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Better Bat-ter Bakery. Its Yelp reviews were absolutely dismal, but despite its 0.5 star rating, the dinky little establishment had been in business for as long as Donghyuck had been enrolled in university. Sitting in the student union across the street, he eyed the greying sign hanging almost sideways above the door, roughly in the shape of a bat, the name of the bakery scrawled across it in nearly illegible script. Donghyuck had been watching it for twenty minutes, and no one had gone in or out of the building in that time. Come to think of it, Donghyuck had never even heard of anyone who’d been there.
“Have you ever been to Better Bat-ter Bakery?” he wondered aloud, stirring his iced americano with the straw.
Renjun let out a snort of laughter. He kept his eyes glued to his computer screen, furiously typing as he responded. “You mean the singular public establishment with the worst rating on Yelp, Google, and Foursquare in the entirety of Seoul? Obviously not. I think Jisung might have gone there on a dare once.”
Twenty-two minutes and still zero activity. “How are they still open?”
Renjun just shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe they’re a money laundering front.”
That was definitely possible. It was hard to believe that they were making money off of baked goods if the reviews by users like flakey_pastry_xox were to be believed.
(Without a doubt the worst croissant I’ve ever had!!! It was as hard as a rock, yet had the consistency of glue at the same time. Don’t even get me started on the taste. I could bake a better pastry with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back! My husband got a cookie. It tasted like metal. Hard to believe that Better Bat-ter Bakery is selling their “food” in exchange for money! Don’t go here if you value your teeth, tastebuds, stomach, or wallet!!)
Damning, but also, intriguing.
“Do you think they’d hire me?”
That made Renjun stop typing. He glanced up from his computer to give Donghyuck an incredulous look. “Why on earth would you want to work at the Better Bat-ter Bakery?”
Donghyuck shrunk in his seat, tamping down the painful feeling of shame and failure in his chest. He peeled at the label sticker on the side of his coffee. “Graduation is in three weeks, and I haven’t heard back from any of the approximately one million jobs that I applied for. I’m a pretty decent amateur baker, and they’re a terrible bakery; they could probably use a couple tips.”
Renjun, who had long since secured himself a spot in a masters’ program for next year, gave him a pitiful look. “Donghyuck, a lot of people in our class don’t have anything lined up yet. You’re so far from being alone in that. You don’t have to sell yourself short just because you didn’t get a job starting the day you graduate.”
Donghyuck shrugged and rested his head against the window, staring out at the Better Bat-ter Bakery. Twenty-eight minutes and still nothing. “I don’t think it’s selling myself short. I have a skill that they could be paying me for. Who knows? Maybe I can teach them something.”
Renjun sighed. “Your oatmeal cookies are almost definitely better than anything they sell.”
Donghyuck’s lips quirked up in a smile. “Exactly.”
In the window of the bakery, a blob in the shape of a person appeared. It disappeared just as quickly, and the building was silent for the rest of the hour.
-
There was no bell above the door to make any noise when Donghyuck let himself into Better Bat-ter Bakery, but someone ducked in from the back to greet him at the counter just the same, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He looked about the same age as Donghyuck, but he was eerily pretty, like someone had dictated their ideal face to an artist and then proceeded to have it molded out of plaster. It was kind of disarming.
“Um, can I help you?”
Donghyuck had never seen a service worker seem so confused at the sight of a customer. He supposed that he would be too if he worked in a bakery that seemed to be actively repelling clientele. The inside of the bakery was just as dreary as the outside. Coated in peeling grey wallpaper, the general vibe of the place was one of an old lady’s apartment that hadn’t been updated in 40 years. From the torn-up vinyl floors to the chipped, yellow-white paint on the counter, nothing about the décor was inviting.
Safe to say, the Better Bat-ter Bakery was not Instagram-able material.
“Yes, hello! I wanted to try something. What do you recommend?”
He looked, if possible, even more confused and maybe a little nervous at the question. He glanced sideways at the pastries in the display as if he’d never seen them before.
The pastries were lined up neatly in order, but they all looked decidedly flat. The cookies were cracked, obviously overbaked, and the muffins were burnt around the edges. And the croissants…best not to look at them too closely. There was also the mysterious decision made by whoever was making these to put what Donghyuck could only guess was red food coloring in more than half of the pastries, giving most of the display a greyish-pink tinge.
“Er, maybe try a cookie?” the storekeeper said. Donghyuck only just noticed that he was wearing a nametag. Mark, it declared. Not a common name in Seoul.
“Okay, I’ll take one chocolate chip cookie.”
Donghyuck watched as Mark fumbled over himself to grab a cookie from the display. He placed it in a bag and handed it over hesitantly, like he was giving Donghyuck one last chance to change his mind. Donghyuck picked it out of the packaging immediately and took a bite. Mark winced.
It was terrible. That was as delicately as he could put it. The cookie actually had a faint iron taste to it. What on earth were they putting in these things?
“Mark, is it?”
Mark nearly jumped out of his skin. “What? How did you—”
Donghyuck gestured to his nametag.
“Oh. Right.”
“Anyway, I was just saying that this cookie is genuinely awful—” Donghyuck expected Mark to look at least a little bit offended, but he merely nodded as if it was a sad but foregone conclusion. “—and you should hire me.”
That, at least, seemed to shock him.
“I’m sorry, you want to what?”
“Work for you,” Donghyuck said simply, placing his resume subtly on the counter. None of it contained any baking experience expect in the “Skills” section at the bottom where he detailed all the deserts and pastries he felt confident in making, but he doubted that it mattered. It was pretty clear to him that no one working in this actual bakery had any baking experience anyway.
Mark looked down at the resume, bewildered. “Why on earth would you want to work for us?”
“Honey, if I were you, I wouldn’t ask any questions. This place needs a complete makeover in every sense of the word. You guys need all the help you can get.”
“I, uh, okay. I’ll show this to the owners, I guess?”
Donghyuck grabbed a pen off the counter and circled his phone number at the top of paper. “Call me, okay? If you don’t call me back by Tuesday, I’ll call you. I need a job and you need a pastry chef, so I think we can make this work out for the both of us.”
-
On Monday morning, Donghyuck received an email from a marketing company thanking him for his application and imploring him to apply again at a later date. Two hours later, he got a call from Mark.
Donghyuck started at the Better Bat-ter Bakery on Tuesday.
-
It took Donghyuck two days to figure it out.
The pastries all tasted like sawdust mixed with iron. Everything had a suspicious amount of red food coloring in it. They were open from the extremely perplexing hours of 3pm to 4am, with all of their very, very few customers coming in well after sundown.
Better Bat-ter Bakery.
It was a bakery for vampires.
(Never mind that Donghyuck had only put it together when one of their only customers looked him dead in the eyes and ordered, “O, because I can’t stand AB. No offense.”)
“It’s a fucking bakery for vampires,” he announced, kicking the door open to his shared apartment with Renjun. “Everything tastes so terrible because they can’t taste anything, and because they put blood in it. Because it’s a bakery for vampires.”
Renjun sat up from where he’d been laid out on the couch, laptop narrowly avoiding a meeting with the floor. He took a second to compile all of his own personal knowledge about Better Bat-ter Bakery with Donghyuck’s new data in his head before nodding. “That…makes a lot of sense actually.”
Donghyuck flopped onto their sad student couch next to him and tried not to let the fact that Renjun was surely about to scold him for not cleaning the dishes in the sink distract him from the more salient point: “Someone ordered an O-negative muffin today, Junnie. O-negative!” He put his head in his hands. “What have I gotten myself into.”
Renjun placed his computer down on the coffee table to let Donghyuck cuddle up to him properly. He sympathetically patted his hair. “I mean, it can’t be all bad, right? Just because they put blood in their pastries, doesn’t mean that they can’t sell good…blood…pastries—never mind, you’re right, this is kind of a mess.”
Donghyuck sat up. Renjun was onto something. Sure, it was a vampire bakery, but still, it didn’t appear to be a very popular vampire bakery. Just because they likely had little interest in improving their bakes in a human sense, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t progress to be had on the vampire front.
“No, you’re right. Do we know any vampires? I know they supposedly can’t taste human food, but like, that’s not an excuse to make a subpar pastry.”
Renjun frowned. “I don’t think we know any vampires.”
Renjun kept talking, but Donghyuck was way ahead of him, pulling his phone out of his pocket to scroll through Instagram. Jisung, definitely not. Jeno, confirmed werewolf. YangYang, he did seem to spend most of his time indoors gaming, but he recently posted one million photos of his Hawaiian vacation which included many beach photos, so unlikely. Chenle, huh. Chenle. Maybe.
“What about Chenle? He’s vampire-esque.”
Renjun laughed. “Chenle is definitely not a vampire. We literally hear him whine about us buying him food probably twice a week. I got boba with him last weekend.”
That was true, but as Donghyuck continued to scroll, he didn’t find any other likely candidates. Chenle would just have to do.
“Well, it can’t hurt to ask.”
-
Chenle was not, in fact, a vampire, but he did know a couple through a friend of a friend, which is how Donghyuck, through much unseemly begging, got Xiaojun’s contact information. Xiaojun was very pleasant over text and didn’t seem too bothered that his cousin’s friend’s roommate outed him as a vampire to a completely random stranger and then gave away his number. He was also extremely helpful in Donghyuck’s research into the vampire food industry.
Here’s what he learned: yes, there were enough vampires, werewolves, and the like in Seoul to support a bakery dedicated to only serving supernatural creatures; yes, he had heard of the Better Bat-ter Bakery before; and no, neither he nor the vampire community at large thought that it was a particularly good bakery. Its rating on VampScore was a solid 3. It seemed like the concept of providing subtle ways for vampires to eat in public without drawing attention to themselves was well-received, but even vampires didn’t have much of a taste for their blood cookies.
Xiaojun provided ample description of other human-like food items that he preferred along with a list of a couple other vampire and supernatural-focused restaurants in the city for him to lookup. He also volunteered to be Donghyuck’s taste-tester for any new recipes he came up with, provided that all tasting happened after sundown, of course.
All this to say that when Friday rolled around, Donghyuck had several ideas drafted for new-and-improved blood pastries that he was positive were the first step towards turning this place around. He bounded into the bakery with a new sense of purpose.
“I know this is a bakery for vampires,” Donghyuck announced after barging through the kitchen door. Mark fumbled the bowl of cupcake batter he was stirring right onto the floor. “But that’s not an excuse for all your pastries to be bad. The cookies taste like salt, Mark. Salt!”
“I—how did you…”
Donghyuck made an overt glance to the giant bottle labeled, “red food coloring,” next to Mark on the counter and raised an eyebrow.
Mark gave up instantly, shoulders sinking. “Yes, okay, we’re a vampire bakery. We can’t really taste human food; it all tastes kind of like cardboard to us. The baked goods are just an excuse to sell items made with blood that can be eaten in the company of humans without freaking them out.”
Donghyuck waved a hand in the air. “I know that, Mark. I’ve seen your VampScore page.”
“You have?!”
Donghyuck ignored Mark and kept going. “You’re missing the point. Even vampires largely agree that this place kinda sucks. And then what about werewolves? Or—I don’t know—dragons?”
“Dragons?!”
“The point, Mark! If you’re going to sell blood croissants, you could at least make them good. Vampires might not be able to taste the difference between an actual scone and whatever the fuck you guys are selling here, but other supernatural creatures that might want a blood croissant can! Regardless of the principal of the thing, you could be expanding the business! Making food that you could actually be proud of and, more importantly, making money!”
Mark seemed confused. “I mean…I guess?”
Donghyuck sighed and started riffling through his bag for the recipes he’d made the night before. “Mark, you are so lucky to have me, you have no idea.” He found the pages he’d been looking for and pressed them into Mark’s chest. “We’re making blood Danishes. You’re in charge of the blood filing since I can’t exactly taste test it. I drafted a few different recipes; I’m not really sure what’s best for you guys, but you can start with what I wrote, and then improvise based on taste.”
Donghyuck picked up the bowl of batter from the ground and threw it in the sink. The kitchen in the bakery was fairly well maintained in comparison to the front of the store, but it was still outdated. If they could pull this off and actually bring money into the business, maybe they could buy a Kitchen Aid. He eyed the single yellowed mixer that was at least 30 years old and sighed. A Kitchen Aid would be a literal dream.
He opened all the cabinets on his side of the kitchen and started pulling all of their contents out onto the metal counter. To be honest, the entire kitchen could probably use a reorganization, and there was no time like the present!
“Which one is sugar and which one is salt again?” Mark called out from where he was carefully reading the recipe next to him.
Donghyuck sighed. This was going to be a long week.
-
The new recipes were, according to Xiaojun, “Amazing! Way better than these used to be. No offense, Mark.”
It went without saying, Mark didn’t seem to like Xiaojun very much.
The next step was probably to get Jeno, the only werewolf he knew, to taste them and start expanding to other supernatural creatures, but when he brought it up to Mark, Mark literally snarled, which was as shocking as it was entertaining for someone so otherwise mild-mannered. He figured he could bring some to Jeno after work instead and pulled up Instagram to send him a message. If Mark was going to turn up his nose at every werewolf that walked through the door, Donghyuck was going to have to spend a lot more time on register duty.
That’s where he currently was, rearranging the croissants in the display, when the newly purchased bell over the door chimed. Donghyuck stood up to smile at the new customer waiting at the register. He was new; most of their few vampire customers were regulars, but the word of mouth spread by Xiaojun had led to a sprinkling of intrigued new visitors. Donghyuck took it as a personal victory.
“Hi, welcome to Better Bat-ter Bakery. What can I do for you?”
The man stared at him, unmoving. There was something so off about his expression that Donghyuck felt a shiver crawl its way up up his spine. The man’s lip twisted up into a frightening smile, sharp canines poking into the flesh of his bottom lip, and he leaned over the counter. His face was close enough that Donghyuck felt the breath from his nose on the side of his neck.
“Oh,” he said, voice low, “a human.”
Before he could even think to panic, Mark suddenly appeared, shoving him backwards and putting himself in between the man and Donghyuck.
“Ten, how nice of you to join us after all this time. Are you looking to buy something?” Mark’s voice was strained, tense in a way Donghyuck had never heard before. He actually rarely heard Mark sound anything but adorably confused, though he’d been letting a bit of his personality out more and more over the past few days.
The man’s eyes, Ten, as Mark called him, didn’t leave Donghyuck’s. “I am. I didn’t know you expanded the menu, Mark.”
Donghyuck, for all the time he’d spent in extremely close quarters with various vampires over the past few weeks, had never felt afraid. Mark was mostly kind of a loser, cute as he was, and Xiaojun was super chill, literally one of the nicest people he’d ever met. It never even occurred to him to be afraid.
He was afraid now.
“He’s not for sale, Ten. Buy something, or get the fuck out.”
Ten’s eyes flickered over towards Mark, sizing him up, but he didn’t move. He looked him up and down, then he smirked.
“A pity. Maybe I’ll come back later.” Ten tapped his fingers on the counter and turned around. The bell rang out in the silence of the bakery when he let the door shut behind him.
Mark stood still for another minute before he relaxed, his shoulders slumping. He turned around, eyes frantically searching Donghyuck for signs of injury.
“He didn’t touch you, did he?”
Donghyuck, for probably the first time in his life, had absolutely nothing at all to say. The situation hit him all at once. A vampire just tried to bite him, and not in, like, the sexy way. There was a very nonzero chance that he could have died. “I’m—no, I’m okay,” he managed.
Mark’s hands hovered over him, like he wanted to touch him, but wasn’t sure exactly how. He dropped his hands after a moment, looking conflicted. “Good,” he coughed, “um, that’s good. I’ll just—” he gestured to the back and slowly walked backwards into the kitchen.
Donghyuck sat down cross-legged on the ground behind the register, heartbeat slowly returning to normal. For the first time since sliding his resume over the counter of the Better Bat-ter Baker, he wondered what the fuck he was doing.
-
Donghyuck had made the executive decision to not tell Renjun about his close encounter with death, or at least what sure as hell felt like a close encounter with death. It seemed better that he didn’t know. What could be done about it anyway? For some reason, it didn’t really occur to Donghyuck to quit, though that would probably be the safest thing to do at this point. Even Mark didn’t seem to have a lot to say about it, though he’d certainly been odd afterward.
Ever since The Incident, something had shifted between them, and Mark became increasingly protective. For one thing, Mark was a lot cagier about letting Donghyuck run the register, werewolves be damned, and he also started walking him to and from every shift, which was…well, it would have been good if he’d warned him beforehand, at least.
The first time he showed up at Donghyuck’s apartment to walk him to the bakery, Renjun answered the door. Donghyuck doesn’t know exactly what their conversation entailed, but all he heard from his room while he was putting on his socks was: “Donghyuck, your vampire boss is here!”
Donghyuck flew out of his room to find Mark sitting stiffly on their couch in his Better Bat-tery Bakery apron, looking entirely out of place. Renjun looked at him suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows.
“You didn’t tell me he was coming over,” he whispered loudly, gleefully.
“Have you ever heard of being subtle?” Donghyuck whispered back, hoping into his left sock.
Renjun rolled his eyes. “No, never,” he said before disappearing back into his room.
Donghyuck eyed mark, sitting on his couch, looking intensely uncomfortable and extremely out of place. He gave Donghyuck a small, nervous smile, and Donghyuck was reminded once again of how handsome he was, awkwardness and all.
“What are you doing here?” Donghyuck asked. He wasn’t due at the bakery for another half an hour, as far as he knew, and he wasn’t even sure how Mark even knew where he lived. Did he riffle through the bakery to pull it from his resume?
“I’m here to walk you to work,” Mark said, completely seriously.
“You’re here to—I’m sorry, what?”
Mark shifted, avoiding Donghyuck’s eyes. “Given recent events, I just thought it would be prudent.”
The image of Ten leaning over the counter, smelling the side of his neck flashed before his eyes. It certainly wasn’t something he wanted to relive, but the fact that Mark came to literally escort him was unnerving. Was this Ten going to be a continued threat? Were other bakery customers going to be just as dangerous?
Mark must have seen the thoughts racing behind his eyes, because his expression softened. “Hey, Donghyuck,” he said with a reassuring sort of smile, “I’m just being a little over cautious. If I actually thought something was going to happen, I wouldn’t let you come back to the bakery at all.”
Donghyuck gasped dramatically. “Mark, you were going to fire me because I’m human? That’s discrimination!”
The smile on Mark’s face left to make way for a roll of his eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”
Despite Mark’s assurance that he wasn’t really worried about anything happening, on their walks to and from the bakery, Mark had a hyper-vigilance about him. Donghyuck often talked at him about his recipe ideas while Mark walked as stiffly as (in)humanly possible while squinting off into the distance, sun practically reflecting off of his pale skin.
Speaking of…
“Wait, you’ve been out during the day this whole time? I thought vampires, like, turned to dust in sunlight.”
Mark sighed. “All vampires could go out into the sun if they bothered with sunscreen. The old guard are all too afraid, but anyone turned after, like, 1950 knows that sunscreen works as well for vampires as it does humans.”
“Ooh, what sunscreen is strong enough for vampires? I’m using Nature Republic right now, but I’m thinking of checking out the Innisfree.”
Mark was clearly barely tolerating this conversation, but he humored Donghyuck anyway. “I usually look for anything 80 or higher. Just not worth all your skin peeling off because you got the fancy one that only comes in 50. Takes ages to grow back.”
“Huh.” Vampire sunscreen. The more you know.
When they got to the bakery, Donghyuck took a second to don his apron before he started looking through his plan for the day. He had finally taught Mark most of the basics of baking like, for instance, that chilling the cookie dough stopped it from spreading too thin while baking and that dusting oiled pans with flour kept muffins from sticking. Yeah, it had been a pretty dire situation for someone literally running a bakery, but now that Mark was operating on more human terms, it was time to make some changes to the operation. Business had picked up considerably since Jeno absolutely raved about their blood Danishes on Moonsiders, the leading werewolf social media platform, and Donghyuck was itching to expand.
“I’m thinking we should make at least a dozen of everything without blood every day,” Donghyuck said while staring down at their inventory clipboard, which released a puff of flour into the air when he picked it up. He was probably already covered in flour, but there was little point in cleaning up since he was sure to get infinitely more flour on him as the day went on.
“Why would we sell any normal human pastries? No offense,” Mark said from where he’d started setting up his prep station, also already covered in flour. Donghyuck rolled his eyes at him even though he knew Mark couldn’t see it. Mark could never see the bigger picture.
“Just because you don’t want a blood-free croissant, doesn’t mean that no one visiting the store will! You guys have been masquerading as a ‘normal human’ bakery for years. Don’t you think that—Ow, fuck.”
Paper cuts hurt like a bitch, and this one was deep, actually drawing blood. Donghyuck shook his hand vigorously, as if that would somehow dissipate the pain. It didn’t work.
“Can you please put a band-aid on that?” Mark rasped out brusquely from the other end of the kitchen. The tone of his voice made Donghyuck pause. Mark was turned away from him, holding the end of the counter with such force that he could actually see it bending under the force of his grip.
Okay. Weird. More that slightly alarming. Yes, there was blood, but barely more than a single drop. For cleanliness’s sake, yeah, he should put on a band-aid, but for the purposes of working in a literal vampire kitchen, it didn’t seem like it would really matter if he got blood in the cookie batter.
Donghyuck lifted his finger to his mouth and sucked on it. Across the kitchen, the metal countertop underneath Mark’s fingers gave way.
Not to say that Donghyuck was still jumpy from the whole vampire-trying-to-eat-him situation, but he definitely was not chill with the fact that a single drop of his blood was bringing Mark to his knees. He wasn’t even a virgin! How good could his blood possibly smell?
“What’s the deal? You literally work directly with human blood every day, but my blood is suddenly the most special and most delicious you’ve ever smelled, and you can’t control yourself?”
“I, uh—”
Donghyuck stalked over to Mark and shoved his stinging finger in his face. Mark frantically backed himself into the slightly bent countertop with a loud clang.
“Stop, stop! Yes, your blood smells really good, okay? Better than the stuff we bake with. What else do you want me to say?”
Donghyuck took a second to process that. How did that make sense? How could Mark work with pints of blood every day, and yet be brought to his knees by a single paper cut? It was weird. It was disconcerting. It was disturbing.
It was…somewhat flattering.
“Is this, like, a vampire crush? Do you have a vampire crush on me?”
Mark rolled his eyes. “It’s not a vampire crush; it’s just a regular crush, you idiot. I mean—fuck.” Mark put his head in his hands and sunk down to the floor.
“You have a crush on me?!” Donghyuck exclaimed, delighted. Mark just groaned and further shrunk in on himself.
This was the best news ever. He was going to make fun of Mark for months.
-
Just because Mark refused to let Donghyuck run the register most of the time didn’t mean that Mark was any good at it. In the couple months since he had first met Mark stammering his way through a fairly standard customer interaction, he’d only marginally improved. So, naturally, Donghyuck spent a lot of time eavesdropping to criticize him about his customer service skills later. It was for the good of the business.
So, when the bell over the door rang in the middle of Donghyuck’s first cake attempt, he accordingly put down the knife he’d been holding to frost it with his buttercream blood frosting and tiptoed over to the door to the front of the bakery to listen in.
“You really have a human working at the bakery, huh?”
This was a fairly common topic of conversation among their vampire clientele. They were fascinated by the prospect of a human working with vampires. The werewolves and other supernatural creatures never seemed to care, so Donghyuck chalked it up to vampires being weird about shit. Loners and losers, he called them when the hair on Mark’s arms stood up at the sight of a werewolf.
“Dude, stop, he can totally hear us right now.”
“Where are you hiding him? Is he in the back?”
“Stop, Jaemin—”
“Oh, he has AB, I can smell it. Damn, are you losing your mind every day in that little kitchen? He smells like your dream dude. He literally smells like a daisy.”
Donghyuck slammed the door to the kitchen open. “I smell like a what?”
Across the counter from Mark was another vampire, strikingly beautiful, of course, as they all were. He was wearing a long black coat and a disarming smile not unlike the one Ten had when he’d tried to bite a chunk out of Donghyuck’s neck. He tried not to shrink away from him, but his self-preservation instincts were just a little too strong. He took a step back as subtly as he could, but the customer’s predatory smile only grew wider.
“Ooh, Mark, you didn’t tell me he was so cute.”
“Jaemin stop that,” Mark said, suddenly standing in front of Donghyuck just like he had before. Was this going to be a regular thing? Vampires trying to kill him? Mark trying to defend his honor? Maybe he really should start sending out job applications again. “He already had Ten snapping at his neck last week; he doesn’t need you threatening him, too!”
Jaemin’s grin melted into a confused little frown, and all of the sudden his aura snapped from intimidating to cute, like a concerned puppy.
“Ten?” he asked. “Why is Ten poking around again? It’s been ages.”
Mark sighed, the hard line of his shoulders deflating. “I don’t know, but it’s never a good thing.”
Never a good thing? Donghyuck narrowed his eyes. “Wait, are you saying that the guy that tried to eat me is a recurring problem that you conveniently forgot to tell me about?”
Mark turned around to look at him, and Donghyuck tried not to think about how stupidly close they were or how stupidly big his eyes were. Mark was the one with the crush, not him. Get it together Donghyuck!
“Oh, almost all of the vampires in Seoul know each other,” Mark said with his beautiful, sparkling, wide, innocent eyes. “Ten hasn’t been around in a long time. I didn’t think he was ever going to come back after the last time…”
“Last time?!”
“I’ll let you two lovebirds work this out,” Jaemin said, backing away from the counter. He snatched a chocolate chip blood cookie from the display. “I’m going to take this, though. Nice to meet you, Donghyuck!”
Donghyuck watched Jaemin wave cheerily and then disappear behind the door, enigmatic smile in place. Then, he thrust a finger into Mark’s chest.
“You have a crush on me, but you won’t tell me about the vampire that may or may not be trying to stalk me down and kill me?”
Mark sighed and glanced at the clock. “Jesus, it’s already past midnight. Get your jacket, we can talk on the walk home.”
Donghyuck had learned over the past couple weeks that Mark would absolutely not budge when it came to walking him to and from work. It was a combination of his misplaced feeling of responsibility over the Ten incident and probably also his massive crush. He’d found it annoying at first, but now, he thought it was kind of cute.
Did he just call Mark Lee cute? What has happening to him. Mark was right, he had to get out of here.
Donghyuck took off his apron and donned his leather jacket before walking back to the front, where Mark was nervously fidgeting by the door, looking both sheepish and hopeful. Donghyuck smiled at him: it was hard not to. Mark answered with a smile of his own, and Donghyuck let himself enjoy it, just a little.
They walked out of the bakery and into the open air, the cicadas the only sound that interrupted the otherwise silent city around them. Seoul was obviously a large enough city that there were lights on at all times of night, but the bakery was nestled in a quiet enough corner that they never ran into anyone on their post-shift walks to Donghyuck’s apartment. It was a nice little routine that Donghyuck maybe should have, retrospective of the light behind Mark’s eyes when he smiled at him, spent more time analyzing.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more about Ten. I should’ve realized that you would have wanted to know about him,” Mark began after a few silent blocks.
Donghyuck could only sigh. “Mark, that man tried to remove my head from my neck. The least you could’ve done was tell me why you were so worried about it that you appointed yourself to be my personal escort.”
Mark scratched the back of his head. “Yeah…I’m sorry. Truth be told, I don’t really know what it is that Ten might be looking for. There’s all this old vampire drama between him and Doyoung and Taeyong that goes way over my head. It’s definitely more about them than it is about you or me.”
Doyoung and Taeyong, those names were familiar… Oh, right, they sighed his checks every week. “Ten has beef with the people who own the bakery?”
“Yeah, there’s some history there. I don’t really know the half of it really; that’s why I’m so cautious. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of weird ritual or whatever that comes with centuries of friendship-slash-rivalry or if he’s really pissed. Taeyong wouldn’t tell me much about it when I asked.”
Donghyuck contemplated that for a minute. Of course, he somehow got himself involved in centuries-old vampire drama. What else would he have expected?
“If there’s anything I can do to make you feel safe, please let me know,” Mark said, sparkly eyes pleading. God, his eyes were so, so big.
Time to make a rash decision.
“There is something you can do for me, actually,” Donghyuck said as he reached over and grabbed Mark’s hand, intertwining their fingers. His hand wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t ice cold, like he might have expected. It was nice.
“Hold my hand,” he said innocently.
If Mark could blush, he would be absolutely flaming red, Donghyuck was sure of it.
-
Donghyuck had been working at the Better Bat-ter Baker for approximately three months when he finally met the owners of the place. According to Mark, they were super nice, very open-minded for vampires, and extremely old, but they always came around after Donghyuck was already gone for the night since they were old enough to not trust new-fangled inventions (sunscreen) enough to go out during the day. But, three months in, their VampScore officially reached 4.5, and a celebration was in order. They couldn’t very well advertise achieving a score below 5, but they celebrated by finally debuting their new blood velvet cake, which Donghyuck had finally perfected, blood buttercream frosting and all.
Taeyong and Doyoung showed up at sundown and raved over the cake despite Donghyuck’s messy icing decoration. Not that they could be anything but delighted to meet him as he was single-handedly responsible for turning the bakery from barely covering overhead to actually running a profit.
“We would’ve come to meet you earlier, but you’re always working during the day before we get here,” Doyoung said after their enthusiastic cutting of the cake. Donghyuck saw Mark roll his eyes from the corner of the room and mouth the word, “sunscreen.” Donghyuck stifled a giggle. Mark grinned at him, and he grinned back.
Taeyong and Doyoung didn’t look particularly old, vampire privilege and all that, but they did have a peculiar fashion sense. Doyoung was wearing a full-on hanbok, though it was a more modern one, and Taeyong was wearing a satin outfit that Donghyuck was almost completely certain was a pair of pajamas. But, oddities aside, they had a lot to talk about, including their VampScore rating, the ever-popular blood Danishes, and of course, Mark Lee.
“Mark’s always saying such nice things about you, you know,” Taeyong said with a glint in his eye. “About how hardworking you are, how creative you are.”
“How funny and intelligent you are,” Doyoung chimed in.
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Mark interjected, grabbing Donghyuck by the arm. “We need to get going, really. Donghyuck’s shift ended 20 minutes ago.”
Taeyong giggled and waved as Mark dragged Donghyuck bodily out of the bakery. “Don’t get too distracted by Donghyuck’s good fashion sense!” he yelled across the bakery just before the door shut.
“Boo, I was having fun,” Donghyuck pouted.
Instead of replying, Mark stopped abruptly in front of him, and Donghyuck ran full into his back.
“Mark, what?”
“Get back inside,” Mark said, voice low.
“What are you talking about?”
“Get back inside the bakery now, Donghyuck.”
Donghyuck has only heard Mark take that tone once, and it was when Ten nearly took out his jugular. He decided to take Mark’s word for it.
“Oh, Donghyuck? You’re back?” Doyoung asked, turning at the sound of the bell above the door.
Taeyong turned around and smiled, but the gentle smile on his face fell off as suddenly. He stood up straight, face stern. “It’s Ten.”
Doyoung’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that bastard want now?”
Mark burst through the bakery doors, looking a little worse for wear. His hair was in complete disarray from what it had been just a moment ago, but more impressively, there was a huge rip down the center of his apron that he’d forgotten to take off, as if he’d been scratched by a large talon. Mark’s eyes frantically searched for Donghyuck, and upon finding him unmarred, visibly relaxed.
“He’s gone now, but I don’t know,” Mark said, addressing Taeyong. “I don’t know why he came back.”
Taeyong looked over at Donghyuck and frowned. “I don’t know either.”
Donghyuck tried not to feel like he was at fault for whatever vampire nonsense was clearly about to go down, but with the way they were all looking at him, it was hard not to. The air in the in the bakery was so stiff, he felt paralyzed by the weight of it.
“Mark, get Donghyuck out of here,” Doyoung said after a moment. “We’ll deal with Ten.”
Mark hesitated, eyes focused on Donghyuck. “Where do I take him?”
Despite the heaviness of the situation, Doyoung glanced over at Mark, and his mouth turned up into a smirk.
“Take him to your place.”
-
The apartment of a vampire was not exactly what Donghyuck thought it would be, but then again, he wasn’t sure what he would have expected. Mark’s things were strewn about the living room chaotically as if it were a frat boy’s bachelor pad, but there were a few things that distinguished it from a regular human apartment. For one, there was no bed, which was kind of a big miss, and for another, the kitchen was entirely untouched. The only thing on the counters was a small pile of mail, otherwise there were no appliances, no utensils, no nothing.
It made sense, in retrospect, why he’d been entirely hopeless at baking.
“It’s not much,” Mark said sheepishly in the middle of hurriedly picking clothes up off the ground, scratching at the back of his neck.
“It’s fine,” Donghyuck said distractedly. “Quaint.” He sat down on the couch and tried very hard not to think about how there was a vampire that was very possibly trying to kill him for sport as a part of some ancient vampire ritual. He wasn’t doing a very good job.
Mark’s rustling in the background stopped, and the couch dipped down next to him.
“Hey,” he said kindly.
Donghyuck kept his eyes on his hands in his lap. “I don’t know if I’m coping well with the situation.”
Mark reached and held both his hands in between his. The action was so surprising, Mark was not a very touchy person, that Donghyuck jolted. He looked up and met Mark’s eyes, which were as beautiful as ever, by the way.
“I know that you’re scared, but we’re not going to let anything happen to you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Don’t worry about Ten, okay?”
Mark was awkward, yes. He was also nerdy and frankly, a little embarrassing. But he was sincere, kind, and funny. He was also extremely hot, loathe that Donghyuck was to admit it, and Mark had a crush on him. All of this ran through Donghyuck’s head as he made weirdly intense eye contact with Mark.
Time to make another rash decision!
“You know what would be a good distraction from my impending violent death at the hands of a rogue vampire?” Donghyuck said as he leaned in closer towards Mark, voice low.
“What?” Mark whispered back.
“If you kissed me right now.”
Mark, for all he was leaning in with his come-hither eyes, looked surprised, but he recovered quickly. Kissing Mark was nice. It was really good, actually. Made his stomach feel all weird and tingly. His lips were cool, like his hands, and Donghyuck wanted nothing more than to find out what it was like to lick the inside of his cold mouth, so he pushed Mark down onto the couch and found out.
Donghyuck pulled away for a moment to catch his breath and marvel a bit at Mark's adorably confused face.
“Uh, is this, uh, I mean, are we—”
“Mark, less thinking, more kissing.”
“Right, got it.”
-
Much later, cuddled uncomfortably together on Mark’s couch in a pair of his pajamas, Donghyuck’s face in Mark’s chest, the light of dawn started to tease its way through the gaps in Mark’s blackout curtains. Donghyuck felt both exhausted from not having slept a wink on Mark’s Ikea couch and relaxed like he hadn’t been in a while, chalk it up to endorphins from a little frottage with a cute boy.
“Does my blood really smell like daisies?” Donghyuck whispered into the silent air of the apartment when it was clear that he wasn’t going to sleep that night. Morning. Whatever.
Mark let out a huff of laughter in to Donghyuck’s hair. “Honestly? A little bit. More like sunflowers than daisies.”
“That’s ridiculous. How do you even know what a sunflower smells like well enough to distinguish it from a daisy.”
“I worked at a flower shop before I started at the Better Bat-ter Bakery,” Mark said ruefully. “I should go back to that, probably. I was a hell of a lot better at it than I was at baking.”
That was both unbelievable and completely believable.
“If you’re a vampire, why are you wasting your time at minimum wage jobs? Don’t you have, like, an eternity to do whatever you want?”
Mark hummed, running a hand up and down Donghyuck’s arm absentmindedly. “I don’t know; I’m just doing whatever. I have an eternity to figure it out, don’t I?”
Well, Donghyuck really couldn’t argue with that.
-
As much as Donghyuck loved snooping about Mark’s things, his apartment didn’t have a bed, and he wasn’t going to sleep on a couch again if there was a perfectly good mattress in his own apartment, so he spent the rest of the day convincing Mark to move the whole protect-Donghyuck-from-vampire-murderers/hooking up situation to his place instead. Renjun had taken one look at Mark milling about in their living room and immediately given Donghyuck a suspicious glance.
“Do I want to know why your vampire boss and/or boyfriend is hanging out in our apartment?” Renjun whispered loudly to Donghyuck while Mark inspected the effectiveness of their blinds at blocking out sunlight. He needn’t have bothered, Donghyuck could have told him they were broken, but watching Mark struggle with them was so satisfying that he was going to give it another few minutes at least.
“Honestly, yes, you probably do, but trying to explain it would be impossible since I don’t think even Mark knows what’s going on.”
Renjun shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said. Then, he collected his laptop and left the apartment to give Donghyuck and Mark “alone time,” complete with air quotes. The pencil Donghyuck threw at him hit the door.
The rest of the day was spent half making out, half brooding about his imminent death while Mark had many mysterious and hushed phone calls with who Donghyuck assumed was Doyoung and Taeyong. It turned out that he assumed wrong, though, because later that evening, Jaemin, the other vampire customer that made a vampire pass at Donghyuck, showed up at his door, canines and all. Apparently, Jaemin was Mark’s best vampire friend. The distinction was important because Donghyuck was Mark’s best best friend, and he wouldn’t invite Jaemin into his apartment until Mark admitted it.
Anyway, that’s how Donghyuck ended up crowded around his own kitchen table with two vampires, one dressed in fine vampire fashion and the other dressed in Donghyuck’s old university sweats, discussing the finer aspects of vampire land ownership.
Yeah, you heard that right, fucking vampire property law.
“He’s trying to invoke his territorial claim to the Better Bat-ter Bakery,” Mark explained to a completely incredulous Donghyuck. “Because the vampire that turned Ten used to rule over this territory in, like, the first half of the Joseon Era, he’s saying that I prevented him from hunting on his rightful territory when I stepped in between you that one time, and now he’s trying to claim ownership of both you and the bakery.”
It was actually preposterous.
“Why would he do that? He can’t own me just because he’s a vampire and I’m a human. What the fuck.”
“It’s so dumb, only Ten would be this ridiculous,” Mark sighed into his hands. “No one’s followed the old rules for centuries.”
“He’s doing it to annoy Doyoung, obviously.” Jaemin leaned in conspiratorially. “Ten used to have a thing with Taeyong, and Doyoung despises him. Ten shows up every once in a while to rub it in Doyoung’s face and fish for threesome opportunities.”
“Okay, you don’t know that,” Mark sighed.
“Please! I don’t know that? It’s all Johnny would talk about for at least a decade! ‘Ten’s upset that Taeyong got a new boyfriend,’ ‘Doyoung hates Ten, and Ten thinks it’s hot.’ Et cetera.”
This was way more information than Donghyuck needed. “Are you saying that I somehow became collateral damage in a vampire poly relationship negotiation?”
“Yes,” Jaemin said emphatically at the same time that Mark said, “No.”
Jaemin gave Mark a flat look. “Um, maybe?” Mark conceded.
Donghyuck let his head fall to the table with a thud. “How is this my life,” he whined. Jaemin gave him a half-hearted pat on the back.
“Okay, so our main focus should be to figure out how to get Ten to leave Donghyuck out of his bizarre and threatening courting ritual, and then we can just let Doyoung and Taeyong deal with the territory issues,” Mark said, trying to wrangle the team back on track.
“Hopefully in a sexy way,” Jaemin added, wriggling his eyebrows.
“Well,” Mark looked such a delicious combination of awkward and embarrassed, and Donghyuck couldn’t even properly enjoy it because a vampire was trying to claim the right to his life over a missed threesome opportunity. “Yeah, hopefully.”
According to Mark and Jaemin, Ten had invoked ancient vampire property law, under which a large chunk of Seoul belonged to him (it also technically belonged to several other vampires under the authority of the same law, which is why ancient vampire laws were entirely ignored in modern times). It meant that any humans on his property were his to hunt as long as they were still alive, so Mark preventing Ten from literally eating Donghyuck allowed him to contest Mark’s right to hunt in Ten’s territory.
Not that most vampires hunted anything in this day and age with the availability of blood banks, but, you know, semantics.
The consequence of Ten challenging Mark’s right to hunt in Ten’s territory was that Mark was technically required to leave the area that belonged to Ten, aka the Better Bat-ter Bakery, or contest Ten’s challenge in a duel.
A literal fucking duel.
While Donghyuck contemplated exactly what a vampire duel entailed, the door to his apartment opened, and Renjun walked back in. The three of them looked up at the sound of the door and all failed pretty dramatically at looking not guilty. Renjun raised an eyebrow.
“Hello. Donghyuck didn’t tell me he was having company over. Well, company for his company,” he said giving Jaemin and his completely unsubtle vampire cloak a once over.
Oh no. Donghyuck knew what that look meant. Time to wrap this vampire powwow up before Jaemin was sucked into Renjun’s orbit. Or worse, his bed.
“Okay, we can pick this up tomorrow, right? Mark needs to reapply his sunscreen, and it usually takes a while, so Jaemin, you can probably head out.”
“No, Jaemin, is it?” Renjun crooned from right behind them while Mark shot Donghyuck a betrayed look. “Don’t leave so soon. I think we have some left over blood muffins from Donghyuck’s last experiments.”
Well, at least Donghyuck can say that he tried.
-
Renjun had rightfully been very displeased to find out that Donghyuck had gotten himself involved in a vampire murder threesome plot and hadn’t told him about it. He’d been even more displeased when Mark put his foot down and disallowed him from attending the duel after Jaemin invited him.
Obviously, Jaemin fell into Renjun’s bed, because Renjun was a fucking vixen when he wanted to be, but that was neither here nor there.
After careful deliberation with Mark and Jaemin and several phone calls with Doyoung and Taeyong, the plan was agreed upon that they would all convene at the bakery after sundown to attempt to talk down Ten. If they failed, well, they were just going to have to duel him. “They,” in this case being Mark. Mark would have to duel Ten for the right to Donghyuck’s life.
It was kind of romantic if you ignored all the utter nonsense about it.
Donghyuck greeted his bosses for the second time ever, and then they all sat around in the front of the bakery being generally morose about the situation. Taeyong tried to tell him that it would all work out fine, but the eye roll that Doyoung gave when he said that Ten was usually reasonable stifled Donghyuck’s hope a bit.
It was two hours after sundown when Jaemin opened the door and announced that Ten was on his way. Mark immediately turned around and pulled Donghyuck in for a kiss. It was ridiculous. Donghyuck’s knees wobbled a little.
Ten strode through the door a moment later.
“Oh,” he said, eyes full of mirth, “this is a lovely development.” Ten gestured to Mark’s hand placed firmly on Donghyuck’s waist.
“Are we really going to go through with this, Ten?” Doyoung demanded, stepping forward. “You’ve got our attention, alright? Donghyuck doesn’t have anything to do with this; leave him out of it.”
Amen, Donghyuck thought. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like Ten prescribed to the same religion.
“I disagree, Doie; I think he has everything to do with it.” Ten took a step towards Donghyuck. Mark’s arm tightened around his waist.
“How could that possibly be true?!” Donghyuck exclaimed, affronted. “Don’t make your swingers problems about me!”
Doyoung coughed loudly at Donghyuck’s outburst, but Taeyong only looked mildly embarrassed. Ten looked positively delighted. Bonus points to Jaemin for knowing exactly what this was really about, Donghyuck supposed.
“Well,” Ten began magnanimously, “our Donghyuck here has transformed the Better Bat-ter Bakery from an affront to society to a grand, desirable establishment. He’s clearly very valuable to you. If he was under my ward, well, you can imagine the leverage I’d have.”
Donghyuck nearly facepalmed. How would threatening his life possibly make Doyoung and Taeyong want to sleep with Ten more? This guy clearly had no game. Then again, looking at Taeyong’s disturbingly fond face, maybe this was just what vampire flirting was like.
“This is preposterous!” Doyoung yelled. Ten ignored him completely.
“Who here is contesting my right to the boy?” Ten asked loudly, gesturing to Donghyuck.
“I am.” Mark stepped forward.
“What are your terms?”
Mark hesitated. “Uh, what do you mean?”
Ten was clearly barely holding back laughter. “I challenged you, so it’s customary to let you choose the manner of duel, assuming you don’t want to fight to to death.” Ten’s canines shined in the fluorescent lighting.
This, they had not planned. Donghyuck had just kind of assumed that he was going to watch Mark get his ass handed to him and then get eaten by a vampire; he didn’t realize he might get to watch Mark lose in, say, Rock Paper Scissors and then get eaten by a vampire. It definitely put a new twist on it. Mark looked over with pleading eyes to Donghyuck and Jaemin, who could only shrug. Mark’s eyes wandered the bakery for a second, as if searching for an answer in the peeling wallpaper that was next on Donghyuck’s list to replace.
Then, his eyes lit up.
“I challenge you to a bake-off.”
-
Ten was quite taken aback by the proposal of a bake-off, understandably since he obviously hadn’t baked in centuries, if ever. But it was also kind of a given based on the fact that he walked into a bakery and started challenging people to competitions, so that was on him for not being prepared, really.
The only candidate for judge of the bake-off for Donghyuck’s life was, ironically, Donghyuck since he was the only non-vampire present who could actually taste human food. Donghyuck spent several minutes thanking Past Donghyuck for spending hours teaching Mark how to make normal human pastries.
Unfortunately, judging the competition that would determine who would literally own him meant that he couldn’t even watch them bake in an attempt to keep the judging fair and blind. Therefore, Donghyuck sat in the front of the bakery with Jaemin while the rest of the vampires all crowded into the kitchen for ninety minutes baking blueberry muffins.
Jaemin was actually very nice to talk to, enigmatic smile aside. They talked mostly about the sad state of Mark’s apartment and Jaemin’s opinion on the evolution of vampire fashion over the decades. Donghyuck sent a text to Renjun to say he approved.
When the timer ran out, Taeyong and Doyoung appeared from the door to the kitchen holding two muffins and placed them in front of Donghyuck. Mark and Ten appeared shortly after, looking adorably covered in flour.
Donghyuck was meant to be a blind taste-tester, but just looking at them, it was obvious which one was Mark’s. One muffin, though a little lopsided, was well-baked with a crystal sugar coating. The other was basically batter. Donghyuck was surprised it was even standing upright in its muffin liner.
He nearly called it there without even trying them, but then he met Mark’s eyes, wide and hopeful. Stupid Mark’s eyes, making him feel fuzzy inside.
He tried Mark’s first. It was a little dry, and most of the blueberries had fallen to the bottom, but otherwise very passable. Good even. He was actually super proud of Mark, who had no reason to learn anything about baking other than that Donghyuck insisted. He eyed the other muffin tremulously before he committed to the bit and just went for it.
Yeah, it was just clumpy batter. Without sugar by the taste of it. Nasty.
Donghyuck pushed Mark’s muffin forward. “This baker is the winner of the bake-off for ownership of my blood, or whatever this is about.”
Ten looked completely unsurprised, though a little put out. Mark looked elated.
Mark ran over and actually picked Donghyuck up out of his chair and swung him around like they were in a goddamn movie. It was amazing. Donghyuck kissed him like there was no one else in the room.
“I have decided that I’m going to take you home and ravish you,” Donghyuck said, stars in his eyes.
Mark looked extremely happy about that. “But, what about—”
“I could not care less if Ten gets to have a threesome with them or not. Now put me down or carry me home.”
Mark carried him home.
-
(“Oh my god.”
“What’s up, babe?”
The email glowed up from Donghyuck’s phone screen in all its glory, official offer letter attached and all. He could cry.
“I got the job!”
Mark moved away from where he’d been holding Donghyuck’s waist to shoot him a confused look. “What are you talking about?”
“After Ten tried to murder me the first time, I applied for a bunch of marketing jobs. I did like three interviews before I gave up and resigned myself to death by vampire. It’s two months late, but the last one finally got back to me, and they want to hire me!”
Donghyuck looked up from his phone, but instead of being excited for him like a good and supportive boyfriend, Mark looked absolutely pitiful.
“You’re leaving me?” he whined, big sad eyes and all.
Donghyuck couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic; you see me every day outside of this place.”
Mark’s pout deepened. “It won’t be the same.”
“Mark, it pays literally three times what you guys are paying me. No offense, but no amount of cute pouting is going to convince me to keep working retail.”
Mark shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
The bell over the door rang and Mark and Donghyuck looked over in tandem to see a customer they hadn’t ever seen before. He was short, noticeably so, but still, somehow, he commanded a large presence. There was something overwhelmingly intimidating about his aura, and Donghyuck tried not to wither in the face of it.
“Hi, welcome to Better Bat-ter Bakery! What can I get for you?”
The customer looked over the display, his long, purple coat with a strange pattern oddly stiff in the wake of his movement about the store.
“I’ll take half a dozen blood doughnuts, a chocolate chip blood cookie, and a blood Danish as well,” he said after a moment of pondering the pastries.
His voice was smooth, pleasant, and Donghyuck was trying to decide if he’d finally just completely lost it, or if there actually was a a faint trail of smoke rising out of the customer's nostrils.
“Of course!” he smiled, trying not to sound strained. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
The customer declined and left with a short nod. The door closed behind him, and the release of his presence from the bakery felt like the depressurization of a plane, popping ears and all. Donghyuck and Mark stared after him.
“That was a dragon, wasn’t it?”
“…Yeah.”
“I fucking told you!”)