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if not, winter
]no pain
]]I bid you sing
—Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho; from ‘Fragment 22, tr. Anne Carson
Consider the art of letting go. Then being the one let go, no, not fired because that would mean a fiery-hot something of Mark fucking up but that’s not what he does.
He does his job and his job decides he is no longer needed to do it. The company on decline, no more space for him to fill with melodies and his everything spilled into a Cubase, a harsh reality kick of something that may resemble being fired but Mark’s boss assures him that it's certainly not the case and talks about budget and sales and uses all the big words so it doesn't seem like the company's at fault but that it's the market.
And so Mark is let go on the most insignificant Thursday of the month and then he lets go, waits for his lease to end before leaving the first place he became a person. A tangible landscape of memory.
Oh, honey, his mother said, voice full of barely-contained pity when Mark broke the news over their weekly scheduled Face Time. Why don’t you come stay with us for a while? Back home?
Mark never really toed the line between fate and coincidence. He listened to what he was told, that there’s a plan but he didn’t really have a reason to believe that. Not now, especially.
There is a church he used to go to a walking distance from his apartment but there is no God to answer Mark when he asks. God doesn’t tap any messages into Mark’s open palms but Mark still says goodbye. I was here, each year harder to live within , on his left. A question mark on his right.
❅❅❅
“It will be good, having you around again,” Johnny is saying. “We've all missed you. Your folks especially. You've been gone a long time.”
Looking out of the window, Mark finds it easier in him to reply. The ease of no expectations of eye contact in a car conversation.
“Yeah. Me too, I guess. It's weird, returning home,” he admits. He had been expecting Johnny at the airport, but seeing him was still a shock. Him and his cedar aftershave. Him and his short hair. Different. Older. Not quite fitting the frozen image in Mark's mind, of being seventeen and having his dumb-cool cousin show him all the things dumb-cool teenagers in small towns do.
The mountains seem to rise up from the fog, sudden. One moment it's milky nothingness, then they're there. Mark forgot how awe-inducing the majestic peaks are, how it feels returning to the glacial countryside, no longer a sight that's familiar but still one that he once swore he couldn't live without.
He was used to seeing it everyday until winter stopped holding meaning for him. Maybe that’s why it feels significant now, the larger than life landscape, the squat, twisted dwarf pines lining the mountain ridges. Capped with snow. New to him.
“Listen, Mark,” Johnny says and glances at him. Mark can feel the stare, but he pointedly looks out of the window, watching the snow dusted pines pass by. “I know how you feel—”
It rises up, the tidal wave of wanting to speak over Johnny, to scream his grief out because he doesn’t, it isn’t true when people say that because they aren’t you and they don’t know how you feel, especially not Johnny because he isn’t the disappointment of the family cousin he’s the cushy office job cousin and he has no idea—
“—well sorry guess I can’t really know—” And that’s exactly why he’s the perfect put together cousin. “—but I hope this break will be good for you. Maybe it’s just what you needed, a change of pace. It’s gonna be alright, man. I’m here if you wanna talk or whatever.”
Mark tries to muster up a smile while holding his grief in the palm of his hands. “Yeah, thanks, John. The mountains look the same so. I guess some things don’t change.”
“For sure, yeah. We’ve got your old skis in the shed, auntie was thinking about selling them but ultimately decided to keep them for future generations. Or, you, now that you’re back.”
“Not sure if I wanna go shred some gnar right away. I don’t even know whether I’d remember how to.”
“Nah, that’s muscle memory.” Mark can hear the grin in Johnny’s voice. “Like riding a bike. Please do let me know if you wanna dust them off, I’ve been dying to get out on the slopes but no one seems to be as keen this year.”
“Mhm.”
The mountains loom, imposing through the slowly settling darkness. Perhaps the only thing that's changed is the way Mark looks at them now that he's different. At least he hopes so. That would be the worst thing in it all, if him leaving had ended up fruitless. Pointless.
“Fuck,” Mark says then.
“What?”
“I have no idea where I've put my toothbrush.”
Johnny laughs, full and bright. Somehow, it's the thing that keeps Mark tethered to the moment.
❅❅❅
The cold, weird, crystallised light streaming through his blinds is what wakes him. The light is different. Mark is certain that he’s going to find snow in their backyard as soon as he draws the once familiar string up. He just wasn’t sure how much of it. 30 centimetres more overnight this early speaks of a probability of a long and drawn out season.
Mark spends the first few cotton-headed moments just staring out into the distance, seeing-unseeing. Then he puts on a pair of mismatched knitted socks, the only way he remembers them being. Scratchy but in a good way. His old pyjama pants are short at the ankles and a bit tight around the waist.
The house is quiet. Mark makes his way through it, muscle by seemingly exhausted muscle. Not much has changed, the wood panelling and the dents and scratches left by his toys, he runs up against his childhood everywhere.
His parents aren’t in the kitchen either. Mark peeks into the fridge. He pulls out the huge jug of orange juice, suddenly unable to recall any of the reasons why you shouldn't drink orange juice first thing in the morning and he finds a glass in the cabinet over the sink, that's where they've always been and still are today.
Something catches his attention as he’s putting the juice away. It’s a big, family size container of yoghurt, the brand he used to buy for himself all the time.
He takes it out. Studies the label. Puts it back inside the fridge only to take it out moments later. Processing. Trying to convince himself he isn't going to lose it over lactose free yoghurt in their most definitely lactose tolerant family. That's not gonna be what does him in. And yet.
Mark's mother walks into the kitchen. He saw her last night, but somehow, just like Johnny, it's still kind of startling. People look older in person than they do on screens—Mark's mom is still his mom but there are shocks of grey running through her pinned up hair, thin wrists peeking birdlike out of the off-white sparkly sweater Mark sent over two Christmasses ago. Something sinks in him.
“Mom,” he chokes out and watches her face change, brows drawing in. It’s been six years.
“Oh, honey,” she says, draws him in by the forearms. Mark allows himself to go limp, lets her bear the full weight of him, she seems so short and small and yet Mark is the one feeling smaller than life, clutching the yoghurt container against his mother's back and trying to choke back sobs. “Oh, my son.”
Gathering up everything he has in him, Mark manages to pull away, sniffling and ignoring the look his mom is giving him. He knows. He knows .
“Where are the bowls?” he asks, searches for a tissue instead as his mom turns to open another cabinet.
“Right where they’ve always been,” she says, then points. “Tissues are on the dining table.”
Mark spoons his yoghurt into a cold blue china bowl. Tops it off with granola and eats as his mother watches, no longer dripping snot around but feeling like he’s barely present, every movement mechanic. Still engulfed in the brief flare of shame.
“Come now. You should go relieve your father, he’s out shovelling the driveway. Some exercise will do you good,” she smiles, an all-knowing motherly smile that means no room for refusal.
“Yeah, mom,” Mark sighs. “Sure.”
❅❅❅
The magic of the night lamps casting golden light on the snow lasts only up until it starts thawing, a sudden spike in the temperatures, untouched white melting into a brown-wet sludge the next day. Mark's piles of snow along the driveway drooping sadly. Mark himself adjusting to being back home–to his greying parents, his childhood bedroom, the fact that he has no job and no ambitions to even start figuring his shit out.
He's stopped keeping track of the days, only finding out it's the weekend when he sees Johnny in their living room, talking to his father and waving his arms around.
“Markie!” he says when he spots Mark walk into the room mid-belly scratch. “We've found your old pair of skates in the shed, too. I was thinking we could take them for a spin, Taeil and Jaehyun are back in town. They're down.”
Mark always approached skating with the same enthusiasm one would homework—knew that it was expected of him, but somewhere along the lines, it became tedious, a job well done only when faced with the results of his peers.
Dennis Levensby knew how to skate before he could walk, the neighbourhood aunties and uncles would always say, just eleven months old, look at him now, still winning trophies in the league.
That's not me, Mark would think. Just get it over with, just one more practice, one more match, please don't talk to me about the sturdiness of your hockey stick. I'll let you copy my homework if you cover for me with coach.
“Right,” he says now. “How cold is it outside? All the snow melted yesterday.”
“Welcome back to Woodcreek, man. It dropped to minus twelve again overnight.”
“Mom!” Mark yells into the house, making his way back upstairs. “Have you seen my Smartwools?”
“We do not respect Smartwool in this house,” Johnny yells back, “Darn Tough only!”
❅❅❅
Johnny drives them to the skating rink. Seeing the town in daylight, Mark hopes to notice something, anything that's different. There's an unfamiliar playground near the grocery and their old school looks newly insulated, but that's about the extent of his mind painting a picture over the unchanging streets, the lone ice rink that's walking distance from his house in the best conditions only waiting at the opposite end of the town.
The air is crisp, glacial wind catching against Mark's face. Their skates hang off their shoulders. Johnny has a pair of hockey sticks in his hand. Mark can't remember the last time he was here.
As they make their way down the shovelled pathway, sheets of melted snow turned ice crunching under their boots, they're not the only ones.
There's someone leaving the rink, a dark coat and beanie pulled over their hair. Mark politely tries to step aside to make way because the determined walk of the guy approaching them doesn't seem like he'd be the one to do it.
Keyword tries because as soon as Mark's foot is on the icy ground just off the dry patch of pavement, he slips. The guy rushes by without a word. Johnny grabs Mark by the hood of his padded jacket and bursts into laughter at Mark's flailing hands.
“You’re welcome,” Mark says under his breath once he gets over the shock of his whole life flashing in front of his eyes. Johnny is still laughing. “Who was that?”
“Oh, man,” Johnny says. “Remember Donghyuck Lee?”
“Not really? The weird kid that was a year below me? Oh wait, his father’s Mr. Lee as in,” Mark waves a hand towards the rink, “this Mr. Lee, isn’t he?”
“Oh, man,” Johnny says again.
“What? Sounds like there’s a story.”
“Have you been hiding under the smallest rock in LA? Donghyuck’s pro. World class figure skating. Or, well, he had an injury and I guess that’s why he’s back. You really didn’t know?”
“Really,” Mark confirms. “Huh.”
He doesn’t remember much of Donghyuck, except him being another Asian kid and the expectations that they, too, would eventually become friends because that's just how it went. Except Donghyuck was a year younger than Mark and Mark had his own and mostly older friends and Donghyuck had his ice skating. Now that Mark thinks about it, the kid was always on the ice. He didn’t know much would come of it.
Helping around the stadium—weekends and local hockey games mostly, it was inevitable Mark saw him there, maybe he even held Donghyuck's skates once, though the memories are fuzzy. Everything kind of is, brain not yet fully developed; only as if leaving Woodcreek lifted some kind of a veil on processing images and storing them permanently.
“You should google him. Or just ask one of the aunties. Small town pride or whatnot.”
“Huuh,” says Mark and doesn’t offer anything else.
Taeil and Jaehyun are already in. Everything seems weird to Mark, mostly the way he knows the grooves and juts of his skates, to wrap the laces around twice, and how to move and slide right onto the ice even though he can't recall the last time he did so.
Jaehyun gets him in a hand shake-back pat and Mark catches Taeil around the waist mid-spin, always the easiest target to tease, always fun to see him try and pretend to be put off by it all the affection.
“How are you doing, hyung?” This part is easy. The words on his tongue. Taeil had been drawn to their roots the most, moved to Woodcreek in high school and he kept them connected, up until Mark cut himself off. He's been hoping they wouldn't hold it against him and with the way everyone's treating him, it's nice that there’s the like-you-never-left feeling.
Taeil struggles out of his hold, flicking Mark on the forehead. “Good, good. I’m always stoked to come up for the weekend. The teen barista spelled the name on my cup as Tale at the cafe the other day and nothing says home sweet home quite as so. What about you, Markie? Kinda early to be back for Christmas, got enough leave saved up?”
“Yeah, no, it’s good. My name’s pretty easy to spell,” Mark says, face muscles too frozen to form the thing resembling a smile. Taeil is looking somewhere past him. Probably at Johnny making cut-off motions behind Mark’s back. He doesn’t mind them knowing. The sting of it lessens each time he talks about it. “I got the sack so it’s back to mooching off my parents for the time being. That’s why I’m here so early. Nothing lined up yet.”
Taeil makes a face. Jaehyun pats Mark on the shoulder. “That sucks, man. If you want me to hook you up, there’s always something to do around.”
“Thank you. I’ve already talked to Mr. Lee, though, just so I don't lose my mind from boredom. About helping out around,” Mark waves his arm vaguely, “here. Like I used to.”
Deflect, daylight, distractions.
This is the easy part.
❅❅❅
The cold has always been best at reminding Mark that he’s alive.
He can already feel his whole face burn—it’s the sharp, winter-hot sun or perhaps the wind against his cheeks, he forgot the sunscreen and Vaseline combo this morning, no longer a subconscious habit. Mark pulls the neckline of his jacket higher up his chin and hopes for the best.
Most of the snow melted but the rest of it froze into a solid sheet interspersed with patches of bare ground. There’s countless breath-catch heart-thud moments of almost slipping that catch him off guard as he makes his way towards the lake.
He takes tiny cautious footsteps breaking the crust, puts his thighs into it until he’s in the forest where the snow provides enough friction so that he doesn’t have to worry about breaking an arm or leg anymore.
The fir trees tower. The forest peels itself open. Cracks, sighs, birdsong. The roar of the wind in the treetops always sounded like the never ending rush of a large river to Mark. It whips past him, buries into the folds of his winter jacket. He likes the feeling. Wants to be thinking about it for days, his frozen hands, body chilled on the surface but keeping warm at the core.
He used to think he’d find God, here. If he searched long enough.
The firs subtract in on themselves until they give way to the lake.
There is a couple in the distance. The ice is steel blue with skate tracks all over, the mountains framing it as majestic as always. They create a type of quiet Mark's never heard anywhere else.
Mark finds a spot where the bank slopes gently down, a worn-out path down to the nature-made rink. He first tests out the edge with his boot, as if that’s gonna do something unless he puts his whole weight on it. Holding his breath, he stands on the ice. Logically, he knows it’s pretty much solid. But logic isn’t always everything in face of nature.
Mark throws down his skates and sits down on the pile of frozen snow, cold seeping through his thin waterproof pants almost immediately.
He stalls for time.
Logic versus nature.
From a curve of trees to Mark’s right, a lone figure emerges.
He gets a few uninterrupted seconds of staring at the young guy, categorising and thinking about the interaction from the weekend. Donghyuck Lee got kinda handsome, is his first thought. Though it may only be the distance. His lean and dark silhouette cuts a nice picture against the white-green backdrop. His steps are sure, no hesitation or fear of slipping. He keeps walking until he realises it’s Mark sitting at the edge of the lake.
Mark raises his hand in a wave. Donghyuck pauses, looks at Mark, looks at the skates next to him and then turns abruptly, power walking back where he came from. It’s puzzling but it’s not like Mark hasn’t done worse. Maybe Donghyuck just really didn’t wanna see anyone. Or maybe it is personal.
The sounds seem to get amplified. Everything is alive around him, all the forms water takes, the wind in the trees pretending to be water. Mark sits there for a bit until the sting of snow on his ass gets unbearable and then he ties his boot back up. Retraces his footsteps through the forest, fitting his boots into the footprints that are left by him or someone else, same size shoes. The skates dry and back to hanging off his shoulder.
❅❅❅
Mark drowned once, in the lake.
He could've been maybe fifteen, still just this side of stupid enough to listen to everyone else but himself. And despite knowing all the things and knowing the way of the ice and snow and water, all the things you grow up hearing—when you're maybe fifteen, they don't matter. The laws of physics don't apply to you. You're lucky and everything seems to be working out for you. Until it isn't.
When you're through, you're dead.
Mark remembers the unforgiving dark, remembers the shock. Water filling him up from the inside and the cold, being so, so cold it started to feel warm. What he doesn't remember is the after because he could've sworn he had drowned and then suddenly he's out there and he's not alone but no one is as wet and cold as he is and no one can tell him who pulled him out. But someone did.
And Mark used to think he’d find God here and then he did. Sometimes he still thinks about it. How he felt His presence only when He abandoned him.
❅❅❅
Mark googles him.
He hasn't touched his laptop ever since he left the city and he doesn't now, either. Somehow he feels weird about doing it on a bigger screen, so he settles for his phone and types donghyuck lee into the search bar.
He watches the medal winning stuff on youtube and then the practice videos and the silly parts, too. Donghyuck looks nice and carefree and silly as anyone doing what they love should. Mark has a hard time fitting this image over the whatever blurry memories he has of the kid in high school.
He tries not to focus too much on it, but he'd be lying if he said he doesn't keep searching out Donghyuck's legs in the tight black pants and think about how the waist that tapers out into the hips and then the quads would feel under his palms. It could fit perfectly. What's he looking so good with his dark hair and dark clothes and the pale veiny forearms when he takes off his jacket for?
Then he reads the article on the ankle injury.
I know how you feel, he thinks, and then immediately: No, that’s wrong. I am not an injured figure skater. Except some parts of it make Mark feel for him and feel sorry for him and then it’s back to feeling sorry for himself and it’s just human nature. To want to connect. To find anything to latch on to just so you can say, yeah, happened to me once, too. As if that’s gonna help.
If Mark can’t even help himself. He has no right to want. To grieve someone else’s losses. To want to tell them that it’s okay to die, it happened to him once. Maybe twice, now.
He hasn’t touched his laptop since he left the city.
❅❅❅
There is a weird painting on the wall of the skating rink front hall—Mark has dubbed it the peanuts holding hands because that's what it resembles the most, crude and rushed, two almost-rectangles with legs hugging close to each other, squiggly red and browns mixing together.
It’s been there as long as he can remember.
“Kinda looks like beans with legs, doesn’t it?”
Mark startles. He's been staring at it for no less than fifteen minutes, lost in thought, and the voice is a welcome-unwelcome distraction.
It's Donghyuck.
He's tall and thin, wearing a short padded jacket and no beanie today, hair swept off his forehead. His face is sweet. Beautiful and sharp at the same time, the kind of face that would make Mark pause, to want to go for a second glance, to want to approach him at a party just to get a chance to stare for a bit longer. Reverberating inside. The first close-up look he gets at Donghyuck's face is one he already knows he won't forget.
“It—yeah. I was thinking peanuts but sure,” Mark says. He feels—met. He feels as though the long fingers settling on the counter separating them aren’t just an afterthought, that Donghyuck right here, right now, is just what he needed to see. Collecting all the light that fills the room.
Mark thinks about how he watched him skate on the screen of his phone for over an hour and how he looked on the ice, elegant and focused and flexible. That's such a dangerous path for his thoughts to take but he does it anyway. And he's got the real thing here, now, talking to him.
“It’s cute.”
“Cute if you’re into squiggly and childish, sure. I don’t even know where it came from.”
Mark craves the circuit of reciprocity. He eyes the lines of Donghyuck’s forehead and his pouty lips quirking into a smile and tries to figure out how to prolong this moment.
“It’s been there forever. I’ve been trying to decipher the meaning for years,” Donghyuck says.
“What have you come up with?” Mark asks, leaning across the counter on his forearms.
Donghyuck stares right at him. Eyes dark and rich brown, melted carob. “They’re gay,” he deadpans. It’s quiet.
There’s the hum of the stadium and Mark’s heart roars and thuds and he opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out, except a burble of something that could be laugher or a shocked sob, even.
Donghyuck smiles. It’s like moving into the unforgiving sunlight. He thunks his skates on the counter next to Mark. “Would you take these through, please? I’d do it myself but I didn’t know my father got help. Wouldn’t wanna put you out of a job.”
“I—uh. Sure.”
The skates are cold both on the outside and the inside. Kinda worn out. Well loved. Mark takes them through the grinding wheel with a focus he used to reserve for the recording room only, adjusting the radius first and then moving smooth and consistent, knowing that Donghyuck would be able to pick the job apart in seconds.
Donghyuck doesn’t even glance at the skates as Mark hands them back.
“Thanks, Mark Lee.”
“You’re—you’re welcome. Donghyuck Lee?” Mark says, tilting his voice up in a question.
“Let me know.”
“Huh?”
“If you come up with something better.” Donghyuck points at the painting. “Don’t think you’ll be getting much traffic. Good luck staring at the peanuts.”
Gay, he thinks. They’re gay. Fuck. That’s the only thing he’ll be coming up with staring at the gay fucking peanuts.
“Yeah, um.”
Donghyuck takes his skates and walks back out of the stadium’s double doors before Mark can say something remotely coherent.
❅❅❅
And then he’s there, he’s everywhere. Somehow operating the ski lift and then packing up the muffin into a paper bag for Mark at the bakery before being chased out with a tea towel by Mrs. Briggs, leaving laughter behind and then. Drinking beer with Mark’s old high school friends. And then. Smiling with his mouth only.
Mark is curious about him way beyond the point of internet searchable stuff.
Maybe he’s bored, maybe he’s just latching onto something like a distraction and Donghyuck seems enough of a mystery that it intrigues him. To the point of wanting to know how Donghyuck feels about living in Woodcreek now, returning after everything, whether his brain has been altered beyond recognition as well. It must have.
❅❅❅
It's another thing that leaves Mark chasing a feeling he once felt, just for a moment, but it was unreproducible and fleeting—Jaemin Na and his parent's house. The lights look like they've been on for hours, dusty and golden on the hung-up coats in the entryway.
When Taeyong bounds up to throw his arms around Mark's neck, his weight is the same as always. This side of heavy and making Mark laugh as he catalogues over his shoulder—all the familiarly unfamiliar faces, Johnny in the middle of the room, too, and he thinks about what he's gonna drink and the door opening behind him is a rush of cold air, the light swirling and shimmering like a mirage smack dab in the middle of rural Canada and turning the moment into an anything could happen.
It makes Mark almost excited. Garden, backyard, and a stretch of woods. Chatter and the drag of chairs across floors, Chet Faker and then Frank Ocean, Jeno's on the speaker, he's always been the one with the best music taste. Beer pressed into his hand and too many faces for Mark to focus on each one but he can just grin and receive the pats on the back and become a part of a unit.
It's weird, it's weird, it's weird, coming back.
When there was nothing else left to do in a small town but get drunk and sometimes—when someone's brother's friend's thrice removed cousin got them weed—high, Mark has spent way too many weekends sleeping the hangovers off 'till noon and pretending he didn't know what alcohol was in front of his parents. He thinks they knew but let it slide because, logically, what could happen in the middle of nowhere.
A lot of Mark's memories are of this.
The evening thus progresses according to some manual that hasn't changed for over a decade.
There's shots and then the rearranging of furniture, everything getting amplified into a swirl of bright colours as everyone occupies the space at once and the beat getting louder and then, suddenly, it disperses, into the dark and the rooms and everything lit by fairy lights and neon displays of watches and stereos. More shots and drinking games when you're just this point of shameless enough to not care and then the inky dark of it all, tipsy to blackout until it comes back full circle into sobriety.
Somehow, it's more exciting than any of the parties he's ever attended down in California.
It's about in the middle that it happens when the people are starting to disperse and the only remaining bright place is the kitchen. It's a space where Mark can breathe for a bit. Deflect, distractions, he's lost daylight a while ago and it's harder working with just two variables.
There's a mess of everything on the dining table—tall bottles, light scattering through them, crisps spilling out of bags, plastic cups everywhere, and a cooler on a chair stacked with beer and ice. Mark reaches for the vodka because his stomach already tastes of it. His elbow knocks a bottle over, a domino effect taking place on the edge of the table, knocking the cup Mark had been hoping to fill down to the floor.
“Isn't it a bit too early to be smashing the kitchen? Or is this an elaborate Jaemin revenge plan? I'm all in for that.”
There are hands stacking the bottles and cups back upright. Mark stares down for a bit before looking at the owner of the voice. And, oh—
“Huh? I—uh?” Mark says, and that's honestly embarrassing, he's such an embarrassment as soon as faced with the cute face of a boy he might, eventually, admit he finds attractive and he tries to make it better only to— “You know Jaemin?”
“I know Jaemin. You know Jaemin?” Donghyuck asks and that's laughter in his voice, he's definitely laughing at Mark but it's honestly kind of hard to find it in himself to care when Donghyuck's looking like that.
Like that means amused, as if he knows something Mark doesn't but also like that. His long lashes and the cute tilt of his mouth and his long, long neck dipping into a completely normal neckline of a completely normal shirt but he's also wearing a cardigan and glasses. Glasses. Mark wonders whether it's the couple inches of vodka chased down with a splash of juice that make him go wild and unhinged in his thoughts, conjuring images of Donghyuck on ice and right here.
Right now.
“Thought you weren’t skating.”
“What?”
“Back then when you—um. Came to the ice rink to get your—”
“Oh!” Donghyuck exclaims. “Aw. That’s nice. What did the neighbourhood aunties say about me?”
“Google, actually,” Mark says.
“That’s even cuter. You googled me? Did you watch?”
Donghyuck is close. Mark can almost feel the heat of his body, the transfer of superficial energy between two objects, getting amplified as Donghyuck runs his eyes down Mark’s chest.
“I did.”
“What did you think?”
“I don’t know much about figure skating.”
Donghyuck leans closer. “You do. You part-time at a stadium now. Try.”
Mark tries to protest, tries to say that it isn’t what he does before realising. And out of all things. It's Donghyuck's voice. That makes Mark's heart knock in his chest, abdomen clenching into the tightest little knot of want. Mark tries to chase it away by reaching for the bottle again but Donghyuck is quicker, moving it just out of reach.
“I dunno, you—it was nice. It made me wanna skate, I guess. I liked your jump saves.” And your quads in those tight pants, is what Mark doesn’t say. Hopes he doesn’t. Legs for days.
“Jump saves,” Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. It makes Mark wanna say the bit about the pants but more than that it makes him want to—
“Yeah, mhm. The jumps were alright.”
“Alright,” Donghyuck repeats.
Mark can see Donghyuck’s face tighten for a moment, nose wrinkling before smoothing out and it makes something tingly and elated raise up, makes him want to push for more.
Let me get to know you, Mark thinks and thinks.
“I mean, I’m sure it’d be even better in person, if you’d—”
Someone bangs the kitchen double door open. They knock their way towards the sink, forcing Donghyuck over and Mark reaches out for his forearm, the other palm finding his waist as he stumbles backwards. Takes Donghyuck with him.
“Were you going for the vodka?” Donghyuck asks abruptly. He’s got weight to him, deceptively. It must be the quads. His athletic body. Hidden muscle. He isn’t pulling away. And the need of being close to someone at a party has never been stronger.
“What? Yeah, it. It's kinda rank but better than the tequila, I think.”
“Come on. I’m gonna show you,” Donghyuck says and grabs Mark’s hand to tug him out of the kitchen.
Mark’s gaze falls to Donghyuck’s high waisted dark wash jeans, and he’s more leg than anything, he was too close for Mark to properly check him out without being too obvious but now. Now he lets himself be led and lets himself look, at the back of Donghyuck’s head, down to his ass. Then back up. Donghyuck catching him mid-movement and sending such a smile Mark’s way it makes all the blood rush straight to his head.
Maybe that’s why the cold is such a shock when Donghyuck opens the patio door and pauses to slip on a random pair of shoes littering the doorway, gesturing at Mark to do the same.
He hesitates. It’s really fucking cold.
There’s a rational part of his brain that makes him ask: “What about the jackets?” but there’s the alcohol altering the way Mark registers temperature and there’s also Donghyuck.
His smile looks wild, the way that can make you feel a little bit wild too.
“Why, Mark Lee,” Donghyuck puts a finger to his own chin, fake-contemplative. “A—you’re from the north and B—I don’t really feel cold right now,” he tugs Mark close who finally stumbles over the threshold and into the night, “do you?”
They’re both from the north so logically, it should be easy enough to get close, two negatives cancelling each other out or whatnot.
Logic versus nature, again.
As Mark watches Donghyuck in the hazy golden light from the window, watches him move and reach out into the snow to pull out a bottle of—something?, he thinks about endings and beginnings and about the way Donghyuck's hair is long and that it's the most unapproachable he's looked so far, even more so than that day at the lake.
There’s something off about him, something different to when Mark saw him skate in the videos, the same kind of grief Mark seems to be holding on to, but maybe that's just wishful thinking and the inherent need humans seem to have of connecting through similarities.
“I haven’t been home for a long time,” Mark finds himself saying. “I think I forgot how to deal with the cold. I forgot a lot of things.”
Mark is twenty five and just got fired from a job he thought he’d be doing forever. It’s the end of the world and this is the place dreams come to die and Mark is back even though he didn't really want to be but perhaps it's not such a terrible thing.
It snowed again, is still snowing actually, huge, fluffy clumps of snowflakes falling to the ground, and the magic is there again and Donghyuck hums in understanding and he looks beautiful and unattainable. Then, he brandishes the bottle of vodka as if he’s come to save the entire fucking world. And maybe he did.
“Tada! This is where I hid the top-shelf.”
Donghyuck stumbles over the too-big slides as he makes his way back to Mark. His glasses have fogged over. Mark can't help but laugh, laugh all the feelings out into the cold. His blood vessels have opened up and his skin feels warm, like it's not minus eight out and he's standing under direct sunlight instead.
“You look like you belong,” Mark says because he's still thinking about it. The whole night. The entire time since he saw Donghyuck move like he's never been able to. “On the ice, I mean. To the cold.”
Donghyuck smiles. “Enough about me—”
“I’ve got nothing,” Mark interrupts. “Nothing important. Zero things about me. If that’s what—”
“I have no idea what you mean.” This smile is soft. “Enough about me, I was gonna say, let’s drink.” He raises the bottle high into the air.
And, oh. Oh, Mark thinks. This one. This one is gonna hurt like a motherfucker.
“Don't tell me you're gonna say we will be chasing it down with handfuls of snow. One thing to leave in the past, I think.”
Donghyuck points behind Mark. “Mango juice. Will you open it for me?”
The bottle is on the windowsill. Mark cracks the cap and watches Donghyuck drink directly from the glass bottle. He tries not to make it too obvious, how he’s staring at the bob of his adam’s apple. The tendons in his throat.
Donghyuck makes a kchh sound, face wrinkling before he trades the vodka for Mark's juice.
“Did you skate? On the lake the other day?”
Mark shakes his head. “No. Why’d you run away? We could’ve—” Mark doesn't know how to continue. Talked? Skated together? Stared off into the distance and contemplated the thickness of the ice for hours?
He drinks instead. There’s something about the mere thought of an indirect kiss that makes Mark unreasonably excited, as if he’s seventeen again and hoping that the bottle goes directly to him after his crush had their mouth on it. It hasn’t lost any of its thrill, especially when Donghyuck is watching him tip the liquor back.
“Oh, good. And, I mean, I was in a mood kinda, you know, teen angst, running away from your parents and double running because you didn’t catch the door in time only for it to bang closed and shake the entire house so you’re afraid for your life kinda mood.”
Mark laughs. “You’re—” he does the mental math, “twenty four, Donghyuck, aren’t you? Oh my god.”
“Yeah, well, you can take the man out of his childhood room but you can never take the emo kid out of the man.”
“Please,” Mark says, chortles again. Then there's quiet. Pulses of music from the inside, occasional bursts of muted laughter. If he strained his ears and listened, he'd probably be able to hear the softest of sounds the snow clumps make as they fall.
“I thought it was personal,” Mark says after a bit.
“Nah.”
Mark is a different kind of northerner. Nature versus nurture.
The vodka is ice cold and goes down easy. Donghyuck’s hand wraps around the bottle, their fingers overlapping; indirect kisses and direct touches. They stand there, holding the bottle and their hands across. Donghyuck's fingers are warm.
“I lied,” Donghyuck says.
Mark straightens his back. He likes the way Donghyuck seems shorter than him like this, chin tilted down as if making himself smaller on purpose. Intent with it. “About what?”
“Let’s talk about you. What’s this forgot to how to deal with the cold? You don’t forget that.
“Nah, let’s not.”
“Then what?”
“I dunno.”
“What’s there to talk about in a place like this,” Donghyuck gestures around. “How fucking cold it is, and then not cold enough. How much it snowed and then not enough. About that bear that wandered into town and destroyed the bins. About God.”
“How’d you know that’s exactly how my conversation with old Mrs. Cetkowski went this morning.”
A hookup tried talking God with him once.
As Mark was leaving, half-dressed, the guy—sprawled on his back and half-covered with a blanket—had asked him why are you in such a rush? And Mark, half-dressed, laid down beside him, supported himself with his forearms and listened to him; he had no idea how the conversation went from discussing Uber rates to talking about how his mother and sister went to Jerusalem once in search of something or the other, perhaps God. Absolution. The strangest kind of unremarkable pillow talk. Mark told him about the woods but didn't say anything about the lake. The guy didn't understand.
Not that Donghyuck is a hookup.
But it wouldn’t be so bad and wrong, to fall apart on Donghyuck. To let himself get shitfaced and vulnerable, already on his way there. There’s just something about him. That makes Mark curious about whether Donghyuck would cook for him after he’d thrown up and they’d talk about their family and then leaving and returning.
That makes him wanna talk God and actually listen to whatever Donghyuck has to say.
Something he wouldn’t mind getting hurt over.
“So?” Donghyuck asks, still so wonderfully close the basic principles of physics apply in every sense of the word, conduction of molecules and intent. “What's your pick?”
I died, once, Mark is going to say. And a second death happened to me too, not that long ago.
But he stares at the golden expanse of Donghyuck's throat where it looks like the sun itself reached for it. And he thinks it'd be a bit stupid, a bit of a lie when he's never felt more alive, wrapped up in the cold but so warm, wrapped up in all the life Donghyuck seems to be embodying, life and light. He's hooking his hand into Mark's belt-loop and he's biting his lip, and Mark didn't think he'd wanna get kissed tonight but suddenly it's the best thing he's thought about the whole night and it's the only thing his brain can focus on.
The patio door slides open ungracefully and Mark steps back, an unconscious movement because the moment breaking is so abrupt it makes it seem like they're doing something illicit. Even though kissing at parties is hardly a thing to pause about. But Mark does, he pulls back and watches Jaemin, followed closely by Chenle Zhong as they bound down the wooden terrace and into the snow.
The door bangs open once more, even though it didn’t really have any room to move and Mark winces for the wood, then winces as Jaemin and Chenle plunge in, just their feet at first—they scream like when you’re four and go for seconds right after, uncaring.
The snow will begin to feel warm, after a short while.
There’s hoots from the doorway and people crowding the patio, suddenly.
And Mark is not sad about it, maybe just a bit bummed but Donghyuck stands shoulder to shoulder with him as they watch more people scream for their lives and dive into the snow and drink and shove handfuls of it in their mouths to chase the drinks down—they share a conspiratorial smile, the lightest of inside jokes. The backs of their hands brush in between them.
Someone calls out Mark’s name.
“Go.”
Donghyuck pushes him gently and Mark walks backwards still looking at him and he’s not sad about it because the house is big but not that big.
And Woodcreek is not that big, either.
❅❅❅
Donghyuck doesn’t suddenly disappear after the night, to Mark’s relief.
He’s still everywhere, only this time he calls out to Mark and reciprocates the waves Mark sends his way and eats his slice of pie sitting at the table opposite Mark and his muffin.
Smiling with his mouth but only after the smile reaches his eyes, first.
❅❅❅
This time Mark is staring at his phone instead of the gay peanuts, knowing he has to move but is stuck in an inactivity loop that consists of him moving from one app to another, unable to bring himself to start closing down. There's the click of the doors opening. Mark raises his head.
“Hi, sorry, we’re about to—”
It’s Donghyuck.
“—close,” Mark finishes.
There’s snow in his hair. He stomps his feet, knocking the excess off at the rubber scraper mat. His smile is bright and—god help Mark, he truly is in too deep—beautiful.
“Aw, but I know the owner,” Donghyuck says, coming closer to the counter. He’s carrying a black gym cross-body bag and wearing athletic gear. It's obvious why he's here.
“Sorry, no nepotism at the ice rink.”
“Oh, just this oooonce,” Donghyuck drawls, tipping his voice into something thinner and cutesy.
Mark’s faux-stern expression wavers, the corners of his mouth ticking up involuntarily. Donghyuck catches it within seconds and latches onto it.
“Just this ooooonce, pleeease,” he whines again and adds a pout, driving it home with a finger pressing into his puffed-up cheek, making a variation of high noises in his throat. It's ridiculous. It makes Mark wanna punch him, cute aggression rising and cresting, all the confused feelings swirling inside his chest.
“You'll clean up after yourself,” Mark says, even though the ice is still all messy from the junior hockey team practice.
Donghyuck pumps his fist. “Yes.”
“I mean it. You'll be driving the Zamboni home tonight.”
“Oh, Mark Lee,” Donghyuck says it like one word, markly. It's weirdly endearing. Is that Donghyuck giving him a nickname? “I know how to ride the Zamboni in ways you can't imagine.”
And Mark is now imagining. And it’s not even funny how quickly the blood can rush, up, up until his whole face is heating with the force of it.
“Get out of here,” he says, calm and collected which he most definitely is.
“No take backsies! I’ll be out there. If you wanna join,” Donghyuck winks, then cackles at whatever Mark’s expression must be doing, laughs even harder when the pen Mark throws at him hits his retreating back.
But—that’s an invitation, isn’t it. It totally is. Mark clears the front desk. He arranges and rearranges the stuff on the counter and after a while of pretending to be busy just so he isn’t rushing right behind Donghyuck like an excited puppy, pauses to give a prayer to the gay beans, and goes out to the rink.
Donghyuck is wearing a black and white tracksuit, none of the tight clinging stuff but it doesn’t matter because Mark is still mesmerised as he watches Donghyuck skate lazy circles around the barriers.
He’s calm and slow, hands spread and that’s all the warning Mark gets before Donghyuck is launching up into a jump, powerfully kicking off the ice and spinning once, twice before landing.
Except he lands wrong and Mark winces as his leg buckles, ankle unable to carry the burden of saving it and Donghyuck tumbles down onto his ass. He spins a bit, seated. Not making a sound.
Mark moves closer to the edge of the rink.
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I am not a baby and I can do whatever I want.”
“It doesn’t seem like you should be doing that.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like we both are where we should be right now but I’m not saying anything to you,” Donghyuck says, a bit mean about it. He scrubs a hand down his face tiredly. It must be ice cold. Mark wants to hold it. Hold him and his meanness.
“Ouchie.” Mark mimes clutching his heart. “Right where it’s tender.”
Donghyuck sighs. He plops down onto his back. “I can do light exercise. I was told to ease into it and it’s been more than enough time for my shitty ankle to get its shitty condition together and I—thought it was fine. I skated yesterday, too. Just. Not the jumps.”
“Maybe it needs a little more…”
“—time?” Donghyuck interrupts. “I don’t have that. I have to get it together in time for the Worlds. I have to come up with a new short program. I—”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Thanks. That’s great,” Donghyuck informs the doming ceiling with their town’s hockey team flag hanging from the centre.
“Glad to help.” Mark leans against the barriers on his forearms. He knows it’s not easy to be vulnerable and he isn’t expecting Donghyuck to share his whole life story with him. It already takes so much just to admit it to yourself. He wishes Donghyuck would, though. Allow himself to be vulnerable in front of him. Open.
“I don’t wanna do anything, you’re right. The only thing I want is to be run over by the Zamboni.”
“That could be arranged. Though I’m not sure whether I’d beat the self-proclaimed best rider in here so rather not.”
He watches Donghyuck smile faintly at the bright halogen lights before pushing up to standing and skating slowly closer to Mark. There’s that grief again, the strange unapproachable quality to his movements, to the way his big eyes lock onto Mark.
“Why are you here, Mark?”
“Um. You told me to come?
“No I mean—back. In Woodcreek. Literally look up the definition of the middle of nowhere, it’s this place. Foxes say goodnight here. There aren’t even any buses running. Jesus.”
“The foxes what now?”
Donghyuck is so close now. He boxes out Mark’s forearms with his hands, cheeks flushed and his nose is red, too, and Mark thinks he looks so, so lovely.
“Yeah, like. Somewhere so remote even the foxes have nothing to say to it but goodnight.”
“Never heard that one before. What if you find the fox first and say goodnight to it?”
“Are you deflecting? It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it. Just thought we were having a little heart to heart. You know,” Donghyuck finger guns, “a nice tête-à-tête.”
Mark wants to laugh so he does. He feels at ease.
“Well haven’t you heard the rumours? Or you can just piece it together—I’m living with my parents again and helping out your dad which I haven’t done since I was like seventeen and I’m a living breathing example of a family disappointment but that’s okay if I still go to church.”
“Always with the church, isn't it. Figures,” Donghyuck sighs. “My mother did warn me.”
“About the church?”
Mark thinks about all the things his mother warned him about before. Eat your vegetables or you'll be sorry when you're older. Hang your laundry right. Don't talk to strangers or follow them home. Nothing about pretty ice skaters that threaten to make his heart lose its steady rhythm. She should've mentioned that.
“About the church boys.”
It’s too late, anyway.
Mark feels heat threatening to emerge once again in Donghyuck’s presence. “No, she didn't.”
“What do you know, Mark Lee?” Markly. Donghyuck smiles. Something he wouldn’t mind getting hurt over. “Go get your skates.”
Mark is going to get whiplash from this conversation. The thread unfolds and floats in the space in front of them, tying to a thought randomly and then dissolving again.
“I can't do figure skating.” He’s always tripped up over the toe picks before giving up on that type of skates entirely.
“I'm not asking you to blow me away with your quadruple Axel, I'm asking you to skate with me.”
“Okay.”
Mark goes.
Being on ice with Donghyuck is like scratching an itch, like fulfilling a bottom-of-the-pyramid need, like getting a Christmas present you never even knew you needed but now that you have it, it’s vital to you.
Mark doesn’t ask whether Donghyuck is sure about this, whether he wants to continue. He just follows him around the ice, going backward and forward in spirals, in circles, around the barriers and on the inside. No pattern to it, just the scraping of blades against ice here. A huff of breath there.
“You skated here much?” Donghyuck asks, slipping just out of reach, just when Mark thinks he’s gonna extend an arm and grab his hand.
“Kinda? Hockey, just like every other kid in this town.”
“I didn’t do hockey.”
“No. Lucky.”
They skate differently. It’s hard for Mark not to feel like lumbering fool in face of Donghyuck’s lighter than life movements.
“It was different, back then. But at the same time, it hasn’t changed much.”
“Yeah. I have surprisingly alright memories of this place. Even though the practice sucked. Everything smelled like teenage boy sweat,” Mark shudders.
“Yeah. I used to go full on no-breather through the hallway.”
“Right. Looking back though like—I was so carefree. Even though I wanted to get out, not having to worry about anything significant was kinda nice.” This is a lighthearted, safe territory. The ghosts of their past and whatnot.
“Mhm,” Donghyuck sighs wistfully. “The rink was this weird nowhere space, too, I'd spend hours in here. In that upper hallway, just my earphones in, practising in my head.”
“Yeah, a nowhere space which ate all of my stuff,” Mark says. “I remember losing so many things in here. Imagine me explaining it to the chemistry teacher like—the stadium ate my workbook, sorry. I'd come back right after classes to check but it was gone. Never found it.”
“Oh, I remember having a chem workbook that was filled out already. The handwriting was kinda awful but it saved my ass so many times. Now that I think about it—”
Mark pauses. Looks at Donghyuck. “Dude.”
“Dude,” Donghyuck says back, mocking.
“No way you stole my fucking chem book! I almost failed that class.”
“It wasn't signed, anyway,” Donghyuck says, skating backwards as Mark advances towards him.
“But you did find it here, right?”
“You can't prove anything.” He is quicker than Mark. Of course he is. There is power behind his movements, even though he was laying in despair on the ice just a while ago.
“Dude,” Mark shakes his head again.
“'S kinda funny. How many times did we pass each other by without noticing?” Donghyuck says.
“Dunno.”
Swish, swish, swish. Donghyuck skates circles around him while Mark stands still. He has worked up a sweat, can feel it cooling on the skin on his back underneath his cotton shirt and hoodie. Breathing heavier.
“I notice you now,” Mark finds himself saying.
“Yeah?”
Now they're edge to edge. Mark likes this part. When eyes meet.
“Mhm.”
“What about me?” Donghyuck leers obnoxiously. “What do you notice, Mark Lee?”
“Stop. Making fun of me,” Mark says, grappling at Donghyuck and finally getting his hands on him. His shoulders feel bone-thin underneath his palms and Donghyuck shrieks, struggles to back off but Mark holds him closer, tries to get him in a headlock.
And then the science: Mark, heavier with his heavier skates and an old hockey-boy constitution against Donghyuck and his bird-bones made for jumping—
They go down together.
Mark fell on the ice once, twice, more times he can count, bit the inside of his mouth, teeth knocking against the inner part of his lip, blood on his tongue. He remembers it well, the taste and the way he’d spit it out onto the ice, red against white. And then they’d determine he was okay and the world would continue as it was, even with a hole inside of him.
This time it’s feeling that fills his mouth, this unnamed thing, this unthinkable, greater-than-life, speak it and you’re done for feeling. He is holding himself very still and the world is shifting and Donghyuck is underneath him and their loneliness combined is dissolving until there’s nothing more than a salt packet’s worth left.
In this nowhere space that ate all the things Mark’s ever lost. Ate all of Mark's memories but he's going to keep this one, always loves to keep the ones where he has a boy underneath him.
“Your ankle,” Mark rasps.
“Hyeah,” Donghyuck says, brows furrowed into it. “‘S kinda fine.”
Except this one is hurt and Mark can’t kiss him right now and he is going to do it later, later he swears, but first. They must get through the awkward silence of it, the magic dissipated but still kinda there in the way Donghyuck smiles at him, small and sure.
As they're putting their things away, Mark notices something hanging off the side of Donghyuck's bag. It's a keychain, a little yellow something prominent against the black of the material.
“What's that?”
“What? This?” Donghyuck raises it up for Mark to see better. A little Pikachu. “A good luck charm. Found it right before I pulled off my first triple Salchow at sixteen.”
“Found it here. Right?”
It’s beat up. It’s missing an ear. And it looks awfully like—
“Yeah, I think. Why? Don't tell me—”
“Donghyuck Lee, you have a serious fucking kleptomania problem. That was mine!”
Mark fights to get closer. Donghyuck blocks the bag with his body, crying out. “No way. Now you’re just making it up!”
“Yes way. Give it back,” Mark yells, hugging Donghyuck from behind, this pigtail-pulling, ridiculous tug-of-war they’d been playing this whole time. Mark doesn’t care about the keychain, not really, he’s just attempting to comprehend—feeling a bit out of it, floating in a dreamy space between reality and unreality. Serendipity.
“Finders keepers! You can’t take it from meee, ow .”
And Donghyuck is laughing wildly, so carefree and Mark joins, laughs all the feeling into the echoing hallways.
A nowhere space full of coincidences. Mark doesn't put most of his life on fate. He's been told that God has a plan but it never really seemed like it, not for the past month at least. But this just might make him change his mind.
❅❅❅
Christmas is as uneventful as it gets.
Mark drives with Johnny to the next town that has a shopping mall where he buys gifts and some of the stuff his mother asks for Christmas. They'll be going tree picking soon and all in all, it does make Mark kinda feel like a little kid, a version of him who doesn’t spend Christmas with friends or tags along to friend’s houses just so he isn’t alone. The plane tickets were never worth it. And his parents usually saved their time off for the summer.
Donghyuck texts him merry christmas and then to say they’re visiting family in the city. He’ll be back for new year’s, though.
There’s the clench of anticipation of—something, Mark doesn’t really know except that it’s wiring his body to be in a state of constant anxiety, jumping every time his phone goes off.
He has a lot of insane thoughts that he thinks shouldn’t start until after the year changes, like last minute dying his hair platinum or texting Donghyuck back but saying that he somehow really fucking misses him. Even though they don’t even know each other that long. Even though Mark doesn't know where they stand, whether Donghyuck wants to continue this thing they've somehow made themselves into. Built a skeleton that needs to be filled in, first the muscles, the skin, the full-body experience. And the circulatory system, the most important thing in it all. The heart.
Except fuck the brain because it's making Mark too rational and anxious. He wants to leave it up to the thing that has made Donghyuck possible all the way until now. Fate or something like it. Winter was made for longing.
He is going to be carrying it with him, hoping, hoping, hoping.
New Year's is at Jeno's because Jaemin's parents are at home but Jeno's aren't and his house is pretty much just as big. It's for all the sensible adults who revert back to their teen selves once back in this tiny town, rekindling friendships and forging new unexpected ones. Mark finds it kinda funny. How they seem to flock together. How he's now one of them.
Mark is late because his mother made him spend time with his grandparents which—he loved, it's just that it's the 31st and Donghyuck is back and all he wants to do is to take a shot and maybe dance with a pretty ice skater boy and hold his hand and. Is that too much to ask?
And so Mark is late and he's freezing once he lets himself in because he walked the four excruciating blocks down to Jeno's but the foyer is warm and there is Johnny immediately zeroing in on him and pouring straight tequila down his throat. So. That's about how he can imagine the rest of the night going.
“Mark! More shots with me?” That's Jaemin and you don't say no to that and the lights are all bright and the anticipation is just about to do him in. He hasn't texted Donghyuck since two days ago.
He is giddy, he is fifteen and having his first crush, he is twenty and being kissed by a boy and he's never felt like that before. And his gut lining is clenching in on itself. And he is. Searching for the only thing that matters tonight.
Pretending that he isn't looking around everywhere is not working and so he lets himself look and strictly forbids the disappointment rising when he doesn't see him anywhere. He instead allows the hands to tug him right into the thick of the crowd moving around the biggest room—designated karaoke slash dance floor. Thankfully Taeil hasn't been able to locate the karaoke mic. Yet.
And it's through the little works of chance that run through the vibration of percussions in their chests that he turns around after taking the shot with Jaemin and comes almost nose-to-nose with Donghyuck.
“Hi,” he says, breathless and Donghyuck grins at him, grins. All teeth, alcohol-bright eyes and he's kinda sweaty, bangs swept off to the side and now that he has him in front of him, Mark can't stop looking. “We meet again.”
“We meet again,” Donghyuck confirms and it's so loud he has to lean in closer to Mark's ear, probably feeling the thump of the music in his whole body just as strong as Mark is but he just can't figure out whether that's actually the speakers or just the head-spinning pump of his heart working overtime.
“How—” was Christmas? Were you? The fuck did I miss you so much and now can't think of a single thing to say to you?
Donghyuck leans all the way into his space to hear him, ear cocked and lips parted. Mark can't stop staring at his lips. He shakes his head, resigning to let himself be a fool only because he's finally found what he's been looking for.
“Nothing,” he says and Donghyuck smiles at him like he heard but probably hasn't. It's not a place for conversation. It's a place to let Mark embarrass himself not with words but with the way it's a physical struggle to keep his hands to himself.
Donghyuck solves that for him. He hooks his fingers into Mark's belt loops, bringing them closer, the crowd surrounding them from all sides—it's just as flawless as it's supposed to be, their little pocket of the dance floor where everyone thinks it's just them. And it's true—Mark would not be able to recognise anyone else existing at this moment.
The room shifts into a song louder and heavier but Mark barely notices because he's inching his still-tentative hands past the hem of Donghyuck's shirt and he's brushing that bare skin above the denim edge of his jeans and he's palming the hot, smooth part of his waist and moving towards the small of his back and Donghyuck is. Letting him, closing his eyes and leaning into the music, the room, the moment.
Mark doesn't know how long they move against each other and he doesn't know whether he wants to pull Donghyuck even closer or just melt into him as a whole but before he can do either, there's the ear-splitting screech of mic static. Mark tears his eyes from Donghyuck.
“What's up, party peopleeee!” Taeil has found the karaoke mic. The atmosphere shifts, the living room gets brighter. And Donghyuck is grabbing his hand.
“Come on,” he says. “Drink?”
“We aren't going outside today?” Mark asks as Donghyuck leads him away and into the spacious kitchen.
“Are you crazy?” Donghyuck looks at him over his shoulder. “It's minus twelve outside. Besides, I don't wanna miss Taeil belting out greatest 00's hits.”
“Weak. And you try telling me something about the northerners,” Mark laughs. “Didn't you wanna join?”
“Nah, I'm all about the eighties. Maybe I'll let you listen. Later.”
Mark is about to reply when Donghyuck shifts his grip on his hand and pain shoots through the spot. “Ow.”
Donghyuck lets go of him. The kitchen lights are beaming and somehow it's even worse, seeing kinda-sweaty, kinda-flushed Donghyuck like that. He's wearing sparkly eyeshadow. He's out to completely finish Mark off.
“Ow?” Donghyuck parrots.
“Forgot to take a splinter out,” Mark raises his palm up to the light. “I was closing the old wooden shed. I always forget how much of a pain these are.”
Donghyuck examines Mark's hand before straightening up. “I know where the first-aid kit is.”
“Uuuuh,” Mark says, but Donghyuck is carefully circling his fingers around Mark's wrist and leading the way again, this time up the stairs and into one of the bathrooms.
“I don't think we should be doing this,” Mark comments just for something to do, watching Donghyuck root around the cabinets. He's a few feet away, concentrating on something that isn't Mark, and it fills him with this halfway-urgent ache that is even stronger than it was when he hasn't seen him for several days.
Donghyuck grabbed a bottle from the kitchen before they left, for disinfection, he said and Mark said uuuuh, I don't think that's how it works but he takes a drink now, glad for the distraction while Donghyuck assembles the materials.
“Alright,” Donghyuck says. “Hand.”
“I really don't think we should be doing this,” Mark says again, but he obediently puts his hand palm up into Donghyuck's.
“Shush. That's Doctor Lee to you.”
“Oh, yeah? How many years of fellowships to qualify have you done?”
“Don't you trust me, Mark Lee?” Markly.
“Hm,” Mark says. Donghyuck brandishes the sterile needle at him. “I do, I do. Just please—careful.”
“I'm always careful.”
Donghyuck raises his hand higher into the light, pouring a little bit of the Peroxide he's got open on the counter at the wound. Sticking out his tongue he then starts poking at the skin around the splinter with the needle. He's gentle. Mark barely feels the sting.
He stares at Donghyuck's forehead, at the earrings that dangle and shimmer as he looks to the side, devastatingly handsome. Occasionally down the stretch of his neck, past the divot at the base of his neck as the collar of his silky white shirt slips dangerously down. It's all dangerous, in general. Double weapons, the needle, and the way the boy operating the needle looks.
“Got it!” Donghyuck crows victoriously and holds the tweezers up to the light. Mark goes cross-eyed trying to look at the tiny piece of wood Donghyuck just pulled out of him.
“Oh.”
“Admit it, you barely even felt it,” Donghyuck says and while Mark is distracted, splashes at his palm with the Peroxide again. This time it hits raw skin, stinging.
“Ow!” Mark exclaims, pulling his hand closer to himself.
“Don't be a baby.”
“I just let you at me with a needle, I think I'm allowed to be a baby about it.”
“You're welcome.”
Suddenly, Mark wants to write about this. About the way Donghyuck looked, sure, but above all about the way he asked do you trust me and the only answer that is yes and about returning and everything being change and everything being connected.
About the boy who drunkenly pulled a splinter from his skin and Mark drunkenly let him. He hasn't opened his laptop since before he came home but that's the first thing he's going to do once he gets back to his room. If he gets back. He wants to spend the rest of the night here. The rest of the morning. Be hungover with Donghyuck. Tell him all about it, and then write it into something abstract, like the concept of fate.
“Thank you, Doctor Lee,” Mark says instead. “I'll write you a review.”
“Don't forget to mention how charming and beautiful I was.”
“Yeah,” Mark says helplessly. He is being pulled in, in, to the tide of him.
“Well, this procedure tired me out. Would you mind if I go get some water?”
“Sure you can.”
“Come find me,” Donghyuck says.
And Mark wants to stay and use the bathroom, anyway. A part of him doesn’t seem to have registered that they would actually have to separate physically for this to happen so he’s almost disappointed when Donghyuck pulls away. But he’s smiling and saying five minutes. Mark stands where he is and watches Donghyuck go.
It's fifteen to twelve, and Mark only knows that because someone thumped down the corridor, yelling 'it's fifteen to twelve, fuckers!' , which was a few minutes ago so it’s more like ten to twelve, now.
He finds a bottle of Listerine Fresh Ginger & Lemon under the sink and he pours himself a full cap before knocking it back like a shot without letting his lips touch the edge of it. He stares at himself in the mirror. There are no gay beans to pray to so he just touches his hair, the corner of his lips, a simulation of something or the other. Then he goes.
Time seems to spin faster the few minutes before the clocks turn.
When he rushes down the stairs, the full crowd is bottlenecking at the patio door, people are yelling fireworks, someone is already kissing in the dark suddenly vacated space. How lucky. They won't even notice the year go.
And Mark should’ve known, he knows how these things go, alcohol altered perception of time and object permanence. Knows he should’ve said let’s meet down by the ugly old pot where I’ve thrown up a couple of times while the plant potted there only seems to be thriving still. Knows he should’ve said, I want to be with you at midnight. Even though it was heavily implied, agreed upon somewhere between the icy path leading up to a stadium and the harsh bathroom lights.
And now Donghyuck is nowhere to be found.
And Johnny and Jaehyun are catching up with him, barely letting him put on his shoes from the foyer and squeezing Mark between them into the thick of the crowd even though he has a mission, he has to, needs to—
They were able to bump into each other even without looking so why in the hell can't they do it now ? Where in the hell is fate now, not-coincidence, everything that drew them together in the first place. No. The house is big, but not that big. The backyard is big, but not that big. Mark wasn't looking before, not in the past, not today and they managed to find each other. Who's going to stop them if he looks?
He squeezes out of the arms crowding him and he rushes through the ankle-deep snow and there, by the edge of the patio. Why is his jacket fucking black?
Mark rushes into Donghyuck, almost knocking them both to the ground with the force.
“Where were you?” Donghyuck asks, clinging to Mark's upper arms to steady them, years of balance and core strength holding them together.
“Where were you?” Mark gasps, kinda breathless. “I almost wouldn't have made it in time to kiss you.”
“And whose fault is that,” Donghyuck says, sounding almost as relieved as Mark feels, “I said come find me!”
Ten. Mark can't tell voices apart anymore. He briefly looks over his shoulder but Donghyuck grabs him by the cheeks and turns his head back. No longer letting the moments die out. Taking it into his own hands, literally. Mark is so, so relieved. And giddy. And—
“And I did. I did.”
Four.
“Didn't I?” Mark says. Two. And there's the burst of fireworks and time seems to go faster the first few seconds before midnight but it couldn't move fast enough because he's pressing in just as Donghyuck surges up into him.
There goes the rest of the year, lost to some abstract thoughts like longing and hoping with Donghyuck's hands on Mark's undercut and Donghyuck's hot lips on Mark's equally as feverish ones.
Mark feels it in all the silly places, like the backs of his knees and the space just right under his heart, where his stomach is looping around his spleen. They weren't kissing minutes before midnight but they're kissing minutes after and Mark is extra, extra lucky.
He hugs both arms around Donghyuck's middle underneath his jacket where he's the warmest and he hauls him closer, can't get close enough. Donghyuck's mouth is open and he is slipping his tongue in and it is merciless, the way all the feelings travel in and keep emitting light, even stronger than the burst of the red and golden dandelion head above them.
This feels like drowning and coming back alive.
“I drowned once,” Mark gasps when they finally pull apart. Mark is breathing back and staring at Donghyuck's lips and he can't help but going back for seconds, feeling it working in his bones, bodies breathing into a rhythm, a trembling one. Lungs. Belly. Knees. Their thighs between each other and the deep, slow kisses they keep guiding each other through.
Strangely, that tremble only seems to remind of something else; the merciless cold he'd felt falling into the water. But in the middle of that, he'd also felt warmth.
“I drowned once. In the lake, in April when I was like fifteen,” Mark tries again. He is embarrassingly breathless. “And it—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, yeah, I know I didn't but I went under and—”
Donghyuck is not faring much better but on him, it sounds hot and not like an overexcited teenager with half a boner. “Yeah, and I watched you go and then I pulled you out.”
“I—what?”
Not like they're having the most important discussion of all, still tangled with each other, still at the edge of a crowd dispersing. It's fucking minus twelve. More even, now. Like a car that's just about to spin, that moment you feel it, a breath-drawn loss of control. Like that. Except brighter and crash-less.
“Donghyuck, are you kidding? Why didn’t you say anything? Ever? You saved my life,” Mark insists. Not like everything he's ever known just got rearranged.
Donghyuck doesn’t seem to think there’s anything crazy about the fact. And he just doesn’t seem to get it that he and that Mark and that they—
“What would you have done?”
“I dunno like…thanked you, I guess?”
Mark doesn't operate on fate. He doesn't operate on anything right now. He is still holding onto Donghyuck tightly and Donghyuck still hasn't let go of him either, hands warm on the back of Mark's neck. Mark didn’t find God at the lake. The revelation makes him feel strangely relieved.
“Well?”
“Wha—oh. Thank you. For saving me.”
Donghyuck smiles, the brightest fucking thing Mark has ever felt. “You're welcome. And thank you for finding me. Mark Lee.”
Markly.
❅❅❅
They take the long way, only because Donghyuck seems to find it satisfying to walk through the crunch of a fresh ice-crust. The sun slants in shreds through the grillwork of the trees, glittering everywhere it touches. Pine, cracks of branches, soft voices through the river-rush of the wind. Mark breathes the winter in, holds it in his mouth for a bit.
The mountains loom just as before. An amalgamation of colour, blue, aniline, bluegrey, icy white. Black with steel down on the slate grey of the frozen lake. Donghyuck goes first. There are people in the distance. In the middle of the lake. Where the ice is the thickest.
“Don't be afraid.”
Waiting with his eyes on Mark. I'm not going to let you drown.
“Okay.”
There’s no gunshot-loud cracking of the ice. It’s still and quiet, a silence like Mark’s never heard anywhere else.
Donghyuck stretches out a hand.
(In the midst of a place where dreams come to die but come back alive, where the foxes say goodnight unless you find the fox first, nowhere spaces, and a coincidental string tying it all together.)
The warmest thing Mark’s ever felt.