Chapter Text
Yuta was barely through the door of his apartment when his phone started to vibrate in his pocket. He swayed unsteadily as he toed off his shoes, momentarily caught off balance, and he landed heavily - shoulder to the wall.
“Ow,” he muttered, yanking his phone from his pocket and ready to blame whoever was calling him at Never O’Clock when they should know that he was drunk.
The name on the screen knocked the air out of his lungs. He swiped to answer.
“Hyung?” Mark’s voice was distant. Yuta put the phone to his ear.
“Mark.”
“Ah, hi hyung. Are you, um, busy?” Mark asked. He sounded agitated. Yuta felt himself sobering by the second. Being around Mark was more effective than drinking a bucket of coffee.
“I’m drunk,” Yuta said, shuffling through to the lounge where he sat down heavily on the couch. Light streamed in from the streets outside, bathing the room in multicoloured, muted streamers of luminescence. “It’s really late,” he said.
“I know,” Mark said. “But I thought you might have been awake since you were out. I mean, I saw your socials. You were out, right?”
“Yes,” Yuta knew he sounded surly but he didn’t care very much right now. Mark had been away for a while; it was easy to pretend he didn’t miss him if he pretended he was annoyed instead.
“Who, um, were you- is your friend still in Seoul?” Mark sounded distracted. Why was he asking inane questions?
“What did you call me for?” Yuta pivoted. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, vision clearing around yellow bursts of light like the streetlamps in a Latin American city, and memories of walking through the quiet streets with Mark’s arm around his waist. Yuta blew out a sigh. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s good,” Mark said. Yuta could hear him shifting about.
“Where are you?” he asked. He knew where Mark was, what city he was in and the memories they shared of it, but he asked anyway.
“We have a rehearsal break,” Mark said. “It’s hot,” he added. “I’m- I came back to the hotel to nap. But I can’t, ah… I’m not relaxed. I keep thinking about… things.”
Yuta nestled into the cushions of his couch. “Is it too much? You can ask Jeno to help, if you’re stressed.”
“I’m not stressed,” Mark said with a laugh that sounded like defeat. “I was just thinking- I mean, I keep thinking about the last time I was here. With urichil, and- and you. Remember?”
“I remember,” Yuta said, alarm bells ringing in his mind cutting through the booze. He hadn’t had a drink in a few hours, he was starting to think very clearly. “I told you, I’ll remember that time for the rest of my life.”
“Hyung,” Mark said.
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever think-?”
Yuta sat up straight, hand shooting to his hair. His heart was pounding. “Please.”
“Woah, what?”
“Don’t finish that sentence again, Mark.”
“But-”
“I can’t- give you the answer you want,” Yuta whispered into the phone, and stood up, starting to pace the room. “Please.”
Mark didn’t say anything for a few moments. Yuta could hear him shifting about on his hotel room bed, heard the little huffs and intakes of breath as Mark tried to work out what to say. He finally asked, simply, “Why?”
Yuta knew Mark. He had known him for years, and he knew he wouldn’t get away with lying here. He also knew that Mark wasn’t a cruel man. He wasn’t asking so that he could dig the knife in deeper. Yuta flopped back down on the couch.
“I can’t open that wound again,” he said honestly. “It was too hard, last time. After us.” Mark’s reaction was audible.
“Hyung,” Mark said in a sad, sorry voice that Yuta could only answer because he could never ignore Mark even when he wanted to. “Hyung, can I- please, can I see you?”
Please. How could Yuta say no? It was a non sequitur but at least Mark wasn’t asking for more details on how he had broken Yuta’s heart; twice, now. He took the phone away from his ear and flipped it, opening the video call request that Mark had sent. Mark’s face bloomed on his phone screen. He was lying on white sheets, his hair fanned out on the pillow around him, lit by warm sunlight from a window somewhere across the room. He had discarded his shirt. He looked soft and painfully beautiful. Yuta saw his own feed on the little box in the corner. His hood was still up, his bangs spilling out of it. He had put his glasses back on and they reflected the light from the city, while the rest of the room was in shadow.
Even so, Mark smiled at him. “There you are,” he said, and Yuta couldn’t help but blush.
“It’s dark,” he said, making no move to change that.
“It’s still you,” Mark said. “I saw your pictures earlier.” Mark looked away for a second, like he was embarrassing himself. “You look so cute tonight, hyung. I can’t stop thinking about you.” He paused, and shut his eyes. “Is that okay? I’m sorry I said- I mean, I’m not sorry I said it. But I’m sorry you don’t want me to say it.” He opened his eyes again. “I miss you, Yuta.” Yuta’s heart lurched at the sound of his own name, without honourifics or embellishment, a plain rendering that made him feel seen. Mark could do that, make Yuta feel like the only person in the world. That was his superpower and his weapon.
He blessed Yuta further or dug the knife in; Yuta would know later which it was.
“I’ve been thinking about you all the time we’ve been here,” he said. Benediction or stab wound.
Yuta didn’t say anything, just let him talk.
“I know you don’t want me to ask you if you ever think about us because- I mean you’ve never lied to me. To make me feel better. You told me I shouldn’t ask. And before, back then, you said you think about me all the time, and I know I’m not a good person for telling you this if you want to never think about me like that again. But I think about you all the time too. And especially here, which is kind of, like, our place. You know?”
Yuta hoped Mark wasn’t expecting an answer. He wasn’t capable of speech right now.
Mark shifted about on the screen, broad shoulders pushing deeper into the mattress underneath him. The phone angle shifted up, holding it higher above his body.
There were his shoulders, his chest, his toned stomach and the dip at his hips. There was his hand, the one that wasn’t holding the phone, lightly tracing the line of his sternum, and lower beyond the camera view. There were his lips parting slightly.
There he was, unholy fucking beautiful, eyes hooded and intent and Yuta remembered seeing this view for himself.
He remembered their last night in that city, and how he’d locked Mark’s hips between his knees and held him steady while Mark begged him for release. Yuta almost tasted the saltiness of his skin when he leant to kiss Mark lightly on the forehead, before he told him he could let go. He almost felt it in his body, how Mark had been relentless after that.
He remembered too, the aftermath and his despair. Getting off the bus at the airport and knowing it was over. He thought about that time constantly. Mark wasn’t cruel enough to use him, use that precious memory, just to make himself feel better. Was he?
“Why are you doing this?” Yuta finally asked. “Because you’re stressed?”
“I’m not stressed, hyung. I just can’t stop thinking about fucking you.”
Yuta had no answer to that.
Mark watched him steadily as he began to slowly move his hand, down beyond the screen.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“Not if this is just like last time-”
“I don’t want things to be like they were the last time,” Mark said quickly. He sounded sincere. He sounded collected, the tremor in his voice gone. He was lying there touching himself and talking to Yuta about their relationship like they were having an argument about choreography.
Yuta couldn’t hang up the phone if he tried. He ached to touch himself and that was exquisite in itself, the pain of it.
“Mark…”
“I think about you all the time,” Mark said with confidence. “I promise, it won’t be like last time.”
Yuta watched him, watched his lips part involuntarily and felt his own move too. Felt his own teeth sink into his lower lip, and felt too Mark’s answering moan.
“You’re incredible, Yuta. Keep watching me,” Mark whispered.
“I’m watching,” Yuta said. The point of no return was long past.
“Keep watching,” Mark said again. He shut his eyes, moved his hand faster. Yuta was fully hard now, but didn’t dare to move the phone long enough to give himself any relief.
“Keep watching,” Mark said a third time, “and when I get home, I want to watch you.”
And then.
And then-
And then Yuta hung up the phone.
He stood up and immediately sat back down, and put his head in his hands. All of the blood in his body was concentrated between his legs, and the ache in his lower abdomen told him that it would take barely anything at all to push him over the edge. None of that beer and sake he had imbibed seemed to matter. His body had reacted instinctively to Mark Lee and that first spray of white across the pristine skin of his abdomen. Yuta breathed deep, willing himself to get a fucking grip.
His phone lit up, and he almost dropped it.
The photograph was in 4K HD, and would ruin Mark’s life if it went any further. [Delete this after], Mark had scrawled across the top of the image. After. Yuta made an involuntary noise, like a whine, and deleted the picture immediately. Because phone hacking was too common, and the image was seared on the inside of his eyelids.
He looked at their chat intently for a moment, but there was nothing. Yuta was surprised, and not just because Mark had sent him - to put it politely - a nude. It was because Mark was following up after he was finished.
This was new.
With shaking hands, Yuta keyed out a response. [Can you go back to rehearsals now?]
Mark sent him a series of laughing emotes, and a thumbs up. Then, [I mean it, Yuta. It won’t be like it was before.]
Yuta looked at the message and turned off his phone. By the time he turned it on again, he had calmed down, the evidence of his own transgression against his well-being washed cleanly from the shower wall. He was getting into his bed, and decided to answer Mark with a challenge of his own.
[Come over when you get home], he typed, and then - because he felt like Mark deserved an answer in kind, snapped a picture of himself from the same angle, with his pyjamas neatly buttoned to the neck, and a sheet mask still on his face.