Archive of Our Own

“Are you sick?”

“No, why?”

“Because Mark is?”

It’s pretty difficult to perturb Donghyuck.

Not unlike a shear thickening liquid, Donghyuck just tends to be harder to agitate under higher stress levels. He’s great in a crisis, having grown up as an older sibling to a sister and brother who looked up to him as an example, an unshakeable entity, the person who they could go to with trouble when they were hesitant to go to their parents.

Could you induce a little disquiet in him? Maybe, but he would probably remember that he is not the first nor the last person in a similar situation and shrug it off. Unsettle him the slightest? Perhaps, but only until he figured a workaround to the situation.

Donghyuck has gone his entire life on the attitude of I’ve survived everything so far and will continue to do so that when Jaemin’s words register, crisp sharp audio on his new earphones not offering him any excuse for why his brain is not processing the words, Donghyuck feels like he might be dying. “What?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, of course I did,” lies Donghyuck, hands fumbling while switching off the mixer even though he’s been through the exact same motion twenty times today already, metal screeching to a halt. His mind is racing, concern clinging to him like the rubber of the too-small gloves that he’s stretched over his fingers. “But why are you asking if I’m sick?”

“You’re joking, right?” scoffs Jaemin. Donghyuck can hear the whistle of the wind behind him, whooshing and annoying, and he thinks maybe the audio quality on his earphones is just a little too good. The sarcasm over Jaemin’s words grates much rawer on his skin.

“How did you find out anyway?” asks Donghyuck suspiciously, mental gears grinding to steady his train of thought. “No way. Have you been talking to Jeno?”

“What? No!” says Jaemin, too quickly and too defensively. Donghyuck rolls his eyes even though Jaemin can’t see him, trusting that he’ll feel Donghyuck’s judgement from an ocean away. “He wished me for my birthday and I’m not a heartless monster. Whatever. All I asked is how he’s doing.”

“And did you tell him that you’re coming this weekend?”

“No. I really wanted to, though. Should I? It would be okay, right? It’s been a while, it’s not like that anymore.”

Donghyuck has a million things to say crowding up the space in his throat from if not getting over your ex was an Olympic sport, you’d be a gold medallist to he cried about you at a party last week and told me not to tell you about it. “That’s up to you, Nana. I’m not sick though, thanks for checking in.”

“How come you’re not?” The suspicion in Jaemin’s tone borders on accusatory, drip-drip-dripping icy dread down Donghyuck’s spine. “Considering your shitty immune system, I would’ve thought you’d have picked it up right away.”

“I’ve been really busy,” says Donghyuck, tempering his voice as he dumps the paste down the drain, scraping out the beaker and increasing the speed of the water in the hope that Jaemin will not hear his voice as clearly. “I was going to go over…soon.”

“Right.” Jaemin doesn’t believe him and he’s not even bothering to hide it. Donghyuck is almost annoyed that he isn’t being spared the courtesy, but a part of him feels like he doesn’t deserve it anyway. “Well, when you do, tell him I said I hope he feels better soon.”

“Tell him yourself, weirdo,” sighs Donghyuck. “You’re still friends with him, and if you can talk to Jeno, you can talk to him.” Donghyuck takes a deep breath, fighting to pull the wet gloves from his hand, already mentally calculating all the things he needs and the bus route he needs to take to get out of there as quickly as possible. “But sure.”

“Thanks, sweetheart, you’re the best,” coos Jaemin, keeping the phone down.

Donghyuck steps out of the lab, feeling like the board has flipped under him, the rules of the game changing too abruptly to accurately map out his next move, tiny coloured player pieces poking into his skin like shards from a glass that shattered with a note sung too high.

Because Mark Lee is in love, but no longer with Lee Donghyuck.

The first time Donghyuck meets Mark is midway through primary school, but that is unimportant. His name is Minhyung and he is a year older and is polite and has rosy cheeks and sings for the elders at his parents’ wedding anniversary party. Donghyuck hates him the minute his own mother turns to his young face, his cheeks stuffed chockfull with chocolate almonds and experiencing the pinnacle of joy in his life so far, and says, “We should put you in singing lessons too.”

The second time Donghyuck meets Mark, the time he actually counts as their first meeting, is a couple years after that, when Donghyuck is starting eighth grade and his mother calls him downstairs in the middle of choosing his outfit that he is carefully laying out on his bed to introduce him to a pimply-cheeked, backward-snapback-wearing, head-too-small-for-his-limbs boy who stands at just about Donghyuck’s height, shifting his weight from foot to foot awkwardly.

“You remember Minhyung, right?” asks Donghyuck’s mother cheerfully, midway through cutting up an apple as he cautiously approaches. Donghyuck shakes his head. His memory is kind of terrible already, which is why he’s not looking forward to studying social studies this year after seeing the thickness of his textbook. “He’s Mira Aunty’s son, they’ve just returned from Canada, remember?” Donghyuck’s eyes widen in realization, nodding. There aren’t many people who leave their town, but there are even fewer who choose to come back. “Minhyung will be joining your school, so I thought it would be good for both of you to get to know each other.”

“Cool, do you want to go play some video games?” asks Donghyuck flatly, even as his mother gives him a disapproving look. She doesn’t get it. This is his process, this is how Donghyuck makes friends.

But the boy shakes his head. “Thanks, but I actually have a class to attend in a while. I’ll be going home soon, but I’ll see you at school.” A small smile. “Donghyuck, right?” Donghyuck quite likes the way how soft his name sounds in Minhyung’s voice, and he thinks they could be friends.

But then Minhyung gets snatched up by the popular kids on the very first day of school, who recognize social capital in a new student’s novelty, with the fluent English and cool name (“Mark,” mocks Donghyuck exaggeratedly to Minjung later, smoothing over the r in the name before retching in disgust), and Donghyuck hates him all over again.

He doesn’t even get why the popular kids need any more social capital anyway, given that it’s the only middle-high school in their small town and the popular kids have been popular from the very first day anyway. You just fall into an archetype when you’re around the same people all the time. Donghyuck doesn’t really have one. His test scores are average, his talents not exceptional, and there’s nothing overtly wrong with him. His friendship doesn’t help you scale the popularity ladder, but you’re not branded a loser for hanging out with him. Donghyuck just kind of is, and that’s enough for him.

But not enough for Mark with the fancy r, apparently. Donghyuck calls him everything but that when he comes up in conversation with Minjung. Melk. Murk. Makgeolli if he’s feeling particularly creative that day.

It’s rather petty, but if there’s one thing a teenager knows better than anything, it’s how to stick your nose in the air and walk past someone like you have no idea who they are. Donghyuck can stomach saying hi to Mark at times when he’s forced to, when they end up at the same house of a mutual friend of their mums, generally having at least one other kid their age as a buffer, but at school Donghyuck doesn’t know who Mark is, especially after watching him hesitate on the first day between Donghyuck’s table and the popular kids’ table and turning on his heel away from Donghyuck.

Mark shoots up five inches in the summer between ninth and tenth grade, growing into his limbs and gaining a smidge of confidence that rests lightly in the curve of his crooked smile. He’s started playing basketball, because of course he has. It’s not a very large town, so everyone already knows about the kid with the accent and shaggy hair, but something has shifted in the way people are talking about him, because now they talk about how smart he is, how nice he is, and how many members of their family they would sell to go out with him. His locker is full with sweets and roses on Valentine’s Day, love notes packed in so tight they spring out to his feet like a weapon when he opens the door, and Donghyuck thinks just about every girl in the whole school must have had some contribution to it.

Maybe some boys too. But not Donghyuck.

Donghyuck’s known that he’s liked boys for a few years, but he’s also known to never, ever breathe a word about it, given that he knows no one else who does (yet), even though he figures statistically that there should be.

Donghyuck wouldn’t go out with Mark, he thinks, he’s not really Donghyuck’s type. Donghyuck’s type is tall, gentle with the suggestion of strength, and returns his sarcasm sharpened twice over. Perhaps it’s a little narcissistic of him (other than the tall part, that’s just a preference), but given Donghyuck’s higher levels of self-awareness (not typical in teenagers), he feels like he’s just setting himself up for success.

Donghyuck’s type enters his life in the form of his mathematics classmate Wu Kangdae. They’re just like each other, and Donghyuck can feel Kangdae’s stare on him even when he’s not looking. His tell-tale heart beats faster with every time they find excuses to hang around each other and when Kangdae confesses to him implicitly in a hushed voice on the last day of ninth grade on the way back from school, suddenly Donghyuck is in his first relationship and with it, takes on enough anxiety to crush a fully functional adult right into the ground.

It is around this time that Donghyuck’s mother starts helping out more with the local church (that Donghyuck joined the choir for a couple years ago, having taken to the singing lessons much better than he thought he would) at the suggestion of Mark’s mother, and Donghyuck can no longer rely on just polite hellos when he’s directly given tasks that require him to work with Mark, require him to have conversation with him, to lift heavy boxes and guide people around events and rely on each other to not mess up responsibilities, because no one outside of the voices in Donghyuck’s head knows that they don’t actually get along.

Even Mark doesn’t seem to be aware of that, with the way that he gives Donghyuck full grins when he sees him and the way he relays conversations he overheard between the adults to give them some entertainment when they’re stuck on more boring tasks.

They’re sort of friends? They don’t ever talk about school, they still don’t even interact at school, and most of their conversation is very situational, but sometimes Donghyuck looks at the people who talk about Mark with awe in their eyes, hypothesizing the paths he will take with grandiose contemplation, and hides a smile thinking of how the weekend before, Mark zoned out watching some video on his phone and started blowing on pieces of watermelon to cool them down as he ate them. Donghyuck would have taken a video if he had a phone, but his parents told him he needs to get to eleventh grade first, so maybe next year.

His romantic relationship with Kangdae progresses glacially, a quiet but constant affair, even as the frustration of feeling like an adult in a child’s body and the weight of religious guilt and societal rejection weigh heavy on Donghyuck’s narrow shoulders. Every action crossing a line feels like a ticking time-bomb in Donghyuck’s gut, even if he knows that this is something he wants to hold onto. His siblings are warming up to the ideas of crushes and dating from their peers in school and they ask Donghyuck if he has a girlfriend, or even a boyfriend, drawing a sharp look from his father, and that’s one of the last times that Donghyuck feels any real panic, proceeding from that moment to plan and re-plan and revise facial expressions and cover stories so he can keep his fists firmly bunched in the cover of his relationship, keeping it under wraps.

Mark asks a leading question about Kangdae during a fundraiser when they’re waiting to help clean up, and Donghyuck almost falls for it, catching himself at the last moment and patching it up quickly and easily. Mark still nods, something akin to flippant sympathy in his eyes as he says, “Yeah, no worries. Even if that was the case, it’s not like I would tell anyone anyway.” Donghyuck can’t really hold anyone else around him to the same expectation, so he’s thankful, but silently.

Donghyuck sees Mark lesser and lesser over the course of that year as he stops showing up to church events. Mark has taken to basketball like he was born for it, spending hours at team practice and in the gym. They talk about him like a superstar, scholarship and future secured before he’s even started his last year of school, complete with a beautiful and driven girlfriend at his side, the school’s royal couple, and he wears the praise like a lopsided crown, falsely modest, his spine straight and his smile cocky, even if the way he works remains endlessly sincere.

Until a bad landing shatters his knee three months before college, and with it shatters Mark Lee himself.

The person who ends up as Donghyuck’s batchmate in college a year and a half later is only a shell of his former self.

Donghyuck hasn’t really spoken to him since the accident, since Mark didn’t even leave the house for a good eight months, finished high school a year late at a different town altogether, living with his uncle, and Donghyuck’s college applications and exams kept him from helping out at the church at all, his parents laying the pressure on thick, locking up his phone for most of the day and only letting him check it right before bedtime.

He manages to make it out not just unscathed, but triumphant, making it to one of the top colleges in one of the biggest cities in the country, and he finds out from his mother (who found out through a friend of a friend of Mark’s mother) that Mark will also be going there. Mark and Donghyuck are friends on Facebook (that his parents don’t know he has), and sometimes Donghyuck had considered sending a message, but he always got too awkward before he pressed the send button.

All in all, Donghyuck is happy where he ended up. A great college in a progressive city, with Kangdae only fifteen minutes away, in a major that he genuinely wanted. He has high hopes for the things he will learn, for the people he will meet, for everything that lies ahead of him, but the magnetic pull to a shred of familiarity that assuages the initial homesickness brewing in his chest is what has Donghyuck waving when he sees Mark walk into their very first common physics class.

Déjà vu is bitter and striking, like a blow to the face that has Donghyuck biting down on his tongue, drawing blood when Mark looks over at the empty seat next to Donghyuck and chooses to sit on the opposite side of the class. Donghyuck rolls his eyes, face darkening like a thundercloud as he begins doodling a little devil at the corner of his notebook, watched closely by the boy who has taken the seat to his other side, who reaches over and adds eyebrows to Donghyuck’s doodle as some kind of offer of friendship, that Donghyuck takes gratefully.

Na Jaemin becomes a steadfast fixture at Donghyuck’s side, choices and outlook similar to an enabling fault but completely different in the details. They make other friends – Doyun, Hyun, Shinhyeo, Wurin, all full of life and excited to make the most of college, but Jaemin is Donghyuck’s favourite. Mark doesn’t really seem to have formed a group around him, keeping to the front rows of his classes and making a home for himself at the library.

The sharp change in attitudes delights Donghyuck, finally learning that he no longer needs to look over his shoulder for people looking to judge him and make him the subject of the weekly gossip crop. One of Donghyuck’s wingmates is entirely out, pride flag on his door and never dodging the correction when someone says it’s nice that he’s an ally. Donghyuck smiles at him in the hallways and tells himself that he’ll be the same one day, putting his back into breaking down all the walls he put up and directing that energy at other hurdles that come his way. The preparations he’s made from when he was a teenager have given him a much stronger can-do attitude, making him his friend group’s standard pick-me-up member, the person they rely on for advice and encouragement.

Despite the extra freedom, Donghyuck finds himself increasingly put off by the fact that Kangdae doesn’t take more opportunities to see him. Sure, they’re in different colleges, and they have their own friends and lives, but their priorities seem to be diverging. Donghyuck thinks they should be putting in some effort to at least be present in the moments they’re together, even if they’re not taking advantage of every opportunity they have to meet up. They see each other on the weekends, and that feels like enough, but Kangdae answers his messages as he sits at a pretty café holding Donghyuck’s hand and Donghyuck is irked.

It doesn’t feel right to be irritated by the small things, because Kangdae is holding Donghyuck’s hand in public, something that they couldn’t do for three years, but Donghyuck admits to Jaemin when they sit on a rooftop one Friday night—in passing, almost as a silly hypothesis that can be passed over—that he isn’t really quite sure if he loves Kangdae or the effort he put in that keeps their relationship going this long.

With every Instagram post that Kangdae puts up with his friends, it becomes increasingly obvious to Donghyuck how sparse his presence on Kangdae’s profile is, but that’s okay, because they prefer to keep aspects of their relationship private anyway. Meeting up every weekend becomes every two weekends, but that’s okay, because they’re both in their first year and have a lot going on. Donghyuck knows that he can rely on Kangdae in a crisis, and that’s all that matters.

Donghyuck gets assigned to work on a team with Mark and a couple others on their final project in the common ecology and environment course, a coincidence that the universe seemed to work overtime to concoct, considering that there are five hundred students across their year and all of them are taking the course, and Donghyuck’s not really looking forward to it. Luckily, most of their communication happens over text, so Donghyuck can be polite and use capitalization and proper punctuation in his texts about how they should divide work up. He ends up having to make the report and present their work with Mark, but that’s okay because they only need to meet up once, they have a fixed agenda, and Donghyuck knows that Mark has exceptional speaking skills anyway so they’ll be alright.

The transition of fall to winter brings a deathly chill that weekend that has Donghyuck waking up with his forehead burning and nose running, all the wrong functions for those body parts. He’s left his window open and now is left to regret it sorely, literally and metaphorically. He opens his phone to text Mark, apologizing for not being able to make it since he’s sick, and tells him that he’ll work on the outline today and see if he’s feeling well enough to make it tomorrow since their report is due on Monday.

Kangdae doesn’t have much going on today, Donghyuck knows he’s only going to be hanging out with his friends, so the frown that descends upon his eyebrows when he gets the response I’ll come see you after dinner! Drink lots of water and don’t go out, love bug is deep and severe. It gets even worse when Donghyuck opens his Instagram story around noon, and it’s some goofy video of all of them at the mall, making some bad joke about the shape of the donuts they bought.

There’s a knock on Donghyuck’s door and he’s immediately suspicious, knowing that Jaemin has a makeup physics lab until one since he missed last week’s. He hasn’t even told any of the others that he’s sick yet, because the screen was making his eyes hurt and he threw his phone away from him as far as he could to prevent himself from succumbing to the boredom. Maybe Jaemin told one of them?

Mark Lee is at the door, backpack over his shoulders and scarf wrapped tight around his neck, looking just as tentative as the first time they met. They’re nearly the same height now as well, with Mark just having the barest inch over Donghyuck, and it feels unfamiliar, because Mark had all his growth spurts earlier than Donghyuck and Donghyuck is only used to looking upwards at those eyes.

“Oh, wow,” says Mark gracelessly. “You’re like, really sick.”

Donghyuck tilts his head. “Did you come by to verify or something?” Did Mark really come all the way to work on the project? Donghyuck knew he could be hardworking to the point of cutthroat but he wasn’t sure how much of that remained in Mark’s system, whether he had mellowed out. Maybe it was a manufacturing defect.

Mark’s ears go red as he shakes his head vehemently. “No! I—” He gestures to his backpack. “You said you were sick and you’re on this side of campus so I thought it may be hard for you to go get medicines or food so I thought I’d just drop some off.” Donghyuck stares stupidly, brain working at half-speed. “You know, because my hostel is way closer to both the hospital and the cafeteria, and by some miracle they actually had soup today and well, that’s what you generally get a sick person, right?”

“Yes,” says Donghyuck slowly. “So you’re not here to work on the project? I mean, we can still do that but my eyes kind of hurt when I look at the screen and so—”

“Oh my god, dude, that’s not what I’m here for.” Mark presses his lips together, taking a deep breath. “Seriously, we can work on that when you’re feeling better, or I can finish the report and you can present it, but that’s not what I’m here for at all.”

There’s a small glimmer in Mark’s eyes, earnest and concerned, and Donghyuck realizes he doesn’t want to live like this anymore.

“Could you give me a minute?”

Mark nods in response, and Donghyuck walks three steps away, and angrily punches the contact photo of the number he’s last called, the smiling face staring back at him mockingly. Kangdae picks up on the sixth ring, five rings too many, and his voice has too many notes of enjoyment and not enough notes of concern as he says, “Hey babe, how’re you feeling?”

The anger that floods Donghyuck’s veins is even hotter than his fever, and he scrunches up his face as ugly tears press up against the backs of his eyes, the nail in the coffin barely piercing his dulled heart. “I’m doing fine. I called to tell you that I can’t do this. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“I—where is this even coming from? Donghyuck, you’re sick and tired, please go rest, and we can talk about it later.”

“See, this is the problem, you won’t even come over to talk about it now!” Donghyuck’s voice raises in pitch before he brings it down to a whisper-shout. Not that it matters because Mark can probably hear him anyway. “Spare yourself the trouble. Don’t act surprised. Enough is enough.”

Donghyuck puts the phone down, feeling like he’s been letting out a breath that he’s been holding longer than he can remember. He walks back to the door, and Mark’s face is like a glass window, transparent in his concern. “You heard all that, didn’t you?” Mark just shrugs. “It’s not a long story. My boyfriend is—was—a piece of shit.” Donghyuck sighs, stuttering midway to suck in his breath to stop his runny nose. “It doesn’t matter, I’m sorry you had to…hear that.”

Donghyuck sways forward slightly, and Mark’s hand twitches like he’s about to reach out. “Do you want some company for a while?”

“No, I couldn’t bother you like that, I—” Donghyuck shakes his head, vision blurring. What would they even talk about? If Donghyuck has to even think about solar gain, his head will explode. “You don’t have to, really.”

“I know,” nods Mark. “But I’d like to. Even without the whole, you know, breakup thing, I would have still offered because like I said, you look really sick. I can just do some work if you want to rest, I was headed to the library anyway so I have my laptop.”

Donghyuck wants to say no, to be alone for a while in the pounding cacophony of his worst thoughts so he can cry everything away, but his fever feels worse than it did ten minutes ago and his headache is amping up like a pre-chorus buildup to a beat drop, so he just nods. Dying next to an old acquaintance seems preferable to dying alone in every sense of the word anyway.

Mark sets up his laptop on Donghyuck’s desk after filling a glass of water for Donghyuck to have some medicine, and Donghyuck falls asleep to the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of Mark’s fingers on the keyboard.

Donghyuck wakes up about an hour later, and his headache has settled, leaving the gravity of the situation to sink in. He stares at Mark’s back, barely awake yet, and stifles a laugh at the surprising turn of events. Two hours ago, Donghyuck had a boyfriend and was on no real talking terms with Mark, and look at him now. A small laugh spills over from Donghyuck’s lips and Mark swivels around in his chair to look at him, a confused smile working its way over his lips when he meets Donghyuck’s eyes.

“What’s funny?” asks Mark, as Donghyuck covers his mouth to stem the laughter.

“I… this,” says Donghyuck, voice scratchy as he gestures to the space between them.

“What about it?”

“I don’t know, I thought you hated me,” says Donghyuck candidly.

Mark presses his lips together and cringes in on himself in embarrassment. “I didn’t hate you. I was actually looking forward to talking to you again.”

“Yeah, right,” says Donghyuck, sarcasm strong but not biting. “I’ve known you since forever and this is the first actual conversation we’re having since we got here. I cannot tell you how surprised I am that you’re here, really.”

“See, that part, that’s my fault, yeah,” admits Mark, shrugging. “In my defence, I was going to address it…eventually.”

“Why not now?” suggests Donghyuck, pushing himself up into a sitting position with a gargantuan effort.

“I don’t know, dude, it’s kind of…vulnerable?”

“Look at me,” says Donghyuck, tilting his head in amused disbelief. “I bet I look straight out of a horror movie right now, I’m in my pyjamas, and you heard me breaking up with my partner of three years. Are you really going to tell me that it’s too vulnerable? If anything, I’ll bet it’s not vulnerable enough.”

“Uh, okay, here goes then,” says Mark, rubbing his neck and looking at the ground, smile flaring when he finds it in himself to look up at Donghyuck again. “You knew me before the accident.” A deep breath. “You knew what I was like before that, and I had already constructed this new version of myself so it was hard to be around someone who knew the older version of me. Especially when the other version was, you know…better.”

“I don’t think there’s really the sense of better here,” says Donghyuck after a small pause. Maybe this was more vulnerable than Donghyuck thought, he has to give Mark credit there. “It’s all just you. There are incidents that shape you, but it’s really all just, you know, you.”

“Yeah, it took me a while to come around to that idea,” says Mark, aimlessly cracking the knuckles on his left hand. “I felt really guilty because we used to be friends and I shouldn’t be out here pinning any regrets I have on someone who had no bearing on any of the circumstances, you know? That was really shitty of me. I’m so sorry about that.”

Donghyuck has been called blunt his whole life. Straightforward. Brutally honest. But there is something different about Mark’s honesty, like it takes even more strength to take the mask off than to simply just never have one on.

“No, it’s okay,” says Donghyuck softly, adding on a confirmatory nod. “You’re good. We’re good. Thanks for staying.”

Jaemin calls about ten minutes later, when Mark and Donghyuck are heating up the soup on the tiny hotplate in Donghyuck’s room, asking if Donghyuck needs anything since his lab is over and he’s on the way. He comes by to drop off more food, pleasantly surprised by the introduction that Donghyuck makes.

“Also,” says Jaemin, voice hesitant as he tries to choose his words. “I think I saw your boyfriend downstairs? He was trying to let the security hyung let him upstairs but he didn’t have a student card. Do you want me to let him up with mine?”

Donghyuck shakes his head, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “We broke up. Super short story, it was just long coming. Don’t let him up and tell hyung not to as well. That may be overkill. Don’t let him up.” Jaemin nods and salutes, and Donghyuck can’t help but think that it was truly a blessing in disguise that Kangdae never really had the time to meet and get to know Donghyuck’s friends.

Jaemin leaves after blowing a couple flying kisses to Donghyuck, refusing to step foot in the room since he has auditions for the football club in a couple days and cannot afford to fall sick, but makes Donghyuck promise to let him know if he needs anything at all.

“He actually has a great point there,” says Mark, cross-legged on the small wooden chair that Donghyuck has next to his desk. “I’m probably going to catch what you have.”

“It’s probably not contagious,” says Donghyuck, hoping that the flippancy of saying it will be enough. “And we’re not sharing utensils or anything, you’ll be fine.”

Mark stays for the whole afternoon, during which Donghyuck is stuck in a cycle of waking up, going to the bathroom, drinking another glass of water that Mark keeps refilled for him, and going back to sleep. His phone is on silent and his room is a comforting kind of warm. Mark is unobtrusive and his presence is calming, because when Donghyuck’s slumber glitches out now and then, when he turns over and his body aches and pulls a groan from his throat, Mark turns around, worry all over his face until Donghyuck gives him a weak thumbs-up.

It’s new and familiar at the same time. It’s the same way Donghyuck would take care of his younger siblings when they fell sick, the same way he’d take care of Kangdae when he would fuck up his sleep schedule during exam season. Donghyuck is generally the one caring, not the one being cared for, and it’s about five PM when he realizes that Mark has made him feel more cared for in the last half a day than his entire broken years-long relationship.

Turns out crying sniffles and cold sniffles sound different enough, because Mark actually gets up off his chair to peer at Donghyuck, who is trying and failing to hide his tears in his pillow. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I—” Donghyuck takes a shuddering breath, curling in on himself and pressing his blanket to his face in a futile attempt to stem the stream from his eyes. “God, this is so embarrassing.”

“Can I sit down?” asks Mark gently, and Donghyuck moves closer to the wall wordlessly. Mark doesn’t say anything, just keeps a hand on Donghyuck’s forearm, anchoring and firm, and lets Donghyuck cry, occasionally adding in a reassuring pat. “It’ll pass, you know?”

“I know,” says Donghyuck wetly. “But it needs to go through me first, and I hate that.”

Mark hums, rubbing Donghyuck’s arm encouragingly. “It’s been about six hours, do you want to take another medicine? How are you feeling?”

“Absolutely on top of the world, as you can tell,” says Donghyuck, rolling over after Mark gets up off the bed. “The fever is coming down. I think. I may just need to sleep more.” He attempts a smile when Mark brings him the tablet and a glass of water, and thinks that even if he looks grotesque, Mark is not letting him know. “You can leave, seriously. I think I’m just going to be out until the morning.”

“If you’re sure,” says Mark with a firm nod. “I’m almost done with the report anyway. I just have the last couple sections.”

“Leave that for me, I need to earn those contributions points somehow.”

“Sure,” laughs Mark, going back to the desk to unplug his charger from the power strip. “I’ll see you in class then?”

“If you don’t fall sick as well.”

Predictably, Mark falls sick as well, nursing a cold and sore throat on the day of their presentation three days later, cheeks red and voice nasal. Donghyuck does the whole presentation himself and buys Mark soup later as an apology.

“Next time, don’t put yourself directly in the line of fire,” says Donghyuck with an eye-roll, even if it is more affectionate and less exasperated. “Have some sense of self-preservation, why don’t you.”

“I know nothing except self-preservation,” says Mark, words decorated with a small laugh. “Trust me, this was an anomaly.”

This marks the beginning of a trend of sorts, where Mark always happens to be within arm’s distance when things are going wrong.

It’s about a month into the second semester, when winter is just beginning to melt into spring, and troubles are brewing within the friend group. Hyun has a girlfriend now, and Wurin has enough things to say about that. He points it out every time Hyun doesn’t join them to hang out, much to Donghyuck’s distaste, because at least Hyun is spending time with his partner, and Donghyuck knows more than anyone else how important that is. Jaemin is refusing to take sides altogether, while Shinhyeo seems more than eager to back Wurin up, and Doyun changes his views depending on who is part of the conversation.

It's a Saturday morning and Donghyuck is sick of hanging out with them all week, navigating conversations like he’s tiptoeing through a field of landmines. Jaemin has gone back home for the weekend as he generally does (lucky bastard), and Donghyuck doesn’t want to sit in his room anymore.

He finds himself walking to the supermarket, skipping every song on his playlist because he doesn’t seem to be in the mood to listen to any of them. He finds Mark there, complete in a large brown hoodie and a watermelon ice-pop that Donghyuck says is a one-way ticket to Sickness City in February, but Mark insists that his system can handle it, since these things are his go-to even in peak winter. Donghyuck wonders what it must be like to have a nearly indestructible immune system.

They’re actual friends now, having hung out a couple times when they ran into each other when they went home for the winter, but they don’t share any classes this semester other than Chemistry Lab, and even there, they aren’t in the same experiment group, so Donghyuck has mostly been seeing Mark struggle to weigh out chemicals on a common lab scale or just seeing the back of his head when his group inevitably always leaves before Donghyuck’s.

Growing apart would have been a natural course of action, but Donghyuck starts with “hey, what’s your opinion on—" before contextualizing the last conversation he had with Wurin over how fast friendships fall apart over relationships, and they have enough to talk about for a good three hours. Mark is measured and insightful, and he isn’t raring for a fight the way that the boys in Donghyuck’s friend group always are, and he does this thing where he just assumes the best of everyone.

Donghyuck thinks people were right when they said Mark has it all together. Just in a completely different way.

Then again, sometimes Mark definitely does not have it together, and Donghyuck gets a peek of the circus behind the curtains when Mark calls him close to midnight on a random Tuesday night, a couple of weeks after.

“Hey, um,” Mark’s breathing is ragged, words heavy with an effort. “Are you up? I need a favour.”

“Yeah, sure.” Donghyuck scrambles out of bed, his first attempt at fixing his sleep schedule falling apart before the starting gun. “What do you need?”

“You said Jaemin has a car, right? I can’t…move my leg. It’s fucking killing me, I think I need to go to the campus hospital but I can’t get up and I definitely can’t cycle. I would call the ambulance but then the whole building would know and I’m just…”

“No, I get it,” says Donghyuck reassuringly. “I’ll pick up the car and be there, do you need anything else?” Mark replies in the negative, a groan more than a word, and Donghyuck picks up his keys and wallet and crashes Jaemin’s room unceremoniously. Jaemin is working late on an assignment that he’s left until the last minute. It’s not like Donghyuck expected him to be sleeping at all – he knows what Jaemin’s daily caffeine intake looks like, he’s not sure Jaemin even blinks honestly.

It's been a year or two since Donghyuck drove, because he hates almost nothing more than the feeling of having horrifying driving statistics and potential accident scenarios flash in his head from the moment he turns the key to switch the engine on. He only learnt how to drive because his mother started working again and someone had to pick his siblings up from school, but every day was a struggle even then, only ever getting marginally easier.

Donghyuck prays under his breath that a drunk college student with a death wish doesn’t stumble in front of the car, driving defensively as he weaves his way through to Mark’s hostel. It’s a struggle, to support Mark’s weight on his shoulder while also trying not to make it look like too much of a matter of concern, just two bros hanging out – besties, even – as they carefully make their way from the elevator to the car, but most of the people out are too high or sleep-deprived to give them a second glance. (Yeah, it’s a Tuesday.)

“Oh my god, what if they need to chop off my leg?” says Mark, beads of sweat on his forehead as he sits with his leg outstretched in the backseat, voice steadily rising in pitch. “I’d come to terms with that years ago, but I have now gone away from the terms so do I need to come to them again, or—?”

“Minhyung, seriously.” Donghyuck’s tone is even, masking the frazzle underneath it, taking an approach that he hopes will not make things worse.

Mark shuts up immediately, eyes wide in the rear view mirror. “How do you even remem—”

“They’re not going to chop your leg off,” says Donghyuck, taking a smooth right turn and avoiding two cyclists who are nearly on the wrong side of the road. “You’re going to be fine, it’s probably something minor. Take a deep breath, yeah? What music do you like? Here.” Donghyuck passes his phone back to Mark quickly, eyes not leaving the road. “Play something to calm yourself down. The password’s oh-six-oh-six.”

“What is that, your birthday?” asks Mark, the tension in his voice momentarily relieved by disbelief. “Didn’t peg you as a birthday-passcode kind of person.”

“What does that even mean?” asks Donghyuck, switching his turn signal on once more, eyes constantly flicking from mirror to mirror. “It’s not like I have things to hide. Anymore.”

“So you recently became a birthday-passcode type of person,” clarifies Mark. “Interesting. I didn’t think you could go back to that.”

“That’s such an incredibly weird thing to care about,” says Donghyuck, shaking his head as they cruise down the main road. “What’s yours anyway? Or are you one of those people who is super secretive about their passcode and won’t tell anyone?”

“It’s two-three-oh-nine.”

“And that’s…not your birthday?”

“Yes. Not even the same month.”

“I wouldn’t know, actually,” says Donghyuck, seeing the final turning for the campus hospital come slowly into view in the distance. “I don’t remember celebrating your birthday at school.”

“Yeah, it was generally towards the very end of summer vacations,” says Mark. “August second.”

“I’ll try to remember but I probably won’t,” laughs Donghyuck. “Whose birthday is on your phone then? Assuming it is a birthday.”

“Yuqi,” says Mark, in a restrained, fake-nonchalant tone.

Donghyuck raises his eyebrows. He knows only of Ahin from school, who Mark broke up with right after the accident, after which she told everyone at school about the future they had planned together, in borderline excruciating detail. It made for a couple days of interesting lunch conversation with Minjung, though. “New girlfriend?”

“I hope so,” says Mark, not meeting Donghyuck’s eyes in the mirror. “We haven’t really had a conversation to define the relationship yet, but I have a good feeling.”

“And your phone password is already her birthday? Dude, that’s established-relationship-headed-to-marriage behaviour.”

“Well, sorry if I’m a little bit crazy about her already,” says Mark, as Donghyuck parks the car with no difficulty thanks to the parking lot being nearly empty. “The world is so cruel to romantics.”

“Do you want me to call her here?” asks Donghyuck, as he opens the door and waves over the security guard to come help him with Mark. “You know, for moral support?”

“No way,” breathes Mark, face contorted in trying to ease himself out of the backseat. “Look at me, I’m a mess, I don’t want her to see me like this.”

So it’s Donghyuck who sits by Mark’s side when the doctor asks him questions, Donghyuck’s hand that Mark nearly crushes when the doctor tries to ease him into some knee exercises to assess his pain, and Donghyuck who the doctor turns to when he’s made his assessment.

“Tell your friend to drop some courses, or at least take ones in the same building,” says the doctor, and Donghyuck nods obediently. Mark has been given a painkiller and a knee brace, and instructions on some knee exercises and to not overdo the cycling.

“What are you even taking two extra courses this semester for?” asks Donghyuck, Mark’s arm secured around his shoulder as they walk back to the car.  “We already have five courses and a lab, no one else is doing this much.”

“I’m just trying to front-load it and get ahead,” says Mark, and then sheepishly adds, “It’s not like I have much else to do.”

“Then find something else to do,” says Donghyuck, pulling open the door and keeping a protective hand at the edge of the opening so that Mark doesn’t accidentally hit his head. “The theatre club has auditions for a play next week. The music club has contingent auditions on Thursday. The writing club has an event they’re hosting on Friday evening. Or play like, chess or something. Don’t spend your time in college just studying, that’s what we’re here for but that’s not what you should restrict yourself to.”

“You make a great point,” says Mark, settling back down with far less effort this time. “Can you help me out tomorrow then?”

“With?”

“Figuring out which courses to drop. And seeing which clubs to join, since you seem to know a lot about it.”

“Sure,” smiles Donghyuck as he gets into the front seat, seatbelt buckling with a click. “You want to meet at the campus café? Or at the Peacock Workspace? Or your room?” They haven’t really made plans before. It feels like unlocking another feature.

“My room works, because, you know,” Mark points to his knee, raising his other hand dramatically to his forehead. Donghyuck thinks the theatre club would really like him. “I should probably not be stepping out too much for a day or two.” Donghyuck passes his phone back to Mark. “Also, thanks for…snapping me out of it when I was freaking out. Even if I can barely ever remember being called Minhyung now.”

“Yeah, same,” lies Donghyuck. It’s one of the few random things that his memory has managed to keep ahold of from his childhood. The taste of the lime soda he used to take his siblings to get on Fridays after school, the way one of the sisters in the church would always pronounce certain words with an accent, the fact that Mark used to be called Minhyung. “It’s a nice name, though.”

Mark shrugs as Donghyuck pulls the car out. “It’s alright, I guess.”

“It suits you better, I think.”

“It’s not a bad name at all, it just feels like I based my personality around being Mark when people couldn’t pronounce Minhyung and it just stuck. And now it’s such an obscure and ancient fact about me that it’s weird when people know.”

“Would you prefer I not use it then?”

“No, but maybe don’t tell anyone else about it.”

“Ooh, so I have forbidden information,” says Donghyuck with a gleeful laugh. “Don’t worry, you can trust me.”

There’s a small smile placed over Mark’s words. “I know.”

Mark spends the ride back to his hostel complimenting Donghyuck’s choice of music more than actually playing music. He plays a song and then gets distracted by a different song on the playlist, cutting the first song out before the second verse. Donghyuck wants to strangle him, and expresses just as much, which just makes Mark continue to do the exact same.

“The next time you need help,” threatens Donghyuck, snatching his phone back once they are at Mark’s door. “I’m not going to be available. Just for this.”

“Oh no, I’m so scared,” says Mark in a high-pitched voice, hands clapped to his cheeks before his face relaxes into a grin. “In all seriousness, thank you, though.”

“Anytime,” smiles Donghyuck. “But I’m never letting you choose the music ever again. I hope your knee feels better soon, and uh, good luck with your sort-of girlfriend.”

Yuqi becomes Mark’s girlfriend two days later.

Mark is smitten. The news reaches Donghyuck through Mark first and Jaemin second, because news of any relationship in their year spreads very quickly. Relationships in engineering college are a rarity, like spotting a polar bear in a desert. Suddenly everyone is lining up and gawking, but mostly, everyone is placing bets on how long the polar bear can even survive there.

But every time Donghyuck sees them around campus, they’re holding hands and Mark always has the coolest grin on his face, like he’s aware of how lucky he is, but that he thinks she didn’t get a bad deal either. Donghyuck is amused every time Mark sees him in passing, catching a glimpse of the boy he knew in high school, a return of the same awareness that eyes are on him, but then Mark follows up with an enthusiastic wave and Donghyuck remembers things are different now, and he’s glad Mark’s doing well because honestly, Donghyuck isn’t.

Donghyuck’s friend group is suspended in tension. He’s so thankful that Jaemin is two rooms away from him, sane and neutral and committed to not enabling fights, but Donghyuck can only hang out with a maximum of two of the others at a time, seeing that their ideas on relationships that are not even their own are keeping them from peace in the friend group, and they dig their heels in when the person that they’re even annoyed about is not around, not even to their face.

This all culminates in a big fight on a Thursday afternoon after their applied mechanics class during the home stretch of the term, and Donghyuck is emotionally exhausted by the end of it, having to mediate for two hours straight. The good part is that they manage to patch it up, but Donghyuck is frankly just fed up that they let it get this bad. Jaemin tries to pull Donghyuck out multiple times, but Donghyuck refuses to budge until they sort it all out.

But the timing? Truly abysmal. Donghyuck has his final Chemistry lab exam the next day but he can’t even seem to concentrate on the material in front of him, so he leaves his hostel room with a headache buzzing around his skull, thinking he’ll be okay after a little walk, only to get caught in the rain in the middle of the main road, not having accounted for spring showers, considering they were not a thing back home.

When Donghyuck wakes up with heavy eyelids and no knowledge on how to go about gravimetry, he feels like an idiot and a half. He’s weak and flushed and barely able to pull himself out of bed, about to text Jaemin before he realizes that Jaemin was assigned to the morning session and must already be getting ready for lab. Donghyuck takes the quickest, most bare-minimum shower known to mankind, arms feeling like lead as he searches for medicine. He chooses to remain standing for a little longer instead of going through the ordeal of having to get up off the bed once more until Mark shows up.

“Boy, you have some timing,” says Mark, words light but worry heavy on his face as Donghyuck lets him in. “Maybe you’re just allergic to academics, have you been tested for that?” Donghyuck nods wordlessly, and Mark’s expression crumples even further. “Oh my god, you’re too sick for comebacks. Why don’t you sit this one out?”

“I don’t want to do the exam all on my own,” says Donghyuck, swiping his hand over his nose, eliciting a look of restrained disgust from Mark. “I want to get it done with, the first-year labs are the worst. That’s why I called you over. I need a crash course. I don’t even care about getting an A at this point, I just need to pass.”

Mark nods like he’s been assigned a mission of international importance, making Donghyuck sit down on the bed, bottle of hot water in hand and leaning against the headboard so he doesn’t fall asleep. “Just the most important things, yeah?”

Mark walks Donghyuck through everything until Donghyuck can’t process anymore, metaphorical legs collapsing beneath him. “Can you come get me after lunch? So I don’t drop off and miss the exam?”

True to his word, Mark is back a little later, having picked up something light to keep Donghyuck going, along with a pack of tissues and a couple large handkerchiefs for Donghyuck to keep on hand. He combs Donghyuck’s hair and helps him look a little less sick, and he’s there waiting by the door when Donghyuck is done with the exam, stance oscillatory as it generally is every time he’s nervous.

Donghyuck has gotten slightly better over the course of the exam – he was put by a window so the fresh air helped, and luckily his experiment didn’t require him to stand too much either, but he’s still exhausted beyond words when he gets back to his room, Jaemin having picked both him and Mark up.

Mark seems too worried to leave. Donghyuck thinks their friendship is steady enough that he doesn’t need to put on the whole polite no, don’t worry, I’ve got this routine, simply moving towards the wall to let Mark sit on the bed next to him and work on his laptop while Donghyuck sleeps fitfully.

The next day is Mark’s two-month anniversary with Yuqi, but when Mark falls sick a day after that, the one sitting by his bed is Donghyuck, and not her.

“Does she even know about the accident?” asks Donghyuck plainly on the second day, lying next to Mark as they watch some video about a professional music producer reacting to songs by their favourite band.

“Not yet,” says Mark, discomfiture rankling beneath his words (or it could just be the sore throat). “I’ll tell her about it.”

“Wait, so she hasn’t even seen the scar?” Donghyuck himself had only seen the scar four hours ago, when Mark’s fever broke and made him so sweaty that he needed to change into a tank top and the only pair of shorts he owned. Mark seemed to be trying to be nonchalant about it in a manner that was super chalant, giving off the same uncomfortable energy that Donghyuck guesses he would if he was lying around with his dick out. Mark treats the thick line down his patella like it’s his worst nemesis, and his superpower to defeat it is pants that come down to his ankles.

“No, we’re not really—we haven’t, um—”

Mark’s cheeks are going tomato red, and Donghyuck suddenly understands the implication. “You haven’t had sex?”

“Yes?”

“That’s fine,” says Donghyuck, shaking his head. “What do you look so embarrassed about? We’re adults, I’m not asking for details or something pervy, dude.” A short, tense silence. “So does she know you’re sick?”

“Yeah, she does.”

“So why am I stuck taking care of you?” Donghyuck tries to keep his tone light, trying not to sound too accusatory, trying to figure out where the fault would lean towards.

“Wow, dude, it’s like you hate me,” says Mark dramatically, huffing and crossing his arms.

“I do, indeed, that’s why I’ve been here the last day and a half.”

“You’re here because you like the posters on my walls.” There are tons of good-looking men from shows and bands that Donghyuck hasn’t even heard of. He cannot complain.

“Admittedly, yes,” nods Donghyuck, sparing a smile before continuing, “But really, why?”

“Because it’s your fault I’m sick,” says Mark, the short pause before the statement making it seem like he’s just latched onto that in his head. “And I don’t want to make her sick as well.” Donghyuck stares, and Mark’s eyes are tired but so, so honest, almost against his will, and all Donghyuck has to do is wait until Mark takes a deep breath, voice quieter as he says, “Okay, so maybe I don’t know how to…seem weak in front of her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel invincible around her,” says Mark, a small besotted smile draping itself over his lips as his mind drifts to her. “She thinks I’m cooler than I actually am, and she really has it all together, and dating her is fun and easy. She’s never seen me fail or stumble or fuck up in the slightest. I don’t know if she’d even want me after that, she seems to love this idea that we’re this really cool, put-together couple, and I don’t know when I’m ready for that perception to be changed, so I think that also plays into the whole…sex thing. It feels too vulnerable.”

“I get that,” says Donghyuck softly. “But vulnerability is the cornerstone of every relationship, it’s literally the cornerstone of any kind of love. There’s plenty of people who will want you when things are great, but the point is to pick someone that you trust to look at the worst of you and want to be around you anyway, isn’t it? How long can you pull off this charade of pretending you have no flaws and no issues?”

The answer is a total of eleven weeks. The semester ends three weeks later and with it, Mark’s and Yuqi’s relationship.

The second year of college brings Lee Jeno, a student from a different college who has transferred to theirs, right into Mark’s branch. Their names are right next to each other on the roll list too, since they have the same last name, and Mark adores the guy. He thinks Jeno’s the sweetest thing in the world, a walking, talking marshmallow.

They’ve finished all the cross-branch courses, and the upcoming ones are purely biotech-related, which Mark is pretty psyched about. He took the branch because it was what he had the scores to get into, but between the introductory courses and a light project he did with a professor over the summer, Mark’s fostering a real affection for it.

Mark is making more friends in his own branch too – other than Jeno, there’s also Yeji, who is sharp as a tack and has basically adopted Mark despite being a year younger in age, and there’s Dejun, who is a year behind just like Mark, because he didn’t perform well enough in his entrance exams the first time to make it into this college but now has the highest GPA in their branch. They’re all a little stereotypically nerdy, a touch too introverted, but they get along very well with each other and never stop talking about how nice it is to have company like that.

Yeji is persuaded by Mark into joining the theatre club – he’s a coordinator there now, and he spends a couple hours on weekends at meetings designing posters and contacting people for events they organize. Jeno is a little overwhelmed by the campus in the best way – his previous college had a total of three clubs and they were all regulated by the professors, so he’s still getting used to everything. Dejun ends up joining the music club, and he’s telling Mark about how their current lead singer is so incredibly talented when it clicks in Mark’s mind who he’s talking about.

“Wait. Are you talking about Lee Donghyuck?”

Dejun’s face lights up in remembrance and he nods enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s his name! Thanks for sparing me the embarrassment of having to ask him again at next practice. Do you know him?”

“Yeah, we’re friends. I should text him, actually.”

The only downside of the semester so far is that now Mark sees Donghyuck even less than he used to. They hung out over the summer, even sleeping over at each other’s house when they watched movies or played video games too late into the night, and then took the train back to the university together, but it’s been three weeks since the term started and Mark hasn’t even caught a glimpse of Donghyuck since their existence relies on different departments, different hostels, different cafeterias.

It always feels funny texting Donghyuck, because they didn’t start actively doing that until a couple months ago, when Donghyuck started sending a million reels to Mark per day after forcing him into joining Instagram. Lunch on Saturday?, texts Mark, waiting for three serial texts in response.

Lee Donghyuck
>> sexyyyy that works
>> sat lunch menu is the best at my cafeteria
>> ill sneak u in >:]

When Mark takes Jeno up to the roof of the biotech department past midnight that night (Jeno’s first foray into breaking rules), there are voices coming from the top of the water tank, and Mark presses a finger to his lips, having been born with an affection for gossip, passed down and fostered over the course of his childhood among people who could not keep their noses out of other people’s business, so it now runs bone-deep like a rotten impulse, even if Mark never does anything about the information he gleans.

“—joking! Four times this week?” The exaggerated exclamation makes Mark frown. He has definitely heard that before.

“I swear, that boy is going to drink himself into a grave before third year.” Now Mark definitely knows that voice, but he waits for a second to confirm.

“I would have some sympathy, honestly, but he told me to go fuck myself when I asked him how much he drank when I picked him up on Sunday, and I just told him to call Wurin the time after that. I refuse to be a part of that circus.”

“Probably for the best, really, I mean—"

Mark clears his throat loudly and Jeno’s eyes widen, big and fearful as two heads poke out over the side of the water tank, peering down at Mark and Jeno from the top of the ladder. It’s quite dark on the balcony, but Donghyuck’s smile of recognition is still bright enough for Mark to swing himself up on the ladder, taking the unspoken invitation.

“Couldn’t wait to see me, could you,” teases Donghyuck as he shifts over, clearing a space for Mark.

“The universe simply led me to gossip, but I should not have been surprised that it was you partaking in it.” Mark pushes himself onto the small platform, taking Jaemin’s hand to steady himself, and gestures to Jeno to come join them.

“I’m a little scared of heights,” calls Jeno nervously, hands loose and hesitant as he stands at the bottom of the ladder.

“You want me to come down and get you?” asks Mark, but Jaemin is ahead of him, clapping Mark’s shoulder and saying, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll go.”

Jaemin scales down the ladder with remarkable speed, jumping off the fifth-last rung, and Mark’s jaw drops. Jeno looks stunned into silence. “Crazy, right?” says Donghyuck with a grin. “He used to do parkour or something in high school. He forgot the keys and student card in his room one time and literally climbed up to my first-floor window.”

“You should have heard Donghyuck scream!” adds on Jaemin, grinning up at them from the bottom of the ladder as he leans sleazily on the wall, trying to look cool even when Jeno is only focused on the height of the ladder.

Jeno makes it up with all the help and reassurance (and multiple offers to just take him up on piggy-back) from Jaemin, and while Donghyuck, Mark, and Jeno huddle together to prevent getting too close to the edge, Jaemin sits casually with his legs hanging off the tank. “So,” says Mark, plainly unashamed of having overheard anything. “Who has an alcohol problem?”

Donghyuck laughs, tumbling forward to smack Mark’s shoulder. “You asshole, of course you were listening. How much did you hear? I’ll fill in the rest.”

They end up staying up there until five in the morning, discussing the happenings with Donghyuck’s and Jaemin’s ever-troubled friend group before shifting to how their semesters are all going. Jeno doesn’t contribute much initially, but the others make sure to ask him questions specifically and slowly he starts adding to the conversation on his own. It ends up being such a good time that Donghyuck makes a group chat for the four of them in the middle of their first class of the next day, when Mark’s eyes are drooping from the lack of sleep, but he can’t even bring himself to regret it.

The group chat ends up being the reason that Mark turns his hostel room from his usual haunt to a place that he comes to just to sleep. Jaemin is constantly asking for company to get coffee, Donghyuck sends obscure memes that work themselves into the group’s dialect for weeks, Jeno pulls up events for the weekends and lets them know when new movies are released on the streaming platform that only he has a subscription to, and Mark keeps track of everything and functions as a final say when they’ve having trouble making decisions.

Mark thinks this is what all the alumni were talking about during orientation, when they said that the memories they held closest to them were the people they met. Mark lives his days knowing that he will miss them.

It's a nice balance, because they each have their extended friend groups in their branches, even if Donghyuck and Jaemin tell them they would switch out the boys for Yeji and Dejun any day. Mark doesn’t quite understand the dynamic they always have going on, because in his opinion, Donghyuck and Jaemin sit for far more than they should only because of Jaemin’s conflict avoidance and Donghyuck’s familiarity bias, even if Mark will never point that out.

Considering the way that Donghyuck and Jaemin draw closer to Mark and Jeno, occasionally pointing out the ways and reasons why this dynamic works so well, forcing them to reevaluate their existing friendships, Mark thinks they’ll get there eventually.

The second year passes by with even the worse memories becoming funny stories. Donghyuck only gets sick once, climbing down from the stage shakily after belting the entire set as the band’s lead singer at the university’s cultural festival with a high fever, collapsing right into Mark’s arms and just staying there until Jaemin brings the car around. Jeno has volunteer work the day after that that he’s also looped Jaemin into (even though Mark suspects at this point that Jeno probably barely needed to ask – Jaemin sometimes looks like he would follow Jeno off the edge of the earth if he asked) while Mark is done with his theatre event, so it’s nice and familiar when Mark ends up hanging out in Donghyuck’s bed, watching videos of people reacting to terrible movies in the periods that Donghyuck manages to stay awake.

Unsurprisingly, Mark is running a fever the day after that, and Donghyuck stays in his room while Jaemin and Jeno come by to drop off food and medicine, seeming awkward for reasons that Mark cannot put his finger on at that moment, but a week later Mark and Donghyuck are sitting behind then on the bus and Jaemin has his head on Jeno’s shoulder, suffering from yet another caffeine crash as Jeno shields Jaemin’s eyes from the sun for the entire bus ride back, and Mark turns to Donghyuck when it clicks in his head, gesturing with his eyes until Donghyuck realizes, covering his hand with his mouth to prevent himself from laughing in disbelief.

It takes until the beginning of third year for something tangible to happen, and unlike Mark’s and Donghyuck’s bet of Jaemin confessing, it ends up being Jeno instead, when Jaemin tells Donghyuck with the biggest, sappiest grin on his face about how someone he doesn’t like from the football team texted him asking him out, and Jeno, who was sitting beside him at that time in the library, simply offered tell them you have a boyfriend as a convenient excuse for a rejection, making Jaemin stare, confirming just in case with I do? to which Jeno went a little pink, saying, I mean, if you want to, only going a bare second before blurting out, I have a crush on you. It’s really bad.

Mark worries initially that it may shake up the group’s dynamic slightly, but Donghyuck just dismisses that with a shake of his head. “Look at them,” he whispers as they part ways with the two, watching as Jaemin rants about his assignment that he has once again left until the last minute, complete with animated gestures, and Jeno watches him with the softest of affection painted all over his face, unashamed and naked in his devotion. “They’re meant to be, there’s no doubting that, but there’s also no doubting that we were all meant to be friends.”

“What, do you believe in fate that way?” asks Mark, amused, pulling his coat over his shoulders as they exit the library. Winter is in the offing earlier than usual this year, a windy chill enveloping them as they step out. Mark passes his scarf to Donghyuck, knowing that he’ll need it more. “Like, soulmates and things?”

“Maybe,” quips Donghyuck, pulling Mark’s phone from his hand. He has a game downloaded on it that he needs to update. He doesn’t have the space for it on his own phone, and he would rather die than delete the several hundred terrible pictures he has of the rest of them. “I think that the right person will not pass you by. Like I don’t think right person, wrong time is a thing at all. Eventually everything falls into place with the right person, it shouldn’t be so hard.”

“I don’t know,” says Mark, shaking his head. “I think you’re just looking for a way to offload the blame in that case. Everything is random by design, you need to grasp on to what you can. If anything, soulmates are made, not found, and I would think one person could even have multiple soulmates because you really don’t know how the circumstances and changes are going to work out.”

“So who’s the newest one?” asks Donghyuck, eyebrows raised as he holds up Mark’s phone that has rejected the password he’s put in multiple times, now locked for thirty seconds. Mark didn’t change his passcode even after he broke up with Yuqi, simply because he got used to it.

Or at least, not until now.

Jung Doyun is an infatuation for now, Mark thinks, but he could be more. He can’t tell Donghyuck about it yet, though, because Doyun is part of Donghyuck’s friend group and Mark is awkward about it. He’s also in Mark’s humanities elective, and they have the exact same sense of humour, and besides, the last time Donghyuck had anything bad to say about Doyun was back in the first year anyway. Wurin is generally the problematic one.

It's still weird to admit it, doubly so given the fact that Mark hasn’t always suspected that he could like boys, so he’s never really had this conversation with himself, let alone anybody else.

“Let me,” says Mark, quickly inputting the numbers while Donghyuck watches Mark’s face, in that sharp, interfering way that always wedges its way into the small chink in Mark’s armour and pries his mask off. “What?”

“Who?” Donghyuck’s voice is deathly calm, the coolness of the moonlight draped over his face making him look even more grave.

“No one,” says Mark, but the conviction in his voice is malnourished and he isn’t even convinced by himself. “I just thought I should change it.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” nods Donghyuck, tilting his head challengingly, bangs falling into his eyes. He’s been complaining about getting a haircut for the last week and a half. Mark should make sure to remind him tomorrow. “Tell me what it is.”

Mark hesitates for a moment, handing back the phone. Donghyuck presses the power button once to put it to sleep, and presses it once more to reveal the lockscreen. The background is from Fullmetal Alchemist, and three international clocks showing the times in Vancouver, London, and Seoul stare back at Mark. There are no notifications, because Mark can’t stand the sight of them, and Donghyuck swipes up to reveal the keypad.

“Who is it, Minhyung?” asks Donghyuck once more, a stark reminder of how much Donghyuck knows Mark whether he likes it or not, and Mark’s resolve crumbles.

This time when Mark inputs the numbers, Donghyuck watches his fingers. Mark can see him thinking hard when he registers the digits, frown unsteady as he considers possibilities and eliminates options. “I give up. It’s not Yeji, not Chae, not Shuhua, not Jimin, and I don’t know any other girls that you speak to even semi-regularly to even be considered on this list unless you’ve been—”

“Not a girl,” says Mark, so quietly that he’s unsure Donghyuck even heard him, but the conflict in Donghyuck’s eyes hardens into decisive realization, and Mark braces for what Donghyuck may have to say, heart crawling up to his throat. Donghyuck can be cutting when he wants to, sarcasm sharpened to draw blood. Donghyuck is kind and easy to be around and even easier to tease, but there’s a limit that anyone knows him is aware of, beyond which Donghyuck’s tongue will cut them down and they will have no one to blame but themselves.

“Really?” asks Donghyuck gently, tone far kinder than Mark was prepared for. Mark has to pause to wonder why he thought the demons in his mind could possibly steal the tongue of his best friend. “This is someone I know, right?” Mark nods, and Donghyuck mirrors him. “Ah. Principles of economics?” Mark nods again. “Cute.”

“You know, if you have something to say, you can just say it,” says Mark, still somehow suspicious about the lack of reaction. “Like I know he’s your friend, and if it’s weird, you don’t need to worry, because I’m not going to do anything about it or—”

“Why not?” asks Donghyuck incredulously, like Mark has just grown three heads and they’re all pulling horrifying faces at him. “He’s a nice guy, you seem to get along with him, and if it works out, it works out.”

“It feels like you’re not saying something,” says Mark, eyes narrowing.

“I think it’s your own judgement that you’re fearing,” says Donghyuck with a laugh, poking Mark in the middle of the forehead. “I would say thank you for telling me but honestly, there was really nothing that could keep me from getting into your phone by password or hammer, so good choice.”

Mark lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, thankful for Donghyuck’s nonchalance, thinking that even though he didn’t know what reaction he wanted, he somehow managed to receive the exact correct one. Mark doesn’t really tell Jeno or Jaemin about it, but he promises himself that he will as soon as he figures out what to do about it. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself over a mere crush, or worse, psych everyone up only to return with a rejection.

The kick-off of actual feelings coinciding with internship season beginning feels like running up a hill as the slope gets steeper and the weight on his shoulders gets heavier. Donghyuck has organized resources for all of them to study, and Jaemin has contacts in the placements and internships team who let him know about the statistics from previous years and give him advice on how they can survive the next two months without being crushed by the pressure and the competition altogether.

Except it entirely decimates Mark anyway, crushing his ego down to the ground once more when he writes enough tests to land five interviews on the very first day and then secures none of those internships. It’s mortifying, because they were all so sure he would be sorted out on the very first day, and his whole class knew which shortlists he made it to. Some of that awestruck speculation definitely got to Mark. The first two interviews still had him feeling some kind of reassurance, knowing he still had options, but after being grilled and choking and getting rejected five times, Mark feels like the most unemployable person on the planet.

He’s sandwiched between Jaemin and Donghyuck, both of them with their arms around him as he tries and fails to keep himself from tearing up. Mark’s head is hidden in Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Jaemin is rubbing comforting circles into his back while they wait for Jeno to finish up his first and only interview of the day, and when Jeno comes out with a big smile on his face, Mark shelves his own negativity as they pull Jeno into a group hug, ruffling his hair and jostling him around like a sports team celebrating a winning goal.

Turns out the other person who was selected along with Jeno for that company is Doyun, who informs Mark about it in an excited text with too many emojis, something Mark finds endearing generally but now has him locking his phone after responding and putting it back in his pocket to not open it again for the rest of the night, self-worth cut down at the ankles. It doesn’t get much better, when it takes Donghyuck three interviews on the second day and the one he gets is the one that he barely prepared for. Donghyuck has always been so much more charming than Mark, and he’s incredibly smart when he needs to be as well, so if it took even him three attempts, well, Mark doesn’t know when he will be free from this circle of hell.

The next two weeks before the second round of interviews become about studying for and writing more tests, reading up on more increasingly obscure companies, and solving logical problems even as the gears in Mark’s head feel like they’re stuck, grinding together and overheating his brain with the friction. Classes become annoying to attend, nothing but a hassle between studying for the interviews he has for the next week, and even Doyun’s face isn’t enough to stop Mark from counting down the minutes until the class finishes, because Doyun’s face isn’t tight with any of the stress that Mark has to carry around. No, Doyun is sleeping well and going out with his friends, and Mark is jealous.

“I don’t even think I like him anymore,” says Mark during a break when Donghyuck drags him out to get a snack after Mark’s been stuck in the library the whole day. “I just don’t feel anything when I look at him. Besides, it would be such a hassle to be in a relationship at this stage of life, wouldn’t it? When everything is shifting and weird and the future is more up in the air than ever?”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Everything is always up in the air.” He pays for their food, holding out a warm bun to Mark. “But I agree with you from an emotional standpoint. The idea of being in a relationship right now would actually kill me, there’s just too many other things that are taking up my energy right now. And look at Jaem, he’s trying to get an internship in the same city as Jen and now he has two great offers but neither of them is anywhere close.”

“Yeah, but it’s just six months,” says Mark with an eye-roll. These couples, seriously. Something about academic stress tends to snap every romantic bone in Mark’s body. “When it comes down to it, you’re going to have to choose your career over and over and over. Besides, technology exists, it’s not like you have to rely on writing letters that take weeks to reach them.” Mark would probably do that. He’s saved every letter that’s ever been written to him.

“But I think it’s sweet that they try,” says Donghyuck with a small smile on his face. “Love is disgusting, but I think they carry it off very well. They make an effort but they also make it look so easy.”

“Except it isn’t at all, is it?” says Mark, taking the seat next to Donghyuck at their usual table by the window, hooking their ankles together as the grey October daylight streams in. “It feels like I hate everything about it right now, though. It feels so weird, I don’t feel like myself at all. I think Doyun may like this other girl in our class, but honestly, who gives a fuck—"

“I think you’re just stressed,” says Donghyuck, patting Mark’s forearm, flaky pastry crumbs clinging to his lips. “Worry about this later. You’ll get an internship soon.” There’s something incredibly simple about the way Donghyuck phrases things sometimes, that makes Mark wonder if it really could be that easy. It doesn’t sound patronizing, it doesn’t sound like Donghyuck could give less of a fuck, but rather that Donghyuck has this remarkable talent of striking directly at the heart of Mark’s troubles, waving away the smoke with the precision of his finger pointing at the exact problem.

Jaemin takes an offer about two minutes before his deadline to choose, choosing not to continue to subject himself to this circus or let go of a good opportunity, pushed into it by Jeno, who looks incredibly proud even as Jaemin’s smile is a little glassy when he tells the other two of them. Mark takes the rest of the evening off so they can hang out and feels more joy in a couple hours than he has in the last few weeks, even as it dawns on him that he’s the last domino standing. It’s so depressing, knowing that they’ll be off having a good time while Mark is stuck in limbo. The worst part is that even though Mark feels much better prepared this time, he has a terrible feeling that he’ll just show up and choke on the anxiety anyway.

Except Donghyuck, Jaemin, and Jeno take the opposite route of letting Mark buckle down on his own, bringing all their classwork to the library so at least one of them is always giving him company, occasionally quizzing him on companies and technical terms when he asks them to. They make sure to always get dinner together at least, and most of the time they bring Mark something to eat for lunch in the library knowing he doesn’t like to break up his studying too much, They don’t let Mark get stuck in his own head too much, so when Mark arrives for his first interview of the week, he thinks he’ll be alright no matter which way it goes and can actually believe that.

It works out.

The relief is crushing, or maybe that’s just the weight of all three of the others jumping on him when he comes out with even half a smile on his face, unable to believe his luck. Mark wasn’t sure he could do it, really, and the relief on their faces makes him wonder if they also thought the same of him.

It’s a terrible thought to think of people who love you, but Mark has made the mistake of thinking it, leaving it to swirl around in his head long after the high of his win wears off.

The nagging feeling of inadequacy only worsens as the rest of the semester slips by, a gradual dip in self-esteem that is worsened by his grades dropping at the end of the semester for the first time, the fact that his script gets rejected for the end of year flagship theatre event, and the frustration of his crush resurfacing with renewed vigour, bringing in another wave of uncertainty and instability.

There’s also the existence of a group chat named 00z on Donghyuck’s phone that he doesn’t know that Mark knows about, and Mark is stuck in his head over why on earth they have a group chat without him. He should probably ask, it would clear things up a lot faster, but it just falls into place like another piece in his warped perception of himself in his head, and it fits too well with everything else for Mark to question it.

It all feels so stupid to worry about as well, when there are people with problems far more tangible with far worse consequences, and Mark himself has been through worse and made it out. There’s something inescapable with how loud his brain is all day, laying down a foundation of self-hate and reinforcing it with misery in every form, constantly assuming the worst of everyone and everything around him, and then keeping it all to himself because he knows that that is not logically the healthy way to go about it at all. So he smiles and locks his emotions down, hoping the tide will recede if he manages to simply keep his head above it all, but there’s something about the way Donghyuck is always looking at him that makes Mark feel like he may be the worst actor on the planet.

“You look so far away,” says Donghyuck with a frown. It’s the last week of their fifth semester, and Jeno and Jaemin left for their homes a day before. Donghyuck was supposed to leave today, but he’s down with his bi-yearly sickness again, having been just about to celebrate having gone an entire semester without falling sick, so he’s pushed his train a day. Mark’s staying at the university for the holidays since his parents are on a business trip to Canada and Mark has another project with a professor that he’s taken up. When Mark shows up right after Donghyuck texts him a distressed selfie, Donghyuck greets Mark with a laugh like they’ve danced this routine so many times they can do it blindfolded. “You better pay attention to what’s going on, you’re missing out on important points. How is Jessica even going to play this off with Mark? She literally rejected him already and now she’s going back to him.”

Mark hums, trying to pay attention to this trashy show that they’ve begun watching, but he’s particularly out of it that day, having looked in the mirror and for the first time in his life since his accident, wanted to look away entirely. The stress is all over his body, with the sallow skin and hollowed cheeks, a more slumped angle to his posture. It’s happened so gradually that he doesn’t even know how or why, but he knows his skin fits him too tight like fabric that itches and burns, and he wants nothing more than to rip it all off.

Donghyuck doesn’t seem satisfied, hitting pause and peering at Mark. “What.” Mark shakes his head, and Donghyuck sighs. “I have no idea what the hell is going on with you, but you’ve been off for a while and you’re starting to scare me. When you’re ready to talk about it, we will.”

“What makes you think I want to?” asks Mark challengingly, the conviction in Donghyuck’s voice grating against his skull, putting a hand out when Donghyuck tries to shut the laptop and keep it away.

“Because we’re best friends,” says Donghyuck simply, but Mark’s expression doesn’t budge. “And if not me, I’m going to need to ship your ass off to therapy.” Still no reaction. “Worse, if you can’t tell me, I’m going to assume you’re in love with me.”

“Oh, you’re good at this,” admits Mark with grudging respect, fingers relaxing as Donghyuck pulls the laptop, putting it away and invading Mark’s space, resting his head on Mark’s arm and blinking up at him expectantly. The warmth of his fever leaches in through Mark’s shirt, and Donghyuck’s eyes are bright despite the haze of sickness around him. “I don’t know if I can talk about it. I don’t know if I even have all the words.”

“It doesn’t even have to be right now. I just want you to tell me when you do. You already know I’m here for you, and you have no choice about that.”

Mark nods. “I do.” He pats Donghyuck’s head clumsily, mussing up Donghyuck’s bangs before he pushes them away from Donghyuck’s forehead in a move that makes Donghyuck hiss like a cat because he hates when his forehead is exposed. Mark has to make amends by smoothing Donghyuck’s bangs back down as Donghyuck leans into Mark’s touch, catching hold of Mark’s arm as he tried to pull it away and tugging it around him, throwing his leg over Mark’s own to trap him.

Most of the time Mark pushes Donghyuck off as a joke, especially when Donghyuck tries to hug him as a follow-up to making fun of him, but Mark surrenders to his fate this time, turning to face Donghyuck as Donghyuck shifts upwards to gather Mark in his arms. They settle with Mark’s head resting on Donghyuck’s bicep as Donghyuck’s nails scratch Mark’s scalp gently.

Mark’s never really been one for physical affection. He’s comfortable with it in passing even if it isn’t his preferred method of providing or receiving comfort at all, but something about Donghyuck’s warmth crumples something in his chest, replacing some of the hurricanes with something that feels like rest, something that feel like yearning, like Mark could dissolve into the moment with a simple exhale.

Donghyuck’s breath catches in his chest as Mark wraps an arm around his waist, a noise that gives Mark’s heart pause as he pulls him impossibly closer. “Minhyung,” he whispers as though caught off-guard, like an impulse, warm exhale fluttering over Mark’s forehead.

“Hmm?” Maybe Mark is getting sick already, even though it generally takes another day or two. Donghyuck nuzzles his nose into Mark’s crown, hand placed almost hesitantly at the junction where Mark’s neck meets his shoulder, thumb resting against his throat like a fragment of a sacred locket. Mark shuts his eyes tight and breathes as Donghyuck moves his hand to the baby hairs at the back of Mark’s neck, strokes gentle and periodic.

“No, nothing.” Mark makes the mistake of looking up. He’s nose to nose with Donghyuck, who seems supposedly unbothered by the distance, or lack thereof, smile gentle and sympathetic as he continues to card his fingers through Mark’s hair, making Mark’s eyelashes flutter even as something much warmer drips into Mark’s stomach. His cowardliness still gets the better of him, breaking eye contact to bury his head in Donghyuck’s neck, the temperature of Donghyuck’s skin seeming so much hotter where it’s in contact with Mark’s, unconsciously making Mark bunch up his fist in Donghyuck’s shirt.

Donghyuck rubs gentle circles into Mark’s back, cheek pressed against Mark’s head. Their legs are tangled, impossible to tell where one of them begins and the other one ends, and they just remain like that for a while, the noise in Mark’s head blocked out by Donghyuck’s breathing.

“You’re going to be so sick tomorrow, dude,” says Donghyuck after a period of silence, wriggling his way down to look at Mark. “Have you fallen asleep.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re like a portable sauna right now,” says Mark as he raises his eyebrows, sarcasm heavy on his tone even though he was just beginning to slip away into a peaceful slumber.

“Mhmm, okay,” says Donghyuck disbelievingly, getting out of bed to get another dose of medicine while Mark mourns the loss of warmth silently, even if it was a tinge too hot. Maybe next time they can do this while Donghyuck is feeling fine.

If there is a next time, that is. Donghyuck pulls the laptop back into his lap and makes Mark sit up so he doesn’t fall asleep and actually pays attention so they can watch the terrible love triangle drama between Jessica, Barnett, and Amber without having to pause and play catch up. They don’t end up in similar positions for the rest of the day, but they hug for thrice the amount they generally do when Mark goes to see Donghyuck off on the train the next day, and Donghyuck’s warmth lingers long after he’s left.

Six months is a long time.

Mark unexpectedly falls in love with his work, and considers the validity of the whole the universe has a plan for you belief, because his coworkers are kind and smart, letting Mark get involved in everything from his very first day, and work is the part of the day he enjoys the most. They have lunch breaks that last an hour and a half, one hour to go to the cafeteria and eat, and half an hour where everyone meets for coffee. Mark doesn’t even need to go searching for other social events, instead taking the time after work to start working on some writing projects that he’s been wanting to start for ages but hasn’t had the time to. He even buys a guitar with his first salary, combing YouTube for the best tutorials. He occasionally plays snippets on call for the others, with Yeji occasionally learning the same song in her quest to learn the keyboard.

The fresh start seems to be exactly what Mark needed to build himself up from the roots up, because his personality becomes easier to wear and he finds it easier to look at himself in the mirror again, like he’s swapped out his entire wardrobe once more. He doesn’t text Doyun anymore and is surprisingly okay with that. Xin from the lab tells him that he asks good questions. Jongho, his fellow intern, thinks that Mark has such balanced takes on everything. His own supervisor, Johnny, is extremely open about how he finds it a joy to work with Mark, who is always enthusiastic and willing to learn.

Mark got rather lucky, because Jeno is absolutely miserable where he is, with no free time and coworkers who are completely unfamiliar with the concept of work-life balance, while Jaemin is happy with the work but is stuck in a city with no culture for the youth whatsoever. Donghyuck seems neutral on all fronts, leaning into the corporate culture quite a bit. He sends pictures of his outfits every day on the group chat, different combinations of shirts buttoned all the way up to his neck and sweaters paired with black trousers, a thin chain with different pendants around his neck. He works the standard working hours, occasionally goes out with his coworkers for drinks, but complains the most about missing the other three of them.

The first month is the easiest, with the novelty and struggle to adjust taking up most of their time, and the group chat is consistently active, slowing down a bit by month two, when the days start blurring into each other a little. Donghyuck takes a train to see Jeno, who he’s the closest to, around the end of the month, when the rest of his team is on a week-long retreat that they couldn’t get him tickets to come along on. The group chat springs back to life then, flooded with silly pictures and bad jokes, and Mark misses them a little more. Jaemin also manages to fly down for Jeno’s birthday two months after, having saved diligently for the first three months, and the sight of their faces in the same frame again, entirely peaceful and loving, is enough to tug Mark’s heartstrings a little bit.

He does miss them, but there’s something about his current environment that doesn’t let him dwell on the emotional turmoil of last semester, traces of which still remain anchored to the ankles of his friends, even if he knows that association makes no sense. Mark wonders if he’s doomed to a life of consistently shedding lives, constructing versions of himself that he entirely moves on from – locations, friendships, romances, and all – when they get tiring or harder to live with. Condemned to a life of escaping being hung up in the past by constantly clawing his way to the future, never really here nor there.

Donghyuck offers to fly to Mark’s place for his own birthday, since he doesn’t want to spend it in the company of his coworkers. He’s also gotten tired of the corporate routine, doing the bare minimum amount of work to get by, switching out the crisp trousers for worn jeans. This is during the beginning of the last month of Mark’s internship, when he’s already started to dread going back to campus.

When Donghyuck shows up, wicked grin plastered all over his face and chunky headphones resting around his neck, Mark is hit with a dose of emotion like a punch to the sternum. Donghyuck’s changed his perfume, smelling like a whole different person now, and his hair is long and shaggy (probably a consequence of haircuts costing obscene amounts in the expensive city he’s been living in more than anything). There’s something more relaxed about him, like he fits into his skin better, even though he’s as annoying as ever, ranting about the person behind him at immigration who kept breathing down his neck and giving Mark the most judgemental look when he peers inside his mini-fridge, immediately dragging him out to buy groceries.

That crumpling feeling is back in Mark’s chest, heart collapsing in on itself, war and peace doing a delicate dance over the steps of his ribs, skin crackling wherever he comes into contact with Donghyuck. The distance has turned Donghyuck fonder, rendering him twice as affectionate – resting his chin on Mark’s shoulder as they make a pot of ramen on Mark’s tiny single stove, biting Mark’s arm with abandon whenever Mark says something annoying, completely obliterating any space between them when they lie in the same bed at night, arm wrapped around Mark’s like Mark may disappear, waiting it out for midnight.

It takes Mark only twelve hours to come to a realization that makes his stomach drop.

Donghyuck is illuminated in the glow of two candles as he sits at Mark’s desk, hands clasped and eyes closed as he makes his birthday wish, with all his friends from all his different circles on call, phone propped up near Mark’s lamp, and Mark thinks he may be the most beautiful person that he’s ever laid eyes on in his entire life, knowing he’s entirely fucked to just be thinking that.

It’s temporary. It’s just a convoluted reaction to seeing Donghyuck again after so long, after seeing someone so familiar after forever, after going so long without a single romantic thought crossing Mark’s head, but the pit in his stomach grows deeper over the entire next day.

They go out for lunch and walk around the city bumping hands, and Mark takes pictures of Donghyuck at pretty spots and attempts in vain to quash the voice that keeps talking about how romantic it all is when Donghyuck tries and fails to make a cherry blossom flower crown for Mark. They have to run back from the train station to Mark’s room because of an unexpected summer shower. Donghyuck’s hair is damp and the collar of the shirt that Mark’s lent him is slipping off his shoulder and, and—

And nothing. They’re friends. They’re best friends. Nothing is going to happen, even if Mark manages to delude himself into thinking that he can see fire mirrored in Donghyuck’s irises. Donghyuck falls asleep on Mark’s shoulder while watching a movie, tired out from all the walking they’ve done, and Mark takes his phone to set an alarm because he knows how much Donghyuck hates the sound of anyone’s alarm but his own.

“I blame you entirely, actually,” says Donghyuck in the morning, sipping a glass of peppermint tea that Mark has made for him after waking up with a crackly throat. “You should’ve woken me up or something. You’re familiar with my track record.”

“You know who else is familiar with your track record? You. I didn’t even notice that your hair was still wet!” Mark was a little distracted by the dip of Donghyuck’s collarbone. He was distracted then, he’s still distracted now. “Besides, don’t worry, one of the people at work put me on to this really great balm, I think it’s made with eucalyptus or something, and some other things. I caught a cold in February and this cured it in half an hour. It’s also great for headaches.” Mark rummages around in a clear bag on his shelf, pulling out a small glass bottle. “Chest, neck, back – should work.”

Donghyuck nods, nearly fumbling the catch as Mark tosses it to him, giving Mark’s incredulous frown a sheepish smile. He pulls his shirt off like it’s no big deal, but Mark pauses like Donghyuck’s just yanked all the air from his lungs. Mark initially casts his gaze away, before walking over to the corner of his room that he calls his kitchen to get a glass of water, wondering if he will ever be able to delete the image of the caramel expanse of Donghyuck’s bare chest from his mind.

“Could you help me out?” asks Donghyuck, holding out the bottle innocently. “I can’t reach my back.” Mark thinks he would be able to pick it out if Donghyuck had deeper motives but he can’t pick up on any at all, so he steels his nerves and goes over.

Donghyuck always runs a little warm in general, but Mark feels like he’s the one who’s burning as he massages the oil into Donghyuck’s skin. He pushes his thumb down a little too hard as he moves from Donghyuck’s shoulder blade to the back of his neck,

and Donghyuck honest-to-god moans.

It was an accident, Mark knows by the way Donghyuck immediately claps his hand to his mouth, trying to glaze it over with an embarrassed laugh, but he also knows that Donghyuck has once again managed to see right through any smokescreen that Mark could have possibly put up when he turns and meets Mark’s eyes, because Mark doesn’t know how to censor himself around Donghyuck. He never has. He never has had to.

It’s tense, suspended in time, stretched like a rubber band to breaking point, but Donghyuck leans in just a little, just enough to let Mark know that it’s okay, and Mark mirrors him, closing the gap little by little, each advance almost daring the other person to move away. Donghyuck’s eyes are hooded and dark as his gaze drops to Mark’s lips, and something snaps within Mark, lunging forward to press his lips to Donghyuck’s. Donghyuck gasps slightly, and before Mark can even doubt that he’s made a mistake, Donghyuck’s hands are fisted in Mark’s collar, returning the kiss with fervour as he turns around to face Mark.

Mark’s hands, initially frozen, slide from Donghyuck’s jaw to his neck, down his bare chest to settle at his waist, kisses messy as Donghyuck climbs onto Mark’s lap, kissing him like he’s been waiting, kissing him like the world is ending. Donghyuck’s hands slide down Mark’s back, fumbling for the hem and easily pulling off his t-shirt. Mark is immediately self-conscious in the morning sunlight, considering closing the blinds, but Donghyuck pulls away to drag his eyes down Mark’s body, whispering a shameless, “Fuck, you’re so hot,” and shuts Mark up immediately when he leans in again.

Donghyuck has always been gorgeous, but caged beneath Mark’s arms with sunrays rippling over his face as he looks up at Mark like there is nothing more in the world he’s wanted until that moment? Mark can’t even tell himself this was a bad idea, not when Donghyuck is so needy, not when Donghyuck instructs Mark to take off the rest of his clothes like he knows he wants it just as bad.

Not when Donghyuck moans like that when Mark puts his lips on his skin, leaving red-purple bruises down Donghyuck’s neck, down Donghyuck’s chest, down Donghyuck’s thighs. Not when Donghyuck pushes back Mark’s hair and tells him to look up at him when Mark has his lips wrapped around Donghyuck’s dick. Not when Donghyuck arches his back and covers his face with a string of expletives dripping from his doll-lips when Mark slides his fingers inside him. Not when he loops his arms around Mark’s neck, pulling him down to kiss him all sloppy and heated when Mark thrusts into his hole. Not when Donghyuck finishes with a drawn-out whine, spurting come all over Mark’s stomach, begging Mark not to stop.

Mark keeps his eyes on Donghyuck, debauched and wrecked, as he feels the tell-tale butterflies in his lower stomach, orgasm building up abruptly until his mind goes blank with pleasure. Donghyuck has his fingers wrapped around Mark’s neck, forcing him to keep eye-contact as his thrusts lose rhythm, warmth spreading through all his limbs.

“Oh, we have to get up immediately,” says Donghyuck, though he’s smiling softly, caressing Mark’s cheek as Mark leans over to rest his forehead against Donghyuck’s, raggedly panting. He tilts his head up to kiss Mark with what feels like finality, a curtain drop, and only then does it sink in, what they’ve done.

They clean up together in Mark’s tiny bathroom, unable to look each other in the eye. What does this make them now? Mark doesn’t really know, because Donghyuck’s opinions on romance and Donghyuck’s lessons from experience with romance sometimes tend to directly contradict each other, and Mark doesn’t know if Donghyuck would be willing to throw caution to the wind yet, to take another chance, or if he still finds romance too tiresome to take on.

Worse, Mark doesn’t know which way he would go either. Dating a boy is an idea that he’s come to feel comfortable with, but Donghyuck comes with so much history that Mark still hasn’t completely made peace with. All he does is reinvent new versions of himself over and over again, but the closet door is slightly ajar and Mark can always feel the eyes of the skeletons in there on him.

Donghyuck makes him feel like their stares don’t matter. Donghyuck calls him Minhyung and all Mark feels is affection. Donghyuck is the only person Mark can wear shorts around. Donghyuck has lived through every version of him and continues to stick around anyway, even if Mark doesn’t understand why.

It seemed so easy to believe Donghyuck when he said that vulnerability is the cornerstone of every relationship, but years later as Mark puts on a pair of pants, he comes to the awful realization that he still doesn’t know how to do that right, he still doesn’t know how to show weakness around someone he wants like that, even when that’s already been the case so far.

So when Donghyuck tentatively says that nothing needs to change, Mark responds with quick and emphatic agreement, leaving the words but I like you jangling around at the bottom of his throat, sinking deeper with every second of forced nonchalance that he’s putting on.

And when Donghyuck doesn’t pick up that anything is wrong, Mark’s face blisters with the newest mask that he’s put on.

The seventh semester brings fresh horrors in the form of placement season, where everyone jumps through hoops to prove to large corporations and enthusiastic startups that they are worth employing, through exams and group discussions and case studies and multiple rounds of interviews. Everyone eventually gets a job, since they’re from one of the best colleges in the country, but it’s somehow part of campus culture to lose sleep over it, to treat it like the hunger games, to threaten to kill yourself multiple times a day. It kicks off at the very beginning of the semester, with workshops and presentations and focus groups, and the interviews come around at the very end of the semester. It’s internship season on drugs, and every junior they know gives them the most sympathetic look when they say it’s their final year.

On top of all of that, Donghyuck’s taken on the position as the head of the music club, because there was no one else to do it, so he also takes on a huge amount of planning and coordination. He’s used to being a leader, having been in charge of his younger siblings since they were old enough to walk, and his issue rests more on the amount of time it takes up.

Donghyuck doesn’t get to see Mark much these days. Hell, Donghyuck doesn’t get to see anyone much these days, but the group chat remains active with major updates and simply hoping that everyone else is doing okay. Jeno gets a pre-placement offer from his internship company and turns it down within ten minutes of receiving the email. Jaemin has been holed up since a month before the semester, trying to make some tangible progress on his final year experimental project so that he doesn’t have to spend too much time in the lab during placement season. Mark is hoping for a pre-placement offer, but his company doesn’t announce those until the end of the semester, so he’s been studying diligently just in case.

And if he’s been avoiding Donghyuck, well, Donghyuck can’t tell, and he’s choosing not to assume.

There’s definitely been a shift in the energy since what happened during the internship, but Donghyuck steels his nerves and acts like nothing is wrong in the rare instances they exist in the same space, knowing that it will pass eventually, that time will do its thing and smooth over this rough patch. They feel less like people who actually know each other and more like people who are executing an elaborate script on how to get along with each other, and it feels exhausting. Jeno and Jaemin have no idea what has happened, even though Donghyuck inches closer to telling Jaemin about it every time they get together to study.

But what could Donghyuck even say for himself? There was this look in Mark’s eyes from the moment they saw each other at the airport, sharp and hot as he’d quickly flick his gaze over Donghyuck’s face thinking Donghyuck didn’t notice him staring, but Donghyuck did. It had been ages since someone looked at him like that, been forever since someone within kissing distance wanted that from Donghyuck, and Donghyuck’s skin prickled and boiled, a longing rash breaking out, making him want to sink his nails in Mark’s back.

Donghyuck hesitates before blaming himself for it entirely. They both wanted it, so they both fucked up. This is temporary, it isn’t like Mark has caught feelings for him, and it isn’t like Donghyuck has either. The circumstances have never aligned before, and don’t look too promising now. They’re just not emotionally healthy enough.

Jaemin would tell him unequivocally to get into a relationship with Mark, because would Donghyuck have slept with any of his other friends? Mark is attractive, but Donghyuck knows that Jaemin would just look at him like an idiot if he said that, eliminating the reasons until Donghyuck had no choice but to think he had a great point, but it wouldn’t work out.

Sometimes Donghyuck thinks about that time after he went home before the internship, when Mark called initially to show Donghyuck some cute puppies that he found living behind his hostel, but ending up talking to Donghyuck through his entire walk on how he found it so hard to feel simple joy anymore. He found the right words – slump and self-esteem issues and societally-imposed expectations – and he laid it all out for Donghyuck, describing his own mental picture of himself, tracing the factors that he thinks may have fed into it, voice going shaky at a point where he admitted he really didn’t know how to get out of it. Donghyuck thinks about that little tremor in Mark’s voice often.

The only reason Mark is so open with Donghyuck is a combination of accidents and a lack of skin in the game (which is a terrible way to describe it right now). Mark finds it easier to open up to Donghyuck because they’re still revolving on separate orbits, they’re two separate worlds that aren’t connected to each other in any form other than with deliberate intention, but Donghyuck doesn’t know how that would change if they made an effort to actually solidify and build that bridge, between Mark’s fear of crossing bridges and Donghyuck’s lack of trust that anyone would cross a bridge for him.

Donghyuck doesn’t trust that Mark could keep the transparency up in an actual relationship, a belief not formed without reason. Worse, Donghyuck doesn’t even think he wants a relationship. They’re in their last year of college, probably going to different places, and to start building something now seems daunting. It’s been years since Donghyuck’s been in a relationship too, and he knows he wants affection, and he knows he wants sex, but he’s still so used to associating commitment with emotional exhaustion.

It took him a year and a half to recover from his previous relationship, regressing every time he happened to run into Kangdae in public, even though he always walked the other way, because it stung—it still stings—to look back on, and the idea of shouldering emotions of that gravity again just makes Donghyuck think he’s not ready for it yet. Eventually, maybe, but not yet.

So he tucks the little thought away, because who cares? It’s not happening anyway. Donghyuck turns his focus onto what he’s doing after college, cherry-picking his companies and applying to a couple colleges for a master’s degree as well, because his project supervisor likes his ideas and widens her eyes when he tells her that he’s not considering higher education at all, telling him to change that immediately.

This time, Mark goes home for the holidays, pre-placement offer landing in his inbox the day before his first interview, dropping by at Donghyuck’s music club meeting to let him know and give him a quick, almost detached hug before he leaves for the train station. The next week is fraught with potential nervous breakdowns. Jeno gets two offers on the first day to no one’s surprise, and Mark’s face is overjoyed on the phone when Jeno video-calls him to tell him that they’ll be in the same city. Jaemin manages to cinch a great offer with a construction company that the whole branch was rabidly vying for at the very end of the second day, and they like him so much that they want him to join their American offices, so he’ll be placed on the other side of the world.

Turning it down would be straight up idiocy, because the salary is obscene for someone just out of college, but especially so considering Jaemin is the first person in his family to go to a college outside his hometown and grew up in an unsupportive household that has underestimated him his whole life. It’s so much further than Jaemin was told he could go, so much further than he thought he would see himself go. Too far, really.

“You should take it,” says Jeno, voice restrained as Jaemin reads the email, heart in free-fall at the added condition. There’s a smile on Jeno’s face as he pats Jaemin on the shoulder, and Donghyuck wonders how he’s holding it together at all. “It’s a great role in a great city and it would only be the beginning. I’m really proud of you.”

Jaemin looks at him like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “But I want to be with you.”

Donghyuck gets an offer three days later at the first interview he takes. He’d be three hours away from Jaemin by bus and nowhere close to Mark and Jeno, and is generally emotionally beat, a weight that seems surgically attached to his shoulder blades now.

Jaemin is in Donghyuck’s room, having climbed in through the window that Donghyuck always forgets to lock, and his smile is wry when he kills any potential joy that Donghyuck was planning to take in the small victory when he says, “So we broke up.”

Donghyuck hates alcohol.

He’s not about to judge anyone for partaking in it, it actually seems like a lot of fun. It’s just that he’s grown up with enough overparenting and religious guilt and secrets to not constantly worry that he may say something that will ruin his life if his inhibitions are even slightly lowered. He’s stayed away from it for most of his college life, choosing to be the designated driver, the one who makes sure everyone is drinking enough water, the one who snatches phones away when people start texting their exes, now more than ever.

Jaemin is on a fuck it, it’s my final semester kick, and despite the fact that both Jeno and Jaemin have said that they do not want Donghyuck and Mark to pick sides, the group chat has remained silent since The End and Donghyuck hasn’t seen Mark since he came back to college. The old branch gang with Shinhyeo, Wurin, Doyun, and Hyun is back together, surface level friendship reignited in an alcohol and nostalgia-fuelled haze. Donghyuck can’t remember the last time that he slept before three AM.

Jaemin is making no secret of any of his feelings. He doesn’t need three shots to tell everyone about how they were supposed to break up at the end of the current semester but didn’t even make it a week from that conversation, he needs three shots to shut up about it. Donghyuck is a little shaken by it himself, especially after he finds out how difficult it was over the course of the internship, and suddenly both of them working themselves to the bone to try and be in the same city makes a lot more sense.

“It was miserable,” Jaemin explains, while walking from one class to the cafeteria on a grey January morning. “Not because things were bad between us, things were never bad between us. But it’s so hard when you miss someone all the time, it feels like you’re being physically torn apart and there’s nothing you can do about it. You miss out on so much, you can’t be there for them physically when they need you, and it feels like you’re taking them away from better experiences when they have to actively make time to spend with you.”

It's weird because they always felt so meant to be. Jaemin calls it a bittersweet ending, but an ending is still an end, and this one has far too much bitter to even taste the sweet. Donghyuck used to think if the world ended, the only things remaining would be sharks and Jeno’s and Jaemin’s love for each other.

“But if we were, you know, meant to be or whatever,” says Jaemin with a shrug, as though he isn’t three thoughts away from bursting into tears, second glass of gin clutched between his white-tinged knuckles. “It would have worked out, right? The circumstances. Long distance temporarily is one thing, but indefinitely?”

Jeno doesn’t look too great every time Donghyuck sees him either, often with Mark by his side, but they either never notice him or make a conscious effort to make it seem that way. Donghyuck is glad that Jeno also has someone to talk to, even if that’s not him, which is truly a shame because Jeno was Donghyuck’s partner in crime, the ones who shared the silliest sense of humour. There’s an ache in his stomach from the ghosts of all the times they’ve made each other laugh enough to feel that.

Sometimes Donghyuck considers conspiring with Mark, pulling some kind of scheme to get their friends back together, but considering how incredibly long it has been since he had a conversation with Mark, he thinks they each need yet another set of friends to conspire to fix their dynamic too.

Jaemin has gone home for the mid-semester break, which is probably for the best seeing as that is the time during which the alcohol and weed skyrocket on campus, and Jaemin is just starting to wean off the partying dependency and start trying to sort out his feelings. Shinhyeo invites Donghyuck to a house party thrown by an acquaintance of his, and Donghyuck goes along, about seventy-percent over a high fever, knowing he’s probably not making the best decision to go out. He has nothing else to do than sit alone with his thoughts, which is becoming increasingly difficult these days, with even the noise of YouTube videos and Instagram reels not being enough to drown it all out.

Donghyuck looks unintentionally cool as he stands in the midst of a crowd, a soda can loosely held between his fingers. There’s a pretty stranger, a girl with a scorpion tattoo on her neck and long blonde hair, who offers him a shot that he declines the first time.

“You need to loosen up a bit,” says Shinhyeo, shaking his head as he throws an arm around Donghyuck’s shoulder, beer nearly spilling over from his other hand. “You’re nearly twenty-three. You could say anything to the people here and they won’t remember you or what you said in the morning. Don’t you get so tired of making good choices all the time?”

Donghyuck can make bad choices. He stayed up way too late when he had eight AM class once. He overate at a hotpot place when he knew it was too spicy for him. He slept with his best friend. This is a guardrail, a safety measure, this isn’t just some flippant bad decision.

But Shinhyeo’s words scratch over something very raw in Donghyuck’s chest, a knot of hurt feelings that he’s been carrying around for so long that he doesn’t know how to not feel it anymore. When a shot of tequila hits his throat, it loosens up just the slightest. Donghyuck has lectured Jaemin enough about not making alcohol a coping mechanism to put together an online course of his own, but at the moment, he’s not sure how much he would listen to himself either.

The climb starts great. Shinhyeo gets Donghyuck a cocktail that tastes so sweet that Donghyuck doesn’t realize how much alcohol is in it, and he’s smiling the most he has in a while. The music sounds great even though Donghyuck thinks the lyrics are a little basic, and the air is just the right temperature and Donghyuck is among his friends, laughing and having a good time as Doyun imitates different professors of theirs exaggeratedly. Donghyuck tells himself he’ll miss this, and pours another shot down his throat to convince himself of it.

There’s a girl who has been flirting with him the whole night, with short hair that falls into her eyes and eye makeup that makes her look like a little bit like a panda, but their moment abruptly cuts off when she slides her arms around his neck, freezes, and then pulls them away just as quickly, shouting over the music that’s starting to thrum in Donghyuck’s cranium unpleasantly. “Are you sick?”

The fever is back. Donghyuck makes the mistake of realizing that this is the first time since the beginning of his degree that he’s been sick without Mark around. He hasn’t been bothered about their lack of interaction so far, considering it to be an unavoidable consequence of the circumstances, because that’s how life is sometimes, but it hits him in the moment that he totally, absolutely, unambiguously ruined his friendship with Mark, and that it seems to be permanent this time.

And now Mark probably hates him, because Jeno hates Jaemin, because Donghyuck thinks Jeno and Jaemin will never be able to feel neutrally toward each other no matter how long they live, because you can’t look at someone like that, you can’t shield their eyes from the sun like that, you can’t give someone the best of you like that and ever stop loving them, and hate is the easiest thing to convert love into when it no longer serves any other purpose than to hurt you for carrying it around, because that’s not what it’s supposed to do, but at least that’s what hate is for.

Jeno and Jaemin were supposed to last forever, Donghyuck thinks. Their friendship, their little safe circle, that was supposed to last forever. College drama was supposed to be the temporary thing, but Donghyuck will have to carry this with him forever because unlike plain petty college drama, heartbreak is permanent.

Donghyuck feels so stupid that it all ended up like this, and over the girl’s shoulder, Donghyuck can see Wurin making an obscene gesture egging Donghyuck on, and realizes that he won’t miss him at all.

The world swims before Donghyuck’s eyes, and he’s not sure if it’s the alcohol’s effect or tears blurring his vision anymore. There’s a chill over his skin, a frigid mix of loneliness and claustrophobia that has his insides locking up as he crumples down to his knees. He’s had too much to drink and his face feels too hot and his fingers feel too cold. The girl kneels next to him, asking if he’s okay, but Donghyuck can only shake his head.

The girl takes Donghyuck’s phone from his pocket and asks him who to call, and ten minutes later, Donghyuck is on the porch with his jacket, propped up against the wall, and Mark is giving him the angriest look Donghyuck has ever seen him wear.

There is no gentleness in Mark’s grip when he helps Donghyuck into a taxi, not a word that he spares Donghyuck until they make it back to Mark’s room. Just this tight, exasperated anger that rolls off him in waves as he gets Donghyuck a full glass of water and watches him drink it with an unflinching glare. Donghyuck lies down on the bed, waiting for the world to stop spinning, the tap-tap-tapping of Mark’s laptop functioning as an anchor to ground Donghyuck, eyes fixed on Mark’s back, even though Mark doesn’t turn once.

When Mark finally comes to lie down, he doesn’t even look at Donghyuck at first, spine straight as he stares at the ceiling, and Donghyuck, more sober now, can’t help the words that tumble out from his lips as his eyes trace the backlit outline of Mark’s face in the dark. “I missed you.”

Mark’s voice is painfully neutral, a plea tucked beneath the disconnected words. “Don’t lie to me. You were sick last week and I had no idea, so no, you didn’t.”

Donghyuck’s voice is much softer when he speaks again, throat clogged up with tears that he’s trying to fight. “I really did, Minhyung.”

Mark turns over the slightest to meet Donghyuck’s eyes, and it’s enough to make Donghyuck burst into tears all over again, and Mark is pressing his lips together as he holds his arms out and pulls Donghyuck in, letting Donghyuck cry into his neck, soaking the collar of his red spiderman shirt.

They don’t talk at all for the rest of the night, with Mark holding Donghyuck until the latter eventually falls asleep, breathing soft and even, completely unaware when Mark whispers, “I missed you too.”

“Shall we just pretend the last year never happened?”

Mark has a kettle boiling, all broad shoulders and sleepy eyes and shorts that cut off just above the knee as he leans on the small counter that functions as his kitchen, and Donghyuck has just woken up, face aching from all the crying and willing to bet real money that if they were on better terms, Mark would have taken a picture of him right now to keep as blackmail material.

“I don’t want to do that,” says Mark, shaking his head, voice still rough with sleep. “I just want us to do better. We’re supposed to be best friends, dude, we can do better than this.” He rummages through his closet and pulls out a couple tea bags. “Besides, we’re supposed to be bad-weather friends, and I thought that part at least would stay the same.”

“Bad-weather friends?”

“Yeah, like fair-weather friends, but you know, the exact opposite.” The confused look sits tight on Donghyuck’s puffy face, and Mark elaborates, “Like a fair-weather friend is someone who’s around when things are good but isn’t there for you when things are bad. We’re the opposite of that. We’re around when things are going wrong.”

“I like that term,” smiles Donghyuck, even though it hurts his cheeks to do so.

Mark does a little exaggerated bow. “Thank you. So if you don’t call me the next time you’re sick, I’m going to kill you. See how you get sick then.”

Donghyuck stays over in Mark’s room for the remaining three days when Mark inevitably takes the remains of Donghyuck’s sickness as his own, a tale as old as time and the final piece of the puzzle that manages to restore normalcy back to their dynamic. They watch a whole K-drama in two days and start challenging each other to games of Angry Birds like they used to when they were bored at church as young teenagers, when Mark was the only one between them who had a phone and would let Donghyuck play an extra game as long as he managed to beat the next level. They fill the time with some apologies, long overdue catching up, half-baked plans to get Jeno a job in the USA through high-ranking contacts in the Canadian government, that Mark regretfully informs that Donghyuck that one, he doesn’t have those, and two, it doesn’t really work that way.

“I miss talking to Jaem,” sighs Mark, looking over Donghyuck’s shoulder at some recipe video that Jaemin has sent with the words we should make this when I’m back. “I feel like I should have checked in more with him after the breakup and—”

“Nah, that’s not on you, he was telling me that he feels bad because he hasn’t answered your messages for a while because he doesn’t want Jen to know that he’s going through it.”

“The real question at this point is who doesn’t know that he’s going through it.”

“Yeah, I don’t know of any way that either of them thinks the other one could be okay with it,” nods Donghyuck. “Maybe you guys need an icebreaker though. I can make a group chat with the three of us. I could make one with you and Jen as well so that I can talk to him. Just to affirm that we’re being neutral. And equal. And that just because they’re broken up doesn’t mean that we need to stop being friends.”

“Yeah, and I can make a chat with both of them and we can complete the set.” Mark hasn’t thought about the 00z group chat in a really long time, having resolved the angst around it with time.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I know about the 00z group chat,” says Mark, seemingly nonchalantly. “Not that it matters, really, but I think I saw it once by accident on your phone, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” Donghyuck leans back on the headboard and surveys Mark’s face, eyes narrowed. “And what did you think it was about?”

Mark shrugs, cracking his knuckles absentmindedly. “No idea. Not that I cared.”

“Sounds like you did,” says Donghyuck plainly, tilting his head. “Oh dude, did you think we had some secret group chat to exclude you or something?”

“No!” says Mark immediately, voice cracking with how quickly his pitch rises. “No.”

But Donghyuck is opening his messaging app, scrolling frantically before giving up and searching up the name, after which he scrolls more, all the way to the top, and thrusts the phone in Mark’s direction. Ideally, Mark would politely decline the phone and pretend he isn’t curious, but that’s just not who he is.

You created the group Mark Lee Elite Support Squad

Mark raises his eyebrows, looking up at Donghyuck, who simply gestures to read further.

jimjaem jaeminnie jaempie nana na jaemin
>> don’t u think we should change the name in case he suspects something

jen out of jen jencore jenpie nono naurnaur lee jeno
>> Yeah, it’s too obvious right now

Jen Out Of Jen Jencore Jenpie Nono Naurnaur Lee Jeno changed the group name to 00z

Mark continues scrolling through messages and messages coordinating schedules and locations. It’s a long log of plans made to make sure that Mark is never alone through his internship preparation, an ode to friendship that rings so loud in Mark’s ears that it makes his head spin and his vision blurry. The last message on the group is from Donghyuck, a simple good job, babies on the day that Mark passed his interview.

There’s a brief moment when Mark hands the phone back that his expression lies naked, shattered with shame and grief and love, and it’s the clearest look that Donghyuck has gotten of Mark across all the time they’ve spent together in the last few days. It’s startling, being witness to the rawest of Mark’s emotions again, even if it’s just for a moment, and Donghyuck thinks they’re okay again.

Until the very last night before the semester resumes, when Mark has recovered but has turned in early like a responsible adult, and Donghyuck is attempting to sleep and failing miserably courtesy to the nap he took earlier. He can hear his phone buzz and fumbles for it under his pillow, desperate for a distraction as he squints at the harsh brightness.

He taps out the passcode and wonders when his wallpaper changed to some pretty picture of the sunset, before realizing that it isn’t his phone at all, it’s Mark’s phone.

Mark’s phone that just unlocked to Donghyuck’s birthday.

The light spreads dimly over Mark’s face, peaceful and unaware, and suddenly Donghyuck realizes why it’s been so hard to read him the last few days – not because Donghyuck’s gotten rusty with the language as a result of temporary disuse, but because the words were being censored from him on purpose. So maybe they aren’t okay.

Donghyuck leans in to kiss Mark’s forehead gently, almost mournfully. He’s watched Mark fall in love over and over and over, and get up and move on when it starts to suffocate him.

Donghyuck doesn’t think it’ll be any different this time. It’ll be okay eventually.

A master’s offer comes through after a couple consecutive rejections three days later, at a university in the same city as Mark and Jeno, and Donghyuck is almost thankful that Jaemin isn’t back from home yet so that he has some time to deal with the information before he has to pretend to be happy for Donghyuck. Donghyuck loves him more than anything else in the world, but he knows that if they had switched places, Donghyuck would be raising hell and burning everything to the ground. When Jaemin comes back two days later, tackling Donghyuck with a hug on seeing him again and telling him that he’s so proud, he sounds like he means it.

Donghyuck has been going with Jaemin to play badminton, to try out some new cafes, and to enroll in random workshops that have to do with everything from pottery to crocheting so they have things to do that are as far away from anything intoxicating (unless we’re talking about tiny pastries).

Jeno waved to Donghyuck the other day. Mark has been on a running kick lately, so Donghyuck’s been waking up early to walk in the stadium to accidentally run into him so that they can hang out for a while and get coffee in the morning. Mark’s still hard to read, but he returns Donghyuck’s sarcastic little comments and calls him insufferable with a smile and hits every friendship note so on pitch that Donghyuck sometimes wants to snatch his phone away to double-check, wondering if that one memory was in fact a vivid dream.

Donghyuck cries on their last day of college, forgoing the mobile games to stare out the window on the way back home, ankle hooked with Mark’s own as he sits opposite Donghyuck, working on outlining some half-formed play idea that he had in the middle of the night. He has a little crease between his eyebrows, mouthing the words to himself as he goes back and forth on a line, the tap-tap-tapping of his keyboard fading out into white noise. He’s quite amusing to watch when he’s writing, and after a while Donghyuck finds himself paying more attention to his peripheral vision than the landscapes that roll past.

Donghyuck flies to Jaemin’s city to see him off when he leaves for the states, tearing up slightly only after Jaemin has entered the airport and can no longer see him. Jaemin’s siblings are all in tears as well, making fun of each other even as they sport matching pink cheeks and puffy eyes.

Donghyuck moves into a large student apartment with four others when he starts his degree. Two of them, Renjun and Yangyang, are his age, while the other two, Chenle and Jisung, are slightly younger, with a year left in their bachelor’s degree. Having grown up with two younger siblings his whole life, Donghyuck is glad he doesn’t have to come back to an empty room the way he did through college. Chenle is generally in the kitchen with Jisung, practising dishes he needs to perfect for his culinary degree, always posting on their group chat about food he brings back from his classes. Jisung is a darling but a disaster, six feet of pure nervousness, but he asks Donghyuck the most random questions when they are in the kitchen at the same time and reminds Donghyuck vaguely of his youngest sister, so Donghyuck has a lot of affection for him.

Yangyang takes to Donghyuck with remarkable swiftness, on his way out to the beach the first time they cross paths and invites Donghyuck along before the end of their introductory conversation. He’s spontaneous and open, always inviting Donghyuck to things and painting Donghyuck’s nails over the weekend, and Donghyuck wonders where he’s been his whole life.

Renjun is a little different, initially reserved. He’s smart, Donghyuck can tell from the very first conversation, and there’s a light in his eyes that makes Donghyuck want to get to know him more. He’s quietly caring, washing Donghyuck’s dishes on the day that Donghyuck has an assignment and forgets about them, never mentioning it. It takes a few months before Donghyuck can declare unmistakably that they are friends, and Renjun is like an angel to people he cares about, even if he hits Donghyuck on the crown when Donghyuck is being annoying like a nagging parent, but that is his highest form of affection.

Mark and Jeno share an apartment about an hour away. Mark buys a second-hand car and occasionally drives Donghyuck along when he has to go shopping for things for their apartment and Jeno can’t come along. Most of the time when it involves lugging something large back, but the outings often end with them stopping for a sweet treat that Mark will inevitably end up paying for when Donghyuck puts on pleading eyes and reminds him that only one of them is an earning adult while the other is a sad broke student.

The hankering for familiarity has Donghyuck’s and Jeno’s friendship falling back together, easy and unaddressed, patched up during a friend’s housewarming party. Sometimes he asks about Jaemin, much more subtly than when Jaemin asks Donghyuck about him, and the wistful look in his eye makes Donghyuck’s heart hurt. Jaemin’s been on three dates with different people that Donghyuck does not breathe a word about, because he knows that I didn’t like the jokes he was making and we showed up in the same shirt and she wore it better than me are not Jaemin’s true reasons for not pursuing anything new.

Donghyuck sees the same longing surface over and over, regrets at the rim of the glass when Jeno drinks, an exasperated sigh when Jaemin swipes on one of three dating apps and mutters about dying alone, and Donghyuck’s beliefs waver, just the slightest.

Donghyuck wakes up with a sore throat on an October morning and immediately calls Mark.

“False alarm,” says Donghyuck when he opens the door, Mark in a large puffy jacket and bright green beanie. “I was just dehydrated. I had some warm water and it just disappeared.” He steps aside, letting Mark in. “You can still stay if you want, though.”

Donghyuck won’t lie, he would have preferred being sick. It’s been a while since he’s had some time to hang out with just Mark. The idea of lounging around all weekend with the one person who doesn’t mind being around him when he’s sick was something that Donghyuck was actually looking forward to.

Mark blinks – once, twice, thrice, expression blank. “I have to be somewhere, actually. My colleagues are going rock climbing at this gym. I was going to go to that.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “That’s boring, you should just hang out in my room the whole weekend.”

“As tempting as that is,” laughs Mark. “I can’t cancel on this.”

Donghyuck points to Mark’s backpack, the worn-out fabric where Mark’s laptop has jutted out of the outline of the compartment. “But you were going to.”

Colour rises to Mark’s cheeks like he’s been caught. “Yeah, but you know,” He shrugs, recovering quickly. His smile is apologetic and doesn’t reach his eyes. “That was in case you were sick and didn’t have any backup, not for nothing. It’s not like we’re boyfriends or something. And it’s like a welcome bonding thing with the new recruit from the R&D division, and I should definitely go.”

“Sounds fun,” says Donghyuck, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice, and trying even harder to not let that disappointment manifest as annoyance, but there’s a small ugly part of him that’s mean and passive-aggressive, because why would they need to be boyfriends for that? Donghyuck would probably prefer hanging out with Mark over most of his batchmates any day. “If he’s cute, get his number. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

“You wish,” says Mark, voice nonchalant once more, sticking his tongue out at Donghyuck as Donghyuck swings the door on his face, going back to lie down, feeling unexplainably cold.

Maybe the real love story was between Donghyuck and his cranky immune system.

He was never a particularly sickly child, but after moving to a campus with a ton of foliage and more palpable weather changes, his immune system started acting like an unreliable roommate in Donghyuck’s body, letting him down from time to time, to the point where it became almost predictable in its unpredictability and no longer made sense to rely on it. Twice or thrice a year, like an old vengeful friend – a fever, a cold, a sore throat, a headache. Sometimes some of them, sometimes all, sometimes they’d test out new combinations like they were debuting new subunits in a band.

Since Donghyuck’s started his master’s, he hasn’t gotten sick at all. It’s December and the weather has been unforgiving, but Donghyuck has retained the colour in his cheeks, woken up each morning with enough energy to make it through the day (on less than two coffees, at least). The little bear bag with his medicines sits tucked away in his closet, gathering dust from not having been needed for so long.

This should be a win for Donghyuck, but the downside to it starts bothering him more and more as the days go by, as Mark’s absence becomes more palpable. They’ve both settled into a comfortable level of monotony, and nothing has been going on, so they’ve barely made the effort to meet up, a slump exacerbated by the fact that they live a full hour away from each other, classes and research becoming too exhausting for Donghyuck to find the will to drop by at their apartment afterwards.

Donghyuck wonders why he feels like a teenager all the time, hesitant to reach out lest it make him seem like he cares too much. It makes him feel too desperate, like calling someone ten minutes after you drop them off at their front door after a date. There’s a simple solution – he can just wait for Mark to call him, so he chooses to do that instead. There’s a hankering in him that begs to be satiated, but he can’t find it in himself to just pick up the phone.

Life is never devoid of things that go wrong, and Donghyuck sits peacefully with the knowledge that he’ll always be the one Mark calls when something eventually does.

“Are you sick?”

“No, why?”

“Because Mark is?”

The sound of Donghyuck’s peace shattering sounds eerily familiar to his heart breaking.

Mark is sick. Mark is sick and he hasn’t told Donghyuck, which is the first blow to Donghyuck’s stomach. Donghyuck has never known Mark to fall sick for any fault of his own, which means someone else must’ve been the reason that Mark got sick, which means Mark must be seeing someone else, which is the second blow to Donghyuck’s chest. It’s taken this long for Donghyuck to realize that he wants to be the only one who gets close enough to make Mark sick like that, and the realization that Donghyuck might have been in love right back all along is the final fatal blow to Donghyuck’s chin, emotionally bruised and bloody.

Donghyuck considers leaving work and racing over to Mark’s apartment, but then realizes he doesn’t quite know what he would say. What does one say at a time like this? Is someone else’s fever bleeding heat into your clothes? Did you get sick from a mouth that was not mine?

But that sounds insane, even in Donghyuck’s head, and his mental image of Mark at the door gives him a look of utter confusion and slams the door on his face.

Besides, even if Donghyuck did go over, he’s not sure he’s mentally prepared to meet the person who got close enough to Mark to make him sick in the first place. Would they even be there? Or would Mark be hiding from them as well, clearing his throat before trying to sound normal on the phone, still unable to let anyone lay eyes on his pale skin and sickly slump of his shoulders?

The answer is loud in the way that Donghyuck’s notifications lay barren for another three days.

maRk mel melk murk minhyung lee
you wanna get dinner today?

It’s Friday afternoon and Donghyuck is falling asleep in a lecture when the message lands in his inbox like the first bud of spring, and yet Donghyuck can’t shake the feeling of dread that this seemingly harmless message is exuding. They don’t meet up for nothing. That’s their whole thing.

This must be about informing Donghyuck about the newest entrant into Mark’s romantic sphere, and Donghyuck is sick to his stomach. He’s spent the entire week trying to convince himself that it’s okay that he never said anything, that if Mark had loved him enough then he would have said something earlier, but there’s an incessant What If rattling around in his head that wonders if maybe they could have made each other better, making a conscious effort to continue to trust each other against their inherent romantic instincts instead of just waiting for both of them to get better, to beat all their demons.

Whether it was the will of the universe or simply Donghyuck’s fault for waiting too long, it doesn’t matter. It’s over now, and when Donghyuck ends up outside Mark’s door in the evening, twisting the hem of his shirt into a knot, he tells himself that he’s made his peace with it, that he isn’t in pieces about it, but Mark greets him with a small smile, and Donghyuck’s head goes blank.

Donghyuck thinks the world will suddenly shift into high definition, that he’ll start seeing more colours than a shrimp, but it turns out that the only thing that has changed is a small whisper echoing over and over in his head, a refrain repeating resembling a prayer.

Mark sounds positively chirpy as he tells Donghyuck about his week at work, having gotten put on a project that he’s wanted to be a part of since he joined. I love you. Mark has a pot of pasta bubbling on the stove, biting into one to check if it is fully cooked and burning his mouth. I love you. Mark is wearing a shirt that used to be Donghyuck’s but was way too big for him. I love you. The little accents that have remained in his speech, the big laugh and the earnest eyes, the lack of culinary skill. I love you, I love you, I love you.

All brought down to earth when Mark goes to the bathroom and Donghyuck cannot resist the urge to pick up the phone that he’s left behind.

Oh-six-oh-six. The phone buzzes in Donghyuck’s hands.

Incorrect password.

Donghyuck’s chest seizes up, a chill washing over his skin. He’s frozen in his seat when Mark comes back, stopping when he sees the look on Donghyuck’s face. “What happened?”

“Why did you call me over?” asks Donghyuck bluntly, emotion drained from his voice.

“So we could hang out?” says Mark slowly, tentatively taking another step forward. His eyes are wide, catching the warm light overhead and sparkling with concern. I love you.

“Yeah, right. We don’t just ever hang out.” The words are spit with blood, the punch to Donghyuck’s gut scrambling all his inner organs.

“Maybe we should,” says Mark simply, taking the stool opposite Donghyuck, clasping his hands in front of him. “I don’t think we should sit around waiting for something to go wrong to hang out.”

“And that’s why you called me today?” asks Donghyuck, disbelief heavy all over his words.

“Yes!” Mark seems to be fed up with the unexplained aggressiveness, indignant tone matching Donghyuck’s own. “I called you today to just hang out. Just like that. For no special reason other than the fact that I wanted to see you.”

“Don’t fuck with me like this,” says Donghyuck, mouth flattening into a line as he shakes his head, pushing Mark’s phone over to him. “Don’t lie, you changed your phone password, for fuck’s sake.”

Mark looks down at the phone and then at Donghyuck, eyes narrowing. “What did you try?”

“Doyun’s birthday,” says Donghyuck without flinching. It’s the last password that Mark gave Donghyuck willingly (willingly enough), and Donghyuck is not about to reveal his feelings that easily.

“Yeah?” asks Mark, tilting his head, angle sharp and challenging. “When’s Doyun’s birthday?”

Fuck. Fuck. It’s been over two years. Donghyuck has a multitude of well-working mental facets, but his memory is not one of those, especially not when it comes to the birthday of a boy he hasn’t spoken to since they stepped out of the shared circumstance that kept their friendship running.

“Well, maybe I remembered it wrong—” starts Donghyuck shakily, reaching over for Mark’s phone before Mark yanks it away.

“What were the numbers you entered?” asks Mark, tone even and unforgiving.

Donghyuck doesn’t answer. There’s the tiniest of smiles on Mark’s lips as he holds Donghyuck’s eyes with his own, staring at Donghyuck like he has him trapped beneath the pad of his thumb. A scarlet heat climbs up the back of Donghyuck’s neck at the intensity of the stare, colouring his cheeks.

Mark takes a deep breath. “I changed my password because Jeno guessed it. A little too easily.”

“What was it?”

“Please,” says Mark, knuckles white with how tightly he’s clutching his phone. “You know exactly what it was.” His face is transparent and unashamed, a portrait of divine adoration. “Was it ever a secret that I was in love with you?”

“It was,” says Donghyuck like the words are painful to get out, heart squeezing and somersaulting and thumping out of his chest. “I found out by accident.”

Mark gets up off the stool, rounding the kitchen counter to stand in front of Donghyuck. “How long ago?”

“Almost a year,” admits Donghyuck sheepishly, casting his glance away.

“And you didn’t say anything? Dude, you’re in love with me too!” blurts out Mark incredulously, making Donghyuck’s head snap back to him.

“How do you know that?” asks Donghyuck, voice raising like an accusation, like this is all a conspiracy of Mark’s doing. “I only found out this week!”

Mark scoffs. “Your phone wallpaper is my sleeping face.”

“Yeah, because you hate it,” says Donghyuck with an eye-roll.

“Yeah, but you don’t,” points out Mark, the emphasis on the word rendering Donghyuck speechless with how bare it has laid him, how seen it makes him feel, like his rib cage has swung open with the correct passcode, revealing his grotesque, beating heart, humming Mark’s name like it came pre-programmed with it.

Donghyuck reaches forward, seizing Mark’s shirt and pulling him forward roughly, their lips connecting on instinct for a criminally short, dry kiss before Donghyuck pulls away, releasing his hold on Mark, who looks like the equivalent of a cartoon character hit over the head with a frying pan, dazed stars revolving around his head. “That’s for being a fucking know-it-all.”

“Yeah?” asks Mark, a manic glint in his eye like Donghyuck has flipped the switch on every emotion that he’s twisted and pressed away in his chest. He leans in once more, fingers tangling in Donghyuck’s hair as he bites down on Donghyuck’s lip, and the most obscene noise tumbles from Donghyuck’s lips as he kisses back with fervour, frantic and wanting.

Mark curves his hands around Donghyuck’s thighs, lifting him clean off the stool as Donghyuck wraps his legs around Mark’s waist, continuing to kiss like they could subsist from not breathing but the idea of pausing the kiss may kill them. They sway dangerously, Mark bracing their combined weight with his hand on the kitchen counter as Donghyuck breaks away, though he looks very displeased to do so.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asks Mark gently, his other hand coming up to cup Donghyuck’s cheek, with Donghyuck’s eyes fluttering as he nuzzles against Mark’s palm.

“So much,” sighs Donghyuck, breathing ragged as he climbs down, the smile that blossoms over his face seeming almost shy as he lets Mark take his hand and pull him over to the couch. “Seriously, why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I didn’t know if you wanted a relationship just yet,” says Mark softly, turning so that he sits facing Donghyuck entirely, thumb running strokes over Donghyuck’s knuckles. “You hadn’t dated anyone since Kangdae, and I thought if us sleeping together didn’t change anything, I didn’t know what it would take at all.” He raises his other hand, running it through Donghyuck’s hair gently. “What did it take?”

“Jaem told me that Jen told him that you were sick,” admits Donghyuck, embarrassment colouring his voice. “And I realized I didn’t want you close enough to catch something from anyone else.”

There’s a confused divot between Mark’s eyebrows. “When was this again?”

“Tuesday, if I remember right.”

“Tuesday…” murmurs Mark, expression concentrated before abruptly smoothing out in realization. “Oh, you’re joking. I ate some leftovers that Jeno had brought back from his dinner the day before and it made my stomach hurt a bit.” Mark claps his hand to his forehead. “I may have played it up a little much when I accused him of trying to kill me, but you know…”

“Minhyung,” says Donghyuck exasperatedly, head dropping into his hands. “Oh my god.”

“Well, at least something good came out of it,” laughs Mark, wrapping his hands around Donghyuck’s wrists and attempting to pull them away from Donghyuck’s face. “Why didn’t you say anything when you found out about the phone password, though?”

“I don’t know, I thought it may have just been a crush or something,” shrugs Donghyuck, inching closer to rest his head on Mark’s shoulder. “I didn’t think you would do anything about it. I thought I’d come with too much baggage for you, and I thought it would change things. I thought we’d be less comfortable with each other.”

Mark squishes his cheek to Donghyuck’s crown. “I didn’t want us to end up that way, I was just waiting for you to feel okay enough to say something about it. It may have gotten a little frustrating, but I think I could have waited forever.”

“It’s been a minute, dude, how are you already going Full Sap?” Donghyuck attempts an eye-roll as he peels his cheek away from Mark’s neck but stutters when he meets Mark’s eyes, his own eyes fluttering closed when Mark leans in to kiss him softly, like a relieved exhale, like a final highlight that completes a work of art.

“Are you even surprised? You know me.” Mark’s hands come up to cup Donghyuck’s jaw, his lips curving into a smile, and the warmth that washes over Donghyuck feels like a flame protected against all odds, kept alight under the harshest winds, roaring upwards like it’s finally been set free.

The snow is still coming down in sheets, a thick layer of white piled up on the window sill, an unexpected snowstorm having shut all of them in the apartment, turning a quick cordial coffee into an all-night reunion.

Donghyuck is tucked under Mark’s arm on the couch, with Home Alone running on the laptop on the coffee table, but they’re watching the two in the kitchen instead. Jeno has his head thrown back laughing at something that Jaemin said, and Jaemin is trying and failing to hide the fondness on his face. Donghyuck wonders how much longer Jaemin can hold off mentioning that he’s going to move back, having applied for an internal transfer within the company. There’s an ongoing betting pool between him and Mark about it.

Mark presses his lips to Donghyuck’s forehead, just because he can, just because he wants to, because Mark Lee is in love with Lee Donghyuck, and cannot hide it even if he wanted to.

The weather is the worst it has been in a decade, but the apartment feels like it has been bathed in sunlight, and the bad-weather friends are now all-weather lovers, keeping each other warm through it all.