has been trying to make sure he will not hit a new low—, but growing old has always sounded terrifying and his once optimistic lifeplan has been shaken to the core.
Thirty is not that big of a number, but it is something that does not leave room for so many doubts—and Mark Lee feels, irrefutably and desperately, lost.
It is with nostalgia, and a little bit of dread too, that Mark thinks about how all of them must have turned twenty-nine now, while he’s already entered a new decade and yet sometimes feeling like he’s still a kid instead.
But life—this too Mark learnt once he found himself standing alone before the dreams he’d created with his very own hands and choosing to let them go—is also about leaving behind the things you want and love the most in exchange for serenity, and maybe the little bit of quietness an overloaded heart might ache for.
And, while it was true that all of them had had dreams bigger than their own lives upon walking into the faculty for the first time, Mark guesses that, somewhere along the way, all of them learnt that happiness is sometimes found not in the wishes and hopes harbored by individual minds forever aching for something more, but rather in the ones bestowed upon them by fate and destiny itself as it weaves together the lives of people meant to complete each other’s souls.
If Toronto had been Mark’s bird’s nest, the one place where he’d been made the man he is today, then Chicago is the one home he makes for himself despite the obstacles he finds along the road. And if he’d wanted for his name to be big the first time he’d sat through a whole lecture on Criminal Law, if he’d dreamed of his picture being printed on the front page of a newspaper after successfully resolving yet another tricky murder case, then seeing how teamwork and camaraderie is brewed in the smaller spheres makes Mark understand that maybe what he needs is simply a place where he can let himself flourish without worry, where the only expectations he needs to meet are his own and those of the people he loves the most.
Chicago taught him many things: humility, friendship and much more law than what Mark had first thought, and gave him a place to which he could belong during what he believes were the best years of his life.
Still, despite how easy it was to slowly accept that his happy place in the world might not have been the one he’d first imagined it would be, there’s a bittersweet taste stuck to the back of his tongue that Mark doesn’t really manage to wash away no matter how many times he scrubs his teeth clean every single night.
Chicago taught him many things, but then also forced him to erase them from his heart, and it is a pain that grows heavier on Mark’s back with every single sunrise.
Chicago was home once but it is no longer, and so Mark feels homeless.
Another email comes into his inbox with the most annoying sound Mark has ever had to listen to, and the world keeps turning with the unwavering motion that reminds him of how none of what he has now is what he’d wanted, and of how the sourness in his throat transcends the walls of flesh and seeps deep into his bones.
A crow seats himself on the sill of the window, and seems to stare at Mark almost mockingly from the other side of the glass. After a few seconds, it flies away in a telltale of the freedom for which he sometimes still aches; and, for some reason, it leaves behind another crack on the walls of Mark’s heart that he does not quite really know how to cover up.
⚖️
Donghyuck sat next to him at the back of the classroom during a Civil Procedures lecture once, and he took Mark’s heart away with just one single glance.
Renjun used to constantly tease them about it, back then, saying they were a cliché straight out of a bad Saturday afternoon movie.
“You fucking asked him for a spare pen in class one day and started dating him the next!”, he’d say, even though that wasn’t exactly true, and he’d always make a show of fake-gagging whenever he caught sight of Donghyuck’s pinky finger hooked around Mark’s thumb under their usual table at the campus cafeteria. But his snarky remarks always, always made Donghyuck laugh, and the sound felt so right where it reverberated against the walls of Mark Lee’s enamored heart that he could never really bring himself to tell him to stop.
Love bloomed between Donghyuck and Mark as if sung along to the tune of the autumn breeze blowing through falling leaves, certain as the fact that the brown and orange tears cried by the trees onto the cooling ground would grow back greener than ever by the time spring came back around—sure and safe, like the hug of a warm cup of milk before going to bed, and fresh like diving into the ocean during summer, the awakening of the five senses and the consummation of a devotion that only comes round once in a lifetime.
Mark was never really able to exactly explain how it happened, him and Donghyuck. He was never really able to tell if it was quick like a lightning strike, or instead slow like the arrival of the warm weather after the last winter snow. If it was him, ever the dreamer with a head full of birds, who fell first, or if it was ethereal, seemingly unattainable Donghyuck instead.
It was not something he ever found himself in need to do, though.
After all, the people who mattered to him had been there to witness it all from the start: when playful words slowly started to turn gentle, and when longing stares became tender, and how, in the end, justice was served and Mark Lee was sentenced to spend his Law school days besides the one boy who managed to make the loose wires in his chest feel like a closed circuit again.
Mark was never really able to explain how it happened, but it’s not as if answering questions was something he and Donghyuck ever learned to do when they were about their own little world. Things fell naturally into place without the need for questioning, a case clear from the beginning to the end: Mark and Donghyuck Lee, a love story to rival those of the old tales, a promise of forever behind every brush of their lips.
Instead, what Mark knows, is what their relationship was—how he understood it as the proof that not all good things are limited to come only after a great fight, and that easy can sometimes indeed be enough—, and how Donghyuck Lee changed the path of his life without even really trying to, and how sweet happiness tasted while melting against his palate for three consecutive autumns in a row.
Donghyuck was a hurricane and a sandstorm, the calm that comes once those two are gone, and all the wreckage they leave behind when they’re done. He was an oasis, too, fresh water found by chance in the middle of a desert, and also the unfaltering burning of the sun that melts and burns everything it shines on.
Donghyuck was silly private jokes shared in low hushes hunched behind someone else’s back during a boring lecture, and full-on laughter around a table at their favorite pub under the unfazed stares of their friends. He was quick brush of the lips while bending down to pick up a pen from the ground amidst the frenzy of the faculty’s library during finals season, and the slick warmth of their tongues licking into each other’s mouth back in the privacy of their own room, moving in together beginning their second year of Law School.
Donghyuck, Mark thinks now, was light one day and then shadow, loud cries of unwavering love first and static silence next. He was the gentleness that comes with all good things past and the grief inevitably tied to an aching loss, and the knowledge that tasting heaven is one too short-lived pleasure for how painful it is to be exiled from Eden.
When he first arrived in Chicago and started Law School, Mark had had the dreams of a god wanting to be adored by its followers, but then he’d found out with great delight that being human could also serve to give peace to his heart.
Donghyuck, though, was never really made to walk among mere mortals—and so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, really, that he’d one day chosen the one path Mark Lee couldn’t walk by his side.
⚖️
Johnny Suh barges into Mark’s office without even knocking on the door when the night has already draped like a heavy blanket over the city, and Mark is so startled by the loud noise of wood slamming open against the partition wall that he makes a mental note to tell the new guy at the reception desk—Yangyang Liu, straight out of college and in desperate need of a little money to pay rent—not to allow him inside ever again.
“Dude!” Mark squeals in a cringey, high-pitched tone that makes him want to crawl into a hole, hand flying to rest on his chest right over his racing heart. “You scared me!”
“Duh, I’m sorry!” Johnny laughs, holding up his hands as if in surrender as he walks into the diaphanous space of Mark’s little office room. “You weren’t supposed to be here in the first place, you know.”
Mark blinks twice, a frown etched on his face. “Then why’d you come?”
“Dude,” Johnny snorts, rolling his eyes as if the answer to his question was painfully obvious. “To make sure you weren’t here so I could go check on you at home. At this point the odds of you being here at ungodly hours are way higher than of you being at your apartment, so. I’m just saving myself a fruitless trip downtown.”
Johnny’s tone is as playful as it has always been, but the feeling and the knowledge behind his words do exist and sit heavy behind seemingly harmless syllables. It makes Mark’s throat grow tight as he huffs and lets his eyes turn towards the window, watching the lights of Chicago’s night twinkle behind the glass.
“I’m busy,” is what he chooses to answer, the strain in his voice giving away just how desperately he’s begging for a topic change. It only makes Johnny roll his eyes again, moving to sit on the corner of Mark’s desk. “You’re right, though. I think that at this point I might as well start saying I live here instead of at my apartment.”
“That you do,” Johnny hums, narrowing his eyes as he studies Mark's obviously squirming form. Then, after a brief pause. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”
Mark stays silent for three painfully long seconds before saying, “Well. I told you I’m busy.”
Johnny knows him better than the palm of his very own hand, though, and so he doesn’t buy the flimsy excuse. Instead, he scoffs and reaches over to pick Mark’s desk calendar from the table, and spends a good moment staring at it before speaking the words Mark had been hoping he would not.
“Or you could just tell me that you’re sad and not doing good, you know. It’s been three years now, hasn’t it?”
So much for being Mark’s one and only very best friend.
Johnny Suh, Mark too meets during his first year of Law School, an engineer pursuing a doctorate that just so happens to prefer a lawyer’s library than his faculty’s own.
Back then, before time and pain took away most of his smiles, Mark used to be what his friends liked to call a social butterfly: always talking and asking and never afraid to meet someone new every single day that passed by.
Like everything that happened during his stay at college in Chicago, meeting Johnny was as simply fortunate as it could’ve been: fate leading them to sit next to each other at one of the crowded tables of the library, and Mark’s amazed questions when he noticed Johnny’s books speaking not of the laws of men, but of those of physics instead.
Johnny had been, for the lack of a better word to say so, endeared by Mark’s curiosity and the earnest look in his eyes; and somehow, after a little hushed talk surrounded by the quiet sound of tapping pens and turning pages, he’d decided to, in his very own words, adopt Mark as his own little brother and show him the dangers and marvels of Chicago’s day and night’s life.
Becoming Johnny’s friend is probably the one choice he made in college that Mark Lee still does not regret. Albeit the twists and turns it has taken have never ceased to be surprising, their friendship flourished fast and healthy even throughout the cold winter months, until Johnny became Mark’s confidant and Mark learnt what it truly means to be someone else’s safe place.
Their relationship was always reciprocal, mutual care and affection that reminded Mark that no matter how far away from home you are there will always be someone to help you make the most out of it all—and so, through the good and the bad, Johnny Suh stood strong by Mark’s side even when everything sweet started to turn sour, and the life Mark thought he’d keep forever vanished right before his very own eyes.
Mark doesn’t think he will ever get to be anything other than thankful to Johnny for everything he’s done, and keeps doing, for him.
Still, sometimes, knowing that there’s still someone that has you figured out inside and out even after the world has tried to throw you off its surface one too many times can be painfully scary.
And so, Mark’s heart aches a little more with every pump, a reminder of all the things he’s lost and the ones he has not despite the best—or, perhaps more accurately, the worst—of his efforts.
“Mmh,” comes Mark’s reply to Johnny’s question, the length of his column growing cold as he tries not to lose focus. Then, easy as they come these days, a lie: “I’m alright.”
Johnny chuckles dryly, a sound that’s almost as humorless as Mark’s laughter has been during the past few years. Then, he places a hand on his shoulder so gently that Mark fears it’ll be enough to break down the walls he’s struggled so much to put up.
“You know I’m not gonna buy into your silly lies, Markie,” he says the words softly, as if afraid to scare Mark away. “It’s okay not to feel good, man, c’mon. You can lean on me.”
And how easy it is for Johnny to say it, for he knows that Mark’s trust is still resting on his shoulders like the heaviest of stones.
“Or you could try and go on some dates, like I’ve suggested a thousand times now.”
But that Mark wishes, too—that he could allow himself to feel things freely, to go through grief and ache and then happiness like he was once able to.
“Those have never really worked out,” he answers, and Johnny just sighs and squeezes his hand down on his shoulder once again.
Mark does not have to remind him of how his heart and soul were crushed three years ago now for Johnny to know, though, and so it’s with a sad smile that he shakes his head and throws Johnny a look that urges him to let go.
There are some things, this Mark learnt the hard way, that will simply never get to be found past the awful sadness carved deep into his bones.
⚖️
Donghyuck moves out of their shared flat three months before their joint lease for the last year of Law School is up, and the apartment he leaves behind resembles Mark’s home but feels nothing like it used to once.
The echo of the sound of the front door slamming shut right in front of Mark’s nose still resonates across the chipped walls of the living room. Donghyuck’s voice, sharp and bitter and full of something so foreign it managed to make Mark feel sick, keeps on scratching bloody wounds into his heart even long after he’s gone, forever engraved into every crevice of Mark’s brain like the melody of a tune you once loved but now cannot bring yourself to listen to anymore.
Sitting on the ground of which once was their shared bedroom, with his back to the wall and his knees pressed tight against his chest, Mark wonders if melting into the bricks would be enough to retrieve from them the memory of gentler times, flashbacks to the moments in which they were witnesses to a love so big it threatened to break past the barrier of their windows and spill out until it drowned the entire world in yellow and pink and all things sweet.
If he were to be asked about it, demanded to tell the tale of how Donghyuck chose to leave and not fight for their shared future instead, Mark thinks he would have to say that he doesn’t know how it happened.
It’s a cruel parallelism, that he knows, the way in which he’s failed to grasp both how their love was born and how it then died: three long years of hard-earned tenderness and hopeful dreams vanishing in a single blink of the eye, but lovesick hearts tend to do wonders to hopelessly enamored minds.
Mark thinks he would have to say that he doesn’t know, take a knife to the throat and plead innocence above all things wrong, for he does not believe himself able to pinpoint the moment in which the flame was shut down.
What he fears the most, though, is the sourness sitting heavy on the back of his tongue, an aching taste that tells him this is something he’d seen coming but hadn’t dared to put a name on.
Perhaps, there is something Mark would have to admit, if thoroughly interrogated about it: that he’d chosen to turn his back on the shadow of truth lurking behind him, just so he could keep pretending his life wasn’t going to crumble the moment he let his guard down.
Perhaps Mark should’ve done more, or maybe there was never something to do in the first place.
All in all, heartbreak comes like a tragedy told in three acts, and things happen exactly the way in which fate chooses to set them up.
There is the beginning, the brewing of a silent war Mark fails to withstand, the strain of their last year of college and the pressure of exams.
Beyond that, past the way Donghyuck never fails to curl into Mark’s chest in his sleep and how easy it is for them to simply hold onto each other and stay, a seed starts to grow into something dark—the shadow of uncertainty, and doubts that never seemed to reach Mark’s heart, and the wilting of something once so beautiful it becomes hard to watch.
Donghyuck was light one day and then shadow, loud cries of unwavering love first and static silence next. He was conversations of “Would you rather we stay in Chicago or take the bar together somewhere else instead?”, plans of a shared future Mark was willing to give everything up for, and then shortly cut replies that led nowhere but to an empty field and a deadly intersection, the forever damned destiny of two inevitably parallel lines.
Mark still remembers once reading an article about a woman who stared at the sun for so long that she went blind, and how he found himself thinking that she couldn’t be blamed for having wanted to stare at something so bright and beautiful until it became the last thing she ever saw. He would’ve been a hypocrite if he’d done otherwise, after all—because Mark keeps on watching Donghyuck, devoted to the core even though he knows himself doomed, and Donghyuck in return steals Mark’s sight with his last rays of light.
It’s the paradox of wanting something and then not, seeing yourself in someone else as if in a mirror and then expecting them not to have always been like you. Mark learns humility at the same pace Donghyuck learns greed, and loses his god-like dreams right at the same time Donghyuck gains his—and shouldn’t he be made to stand in trial for the crime that it is to be the one that ends up destroying everything?
There’s arguments, fights, and yet still some room for a little love. Looking back on it now, Mark thinks he should’ve noticed, should’ve known the second it all started to go wrong. Still, he’d once learnt that sometimes easy can too be enough, and there is nothing simpler than pretending things are still the way they were right before the beginning of the storm.
He should’ve known, though, that things such as fate tend not to be set in stone.
Falling in love, and then out of, the theories and processes never told in textbooks—the very two things Mark never really learns to recognise, not until it’s too late for him to do anything other than grieve.
Then, there comes the clash.
Donghyuck was one day gentle, and heart-wrenchingly cruel the next. Mark gets home from another lonely study session at the library preparing for the bar exam, long hours of aching for Donghyuck’s warmth after yet another half-attempted discussion weighing heavy down his back, and is greeted by the sight of an old faded duffel bag left right by the entrance and Donghyuck’s solemn eyes as they watch Mark’s steps come to a halt.
“What’s wrong?” Is what Mark asks, even though somewhere deep inside, in some hidden corner light never gets to reach, he already knows.
He knows. He does not want to know, and yet.
“I’m gonna—” Donghyuck starts, and his voice has the decency to break in the middle, perhaps the last bit of mercy Mark will ever be allowed— “I’ve decided I’m going to live alone while preparing for the bar, you know.”
The entire length of Mark’s body grows cold.
“What?” He manages to babble, and he hears himself as if from afar, anchored to a stone sinking into the sea. “Hyuckie, what are you talking about?”
“Mark,” Donghyuck breathes out through his nose, slow, too slow, as if he were trying his best not to burst at the seams. Then, as if all the powers from above had been bestowed upon him, he sentences Mark’s heart to death: “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
And how painful it is, to witness the destruction of the love you’ve spent years nurturing, and to be rendered unable to change the direction of events all under the command of the one you believe is your soulmate.
“What,” Mark tries and his tongue fails, feeling too thick for the cotton of his mouth. Again—he has to try again, cannot give up, cannot let go— “What is that supposed to mean?”
When Donghyuck’s gaze meets his eyes, full of a desire that leaves out the entirety of their built-together life, Mark realizes that he might as well have missed the reality behind the last few months of their relationship.
“That I don’t think we can keep doing— this. Staying together. It’s,” a deep breath, filling up the cavity of Donghyuck’s chest, and the eight words that serve to bury Mark’s soul. “We’ve grown too comfortable with everything. I don’t wanna tie my future to you.”
It’s the sound of ambition and greed, tearing Mark’s home apart from the inside.
It’s the sound of heartbreak, sudden denial and then grief, and Mark feels like he can’t breathe.
“But,” he gasps, lightheaded and desperate, and oh-so-not ready for the answer he is about to get, “isn’t it— isn’t that what love is supposed to be about?”
A moment of silence, the weight of the world heavy on Atlas’ shoulders, and then the vast nothingness of despair.
“Then maybe—” Donghyuck says, and he sounds horribly certain— “Maybe this isn’t love at all, Mark.”
Screams and cries don’t take long to turn into a fight—for all the things once had, and all those that were lost to the war.
In the end, Mark is left alone to deal with the aftermath.
When he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, hours after the deed is done—after Donghyuck swears they’re never meeting again, that he’s sure there’s better somewhere out there, that he’ll pick up his things when Mark says he won’t be there—, Mark does not recognise himself. When he stares at his reflection, the yellow lights of the bathroom blinking from extended use, he finds his other half missing, and so his chest feels heavy and his heart seeks shelter in sharp corners behind rusted doors.
Graduation after the end of the college year, and the bar exam awaiting for him right before the warmth of summer arrives on shore, and everything else he’d once dreamed of: it all loses its meaning, once Donghyuck Lee is gone.
⚖️
It’s now been three painfully long years since Mark last heard about Donghyuck Lee, the frenzy of the bar exam and life choices and everything else that happened in between failing to wipe away the ache he left behind.
Mark Lee, who once dreamed about a flourishing future together with he who was the one, ends up drowning in regret and doesn’t even get to know where Donghyuck goes, what he does after the bar or what kind of lawyer he becomes.
Some nights, Mark still wonders if he’s really stopped loving Donghyuck too, despite all the hurt. He wonders, with the sadness reserved to those condemned to mourn what could’ve been, if he will ever find an answer to that question when he can barely bear to think about what happened between them anymore.
It is a pain that seeps deep into his flesh and, sometimes, doesn’t even let him sleep—a pain he learns to carry, but that doesn’t subside nevertheless.
Still, even as he tries to feign he did with all the good faith there’s in the world, Mark simply knows it’s not just his severe case of late heartbreak that Johnny came to his office to talk about.
“Okay, now,” Mark says, the tilt in his tone still a little tense. “Tell me why you’re really here. What do you want?”
Johnny gasps, as if baffled by Mark’s question while he moves to sit on one of the chairs at the opposite side of his desk.
“What is that supposed to mean? I just wanted to see you!”
“Yeah, no,” Mark huffs out a laugh, shaking his head before giving Johnny the look he knows is one of having been caught. “I appreciate the intention, man, but we both know you would have just barged into my house and waited for me there if you didn’t want anything else. I gave you a key for a reason.”
The flash of guilt and embarrassment that passes by Johnny’s eyes is one Mark does not fail to grasp. Then, as if he were a balloon, Johnny deflates and admits, “Yeah, okay. Maybe I need a little help with something.”
Mark tilts his head and reclines into his chair, eyebrows raised in amusement as he stares at Johnny across the mess of papers on his table.
“That’s new, dude.”
“Things are usually the other way around, I know,” Johnny laughs, eyes closing into crescent moons, and the sound feels warm inside Mark’s chest—reminds him of caring, found families and other matters reserved only for his most sensible dreams. “I’m serious, though.”
“Okay,” Mark muses, curiosity getting the best of him. “What is it?”
“Right,” Johnny huffs, then takes a deep breath. “Okay, so. Remember Ten?”
“Ten,” Mark says, molding the syllable against his palate as if familiarity were something to be found there. “As in, the guy you’ve been hooking up with for the last few months?”
“What? Dude, no. What the hell!” Johnny gasps, eyebrows furrowed as he brings his hand up to his chest in an overly dramatic display of offense. “We haven’t been hooking up! He’s just my friend!”
“Friends do hook up sometimes, though, you know,” Mark frowns, thoroughly confused. “There’s nothing wrong with—”
“No. Mark, I’m telling you,” Johnny says, as serious as he manages to get. “We’re just strictly platonic friends, I swear. We haven’t even kissed!”
“Okay,” Mark sighs, not really in the mood for arguing. “I believe you,” he does not. “What’s with Ten?”
“Well,” it takes Johnny a painfully long moment to elaborate, and Mark can almost see the whirls turning inside his head as he tries to find the most appropriate way to explain himself. “Turns out he’s actually the one who needs your help.”
Mark blinks twice. “My help? As in?”
“As in—” Johnny’s voice is strained, as if his tongue were struggling to push the words out of his mouth despite how nonchalant he tries to sound, and Mark is honestly starting to freak out a tiny little bit. “As in help from a lawyer, obviously. Duh.”
Silence reigns over the office for a few seconds that stretch themselves so long it feels as if they’re going to last forever.
Then, in come slow words of confused concern.
“Dude,” Mark says cautiously, not really sure of what exactly Johnny is asking for, “you do know I’m a family lawyer, right?”
“Mmh, yeah,” Johnny simply hums, staring at him as if he were giving the most absurd statement in the world.
“And that, like, I don’t deal with, uh,” Mark stumbles over his words, and he should be upset about it because he’s not the one being a cryptic little shit, “criminal shit and stuff.”
“Mark!” Johnny exclaims, seemingly a second away from outright jumping off his chair at the affront. “Ten’s not a criminal!”
“Then what help does he need from a lawyer?” Mark asks, exasperated.
“Well, duh, he,” It takes Johnny approximately a minute to finally respond. “He needs to, eh. You know. Get a divorce.”
“A divorce,” Mark repeats after a couple of seconds, awfully slow, his brain not processing the words until his tongue is finished parroting them back at Johnny.
Then, chaos.
“Dude, what the hell!” he screams. “You’ve been fucking a married man?!”
“For fuck’s sake Mark,” Johnny screeches, his hands flying to cover his reddening face for a moment. “I’ve told you I haven’t been fucking him! Why won’t you just believe me!”
“Because you’ve been talking about him nonstop for weeks!” Mark shouts back, thoroughly bewildered. “What, am I supposed to believe you’re not head over heels for him?”
“But that’s not— That’s not the same thing!” Johnny cries out, and it’s a little bit too honest, a little bit too raw. “I swear I haven’t laid a finger on him! And he’s not even in love with the guy anyways. You don’t need to be such an asshole to me!”
Somewhere deep inside his head, Mark knows he needs to be the rational friend he hasn’t been in a very long while. And really, even though being around Johnny—who always looks after him, brings him comfort and listens to his endless ramblings about hating his job and badly wishing he could go back to when his biggest worries were deadlines and school—makes it hard to play the bigger guy, they’re still at Mark’s office, and he’s apparently talking about giving him an actual job.
Mark doesn’t think his boss—Kun Qian, a man who seems to be as passionate about money as he is about messy divorces and marriages of convenience and everything of the sort—would approve of him having this kind of argument about a potential client, and so he sucks it up and tries to keep his tone steady as he pushes his hair back from his face and asks,
“So you want me to take his case?”
Johnny scowls, apparently appalled by Mark’s lack of basic understanding, and huffs. “Of course, dude. Do I look like I know any other marriage attorneys apart from you?”
“The correct word is family, not marriage—”
“Does it matter?” Mark could swear Johnny outright whines. “C’mon, Markie, after all we’ve been through, don’t you wanna do me just this little favor?”
“Well, is he going to pay me? I don’t even know the guy, how can I know it’s going to work—”
“Of course he is! It’s not a charity case!” Johnny cuts him off yet again, and Mark does have to take a deep breath to stop himself from actually popping a vein. “Listen, it doesn’t have to be anything too fancy, like, you know. I’m sure it won’t be that hard.”
“Huh?” The promise of an easy job sounds attractive enough to make Mark pause.
He studies Johnny’s face, a telltale of a kind of desperation Mark doesn’t manage to link to anything just yet, and squints his eyes at him as if that would help him see right through his friend.
Then, just to make sure the both of them are on the same page, he adds, “What, does he just need me to like, go over his papers and stuff? Do they have it all settled?”
If he had known that was the question that would make Johnny fall silent, Mark would have asked it hours ago. Still, just by the look on his face, and the way he fidgets with his fingers in the way he tends to when he’s nervous about something, Mark knows it all sounded way too good and easy to be true.
“Uh, well, you see,” Johnny mumbles, his eyes darting around the room. If he didn’t know better, Mark would dare say he looks embarrassed of what he’s about to say. “Ten, he, uhm,” a hissed breath. “He wants the pets.”
Mark, in a strange moment of lucidity, is reminded of the stupid, definitely-not-funny prank shows his father would watch on the TV at home while waiting for the news to come on. Indeed, he has to actively fight the instinct to look behind him just to make sure there’s not a hidden camera recording him from somewhere, increasingly confused by Johnny’s overall attitude.
“He wants the what?” He asks, just to give his mouth something to do while his brain struggles to process the situation.
“The pets,” Johnny repeats, more confidently this time, and his gaze meets Mark’s as if he could to get him to understand through mere thinking alone. “He wants the pets, and apparently his husband does too, you see. They aren’t— Ten doesn’t think they’re gonna come to an agreement about it anytime soon.”
Mark can’t help the incredulous chuckle that squeezes its way past his lips.
The pets. How petty.
“So you need me to mediate?” The question leaves Mark’s lips in a slightly incredulous tone, but it hides behind a load of growing curiosity that is not easy to conceal.
“I guess?” Johnny’s eyes will not meet his, and it only makes Mark grow more convinced of the fact that someone must be recording this to laugh at him and he’s going to have Johnny’s ass kicked. “But they’re friends! Like, really, it’s not going to get ugly or anything. Just— yeah. Ten really wants to keep all the pets. He loves them a lot.”
“All the pets,” Mark echoes him, just for the sake of his imaginary show. “You’re asking me to… fight for your boyfriend’s pets?”
“He’s not my fucking boyfriend!” Johnny groans, exasperated, and finally looks at Mark to give him the pleading eyes he knows Mark simply can’t deny. “Seriously man, you’re my best friend. Please help me out on this one. I don’t know anyone who’d do it better than you.”
“You don’t know anyone other than me who’d do it, period,” Mark snickers, and the sound comes out a little more bitter than he would’ve liked it to. “I’m a shitty ass attorney and you know that.”
“And you know that’s a lie,” Johnny frowns. “You’re good at your job, I’ve heard your boss telling you so on the phone before, I’m not gonna be fooled.”
“Family law is tiring and uninteresting,” Mark says. “I don’t like it enough to truly try and be good.”
I wanted to make it big in the court scene, I wanted to put criminals in jail, not deal with petty divorces, he doesn’t voice, because some truths feel heavier than others; harder to swallow, more painful to bear.
“Whatever you say, I’m not buying it,” Johnny shrugs, leaning back into the chair and raising his right eyebrow expectantly in a sudden showcase of confidence. “You’re gonna take the case anyways. For me. Pretty please?”
And really, Mark could say no.
He could say no, and save himself the effort of getting too involved in a mess in which he does not belong. He could say no, give Johnny the name of at least another ten law firms in Chicago who’d fight themselves to death to take the case, and go home with a guilty mind he’d drown in a lukewarm cup of coffee while going over the thirteen summaries he does need to work on and still hasn’t gotten through.
He could say no, and then carry with him the knowledge that he’s left Johnny hanging despite how Johnny has never refused to help him through the endless chaos that the last six years of his life have been—and the phantom weight of such treason feels so heavy on his shoulders that Mark fears he’s going to get crushed before even doing anything.
In the end, he says:
“Be here with Ten next Thursday at six,” and Johnny smiles, wide and toothy and so bright that Mark is once again reminded of staring at the sun and going blind.
“Thank you,” Johnny exclaims, as honest as it goes. “Thank you, Markie, for real. It’s gonna go great, I just know!”
A goddess, watching from somewhere above, flips her coin right then—and somehow, even though Mark cannot exactly tell why he knows this, it feels like a sign that something's going to change.
⚖️
Five minutes into his first ever conversation with Ten Lee, Mark finds out that he’s actually an oddly good match for the headassery he knows tends to characterize most aspects of Johnny Suh’s life.
“—And we were both dance majors, you know, so we sure as hell knew how to move,” Ten keeps on explaining, undeniably dedicated to his passionate storytelling technique as he wiggles his eyebrows for emphasis. “So before any of us could realize what was happening, boom! We didn’t want to hook up with anyone else, and believe me when I tell you we both used to be total sluts—”
“Uh, Yongqin,” Mark dares to speak up, and gets in return a murderous glare for the crime that is to interrupt the potential screenplay of Ten’s very own biopic. “I don’t think all of these details are relevant for your case.”
“But Markie!” Ten all but whines, and Mark’s right eye twitches with sheer stress at how easily the nickname only Johnny has ever used on him slips past his lips. “You need to understand how our relationship started to see why it’s now ending! And please call me Ten, no one ever uses that ugly ass name on me anymore.”
Mark has to swallow back the hazardous instinct to remind him of the fact that it is, actually, his legal name.
“Fine,” he says through badly gritted teeth, “but then don’t call me Markie again.”
“Now that’s stupid,” because of course that has to be the first comment that comes out of Johnny’s mouth ever since he seated himself on the armchair pressed into the corner of Mark’s office today. “You’ve never complained about me calling you Markie before.”
“We’ve been close friends for almost seven years now, John,” Mark deadpans. “Ten’s my client—”
“A client who’s heard endless anecdotes about you, Mark, c’mon,” Ten cuts in expertly, sounding awfully proud. “And one you’re not listening to, may I add.”
At that, Mark glares at Johnny, who just sends an unapologetic smile his way, and then spares a desperate look at the window, tightly closed to prevent the still cool April breeze from slipping into his office.
He wonders, briefly, if his body would be able to survive the fall if he were to escape this conversation by climbing out of it.
“Yeah, good, fine,” he gives up in the end, trying his best not to sound as tired as he already feels. “Continue, please.”
Light seems to return to Ten’s eyes as he gets ready to pick up the story right where he left off, and Mark takes a second to go over the annotations he messily scribbled on the afternoon side of his agenda page for the day—the side dedicated to Ten’s divorce case—when Johnny had first tried to explain the situation to him.
Ten Lee (33)’s husband → Taeyong Lee (34)
“So, as I was saying, it was halfway through my second year of college that Taeyongie and I started officially dating. It was a shock to everyone at first, because I told you, we were so not the type to date,” Ten sighs dreamily, “but we were really happy together, back then, and I seriously thought I’d never want to be with anyone who wasn’t him again.”
An invisible knife digs through the flesh of Mark’s already badly damaged heart, the ache of a memory which now feels as if it belongs to someone else taking shape at the forefront of his mind.
I get that, Mark wants to say, but finds that he cannot get his tongue to move.
A nod of the head instead, silent understanding, and Ten goes on without picking up on his discomfort.
Married at 23
“When did we decide to get married? Oh, boy,” Ten chuckles, crow’s feet framing his eyes when he smiles and tilts his head back, a telltale of a life full of laughter; and, to Mark, his face seems to be both incredibly sincere and not at all at the same time, “this one’s good!”
“Is it?” Mark’s question comes out sounding genuinely confused, the cap of his blue pen resting against his chapped bottom lip as he watches Ten. “Why?”
“Well, you see, it was about… three? Four? Months before I graduated college,” Ten’s response comes out way more smug than it most likely should. “And believe me when I tell you that Taeyong proposing to me was both the most romantic and hilarious thing to ever happen to me.”
From his spot where he’s splayed out on the armchair, Johnny snickers. “Dude, Mark, this one’s really good.”
“Uhm,” Mark does not really know what kind of reaction the two of them are expecting from him, but if there is one thing he is sure of, it is the fact that this is so not the way a first case briefing should go. “Again, why?”
“Because we were in love, we really, truly, absolutely were,” Ten says, and a soft sigh falls past his lips as he shakes his head, “but no one in his right mind would want to get married when you’re twenty-four and totally broke. That’s just how it is! But Taeyongie loved me to death, and I loved him back just as much, so—”
“So?” There’s an itch at the back of Mark’s throat he knows will only go away once he gets Ten to stop stalling and spill everything. “C’mon, just say it!”
“How impatient, Mark,” Ten whines dramatically, then finishes with a smile, “So we got married because my student visa would expire once I finished uni. I didn’t wanna go back to Thailand and Taeyong didn’t want me to go either, so. There. Happy?”
Mark blinks, twice as slow as he normally would while his brain struggles to recover from the blow of nonsense, and then dares to ask, “And, uhm. Couldn’t you maybe have applied for a work one?”
“Oh man, c’mon! The US administration system hates my guts—you’re also a foreigner, doesn’t all kind of weird shit happen to you when you need something from them too?” Ten huffs. “Plus, you know. Finding a job seemed way harder than marrying Taeyong. And I loved him. I truly did.”
No it doesn’t, this Mark wants to answer but instead keeps to himself, if only for the sake of his very own sanity.
Marriage of 10 years
“So how did that work out for you two?” Mark asks, both amazed and terrified by the prospect of a rushed marriage in the name of both convenience and love. “It does sound quite, uh. Surreal.”
“Very well, actually,” Ten shrugs, running a hand through the dark, short strands of his hair. “It’s not as if we would have broken up if we hadn’t gotten married when we did, you know.”
“And you’ve been married for—”
“Ten years, yeah,” Ten nods, and for a second his breathing seems to turn heavy, laced with something akin to grief. “It’s a pretty long time, but at the same time it feels as if it hasn’t been quite enough yet, you know?”
Mark does.
He knows what it feels like on the chest, knowing that your time with the one person you love is running out, and the sourness the thought bears is enough to make his heart clench painfully.
At the back of his mind, kept inside a drawer he tries not to open too often, sits the memory of everything that Mark regrets never happened.
Growing old alongside Donghyuck, crow’s feet and wrinkles around the eyes from a life spent laughing together way too much, and knowing what it would feel like to carry a ring on his finger that would tell the world Donghyuck was his—those are all part of the hundred things Mark had always wanted to have, rotting away under the ache of goodbye.
“Then please, allow me to ask what happened,” Mark forces himself to speak, even though the question tastes acrid when the syllables brush against the roof of his mouth, “that’s made you want to divorce him?”
Break-up (???)
Sadness paints a heart-wrenching picture on Ten Lee’s sharp face.
“Taeyong and I have been together for thirteen years now,” he says gently, but the words come scratchy out of his throat, “and they’ve been some of the happiest years of my life, I swear.”
That is something Mark could tell. From the way Ten’s eyes sparkle when he mentions meeting and dating Taeyong, to how fondly he speaks of their relationship, there is no way one could believe him to be lying about it.
Still, as with everything ugly, some feelings stay rooted in places way too dark and deep to see, and they sound rough when pulled out of the chest and voiced into the void of a room.
“But I guess that things are not the same anymore, you know?” Ten sighs, and for the first time since he started talking, his eyes meet the ground between his feet. “One day we noticed that we’ve lost the… spark, you could say, that we once had. That there’s many other things that we’d rather do over spending time together, and that we do not have enough strength to try and fix things between us again… It’s probably the saddest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Mark wonders what it feels like to realize that things are not working, and getting to decide if you want to keep going or just give up, choices that are bound to change the course of your life—
“So we sat down and talked about it, like adults for once, and—” Ten takes in a deep breath, a display of all the force of will Mark wishes for himself, and mumbles— “And we simply realized we’re not in love anymore.”
—And wonders, too, what it feels like to fall out of love with someone, for it’s yet another one of the things he fears he never got to do with Donghyuck.
Johnny??????
“And did meeting Johnny help you with that… realization?” Mark asks, chin resting on the palm of his hand as he lets his eyes wander towards where his best friend has perked up at the sound of his name.
Ten just chuckles. “That’s a cheeky question, Mark.”
“Is it?” Mark laughs, and the tension in the air seems to dissipate, somehow, at the presence of topics of less transcending relevance. “I just need to paint the whole picture so that I can, you know. Get you what you want and all.”
“Dude, he’s right,” Johnny nods at Ten, oddly gentle. “Plus, it’s not like it’s a secret or anything.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ten sighs, and it’s overly-dramatic once again. “Okay, well, you see. I met Johnny the morning before Taeyongie and I first discussed things, so it’s not that he is the reason why I want to divorce him.”
“I never said he was,” Mark points out carefully, some sort of automatic self-defense mechanism that’s set into motion every time someone suggests he’s done something wrong.
“I know, I know, but it’s worth saying!” Ten hurries to clarify. “But it’s true that Johnny did help me get… acquainted with the idea of, you know. Leaving behind the only sort of life I’d ever known. And it was kind of a, what’s it called again? A wake-up call, I think,” a swift nod of the head, upward sloped curve on the lips. “I hadn’t felt the same kind of excitement I used to first feel around Taeyong in years until I met Johnny.”
“And does Taeyong know this?” Comes Mark’s inevitable question. “I think that’s going to be a key point during the proceedings.”
“Yeah, he does,” Ten is quick to nod. “I’ve never hidden anything from him, and I wasn’t about to start now. Johnny’s kind of really important to me now so, you know. I needed Taeyong to understand that.”
“That’s cute,” Johnny snickers from behind him. “I didn’t know you were so fond of me!”
“Oh shut up,” Ten groans, and Mark knows to recognise familiarity when faced by it. “Attorney funky little dude just wanted to know everything.”
“Hey!” Mark whines, cheeks burning red under the kind of banter he is no longer used to, but it falls on deaf ears.
“Funky little dude?” Johnny outright cackles. “That’s a fun one, Mark!”
Pets (main discussion?)
“Johnny told me,” Mark manages to say once he gets Johnny and Ten to stop discussing whether he is, indeed, a funky little dude or not, “that the only thing you and your husband couldn’t agree on was who gets to keep custody of your pets. Is that right?”
Ten’s mouth twists into a sudden scoff. “Can you believe that? He wants all of them, when I should at least get to keep the cats. They’re like my children! I’ll die without them.”
“Oh Markie, I’m telling you, they’re cute as hell,” Johnny chirps in even though nobody really asked him to. “You’d love them!”
I’m more of a dog person, Mark doesn’t think it’s appropriate to respond. Instead, he says, “We’ll treat that issue during the discussion with the other party, then. I just need to know if there’s anything else you want that your husband does not want to give up, so that we can bring it up when we negotiate the settlement.”
Ten is quick to nod, but then it takes him an awfully long minute of silent pondering to say, “Well. I think I’d like to keep the car too.”
Mark chooses not to comment on how obvious it is that Ten hadn’t thought about it before and just scribbles it down on his notebook. “Anything else?”
“Oh, very important!” Ten gasps. “I absolutely cannot lose my residence and working permits. That’d be my last straw, Mark!”
“Very important indeed,” Mark hums, uncapping a red pen to note it down in lieu of saying how that is the one thing Ten should’ve been more concerned about in the first place. “Is that everything?”
For a short, awfully ingenuous moment, Mark believes Ten is going to say yes. He even dares to get ready to ask his next question, the words already starting to take shape on the tip of his tongue, but of course it’s not the last thing Ten’s got to say.
“I wanna keep the last name,” Ten states, his serious gaze fixed on Mark’s. “Changing it sounds like a nightmare, I told you the administration in this country hates my ass! Plus, using the one I had before feels wrong. Everyone knows me as Ten Lee by now!”
Just to save himself from another headache, Mark simply nods.
Mediation → Collaborative divorce?
“Just to make sure we’re all on the same page,” Mark sounds cautious as he says. “We’re going for a collaborative divorce, right?”
In return, he gets Johnny’s curious gaze and Ten’s suspiciously unsure, “Yes?”
“It,” Mark takes in a deep breath, reminds himself that this is the job he chose, and explains, “It means that we’re not going to be involving a court, we won’t go to trial. Your husband did get himself a lawyer as well, right?”
“Yeah, he did,” Ten sighs. “We thought it’d be better that way, so that there would be no issues and, you know. We wanted to make this right.”
“Good,” Mark nods. “Then make sure that Taeyong comments this with his lawyer as well. What’s most likely going to happen is that we’ll meet with them periodically to discuss the terms of the divorce contract, and those discussions will be cooperative. So, basically we’ll try to reach an agreement without the need of going to trial. Does that sound good?”
“Perfect,” Ten responds. “That’d be the last thing we’d want to do. It’s sad enough already that this is happening to us.”
There is a reason—one Mark long ago decided not to dwell on—why the talk about heartbreak and divorce has him wishing he never chose this job.
Falling out of love, and being torn apart from the one person you once swore you wanted to spend your life next to, are both things Mark wishes he’d never had to experience, and having to live with the pain they brought him takes a great enough toll on his heart.
Having to witness them happening time and time again every single day at his job does not help to ease the ache in the slightest. Instead, it serves as another reminder of how he once lost everything, and ended up becoming a family lawyer simply because he needed money to eat and the application process seemed simple enough when he stumbled upon the ad on LinkedIn.
It’s the choices one makes, and those one doesn’t, that end up giving shape to one’s life. Mark’s own is horribly dented at the edges, all chipped paint and cracked right in the middle, but he guesses it might as well be exactly what he deserves.
Cheating???
“Just one last thing before you go,” Mark says when Ten is already slipping on his coat and Johnny has almost made his way through the office door, gazing fondly at each other, “and I need you to tell me the truth. Are you two dating?”
Mark doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone blush so much at the speed Ten and Johnny do when they register his question.
“No!” The both of them shriek at the same time, and their eyes will not meet as Johnny rushes to close the door once again, as if that would stop the person on the other side of the paper thin walls from hearing them try to explain themselves.
“Mark, dude, I told you it’s not like that!” Johnny groans. “We haven’t kissed not even once, why can’t you just drop it?!”
“I can’t help it!” Mark exclaims back. “Are you not aware of the picture you two make together? I need to know if Ten has been with you while still being married to Taeyong just in case the topic comes up in the discussions!”
“We’re not—” Ten tries, but he’s so flustered that it comes out in a high-pitched stutter— “We’re not together. Yet? I mean. We haven’t done anything, not even kiss! We promised we wouldn’t until I’m… single again.”
It is only because of the way in which Ten’s words sound painfully honest, and of how Johnny looks smitten as Mark has never seen him do before, that he decides to believe them.
“Alright,” Mark says, and hopes for things to turn out as well as he knows the both of them deserve. “Okay, then I’ll let you know the date for the four-way meeting with Taeyong and his lawyer as soon as they communicate it to our reception desk.”
(The back of Johnny’s hand brushes against Ten’s as they walk out of the office reception’s front door, faces close as they mumble something only they will ever know.
Mark thinks that it must be nice to have someone’s hand to hold when you’re on the verge of defeat, and guesses it must help to ease the pain of losing that which once was your everything.)
⚖️
“Dude, I probably hadn’t felt this nervous since I had to defend my PhD thesis,” Johnny says, as if he had any reason to, just to break the tense silence that has taken reign over the still half-empty meeting room. “Aren’t they late? Is that allowed?”
“They’re not late, babe,” Ten says from where he’s standing next to him by the head of the large meeting table, sugary sweet, and Johnny melts at the tone the same way a wax candle would under the heat of fire—ridiculously quick, that is. “It’s gonna be fine!”
“But it’s almost four, weren’t they—”
“They’re not late, can you shut up?” Mark groans, all of his strings pulled taut with tension, and definitely not for the first time today wonders how good of an idea it was to allow Johnny to stick around for the day’s proceedings. “It’s not four yet, they said they’d be here then, and why the hell are you nervous? It’s not your divorce.”
The art of giving the most pitiful of puppy eyes is one Johnny mastered long ago, and the way he directs them at Mark is almost enough to make him feel bad about snapping at him. Almost, because for how much Mark loves him, Johnny never really learnt how to shut up.
“Because you know I don't like arguments, Markie!” he shamelessly claims. “And I don’t want them to be mean to Ten. Especially not if I’m there.”
Ten gazes at Johnny as if he’d hung the moon on the sky or something, and utters the sweetest, stickiest, “Oh Johnny, you’re so cute,” that he could’ve mustered.
Mark wonders if they’ll stop being gross if he tears his own hair out and starts throwing up.
“Yeah, well, we’re not even going to argue today, for a start,” Mark says, making a great effort of not rolling his eyes. “And you won’t be allowed to be there during the official proceedings, anyways. It’s called a four-way meeting for a reason, you know.”
It makes Johnny fucking pout.
“That's stupid,” he huffs. “Ten should be allowed to have moral support and someone to defend him from slander.”
“That’s supposed to be my job,” Mark facepalms. “And there won’t be any slandering going on, for fuck’s sake. I already explained to you both that the point of this kind of divorce is that it’s collaborative. The only thing we’re gonna be doing is negotiating so that both Ten and his husband can benefit from the agreement, not fighting to fucking death.”
Ten hums, linking his arm with Johnny’s and resting his head on his shoulder before the two of them share a tender glance, and Mark wonders if this is what love used to look like on him: soft and gentle and coloured pastel pink, all the things he no longer can stand to deal with.
“What’re we doing today, then?” Ten asks, sounding painfully oblivious for someone minutes away from the first step towards his divorce. “Signing something, right?”
Mark swears he could start screaming out of sheer frustration right now.
“Yes,” he almost hisses, “signing something. The participation agreement for the two parties involved. I explained that to you through the phone, remember?”
“Oh,” Ten does not sound like he does at all, “of course.”
“We’ll explain it again when your husband and his lawyer get here,” Mark adds in a snarky remark, just in case it manages to make Johnny and Ten get a little more serious about the topic at hand. “Which they should do soon, by the way, they probably—”
Mark’s rambling is abruptly interrupted when the meeting room’s phone starts ringing from where it sits on the table right in front of him. Johnny almost leaps out of his skin at the sudden noise, which makes Mark chuckle right before he picks up the call.
“The other party is here, boss!” He hears Yangyang’s enthusiastic voice chirp through the speaker right before promptly hanging up, always full of positive energy and good vibes.
“Alright,” Mark says, partly to ease Ten’s weirdly wired nerves but mostly so that Johnny will take the hint and start to behave himself. “It’ll be a quick meeting today, you have nothing to worry about! Just trust me, I know how to handle this.”
And so, just like that, the last stage of the tragicomedy that is Mark Lee’s life starts to play.
⚖️
The inside of Mark’s mind fills out with white noise the second the door opens and Taeyong and his lawyer step into the room.
Standing by Ten’s left side, facing the door from behind the large table, it is impossible for Mark to hide the sheer stupor that washes over his face when Yangyang welcomes the two men that make for today’s opposite divorce party into the meeting room, which walls suddenly start to feel like a prison of sorts.
From his spot, glued to the ground with all the weight of the universe suddenly dropping onto his shoulders, Mark cannot see the horror morphing Johnny’s face by Ten’s other side as he realizes the catastrophe that has just been brought upon the room.
No—from where he stands, cold seeping past the layers of his blazer and his shirt to crawl right inside his very bones, the only thing Mark can do is try to keep breathing, if only so that he won’t faint and terribly embarrass himself yet once again in his life.
“Taeyongie,” Ten greets his soon-to-be ex-husband, and his voice sounds too soft for Mark’s prickly ears when it reverberates across the room. “Hi.”
“Hi bab— Ten,” Taeyong greets back, a smile Mark sees through blurred eyes stretching on his sharp, handsome face. “Doyoung came along with us, but he went to the bathroom for a second. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
“Oh, Doie, huh? Yeah, it’s fine!” Ten says, even though it’s not his problem, even though it’s not his job to say so—even though his tone is taut with an unexplained sort of tension that lingers in the air between them. “This here is Johnny. He came to keep me company too”.
But to Mark, it feels as if the conversation were developing itself in the far distance, oceans away from this little room in Chicago where all of them have come to meet.
Faintly aware of the fact that he needs to do something before it is too late to fix this one mess as well, he tries to force himself to move.
Pushing past the ringing in his ears feels like an impossible enough feat, but Mark finds that his legs move as if on autopilot to direct him around the table until he comes to stand before the man he now knows to be Taeyong’s lawyer—the very embodiment of Mark’s worst nightmares and sweetest dreams taking form right in front of his eyes, all while dressed in a fancy, impeccably ironed navy suit.
“Donghyuck Lee,” the man introduces himself confidently, hand extended out for Mark to shake and a serious look in his eyes as he stares right at—or through, perhaps—his semblance. As if there’s any need for you to say so, Mark bitterly thinks. “I’m here in legal representation of my client, Mister Taeyong Lee.”
Mark’s tongue feels like cotton inside his mouth as he tries to draw the shape of meaningless syllables against his palate, taking in the way Donghyuck does not seem affected at all by the situation that has Mark held by the throat.
“Mark Lee,” he tries to make his voice sound firm, but it ends up breaking in the middle—even though it’s all useless, even though it is just another feeble act in the stupid play of his life. Then, after the briefest moment of silence he cannot bring himself to fill with something that makes sense, he simply adds, “Attorney at law.”