Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

New York did not care that Mark existed and lived within its space. It did not soften itself for him when he first moved in or quiet its noise when he fought for sleep the first night. The city roared outside his window at all hours, never catching a break. The sound of strangers laughing on sidewalks bled through the walls of his high-rise apartment.

His place was still nearly empty even though Mark had been living there for months. The wide space promised on his lease still remained mostly untouched. Mark had only furnished what he needed, which were a king-sized bed, a plush grey couch, and a lonely dining table that sat unused most nights. He hadn’t bothered with decoration.

There were no photographs clung on the walls, no yellow pillows softening the edges of the sofa in a way nothing suggested anyone had ever stayed or might return some impossible day.

One of his work colleagues had asked him one day, when Mark had no choice but to bring him to his apartment because they were chasing to finish the materials for the upcoming executive meeting about the new hospital development tender.

“This place feels so… empty,” Doyoung had said, scanning the room. “Did you not bring anything when you moved out of home?”

“I brought my clothes.”

“Just clothes?” Doyoung pressed. “Nothing else? Pictures, at least?”

“I burned them all before I left,” Mark had answered, placing a glass of water on the table. “Now, what was the concern of the board again?”

Mark lived in a routine that he created. He woke up at six every morning, brewed himself a cup of double shot and stared down at the vast skyscraper. His mornings often ended at a gym where the monthly membership cost almost half of his previous annual income, working out under the silent gaze of a personal trainer who sculpted him into the image of a new generation executive.

His walk-in wardrobe had become a cathedral of monochrome Loro Piana, punctuated only by the occasional sharp silhouette of a Saint Laurent blazer. He always dressed in silence, white for monday, blue on tuesday, black for the rest of the week.

He took the subway to work because he couldn’t stand the unforgiving traffic, even though his position had given him the right to a personal driver. In those long hours of commute, Mark scrolls down Twitter and listens to no song. He stood between strangers and let himself melt into the press of bodies and the hum of conversations he did not belong to.

At work, Mark was distant but reliable. He was the youngest commercial executive that the company ever hired. He answered client's emails before the phone ever got the chance to ring and stayed late five times a week.

The marketing team’s intern called him Excel-Lee once, in a whisper that wasn’t meant for him to hear.

Mark heard it anyway, but didn’t take offense to it. Excel-Lee is good. Excel is technically a machine, right? Machines doesn't hesitate. Machines doesn't dwell on things they could not fix. Sungchan was so right for that. In any way, it was easier to laugh about it.

Sometimes he dined at Michelin-starred restaurants where the plates were presented like art, consuming gourmet food that was technically perfect yet never tasted quite like home.

It was at one of these dimly lit, overpriced tables that he met Yuta, an art manager with a sharp eye and a laugh that briefly cut through Mark’s silence.

For a whole month when autumn still clung to the city in dull brown and tired maroon, they clicked over a shared appreciation for the city’s cold efficiency. It didn't take too long for them to make things official, but the relationship was fragile and rocky from the start.

Mark was a ghost even when he was sitting right in front of him, and being perceived by someone as observant as Yuta only made Mark feel more pathetic. They broke up barely a month in, and Mark went back to his quiet table for one.

It was a lifestyle that felt slightly ill-fitting, like a stiff pair of shoes, but it was welcomed.

The only thing he couldn’t automate in his life was the monthly wire transfer to Korea, for both his parents who had moved back to care for his ailing grandmother. He sent them an amount of money he never thought he would see in a lifetime.

On a rare phone call, Mark had told his mother they could finally afford a high-end nursing home with 24-hour care and the best facilities.

His mother had exhaled from the other side of the line, and Mark had that unforgivable feeling that his mother was frustrated at his idea.

"Honey, sometimes it’s about why they stay. Anyone can leave, Minhyung-ah. Leaving is the easy part. But staying? Staying is the hard part. And that is what I am going to do for your grandmother. Not because it’s efficient, but because I love her.”

So what his mom basically said was love isn't just about paying for a premium suite in a nursing home but rather about being the one who holds the spoon when his grandmother forgets how. 

Unable to find a response that didn't feel half-hearted, Mark had pulled the phone away from his ear. With a practiced detachment, he opened his banking app and watched the loading screen spin for a second before the status updated to a bright 'Successful.', though none of it ever felt successful enough.

For Mark, it was easier to stare at those digits than to sit with the silence his mother had left behind.

Now, he had been with the firm for exactly two year and twelve days when he brought back million dollar projected revenue. On a Thursday afternoon, the news came through in a company-wide email stamped URGENT, even though nothing about it felt urgent at all.

To his defense, it felt inevitable because Mark worked hard for it. It was the project that proved himself deserving of the hundred thousand dollar paycheck his bank account received annually.

“You carried a big part of this,” the President Director said, handing him a glass of champagne.

Mark didn’t shy away from the compliment, but remained humble. “It was a team effort. Doyoung estimated the cost in a way I couldn’t ever.”

It was easier to say that than to explain how many nights they had stayed behind long after everyone else had gone, staring at structural drafts until the lines blurred into something meaningless.

By eight, the executives had migrated to a bar a few blocks from the office that smelled of expensive leather and old mahogany. They cheered and drank with a frantic energy as if their kidneys were forged from the same steel as the skyscrapers they built.

Mark wasn’t much of a drinker, but he held a glass anyway— a necessary prop for the youngest executive in the room who had succeeded beyond anyone’s expectation.

“To Mark Minhyung Lee, our star executive.”

Mark fucking Minhyung Lee, the small boy they had found from Palo Alto. A boy who climbed up the corporate ladder faster than a lightning strike on an iron rod. A blank slate with no safety net and nothing to lose. A ghost in a cheap suit, fueled by a distant, icy eagerness that unnerved his peers. A boy who took less than a year to prove that he didn't come for the culture or the connections, but for a win.

Around him, his coworkers grew louder, looser. They talked about promotions, Doyoung’s up-coming marriage, and plans that stretched years ahead without hesitation. But Mark simply watched the ice cubes melt, calculating the dilution of the drink the same way he calculated the distance he put between himself and the people he left behind.

When the noise grew too sharp to be bearable, Mark stepped away, slipping out into the night. As he reached the curb, his phone buzzed against his thigh.

He reached for a cigarette instead. He lit it, the orange glow reflecting briefly in his eyes before finally fetching the phone from the pocket of his stiff, tailored suit.

He stood there, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the city’s indifferent glow. He exhaled slowly, watching as the smoke disappeared into the thin air with no care for where it had come from. Much like Mark himself.

Jeno

Yo, Lee. You alive?

Mark exhaled faintly through his nose as he typed, smelling the nicotine before it fell to his lungs.

Mark

Alive and well, fortunately.

The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.

Jeno

They said no news is good news.

Is this what they truly meant?

Mark chuckled.

Jeno

Anyway, just letting you know that we’re meeting up next month. you should come

He leaned back to the wall behind and inhaled another breath of cigarette. Leaves fell without urgency around him, making the city look quieter than it was.

Mark

Where?

A pause.

Jeno

You know where.

Mark’s thumb hovered over the screen, thinking for an answer. Jeno went on anyway.

Jeno

Renjun's flying in from Shanghai. You know he will personally kill you if you don’t come, right?

Another pause.

Jeno

He’s coming too.

Mark locked his phone before he could read the message again.

By eleven, the bar had cleared out of his drunk middle-aged co-workers. Mark let his driver drove him home where there was no one waiting for him to come. When he arrived, the apartment greeted him the same way it always did, cold and empty.

He loosened his tie and sat on the edge of his bed. For a long time, Mark did nothing. His phone rested face-down on the nightstand beside, silent now. Mark never replied and Jeno did not text again. Mark knew Jeno knew he didn’t have to.

Outside, New York carried on without waiting for him. It did not soften or quiet its noise for his thoughts.

Inside, Mark sat very still, listening to the rush and pretended there was nothing in the world he was avoiding. He suddenly felt the need to drink.

_______

Back then, life in the outskirts of Atlanta moved at a pace that Mark found suffocatingly slow. It wasn’t unusual for people to appear in your life without an invitation. In that leafy, sun-drenched neighborhood, Mark’s neighbors' kids sometimes wandered in and out of his home as if the building belonged to them.

Mark had learned to treat them like background noise. A passing of the mundane routine of a life he was desperate to outrun. He always kept his head down, ignoring the sound of cicadas and the muffled Korean potlucks next door.

That was until Donghyuck, a child whose name Mark couldn’t afford to remember when he first showed up in his life. Nine years old, too loud for his small body, standing in Mark’s bedroom door like he had always belonged there, while the golden Georgia sun bled through the window behind him.

“Your mom said you have a guitar,” Donghyuck had said in Korean, not bothering with any form of introduction.

Mark stared at him from the floor of his bedroom, the said guitar resting awkwardly on his lap.

“Can you play anything cool, hyung?” he asked again, already stepping inside.

Mark shook his head, too confused about the situation unrolling upon him, too far away from his roots to grasp the fluent Korean spilling out of Donghyuck’s mouth.

Donghyuck gasped like Mark had personally offended him. “You have a guitar and you don’t even know how to use it?”

Mark frowned as he watched the small kid sit on his side, still uninvited.

“I know how,” he replied in Korean, albeit it sounded foreign even to him.

“Prove it.”

Mark didn’t. Donghyuck stayed anyway.

From the very first moment, Donghyuck never asked if he could stay. He just did. Somehow, Mark never asked him to leave either.

The same night, Mark learnt from his Mother that at nine, Donghyuck’s world folded into five suitcases and a one-way ticket from Seoul to California, something about more opportunity for his parents. Back then, Mark didn’t fully understand what it meant to leave a place he lived for his whole life.

Donghyuck went to the same school as him and memorized English as if he had spoken it in his previous life. Donghyuck forced himself into his life in the way he carved himself a spot in Mark’s childhood bedroom with his laughter and his lame jokes. Mark remembered the persistent way Donghyuck sprawled across his bed like it belonged to him, talking endlessly while Mark pretended not to listen.

The majority of Mark’s childhood was spent on listening to Donghyuck’s high pitched voice bubbling about things they didn’t even understand yet, never catching his breath in-between sentences.

Many years later, adolescence changed everything about them. Their voices deepened and their shoulders broadened. The world grew larger and more complicated for a kid who had just tasted the bitterness of reality.

In his own way, Donghyuck was immune.

He was still a chaos mix of noise, warmth and careless honesty. He still spent the entire day splayed out on Mark’s bed talking about outer space or the boring mathematics’ class. Mark would’ve just hummed in response, busy with his guitar or spacing out to the scenery of polluted city, and it always earned him a pillow slap from the boy whose laughter rivalled the sun.

Mark knew Donghyuck had always been made of sunshine and laughter. He was carved by constant rambles and quirky answers. Everyone knew it was impossible for Donghyuck to be quiet.

Not because he had nothing to say, but because he had too much.

Too much buzz, too much feeling, too much love spilling out of him in ways Mark never had to question. Those same love that Donghyuck spent too much on others and never for himself.

Donghyuck was… something else. Childish and mature at the same time, Mark learned. Twelve years old, still too loud for his small body, still existed in Mark’s bedroom.

Under the cover of Mark’s quilt, Donghyuck had once asked, “Hyung, do you know what happens when we die?”

Mark stopped turning the page of his seventh grade science book. “Uh… our brain stops functioning, our body shuts down, and our consciousness ends, meaning we no longer think, feel, or experience anything.”

Donghyuck playfully groaned. “What the hell, Hyung.”

“What?” Mark asked seriously, but his grin betrayed him. “It’s true though?”

“I don’t mean literally.”

It was then that Mark decided the softness of his mattress was far more forgiving than the chair he had spent the rest of the evening in. He climbed into bed carefully, crawling over Donghyuck’s body before settling into the empty space beside.

The clock ticked on his side table, filling the sudden silence. Outside, the stars began to burn.

“What do you think happens after we die?” Mark repeated, closing his eyes.

Donghyuck hummed and offered nothing else. Mark nudged him for an answer.

“Ouch?” the younger yelped.

“I’m serious,” he laughed. “What could possibly happen after we die?”

“I think… when we die, we stay where people remember us the most.” Donghyuck laid on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Not like ghosts. Just… there. In places we existed before we went away.”

And that was who Donghyuck was for Mark. A kid who was too mature for his age, even though the baby fat on his cheek hasn’t fully melted yet. A kid who always pretended like nothing could ever hurt him, still untouchable by grief.

Mark turned his head to face Donghyuck. The younger did the same. “So if someone dies, they don’t really disappear?”

Donghyuck shook his head faintly against the pillow.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think they do.”

The night stretched around them, vast and endless. The window was cracked open just enough for the summer air to slip inside.

“Where would I be?” Donghyuck asked suddenly.

Mark frowned. “What?”

“If I die,” Donghyuck said. He smiled like it was a joke, but his eyes stayed serious. “Where would I stay?”

Mark didn’t hesitate as he answered, “Here.”

He reached out for Donghyuck’s hand and pointed it across his room. “Right here.”

Donghyuck laughed with all his heart but didn’t pull his hand away. “Hyung, this is really some rom-com shit.”

“But it’s true,” he said, laughing with him. “What about me? If I die, where would I be?”

Donghyuck reached up and flicked Mark’s forehead. “Now, now, don’t be clingy. If I’m honest, you’ll be very very sad about my answer.”

Mark tackled him to the bed until Donghyuck begged for his mercy.

_______

“Hyung, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

At noon, the street grew busier with the rush of lunch time, shoulders brushing and bumping as people hurried past in every direction. He walked through the crowd with his earphones in, listening to Renjun’s impatient voice traveling thousands of miles from Shanghai to the sidewalks of New York.

“Think about it, Jun. It would be super awkward with me there.”

“You know what you missed, Mark? The fact that this world doesn’t revolve just around you.”

Mark muttered a small apology to a girl he bumped into as he turned into a secluded hallway and answered, “His world does.”

“Did,” Renjun corrected. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. It’s been like… what? Two years? He probably doesn't even remember your full name.”

Now that’s a stretch Mark wouldn’t dare to cross.

“Point is, I don’t think I would come. Best if I don’t.”

Renjun shuffled on the other side of the line and exhaled a deep sigh. “Hyung.”

“Hmmm,” Mark said, tearing down the wrap of his burrito.

Manhattan was getting cold and Mark had exactly 29 minutes before his lunch time expired. This call would determine his mood for the rest of the week.

“Sooner or later, you need to own it, you know? You were the one who decided to leave.”

Oh, that was true. “That, I did. But I'm not sorry for it.”

“Just because you don’t feel sorry about it, doesn’t mean you don’t owe an explanation for it. I don’t blame you. Let’s be honest, if I were you, I would’ve left too. Damn, Mark, I indeed left after that. But he was your friend before he was everything else. You cannot just leave your relationship with him at that and pretend like you didn’t shatter his world apart.”

The words didn’t come out accusingly and that somehow made them worse. Renjun’s voice was almost gentle, but it pressed down on Mark’s aching heart.

Without even taking a bite, Mark tossed his food with a clenched fist and covered his face from the sun. He wanted to argue, to defend himself, probably say that leaving had been the only choice he had.

But as he stood there in the secluded hallway, the noise of the New York streets began to bleed back into his consciousness, his eyes suddenly snagged on a figure across the street.

A boy with the exact slope of shoulders Mark had spent fifteen years memorizing, wearing a hoodie that looked just like the one Mark had left behind in their shared closet.

Mark’s pulse began to pick up its own beat.

“Wait— Renjun-ah, hold on,” Mark muttered.

It’s him.

He began to move, his pace quickening into a near-run, weaving through the thick lunch-hour crowd. He ignored the indignant shoves from businessmen and the confused "Are you listening?" crackling against his ear.

It has to be him. What is he doing in New York?

Mark reached the corner just as the figure stopped to talk to someone. He was only a few steps away with a burning lung and sweaty palms, his hand already halfway extended to reach out and grab the sleeve when the boy spoke out.

The voice that came out was deep and entirely wrong. It was a voice that belonged to a stranger. The heavy baritone that shattered the illusion instantly. Because Donghyuck’s voice was a melody, sharp and high like a bell, capable of reaching notes higher than the sunlight above him.

Mark stopped dead in his tracks. The stranger turned, giving him a confused, wary look before moving on.

He stood frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, the human tide of people surging around him. A wave of sickening nausea hit him before he could process anything.

Even here, three thousand miles away from California, he was a slave to an acute phantom limb syndrome. Still begging for a glimpse of the very boy he had abandoned.

Mark was apparently too naive and stupid enough to think he could walk away just like that and still keep a piece of what he had destroyed.

It was pathetic, that every time a laugh echoed too loudly off the brick walls, he would find himself constantly turning around in crowded places, frantically searching for the back of a head or the set of a pair of shoulders that looked just a little too familiar.

For a split second, the gray New York pavement would dissolve and he would be back in the warmth of California, fooling himself that if he just stepped through the crowd, he would find him waiting for Mark.

He was searching for a person he had deliberately erased from his life, looking for a face in a crowd that he didn't even have the right to look at anymore.

It was the ultimate irony of his exile. That he had moved across the country to escape the memory of Donghyuck, only to find him reflected in every stranger he passed.

Then Renjun's voice finally rang again. “Mark Lee!”

“Yeah, yeah,” He looked down at his shaking hands and realized how pathetic he was. “Sorry, I was– uh, I'm listening.”

“Listen, Mark. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you and I don’t wanna know. What I want is to see you in that god damn place one month from today. Do you hear me?”

“Renjun-ah,” Mark said, then stopped, because he had not prepared a refute logical enough. “I don’t–”

“Jesus Christ, Hyung. Grow up. You’re not nineteen anymore. We’re not nineteen anymore. We haven’t been for a long time now. It might not be your fault entirely, but you were not right either. Whatever it is, you still owe it to him. To Jaemin too.”

Walking away had saved one life and fractured another, both truths could exist and collide at once. His departures were necessary, but selfish. Maybe they were the same thing, after all. Mark just didn’t have the courage to admit it out loud yet.

He sighed into the call and said nothing more.

“I’ll see you next month, alright? I’ll– we’ll be waiting for you.”

The line went quiet and he stood there still.

Mark Lee, a hypocrite of the highest order— telling Renjun that he wasn't sorry for leaving, pretending he had found peace in this pseudo city, all while chasing ghosts like a starving man.

_______

Eventually, Donghyuck was the one who brought others with him. Without Mark’s permission, he once again carved a spot in Mark’s’ life for them.

Jeno first. Quiet, observant Jeno, who stood awkwardly at Mark’s doorway until Donghyuck had to practically drag him inside like he owned the place. It took exactly three months until Jeno was comfortable enough to address him with Hyung instead of Mark Lee.

Then Jaemin, who always smiled like he knew something the rest of them didn’t. Jaemin Na, who filled spaces differently than Donghyuck did, in a way that was calmer, steadier, but just as bright and enchanting. A small kid who practically glued himself to Mark since the very first moment he stepped into Mark’s bedroom.

And then came Renjun and Chenle, the exchange students that Donghyuck somehow found and claimed as his own as if he was a mother. They arrived quietly at first. They were uncertain and distant, until Donghyuck’s persistence and endless chatter wore down whatever distance remained.

Jisung came with them. He was shy in a way that made him almost invisible. He spoke so little that Mark wondered if he preferred silence over words. He lingered at the edge of everything like he was still deciding whether he belonged there within their space.

But Donghyuck never gave him that choice. He pulled Jisung in the same way he pulled everyone else until one day, Jisung was simply just there.

They arrived one by one, until Mark’s room was no longer just his but theirs. They orbit each other, but somehow Donghyuck was always the center of it. Like a sun, Mark thought, and everything around him was just a speck of nothing that kept following him.

Summer stretched endlessly around them in those years. Long, humid afternoons were spent in Donghyuck’s living room, listening to Jaemin and Donghyuck duet as Jeno accompanied them with the string of Mark’s guitar.

Moon River, wider than a mile

Crossin in style, someday

My dream maker, heartbreaker

Wherever you're going, I'm going the same

Donghyuck nudged the side of Jaemin’s rib when he went off-note and held his laughter back. Jaemin scowled in a way that reminded Mark of a kicked puppy and proceeded carefully, following Donghyuck’s honey voice as his guide.

Two drifters off to see the world

There's such a crazy world to see

We're all chasin' after all the same

Chasing after our ends

Then it melted into evenings, into nights they never wanted to end. They would order out, or on some clever days, enjoy the delight Renjun and Chenle spent hours making. They lay on rooftops and talked about futures they couldn’t imagine yet, sharing snacks they found on Donghyuck’s cabinet and beers that Jaemin stole from his parents. They existed in a fragile space where the difference between honesty and stupidity was blurred.

“I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy,” Jisung had said to them one day, mouth still munching on the leftover pizza Renjun made.

“That’s not a job, silly,” Donghyuck had answered to him.

Jisung shrugged and pressed himself closer to Chenle. “Well, it doesn’t have to be a job, you know? If we could be something in the future, we could be anything we want. What about you guys?”

Surprisingly, it was Jaemin who answered first. “I want to be an astronaut.”

“Jaemin hyung, you cannot even do simple math, but sure,” Chenle answered, mean with no real bite to it. “Though I think you could be a real good chef. Oh, now that I think about it, I kinda want to be a chef.”

“Hmmm. I want to teach,” Renjun chimed. “It would be fun, I think.”

Donghyuck literally deadpanned. “Renjun, I don’t think your idea of fun teaching is an universally acknowledged definition of fun teaching.”

“No one asked for your opinion, Mr. Smartpants.”

Jeno laughed from where he lay next to Mark and said, “Would I make a great athlete?"

“Sure you would, kiddo,” Mark said with a smile, ruffling his hair. “What about you, Hyuck?”

Donghyuck really contemplated on his answer like his life depends on it. As if the question wasn’t just a mere empty talk they had way too often.

“I don’t know. Never thought of them until now.” He settled with that.

They all hummed in response. And then they laughed at the simplicity of their answers.

“What about you, Mark hyung? What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jaemin asked, voice an octave higher from the buzz of the stolen beers.

The sky was bright under the mercy of summer, letting the air carry comfort. Mark shifted his eyes from the stars to Jaemin’s curious gaze and smiled.

“Happy? I think I want to be happy.”

Mark didn’t realize it then, but those were the happiest years of his life.

_______

It had always been difficult for Mark to define what they were to each other, even though he knew he loved Donghyuck in a way that set him apart from everyone else.

In high school, he had watched Donghyuck fall in and out of love countless times over the years. He knew the names of all Donghyuck’s exes, where they lived, how each relationship had begun and how it had ended.

It became a cycle Mark had memorized by heart: the initial spark Donghyuck felt with someone he met at the house party, the frantic late-night phone calls that followed for weeks, and the eventual, quiet drift back to Mark’s side when the fire died out.

Mark had been the safe harbor for so long that he completely abolished the idea of how it felt to be constantly swept away by Donghyuck’s storm.

While Jeno and Jaemin were becoming an inseparable unit, Mark was the one waiting in the parking lot after Donghyuck’s dates. He was the one who kept extra hoodies in his trunk because Donghyuck always got cold easily, and he was also the one who knew exactly which song to play to stop Donghyuck from overthinking a breakup.

When Jisung and Chenle finally became a thing, he had spent years being the constant in a life full of variables. It was a role that was as exhausting as it was sacred. All of it was just because of his cowardly act of keeping Donghyuck by his side as his best friend.

And that was the punchline. Mark and Donghyuck never dated. Not officially, at least.

People always had something to say about that. Renjun thought whatever they were too intense and too consuming for something without a label. Jisung, in his peculiar way, had assumed that Mark and Donghyuck would eventually break under the slow, unforgiving weight of adulthood. He described it as “the kind that pulls people in different directions, you know? Where everything demands practicality over feeling.”

When they graduated, Jeno had once told them to just marry each other already. Donghyuck had thrown a pillow at him for that, hard enough to knock Jeno sideways on the couch even though he was laughing the entire time.

“Shut up,” Donghyuck had said, ears burning red. “You all know hyung and I are not like that.”

“Me when I lie,” Jaemin muttered, low enough for only Mark to hear.

Mark hadn’t said anything. He had just sat there, smiling in a way he hoped looked casual. Renjun had only raised an eyebrow, and Mark had known him long enough to know that it meant he didn’t believe a word of it.

But none of that mattered to him. Mark and Donghyuck have never needed a name for their relationship because that didn’t make it any less real.

When they got into Stanford, Donghyuck brought up the idea of moving in together— mumbling something about splitting the soul-crushing rent and other practicalities. He played it off as a convenience, but Mark didn’t need to be asked twice. In fact, he already had his first box packed before Donghyuck could even finish the sentence.

Some said they were too young to be playing house, too different to survive living under the same roof. Mark’s dad said it would blur lines that shouldn’t be blurred and make things complicated.

But they didn’t know Donghyuck like Mark knew him.

“No offense, hyung, but I think your dad should mind his own business.”

Oh, of course he didn’t take the slightest offense. If Mark didn’t know better, he would think Donghyuck was dead serious about his words. But he had known Donghyuck since they were little, watching him grow from squabby limbs to a fine young man that shook Mark’s resolve in life, becoming the center of his orbit.

Mark knew Donghyuck didn’t mean it. Donghyuck loved his parents. He respected them even when he bristled.

Donghyuck was just… like that. Fierce where it counted, all fire and sharp edges when it came to protecting the people he loved. This is the part that no one knew about him. No one but Mark.

“Sure, Hyuckie.”

The younger pouted from where he was seated on Mark’s lap. The movie they had decided to entertain their weekly movie night was long abandoned behind them.

“I’m serious, hyung. Why do they think they have a say in our life? It’s our decision. We made them together.”

“They’re just worried for us, it’s normal. Even I’m worried for us.”

“Why would you? We’re doing fine. We’re living our life. We’re just moving in together. Even Jeno and Jaemin had moved in together before us. Yet no one ever said anything about it.”

Mark sighed, his hands instinctively finding their place on Donghyuck’s waist to keep him steady. The blue light from his laptop cast a cool glow over Donghyuck’s frustrated features.

“Jeno and Jaemin are… them,” Mark murmured, unsure how to explain. “And we are us. People look at us differently, Hyuck. They see two freshmen who should be focusing on their GPA, not playing house in a cramped apartment near University Avenue.”

Donghyuck scoffed, leaning back so he could look Mark dead in the eye. “Playing house? Is that what you think this is?”

The tone Donghyuck used was familiar, though Mark couldn’t quite remember where he had heard it before. Maybe it was that day in high school, right before graduation when a girl in their class had suddenly asked Mark to be her plus-one to the prom night.

Donghyuck had reacted the same way back then. Quiet and annoyed but still pretending it didn’t bother him when it clearly did. And how did Mark knew? Because Donghyuck had disappeared for the rest of lunch that day, ignoring every text Mark sent like they didn’t exist.

Mark had panicked almost immediately, and that ended up with Chenle, Jaemin and Renjun being dragged into the gym after school, listening to Mark ramble while Renjun complained and Jaemin wondered why this had suddenly become their problem.

Ten minutes later, Donghyuck walked in to find a crooked banner, two very unwilling accomplices, and Mark standing in the middle of it all with a sign that reads Lee Donghyuck, would you be my partner to the dance? as Chenle gleefully recorded it all in Jaemin’s camera.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then stop letting their worry get under your skin,” Donghyuck quietly said, giving him a comfort squeeze. “We’re splitting the rent, we’re sharing the groceries, and I’m the only one who can make you sleep before 3 AM when you’re spiraling over your CS projects. If anything, we’re saving each other.”

“Hmmmm.”

He reached out, his fingers tracing the tired line of Mark’s jaw. “Look, Hyung, college is going to be stressful enough. Don't let our home be a place where you worry about what they think too. We’re safe together. We have each other’s back. It’s all that matters, right?”

Our home.

Our. Home.

Oh, Donghyuck didn’t know. He didn’t know that he was already Mark’s home for as long as he breathed. The center of his orbit, gravitating everything in Mark’s life to him, for him.

Mark looked at him and felt that familiar, grounding warmth that no amount of Palo Alto fog could chill. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Donghyuck’s.

“You’re right,” Mark admitted, a small, defeated smile tugging at his lips. “You’re always right when you’re sitting on my lap, aren’t you?”

Donghyuck smiled smugly. “I’m always right, period. The lap thing is just a bonus for you.”

_______

So, fourteen days.

That was all the time Mark had left before his world collided with his worst nightmare. He had always been good at hiding, but tragedy had a way of sniffing him out no matter how many miles he put between them.

It arrived on a Sunday evening he had not prepared for, catching him off guard just as the city was losing its grip on autumn. That strange in-between of the trees along the Hudson are half-gold, half-bare. The air bites but not enough to send people indoors.

Mark walked without destination with hands tucked into his coat pockets, letting the river run parallel to him like a quiet companion.

He stopped near a street vendor selling coffee out of a silver cart and neon signs that were too bright for his eyes. The line was short with few people tucking their hands in their pockets, fighting the cold.

A man ahead of him made his order. Mark stared at him mindlessly. Mid-twenties, maybe. Hair wind-tousled and his scarf hanging loose like he forgot to tie it properly.

The man turned suddenly, almost bumping into him.

“Sorry–” he said, and then laughed at himself. “I swear I have spatial awareness. It’s just selective.”

Then his laugh hit first. It was bright, almost unfiltered. Something in Mark’s chest tightened.

“It’s fine,” he replied.

The man scooted aside, allowing Mark to walk up to the cashier. “Please, your way.”

“Thank you.”

As Mark ordered for his hot Americano, he noticed the stranger lingered beside the pick-up section of the vendor cart. Mark paid for his coffee and scooted away to where the man remained.

The stranger studied him for half a second longer than necessary, like he was trying to place Mark somewhere.

“You look like you’re thinking about something tragic,” he then said casually.

Mark blinked, puzzled. “Do I?”

“Yeah.” The man nodded with complete confidence. “Very main-character-staring-at-the-river energy.”

The comment was so ridiculous that it almost made Mark smile.

“Bad habit,” he responded.

“Thinking?” the stranger asked.

“Overthinking.”

“Ah,” he grinned. “That’s terminal, my man.”

There was something about the way he said it. Light, but not careless. Like he understood the weight of things Mark felt but refused to drown in them.

“You from here?” the stranger asked again.

“No.”

“Thought so.”

Mark tilted his head. “Is it that obvious?”

“You walk like you’re still measuring the ground,” he said, shrugging. “People who grow up here don’t look down. If they do, they’ll get carried away.”

The observation landed too accurately.

They got their coffee a second apart. Mark thanked the server and shifted his thoughts toward the mundane. Where to have dinner, which corner of the city would feel less empty tonight.

Beside him, the stranger refused a lid, immediately burned his tongue with his hot latte and laughed. “See? Selective awareness.”

They started walking in the same direction without deciding to. Mark paid no meaning to the companion and slurped on his coffee.

“I’m Jungwoo,” the stranger offered after a while.

Mark told him his name.

Jungwoo nodded. “What do you do?”

“Commercial Development.”

“Ouch. That sounds serious.”

“It’s hell on earth, yeah.” Mark nodded, agreeing. “What about you?”

“Acting. The world is my stage.” Jungwoo glanced sideways at him. “I must say, though. You don’t look like someone who enjoys leisure.”

Mark turned to him and watched as the wind pushed Jungwoo’s hair into his eyes. He didn’t fix it.

“I’m good at it,” Mark says instead.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“Oh, there was no question, though?” Mark asked, confused.

There it was again. The tilt of curiosity. The refusal to accept the surface answer. It felt uncomfortably familiar, like someone once sitting cross-legged on a living room floor insisting on Mark’s honesty.

“You always this interrogative with strangers?” Mark asked, just because he can.

“Only the interesting ones.”

Mark laughed. “I don’t think I’m that interesting.”

Jungwoo smiled softly. “You’re very wrong.”

They paused near a bench overlooking the water and Mark invited Jungwoo to sit with him. The two of them watched boats cut slow lines across the surface of the river. Somewhere behind, a street-saxophone starts playing thin, aching notes through cold air.

Jungwoo leaned back against the chair and asked, “Do you ever feel like you’re living a life you’re technically succeeding at, but not necessarily the one you wanted?”

The question was tossed out lightly and landed impeccably heavy. Mark stared at the river without actually looking at anything.

“Yes,” he said.

Jungwoo nodded like he expected that answer. “Yeah. Me too.”

“You too?”

Jungwoo laughed again. He laughed a lot in the span of 10 minutes of Mark knowing him. It was… unsettling. In a way that made Mark think that Jungwoo carried more than selective spatial awareness and happiness with him.

“Beats me, Man.”

Silence stretched between them, but it’s not uncomfortable. Jungwoo hummed along to the saxophone. Off-key. Unbothered.

For a brief, dangerous second, the scenery in front of him blurred into Donghyuck’s parents' living room.

Jungwoo turned his head suddenly, breaking the illusion.

“Did you lose something, Mark?”

“Everyone loses something, Man,” Mark replied, too fast. “That’s just how life is, right?”

“Sure. But not everyone carries it like you.”

The steam hit his face as Mark sipped on his coffee. “Like what?”

“Like they’re going to spend the rest of his life paying the price of losing.”

Losing.

Was this what losing felt like? He had always thought he was constantly trapped in a zero-sum game, where it was given for one of them to move on, the other had to break. But looking at the wreckage of what it used to be, Mark concluded there was no winner to be found.

They had both played their hands, and they had both ended up with nothing. There was no victor. It was mutual destruction.

The wind grew sharper as Mark tried to call for an objection. A light buzz came from Jungwoo’s pocket, pausing his answer. Jungwoo took his phone out and scrolled down rather fast.

“Listen,” he said, almost casually. “I don’t usually do this, but if you ever want to get coffee without the existential crisis vibe, just hit me up. Right now, my duty calls.”

He scribbled a number on the napkin he got from the coffee vendor and pressed it into Mark’s hand.

“Or not? Either way is fine,” Jungwoo added with a grin. “Mystery suits you, Mark. But not grief. It’s… not very sigma of you.”

He walked away before the moment could calcify, leaving Mark still in his thoughts. Then Jungwoo turned once again and started walking backward for a few steps.

“Stop measuring the ground, Mark,” Jungwoo called out. “It’s still there. You just need to trust yourself enough to make the right choice.”

And then he disappeared into the city crowd.

The napkin on his hand felt fragile between his fingers. The river ahead kept moving, not giving him a chance to catch up. The saxophone faded into background noise.

Mark sat there longer than he should. When he realized, the sky had shifted towards evening glory, trampling down on his plans.

For the first time in a long while, the loneliness of his life felt less like a punishment and more like an open space.

And as he finally started walking again, Mark didn’t look down.

It was unfair, Mark thought. He had spent months in this city trying to rebuild the life he left behind. He drowned himself in work and other things that could not remind him of home, of a life that killed him a lot to give him so little.

And yet… Mark unknowingly carried it still, 2,600 miles away from where he watched the fire burn his things.

And the burden of his fault could not be shown because Mark didn’t carry a bruise or a cut for it. Mark could not just point out somewhere and say there, that’s where it hurts so much. It showed in Mark’s half-hearted laughter and the trembles of his hand when he accepted the napkins.

It bleeds everywhere everyone can see. As if Mark lived in a perpetual loop of trying to save himself from something after something and someone after someone.

By the time he reached his apartment, the city had turned cold again. The warmth from the river, the saxophone, and that reckless, easy laughter had faded into a dull echo.

The elevator ride up felt too long. The hallway outside his unit was sterile and quiet— a space that still refused to feel like home. The loneliness of his life started to like a punishment again.

Mark set his keys down with practiced care, only to realize the napkin was still gripped in his hand. The number had been crumpled and blurred until it was nothing more than an illegible smudge.

Guess Mark would never be able to call Jungwoo, after all.

Mark swore he can still hear his laugh. The way Jungwoo asked questions like he wasn’t afraid of the answers. The way he looked at him like he could see straight through the practiced composure. The way he smiled like he knew something that Mark didn’t.

That is what Jaemin would’ve been like, he thought suddenly. A little reckless, a little intrusive, but always seeing it through.

Mark dropped the napkin on the dining table. It fluttered down, then still against the marble of the table. He stared at it like it might accuse him of something.

And the way Jungwoo tilted his head when he asked Mark—

That wasn’t Jaemin.

That was—

The thought didn’t finish.

Mark’s stomach turned without warning. It was sudden, violent, earth-shattering. He barely made it to the bathroom before the nausea overtook him.

It’s the coffee, Mark thought as he retched in the sink. It’s not the memory nor the realization that Jungwoo reminded him too fucking well of Jaemin and Donghyuck, Mark convinced himself.

Mark convinced himself that he got over them. He really did. But it was always that fine Sunday evening that he realized that he was stuck in a loop, becoming a black hole that swallowed himself until he could barely survive the gravity pull.

Maybe Mark did get over it.

But never over them.

Never.

_______

The thing was, Mark and Jeno shared a secret.

It was the kind of an ugly piece of truth they both carried but never dared to speak about, because to acknowledge it was to admit that their world had already fractured beyond repair.

The day of Chenle and Jisung’s wedding far away in the warm ground of home, Mark had purposefully buried himself in a weekly flow meeting that turned out to be a hollow attempt at distraction. In his defense, Mark had called in the morning to talk with Jisung to offer a strained congratulations over a flickering video call.

He can't believe it still, that the youngest of their group was to be the one marrying each other. Somehow, for some reason, Mark always thought he would be the first one to settle down and build something eternal with someone he had known more than he knew himself.

“Are you sure about this, Jisung-ah? It’s not too late yet to back off.”

Jisung scrambled to pull the tight butterfly tie on his neck loosely and stifled a constipated laugh. He looked like he could cry any minute, and so did Mark.

He pictured the grand wedding, with flowers that Chenle personally hand-picked because he was a perfectionist like that. Imagine the grand, glittering spectacle of it all. It was the kind of event that would make Jisung and Chenle permanent headlines of the local gossip mill back home.

If it was Mark– if Mark would ever get the chance to, then he would’ve kept it traditional. He would have wanted something tucked away far from the prying eyes of the world. Just their friends who felt like brothers and family who had seen them through the worst of it. He could almost hear the smooth hum of a jazz band in the corner playing the soft notes of the song Mark had always dreamed of getting married to.

It was a quiet dream, one where the only thing that mattered was the person standing at the end of the aisle.

“You sure you’re not coming, hyung? We can wait,” Chenle had said, still looking nonchalant even though Mark knew he was deeply disappointed by him.

Mark laughed. “You’re going to delay your wedding, for me? No way.”

“Sure, why not?” Chenle answered, as if rescheduling a wedding is the same as rescheduling a zoom meeting. “For as long as you’re here, the wedding can wait.”

“Sorry, I really can’t come. But all my love for you guys. Always.”

Renjun had shot him a glare that could kill from where he peeked behind Jisung’s shoulder, and Mark really, really thought that he deserved it. Renjun had flown in from Shanghai to Atlanta while Mark couldn’t be bothered to buy a ticket from New York?

So yeah, Mark deserved that. He didn't even have the right to feel offended by that silent condemnation.

“Thanks, hyung,” Jisung answered, forcing a bitter smile. “We gotta go, the ceremony’s bout to start.”

Mark forcibly swallowed a bitter chuck and nodded. “Sure. Congrats once again, Jisung-ah, Chenle-ya.”

He tried to deny it at first, telling himself that missing his two best friends' wedding could be excused by deadlines and work. Mark knew he was lying to himself because he did. But in the fractured comfort of his office, who could tell him off but his own conscience?

As the sun dipped below the Manhattan skyline and painted his office in blue shadows, the weight of his absence felt heavier than the skyscrapers surrounding him. This city was always loud, but it was a lonely kind of noise that only highlighted how empty his life was.

Truth is, every success that he reaped now felt like ash in his mouth because there was no one to tell. tThere was no one who knew the version of Mark Lee that existed before the suits and the cold glass walls.

The coffee on his desk had long since gone cold, but Mark had not moved. He just stood with his forehead pressed against the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the pulse of New York's live below. He was too tired to work, too guilty to go home, and too restless to exist anywhere else.

He was staring out at the city lights, wondering if the celebration in the South was finally winding down, wondering if they were all laughing and dancing in a world that no longer had a place for him, when his phone vibrated against the mahogany desk.

The screen lit up and Mark’s breath hitched.

The number that flashed on the screen of his phone was a sequence of digits burned into his memory so deeply he could recite it in his next life. Mark watched the phone hummed but he couldn't move to answer it, as if the sheer weight of their history pinning his arm to the desk.

Had this happened many years ago, Mark would’ve simply picked up and answered with a smile before the second ring.

But this was now, five hundred something days since he had traded their fifteen-year something for a flight to New York.

Things have changed. Mark has changed. But can he really say the same about his true feelings?

“You’re an asshole, Mark,” was the first thing Donghyuck said right after Mark finally picked up the call.

The voice was slurred, the words dragging at the edges as if they were too heavy to carry. Mark’s heart stopped. He was paralyzed by the sudden sharp sound of a voice he had tried so hard to forget.

To hear Donghyuck again in the middle of a Friday night of the wedding he had purposely missed just so he wouldn't have to face him was so… violently cruel. It almost felt like the universe was finally forcing him to look at the blood on his hands.

“Donghyuck?”

That can’t be. Donghyuck had blocked him everywhere the night he left.

“Mark— you’re so— I hate you so much.” The anger in Donghyuck’s voice was piercing at first, but it wavered, dissolving into a wet sob before sharpening again.

Mark felt like his face had been splashed by a bucket of ice water.

“Donghyuck-ah, have you been drinking? Where’s the others? Are you with them? You’re at the wedding, right?”

Of course Donghyuck was drunk. And of course he was drunk-calling Mark from the after-party in the city where they had grown up together. Perhaps the image of their incomplete group threw him off. Perhaps, he missed Mark too but was too scared to admit it out loud.

Mark didn't know and he didn't want to guess. He didnt have the right to, for fuck’s sake.

“I’m so angry that you— you left, Mark. You f-fucking left me,” he stammered, the words messy.

“Donghyuck, stay where you are, alright? I’m going to tell Jeno to find you.”

“Jeno? Fuck– Mark, what th-e fuck? You’re still the same, aren't you? You’re a coward.”

“I am.”

“You’re a man child, Mark.” Donghyuck’s tone shifted again. A bitter, slurred laugh bubbling up through the sadness. “You think– think you can just… send someone else to fix up the mess that you caused?”

Mark closed his eyes. “You’re right. I am a man child.”

“Then fucking say something else!”

What would he even say? Where was he even to start? Should Mark really start by saying that he’s been losing sleep ever since he touched the pavement of New York, as if admitting it would give him a chance of redemption?

“Aren't you going to say sorry?”

Sorry didn’t feel sincere enough, sounding more of a pathetic attempt to minimize the impact he had caused. But anything beyond that was likely to just be excuses for his behavior.

It was a familiar battle that he had lost too many times before ever since their separation. Yes, separation. It was easier to call it that, rather than what it really was, if only there was a softer, less cruel way to define what Mark did to Donghyuck.

“No, Donghyuck. I won’t.” Mark’s voice was a whisper. “Now please tell me where you are right now. I’m texting Jeno so he can get you.”

“You left,” Donghyuck sounded small now, the anger replaced by a devastating, hollow sadness. “You’re— you’re an asshole. I hate you so much, Mark. I hope you suffer.”

Donghyuck was right. Mark was an asshole.

But Mark was a consistent asshole. He had decided to leave, and he had stayed gone. He never called, he never texted, he never drunk called and never drunk texted Donghyuck no matter how much he missed him. That won't take away the damage he caused, but at least it did soften the pain and gave them some space.

He really thought the silence would soften the pain, but instead, he had just given the resentment room to grow.

“Would you believe me if I say that I’m suffering now, Hyuck? Cause I really am.”

“Not enough. I want– I want you dead,” Donghyuck hissed, the anger returning in a violent surge.

The words hit Mark harder than anything else could ever. He stared at the city lights, but all he could see was the ghost of the life he walked away from– the wasteland of Georgia where they buried something that never died.

“No you don't.”

“I do. I want you buried. I want you under the grave.”

He wondered with a sickening lurch in his stomach, just how deep the rot had gone. After everything that happened to them, how much resentment had to have curdled in the silence for Donghyuck, his Donghyuck, to wish for his death?

His Donghyuck, who used to gravitate himself around Mark. His Donghyuck, who used to cry in the comfort of Mark’s arm when life felt a bit too much. His Donghyuck, whom Mark loved with all his heart and all his soul before he became something Mark couldn't stand to look at.

Mark already hated himself. He had lived with the crushing weight of his own guilt every day since he boarded that damn plane. But hearing it mirrored back to him in Donghyuck’s broken, slurred voice made the self-loathing felt official.

If Mark felt like he was rotting from the inside out just by remembering what he had done, he couldn't even begin to fathom the agonizing scale of Donghyuck’s pain.

“Donghyuck, listen to me.”

“Mark— Melt–”

Mark squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to reach through the phone and hold Donghyuck, but his hands were tied because they were the ones that had caused the damage.

Suddenly Mark felt himself back to the front door of his shared apartment, watching Donghyuck pass out on the floor with blood on his teeth after inhaling an unexplainable amount of something bitter. And Oh God–

He fucking left.

As the pain started to grow and sank its teeth to Mark’s ribs, Jeno text came back, saying he was on his way.

Mark tried to keep Donghyuck on the line, pretending his life wasn't shattering into a million pieces with every slurred cries he heard through the line that had separated their lives.

“Donghyuck-ah, you need to forget me.”

“Don’t call me that!”

Donghyuck screamed to the phone, as if the familiarity of the three syllables Mark said had burned his skin like a knife dragged across old scars.

“Lee Donghyuck,” Mark said again, “Don’t hold this against yourself. I’m the one who left. It was not your fault, alright?”

“Mark,” Donghyuck called. “Why did you leave me, Mark?”

The silence on his end was suffocating, a matter of fact that proved Donghyuck was right. Mark was a coward. He was an asshole. He was just a man-child who couldn't even give Donghyuck an overdue reason, an answer.

The reality he had been running from finally caught up to him, slamming into his chest with the force of a light speed. He had spent months pretending he was doing the right thing, but hearing Donghyuck’s voice made the world collapse around him once again.

Suddenly, there was the sound of rustling. A friction of fabric against the phone. Jeno’s voice cut through the haze, cold and sharp. “Found him.”

“Jeno? Is that you?”

“Yeah, hyung. Don't worry, I’m taking him back to the house.”

“Is he alright?”

Mark heard the strain in Jeno’s voice as he tried to lift Donghyuck. “Jesus Christ, hyung, are you seriously asking that? Of course he’s not fucking alright.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Mark dropped himself to his chair, feeling relief and regrets washed over him like rain. “Just get back home safely.”

“On our way.”

Mark contemplated turning off the call, his thumb hovering over the red icon with a desperate urge to protect them both. He could remind himself to ask Jeno to delete the call log from Donghyuck’s phone later, a final act of mercy so that Donghyuck wouldn't have to wake up to the crushing weight of regret.

But then the sound reached him. A broken sob that bypassed Mark’s logic and went straight for his throat like a two-sided dagger.

He could hear Donghyuck crying now, the sound messy and heartbreaking. Mark could almost see it when he closed his eyes. Donghyuck fighting Jeno with a weak, clumsy desperation as his movements were weakened by the alcohol and the grief as he repeatedly called for Mark.

It was the sound of someone who had been holding it together for five hundred something days finally coming apart at the seams, and Mark realized that if he hung up now, he was just abandoning him all over again.

And so he asked, as if he still had the right to do so– as if he hadn't forfeited the privilege of worrying about Donghyuck the moment he signed that five year lease in Manhattan.

“Jeno, where was he? Where did you find him?”

“Do you really want to know, hyung?”

Mark closed his eyes. He already knew. He could feel the answer in the marrow of his bones, but he didn't want to hear it.

“I do. I want to know.”

He didn't. He wanted Jeno to lie, to say Donghyuck was at the park where they had spent their childhoods scraping knees and chasing sunsets. Or at that old, neon-lit diner where they used to split a single milkshake with seven straws until the manager kicked them out.

Anywhere but that one place Mark was deeply terrified of.

Jeno’s voice was flat as he demanded, “Then if I tell you, promise me that you wouldn't ever call Donghyuck or answer his calls again, and we won't ever talk about what happened tonight.”

“I promise, Jeno. I won’t.”

Jeno let out a long, heavy sigh that crackled through the speaker, the sound of a man exhausted by a grief so heavy that he couldn't carry by himself. A grief meant to share by the seven of them, a burden intended to be divided until it was light enough to bear, but now it lay on his shoulders like an unyielding shroud.

“He was with Jaemin, hyung. Can you even believe that? After all this time of avoiding and pretending like Jaemin didn't exist, now Hyuck’s here.”

The line went dead. The silence that followed was absolute. Mark looked down at his hands and realized they were trembling.

The next day, Donghyuck had him blocked again, and neither Mark nor Jeno ever talked about it.