Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The loose gravel lining the perimeter of the Curie Building crunches under Renjun’s sneakers as he rounds the corner. He’d overslept this morning, the result of staying up way past his bedtime in the name of studying for his first period’s reading quiz. He had just enough time to scarf down a half-defrosted Eggo waffle before rushing out of the house with mismatched socks, unbrushed hair, and toothpaste still stuck to his chin.

He checks the time on his phone, his knuckles pale around his backpack straps and his breaths labored as he climbs up the wide concrete steps. If he pushes himself, he can make it in time for roll-call. Probably. 

Mr. Choi’s classroom door comes into view just as the clock strikes eight-fifteen, the school bell blaring loudly through the sound system embedded into the ceilings. Renjun almost trips over his untied shoelaces as he skids to an abrupt halt in front door, once bright red but now faded to a rusty orange with chipped paint around the edges. He manages to catch himself before he can faceplant into the ground and wrings the door open with all his might. 

Unlike everyone else in the world, Renjun hates Fridays. 

He hates Fridays because Fridays are F days, which means that Biology is his first period of the day. And every Friday, Mr. Choi hands out a reading quiz worth five points of Renjun’s total grade immediately after taking attendance, which means that if Renjun shows up late, he’ll lose five precious points towards his perfect GPA. But that’s not even the worst part about Fridays. 

Fridays are also lab days, which means that Renjun can’t just pretend that his lab partner doesn’t exist like he usually tries to do on all the other days of the week. Lab assignments are turned in by pairs, and if Renjun wants to preserve his A+ in the class, he needs to participate. With his lab partner. Who happens to be—

“Mark Lee.”

“Here!”

Mr. Choi looks up from his computer to nod at Mark’s raised hand before moving onto the next student on his list. Renjun slides into his seat as quietly as he can, his face beet red and legs trembling from his sprint across campus, and has the overwhelming urge to cough his lungs out. Running has never been and will never be his forte. He tries his best to keep his expression as neutral as possible, but with the way he can feel Mark’s eyes boring into the side of his face, he knows he’s not doing an amazing job at it.

Here’s the thing about Mark Lee: Renjun hates him. With all his guts. 

Well, to be more accurate: Renjun really likes him. A lot. Which is why he hates him.

Renjun isn’t supposed to be into jocks. Jocks are dumb and all they care about is sports and protein powder and hitting the gym whenever they’re not in school or asleep. Jocks aren’t cute because they’re always bruised up with dirt under their fingernails and sweat-drenched jerseys that they never take off. Jocks never spare Renjun a second glance—and if they do, it’s usually to ogle him like he’s a piece of freshly-butchered meat.

But Mark, unlike all the other jocks on campus, isn’t dumb. He’s actually really helpful with all their lab assignments and he’s always attentive, eager to answer Mr. Choi’s cold-calls despite how scary they can be. He does well on all the quizzes and tests—and Renjun knows this because sometimes he’ll sneak a glance at Mark’s exams before he can slip them into his backpack and is always greeted with at least a ninety-five circled in red at the top of the page. 

Mark is witty and likable and cute and popular and smart, and the thick round frames he pulls out to see the board at the front of the classroom only make him look smarter. Mark doesn’t smell like sweat and his nail beds are always clean and Renjun has only ever seen him wear his jersey during practice. And Mark doesn’t look at Renjun like he wants to eat him, but Renjun doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that when Mark looks at him it’s always with his undivided attention—like he’s expecting Renjun to say something to quench his burning curiosities about God knows what—or the fact that he looks at him. Like he’s doing right now.

“You okay?” Mark whispers. In the corner of Renjun’s eyes, he can see Mark’s brows furrowing together in genuine concern. It makes his stomach hurt.

“Yeah,” Renjun coughs out, still avoiding eye contact. He leans over the side of his desk to grab his notebook and mesh pencil case from his backpack, hoping that his thin-lipped response makes it obvious that he doesn’t intend on continuing their conversation. Unfortunately, when he sits back up straight, Mark’s eyes are still fixed on him. 

“Mr. Choi’s going backwards today,” Mark says, completely oblivious to Renjun’s impassivity. 

Mark twirls his pencil between his fingers, a fancy mechanical one he got from one of his Japanese teammates—Osaki, or something like that—as a birthday gift. It’s a habit of his that Renjun used to hate because he thought Mark was just trying to show off, but after he realized it was just something Mark did absentmindedly, similar to how he’ll rub his chin when he’s deep in thought or scrunch his nose when he can’t come up with an answer to something, he found it kind of endearing. Cute, even. But he’ll never admit it. Ever. 

Renjun doesn’t care to learn about who’s on the basketball team—other than Mark, obviously—because he doesn’t care about basketball. All he knows is that Mark is the varsity team captain, plays point guard—whatever that means—and is best friends with Jeno Lee, who plays shooting guard. He has no idea what they’re guarding.

“Cool,” Renjun replies. He tries to be as nonchalant as possible while he rips a blank page out of his notebook to use as scratch paper, but on the inside, he feels like a kid with twenty bucks to burn at the ice cream parlor. He makes a mental note to compliment Mr. Choi on his shoes or perhaps his tie today as thanks for his decision to start from the bottom of the attendance sheet this morning. Maybe Fridays aren’t so bad after all.

“Renjun Huang.”

“Here!”

Renjun shoots his arm up high with a pleasant grin to meet Mr. Choi’s warm smile. 

“Nice of you to make it in time,” Mr. Choi says. “Mark seemed a bit worried that his partner wasn’t going to be here for dissection day.”

Mr. Choi moves on before Renjun can save face, but the nail was already hammered into the coffin the moment Mr. Choi said Mark’s name. The bright red flush of Renjun’s cheeks rushes up to the tips of his ears, his hands balled into fists as he stares straight ahead while Donghyuck giggles loudly from two seats behind him. He doesn’t have to turn around to confirm the exact look Donghyuck is lasering into the back of his messy head of hair.

After Mr. Choi finishes attendance and the last quiz is collected from the back of the class, Renjun allows himself to breathe. He’s certain he got all the questions right, thankful that he reviewed Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium despite Donghyuck telling him last night over Discord that there was no way it would show up on the reading quiz. Mr. Choi’s comment about Mark being worried about him sticks at the forefront of his thoughts like superglue, but he still has another hour of Biology to get through. With Mark. He can’t afford to show any weakness right now.

Unfortunately for him, Donghyuck has other plans.

Donghyuck drapes himself over Renjun’s shoulders once their lab coats and gloves are on, his sickly-sweet strawberry shampoo flooding Renjun’s nose to make him sneeze.

“So,” Donghyuck coos with an impish smile as they walk over to their shared lab bench, “did you have a good night’s sleep?”

“Shut up.”

“What?” Donghyuck feigns hurt, a hand slapped over his chest. “I can’t check in on my best friend of,” Donghyuck counts with his fingers, “nine years? I’m sure Mark was also wondering if you’d slept well—”

“Hey, Renjun!” Mark’s voice cuts across the room to freeze Renjun in his tracks, allowing Donghyuck to dodge his incoming fist to his face. “Did you have a preference for what species you wanted?”

Mark points to Mr. Choi’s illegible scrawls on the blackboard. Renjun, having forgotten his glasses in his rush to get to school on time, has to squint to make out the list of frog species written in Mr. Choi’s abysmal handwriting. 

“Um,” Renjun yells over the clamoring of students either freaked out about having to touch a dead frog or genuinely stoked to use a scalpel like they’re a doctor on Grey’s Anatomy, “no! No, I don’t have a preference!”

Mark holds a thumb up and nods, and when he turns around Donghyuck cuts in front of Renjun’s line of vision to waggle his eyebrows at him. Prick.

“Renjunnie,” Donghyuck pouts, his glossy lips jutted out and eyes wide as saucers, “I missed you so much. I was so worried I’d have to do this lab all by myself, without my super cute straight-A lab partner, and I—”

Renjun clamps his hand over Donghyuck’s sticky mouth and keeps it there despite the gross feeling of Donghyuck’s warm tongue against his palm. “Say another word, Hyuck, and that frog won’t be the only thing—”

“Duckie,” Jeno’s voice comes from out of nowhere and startles Renjun out of the headlock he’d secured Donghyuck in. “Can you go ask Mr. Choi for another scalpel? We only have one at our station.”

Donghyuck takes his chance to dart across the room before Renjun can register the fact that his arm is no longer wrapped around his neck and blows Renjun a raspberry from the crowd of students standing by Mr. Choi’s desk. Renjun flips him off only to drop his hand like a hot potato just in case Mr. Choi happened to be looking up. He’d already gotten in trouble once when Mr. Choi had walked in on his fist against Donghyuck’s stomach—it didn’t even hurt, okay, Donghyuck was just being overdramatic as always—and was lucky that Mr. Choi let them off with just a warning. 

Jeno waves at Renjun with a smile that curves into his eyes when he joins him at their shared bench.

On the first day of school, after Mr. Choi had randomly paired students up to be lab partners for the rest of the year, Donghyuck grabbed Renjun by the arm before anyone else could get to him and dragged him over to the bench at the far right of the back of the classroom. Jeno, being assigned Donghyuck’s partner by some miracle of nature, was quite happy to find that he’d be sitting at the same table as his best friend, his boyfriend, and his boyfriend’s best friend for all their labs. He called their group the Dream Team.

“How’d you do on the quiz?” Jeno asks as he carefully lays out his tools in one neat line. When he notices that his forceps are slightly crooked, he nudges it with his knuckle until he’s satisfied with its alignment with the rest of the stainless steel tools.

“I think I did okay,” Renjun replies. He spots Mark coming toward them with their frog held at arm’s length, his lips pulled into a distressed frown as he weaves through the rows of chairs to get to their bench. Renjun catches himself smiling at how cute Mark looks and immediately stretches his lips into a thin line. No weakness. He turns to Jeno. “I almost ran out of time because of that last genetics question, though.”

“That question tripped me up!” Jeno groans, tipping his head back with a pout. “Donghyuck swore Mr. Choi wouldn’t ask us about it.”

“You know, for someone who’s been dating him for, what, a year already? Two? I’d expect you to know not to trust him. Ever.”

Jeno cracks a fond laugh, blush dusted on his cheeks. “Yeah, you’re right. Better luck next time, I guess.”

Donghyuck returns with another tool set just as Mark sets the newspaper-wrapped frog on the table. Though they’d be writing their lab reports in pairs, Mr. Choi only ordered enough frogs for groups of four, so the Dream Team would be dissecting the frog Mark picked altogether. 

The smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant irritates Renjun’s nose and he feels a headache start to come on the moment Mark unwraps the damp newspaper with a grimace. Donghyuck turns as green as the frog in front of them and pretends to hurl, clutching his chest in disgust while Jeno wraps one arm around him to pull him into his embrace.

Mr. Choi’s voice booms throughout the classroom, quieting the repulsed groans and puking noises that had begun to echo across all the benches. “Alright, does everyone have a frog? Are we all good?”

“Mr. Choi, I’m sorry to say it,” a muffled voice—belonging to Yangyang, Renjun recognizes by the slight twang in his accent—makes itself known amidst all the nauseated whispers. “But I think I’m going to have to take the L on this one.”

Yangyang doesn’t even give Mr. Choi a chance to respond. He clamps his hand over his mouth and nose, straightens his posture to salute Mr. Choi as if he was heading off to war, then sprints out of the classroom without a look back. Mr. Choi stares at the door for a moment, sighs when he realizes Yangyang isn’t coming back until the bell rings, then turns to face the rest of the class.

“O- kay. Well, since I can’t leave a student unaccounted for, I guess I’ll go track him down. The rest of you: enjoy exploring the wonders of amphibian anatomy!”

“I never want to even think about frogs ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever.”

Donghyuck cringes in disgust on their way out of class, the hallway slowly filling up with hungry sleep-deprived students that pour out of their classrooms like lethargic cockroaches on the hunt for breadcrumbs. Renjun catches a flash of silver hair that pops out of the boy’s bathroom near the teachers lounge and laughs when Yangyang body slams the double door exit to make a mad dash to be first in the breakfast line. 

“You could go hang out with Yangyang,” Renjun says, cocking his head at the crowd of students standing by the hot food bar. He spots Yangyang talking animatedly to Hendery, who reacts with wide eyes that bulge out of his head—just like a frog. “Do whatever it is he does in the bathroom all by himself. I wonder if he’s ever gotten caught. You think he picks the same hiding spot every time?”

“I can’t ditch even if I wanted to,” Donghyuck groans.

They make a stop by their lockers, conveniently placed next to each other, to drop off their heavy Biology textbooks. Renjun frowns when he catches his reflection in the small magnetic mirror stuck to the inside of his locker door, brushing through his hair with his fingers in an attempt to calm the frizz. He sighs in resignation when, after a few long minutes of pressing his cowlick down to no avail, he realizes that this is as good as his hair is going to look for the day.

“If I miss another day of class, Mr. Choi’s going to bring my B+ down to a B and my mom’s going to freak. I still think it’s stupid that he counts attendance as part of our grade.”

Renjun can’t help himself. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t been late so often because you were too busy making out with Jen—”

“You’d do it too if you were dating him!”

“Would not!” he argues. Renjun would never miss class for a boy. Even if that boy was Mark Lee.

Donghyuck slams his locker door shut, stomps his foot and crosses his arms, and sticks his tongue out at Renjun as if they were back in the second grade and Renjun just swiped his favorite chocolate candy from under his nose.

“Put that thing back in your mouth,” Renjun rolls his eyes. “It’s gross.”

“For your information, Jeno happens to love this ‘thing!’”

“Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!” 

Renjun fakes a loud gagging noise and presses his palms to his ears as if that would block out all the intrusive images of Donghyuck and Jeno making out in some dark corner of campus like the horny teenagers they are. Unfortunately for him, that’s not how neurons work, and he almost actually hurls when he imagines Donghyuck shoving his tongue into Jeno’s mouth. Ew!

“Do I even want to know what’s going on here?”

“Jennie!”

Donghyuck bulldozes right through Renjun and leaps into Jeno’s arms, his head of fluffy brown hair stuffed into the side of Jeno’s neck like a curly-furred beaver would its burrow. Renjun scoffs and dusts off his shoulder.

“We were just talking about the dissection,” Renjun tells Jeno, who gives Donghyuck a peck on the cheek with a dopey grin. Gross.

“Oh!” Jeno says after mussing up Donghyuck’s hair. He turns to Renjun. “That reminds me. Mark is looking for you.”

Renjun chokes on his spit. “What?”

Donghyuck pops his head up at that, his eyes alight in mischief as Jeno continues.

“I think he’s still talking to Mr. Choi, but before I left he said he wanted to talk to you. Do you want me to—”

“No, I think Renjun should go find Markie,” Donghyuck cuts in with a devilish smile. “You heard him, Injunnie. He’s talking to Mr. Choi!”

“I—”

“C’mon, go find him before he disappears,” Donghyuck urges him, detaching from Jeno’s shoulders to push Renjun towards Mr. Choi’s classroom. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“We have class together, idiot. What the hell are you talking about— Oof.”

“I’m sor— Oh! Renjun! I was just looking for you.”

Mortified from slamming right into Mark’s chest, Renjun struggles to swallow as he looks up and meets Mark’s eyes, his wing-like eyebrows lifted high, stars swirling around in his dark irises. He feels his knees turn into jello.

“My job here is done,” Donghyuck announces. Like he’s proud of himself for getting Renjun into this mess. “Bye now!”

Before Renjun can grab onto his shirt and pummel him into the ground, Donghyuck runs the opposite direction, grabs Jeno’s hand, and drags him down the hall and out of sight. Wait ‘til I get my hands on you, you little piece of—

“Renjun?”

“Sorry, what?”

Renjun takes a step back when he realizes he’s still pressed against Mark’s chest, his scent warm and familiar, clean laundry fresh out of the dryer. He has the sudden urge to curl up into a ball and bathe himself in it like a cat sunbathing on a warm summer’s day. He’s going insane.

“I was, uh. I wanted to get your number.”

“You— What?” Renjun’s jaw drops, his heart sinking into his stomach to swim around with his waffle from earlier that morning. When he remembers who he is and where he is and who it is he’s talking to, he clamps his mouth shut, embarrassment taking form in the red that colors Renjun’s entire body. 

“Sorry,” he clears his throat. The world starts to spin. “What?”

“So you could send me your notes from today. For the lab report,” Mark answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “That way I can text you if I have any questions.” Why else would he want Renjun’s number?

“Oh.” Renjun feels his stomach gurgle. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Renjun stammers, almost biting down on his tongue from just how shell-shocked he feels.

Of course. They’re a month into the school year and it only makes sense that Mark asks him for his number now, before midterms start. Because it’s easier to exchange notes that way. And school—not boys—is important. Yes. This isn’t heartbreaking in the slightest.

Time seems to stop when Renjun hands his phone over to Mark, suddenly hyper-aware of his home screen—a photo of him relaxing under the Hawaiian sun, a wide-brimmed hat decorated in tropical flowers sitting atop his head—and how many fingerprints there are on his clear phone case. Maybe he should change it out. Can Mark feel his finger grease?

“There.” Mark smiles and hands Renjun’s phone back to him. He doesn’t wipe his hands onto his pants after he does, which is a good sign. No finger grease to worry about. “Text me anytime.”

“Okay,” Renjun nods awkwardly. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s an appropriate time to run off to the bathroom to scream in mortification, so he just stands there with his hands at his side, weight shifting from one foot to another until Mark clears his throat.

“Did you want to give me your number too?”

Oh. Yeah. That’s how exchanging numbers is supposed to work.

“Oh, sure. Yes. Totally!” What are you saying right now?

Renjun isn’t normally like this. He’s a stellar public speaker—he’s co-captain of the Speech and Debate team, for crying out loud. He’s supposed to be good at commanding conversations. He’s Huang Renjun.

But every Superman has his own kryptonite, and Mark Lee is the unstoppable force to Renjun’s immovable object. Or something like that. He doesn’t really know how the saying goes.

After Renjun types in his number, Mark grins at him, pleased, his eyes curving into crescents that match the smooth arch of his eyebrows. 

“Thanks! I’ll text you for the notes later.”

“Okay.” Renjun forces himself to return Mark’s smile, his cheeks stretching uncomfortably to mirror the turmoil of his troubled soul. He decides he’ll treat himself to some ice cream after school. He deserves it. “You got it, dude.”

“‘You got it, dude?’” Donghyuck cackles, doubling over to clutch his stomach in laughter. “You said that to him?”

“Shut up,” Renjun grumbles, pointedly refusing to slow his pace just so Donghyuck can catch up to him. Donghyuck doesn’t even seem to care, struggling to catch his breath before skipping over to Renjun, his squeaky giggles growing higher and higher like a rapidly deflating balloon. Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to drive Donghyuck home today. “Shut up, Hyuck.”

“You’re so cute,” Donghyuck coos. Renjun barely manages to dodge the incoming hand that threatens to squish his cheeks pink. 

The school gym is about as noisy as Renjun remembers. He doesn’t come here often, only to attend after-school faires or to help ASB set up for dances. Donghyuck leads the way and weaves them through the empty bleachers to settle towards the top, far enough away to keep their distracting presence to a minimum but still close enough to ogle at his boyfriend down on the court. It doesn’t smell up here, thank God, but the loud squeaking of all the basketball shoes running along the court is already starting to annoy Renjun. How is he supposed to get any work done amidst all this ruckus?

Just as Renjun dusts off his seat and procures his Pre-Calculus workbook from his backpack, Donghyuck waves at one of the players standing by the edge of the court. Renjun doesn’t have his glasses on to be able to see super clearly, but by the looks of Donghyuck’s enthusiasm and the black head of hair that crowns a lanky, toned body, he’s pretty sure Jeno’s come by to say hello. Renjun waves back.

“He’s so hot,” Donghyuck gushes, sinking his chin between his hands with stars in his eyes. “I just want to eat him. I bet I could in one bite, if he let me. Is that weird to say?”

“You need to stop that. Seriously,” Renjun mutters. He digs into his backpack to try and find his earbuds and thanks his lucky stars when he feels the familiar rubber cording loop around his fingers. “I don’t need to hear about how horny you are for him. It’s gross.”

“Oh, so you can rant about Mark all the time but I can’t talk about my own boyfriend? Who I am dating?”

“That’s— That’s different! I never talk about how hot Mark is!”

“So you’re admitting he’s hot.”

“No— Stop putting words in my mouth,” Renjun glowers, his cheeks hot. He yanks his earbuds out of his backpack so forcefully that the silicon dongle almost smacks him square in the face on its way out. “I’m just saying— You know what, forget it.”

“No,” Donghyuck says, stubborn as ever as he twists around to meet Renjun’s eyes. “Tell me, Renjun. Do you admit that Mark is hot?”

If Donghyuck had cornered Renjun this past summer, when he was a little buzzed after taking a few sips from his cousin’s hard lemonade while they were on vacation—which he did by accident, to be clear, because hard lemonade and regular lemonade packaging happen to look very similar—then maybe Renjun would’ve admitted that he finds Mark quite attractive. He wouldn’t say Mark is hot, per se, because he finds the word kind of reductionist and Mark is more than just a one-word description of temperature, but he wouldn’t say Mark isn’t hot.

If Renjun were to be truthful, he’d say that Mark isn’t hot in the conventional way—the way that, say, Joe Jonas is. He’d say instead that Mark just happens to make his insides heat up whenever he thinks about him, which is admittedly more often than he likes to let on. 

He’d think that Mark is hot. He’d keep the thought tucked under all the other thoughts he has about Mark, like the way his eyes shine whenever he answers one of Mr. Choi’s questions correctly or the way he’ll smile brightly at Renjun whenever he walks through the door at the start of class. He’d never say it aloud, because then he’d have to admit that he actually has a crush on Mark Lee, the varsity basketball captain who likes to throw his crumpled scratch paper into the bin from across the room and smiles widely whenever he makes the shot, which is always. The cute boy he fell for by chance after bumping into him during last year’s homecoming dance and later, by some twisted fate, being assigned as his lab partner for the rest of his junior year. The one person on this planet that isn’t Donghyuck that can manage to fire Renjun up—and not even be aware of his effect on him, which makes it that much worse.

“No,” Renjun says, resolute. “I don’t think he’s hot.”

Just then, a flash of red catches Renjun’s eyes. Donghyuck follows his line of sight and turns towards the court, smirking when he spots the blob of red Renjun is staring at.

“Hey guys!” Mark yells across the gym and waves his arms in the air.

Before Renjun can clamp a hand over Donghyuck’s mouth or perhaps tie him down with the free straps of his backpack, Donghyuck stands up, cups his mouth with his hands, and yells back, “Hi Mark!”

With Mark’s presence confirmed, Renjun has no choice but to resign himself to waving hello back. He burns up as he does it, his arm timid in the air, and when Mark stops waving at them to run to the opposite end of the court, Renjun heaves out a constipated sigh. He can’t wait for today to end.

Donghyuck presses his hand to Renjun’s forehead. “Wow, Junnie. You’re really burning up. I think Mark might be too hot for you to handle.”

Renjun shouldn’t have agreed to this. Maybe Donghyuck was right. 

As hard as Renjun tried to concentrate on finishing his homework, not on the red blob that scored threes like he was born with the innate capability of playing like Stephen Curry in his prime, he didn’t get any work done while waiting for Jeno to finish with practice. The only reason why Renjun had agreed to drive Donghyuck home after school in the first place was because he thought they’d be able to grab some ice cream—just the two of them—on the way to Donghyuck’s house and spend their Friday night cozied up on Donghyuck’s bed, a Tim Burton film playing on his crappy projector to prep them for the upcoming holidays. It was a tradition of theirs started sometime in elementary school because Donghyuck, though he still denies it, was too scared to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas by himself.

Instead, Renjun had been roped into not just wasting his precious afternoon by watching varsity basketball practice but also driving Donghyuck, Jeno, and Mark to his favorite ice cream parlor just a few blocks down from campus. Once Donghyuck learned that Renjun wanted to get sweets after practice, he invited Jeno along—because apparently they can’t bear to spend more than a few days apart—and thereby invited Mark to come with, because Mark is Jeno’s best friend and Mark also didn’t drive himself to school today, so hitching a ride with Renjun was a no-brainer. Obviously.

Donghyuck ends up squeezing into the backseat to sit next to Jeno and not at all because he wants Renjun to spend more time with the man of his dreams, thus forcing Mark to take the passenger seat next to Renjun. White-knuckled and so nervous he can barely concentrate on the stupid road, Renjun almost hits the curb when he turns the corner to park in front of Seo’s Super Sweets & Eats and sighs in relief when he finally turns the engine off. His thighs are shaking and his heart is hammering so loudly against his ribs that he thinks they might break, but he made it. They’re all still alive. That’s what matters.

Mark’s soothing voice jolts him out of his thoughts. “Thanks for the ride, Renjun.” 

“Yeah, thanks Junnie!” Donghyuck squeals, already halfway out of the car to scamper into the creamery with Jeno in tow. 

Renjun doesn’t expect Mark to wait for him to collect his things, but Mark does. He almost wishes that Mark wasn’t so charming because then he’d have something to hate Mark for, but Mark stands at the hood of Renjun’s car and waits for him to grab his wallet from his backpack. Mark smiles at him when he finally joins him on the sidewalk, his hands tucked into his pockets to make him look like the boy-next-door of Renjun’s dreams—the type of guy to be featured in a quintessential early-2000s Taylor Swift music video. Renjun’s heart melts just like ice cream on a hot day, because of course it does. 

“You’re a good driver,” Mark hums, reaching for the door before Renjun can grab the handle. Renjun awkwardly shuffles into the shop when he realizes Mark is waiting for him to go in first, shivering when a gust of cold air blows past him. “My brother is pretty bad. Sometimes it feels like he’s out to get me with how much he sucks at it, you know?”

“Isn’t your brother older than you?”

Mark laughs, his shirt pulling up as he lifts an arm to scratch the nape of his neck. Renjun’s eyes flit down just in time to catch the sliver of Mark’s stomach that peeks out from under it—he didn’t mean to look, it just happened—and he chokes back a cough when he registers that Mark has abs. He should’ve expected a natural-born athlete like Mark to be toned, but seeing his deepest darkest fantasies confirmed in the flesh startles him numb.

“Yeah, but,” Mark chuckles, cocking his head at the counter when he notices that Donghyuck and Jeno are done ordering, “he’s still a pretty bad driver. I think I’m better than he is by a long shot.” 

“Mmm,” Jeno hums happily as he walks up to them, his tongue darting out to lick the ice cream stuck to the corner of his lips. “You guys should get the matcha! It’s so good.”

“No, get the coconut so I can share with you!” Donghyuck pouts at Renjun. 

Renjun watches as the two make their way into a booth by the far end of the shop, Donghyuck’s grabby hands successful in stealing the cup of ice cream from Jeno’s grasp. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

“What’s your favorite flavor?” Mark asks. “I’ve never been here before.”

Renjun gasps, eyes bulging out of his head in shock. “Never?”

“It’s pretty popular, right?” 

Mark takes a step forward to greet the employee behind the counter and compliment him on his orange hair. Based on the shine of his nametag that reads Jisung, he must be new. Mark turns to Renjun. “Do you have any recommendations?"

Renjun wouldn’t call himself an ice cream connoisseur, but he’s been a Seo’s Sweets regular since they first opened. Of course he has recommendations.

“What kind of ice cream do you like?” Renjun asks. He joins Mark by the glass display case and grins when he’s greeted by the familiar rainbow of colors he revisits every few weeks. Even when it’s blistering cold outside, Renjun will still try to stop by at least once a month to sample their new flavors. 

“I really like their pistachio flavor,” Renjun points to the left of the case. “But honestly, their madagascar vanilla is pretty good too. Ooh, or their cookie butter! Or if you like tart, they have a really good blueberry cheesecake!”

When Renjun realizes he’s rambling and stops to look up at Mark, he finds Mark’s gaze intent on him and immediately looks away as blush begins to creep up his face. Great. Way too keep your cool, Renjun.  

But Mark doesn’t look away, and Renjun knows this because Mark actually takes a step closer, their shoulders almost brushing as Mark leans toward the right side of the case. Renjun considers bolting from the shop to leave Donghyuck with figuring out how to get the rest of them home without Renjun’s car, but thankfully, Jisung comes to the rescue by clearing his throat.

“Would you like to try any samples?” Jisung asks with a shy smile. “They’re free!”

“I think I’m okay,” Mark replies, still grinning at Renjun. “You can order first, Renjun.”

Mark steps back then, the warmth of his shoulder replaced by the freezing air radiating from the ice cream display. Renjun kind of misses it. But he’s never going to say it, especially not in front of Jisung or Donghyuck or Jeno, so he just shivers, rubs the goosebumps on his arms, and returns Jisung’s friendly smile.

“I’ll have the pistachio,” Renjun says. “Single— Double scoop, please. In a cup.”

“You got it, captain.”

“You really like pistachio, huh?” Mark murmurs as they watch Jisung work his metal scoop into the thick ice cream. 

“It’s my favorite.”

Mark hums. “That’s good to know.”

After Jisung hands Renjun’s cup to him and scoops Mark a cone of the cookie butter flavor, they walk over to the register right by the freezers full of ice cream cakes. Before Renjun can even procure his wallet from his back pocket, Mark beats him to the punch by handing Jisung a twenty-dollar bill.

“You can keep the change,” Mark smiles, glancing over at Renjun who’s about as red as the cherry-flavored ice cream sitting in the case. 

Jisung thanks them for their patronage, hands them their spoons, and when they start to make their way over to where Donghyuck and Jeno are seated, Renjun blurts out, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” 

“Pay for me.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Mark shrugs, grinning after he licks the bit of cookie crumble off the top of his cone. “You’re my— Um. Friend. Friends can pay for each other’s ice creams, right?”

Donghyuck’s cup of ice cream is already empty by the time they sit down. “What’d you get, Junnie?”

“Fr— I, uh, got the pistachio,” Renjun stammers. Friend?

“What’s yours, Mark?”

“Cookie butter,” Mark replies, his smile as bright as ever. As if he didn’t completely shatter Renjun’s hopes and dreams all in one fell swoop.

“Oh, I love that flavor. We should get that next time, Jennie.”

“Okay,” Jeno nods. “Whatever you want.”

“Oh, Junnie! Jeno suggested we go to the Halloween Haunt. And Halloween is on a Saturday, which is perfect! Students get a ten percent discount. Are you down to go?”

“Um,” Renjun starts, pulling his phone out of his pocket with a shaky hand to check his calendar. “I— Oh. Sorry. I can’t. I’m going trick-or-treating with my baby cousin.”

“Can’t you cancel?” Donghyuck whines.

“Duckie, that’s not very nice—”

“But it’s Halloweekend!”

“Sorry, Duck,” Renjun grimaces. He should’ve told Donghyuck sooner; Halloween is one of Donghyuck’s favorite holidays. They used to go trick-or-treating together every year, with matching costumes and everything, until Donghyuck came down with the flu last year and Renjun’s new partner became his cousin by default. “Maybe next year?”

“What about you, Mark?” Donghyuck asks, eyes pleading in the way they widen. “You can come with us, right?”

“I, uh—”

“Please, please, please—”

“I think I’m busy that weekend,” Mark coughs. Renjun, too focused on scarfing down the rest of his ice cream before it melts, doesn’t notice the way Mark’s gaze lingers on him. “But if my schedule clears up I’ll definitely let you know.”

“Yay!” Donghyuck squeals and wraps his arms around Jeno’s shoulder in excitement. “Don’t worry, Injun. We’ll take lots of pictures for you. It’s like you’ll actually be there with us!”

“He called me his friend, Donghyuck.”

“Yeah, but he also paid for your ice cream,” Donghyuck argues matter-of-factly without even looking up from his phone.

“He literally said ‘that’s what friends do.’”

“He asked you for your number this morning, Jun. And then he came with us on our double date. What about that screams friends to you? He likes you!”

“He— That wasn’t a date! You dragged him along with us!”

“And he said yes! So it was a double date!”

“You are so— Agh!” Renjun grumbles, clenching and unclenching his fists to stop himself from pouncing onto Donghyuck to choke him out. 

Donghyuck throws his phone onto the bed and twists his head to stare at Renjun, lips taut, face flat. “What do you want me to tell you, Renjun? That he doesn’t like you?”

“Yes, actually.” Renjun stuffs his face into one of Donghyuck’s pillows. Perhaps death by asphyxiation would be better than facing Mark The Friend on Monday. “I’d love that.”

“You’re being too pessimistic,” Donghyuck clicks his tongue. He scoots down on the bed to lay next to Renjun, smoothing a hand over the small of his back. “I think he likes you. Really. I think Jeno thinks he likes you too.”

“You’re just biased. You’re obligated to support me,” Renjun says into the pillow. He lifts his head to squint at Donghyuck, who just sighs tiredly, then smushes his face back into the warm cushion. “And Jeno is obligated to support you because he’s your boyfriend.”

“You could have a boyfriend too, you know,” Donghyuck argues. “If you two just talked it out. I swear he stares at you like he’s in love with you, Junnie. He even did the whole lab for you today just because you didn’t want to touch that stupid frog, remember? What kind of guy does that?”

“A good lab partner,” Renjun sniffles.

“He’s like,” Donghyuck hums, “Prince Charming. What’s that one Disney movie with the frog in it?”

“The Princess and the Frog.”

“Oh! Yeah. That. Except, um. Mark is defeating all the frogs for you. Is that something a prince would do?”

Just then, Renjun’s phone chimes.

“Who’s that?”

“Dunno,” Renjun replies, voice still muffled by the pillow squishing his cheeks. It’s silent for a moment, a bit of shuffling as Donghyuck reaches over Renjun’s head to grab his phone, and then Donghyuck lets out a blood-curdling scream.

“Renjun!”

“What? What is— Why are we screaming!?”  

Renjun shoots up so fast he hits his head on the phone Donghyuck extends over him, wincing in pain as he rolls over to clutch his skull while Donghyuck jumps up and down on the bed to jostle him about. 

“It’s Mark! It’s Mark! It’s Mark! It’s Mark!”

“Wh— What are you talking about—”

“Look.” 

Donghyuck shoves the phone right into Renjun’s face. Sure enough, Mark’s name is there, coupled with a few more texts that roll onto his phone like boulders down a hill.

Renjun wrenches his phone out of Donghyuck’s tight grasp, his heart beating so fast he’s scared it might explode right in his chest.

[22:31] mark lee
hey renjun
thanks for inviting me for ice cream today :)
it was really yummy

[22:34] mark lee
i was wondering

[22:35] mark lee
could u send me the notes from lab today?
and did u get home ok? haha

Renjun’s emotions whip through him so quickly that he feels dizzy by the time he reads Mark’s last message, anxiety and alarm turning into relief and then disappointment.

“He just wanted me to send him my notes from today,” Renjun says, his voice tighter than he means for it to be. 

Donghyuck takes his phone from him to read the messages himself. Before Renjun can crawl out of bed to grab his notebook from his backpack—and maybe run off to the bathroom to vomit while he’s at it—Donghyuck wraps his arms around Renjun’s waist and pulls him into a tight hug, squeezing so hard that Renjun’s sure there will be a bruise by tomorrow morning.

“Ow, Duck.”

“‘M not letting go.”

Renjun sighs. “I’m okay, Hyuck.” 

Friend. We can be friends. Friends treat each other out to ice cream and exchange class notes. Friends.

“‘M still not letting go.” Donghyuck sticks his head in between Renjun’s neck and shoulder, his strawberry shampoo from earlier that morning replaced with a scent reminiscent of piña coladas. 

Renjun gives in, sinking against Donghyuck’s chest, trying to quiet the rapid beating of his heart. He’s just high-wired because Donghyuck screamed out of nowhere. That’s it. That’s all. Renjun wraps his hands around Donghyuck’s arms and twines their fingers together, chuckling softly to himself when he realizes just how silly they’re acting.

So what if Mark just wants to be friends? It’s not like Renjun ever confessed to him—it’s not like Mark is rejecting him. How can Renjun be rejected if he never gave Mark the option to deny him in the first place? It’s just a crush, and crushes pass. Mark is still a nice guy and Renjun is still the world’s best lab partner. In fact, Renjun isn’t even upset. He’s happy Mark wants to be his friend. Genuinely. Renjun is a really good friend.

“Duckie, I’m okay.” Renjun twists around to face Donghyuck, whose head is dipped low. “Why are you acting so sad? It’s fine. He just asked me for some notes. No big deal!”

“I’m sorry for freaking out on you like that,” he mumbles. 

Renjun keeps his grasp tight around Donghyuck’s hands, knowing that if he lets go, Donghyuck is only going to pick at his cuticles like he usually does whenever he’s upset. 

“I was just,” Donghyuck inhales, holds his breath, then deflates like a balloon, “excited.”

“I know, Duckie,” Renjun sighs, letting go of Donghyuck only to wrap his arms around his shoulders to pull him close. He takes in a deep breath, smiling when his summer memories of white Hawaiian beaches flood his mind, and exhales as he pulls back to meet Donghyuck’s eyes. “Did you know?”

“Know what?”

Renjun presses their foreheads together and scrunches his nose.

“Did you know that I love you?”

“You’re gross,” Donghyuck mumbles. Rather than pushing Renjun away in disgust, however, Donghyuck beams and pulls Renjun in for another tight hug. “My grossest bestest friend in the whole wide world.”

Before they snuggle under Donghyuck’s covers to fall asleep to the musical genius that is the Corpse Bride soundtrack, Renjun snaps a few photos of his notes to send Mark’s way. They end up falling asleep a quarter of the way through the movie, but thankfully, Donghyuck’s new projector knows how to turn itself off.

[22:47]
hi mark :)
thanks for joining us today
i did get home safe, thanks for asking
hope you have a good weekend!

[23:51] mark lee
thanks haha
and i’m glad!
i hope we get to hang out again soon
spending time with you is fun :)

Donghyuck is relentless.

“Hyuck.” Renjun jabs his elbow into Donghyuck’s ribs and glances up at Mark, who’s oblivious to the slew of curses spewing out of Donghyuck’s mouth, from across the cafeteria. “Hyuck, stop it.”

“No,” Donghyuck retorts petulantly. He permits his eyes to drop to his plate just so he can aim his spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth, then resumes his spiteful hexing. “I’m busy cursing him with a thousand years of bad luck.”

On the other side of the cafeteria, Mark gets up to throw his styrofoam plate into the trash and slings his backpack over his shoulder. He motions to Shotaro that he’s going to head outside, then disappears past the double doors that lead to the blacktop. 

Renjun turns to a scowling Donghyuck and sighs. “You need to calm down. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Why are you defending him?” Donghyuck argues, exasperated. “He has worms for brains!”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

It’s been two weeks of the same routine—Donghyuck glaring at Mark from across campus, across the basketball court, across their shared lab bench. Renjun didn’t think that Donghyuck would take this all so seriously, but he should’ve known better than to expect anything else from Donghyuck. The only person who’s ever been able to escape one of Donghyuck’s famous grudges is Jeno, and that’s only because the love he has for Jeno takes up just a tad bit more space than the spite that lives inside his heart. 

Other than Donghyuck’s prolonged temper tantrum, nothing changed. The sky's still blue, Yangyang still ditches Biology every Friday, and Mark and Renjun are still friends that occasionally text each other for homework help. They also spent last Sunday on a Discord call—that Donghyuck doesn’t need to know about—so that Mark could help Renjun with his physics homework. As it turned out, basketball is a wonderful analogy for the universal mystery that is projectile physics. 

Renjun doesn’t really have a problem with it; he was never one to be comfortable with swift and sudden change, preferring to establish routines that he could depend on and fall back onto whenever everything around him seemed to be swirling into chaos. Donghyuck, on the other hand, is the type to jam square blocks into circular openings until they fit. After a few days of just wishing for Mark to trip over his own shoelaces, Donghyuck decided he needed to resort to more drastic measures: witchcraft. 

He’d dragged Renjun to the public library to explore the young adults’ section and pick out a few spellbooks to aid him in his quest to make Mark’s life a living hell. Renjun insisted that the books wouldn’t do him any good, but Donghyuck refused to listen, walking out of the library with a new library card and paperbacks stacked up to his chin. Later that night, armed with the one-dollar candles he’d bought from Target, dried spices raided from his mom’s pantry, and a red marker, Donghyuck sat Renjun in the middle of his room, whispered a few words in butchered Latin—or maybe it was Greek, who knows—and claimed to have cast a spell that would do either one of two things: bring Renjun and Mark together, or, if Mark remained too dense to see that Renjun was the perfect boy for him, curse Mark with a bajillion years of misfortune.

So far, to Donghyuck’s displeasure, it seems like neither things have happened. Despite all the incantations he mutters under his breath whenever he thinks Mark isn’t listening, nothing has changed. They still have reading quizzes every Friday, Mark’s luck hasn’t gotten any worse, and Renjun still has a big fat crush on Mark Lee.

“What if Mark’s bad luck turns into Jeno’s bad luck, hm?” Renjun hisses under his breath. He stabs an apple slice with his fork and takes a bite, pursing his lips when the sour fruit hits his tongue. “Ever heard of the law of proximity?”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Donghyuck retorts. “I made sure to cast a protection spell on Jeno.”

“Then what about me? What if Mark forgets to turn in our lab assignment one day and then I get an F and my GPA is ruined and it’s all your fault, Hyuck? Just let it go already!”

“You and your pessimism.” Donghyuck crosses his arms with a huff and sticks his tongue out at Renjun. “There are two ways this could end, remember? He either falls in love with you or dies unlucky. His choice.” 

Fortunately for the both of them—mainly for Donghyuck’s criminal record—Mark doesn’t die within the week despite Donghyuck ramping up the severity of his hexes. Unfortunately for Renjun, Mark doesn’t fall in love with him within the week either.

“Who’s that?”

Renjun types up the last bit of his reply and shoots it off before looking up from his phone, apparently a beat too late for Donghyuck’s liking. Donghyuck’s expression, sour as the lemon jawbreaker he’s been obnoxiously sucking on for the last ten minutes, only darkens when he catches Mark’s name pop up on Renjun’s phone.

“Oh,” Donghyuck mutters. He rolls his eyes and returns his attention to his homework, still blank except for the doodles scribbled into the margins of the paper.

“He’s just asking about Lee’s project,” Renjun explains with an exasperated sigh, looking up from his phone to add, “And he also says hi.”

“Tell him he can suck it,” Donghyuck grumbles. He stabs the tip of his pencil into his paper, the lead snapping off to leave behind dark powder forever indented into the page.

“I will let him know that you’d like to offer him some of your sour candy in the spirit of Halloween,” Renjun deadpans.

“That’s not what I said!”

Renjun cocks an eyebrow, lips pursed. He offers the candy to Mark anyway. It’s not like Donghyuck can stop him.

[15:01] mark lee
oh also
are u gna be visiting practice again soon?
maybe we can study at the library after
if ur down haha
u don’t have to if ur busy though

[15:03]
honestly
duck’s prob gna drag me anyway lol

[15:05] mark lee
aw lol
i feel bad

[15:06]
oh it’s nbd haha
i really don’t mind!
it helps my physics grade yknow
projectile motion and all that

[15:08] mark lee
LOL
i’m glad it’s not a total bore for u then
i should learn some flashier moves for u

[15:10]
i doubt backflips are allowed on the court mark
can’t hurt ur back if we’re gna go study after

[15:12] mark lee
wow
u care about me
ur so cute renjun

Renjun huffs through his nose. If only Mark knew exactly how much he cared. 

There’s a sinking feeling in the hollow of his chest that he knows to label as heartache, having felt it the day they visited Seo’s Sweets and again when Mark texted him for the first time and all the times that came after. Despite the familiarity of the feeling and how reliably it arrives after every new notification from Mark that pings his phone, Renjun still feels betrayed by his own body. Why does it have to get so worked up over stupid text message about evolutionary drifts and basketball memes that Renjun doesn’t understand?

“Hello? Earth to Renjun. Hello?”

Renjun jolts out of his self-pitying trance. “Sorry, what?”

Donghyuck’s eyes are narrowed into thin slits, like he’s a grumpy cat upset about being fed its dinner a minute too late, his lips pulled taut and eyebrows furrowed. As menacing as Renjun knows he’s trying to look, he can’t help but feel annoyingly endeared. 

“I said,” Donghyuck whinges, “are you still trick-or-treating with Chenle next Sunday?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you?”

Donghyuck quirks a brow, shaking his head.

“Chenle got the flu,” Renjun chuckles, remembering the way his baby cousin wailed on the other end of the call when his mom broke the news to Renjun a few days ago. Renjun had told her that he’d come visit Chenle after he gets better, promising that he’d be armed with candy to make up for a missed Halloween. “Fei said it’s still pretty bad. Why?”

“What was your costume going to be?”

“Well, Chenle wanted to go as Pikachu this year, so I was planning on dressing up as Ash.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Donghyuck returns his attention to his homework, deep in thought. Renjun doubts it’s because he actually cares about solving the word problems that have been taunting him for the past few hours, so he asks, “Why? What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Donghyuck shrugs, looking up with a grin that widens the longer he returns Renjun’s confused stare. “I was hoping to put you in a maggot costume, but—”

“Maggot?”

“—I guess Ash Ketchum is a cooler costume—”

“Donghyuck. Why am I dressing up as a maggot?”

“Because Jeno and I are dressing up as Victor and Emily!” Donghyuck exclaims, his eyes gleaming. “From Corpse Bride! And since you’re not going out with Chenle anymore, that means you can come with us to the Haunt!”

Oh. That.

“C’mon, Junnie! Please come? Mark canceled because he said had a thing or whatever, so that’s a bummer, but now you can come instead!”

“Were you going to dress Mark as a worm?”

Donghyuck mulls the question over for a moment, then replies with a pleasant smile, “Nah. He’s more of a Barkis Bittern, don’t you think?”

Renjun shoots him a level look. “You were planning on going to the Haunt as Emily and her boy toys?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

Renjun can’t help but laugh, the sound bubbling out of his chest despite how hard he tries to tamp it down. He was planning on staying in on Sunday, perhaps snuggled up with a nice mug of hot cocoa and a library book he’s yet to crack open, but Donghyuck sounds so excited about the Haunt that Renjun can’t find it in himself to refuse. He’ll just catch up with his reading the following weekend. 

“Fine,” Renjun says, his lips tugging into a smile at the way Donghyuck’s whole face lights up. “I’ll come. But not as a worm. Sorry. They gross me out.”

“It’s okay, Junnie,” Donghyuck beams, standing abruptly to lean over the table and wrap Renjun in a tight hug, “I’d still love you if you were a worm.”

Sunday night is blistering cold.

Renjun’s teeth clack together as a shiver worms its way up his spine, another cold breeze whisking by to rustle the leaves crunching under his feet. He’s the least clothed of the bunch, his only protection from the unforgiving weather a button-up tee shirt sewn together by his mom the week before. He rubs his hands over the goosebumps covering his arms in a futile attempt to warm his body up; his gloves aren’t even that useful because they’re fingerless, allowing the cold to bite at his fingers and freeze his knuckles stiff.

Donghyuck isn’t faring any better. He has Jeno’s tuxedo jacket tightly wrapped over his shoulders, his skimpy dress of white lace and carefully-torn cotton fluttering between his legs as they make their way to the park’s entrance. To Donghyuck’s left, Jeno seems to be doing okay, the only tell of his actual comfort—or more accurately, the lack thereof—the purple color of his usually-pink lips. Jeno, thankfully, has a layer of thermal innerwear underneath his white button-up, but from the looks of his face, Renjun doubts they’ll be able to make it back home without at least one of them catching a cold. 

They make their way to all the food stalls first, having forgone dinner to help Donghyuck with last-minute alterations to his costume instead. It had taken over an hour to paint his entire body blue, and Donghyuck refused to leave the house without replicating Emily’s signature spidery eyelashes on his own face. After smudging his mascara all over his cheeks twice, Renjun had to step in to fix Donghyuck’s makeup at the threat of his tears spilling over to ruin all their hard work.

The stalls are packed. Steam spills out from under the white canopies to warm them from above as vendors wave hot dogs and huge bags of kettle corn in the air in bids for hungry customers. Donghyuck buys a tray of chili cheese fries topped with jalapeños and grilled onions while Jeno accompanies Renjun over to the row of food trucks. They each buy a plate of tacos and split a cup of horchata between all three of them, grinning blissfully when the tender carne asada pulls apart on their tongues.

By the time they’re stuffed full, the sky is dark, painted in deep oranges and purples as the sun rests behind the horizon. They snap a few pictures at the pumpkin patch while there’s still some natural light and Donghyuck gets yelled at by one of the adults supervising the patch for sitting on the shiny red tractor in the middle of all the rainbow gourds.

“How was I supposed to know that it was vintage or whatever?” Donghyuck grumbles, stuffing his hands into the pockets of Jeno’s jacket and stomping towards the direction of the corn maze on the other end of the fairgrounds. “If they didn’t want anyone to sit on it, they should’ve made a sign!”

“I think there actually was a s—”

“Hey!” Jeno interrupts Renjun with a strained smile before he can further antagonize a prickly Donghyuck. “There’s the haunted mansion!”

Jeno points at the building just up ahead, a dilapidated house with shuttered windows and cobwebs galore. Surrounded by tombstones and lampposts that illuminate the stone path leading to its entrance, the house looks like it was built in the 1700s, its pointed arches and ornate rib vaults ripped straight from England’s Gothic Revival period. The fog machines stationed around its perimeter spew white clouds that envelop the second story of the house in a shroud of mist, only the entrance, a door cracked ajar and covered in chipped green paint, fully visible from where they’re standing.

One look at the house is all Renjun needs to decide that he doesn’t want to find out who or what is hiding inside of it.

“What about the corn maze?” Renjun asks with a nervous laugh, pointing at the maze to their right. “Or, uh— We could go bob for apples!”

“And wash all my makeup off? No thanks,” Donghyuck says, shaking his head. “Besides, the water’s probably going to be freezing cold. You think the mansion has a working heater?”

Donghyuck turns towards the mansion, his eyes lighting up when he spots the smoke pluming from mansion’s chimneys. “Bingo!”

“Well, we don’t have to bob for apples,” Renjun blurts, his mind racing to try and come up with something else to get him out of walking into the creepy house just up ahead. “We could go make some corn husk dolls! Or— Oh! We could go on the hayride! I think the next tractor’s supposed to come by in like ten minutes, so if we hurry we could—”

“But that’s all the way over there,” Jeno argues, pointing at the pumpkin patch. “And we haven’t explored this side of the park yet.”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck chimes in, linking his arm with Renjun’s to drag him towards the house. “I wanna go in the house first.”

Renjun pales. He tries to dig his heels into the dirt to slow Donghyuck down, but Jeno loops an arm over Renjun’s shoulder with a grin too happy for what’s about to happen and drags him along with them, the entrance of the house growing closer by the second.

The haunted mansion is even more terrifying up close. There are spiders— live, moving spiders— dancing among the webs draped over the rotted doorframes and what look to be human bones littered in the dirt. Renjun feels a sharp tingling under his skin and he can’t tell if it’s because of how cold he is or because there’s a spider crawling all over him, but before he can release the scream jammed into the base of his throat and bolt the other way, a disarmingly handsome boy around his age dressed in an emerald green bellhop costume appears at the doorway to cut him off.

“Hello and welcome! My name is Jaemin Na, but you can call me tonight,” he winks, bending forward slightly to meet Renjun’s eyes. Renjun immediately looks away—there’s something disorienting about the way Jaemin smiles at him, his sharp teeth that overcrowd the frame of his pink lips poised to bite. “How may I assist you today?”

Despite the mysterious aura that cloaks him—or maybe it’s just the fog machines working overtime to cloud him in a light blue mist—Jaemin looks friendly, at least upon first glance. He’s about Jeno’s height, his hands crossed behind his back as he smiles warmly at them. Unlike the doom and gloom of the house behind him, he has a cheery expression on his face, his cheeks tinted in a lively shade of pink.

“We were wondering if we could explore the mansion,” Donghyuck chirps, seemingly unfazed by the tarantula descending from the ceiling to sit on top of Jaemin’s hat.

Renjun’s eyes widen in horror. The spider looks like it’s waving at him. He tugs on Jeno’s sleeve, gesturing at the spider with alarm in his eyes, but by the time Jeno realizes where exactly Renjun is looking, it’s already too late—the spider has disappeared down Jaemin’s neck.

“Actually, um,” Renjun squeaks, his body frozen in place, “I think you two can go ahead. I’ll just, uh. I’ll wait outside.”

Renjun tries to back away, but Jaemin flashes behind him before he can make a run for it.

“Now why would you do that?” Jaemin asks, cocking his head to the side. His lips pull up into a smile, but Renjun catches the subtle twitch in his eyebrow. Something is off. How is he the only one noticing these things?

“C’mon, Renjun, it’ll be fun! It looks like we’re the first ones here,” Jeno says.

“Yeah, Junnie!” Donghyuck pouts, draping his arms over Renjun’s shoulders. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a silly house!”

“I’m not scared,” Renjun lies, his ego getting the better of him before he can stop himself. Of course he’s scared. What kind of person wouldn’t feel scared if they were about to walk into an obvious death trap—on the spookiest night of the year, no less?

“I’m just— I just—”

“I think Injunnie’s scared,” Donghyuck teases, waggling his eyebrows at him with a shit-eating grin. “C’mon, admit it. You’re a big scaredy-cat.”

“Am not!”

“Am too!”

“Guys, maybe let’s not—”

“Am not!”

“Then prove it!”

“Fine!” Renjun huffs, sulking when Donghyuck’s grin slowly stretches across his face in triumph, a cheshire cat having cornered its prey. It's too late for him to back out now—he’d sealed himself into his own coffin and Donghyuck had just thrown him six feet under. The only way out is through.

Jaemin’s voice cuts through the silence. “Perfect!”

Jaemin skips back over to the entrance of the mansion, his hands still tied behind his back, right fist gripping his left wrist. When he turns around, he has a giddy smile on his face. It’s so wide and teethy, like he’s a cat waiting to pounce, that it’s almost disorienting. Uncanny.

“I hope you enjoy your stay,” Jaemin purrs, holding his left hand out for Renjun to shake.

“T-Thanks,” Renjun stammers. He grits his teeth together, cursing himself for agreeing to do this, then wills himself to return Jaemin’s handshake.

The minute Renjun’s hand meets the white glove covering Jaemin’s hand, the sound of lightning crackles in his ear. Jaemin’s glove bleeds red, the color seeping from his palm down to his fingers. When Renjun looks up, Jaemin’s eyes are bloodshot. His smile is lopsided, fangs bared. And then his hand falls off.

Renjun shrieks, the blood-curdling scream lodged in his throat finally breaking free, and immediately drops the bloodied hand onto the ground with a thud to run straight into the mansion, his heart pounding in his ears as Donghyuck and Jeno chase after him.

“Junnie!” Donghyuck yells, his footsteps echoing down the corridors. “Renjun, come back! Jeno, you go left, I’ll go right. Don’t stop until you find him, got it?”

Donghyuck was right. It is considerably warmer inside the mansion than outside, but Renjun would rather die than be stuck inside the mansion for another second.

The inside of the mansion looks exactly like Renjun suspected it would. Dust stings his eyes as he dashes down the hall, the sounds of Donghyuck’s yelling growing quieter as he takes a sharp left to meet carpeted floor. His heart pounds against his ribs and his pulse races as he comes to a gradual stop to catch his breath.

Renjun looks around. The carpet, decorated in red and white lilies swimming in dark pools of black ink, spans the entire length of the corridor, at the end of which sits a large window. There are about a dozen doors on either side of the hallway, each door with a number sitting underneath a wooden peephole and a splotchy brass handle to match. Every door is painted a different color. Dark aspen peeks through the chips in the paint that bubble off the wood. Renjun holds his breath as he walks towards the window, the floorboards groaning under his feet with every step.

His first surprise comes in the form of a spider that suddenly springs at him from the flickering chandelier overhead, its fangs bared and legs ready to attack his face. Renjun screams and his reflexes take over, his eyes glued shut as one arm comes up to cover his face while his other hand closes into a fist. He swings and by some stroke of luck, manages to punch the spider right in its abdomen, leaving it suspended in the air while he dashes away.

His second surprise comes in the form of a hatchet that jets from the wall to spear the door to his left. Renjun narrowly avoids death by ducking right when he catches the light glinting off its metal blade, falling onto the carpet with a thud and crawling on all fours to the window at the end of the hall. In normal circumstances, Renjun would never subject himself to this kind of filth—who knows how many murder victims have met their sorry ends on this very carpet? But this isn’t a normal circumstance by any means. He needs to escape. If crawling around on the dirty floor is going to guarantee his freedom, so be it.

His third surprise comes right at him. Just before he can crash into the glass panes of the window to make his escape, both doors on either side of him snap open to reveal two disheveled zombies with amber yellow eyes and blackened teeth, their rotted arms held out to grab him. Their flannels are stained in what looks like blood and grime, the hair on their head mussed up like they haven’t showered in days. One of the zombies is slightly shorter than the other but still a few inches taller than Renjun, his eyes widening when Renjun meets his gaze dead-on.

Renjun screeches, his body reacting before the rest of him can catch up. He holds his breath, bracing himself, and manages to kick the taller zombie in the shins to send it crumpling to the floor. The zombie groans out a bunch of garbled nonsense as it tends to its leg, lifting its pants to massage the tender skin. Renjun ducks out of the grasp of the shorter zombie before it can grab and eat him, punching it in the stomach for good measure, and runs back down the hall from the direction he came. He chokes on air as he sprints as fast as he can toward the other side of the mansion, his heart beating so loudly he misses the echo of his name being called.

Renjun runs until his legs give out.

He has his eyes closed for most of the sprint, narrowly avoiding a painful death by impalement by swerving around the spikes erected from the floor in the hallway leading to the west end of the manor. By the time his legs stop working, he’s locked himself inside of one of the mansion’s ballrooms, securing the heavy doors shut by wrapping a spare chain around its brass handles.

He sinks to the floor, his lungs heaving for air as his head spins. There are spots in his vision when he finally opens his eyes to the dimly-lit room, his only light sources being the melted candles surrounding the dusty fireplace and the moonlight filtering into the room through the large windows overhead. Another escape route.

He scuffles over to the windows, hopeful, only to find them bolted shut with wooden panels and large, rusty nails half the size of his forearms. He looks around for a crowbar to use, but other than the piano on the far end of the room, there’s nothing heavy enough for him to use as leverage—and he’s not about to break a (likely) haunted grand piano just to make his great escape.

Think, Renjun. 

His head swirls and his pulse pounds against his eardrums. He must’ve landed himself in an area of the mansion with decent signal, because just before he can do something reckless—like trying to break a piano leg off or perhaps body slam the window—his phone chimes about a dozen times in quick succession.

[20:21] duckie
renjun
junnie where are you
answer me!!!

[20:21] jeno
hey renjun are you okay
we’re really worried about you
are u still inside the mansion?

[20:21] mark lee
renjun
are you at the haunt right now
inside the mansion
are you okay
please reply

Mark’s texts catch Renjun’s attention first. How does Mark of all people know where he is right now?

Before Renjun can shoot a reply to Donghyuck to let him know that he is so dead when this is all over, Mark’s name lights up his whole screen and his ringtone echoes throughout the empty ballroom. When Renjun picks up, Mark’s voice is ragged.

“Renjun? Renjun, are you okay?”

“Wh—” Renjun’s voice cracks, the effects of all the adrenaline coursing through his veins slowly wearing away, “How do you—”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the Haunt,” Renjun stammers, shivering when a gust of cold air blows past him. He looks around, frantic, worried that a ghost is hovering too close to him. “In the haunted mansion.”

“Where in the mansion?”

“I’m— There’s a piano. I think I’m in one of the ballrooms.”

“Don’t move, okay? Stay right there.”

“But Mark—”

The call ends with an abrupt beep. Tears threaten to stain Renjun’s cheeks, his vision blurring into a dark haze as he blinks them away and tries to calm himself down.

Maybe Donghyuck’s spells worked after all—just not on his intended target. Maybe, rather than hexing Mark, Donghyuck had accidentally made Renjun the subject of all the misfortune the universe has to offer instead. It only makes sense—why else would Mark call him right now, in his most dire time of need, just to hang up on him so cruelly? Why else would Renjun find himself abandoned inside of a creepy old mansion with booby traps and spiders and zombies galore, his death waiting for him around the corner? Who knows what else is out there just waiting to eat him alive? 

A sudden bang on the other side of the locked doors scares a loud scream out of Renjun, his body shivering from both the cold and the fear washing over him in breaking waves. He wants to move, to run, to hide but he can’t, frozen in place as he watches the double doors tremble under the force of whoever—or worse, whatever— is waiting for him on the outside.

Then he hears his name.

“Renjun!”

Whoever’s calling it doesn’t sound like Donghyuck or Jeno, that’s for certain.

“Renjun, open the door!”

Renjun snaps his head over to the windows on the other side of the ballroom. If he could just manage to get his legs to work, maybe he can try to unscrew those stupid nails and—

“Jun, it’s Mark!”

That gets his attention.

What are the odds that the person calling his name is actually Mark Lee, not the voices in his own head trying to make the best of his situation? Is this what happens right before you die? Do your deepest, darkest fantasies play out before you so that you can die happy? More importantly, when did Renjun start hallucinating? Is he hallucinating? If he somehow manages to survive this, he’s going to give Donghyuck the worst noogie of his life.

Renjun considers his options. The chains wound around the door handles look like they’re about to give out at any second, the untied ends slowly unraveling with every push from the person yelling for him from the outside. He could either sit here, huddled under the grand piano and cower in fear in the face of his potential unfortunate death, or he could try to pry one of the wooden boards off the windows and weasel his way out of the mansion. There’s only one problem with his second option: he doubts he’ll be able to crawl out of here before the intruder breaks their way in, no matter how optimistic he wants to be.

His third option? Face his fears head-on like he’s been doing since he got stuck in this mess. He just punched a tarantula in the stomach and knocked two zombies out cold, nevermind the fact that he’d also escaped the clutches of death by sharp object through sheer reflex alone. 

If he’s truly hallucinating, he’ll make an appointment with a psychologist tomorrow morning. If the stranger on the other side of the door is another zombie out to get him, he’ll just resort to the two years of kung fu his mom signed him up for when he was six. If the person calling his name is actually Mark… he’ll cross that bridge when he gets there. 

The doors slam open right when Renjun unravels the last of the chains from their brass handles and he finds himself standing face to face with the ugliest creature he’s ever laid eyes on. 

The zombie staring back at him has chocolate brown eyes, not amber ones. His hair is even messier than before, like he’d been running a marathon without a break, and the black of his teeth are rubbed onto the back of his hands to stain them in ink. His skin is tinted green, sweat beading down his temples to sheer out the wash of paint on his face. His lips are as pink as the ones Renjun often dreams about.

“Renjun.”

Renjun doesn’t scream when the zombie wraps its arms around his shoulders in a death grip and tucks its mouth against his neck, death knocking on his door accompanied by the scent of clean laundry. Instead, he stands rigid, his arms glued to his side as he begins to cry, his tears breaking down his cheeks to wet the zombie’s hair and stain its flannel jacket in salt. He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until he hears his own sobs worm their way out of his throat.

“You looked so scared,” the zombie says, squeezing him even tighter as his quiet sobs turn into loud hiccups. “I’m so sorry it took so long for me to find you.” He takes a step back only to cradle Renjun’s face in his hands, taking his warmth away with him.

Renjun’s voice cracks when he finally puts a name to the person standing in front of him.

“Mark.”

Renjun doesn’t know if he wants to wake up from this twisted nightmare. One moment, he’s running for his life; the next, he’s crying into Mark’s chest with Mark’s arms holding him close, Mark’s comforting scent washing over him, Mark’s quiet whispers into his ears to remind him that it’s okay, that he’s here. They can hide in here for as long as Renjun wants. Mark will walk him out of the mansion through the back so that he doesn’t have to face another one of his fears. 

Mark holds Renjun in his arms until his cheeks are dry. He doesn’t judge him for being scared of anatomically-accurate mechatronic spiders or scare actors playing zombies a bit too well or fake bloody hands that feel like plastic and are cold to the touch. Instead, he gives Renjun his flannel jacket, wrapping it over his shoulders and refusing to take it back because he knows how easily Renjun gets cold. Remember when we went to get ice cream? You kept shivering while you ate!

Mark keeps their fingers twined together, seemingly uncaring of the way Renjun’s hands clam up, and rubs circles into the joint between Renjun’s thumb and index finger. He looks at Renjun like there’s nothing else that matters—like Renjun holds the answers to all the unsolved mysteries of the universe, even though he’s just a teenage boy who’s scared of the littlest things and has the biggest crush on the varsity basketball team captain.

Mark’s voice rumbles out of his chest like a boulder lazing down a craggy hill to break the silence. “That was really cool, what you did back there.”

Renjun leans back to get a good look at Mark, incredulous, as he scrunches his eyebrows together in confusion. “You mean run around this place like a headless chicken?”

“No, I mean,” Mark chuckles, nudging Renjun with his shoulder, “when you punched that spider. And dodged that ax! I mean, that was like, straight out of The Matrix or something.”

Renjun thanks his lucky stars that it’s too dark in the ballroom to make out any fine details or color, his cheeks heating up as a shy smile stretches across his lips. He’s torn between averting his eyes from Mark’s gaze and his genuine smile, a bit lopsided with dimples to frame it, and indulging himself for just a moment longer. It’s not every day he gets to cuddle with the boy of his dreams—creepy old mansion be damned. He eventually decides to just change the subject.

“I thought you said you couldn’t make it to the Haunt,” Renjun mumbles, thinking back to when Mark first put an official label on their relationship. Or, to be more specific, the lack thereof.

“Well, I—” Mark chuckles, looking away and running his fingers through his tangled hair. “I wanted to go with you, but they needed all hands on deck for today and I mean, I didn’t see a point in third-wheeling Jeno and Hyuck if you were going to be busy, so…” Mark rambles, his voice fading away when he meets Renjun’s eyes again, “yeah.”

Renjun doesn’t say anything for a while and neither does Mark. Outside the closed ballroom doors, he can hear the sounds of shrill laughter and frightened screams of unassuming visitors making their way down the corridors he’d just escaped. Quiet footsteps suddenly turn into thunder against the ornate carpet lining the floor, disheveled zombies and masked executioners chasing after their scare victims with fake axes and toy chainsaws.

“Well—”

“Did you know I have a phobia of spiders?”

Mark stops his sentence in its tracks and stares at Renjun as if he’d just seen a ghost.

“What? You are?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Why’d you come inside then?” Mark asks. His thumb stills on Renjun’s knuckles, disbelief painted across his face. “There are spiders everywhere!”

Renjun throws his head back and laughs, disbelieving of his current reality. When he finally calms himself down, his laughs quieting into soft hiccups, he cocks his head to the side, tongue in cheek.

“Believe me, it wasn’t my first choice,” Renjun says flatly. “You can blame Donghyuck for all the years of therapy I’ll need from tonight alone. Actually, scratch that—you can blame him for all the years of therapy I’ll ever need.”

Mark continues staring at Renjun, his eyes trailing from the furrow between Renjun’s eyebrows to the curves of his cheeks and then the swell of his lips, slightly chapped from the cold. Something blooms inside of Renjun’s chest as he watches Mark—something that feels a lot like the thrumming of his heart that starts up whenever he catches Mark’s gaze lingering on him during Biology, like the sound of his quickening pulse against his eardrums whenever Mark wishes him goodnight over their daily Discord calls. He’d call it hope, but after spending the night inside this stupid mansion, the line between hope and fear has become so blurred that Renjun can’t quite put a name to the feeling. So he doesn’t.

“You pack quite the punch.”

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Mark laughs. His smile reaches up to his eyes, his entire face scrunching together as he tightens his arms around Renjun’s shoulders. Renjun doesn’t mind. “Did you take taekwondo when you were younger?”

“Kung fu. I quit after green belt, though.”

“Oh shit, really? I quit after yellow.”

“Makes sense as to why you couldn’t dodge my blow.”

“How was I supposed to know you were aiming for my stomach?”

Renjun’s lips curl into a smile. He looks up from the stain on his jeans to find Mark grinning right back at him, his heart leaping in between his ribs.

“Well,” Mark suddenly clears his throat, “I think, um. Like I was saying earlier—”

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.”

“No, it’s okay,” Mark shakes his head, “I just, uh, since we’re here—”

“There he is!”

The shrill voice cuts through the ballroom to spear Renjun right through the chest. He snaps his head up just in time for him to brace himself for impact, his face meeting Donghyuck’s bony shoulders as he’s ripped out of Mark’s arms and into Donghyuck’s suffocating embrace.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I called you like, a bajillion times. Why’d— Where— How—”

“I’m fine,” Renjun mutters into Donghyuck’s shoulder, his cheeks squished by how tightly Donghyuck has his arms wrapped around him. He taps on Donghyuck’s back and then worms his way between his stomach and Donghyuck’s chest to peel himself off of Donghyuck, sputtering to get the loose threads of Donghyuck’s dress off his lips. He dusts himself off and, just before he’s able to continue, Donghyuck shrieks his head off at the zombie getting up with the help of Jeno’s outstretched hand.

“Jen— Jeno, that’s a zombie!”

Donghyuck may be fast, but Renjun is closer to him than he is to Mark. Renjun loops his arms around Donghyuck’s neck to put him into a chokehold, wrangling him away from his path of destruction before he can tackle Mark to the ground. “Hyuck, that’s just Mark—”

“Get away from my boyfriend, you creep!”

“Hyuck— Jesus Christ, Donghyuck! That’s Mark! Mark Lee!”

It takes Jeno holding Donghyuck at arm’s length and Mark wiping his green body paint off for Donghyuck to finally come to terms with the fact that the person standing in front of them never intended to eat his boyfriend. Renjun only lets go of Donghyuck once he swears on his own grave not to hurt Mark for scaring his wits out of him, but immediately regrets his decision when Donghyuck swivels around to squint daggers at his own best friend.

“So you ignored me,” Donghyuck seethes, backing Renjun against the wall, “to hang out with a liar and a conman?”

“I didn’t lie, I told you I was busy—”

Donghyuck snaps his head to glare at Mark. “Shut your mouth, Mark. This conversation doesn’t concern you.”

“You’re literally talking about me!”

“Did he hurt you, Renjun?”

Renjun shakes his head.

“Are you sure?”

He’s 100% certain. If Donghyuck had asked Renjun the same question a few weeks ago, perhaps after a certain someone had gotten ice cream with him, maybe he would’ve admitted otherwise. But time heals all wounds and Renjun has never been one to let a not-rejection knock him down.

Plus, Mark more than made up for it with the past half hour of cuddles and staring at Renjun like he hung all the stars in the sky. Maybe it didn’t mean anything more than a friend comforting a friend, as friends do, but Renjun can’t find it in himself to harbor any more anxiety inside of his body for the night. He’ll tuck this memory into all the other happy ones they share, and that’s that.

“If anything, Junnie was the one that hurt me—”

Renjun blurts, “I didn’t mean to—”

“Renjun is innocent,” Donghyuck says at the same time, his eyes still scrutinizing Renjun’s face. Donghyuck turns to look at Mark after a beat. “He’s never done anything wrong in his life.”

If Renjun didn’t know any better, he’d think Donghyuck is losing his mind. Since he’s fairly certain that this is Donghyuck’s way of apologizing for goading Renjun into facing the worst of his nightmares, he accepts the compliment in stride and makes a mental note to give Donghyuck that noogie sometime later, perhaps when they’re on the ride home and Donghyuck can’t worm his way out of Renjun’s grasp.

“You, on the other hand,” Donghyuck says, his eyes still narrowed at Mark and an impish smile pulled across his lips, “have a lot to be sorry for. You can start making up for it by getting us out of here.”

As promised, Mark leads them out of the mansion through a secret hallway designated for employees only, the sounds of terrified screams and nervous, pitched laughter fading into the crunching of leaves under their feet as they sneak through the back garden. He turns around every so often to check that the three of them are still following him, though his gaze lingers on Renjun the longest. Renjun pretends not to notice.

It’s considerably colder now that the sun is fully gone, the fairgrounds lit up by all the amber fairy lights strung between the bare oak trees and the lamp posts stationed at every wide turn of the main walkway. Renjun shivers, a burst of cold shooting up his spine as he follows Donghyuck over to the line formed by the huge ferris wheel in the middle of the park. They’d considered going through the corn maze after finally escaping the haunted mansion, but Donghyuck claimed that he didn’t want to lose Renjun again and Renjun didn’t feel like putting up a fight about it. He can’t really complain, anyway—at least the ferris wheel pods will offer them a bit more warmth than a trek through an outdoor maze.

“You didn’t tell us you were working tonight.” Jeno cranes his head all the way back to look up at the ferris wheel, its support beams lined with neon lights that ebb and flow to the rhythm of the spooky music playing throughout the park.

“It was a last minute thing,” Mark says, the cool air fogging up around his words as he breathes out. “If Jaehyun hadn’t called out, I would’ve been able to come with you guys, I swear.”

“You’re not going to get in trouble for ditching?”

“Nah,” Mark replies with a shake of his head. “I texted Sungchan already. He said he should be able to handle it as long as nobody else tries to attack him,” he chuckles.

Mark glances at Renjun from over Donghyuck’s head, both of them looking away the moment their eyes meet. Mark clears his throat and rocks on his heels while Renjun directs his attention to the costume of the little girl standing in front of them in the line. From the look of her long black hair tied into pigtails and her all-black ensemble, he guesses she’s dressed as Wednesday Addams. He waves at her when she turns around and smiles at him and feels a pang of envy when he notices how warm she looks in her padded coat. He really should’ve brought a jacket. He shivers again, frowning at the way his breaths condense into wispy clouds.

Donghyuck tugs on his sleeve. “So,” he whispers, “What were you two doing in there? Alone?”

“I—” Renjun smacks Donghyuck’s arm with a click of his tongue, “ Shut up, Donghyuck.”

“What?” Donghyuck hisses. They all shuffle forward as the group of people in front of them climb into their respective pods. The volunteers manning the ferris wheel, both dressed in matching skeleton costumes, hold their arms out to cut off the line.

“You’re up next,” Jimin smiles warmly at Renjun, the white paint around her eyes formed into the shape of two hearts rather than orbs. Her nametag glows purple and then green under the undulating lights. The music starts up again once Jimin presses the big green button at the center of her control panel, the ferris wheel beginning to accelerate to its syncopated rhythm.

Donghyuck tugs on Renjun’s arm again, his hot breath tickling Renjun’s ear as he presses up against him both for warmth and a semblance of privacy. “C’mon, Junnie. I saw you two cuddling!”

“We weren’t cuddling,” Renjun argues and jabs Donghyuck’s side with his elbow. “He was just— I was just scared. Because of you, by the way.”

“I didn’t force you to go inside.”

“You might as well have!”

“You should be thanking me!” Donghyuck retorts, no longer whispering. He purses his lips together and hunches forward. Rather than indignance painted on his face, mirth dances behind Donghyuck’s eyes, satisfaction obvious by the way his lips pull into that stupid trademark smirk of his that always shows up whenever he thinks he’s in the right. He’s not.

Donghyuck leans in so close Renjun can clearly make out the cracks in his blue foundation. “My spells are finally working.”

Renjun scoffs in disbelief. “Working? You know, I think you actually ended up cursing me. I almost died in there, you twat.”

“By the looks of his arms around you, I don’t think you were anywhere close to nearing death. Then again, given the way you react whenever he so much as looks at you—”

“That’s not the point!”

“Admit it, Renjun. The spirits of Halloween are working in your favor. Well, my favor. I was the one that did all the witch stuff.”

“You are so irritating. Did you know that? You irritate me.”

“I know,” Donghyuck sing-songs, smiling brightly at him. “But you love me all the same.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I really don’t.”

“Oh, would you look at that?” Donghyuck says, suddenly clapping his hands together in feigned surprise as they’re ushered forward to begin filing into the pods. “What a total bummer. Only two people per pod!”

Renjun looks at Donghyuck in confusion. “Did you hit your head in the mansion or something? Four divided by two is—”

“Looks like you’re stuck with Mark,” Donghyuck smiles wickedly.

Before Renjun can register what’s happening, Donghyuck pushes him forward just as Jeno leaves the pod he’d entered with Mark. Jeno waves at them with an innocent smile while Donghyuck snickers at Renjun. The last thing Renjun sees before Jimin closes the pod’s doors to shut him in from the outside world—and from strangling Donghyuck with his bare hands—is Donghyuck’s stupid smirk plastered across his face.

Renjun can’t decide who deserves more of his wrath. It’s bad enough that he allowed himself to be fooled by Donghyuck’s stalling—he should’ve known something was up by the way Donghyuck cornered him against the metal railing, smiling rather than cowering under Renjun’s gaze when he was being chastised for his nefarious antics. But for Jeno to have been in on the joke and to betray him like that? Renjun always knew there was a little bit of evil hidden behind Jeno’s eye smile.

“Hi,” Mark chuckles nervously, raising a hand to grab Renjun’s attention. “Did you… want to sit next to me? I think there’s gum or something on your side of the booth.”

Sure enough, when Renjun looks behind him, he finds a fresh wad of gum stuck in the middle of his bench. He clenches his jaw, bites his lip, then waddles over to Mark’s side of the booth to sit. Thankfully, the pod is stable enough that their weight distribution doesn’t tip it all the way back, but Renjun still leans against the railing to keep himself steady. He doesn’t need any more heart-stopping surprises tonight.

He looks behind him just as the music starts up, the ferris wheel coming back to life as their pod is jostled forward and up. Their slow ascent is accompanied by Donghyuck waving at them from the next pod behind them. Mark turns around too, scoffing at a laughing Jeno. When they both turn back around to stare out at the starry night sky that blankets their pod, Renjun feels the air grow thick, like the walls are slowly closing in on him to squish him closer to Mark’s side.

After a silence that seems to stretch out for hours, Mark clears his throat.

“So like I was saying earlier—”

“Isn’t it so beautiful—”

“Oh, you can go first.”

“—how the— Oh, no. You go.”

They both laugh awkwardly and avoid looking at each other, instead fixating on the scribbles littered all over the walls of the pod and the trees that shrink under their feet. When Renjun musters up the courage to look at Mark, he finds Mark’s eyes already fixed on him, dark brown eclipsing warm caramel.

“You can go first,” Mark says, chewing on his lips.

“I was just, um,” Renjun replies, his nerves betraying him through the softness of his voice, “saying that it’s really pretty. The sky, I mean. Because of all the stars.”

Mark nods. He holds Renjun’s gaze for a moment longer before breaking away to stare out at the inky black sky and the gold and silver specks blinking at them from above.

“What about you?” Renjun asks. “What were you going to say?”

He waits, watching the way Mark chews on the inside of his cheek and then his lips again, his eyes flickering from the sky to his shoes and then Renjun’s face.

Mark looks at him the way he does when they’re waiting for Mr. Choi to start lecturing, the way he did earlier when it was just them in that dimly-lit ballroom and later when they were standing in line for the ferris wheel. Renjun traces the curve of Mark’s nose, his splotchy makeup worn off to reveal the warmth in his skin, his dark brown moles and his faded acne scars. His eyes trail the peaks of Mark’s cupid’s bow, his lips plush pink and slightly chapped. He follows the line that defines Mark’s jaw up to his sharp cheekbones and finds his eyes, again, his long eyelashes fanning his cheeks flushed red from the cold. Suddenly, it feels a bit too warm inside the pod.

“I was just thinking,” Mark starts, his voice so quiet that it sounds like he’s mumbling, “since we’re here, you know. Like, alone. Not that I don’t like it when Donghyuck and Jeno are here too, but like, it’s hard, you know? ‘Cause they’re always with us. And I didn’t think it would be right to say this over text or anything because I think Donghyuck would actually kill me if I did, and I don’t think, um— So, like.”

“Like?”

Mark’s nervousness is so palpable it feels like it’s grown its own body—a symbiote reaching out to find a home in between Renjun’s ribs and shake up his heart. Whatever this feeling is, be it hope or fear or something in between, it feels worse than all the emotions that raced through Renjun’s mind when he was running for his life earlier inside the mansion. It heats up his cheeks like the adrenaline that coursed through his veins and makes his hands tremble like the cold of the October evening, but it also paralyzes him. It crawls over his skin like a warm hug, that same feeling that always washes over him whenever Mark’s voice comes through his earbuds during their Discord study sessions or whenever they text goodnight for the evening, a promise of renewed conversation and laughter that will find them the next day.

It feels a lot like Renjun is being crushed, like the sky is falling and the world is tilting on its axis.

“God, this is kind of embarrassing,” Mark mutters, looking away to laugh awkwardly again.

“What’s embarrassing?”

Mark barrels on. “And you know what’s funny? I didn’t even stutter this much when you gave me your number, but now, it’s like everything is going way too fast but at the same time, way too slow. You know?”

“Know what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I mean. It’s only right that I face my fears today, right? Halloween and all that.”

“Mark, what are you talking about right now—”

“Renjun, I like you.”

Free fall. That’s the feeling. That helplessness that envelops you when you’ve fallen off a cliff in your dreams, that jolt of panic that shocks you awake, your breaths choked out of you. That’s what this feeling is.

“What?” Renjun can’t do more than stare at Mark, his mouth agape. Of all the things he’d expected to go down tonight, this was the last thing he could’ve predicted. “But you said— You said we’re friends.”

“Well, aren’t we?”

“I mean, yeah. But— You— You like me? You’re not joking, right?”

Mark shakes his head, earnest. “Why would I be joking?”

“I mean— I don’t know!” Renjun throws his hands up, more flabbergasted than anything, though a hint of frustration flares inside him. Maybe a bit of happiness too, but the feeling is short-lived—this means Donghyuck’s stupid little charms worked. “I assumed you were just— Being nice. You’re always nice. You never said anything.”

“Was I supposed to say something?”

“Yes. No. Yes! I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. This is too much to process all at once.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring this on you like that,” Mark says. “I just— I thought, you know, like I said, we’re never alone, and I didn’t want to do it over the phone because you deserve more than that. You don’t have to like me back or anything, so don’t feel pressured—”

Renjun slaps his hands to his face and yells into his palms, effectively cutting Mark off before he can embarrass himself any further.

“Pressure?” Renjun scoffs in disbelief.

Mark nods.

“Dude, I’ve liked you for months.”

Mark’s jaw goes slack. “What?”

“Mark, I’ve had the biggest crush on you since homecoming.”

“You did?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

Mark breaks first. His quiet chuckles grow until he’s fully laughing, hiccups interspersed between his pitched heaving that eventually gets Renjun to laugh too, both of them leaning into one another as the harmony of their laughter fills the space of their pod and finds a home in Renjun’s heart too.