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Mark is a wreck.
If Donghyuck Loves him, it’s not in any way that Mark can understand.
When he wakes up, he doesn’t move for a long time. He stares at the dark shape of Donghyuck’s body beneath the rumpled cotton sheet. Fold dip fold, he traces with his fingers. He lifts a hand to touch Donghyuck’s hair, but stops himself. There’s something there, he muses. Inside his head, inside the flesh and muscles and nerves and bones. There’s Donghyuck held like a secret inside his own skull and Mark doesn’t think he’ll ever fully connect with it.
He drags his hand back to clutch at his own chest, toys with the neckline of his shirt. I hate you. He thinks, feeling bad about it the second it springs forward, an unwanted house guest. The source of a smell that’s been bothering him for what must be years now if he really thinks about it. He doesn’t know what he thinks about; he thinks about everything.
All the stupid shit he did last night, it’s a wonder he fell asleep here, by Donghyuck's side. He wonders what there is left to say? What is there left to do? He thinks about grabbing the pillow and stifling them both with it. He thinks about what a waste that would be.
Donghyuck’s eyelashes flutter in the February blue. That abyss of nightfall, the prussian velvet that drapes itself languidly through their unfettered windows. He puts his head into his hands, too tired to cry, too annoyed to wake up Donghyuck.
He decides to leave.
They’ve done the whole fight thing before. They’ve done it so often it becomes second nature. The opening of a window, the slam car door rattling through Mark’s body. It becomes such a part of life that he can trace his fingers around its shape, feel the solid hammock of argument hanging below them, it’s always been their safety net. Tangling and caging.
The silence and then the screaming and then the coming silence again. Its awful quietness, the feeling like Mark’s choking on a cherry red bath bomb, feeling it fizzle and explode, twisting and constricting his every inside. Clawing clawing, bursting bubbling. The stain on his bathtub when he finished with it, the ugly nakedness that reveals itself when he looks in the fogged up mirror. When Donghyuck goes away Mark watches the shape of his body twist into something cruel and crueler as he walks into the bleaching light. Alien, inhuman .
They’ve done the kiss and makeup. There’s nothing that quite beats the calm after and before the storm. The water filling every pothole, the heavy warmth in the air when they’re done using each other. He loves it when Donghyuck is nice, but not too nice. He loves the mutual peace in the kitchen when all is reconciled and accounted for, their sins confessed and transpired from their mouths.
As Donghyuck peels the potatoes, his fingers dipping and lifting gently while Mark starts the oven, all's well ends well and Mark feels that peace inside him. They settle, their black and white hearts bleed back into an all-consuming shade of gray that smothers the home that they built.
It’s okay, you’re here so I love you. He thinks.
Eat breakfast, buy groceries, apply for jobs, fight with Donghyuck, cook dinner together. Peel potatoes and never speak about it. Fall asleep under the same roof. There’s nothing more to life for Mark. Nothing else to do.
He tiptoes downstairs, feeling like a kid in the act of something shameful again, smuggling his 3DS into his room to play pokemon into the early hours of the morning, a teenager mournfully sneaking through the window after a long light of binge drinking in someone's field. Cattle and wet grass, careful steps. He sticks close to the landing to try and not catch himself. He grabs his coat, he stumbles blindly at the bottom of the stairs to try to find his keys.
A person never really grows out of being a schoolboy. It’s like the smell of a church, holy bread heavy with incense, a preacher’s voice deep and echoey in a great big hall of people falsified in their sunday best. His own loose tie, the starch press of a uniform collar against his Adam's apple.
He decides to fully commit to the bit, treading more and more certainly with every step he takes. He’s walking like a real person by the time he hits the front door.
The night is cold. A mean, hurtful cold.
Opens the car door, shuts it minutely behind him. He places his head against the wheel for a long time before he takes off.
The fact of the matter is that he doesn’t think he’ll ever love anyone else. Who would even try? Mark is a lifeless body with a still-beating soul, muscles that pull and tear and find a way to get through the day. An icy morning, a gun fight between farmers over infertile land.
As much as he hates to see it or tries to turn from the fact, Donghyuck is probably the same. They’re stuck in their lives, weaving snares around each other. That heavy idea of having to untangle, unweave something so deeply entombed in his DNA fucks with Mark’s head. Too much. Pushing and pulling, ebbing and flowing. Who else would love him? It’s painful to admit, but the truth nonetheless. There’s nobody quite like Donghyuck, there’s nobody who would ever tolerate Mark’s sluggishness and seasonal-whatever-the-fuck . There’s nobody like Donghyuck who understands his changing desire and the sadness that stops him from doing anything with it.
There’s nobody able to tolerate Donghyuck’s mood swings like Mark. Donghyuck likes to hurt. He enjoys the process of pulling apart threads of conversation and examining them, finding joy and a reason to be smug in every one of Mark’s imperfect starts. He is disgustingly perceptive, picking up on each and every wrong step Mark clumsily reaches out for. Sometimes he laughs, guiding Mark gently onto the right path, light dancing in his eyes and gentle love extending between them, sometimes there’s that terrible cold line drawn across Donghyuck's mouth as he realizes, with doom, that he has done the wrong thing. Again . There’s nobody else who disappoints and delights Mark as much as Donghyuck and it’s disgusting and shameful to think about but he’s sure Donghyuck feels the same.
Donghyuck makes him feel exposed like nothing else. Sharp as a tack, smart and painful. Donghyuck always knew what to point out, for better or for worse. Every small effort on Mark’s behalf is appreciated, everytime Donghyuck is in the mood to pick at his carcass there’s Mark, sprawled out on the operating table entirely undressed.
Don’t hurt me
Dont hurt me
dont hurt me.
Being around someone while not wearing any clothes wasn’t something Mark understood until he met Donghyuck.
There are secrets sung unspoken in the early hours of the morning, when the milky moon shines high and all that is to be heard is the sound of their breathing and birdsong from beyond the pale. Their eclipses are so rare and yet so gratifying. Most of the time he feels like the moon, barely managing to sneak in a kiss hello and goodbye to his sunshine, before being put back in the dark. Exiled to the ‘ Waiting game,’ while Donghyuck burns pieces of himself away.
This kind of communication, Mark finds a desperate thrill in.
There’s rare evenings where Donghyuck meets up with Jaemin or Jeno, or he meets his sister or stays late at work and those are the time sMark feels shittiest. All there is to soothe him in his singularity, is the sound of the clock against the wall, the wind outside his window, the drip of the kitchen sink. The depressing truth that no matter how nice everyone else is, nobody will ever quite get him like Donghyuck.
Adulthood is so lonely, and so miserable and without Donghyuck to bear witness to his existence Mark feels like he could fade away. Pressing his hand against the steering wheel he thinks he could grow into it, slip into the fabric like some creature spun from folklore.
Nothing or nobody would ever know he was there.
He wonders how long he could go without speaking without Donghyuck around, and the answer is so uncomfortable and unyielding he shutters it away and refuses to dwell on it anymore. Accost the thought, punch it into a box, kick it under the stairs like Mark does with everything else in his life. Compartmentalise, push, forget about it. Take a shower just to feel clean, just to have something to occupy his hands. Step out into the bedroom with the towel around him, shiver from the cold. Feel the emptiness of the room and wish there was something, anything to reassure him. Tell him he’s doing okay and it’s just one night how bad could it be.
Tesco bags ripping in the rain, unfriendly clerks at the gas station, the hum of the fridge at night, a light that flickers because Mark never learned to change the bulb.
The people warned their children about being alone, and the children warned their children’s children. Maybe people are too arrogant in 2023, or maybe Mark can only speak for himself. Regardless, in the face of the blue light coming from his phone as he connects Spotify to his car, he feels it. He sickens himself in solitude.
This is the reality of a life without Donghyuck.
He pulls over at the top of the street they live on, shuts his eyes right, pitching the brow of his forehead.
“Can’t even drive down the fuckin’ street.”
I need you
I need you
I need you
Not one of those prayers has anything to do with love or sex or religion.
He is an objectively bad boyfriend, son, and employee.
Is he a bad person?
The road around him is dark and winding, all bushes and briars and it reminds him of being a kid again, these first paths he grew up in, sneaking out at night to be with Donghyuck at as a terrified young adult, picking berries from brushes, pricking his hands in the process. His hands are a bloody, smeary juicy mess. There was nothing sweeter than their stolen berries. Fruit made them criminals and liars then. August back in those times smeared them in lust. He hates the winter. He hates it, he hates it. If he and Donghyuck make it till Spring he’s sure it’ll all be okay. They’ll save up, they’ll go to Spain.
54 weeks in a year and Mark is determined to enjoy at least one of them. It’ll save them, their holiday.
A car drives by him, all coughing and revving.
-And he wonders where they’re going at this hour, which leads him to his next question.
Where is he going to go?
He starts the engine again and takes off, grateful to be inside something that feels alive.
The loneliest night is every night, it seems to Mark. Especially right now on his impromptu cruise round the peninsula.
The aching stretch of his quiet drive around the coast still does not compare to the seeping loneliness that comes to him when he’s with Donghyuck and they’re both bored out of their minds. The pain of waiting all day just to be near him, spending their time together just waiting to fall asleep, wishing the day were over. This is a different, dull, pain.
He gave Donghyuck his first lessons on how to be a ghost.
They say you have to be comfortable in yourself to love someone else. It had been one of the first things Mark and Donghyuck had bonded over. Detesting that idea. When he met Donghyuck at seventeen, they went to different schools. They were at the only nightclub worth anything in their county, a nightclub that would have died a pathetic death had it been born and lived in Dublin. A great big pulsing shithole with Djs who played Best hits of 2017 and old pub classics.
Mark had felt fucking stupid.
He was hovering outside, music pounding from inside the club, so loud that the insides of his ears unpeeled themselves and swam. He sipped his stale water (two fucking quid!) and thought about paying for his own taxis home, how much it would cost, whether or not it’d be money well spent.
Fuck the group, fuck leaving his comfort zone, he felt fucking stuoid and he shouldn’t even have tried. Pointless.
He tilted his head up to feel the rain, partly so he had something to look at so he would feel less aimless. It was that kind of quick mist that sprays over your body. It’s better than sweat and some girls’ regurgitated tequila by any degree.
He flinched when a body slammed into the plant pot next to him.
A guy, so pretty. Prettier than Mark, dressed more comfortable for the club ( why the fuck did Mark wear a sweater?) looking comfortable in his own skin. He was young and human, looked more alive than Mark ever felt would be attainable for him.
He averted his eyes, waiting for him to stumble away but he seemed happy out, satisfied to lean against the plant pot. Lord knows the support definitely couldn’t have hurt.
“Do you.. do you want some water?”
The guy shook his head. Like a dog. He had shaggy hair, not in a trendy way, but the kind that comes from being too preoccupied to cut it. He wore a button down, soaked with something Mark didn’t particularly care to know what.
Alive boy scrunched his face up. Button nose, pouty lips. He had a good face, made up with full cheeks and long eyelashes.
“‘S’not spiked?”
“No.” Said Mark, awkwardly. Painfully off putting. “I can get you a fresh one if you want.
He’d squinted at hum, “What’s your name?”
“Mark.”
The guy took the cup of water, completely missing his mouth.
Mark stared at the remains at what had once kept his hands busy.
“I’m Donghyuck!” He announced cheerily, happy for somebody who looked awfully green.
Mark hated taking care of people. Was never much good at it. He didn’t understand the purpose of entertaining this. And yet.
He shook his hand. ( Who the fuck shakes peoples hands?)
Donghyuck lurched again and Mark stuck out a hand, holding his arm down to earth, as if Donghyuck were a dog on the verge of attack or affection.
He thinks that pleased Donghyuck, “Wass’ yer snapchat?” he had leered. All teeth, all tequila ongis breath.
Donghyuck had messaged him the next night. Mark had replied with a bleary selfie.
As they say, the rest is history.
It was just one of those relationships everyone has when they’re sixteen/seventeen, it’s temporary prose mutually understood and agreed upon. Except they ended up sticking around. Something about being gay means never getting to try dating, something about being gay means being filled with angst and the desire to be wholly consumed by a romantic lover. That first night spoke to Donghyuck there was one thing on his mind. Ringing like a drum, beating like a fire alarm.
The desire to feel his smile from the inside. Mark had wanted to be eaten by love.
It just seemed more convenient to stay together than break up and such by such, they bricked down roads for which to drive on. They cemented each other in sticky black tar, smothering all roadkill and grass in the process. Builders , they declared themselves, creating Something that smelled like burning tires; at first unpleasantly and then routinely.
They built a life like that, one that never really went away.
Mark is not an easy person to be close to by any degree and he understands this on the most simple premise.
He does not burn to touch, unlike Donghyuck. He is not prickly and covered in thorns. He isn’t painfully shy or anything, but He’s the antithesis of close. He’s not the kind of soul people divulge their painful secrets to, he isn’t giving, he doesn’t particularly care to give up his time for others. He knows what he is.
He’s the kind of person who isn’t.
He picked Donghyuck up and took him home again evening by evening. Mark had leaned his head against the window in all their cuts into night, feeling every jam of traffic, every tiny piece of the fuschia-orange dusk flecking against his nose. The orange juice Donghyuck drank before kissing him, the guilt of waiting at a traffic light feeling the driver next to him’s eyes on them.
Even now, he can’t believe that of all things in life, Donghyuck was the first thing he ever really learned to choose. Until that point, things sort of just happened to Mark as he went with them.
One day when they were still kids, Mark pulled into the McDonalds parking lot, by then he finally felt comfortable enough to shoot Donghyuck a glance, sure he wouldn't be caught.
He was sprawled out like a dream, this time on the passenger side instead of on the corner of an empty street. His long fingers tapped against the seatbelt, it was always obvious when Donghyuck was thinking about something, tongue and jaw pressed forward inside his mouth. He slouched then and now, every limb always too to the point where his body curled continually over in on itself. Less like a flower, more like a wolf in a boy’s body. There was something canine about it.
They said nothing for a while, Donghyuck hummed along to Broken Clocks as he rolled their cigarettes.
Mark should have never started, but he didn’t realize it was an actual habit of his until he was lying in bed alone, fingers twitching for one.
That Hungry irritation, the remoteness that he still associates distinctly with being away from Donghyuck for more than a few hours, the dirt behind his eyes and heavy, numbing nicotine mind fog.
“Open,” said Donghyuck, slotting the roll up into his mouth. Mark frowned around it, fumbling for a light in the glovebox.
“Are we boyfriends?” Mark had blurted. At the time it had been six months since they first met.
Donghyuck had shrugged. “Sure.”
“Do you... Do you want that?”
“Maybe.”
Mark had pursed his lips.
“I think it’s a bit more serious than maybe .”
“Nothing’s ever that serious,” Donghyuck had yawned, “We can be boyfriends if you want to be, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I mean like…” He trailed off.
“It’s just not really the love story I thought it would be.”
Donghyuck had turned around then, “You don’t love me?”
Mark recalls being surprised by the hurt in his voice, and annoyed as to why Donghyuck had the right to be upset by that when his own answer had been so indifferent and far away.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Don’t parrot my words back at me, I’m sad. I thought you did.”
“Do you love me?”
Donghyuck had smiled with half his mouth serious, the other half teasing upwards and creasing the corner and area beneath his eye to stare at Mark. “Of course I do.”
“I don’t know if I’d be a very good boyfriend.”
“Why?”
“I dunno I mean, I don’t like myself much.”
“What’s that got to do with liking me?”
He opened his mouth and shut it again. “Nothing.. I guess.”
Donghyuck tossed his head back, reaching over to steal one of Mark’s chicken nuggets. “I don’t like myself much either,” he shrugged. “I still deserve a boyfriend.”
“You don’;t give off the vibe of someone who doesn’t like themselves much.”
“Narcissistic?”
“No. Like happy and confident.”
He remembers thinking about how Donghyuck had been that first night at the club. Too smashed to even properly stand on his own.
“I’m a bit too much.”
“I’m not really enough. Maybe we’ll balance each other out.”
Donghyuck grinned, “We’ll be one long lovely tightrope.”
It’s so juvenile to think about now, but Mark remembers the exhilaration that came with that initial exchange. The feeling that something was beginning. The start of vulnerability. He had been so happy that he had found something that was going to fix him finally. Everyone talks about needing to love yourself, Mark had thought they were all hypocrites; Everyone knows the best love songs are about being perfected by finding your perfect mirror.
It’s probably a bad omen their get together story was an argument. Sort of. Lines go blurry, he’s probably misremembering a detail, missing snatches of sentences here and there.
Their first real date as boyfriends was to one of those glossy fake American diners. They became ‘ Grease’, Milkshakes, hand-holding, roses, Saccharine Laughter. For the first time in his gay life, Mark felt like an actual teenager taking baby steps into the wild. Giddy in his shoes, anxious and shaking. The memory is clear in Mark’s mind now; the black sneakers Donghyuck wore, the feel of sweat beading on his nose. Discomfort, butterflies setting fire to his insides. Bored waiters, tired families gone out for dinner after church, the old man chewing silently and alone, seated by the bathroom. He remembers the strong noises coming from the kitchen, the scrape of plates and the rattle of cheap cutlery across the counter. How his fingertips lit themselves up when he and Donghyuck reached for the menu at the same time. The happiness when he realized he finally understood the electricity people write poetry about.
He turned around and Donghyuck was suddenly there, the red neon lights burning through his eyes. He saw his own face then, lost in the thrill of it all. He let out a smile as they shifted in their seats. Less of a date between boyfriends and more so a job interview. He didn’t know how to express how desperately he wanted to fill the position of Donghyuck’s person .
They ordered fries to split and two diet cokes. They shared food and conversation, and Mark remembers how smart he had felt when Donghyuck laughed at his stories, how interested he was in the kind of person Donghyuck was. He had imagined everything and anything that never happened to them. Creation. The initial excitement of wanting to be around somebody all of the time.
His hands had been in a terrible state when he finished his food. Sweaty and trembling, he had them shoved into the pockets of his jacket. Surrounded by crumpled tissues and coins, he’d figured they were in good company. Running through the numbers one through ten in his head, he had hoped that Donghyuck wouldn’t try to hold his hand because it would be mortifying.
At the same time he had wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch him.
Desire filled him then.
The things he would have done to be braver.
One thing was clear from the get go:
They wanted to be something else so badly. Bringing each other to an early grave, they painted up and planned their own cult. Isolated now and severed from the world Mark understands that it was a poor choice. He aches to be around people, he’d do anything to be one of them. When they started dating it was when Mark knew nothing of love and either wanted to experience being attractive to someone or to finally understand what teenage heartbreak felt like. He thought Donghyuck would bring him closer to God, if God was Love , the way everyone said. He was just a child, he would’ve done anything to be told he was wanted around by someone, anyone.
When he looks at Donghyuck now, he wishes he were able to stop thinking about the end. He wishes someone would put their arms around him and actually connect with him, that there would be no more movie references, pieces of pop culture that sink into his life. Music on his car radio, humming while flitting to the pages of romantic books. He gets so romantic it makes him sick. He gets so romantic he wishes the romance from stories was attainable. He wishes he and Donghyuck had something in each other and that it didn’t have to be a dramatic shakespearean affair, Monologues and weaponry and dialogue. He wants to experience that love-religion so bad, he circles back to doubt.
The rest of Mark’s leaving cert went a whole lot like this:
Bunking off school to hang out with Donghyuck, the metal of a swing on his hands, twelve year olds shouting names at him from the playground. Eighteen felt a whole lot like looking at a BMX and a Nike tech tracksuit and wishing he were sixteen again, wishing he weren’t what he is. Donghyuck turning to catch the corners of his eye, a smirk half on his face. An inside joke should have found funny and yet was repulsed by. It was always hard for him to shrug people off. Maybe that was something he wanted to learn from Donghyuck but never got around to.
It was Donghyuck’s cold hand slipping into his pocket, his bitten nails and knobbly fingers winding around Mark’s.
Suddenly everything didn’t feel so bad all of the time, all at once he wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on his back. Suddenly it somehow felt worse to be in the company of another miserable person. Maybe it made things feel worse. How could both of those things be? Stupid stupid stupid.
Sixth year was scrubbing his hands with the watery library soap so his hands wouldn’t smell like smoke when his mam collected him. Staring at himself through his cracked iPhone and the bags under his eyes, unable to recognise the ugly face looking back at him. Sleepless bruises carved into his reflection. Hills and valleys on his rumpled skin. In his pocket, phone buzzing, three unanswered snaps from Donghyuck, piss all over the bathroom floor, a broken hand dryer, and an old person hammering on the door asking him to get a move on. 4Loko swigged on a park bench, half sunken with rot and damp.
It was ennui, not studying hard enough and then lying in bed watching the world spin on around him from the comfort of his duvet and phone. Missing Donghyuck when he wasn’t around, hating everyone else in life for not liking him as much as Donghyuck.
Sometimes Mark gets so sad he becomes paralyzed and it’s really fucking hard to explain.
Hours can go by numbly staring out of a window, in front of the TV. Blue light becomes his best friend, wrapping it’s slick wings around him, strangling him, keeping him warm. Like stepping into a deep hug Mark allows himself to sink into his own emptiness and become one with the floor. Screaming at every minute that passes wasted, screaming that eventually this will pass and he will have to return to decision.
This is information he did not divulge easily. Donghyuck pried his privacy from him on their second anniversary. Not that Mark could ever blame him for it. They were nineteen and the shape of Donghyuck’s neck during that conversation is still visceral, his honeyed skin stained gold in the lamplight.
There is something to be said in the way that Mark is wired, acclimatised to reject all extensions of help. Every well-intentioned hand offered to him he shrugs away with a baneful smile and polite, “ Nah it’s good.”
His love language is being relied upon and relying on others. Asks for fridges, utterings of “ Can you cover me?” “Are you free?” “Is it okay if…”
After the ditched Mark’s debs, they were seated outside their local dingy pub. Donghyuck announced into the night; “It’s nice .”
“What?”
“Like, just to be needed.”
Mark frowned, sipping his flat beer.
“Sometimes,” said Donghyuck, eyeing it up and leaning back, pulling at a pice of rotten bench. “I feel like you don’t need me.”
“That’s not true,” he replied anxiously, setting the glass down to be forgotten for a lonesome ten minutes.
“Is it? It’s not an unreasonable ask.”
“Asking what?”
“For you to rely on me. Real partner shit and all.”
“I think it’s good not to want to bother people.”
“Do I bother you?”
The truthful answer is sometimes . But Mark senses the lull in conversation, the darkness clouds around the word, blocking out any hope of enjoying the night with Donghyuck if he tells him so. He finds it hard to make a habit of winning their battles. It’s just easier not to engage.
“Not giving me a single inkling of what you want is more of a bother than keeping it all to yourself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry, tell me what’s up.”
He shook his head, feeling dizzy. “Nothing’s up,” murmuring, “I’m just a little tired.”
He could see Donghyuck’s irritation become plaintive across his face.
He hesitated. “Sorry. I don't know if I can. It’s stupid.”
“I don’t care if it’s dumb. You can be needy. It’s nice to feel needed. You can tell me anything… You know that, yeah?”
“I think,” he began, brushing a hand to his throat, distressed by the sudden tightness he found in it, “I think explaining these things is hard for me.”
“Everything is hard,” Donghyuck had gently said. “You get better by practicing. I know you’re not okay and look, I don’t know if it’s something that’s happened because I entered your life or if it’s because you’ve always been this way but I think there’s something seriously wrong with you and I can feel it.”
“It’s not your fault. I uh, I think maybe it coincided with when we met. You’re uh- the first person I’ve talked to about it.”
“It sucks to sit here and feel like I don’t bring anything to your life and that there’s nothing I can do to help”
“You do.” He says automatically.
“Like what?”
He can’t articulate it.
“ See ? It wouldn’t make a single difference to you if I upped and left right now.”
“Please don’t.”
“Mark, I don’t want to stay with you just to watch you rot from the inside out in slow motion. I’m not gonna do that to myself. Why won’t you let me be there for you? I’m not gonna be an arse about it- I mean, what are you so afraid of?”
“Dependence.” He blurted.
“Why does that freak you out so much?”
He wrung his hands, the capillaries in his fingers turning like a kaleidoscope.
“I feel like you don’t even know how much I need you in my life.”
Donghyuck went uncharacteristically quiet, as Mark chuntered clumsily forth.
“I don’t know how to show it, even less how to say it but I’d crumble without you.” He cleared his throat. “ I uh… I’m not very good at being a person. Or a boyfriend. I’m sorry I don’t tell you much. It’s because I feel like I’m lame and stupid and weak and no matter how hard people push to destigatise everything I’m always gonna be embarrassed by the fact that sometimes I can’t do anything because I’m busy being Numb and Sad. I think a lot of the time I’m an idiot who can’t do anything right and I don’t know.. It feels pathetic and I know it’s pathetic. I don’t want you to think I’m like some stupid loser who can’t do anything or whatever.”
“Depression?”
He withered. “Yeah, maybe. “
Mark had never felt so shrunken in his body.
Donghyuck was thinking for a very long time, seconds passed like hours, and Mark wondered what he’d say next. He wished Donghyuck would appreciate the intimacy of his confession, knowing it was already lost in his incoherency.
“I mean, everyone’s depressed so it’s not a big dea-”
“Thank you for telling me.”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t know it that makes you feel needed. Don’t be obliged to stick around because I’m whatever I am.”
“I don’t know if it makes me feel needed either. But telling me is probably a start.”
His mouth was dry. “Sorry for not saying anything. I don’t know, I just don’t want to feel like I can’t handle it by myself.”
Donghyuck stole his pint, dragging it to his pink lips. “You told me how you feel. That’s something.”
“A very small something.”
“I’m with you because I like you. Fuck, I like you a lot. Being around you is amazing but the not-knowing makes me feel low. I’m not like… I dunno.. Arguing. The way I see it, I feel like it’s my fault for not making you happy.”
“I make myself unhappy.”
“Do I make you happy?”
The conversation always went back to Donghyuck, as sure as the sun was bound to set each evening.
“You make me feel like I’m standing up after sitting for a very long time, like I’m trying to stand on human legs for the first time.”
“Alright. Sorry, God .. I didn’t mean to drag you out just to argue with you, it’s just that it’s been weighing on me and It all spills out. Y’know?”
Not really , but he nodded anyway.
“Sorry if I pushed you too far.”
Mark shook his head. “Normal couple shit.”
“We make the perfect pair. We are a real couple who really exist.”
“Maybe we should kiss?”
He laughed wryly and Donghyuck returned his smirk.
“I think we might be the realest of all the fish in the sea.”
Mark can’t tell if his relationship is truly on the rocks, or if everybody else is just lying about how much work loving someone entails.
He eyes the coast as he drives. The dashboard underscores all his memories calling like broken CDs.
Their third Christmas together, their first christmas with the rest of Mark’s family.
“I told you I should’ve introduced you as a roommate.” The words exploded out of him like a sneeze and the migraine set in. They were on the porch of Mark’s childhood home, he had only socks on his feet.
“Who cares?” Donghyuck raised his arms out, like Christ the Redeemer. They were making a scene in front of all the neighbours, Mark was aware of this fact, resented it and still ploughed ahead with his lines regardless.
He bit his lip and tasted the blood. He cared. He cared because it was his family.
“My mam doesn’t like you.” Which to him felt like the world was ending. Her face, his stomach sinking, his father gone completely silent.
Sick
Sick
Sick
He should not have brought a boy home.
Donghyuck shrugged. “My mam doesn’t like you either.”
Mark faltered a bit, biting his lip. “But we like each other.” He was upset by how much it sounded like a question and he cursed himself, hoping regardless Donghyuck would tell him what he wanted to hear.
“So much.” Mark wishes Donghyuck could speak with a bit more conviction.
He bit back the tears.
Entanglement with Donghyuck is like being stuck in a nasty current.
When he was a kid he swam out too far. It was early in the year to be at the coast, far too cold to be wearing shorts but he had been adamant, stubborn in his ideas and fixated on the idea of cold water. Impatient as secretly ever.
His mam never even noticed him trailing out the back door, in his finest crocs and jumper and swim shorts. The beach was a twenty minute walk. He was a child with his whole life ahead of him.
Finding himself unable to stir, it dawned on him that he was in over his head.
Mark just had to lie with the current as it pushed him down, he didn’t have enough left to kick back against it. He gave the salt permission to fill his ears, he allowed the cold embrace to grip his skin. The foam caressed his sodden hair and pruny fingertips. Like the touch of his best friend at the time, like the grace of God.
He had imagined what it would feel like to have the ocean wash over his grave.
They have ended things before. At twenty one they underwent their first breakup.
“We are each other's safety blankets. We needed to break up and we’re gonna stick with it this time.” Donghyuck announced to Jaemin in the sitting room. From where Mark was hovering in the kitchen with Jeno, he grimaced, both of them stared at the floor, pretending not to hear the conversation.
“I thought you wanted to get back with him?” Jaemin replied.
“I thought so too.”.
“What happened?”
There came the sound of rustling and Donghyuck moving a bowl of popcorn onto the coffee table.
“Nothing. Nothing ever happens and I’m so tired. So that’s why I’m doing something. I don’t want to be stuck in this forever. There has to be something more out there.”
Jeno’s face plummeted and Mark stared at the floor.
“You okay?”
It was nothing Mark hadn’t heard before, he even felt the same way. He didn’t even know why his heart had the right to shatter the way it did upon impact.
He smiled weakly, “Fine.”
The rest of the night was smiling to the point of stupidity, cheeks twitching, off putting quiet.
Another evening spoiled. Rotting from the inside out.
Hell.
Donghyuck is a hound from hell, and in that way he’s just like love.
The next day he rang Donghyuck twenty times. Felt stupid and clingy. When Donghyuck texted him “ Wtf do u want psycho.” He left him on read. On Monday three weeks after their breakup, Donghyuck actually rang him. He accepted the call, listened to Donghyuck rasping through tears on the other end of the line and immediately hung up, satisfied in a sick, shameful way. The next evening he tried to text Donghyuck back only to find he’d been blocked. No number allowed, no Whatsapp, Snapchat, Pinterest even. He’d promptly gotten drunk, calling Donghyuck on his house phone, feeling shitty.
“Who the fuck even has landline?!” Screamed Donghyuck down the line.
Climbing over Donghyuck’s back fence, this definitely isn’t normal, he’d thought. As though this made them special. Lucky. He watched Donghyuck through the back window, his face sunken into his knees as he’d sobbed on the kitchen floor. Mark felt out of his body.
How did I do that to you?
Why did I do that to you?
With the last-resort Landline blocked, Mark found himself breaking down to wind up ringing from his Moms phone. They never apologised for it all, but put themselves back at square one. He thinks all the time about how different things would be now if they’d actually broken loose.
It was never going to be a clean cut. Both of them are too insecure to think they’ll ever find anyone better and so weeks go by, the block button remains untouched. Somebody always caves.
Mark pulls up, watching the sun rise over the shore, the dark blue sea swallowing up the craggy rocks. The sunrise is unsatisfactory, ut’s te bleeding of Darkness to eventual grey, that foreer sense of cold permeating every irish coastline, the fog that devours every inch of the land, taking no survivors, showing no mercy. It’s the damp call that yields to him as he climbs out of the car and sits on the bonnet.
He walks to a petrol station and buys a pack of Pallmalls . Cheapest nastiest shit that the money in his pockets can buy.
The worker eyes him. “Do you have a form of ID ?”
He’s twenty three for fuck’s sake . Saying nothing, he nods, smiling awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets, thanking high heavens he managed to pick up his own jacket when he left and Not Donghyuck’s .
Nodding goodbye to the cashier he walks back out to his car, shuddering in February air, the wind nipping at his ears and angrily tugging on the ends of his hair. He pulls up a hundred meters up the road, right by the scenery. The grey of the sea is grimmer in this enave is grimmer than anywhere else in the world. The water is hard down here, and his skin and hair are all fucked up.
He smokes three of his cigarettes and then vomits on the side of the cliff. He can smell it, the smoke, the bile, everything bad. He wishes he could be reborn, trying his best to teeter back to the car, dizzy with the buzz, he smokes another one with a hand on the door. There’s ash all up in his shit, there’s char marks all down his trackie bottoms. He sucks it right down to the filter, and then immediately wishes he’s bought a Coke Zero to go with it. He can imagine the taste now, the brown bubbles, the satisfying click of can, the cold grounding it would bring to his head. He leaves the butt on his dashboard, looking at it all bunched up and orange and sad. His mouth is so dry, his hands stink and he wonders vaguely; briefly if he’s going to vomit again. He thinks about what it would be like to have enough money to book out a hotel and leave for good. Move to England or something, thinks about how much better he and Donghyuck would be if they didn’t live in a town with nothing for them. Zero prospects, zero chances. They’re out of lives in a place filled with farmers, alcoholics and people shuttered away in
Nursing homes, left to drip away day by day until they drop dead. He thinks about ringing his Mam. She’s probably asleep right now.
The sky is as tall as a runway, he wishes he could take flight, leave behind all the moss and mould and craggy comfort of home. A bird with wings with which to set sail, soaring against the backdrop of freedom.
It’s Valentine's day next week.
“Keep smoking. I hate you.” Donghyuck told him this morning. How much that hurt to hear, and to think that their rebellion against healthy bodies once made them Cool.
Bleary eyes, he continues on his distraught pilgrimage. He wishes there was a higher power, he wishes he and his Mam were closer. If she wasn’t so weird about this stuff, he’d be able to talk to her about it.
Why does nobody ever listen? Or want to listen? Is nobody listening to anybody or is Mark just the sole miserable exception to the General rule of communication and care? He wishes there was someone waiting for him back home with the physical capacity to love him and thus be loved by him properly. He screams at the windshield, moving at snail's pace, 15 kilometers an hour. He could pull the wheel right now, he thinks bitterly. And nobody would be there to command him otherwise. He’s so tired of feeling tired. He’s so tired of being alone. Laughing out loud then, because it’s not like anything would actually happen. Mark does not choose life, he just goes with it. Whatever.
He thinks about their good moments, when they do happen. See, it’s so easy to forget about the rot inside them, and the hurt and the years of scars ripped open and stitched up only to get all scratched up again.
He thinks about Donghyuck’s smile, the way he throws his full head back into it, as though his body sin’t big enough to contain the magnitude of his expression.
He loves Hyuck because he’s funny when Mark isn’t the punchline, he loves Hyuck because he’s smart and kind. He loves Hyuck for loving him.
They were watching Love Island , the season with the maybe-gay PE teacher.
Donghyuck leaned in and rested his head on Mark's shoulder and he felt ill with happiness.
He drives past Donghyuck's old street and thinks about how his stomach used to drop into his ass while driving here when he was younger. Everytime they went over the speed bumps on this side of town, the familiar bent stop sign. He feels that same sinking feeling. He used to wish that the sun would never come up in the morning, he used to wish one day he’d drop Donghyuck home to a house that didn’t exist anymore. So they could stay in Mark’s car forever. Their own private world, Donghyuck’s honey voice and the hum of the engine, nervous sweat on his hands and butterflies in his stomach. Their hopes, fears. Everything that wasn’t vulnerable but almost could’ve been.
“Am I boring?”
“Like in general or right now?”
“Either.. both.”
He hears Donghyuck sigh, “You’re fine Mark.”
“Am I boring you?”
“No.”
Donghyuck is so smart and funny and bright and wonderful and Mark is none of those things. Everything he likes in Donghyuck he doesn’t know how to make happen. He can’t invoke witty, charming conversation. He’s not particularly impulsive or romantic. He wonders if he’s sucking Donghyuck’s soul slowly from his body. If he’s lecherous. He coughs.
He turns. “Are you being honest?”
Dobghyuck frowns. “I’m always honest.” Which he is.
“Okay… sorry.” He tacks on at the end.
“What’s got you hung up?”
He shakes his head. “Just thinking.”
“Mark I choose you because I love you and I like being around you and you have your moments and you’re hot. You’re not boring.”
“Okay. Sorry again. Thank you.”
Donghyuck laughs and pulls him into his chest, kisses his forehead, placating him.
Mark could cry just being held there.
They aren’t close in any sense of the word. They barely count as acquaintances. Donghyuck is all his memories. His memories are such a drug, cheap dopamine he’s scared to let go of.
He just might tell Donghyuck in the morning, that he hates him too.
He thinks about what Dobghyuck will say.
“You have wasted six years of my life.”
All he will say is sorry. He has spent all night driving around The Peninsula, looking for words to say and even now all he will muster in himself is Sorry . But it’s how he’ll feel. Sorry . Sorry for all the damage, the wasted time, the wars waged and tears shed. He’ll be sorry for being such a shit boyfriend to be around. He’ll be sorry for himself too. He’ll feel sorry for being too tired to even think. He’ll be sorry he smells like smoke and vomit.
There will be this ringing disappointment, clear and high as the choir calling on judgment day.
“We could’ve been so good without each other.”
“What happened to us?” These are things Donghyuck might say, questions he might ask.
Mark finds that he does not have the answers, nor the words to even try. He doesn’t even bother to scurry around his mind and attempt, scrabbling to thrash and crawl for the pieces of the puzzle. He feels like his mind has gone numb, only the aching sadness and the bile still resolute on his tongue..
He doesn’t hqve the words, he doesn’t have the answers but he has the coastline to a Perfect T. Drawing it up, he thinks of its great swooping lines, the thrill of bisecting it in a perfect ideogram. He knows what the curve of bushes against the night looks like, and he has memorized the sounds the waves make as they break and shatter on craggy rock. Mark knows not what to do with himself, but he knows the peaceful stretch of the quiet road, the clicks of keys on the till while the petrol station clerk snaps his gum.
“Say something.” Donghyuck might shout, but he won’t reply, his stupor shackling him to where he might stand, rooted in exhaustion.
He won’t fight back, he’ll allow it to wash over him.
He closes his eyes after he pulls up in the driveway of the house that they live in together. He didn’t want things to be this way.
Dust staining his cheeks, alarms scratching and screaming through his ears. Petals of their fallout gently unpeeling themselves around him, eat me alive. I don’t care anymore.
Last night’s argument had been over fucking tea .
“Regular or decaf?” Donghyuck asked him.
“Regular after 6 keeps me awake.”
Sipping the dregs ten minutes later, he went back into the kitchen, opened the cupboard looking for biscuits. Opened the press, there was no decaf. He checked the bins, the recycling box. No empty boxes of decaffeinated tea bags.
Lying awake he became overcome with hatred.
If he was lying awake it was because the fucker had definitely given him caffinated tea. And for fucking what like?
Since when did shit like this make him angry?
He doesn’t want to be this person anymore.
In the car he stares out the window, dreaming of the waves rolling into the shore. The extent of his dread towards returning home fills him to the crown. The fact that he’s dreading going home alights him empty.
He’s neither here nor there nor anywhere.
Guilt
Guilt
Guilt
Guilt
Maybe he’ll tell Donghyuck tonight that he hates him.