sugar hiccup

by mayhems

Summary:

Mark Lee is a boy with an innocent cherub face and gently clumsy hands, embroiled in a world full of trouble because he has no other choice.

Of course, Donghyuck lets himself get involved.

Notes:

i am back once again with another monstrosity. thank you to my beta, and thank you to myself, as always, for not going completely crazy while writing this. please heed the tags; besides what’s already been stated there, there’s also some discussion of generally unhealthy relationships and depiction of mental health issues. stay safe!

Like most things did, the concept of Mark and Donghyuck started very simply.

“Tuck in your shirt.”

Donghyuck had sighed into the locker before him and bit his tongue, shoving the front of his crumpled white button down into his slacks. The teacher had only continued her reign of terror down the hallway once he was nice and presentable. The constant loud chatter of school children only resumed once she was out of sight, the leftover scent of her flowery perfume making him dizzy as he closed his locker shut. Gently, like a proper schoolboy.

“Fuck!” Donghyuck shrieked as his foot came into contact with some asshole’s backpack as he tried to walk to his next period, falling flat on his ass in the hallway. Someone behind him snickered.

“Oh, shit,” a voice above him said elegantly, and as Donghyuck craned his head up from his seat on the floor, he was met with a faceful of someone’s calloused hand, offering him help.

“Sorry,” they both said at the same time as Donghyuck grabbed the boy’s outstretched hand and heaved himself up with a groan. Donghyuck finally looked at him in annoyance and the boy’s lips quirked upward in amusement or embarrassment or both, and Donghyuck had never seen eyes so bright before.

“It was my fault,” he said good-naturedly, and Donghyuck was acutely aware of the fact that their hands were still connected. “I’m Mark.”

“I’m…” Donghyuck snatched his hand away and stuffed it into the rough pocket of his overly-starched pants, “Donghyuck.”

Mark nodded and bowed a little. “Nice to meet you,” he said very politely, and Donghyuck wanted to slug him in the stomach.

“You too,” Donghyuck bowed back and bent down to pick up the textbook he dropped. “Don’t try to kill anyone else with your backpack.”

A high pitched laugh tumbled out of his mouth like the discordant keys of a piano and Donghyuck froze in place like a deer in headlights.

“I won’t.”

Donghyuck didn’t see him around much after that. They didn’t share any classes, he never even saw him in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and even though Donghyuck tried to befriend everyone he could get his hands on to pass the time, Mark seemed to be an incorporeal being. Or maybe he was a loser.

Donghyuck would sometimes see him sitting in the soccer field after school and whispering with some kid. Mark would offer him an endearingly uneasy wave when they caught each other between periods, and occasionally, they ran into each other at the water fountains. Donghyuck continued to chat shit in his spare time, play marbles with the delinquent kids whose ties were always too loose, and flirt with the lunch-lady for extra rice. He tried not to forget to tuck in his stuffy shirt, didn’t run in the hallways (when he could be caught), and pretended to listen to the daily morning announcements. He hadn’t seen the point in trying to keep up appearances when half of his fellow classmates had their hands down each other’s pants or were flushing some nerd’s head in a toilet, but he didn’t need trouble.

He didn’t think of Mark much. They were strangers at worst and acquaintances at best, until second year when Donghyuck saw Mark passing some douchebag some pills in a little baggie in exchange for crisp green bills in the boy’s bathroom.

Mark had looked at him with wide eyes, seemingly surprised at being caught out, but he didn't look scared, like he somehow knew Donghyuck wasn’t the type to tell. The kid with the pills pocketed the bag quickly and hustled past Donghyuck, bumping into him accidentally on purpose.

“You deal?” Donghyuck blurted out as he rubbed his shoulder, and Mark giggled a bit, but it felt a bit glazed over. Donghyuck knew about drugs. Kind of. He knew that they were generally seen as not good because of all the ads and campaigns that he’d seen vehemently against them. He’d seen his aunt pop painkillers like they were candy for her chronic migraines when she thought he wasn’t looking. When he had gotten his wisdom teeth taken out, he’d been woozy and high as a kite after he came to from the anesthesia. His seatmate in chemistry lab always smelled like marijuana. Donghyuck was cultured. But Mark’s sweet innocent little cherub face did not compute in Donghyuck’s brain as the face of the same Mark who had been passing pills to some debate club kid mere seconds ago.

“Money,” Mark had said simply, like it was the most normal thing in the world. He rubbed the back of his neck like he was sheepish, and reached out to pat Donghyuck once, twice on his shoulder. “It's good to see you.” Mark ducked out of the restroom without further preamble.

Maybe he wasn’t a loser, is all Donghyuck had thought. Or, maybe he was a loser who just so happened to sell drugs to fellow teenagers.

It seemed like Mark became more of a person and less of an apparition after that, drifting behind Donghyuck everywhere he went. He noticed that Mark was everywhere if you looked hard enough, in every nook and cranny of the school: tucked into the bleachers, hanging around supply closets. He was even in the fucking robotics club. He still gave Donghyuck that same wave whenever their eyes met, less uneasy and more cheery. It seemed like Mark had a good morale with his grubby-handed, bright-eyed, naïve customers, and it made sense to Donghyuck. He was intoxicating but in a way that it was obvious that he didn’t do it on purpose, probably wasn’t aware of it in the first place. He looked like the boy next door, like someone you could trust–like someone who didn’t sell drugs for money. Donghyuck had to give it to him, he was an artful businessman. And smart too, given the fact that he was taking advantage of teenagers desperate to get high or numb something or fit in or all of the above.

They eventually became leveled up acquaintances, friend-adjacent, as Donghyuck could barely pass off his excruciating curiosity as just good old-fashioned amicability. They didn’t see each other outside of school, but they talked and played rock, paper, scissors, and Donghyuck learned bits and pieces about Mark’s life that he let slip through the cracks of his open yet closed exterior.

“Why are you always staying behind after school?” Donghyuck had whisper-asked him in the library one day, watching Mark spin a pencil back and forth between skilled fingers as he blinked down at his calculus textbook with his perpetually wide eyes.

“Oh,” Mark said like it was a weird question, “I don’t go back home until the evening, most days.”

Donghyuck had finally given up on pretending to be interested in his chemistry study guide and pushed it to the side, snatching his phone out of his pocket and opening up a rhythm game. “You do those after-school programs?”

Mark seemed to think the question over as he continued to spin the pencil delicately between his fingers. “Yeah, sort of.”

Donghyuck didn’t pry, in case he was one of those dealers who also killed people in his spare time or something. No matter his goofy laugh and dazzling Christian boy smile, surely no person who was in that line of business didn’t have some fucked up things going on.

Some time later, Donghyuck found out that Mark lived with his parents, but they were a dysfunctional union at best, only good for taxes. He had been watching them fall out of love for what seemed like most of his life. When Mark didn’t think anyone was looking, he would have this scarily melancholy look in his eyes that seemed to overtake his entire face. Sometimes it would slip through even when he was smiling or laughing, but Donghyuck didn’t mention it.

Things were bad was all that Donghyuck knew, but weren’t most things?

“Hard times make us stronger,” Donghyuck’s aunt had told him once while he was picking at the limp vegetables on his plate with his fork, more sludge than actual nutrients. He wasn’t sure if she even believed that herself or if she was high out of her mind, but he glanced at his little brother who was unaware that he had lumpy mashed potatoes smeared all over his little face and sighed.

“Crock of shit,” is all Donghyuck responded, pushing up from his seat at the table and grabbing his plate. His brother giggled loudly at his language, and his baby sister looked at him like he had just killed a man.

“Language, Lee Donghyuck,” his aunt said, a little delayed, and Donghyuck noticed that her already hollow face had lost some weight. “You have a sailor’s mouth, just like yr’father did.”

Apparently his temper was also something he inherited from his father, but if you asked Donghyuck, he’d tell you that his anger was justified.

If God was looking down on him, letting everything happen to him, just to make him stronger, he had a lot of questions.

“What do you think happens after we die?” Donghyuck had asked Mark around a cigarette, watching an underpaid faculty worker sweep up autumn leaves that had begun to collect all around campus as he exhaled slowly.

“Atonement,” Mark said simply. “Since when do you smoke?”

“You think you're gonna get punished?” Donghyuck ignored his question, turning to face Mark where his back was against the fence separating them from the real world. “For pushing drugs and shit?”

“Everyone deserves forgiveness,” Mark said dubiously, swiping the cigarette out of Donghyuck’s mouth before he could protest and stubbing it under his dirty Chuck Taylor’s. “But we have to earn it first.”

Donghyuck didn’t agree. Not really.

The first time Donghyuck ever saw Mark’s mother was in third year.

“Mark!” she had yelled as she stumbled out of an old Honda, tripping over her feet as she waved her hand at where Donghyuck and Mark were sitting on the curb outside of school. “Mom is here to pick you up!”

Mark always had pretty big eyes, but that was the first time Donghyuck had ever seen them bug out so much.

“Uh,” was all that he could get out before Donghyuck got up to his feet and skipped over to greet the urban legend herself.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Lee,” Donghyuck bowed deeply before her swaying figure, and he could hear Mark’s hesitant footsteps approach behind him. She smelled like rubbing alcohol.

Her glassy eyes focused somewhere behind him. “Markie, who’s this?”

Mark appeared beside Donghyuck, looking absolutely mortified. “Uh, this is, uh.”

“Lee Donghyuck,” he finished for Mark smoothly, crossing his hands neatly in front of him like a proper schoolboy.

She pointed at him as her eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, I’ve heard about you! You’re adorable.”

“Okay,” Mark butt in pointedly, grabbing his mother’s arm gently and trying to maneuver her into the passenger’s seat with minimal injuries. He looked over his shoulder at Donghyuck watching them in morbid curiosity and gave him an ambiguous look. “Time to go now.”

“Invite your friend over for dinner,” she whisper-yelled, slapping his arm away sloppily. “We’re a family with manners.”

Mark turned back to glance at Donghyuck and his heart jumped against his ribcage at the look of… fear on his face; a sprinkle of somber embarrassment that made him look like a puppy getting scolded for chewing up your favorite pair of shoes.

“That’s okay, ma’am, I actually have somewhere to be in a bit,” Donghyuck cut in, eyeing the both of them unsurely. He noticed Mark’s shoulders deflate infinitesimally out of relief, but he was still red in the face.

His mother leaned out of the door and Mark saved her from face-planting onto the pavement. “Okay, next time then!” Mark pushed her back into the car and shut the door before she could say more. He regarded Donghyuck with a blank stare, Adam's apple bobbing up and down nervously in the cage of his pale throat.

“See you tomorrow.”

He tried to smile but it ended up looking more like a grimace. Donghyuck watched him silently as he left and made his way to the other side of the car and got into the driver’s seat. The slam of the door resounded down the residential neighborhood, and he started the car up, meeting Donghyuck’s gaze through the rear-view mirror as he drove away.

Mark did not have his driver’s license yet.

He didn’t show up at school the next day despite his parting words. Donghyuck definitely wasn’t worried.

“Where were you?” Donghyuck asked him when he returned the day after, trying to keep his voice neutral but it came out more as an accusing whine.

Mark shrugged, rummaging through his backpack. “Something, uh, came up.”

Donghyuck didn’t pry yet again, and it was starting to piss him off how much he didn’t pry when it came to many aspects of Mark Lee, like he actually cared about his feelings and integrity. Donghyuck, whose favorite pastime was prying.

“You missed out on some money,” he joked instead. “I hear drugs are all the rage these days.”

Mark didn’t spare him a little laugh like he usually would, not even a huff of air out of his nose, and Donghyuck made sure a frown didn’t show up on his face. Mark zipped his backpack shut and stood up abruptly, shrugging it onto one of his shoulders carelessly. “Gotta go. I’ll see you later.”

And it was fine, because Donghyuck did not care about Mark’s friendship at all.

Mark eventually reverted back to his normal, unintentional boyishly charming and skittish self a couple days later, but something seemed different about him, something Donghyuck couldn’t put his finger on.

“If something ever bothers you, or happens to you, you can tell me about it.” Donghyuck tried to go for a casual tone and lit up a cigarette as they sat on the curb and watched minivans and trucks pass them by on the school’s street.

Mark wrinkled his nose at the smell of smoke but nodded minutely. “Okay. You too.”

Donghyuck didn’t see Mark’s mother again after that.

By the time their fourth and final year rolled around, Donghyuck and Mark knew more about each other than either of them were really comfortable with.

Something shifted and made it official. If you asked Donghyuck, what sealed the deal was when they finally crossed their invisible line after Mark rang Donghyuck up one day and asked if he could help him type up his essay when two of his fingers broke. Or, well, when someone broke two of his fingers. On purpose. Shady business.

“What the fuck?” Donghyuck had whispered into the library, looking at Mark hunched over his barely functioning, definitely five years out of date computer. He looked relatively normal aside from the nasty, fresh cut on the corner of his bottom lip. “What happened?”

“I love reading, but AP Language is kicking my ass right now,” Mark ignored him, gesturing slowly with his gimp hand to the chair across from him so that Donghyuck would sit.

He walked over to where Mark was seated and got up in his face, anger flaring through his body, always a familiar feeling. What wasn’t familiar, though, was why he was so angry.

“Who did this to you?”

Mark flinched away from him and placed a functioning finger over his lips with wide eyes. “We’re in the library, man.”

“Who?” Donghyuck pressed again and made his voice even louder on purpose, earning them a couple of stares from confused students. Someone in the distance shushed him.

“Calm down,” Mark tried to say coolly, but his voice wavered a little bit. “Just sit.”

Donghyuck made a show out of scraping the chair painstakingly slow against the floor of the library, plopping down loudly and forcefully into the chair like he weighed tons. Mark physically cringed at the sound and sent him a Look, which Donghyuck graciously returned.

“Well?”

Donghyuck crossed his arms over his chest, getting increasingly uncomfortable at how much concern was swirling around in his body. He felt like his aunt back when she actually cared, always scolding him when he did something she didn’t like. Mark looked over both of his shoulders like he was scared that they were being watched by the Feds, and leaned forward so that no one else but Donghyuck would hear.

“I owed someone some money. It’s cool now.”

“It’s cool now?” Donghyuck shouted incredulously, and he missed the old librarian shooting him a warning glare over her glasses. “Two of your fingers are fucking broken!” he whisper-yelled.

Mark winced at his increasing volume and rubbed the back of his head with the hand that was currently functioning the way God intended. “It is cool now. Just…like I said, owed someone some money. It’s fine now. Like, seriously.”

Donghyuck leveled him with a blank stare. “It’s fine now,” he echoed.

“Yeah.”

Donghyuck snatched Mark's piece of shit computer toward himself and opened up a Word document angrily, taking his irritation out on the half-broken keyboard. “It’s fine now,” he mocked. “I wanna hit you sometimes, you know that?”

“Uh–”

“If you were seriously in danger, you’d tell me, right?” Donghyuck let himself ask honestly, boring a hole into Mark’s flying saucer eyes with the intensity of his gaze. “Right?”

Mark looked down like he was suddenly shy and twiddled his thumbs together slowly. “Yeah.”

Donghyuck, unsatisfied with his answer, blinked at him and didn’t grace him with a response.

“I’m serious!” Mark raised his hands up in defense. “If something were wrong, like, really wrong, you’d be the first person I’d tell, okay?”

Donghyuck’s eyes widened comically, and he felt his heart grow two sizes too big inside of his chest like the Grinch. Mark physically cringed like he was revolted with himself, like he hadn’t meant to let that slip.

“First person, huh?”

“Ah, yeah,” Mark said, taking it in stride and rubbing at the back of his neck again, eyes wide and honest. “I mean, like, we’re friends, right?” Mark sounded a little unsure but mostly embarrassed, avoiding eye contact and looking at Donghyuck’s neck instead of meeting his eyes.

Donghyuck smiled with all of his teeth, and Mark smiled back despite himself.

“Yeah. We’re friends.”

—

The best day of Donghyuck’s life was the day that they graduated.

Not because of the profound feeling of accomplishment, not because of his aunt’s proud and lopsided smile, and not because both he and Mark managed to make it onto the dean’s honor roll despite, well, everything. Just mostly because he was finally getting the fuck out of there.

The morning of, as Donghyuck adjusted Mark’s crooked graduation cap, he felt a weight lifted off of his shoulders. But as always, when one weight was lifted, another one was added. The only way for him to go to college was to take out loans, and he cursed the entire Earth to hell and back for the stress it would put on his family. His aunt had insisted that it was no problem and that they would ‘figure it out,’ but to Donghyuck it was a big fucking problem.

“Just focus on getting your degree,” she had told him that summer, pouring herself a very large glass of cheap wine. “I’ll handle the rest.”

She had lost even more weight all over, and her pupils were dilated most days. She didn’t look like she could handle much of anything, then.

Donghyuck found a baggie of cocaine in her bedside drawer a couple of days later. He had only ever seen it in the movies, and it looked almost innocuous under the flickering yellow light of her bedroom, a fine white powder.

He looked over his shoulder at the door open behind him and walked over to close it softly. He sat down in front of it and leaned his back against it, muffling sounds of kitchen clatter and screaming children thumping down the hall.

The baggie swung harmlessly in his hand as he opened it slowly. He knew that his aunt couldn’t live without her painkillers, but he had never been face to face with harder drugs. Her recent erratic behavior and sweaty palms started to make more sense.

His heart rattled in its cage as he dipped his finger in and held it to the light, white powder glittering under the shitty room light like snow, and rubbed it slowly across his bottom gums. It tingled like something sour, eventually numbing any feeling. There was a slight wintergreen taste, and wasn’t cocaine supposed to be tasteless?

In the future, he’d come to understand lacing and potency.

He pocketed the bag and leaned his head against the door, head throbbing in time with the loud footsteps outside. A slight headrush, a numb mouth, a rapid heart going thumpthumpthump.

He flushed the bag down the toilet later that night.

“You still not going to college?” Donghyuck asked Mark three days later, flicking his chewed up lighter on and off. Mark kept telling him that he smelled like shit, so he stopped smoking around him.

“Gonna go up to Seoul, get a job,” Mark shrugged as he counted bills quickly between his fingers. “That’s all I got right now.”

Donghyuck pocketed his lighter and leaned back against the scaffolding. “Have you finally quit drug dealing and given your life over to Christ?”

“Very funny,” Mark said, picking at a rip in his sneaker. “But nah, I mean. Seoul…there’s a lot of college kids there. Businessmen. Bored housewives. Dongwon-ssi gave me my biggest front yet, ‘cause everyone’s looking to expand their consumer base.” Mark turned to look at him, and Donghyuck couldn’t place what was swirling in his eyes. “Maybe when I’m older, I’ll have enough money to keep my mother afloat and then finally go to college. I dunno. It’s all up in the air.” He paused and shook his head like a wet puppy as if to shake off the conversation, dark fringe falling over his eyes. “Anyway. You know I don’t like talking about this stuff with you.”

Donghyuck scoffed at that. “I’m not some baby. I can handle it.”

“I never said that,” Mark replied earnestly. “Just wanna keep you separate.”

He could’ve meant a lot of things by that, is what Donghyuck thought.

“Did you quit smoking?” Mark piped up after minutes of calm silence, the right side of his mouth quirked up as he looked at the lighter in Donghyuck’s hand going flickflickflick.

“I just don’t smoke ‘em around you ‘cause you’re a baby who can’t handle the smell.” Mark grumbled lowly in his throat and Donghyuck exhaled a laugh. “I’m not a smoker, anyway. I just do it when I need to relax.”

“You need to take care of your health,” Mark said, suddenly scarily serious. “You might be young, but if you keep it up, it’ll catch up with you eventually.”

Donghyuck shrugged, looking into the orange-yellow glow of the flickering flame. “Well, that’s the thing, Mark. I don’t really care if I live or die.”

Mark didn’t respond for a couple of seconds, and Donghyuck looked up to be met with the sight of him frowning deeply, in that way that made the soft lines of his face harden up. “Don’t say that.”

Donghyuck reached up with his other hand to smoothen out the crease between his eyebrows, patting his cheek patronizingly. “Kidding.”

It was just a joke. Wasn’t everything?

The summer got hotter, hot in the wear-as-little-clothes-as-possible, stand-in-front-of-the-fan-and-try-not-to-die way. There wasn’t a functioning aircon in their stuffy apartment, so Donghyuck stuck his head in the freezer.

“Where the fuck is the welfare check?” his aunt demanded to the quiet living room a couple weeks before his train to Seoul. “Those greedy motherfuckers, they’re hoarding all of the money in the goddamn world.” She slammed the door roughly behind her, and Donghyuck felt the aftershocks rattle through his body. It caused his brother’s makeshift jenga tower to fall over, making him promptly burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” Donghyuck frowned, snatching up a Melona from inside the freezer.

She laughed bitterly as she tossed her purse onto the dining table, pacing around the kitchen manically. It was scary, how she didn’t look like herself anymore. “God, and the crying, the fucking crying. Someone is always crying. Kids, if you were me, you’d really be fucking crying.”

“Don’t say those things around them!” Donghyuck shouted, watching her tug her hair into her fists and grit her teeth like she was in pain. Restlessness, irritability, paranoia, erratic behavior. She was high out of her mind.

“We’re just fucked,” she had said, suddenly feigning calmness. “Utterly and truly fucked.”

She snatched a cigarette out of her pocket and stomped away to her room, leaving a heavily breathing Donghyuck and two wailing children in the living room. She forgot to take off her shoes.

The popsicle melted down his fingers to the floor.

So, naturally, “You ever sell coke?” is what Donghyuck asked Mark later that night, the full moon and flickering street-lights the only source of light above them as they sat on the curb outside of the apartment.

Mark furrowed his eyebrows and turned to look at him curiously. “No. I don’t wanna venture into doing the harder stuff. Other people are in charge of that.” He paused a bit. “Dongwan-ssi takes it easy on me ‘cause I’m young. And high schoolers mostly like, I mean, less hard shit I guess. Adderall, Vicodin, Fentanyl. Weed. Well, sometimes spice. But adderall is definitely the most popular, especially during exam season.”

“Oh. Good,” is all Donghyuck said.

Mark was still dealing drugs, fast-tracking destructive behavior, possibly ruining lives, but at least he drew a line somewhere.

The line was a little blurry.

—

When Donghyuck finally leaves home for college, a stone drops and settles into the pit of his stomach as he leaves his drugged up aunt with the kids. At least they’re too young to understand.

He had always planned on leaving, and somehow Mark became a part of that. Donghyuck has no idea why he cares about Mark so much or even wants him around after all these years, so he just doesn’t think about it.

“Feels just like home,” Donghyuck comments lightly as he kicks off his busted up Nikes across the room. The goshiwon is a nice and satisfying rectangle of low income normalcy, and there’s even a window, so Donghyuck can’t complain. A bed, a desk, a closet.

“Huh. Yeah,” Mark says thoughtfully, dragging Donghyuck’s luggage inside like a dead body. “But where the fuck do we put this?”

It takes them six minutes to successfully shove Donghyuck’s suitcase into the tiny space under the bed without major injury, Mark only taking a couple of elbows to the face.

“I think ‘m gonna apply to work at the grocery store around the corner,” Donghyuck says as flops onto the bed unceremoniously, wiping nonexistent sweat off his brow. It feels like a solid brick underneath him. Maybe it’ll help with the shitty posture Mark is always trying to get him to fix.

Mark shoves his hands into his jean pockets and hovers over where Donghyuck lies. He’s got on his concerned little boy face again. “We just got here and you’re already thinking about jobs?”

Donghyuck laughs a little at that and slings an arm over his eyes, feeling the intensity of Mark’s gaze boring into his forehead. “Cash is king, or whatever the fuck they say. Gotta prepare for when I’m swimming in debt. Shit, I mean, right now I’m already wading in it.”

He hears Mark sigh a little and feels the bed near his feet dip a little, so little space left that he’s almost on the floor. “You know, I could always help you out. Like, a little.”

“My favorite drug kingpin,” Donghyuck teases, “I knew you’ve been hoarding millions this whole time.”

“Seriously,” Mark insists as he raises his eyebrows earnestly, looking way too innocent despite where the money he’s discussing came from. “I’m not rich but, like… I do well enough for myself. And I can help.”

“Yeah, I hear the drug trade is very lucrative.”

“Hey,” he stresses, and Donghyuck removes his arm from over his eyes to furrow a brow at Mark. “Donghyuck. I’m serious. I know you’ve got your…whole pride thing, but it’s just me.”

It being you is a part of the problem, Donghyuck doesn’t say out loud. “‘M fine, I’ll manage. I can get more than one job.”

Mark lets out a long-suffering sigh. “You’ll end up killing yourself.”

So what? is what he immediately thinks, but he doesn’t voice it out loud because he knows it’ll piss Mark off or make him sad. Probably both. Funnily enough, Donghyuck used to think a lot about what it would be like to die all the time. The actual process of it, and what it would be like to be dead, the finality of it all. If your life really did flash before your eyes, if you really did see a pure white light before everything goes black. He wanted his life to be a life worth watching over again. Or maybe death would just be the same nothingness he felt before he was born, floating in his mother’s womb in a primordial haze. A nothingness that was comforting; no debt, no cold water, no drugs, no money.

He can’t say it doesn’t sound ideal.

“I’m not delicate,” Donghyuck says instead and closes his eyes, watching the comforting and ever-present dark swirl underneath his eyelids.

“I know.”

And that was that.

Despite being a life-force-sucking, sadistic money-making machine, college isn’t too bad. Donghyuck has always been smart; he started walking at seven months, won a handful of science fairs, had a finesse and command for his mother-tongue that could get him out of almost any situation he managed to get himself in. Sure, he’d been dealt a difficult hand, but no matter how much he wanted to tie himself up to some train tracks and close his eyes sometimes, Lee Donghyuck was a motherfucker who refused to die.

He aces his first job interview, as much as someone can ace an interview to be a cashier, and separates his meager biweekly checks into three sects: monthly funds to send back home, the Get-Out-of-Debt-Before-You-Turn-Thirty jar, and money to help him not starve to death. He feels pretty adult, pretty independent, despite the future of paying off loans and finding a job with a degree in a major he never wanted.

Donghyuck had metaphorically blindfolded himself and thrown a dart at a board of acceptable majors: business, economics, marketing, communications, accounting, engineering. He would’ve been good at all of them, but he figured business would make him want to gouge his eyes out the least amount, so he applied to all the best business programs he could find. It was a good choice. He'd be able to get a real job as soon as he graduated, it would look impressive on resumés, and he had the people skills to be successful. Maybe he would be able to move his family out to Seoul, get his aunt clean, enroll his siblings into the best schools.

Well, it wasn’t really a matter of maybe, so much as it was a matter of he had to or else he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

He takes a part-time at some fancy restaurant near campus frequented by nepotism kids and trust fund babies, and his natural charm gets him a pretty penny of weekly tips slipped discreetly into his pocket like a joke only he and they were in on.

His money piles grow, but it still isn’t enough. He’d probably have to rob a bank or start a pyramid scheme for it to be enough, so he starts babysitting to try to help remedy the tumbleweeds in his bank account. With that on top of classes, he gets a maximum of two hours of sleep per night, but he’s good with kids and it's less soul-crushing than bagging groceries or bussing tables, so he stocks up on energy drinks and instant coffee and keeps on trekking.

One day after class, Donghyuck snoops out of pure boredom and finds a suitcase of pills and pounds of cocaine in Mark’s little apartment weeks later.

“Hey,” Mark says as he opens the front door, only slightly surprised to see Donghyuck sitting in the middle of his Craiglist corduroy sofa. “What’re you doing here? Thought you had class.”

“Thought you didn’t deal coke,” Donghyuck responds, and Mark’s face drops and goes from horror to hurt to scarily blank in seconds.

“You looked in my stuff?”

Donghyuck scoffs and stands up from the sofa so quickly he gets dizzy, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “That’s really what you’re worried about right now?”

Mark sets down the groceries he’s holding onto the coffee table infuriatingly gently and stills him with a look.

“Donghyuck…”

“Do you think you’re fucking Tony Montana now?” Donghyuck steps forward until they’re almost chest to chest, until he can feel Mark’s exhales against his cheek. He’s lucky Mark’s only got a couple centimeters on him. “Are you crazy? Are you trying to get killed? What happened to your moral code?”

Mark has the audacity to look confused, not backing down from Donghyuck’s predatory stance. “Moral code?”

“No hard shit.”

Mark scoffs a little, running a hand through his overgrown hair. “You think certain drugs get a pass?”

Donghyuck feels a trickle of irritation drip down his spine, but Mark doesn’t let him answer.

“Cash is king,” he says stonily, gaze flickering down to his socked feet. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Ruining people’s lives is what you gotta do?” Donghyuck laughs and jabs a finger into Mark’s chest. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

“You never said anything when we were in school,” Mark wraps his hand around Donghyuck’s lone finger and pries it from his chest. “Why this now?”

Mark doesn’t give Donghyuck a chance to answer as his face softens slightly. “Because of your noona?”

Donghyuck pushes him as hard as he can and sends him back stumbling a little. Mark’s eyes widen like he’s seen a ghost; they hadn’t gotten physical since a petty fight in second year. Donghyuck tries to push him again but Mark grabs his hands before they can reach him.

“Don’t talk about her!”

He tries to tear himself out of Mark’s grip, but he digs his fingernails into the thin skin of his wrist where he knows it hurts. “You didn’t care about high schoolers abusing opioids. You only care now, because you’ve seen this firsthand? That’s a little selfish, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck wrenches his hands away and Mark lets him, hands red from all the pressure.

“Go fuck yourself. Don’t make this about me. This is about you.”

“I don’t think so, Hyuck.” He runs a hand through his dark mop of hair again, like Donghyuck is the one exasperating him. “Listen, we can talk about it, just-sit-“

“No,” Donghyuck shakes his head, slipping his sneakers he abandoned near the doorway back onto his feet, “I don’t wanna talk to you.”

Mark crosses his arms over his chest. “This isn’t fair, and you know it.”

“Fuck off.”

—

When they first met, Mark had said to him, “I don’t feel like a good or bad person.”

Donghyuck sent him a sideways glance and rested his chin on his arm. “I don’t think you’re a bad person. Your dream was never to be a dealer.” Mark blinked owlishly at him. “Or, well, I’m assuming it wasn’t.”

“There was, uh…” Mark turned away from him to look out into the field, hot sun reflecting off the dying grass and into his eyes. “My brother got injured pretty bad. I had, uh, been taking prescription benzodiazepines since I was a little younger. That was the only way I knew I could get the money quickly before…you know. And then, after that, I didn’t stop.”

The sun got stuck in Donghyuck’s eyes and he hummed in consideration. It didn’t surprise him one bit that someone like Mark of all people had gotten himself into that unspeakable cesspool out of love for someone else. But maybe that didn’t really matter.

He thought to himself, Mark is just giving people drugs that they asked for. What they did with it, how they used it or how much of it they used was out of his control. No one gives the CEOs of alcohol brands shit when someone dies in a drunk driving accident. Do gunmakers lose sleep over a bullet from a gun they made going through someone’s head? They’re just giving what people want; supply and demand. What they do with it is up to them and them only.

If he was doing it to survive and not out of malicious intent, could he really be blamed?

He says just as much. “I don't think you’re any worse than those people. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

Mark didn’t reply.

—

None of the adults in Donghyuck’s life ever seemed to apologize.

He can count on one hand the times anyone in charge of him had ever taken accountability for their actions. He was always on the receiving end of scolding, adult hissy fits, and general disdain for humanity and every person who was a part of it.

It’s funny that sorry is the first word that Mark ever said to Donghyuck.

With their contrasting dispositions along with Mark’s give and Donghyuck’s take, they had clashed an amount of times higher than some people could count. Mark didn’t know how to deal with Donghyuck because he wasn’t like anyone he had ever met before. Donghyuck wanted to push Mark until he burst. Both of them could give the silent treatment like no other, and they were both stubborn enough to let it go on for weeks. Mark was usually the one to cave first, sometimes with a ‘sorry’ but most times with a ‘let’s go see a movie.” It reminded Donghyuck of his aunt, the woman who would cut up a bowl of fruit for you after berating you over some menial thing but never acknowledging how she had hurt your feelings just hours before. It was a cycle.

Mark and Donghyuck eventually worked out their differences, except they really didn’t, but who did? Annoyance went from anger to catharsis to tolerance to admiration to something else. There was an unspoken understanding of the fact that neither of them were in any place to judge each other, at least, not in a way that mattered. The fact that someone was willing to put up with Donghyuck, the fact that anyone was willing to give Mark the time of day, it was all worth something to them.

The last time Donghyuck said sorry to Mark, he had to focus on the wall behind him to even get the word out. It made him want to vomit his guts up, the thought of apologizing and admitting that he was wrong and an asshole and a good-for-nothing piece of shit, but sometimes Donghyuck managed to swallow his pride for Mark, if only to see him smile at him again.

So Donghyuck texts Mark two days after he left his apartment in a fit of rage, sitting on a wooden box full of fresh vegetables in one of the restaurant’s storage rooms.

2:52 p.m.

i’m sorry. really. my bad.

It’s even worse than saying it straight to Mark’s face, because he has to see the words in front of him, taunting and jeering at him for being a piece of shit.

Mark responds approximately forty seconds later, like he had been waiting. Not that Donghyuck was counting.

2:53 p.m.

come over after your shift

So Donghyuck shoves his phone into the front pocket of his apron and completes the rest of his shift like there’s no place he would rather be, always serving a smile. Maybe this particular smile is a real one.

And that’s how he ends up standing in Mark’s cramped doorway, sweaty and out of breath with a stain that he thinks is pasta sauce on his black button up work shirt.

“You didn’t have to run,” Mark says as he raises an amused eyebrow, stepping aside to let him in.

“It was fucked up of me to get mad at you,” Donghyuck comments casually as he flings his shoes off of his feet and into the foyer. He plops down onto Mark’s couch and tilts his head back against the lumpy cushion, the picture of relaxation. “I know that.”

Mark, seemingly caught off guard, sits hesitantly beside him, and Donghyuck makes note of the careful distance between them.

“I mean, I know why you were mad. It wasn’t, like, a crazy reaction.” He side-eyes Donghyuck who’s still too busy leaning back to look at him. “And… even if we don’t talk about it, what I do isn’t… good.”

Donghyuck lets out a little sigh and keeps his eyes closed, and Mark continues.

“I didn’t really want to,” he starts. “But Dongwan-ssi said I need to start pulling my weight, and the money was good, so I–” he cuts himself off and Donghyuck finally looks at him. There’s a somber expression on his face, like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. “And mom needs to go back to rehab, so I figured…the money, I really didn’t wanna do it, all I could think about was you, like, how could you even be friends with me? And it doesn’t excuse it, but–”

Donghyuck scoots closer and pinches the thin skin of his knee exposed through the rips in his blue jeans. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mark.”

Mark still looks stressed, but his shoulders relax minutely, and Donghyuck reaches out to smoothen the crease between his brows with his thumb. “But I still want to.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person.” Donghyuck drops his hand and folds it in his lap. “Yeah, it’s fucked up. I know. But you’re still Mark. My Mark.”

Mark looks down at his lap with uncertainty and worries his bottom lip between his teeth. Donghyuck stares at the soft crown of his head, bowed like he’s in silent prayer.

“Let’s watch a movie.”

They don't talk about it. How could they?

—

It’s the beginning of the second semester when Donghyuck gets a call from home.

“Your sister,” his aunt is crying into the receiver, “she was fine, she was doing well, she was normal, and then sh-she fainted in class, a-a-and she–”

“Slow down,” Donghyuck urges her, feeling panic and dread immediately rise up from his chest and into his throat, making it hard for the words to come out. “Tell me what happened.”

“She’s,” she hacks a wet cough and Donghyuck wonders what she must look like, “She’s sick. It’s bad.”

He takes an emergency train back home the same day and doesn’t stop to tell anyone, three seconds away from vomiting all over his dirty shoes.

Donghyuck has been in hospitals enough, but when he walks inside, this time feels worse. The sticky smell of antiseptic fills his nose and stays there. The doctor is sympathetically explaining something to his sobbing aunt, and all Donghyuck can focus on is the pristine white walls behind her. It isn’t real. Can’t be.

He hears something about ‘chronic’ and ‘treatment’ and for one fucked up second, all Donghyuck can think about is what it’s going to cost them.

He hates himself for it.

—

Donghyuck had only ever seen loan sharks in the movies, slimy and greasy men with cheshire grins stitched artificially into their faces. They’d wear Hawaiian shirts and gaudy suits, wear their hair smoothed back and oil slick.

When Donghyuck first meets the man who holds the illegal key to solve all of his immediate problems, he looks like he could be someone’s father. He tells him to just call him Kim. He looks innocuous enough, his face misleadingly trustworthy. But there’s something in his eyes that Donghyuck can’t place, and Donghyuck knows that he’s bitten off more than he can chew.

He takes the loan anyway.

When the dirty money reaches back home and his aunt demands to know where he got it so suddenly, Donghyuck says, “Just take care of her. Please.”

Sometimes he doesn’t even have the energy to lie; what matters and what doesn't is constantly getting mixed up in his head. He doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone. And there’s a sick satisfaction in the pit of his stomach at the thought of his aunt fearing for him. It’s how he felt about her all of his childhood.

Donghyuck offers to take up more hours of babysitting for the friendly and busy parents of a pair of young twins to drown out the thought of his impending doom. His schedule becomes so packed that he keeps boxes of energy drinks stocked up under his bed and in his closet and in his drawers. No sleep isn’t anything foreign to him, but with the added pressure of school on top, he starts to fall asleep in class and loses the feeling in his legs.

Donghyuck hates asking for help, and what he hates even more than asking for help is admitting defeat. So he calls Mark up that night and casually says, “Come babysit with me this weekend. Could be fun.”

He deflates in relief when Mark agrees enthusiastically, even though he already knew that he was going to say yes in the first place, because if he’s being really honest with himself, he needs the help or else he’s going to end up dying prematurely. And as nice as that sounds in theory, he has shit to do.

Friday morning comes slowly, and the only pop of color in Donghyuck’s life that he even notices is the slowly blooming yellow flowers outside that he can’t identify.

The twins live on a nice and neat residential street like the ones Donghyuck used to daydream about living on. Mark fits in nicely, he thinks, with his cherub face and normal boy clothes. Maybe in a different life, Mark is the one who lives on a green residential street with his white picket fence and his wife and two kids.

This isn’t that life, though.

“House is sick,” Mark comments offhandedly as they toe off their dirty shoes in the pristine doorway. The adults are out of the door as soon as they arrive, leaving their little latchkey kids with a broke college student and a drug dealer.

(A broke college student and a drug dealer walk into a bar. Donghyuck can’t think of anything to finish the punchline.)

They run up to Donghyuck while babbling some incoherent baby nonsense, and then they welcome Mark with open arms because all they see is a new friend.

“Go feed them breakfast,” Donghyuck yawns as he goes into the living room and plops down onto the couch, reruns of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse already playing on the big flat screen. “It’s always pre-made in the fridge, so don’t worry about burning the house down.”

Mark shoots an offended glare at the back of Donghyuck’s head but does as he’s told, because he’s happy to finally be around normal people, or, normal little people, for a change.

Donghyuck rests his head over the back of the couch when he isn’t looking, watching Mark with the kids. There’s a feeling in his chest that he’s not sure if he hates or not, and he wonders if life could ever be this simple for either of them.

Mark eventually catches his gaze as he waves around a piece of boiled egg in classic Here-Comes-The-Airplane fashion in front of them, pretending to debate about which twin he should give it to, and he smiles.

“They usually play or watch TV after breakfast,” Donghyuck says as he gets up from the couch and walks over to the dining room and sits down across from Mark, swiping a lone piece of egg off of Minwoo’s cheek.

Mark is distracted by some botched version of patty cake he’s playing with Mijin. “You can rest.” He looks up to meet Donghyuck’s eyes and sends him a tiny smile. “I got it.”

Donghyuck opens his mouth to protest but a painful yawn rips out of his throat instead, and Mark gives him a knowing look. “Are you sure?” he tries anyway, ignoring the twitching in his hands that won’t go away lately. “I can read to them. Oh, or play dollies, they like that.”

“Let’s have a tea party!” Minwoo yells from his left, and Donghyuck sends his best kicked puppy eyes toward Mark who’s raising his eyebrows comically.

“I wanna join the tea party,” he pouts in a high pitched voice, and Mark sends him a glare with no malice behind it.

“Tea party!” Mijin concurs.

And that’s how Donghyuck and Mark end up crouched on the floor with two menaces wearing princess dresses, tiaras perched atop their heads.

“It looks good on you,” Donghyuck says through a choked laugh, watching Mark attempt to adjust the tiara tangled in his hair. “Doesn’t it, friends?”

The twins cheer and pour imaginary tea for them and their stuffed animals and dolls, and Mark pretends to drink from his tiny teacup, complimenting their tea making abilities. The morning sun filtering through the window sharpens the hard lines and contours of his angel face, and Donghyuck can see faint purple circles under his eyes. He must be tired, too.

Before he knows it, all of their imaginary tea is gone and Mark is shooing him away, telling him to go relax somewhere.

On any other day, Donghyuck would barge into the large master bedroom and sleep on top of their expensive silk sheets, making sure to rearrange them back to pristine starched up condition before the real owners of them returned, but he’s so tired he only manages to make it to the middle of the hallway before promptly passing out on the floor.

In his state of half sleep half delirium, he vaguely registers someone giggling from above him and placing something warm over him, shoving something soft haphazardly under his head. He snuggles into it and dreams about princesses and coke.

By the time his body decides to return back to consciousness, everything is dark and hazy and he has a painful crick in his neck. He rises from the floor slowly and immediately regrets it as his head throbs with a power he didn’t know was possible, groaning as his bones creak.

He can smell Mark’s laundry detergent. He looks down through bleary eyes to see that Mark had rested his hoodie on top of him as a makeshift blanket. He snatches it up along with the sofa cushion underneath him and shuffles to the living room, where Mark and the twins are sprawled over the large sectional, limbs sticking out in various haphazard directions. Mijin is asleep with her mouth wide open lying dead to the world on Mark’s lap, and Minwoo is neatly snuggled up with a stuffed bunny next to them. The curtains are drawn and the sun has already set, the only source of light coming from the giant television, casting the room in a ghastly glow.

Donghyuck makes his way over and gingerly sits down next to them, causing Mark to look up from his phone and glance at Donghyuck like he’s seen a ghost.

“You look like shit,” Mark whispers quietly enough not to wake anyone. “Have you been sleeping?” A pause. “Actually, don’t answer that, I know you haven’t.”

Donghyuck lets out a long-suffering sigh, the kind that expels all of the air from his body and leaves him lifeless. “My sister is in the hospital.”

He says it to the television instead of Mark, watching flash animated animals prance across the screen.

Donghyuck can feel Mark whip his head to look at him so fast his neck should’ve fallen off.

“What…Donghyuck-ah…?”

“I wanted to tell you as soon as I found out. But I guess I was afraid that it would make it real.” He continues to stare resolutely at the blue light of the television, the dull throbbing ricocheting off of the walls of his skull the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.

He can taste the worry in Mark’s tone as he asks, “How long?”

“Two weeks.”

“Hyuck…”

“Don’t,” he grits his teeth so hard he feels it in the back of his head and curses the way his voice wavers a bit, using all of his willpower to look over at Mark who’s looking at him with a face so concerned he wants to run. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

He can really only make out the downturn of Mark’s lips and the glossiness of his eyes, can only imagine the crease he knows is between his thin eyebrows. He thanks every God in the sky that Mijin is passed out on Mark’s lap, because if he tried to move closer and comfort him, Donghyuck might’ve cried.

Mark looks at him helplessly as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down rapidly, like he doesn’t know what to do.

Donghyuck feels the same.

—

They don’t talk about it.

It’s not like Mark didn’t try; he wanted to know how Donghyuck was feeling, if they had started treatment on her yet, if he needed money. Donghyuck stepped on his toes until he shut up.

He loves smothering people; he thrives off of suffocating hugs, making people squirm, coaxing others into talking honestly, making himself so big no one would be able to ignore him even if they tried. But if there’s one thing he really fucking hates, it’s talking about his own feelings.

Mark is sentimental enough for the both of them. They’re both honest, almost uncomfortably so, but in completely different ways. Mark isn’t premeditated about it, honesty coming so naturally to him it’s second nature. Donghyuck is always intentional, until it’s turned back on him.

He works overtime to distract himself.

He doesn’t see Mark as much, turning him back into the apparition he was at the beginning of high school. He knows Mark and his anxious brain are probably worried sick, but he can’t bring himself to do anything about it.

Donghyuck was never one to answer his texts or get his news from the internet in the first place, so he ends up turning off his phone completely and shoving it in an empty drawer. He finds an old payphone near the bank and calls his aunt every day to hear about how the treatment is going and if she has enough food. Someone knocks on his door, and he doesn’t answer. He tapes his window over and blocks out light with bright red duct tape. Lives off of liquids and protein bars. Does his assignments the best he can even though he’d rather sit in front of his laptop and mindlessly blow through some video game he’s beat countless times before.

He sleeps sometimes, and when he does, he has strange dreams, something about empty rooms, something about overdosing, something about hospitals, something about Mark.

He finally invites himself over to Mark’s apartment when he starts to go a little stir crazy and his usually golden skin has gone dull.

There’s a guy with a giant cross tattooed on his neck sitting across from Mark at the crowded dinner table. He can’t be much older than them, and Donghyuck has seen him enough times to understand that he’s… well, what do you call someone who deals drugs alongside you? A coworker?

Mark looks up when he hears the telltale sign of the spare key he gave to Donghyuck turning in the lock. His lip is busted to hell and there’s an ugly, fading bruise on one of his sharp cheekbones, violet sprawling in the middle and blending into faint green blotches around the edges like some sort of fucked up watercolor painting.

“Hey,” Mark says when their eyes meet, voice sounding unsure. “Ah.” He turns to Tattoo Guy and opens his mouth to say something, but Donghyuck interrupts.

“I’ll wait.”

He can see in Mark’s face that he wants to protest, but what he’s doing must be important so he bites his tongue. Cross Guy doesn’t even look up; he knows Donghyuck is cool. There are some pounds of coke sprawled across the table, along with an assortment of pills that Donghyuck can only guess are opioids. He sits on the couch and waits.

Donghyuck can feel the weight of Mark’s stare bore holes into the back of his head as he transfers the pounds into individual baggies; he must be going on rounds soon. Donghyuck scrolls through his phone as casually as possible, even though he wants to turn around and watch them work to fulfill his morbid curiosity. He listens to the periodic buzzing of their burner phones and the anxious tapping of Mark’s sock clad feet against the floor.

When they finish, he hears murmurs of some clandestine plans and a see you later, and Tattoo Guy nods at Donghyuck on his way out. His backpack is full.

“You have blood on your shirt,” Donghyuck says to Mark once he’s gone, leaning his head over the back of the couch and watching Mark hover by the table.

“What?”

“You have blood,” Donghyuck repeats patiently, “on your shirt.”

Mark looks down at his white t-shirt and the fresh blood pooling underneath his collarbones, dripping down from his busted lip. He releases it from his front teeth like he hadn’t noticed he was gnawing on it to the point the wound reopened and swipes a forearm across his mouth.

“Sorry.”

Donghyuck snorts at that. “What are you apologizing for?”

Mark’s eyes flicker to the mess on the table quickly enough that Donghyuck almost misses it.

“You know.”

‘Yeah, I know.” Donghyuck gets up from the couch and walks the small distance where Mark is standing alert in front of the table like some sort of guardian angel. “So, what the fuck happened to your face?”

The only telltale sign of a reaction is the slight twitch of his jaw, like he was expecting the question to come sooner or later. He crosses his arms over his chest like he needs to protect himself from Donghyuck, or maybe protect Donghyuck from himself, looking him up and down with inoffensive eyes. “Some shit happened.”

Donghyuck sends him a baleful smile. “Some shit happened.”

“I’m fine,” Mark insists like he’s pleading, “Seriously. I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ve got it under control.”

Donghyuck steps forward until their noses are almost touching and he can smell the metallic tang of Mark’s blood. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

Mark narrows his eyes a modicum, and Donghyuck can tell that he wants to move, but he’s caged in. Mark could push him or slap him or flick him in the forehead like he usually does when Donghyuck is too close, but he doesn’t budge. “What’s with you lately?”

Donghyuck backs away and mirrors Mark’s stance, tightening his arms across his chest. “What’s with me?”

“You disappear for days and then when you come back the first thing you do is interrogate me.”

“Well, fuck me for caring about your safety.”

Mark shakes his head and his overgrown hair curtains his wide eyes. “It’s not about that.”

“Oh, poor baby.” Donghyuck tilts his head to the side and puts on the patronizing look that he knows pisses Mark off to no end. “Can’t be a dealer in peace?”

“You’re not exactly the poster child for holiness, are you, Donghyuck?”

Donghyuck balls his fists up and digs his bitten raw nails hard into his palm. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

Mark shakes his head again like he’s disappointed of all things and kicks off of the table to walk to the bedroom. “You were always the person who never judged me. Not seriously.”

Donghyuck feels a burning in his throat and follows after Mark down the dimly lit hallway. “Don’t walk away from me!”

The bedroom door slams in front of his face hard enough he feels it vibrate in his bones. He slams his fist against it until his hand feels like it’s going to split into two. “Open the fucking door!”

There’s no answer.

—

A week later, there are three men waiting for Donghyuck when he exits campus.

It’s been a week since he’s seen or heard from Mark, leaving him dizzy, so it catches him off guard more than it usually would have.

Donghyuck isn’t a weak person by any means; he’s not a beefed up meathead who lives off of pre-workout and raw eggs, but he’s not a scrawny motherfucker either. If there’s one thing he knows about dealing with men bigger than him, it’s to always go for the nuts. And Donghyuck has one hell of a horse kick. But this situation is a little different.

They drag him into some nondescript alley, and Donghyuck curses himself to hell for signing up for a night class this semester. If he’s gonna die, he really doesn’t want it to happen among dumpsters and the stale piss of drunk people, but God has a good way of never giving him what he wants.

He knows that he’s late in payment. He knew that when he signed the convoluted sorry excuse for a contract that they put in front of him, he was signing his life over in a way, but that was the least of his concerns. It wasn’t about him.

Donghyuck had never been beat up before. The hardest hit he’d ever taken in his life was the occasional sandal to his ass from his aunt, pushes from Mark for being a pest, spraining his pinky toe after tripping over his little brother’s action figures. He’s aware that intimidation tactics are common in this line of work. Maybe someone will threaten to hurt you real bad if you don’t cough it up, set your backyard on fire, send a family member to the hospital. So when the first kick lands on his stomach, he can’t say he’s surprised.

It fucking hurts though, sends him stumbling back into the wet wall behind him, and he barely has a chance to even blink before another kick lands on his ribs and sends the air straight out of of his lungs. He groans and coughs in pain and he can taste the bitter tang of metal bubbling up his throat. Another one to his stomach. Then his stomach again. Then his stomach again.

He doesn’t really know how or when he ends up on the ground, but he has enough sense left to curl up in a fetal position and attempt to protect his ribs. There’s no use in trying to fight back, so he just takes it. It doesn’t help that much, sharp pain shooting up his chest as the biggest guy rams his steel-toed boot into him. He’s wearing a severe smile, like he enjoys beating up broke college students who don’t repay their debts on time, and maybe he does. Donghyuck’s vision starts to blacken a little at the edges, and all he can think about is how he won’t be able to see Mark one last time before he dies.

It’s a warning, is what Donghyuck thinks as a thick glob of spit lands on his cheek and slug trails down his neck, the first strike to give him a taste of the havoc that will be wreaked if he doesn’t pony up eventually. They don’t kill him. They still need the money.

Seemingly satisfied, they eventually retreat, the tallest one bending down to pat his head condescendingly. His best bet, they were probably going off into the night to mess up the next poor fucker who took out a loan from them, and Donghyuck is left gasping for air on the wet pavement. Each breath sends knife stabs to his chest, and he clutches his stomach in pain. There’s blood dripping out of his mouth and down his chin, and he prays to God that the damage to his ribs isn’t too bad. Definitely not broken. All he can think about is how much it aches, like thunder rumbling underneath his skin.

It takes him five minutes to gather the motivation to get up, and pain is buzzing through his entire body like a livewire. It isn’t helping that he rarely sleeps and his organs haven’t been fed proper nutrients in weeks.

But this isn’t even the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, so he limps out of the alley as hot tears of pain and snot soak his shirt collar and walks to Mark’s place.

The door swings open after three weak knocks to the wood and Mark’s face is completely drowned of color as he freezes like a deer in headlights with his hand stilled on the doorknob.

“I got somethin’ on my face?” Donghyuck tries to joke, but it comes out more of a quiet gasp as blood bubbles up in his mouth.

Mark grabs his wrist so roughly, Donghyuck is surprised that it doesn’t disconnect from his body as he drags him inside and slams the door closed behind them.

“What the fuck?” Mark’s eyes flitter up and down his body like rapid butterfly wings and Donghyuck can only imagine what he looks like right now. “Oh, my god. Sit down.”

He’s not really in any place to refuse, so he sits down gingerly on Mark’s lumpy couch and tries not to pass out.

“What the fuck?” Mark eloquently exclaims again, looking the most terrified Donghyuck has ever seen him. “What happened? Who… how?”

Donghyuck internally cringes and leans against the couch as he tilts his head up to look at the exposed ceiling. He forgot about this part. He never really planned on telling Mark about his… predicament, had only told him that him and his aunt would figure their shit out and no, Mark, I’m not taking your fucking money. He could tell Mark wanted to get his hands on him, really strangle him to death and just get him to accept help for once in his life, but once Lee Donghyuck decides he’s not going to do something, he doesn’t do it.

He might as well just rip off the bandaid.

“I took out a loan.” The ceiling stares peacefully back down at him. “From, y’know. Loan sharks?”

He curses himself for letting his voice waver at the end, but he really doesn’t feel like getting his ass beat a second time. Shit hurts. And as much as he doesn’t act like it, he fucking hates it when Mark is mad at him.

“Loan sharks,” Mark echoes, and he looks so much like he’s on the verge of tears Donghyuck almost laughs. “Why… just–just let me go get some shit. Don’t move.”

He speedwalks away into the hallway bathroom and returns with a busted first aid kit shoved haphazardly under his arm. He forces Donghyuck onto his back and doesn’t look him in the eyes as he kneels down and sets the kit on the coffee table. Donghyuck’s chest tightens even more as Mark brings a wet rag up to his mouth. “How bad is it?”

Donghyuck leans up on his elbows despite the pain. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“Why would you do this to yourself…” Mark barely whispers, focusing on wiping off the congealed blood on his chin. “Why did you let this happen?”

He doesn’t sound mad, he sounds scared. Donghyuck almost lets a sick sense of satisfaction settle in his stomach, because for once the tables are turned. But no matter how much his brain wants to gloat, wants to hurt Mark like he hurts, his hate for worrying him outweighs it all.

“I know what you’re gonna say. It was stupid, I know. But I was desperate. No matter how much I bust my ass, it won’t cover treatment. And loan sharks are quick.” Every word is a struggle, and he feels his eyes start to well up. “My chest hurts.” He drops the rag back onto the table and rushes to sit by his feet, and Donghyuck belatedly realizes that he forgot to take his shoes off. “Where else did they hurt you?” He sounds like he’s on the verge of a panic attack, and Donghyuck can’t even bring himself to be worried because he’s on the verge of letting the good Lord take him away.

“My ribs…”

“Fuck, are they broken?” Mark reaches out like he wants to pull up his shirt but hesitates, and Donghyuck shakes his head. “No, they’re just gonna be bruised to hell.”

Mark gets up again and Donghyuck finds himself missing the warmth near his feet. He comes back with ice packs and frozen vegetables and a roll of paper towels, setting everything down except for a frozen bag of peas. He sits back down at the edge of the couch and reaches his hand out to brush his fingertips against the hem of Donghyuck’s bloodied t-shirt, hesitant.

Donghyuck nods minutely, and Mark slowly shoves his shirt up his torso, eyes widening as the expanse of a valley of nasty red marks speckled with blood over tan skin come into view. “Jesus Christ.”

“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Donghyuck jokes, but Mark finally meets his eyes to send him an icy glare, so he shuts up.

“I hate you,” is all Mark says as he wipes up the blood and presses the peas to his ribs, Donghyuck hissing at the freezing cold. “You’re so stupid.”

“But you love me anyway?” Donghyuck asks in a hopeful tone, watching where Mark’s fingertips are just barely grazing his last rib. Mark doesn’t respond, just shakes his head and stares mournfully at the bag of peas like he’s trying to light it on fire with his eyes.

“Mark.”

“You’re bullheaded,” Mark finally responds, grabbing another bag and pressing it to his lower abdomen.

“Sorry,” Donghyuck half-apologizes, because he is sorry, but he also isn’t going to do anything about it. “Runs in the family.”

Mark doesn’t say anything else, just keeps lifting the icy cold bags in ten minute intervals and wiping up clotted blood. It’s an eternity before Mark deems him iced up enough, wrapping an elastic bandage tight around his ribs.

“I’ll get you a shirt.”

He returns with a faded old green shirt with some English logo on it and turns away as Donghyuck pulls his ruined shirt over his head and replaces it, as if Donghyuck’s dignity hasn’t already been compromised in more ways than one in the past two hours.

“You’re staying here until you heal up,” Mark says with no room for argument as Donghyuck moves from his lying position to sit normally. Mark settles down next to him.

“I have class.”

“You’re staying here until you heal up.”

Donghyuck shuffles around the bloody and cold mess on the coffee table to find the television remote. “If you wanted to hang out with me so bad, you could’ve just said so.”

“Not everything is a joke, Hyuck,” Mark huffs frustratedly, and Donghyuck turns his head to look at him in concern as he clicks on the first drama he sees. “Can you just listen to me? Please?”

Donghyuck blinks ahead. “I’m tired,”

Mark sighs and gets up to grab the remote from his hand. “You can sleep in my bed.”

With much pain and inhuman amounts of patience, they manage to make it to Mark’s bedroom alive. Donghyuck flops down in the middle, groaning as his head hits the pillow.

“This is so much better than your shitty couch.”

Mark frowns a little. “What’s wrong with my couch?”

Donghyuck closes his eyes in lieu of an answer and Mark fetches him a glass of water and some painkillers.

“Here,” he says, dropping the pills into Donghyuck’s outstretched hand and watching him intensely until he downs the entire cup.

He stares at Donghyuck, dark hair plastered to his head, and sighs. “You look like shit.”

“You’re not looking too good yourself,” Donghyuck laughs, and he really isn’t. Mark is always handsome, really, but the dark circles under his eyes are forming their own dark circles, and he’s overdue for a shave and a haircut. He looks tired. “Come lay with me.”

Mark’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead all the way to the sky, and Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “Just come here.”

Mark hovers and shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweats before circling around to the other side of the bed and sitting against the headboard gently, like the slightest amount of pressure will hurt Donghyuck.

Donghyuck lays back down and turns onto his left side with superhuman amounts of willpower. “Touch my hair.”

“What?”

Donghyuck looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Touch my hair. It helps me sleep.”

Donghyuck stares at Mark until he relents and places a hesitant hand in the tangled mess atop his head.

“You’re so jumpy nowadays,” Donghyuck hums contently, curling into a ball even though his body is protesting and begging him for mercy. “Like a little rabbit.”

Mark does his little laugh that’s more an exhale of air through his nose. “Can you blame me?”

Donghyuck shakes his head and buries his face deeper into the pillow like he can disappear into it. “No.”

Neither of them say anything for the next half hour, the buzz of the aircon and Mark’s gentle hand in his hair lulling Donghyuck to sleep.

Mark breaks the silence. “I’m gonna help you pay back the loan.”

Donghyuck blinks his eyes sleepily. “N–” he starts to protest, but Mark’s soft grip on his hair tightens, and Donghyuck whimpers in pain. The look Mark is giving him is one he sees rarely, the Mark who is able to be cruel in his own ennobling way.

“I'm giving you the money.” Donghyuck tries to back away and gasps shakily at the zing of pain that lightning strikes through his skull. Mark loosens his grip on him immediately in apology, but he’s probably not all that sorry. “Okay?”

Donghyuck can feel the fight leaving him. He’s so, so goddamn tired.

“Fine.”

—

Donghyuck emails his professors that he got the stomach flu as he’s held hostage in Mark’s apartment. Mark plays nurse for the next couple of days, drowning Donghyuck in heating pads and painkillers and replacing his bandages when he showers. Donghyuck does his assignments on Mark’s laptop, and Mark smacks the shit out of him whenever he tries to overexert himself. He can’t say he hates the attention.

“You’re a really shit cook, you know that?” Donghyuck comments lightly as he shovels burnt rice down his throat like a starving man at the dining table. “If I knew I was gonna have to endure your cooking for over a week, I would’ve never taken that loan.”

“Hilarious,” Mark doesn’t look at him, standing at the kitchen counter and roughly scraping the bottom of his rice cooker with a spatula like it’s going to attack him at any second.

“I want hotpot,” Donghyuck laments, thumping his head against the table dramatically. “I haven’t had a real meal since I left home.”

“I’ve noticed,” Mark says as he turns around and eyes him warily. Donghyuck isn’t stupid, he knows he’s dropped a couple pounds, but it really isn’t the big deal people are making it out to be. “If you finish your proposal, I’ll treat you to hotpot tonight.”

Donghyuck’s head flies up from the table so fast he gives himself whiplash. “I’ll start right now.”

He hobbles like an old man to the couch, slapping Mark’s hands away when he tries to help him.

“I’m injured, not senile. Jesus.”

He breezes through his proposal lightning fast, and he’s not even sure himself what it’s actually about. He at least takes some time to proofread it twice, and then picks up his laptop to wave it in Mark’s face as proof.

“Done!”

Mark's eyes go crossed trying to focus on the brightness in front of him. “Did you look over it?”

“Twice.”

“Submitted?”

“Mhm.”

“Wait, did y–”

“Jesus Christ, just take me to get some fucking hotpot!”

Mark eventually relents, and he’s got that smug little look on his face he gets every time he’s the one to get on Donghyuck’s nerves and not vice versa. “Alright, let’s go.”

He helps Donghyuck up and helps him put on his shoes, ushering him out of the door with a hand on the small of his back like the gentleman he is. The warmth of his palm lingers on Donghyuck’s skin long after he lets go.

While walking under the overcast sky next to Mark, who’s looking very young and innocuous in his specs and his puffer jacket, Donghyuck wonders how they must look to people passing by on the street. Just two harmless kids, probably students, on their way to get hotpot without a care in the world. Donghyuck begs to differ.

The place Mark takes him to is nothing like the ones back home; there’s no cracks in the walls, no exposed tile, no old laminated menus, but the food is good, so Donghyuck deals.

As soon as food is set down on their table Donghyuck is breaking apart his chopsticks and digging in, burning the shit out of his tongue in the process. Mark laughs goofily at him, but Donghyuck is barely paying attention as he vacuums up noodles with his mouth like it’s his last day on Earth.

“You must’ve been hungry,” Mark says thoughtfully as he watches him carefully. “You need to make sure you always eat well, okay?”

Donghyuck smiles; there are times where he can barely even get out of bed, can barely even roll over or pull up the covers, but for Mark, maybe he’ll try.

“Okay.”

—

Donghyuck is eventually back to his normal, functioning and non-injured self in no time, being released from the prison of Mark’s apartment and back into the wild. “Be careful,” Mark had told him as he left, and Donghyuck said he would, but he honestly can’t completely guarantee his own safety right now.

His body heals, but what settles over him once he can breathe easy again is a fog, a loud and profound numbness in the middle of his chest.

He doesn’t go completely M.I.A. like last time; he keeps up appearances the best he can, lets Mark give him money even though his body is trying to physically reject it, and reads the barely legible letters his brother sends him from home.

It’s hard to find the motivation to get up and go to class, though, and soon enough he’s accumulated enough unexcused absences that he’s surprised he hasn’t been put on academic probation yet.

He does find time to catch up on video game tournaments though, and as he’s rubbing his eyes raw from the brightness of his monitor, eating empty calories and drinking something so carbonated it might as well be pure acid, he feels like there’s no point to anything at all.

He doesn’t really check his student portal; he’s sure his grades are dropping, knows that there’s tons of overdue assignments. If he were back home, his aunt would say something about him not applying himself. He knows he’s smart, knows he’s capable, knows he deserves his spot way more than half of the bastards he goes to class with, but his stupid fucking brain won’t cooperate.

He can only get away with it for so long; with Mark bugging him about his classes and showing up uninvited like he pays rent, Donghyuck’s gig is eventually up.

“How was class?” Mark asks as he brings takeout completely unannounced, greeted by a Donghyuck face down and spread eagle on his tiny bed.

“Didn’t go,” Donghyuck mumbles into his rock solid pillow. He doesn’t have the energy to lie today.

“Didn’t go?” Mark sets down a bag on the tiny desk and hovers over Donghyuck’s still form. “Why not? Are you okay?”

“Never been better.”

He feels the bed dip at his feet. “Hey, look at me.”

Donghyuck laughs drily, but it comes out as more of a cough. Right. He should drink some water. “I don’t know if you’re prepared for that horror.”

“Hyuck-ah,” and great, now Mark is worried about him because he can’t help himself and because Donghyuck is a piece of shit.

He considers his options. He could always make a run for it. Or play dead. He hasn’t washed his hair in a week, there’s a zit smack dab in the middle of his usually clear face, and his face is puffy from the amount of hours he’s spent the past couple of days passed out in misery. He’s lucky he isn’t much of a crier, or else he would look like the Michelin Man.

Mark has, unfortunately, seen him at his worst; he was there when Donghyuck broke his right arm in second year and could barely use the bathroom by himself, was there when his aunt passed out outside of her work and they had to drag her unconscious body back home, was still there when Donghyuck had to bust his ass chopping off fish heads and gutting intestines into a trash bin at their next door neighbor’s shop the days his aunt was too high to work and had to come to school smelling like rotting corpses. Mark seeing him stewing in his own dirt and sweat and failure isn’t the end of the world, but it feels like it is.

Donghyuck turns around slowly to face Mark, and his face doesn’t really change, his eyes just turn sadder than usual.

“Just been on a little vacation,” Donghyuck jokes before Mark can say anything, voice scratching out of his throat like nails on a chalkboard. “It’s been doing me well, as you can see.”

Mark doesn’t respond to his sad attempt at a joke, because nothing is funny, and Donghyuck knows that. He always knows that.

He looks at Donghyuck kind of profoundly, like he’s trying to stare into his soul and wiggle it out of his body with his calloused hands.

“I’m sorry.”

Donghyuck pushes himself onto his elbow. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Mark says again, heartbreakingly earnest, and Donghyuck wants to look away. “It must be hard.”

He’s so strange, Donghyuck thinks, the way that he is. Mark will deck him in the face for even trying to jokingly kiss him on the cheek, but when it comes to these kinds of things, to comfort, he’s so open that it’s almost horrifying.

Donghyuck rarely admits defeat, tries not to let Mark ever have the upper hand if he can help it, so he doesn’t look away.

The real truth is, even if he isn’t aware of it, Mark always has the upper hand.

Donghyuck places his hand palm-up in the space between them, and Mark places his own palm atop his and squeezes.

It’s the only way he can say thank you.

—

Donghyuck finally gets off of his ass long enough to start on his mountain of overdue assignments, rapidly emailing all of his professors and praying to every god there is that they’ll take pity on him and work with him as he busts his ass to save his enrollment status.

Much to his countless protests and incessant whining, Mark insists he help Donghyuck out like the selfless man he is. Except he’s absolutely not selfless, making Donghyuck’s life a living hell because of his little savior complex.

“It’s not a ‘savior complex,’ Hyuck.” Mark’s voice crackles like a fireplace over the phone. “Maybe I just care about you. Crazy, right?”

Donghyuck thinks it’s a little crazy.

He shrugs it off like it’s nothing and hauls ass to Mark’s place again, practically temporarily moving in because Mark’s got such a close eye on him. Maybe he was meant to be his father instead of his friend.

"I just want you to know that I’m never forgiving you for this,” Donghyuck says as he drags his backpack to the dining table and plops down in a chair dramatically. “9 in the fucking morning.” He opens his bag and rummages around, pulling out his laptop, two textbooks, and a warm Red Bull he forgot he left in there a week ago.

“Hey,” Mark appears in front of him suddenly like a domineering teacher, snatching it out of Donghyuck’s hands before he can even blink. “No more of these. Seriously.”

Donghyuck groans like he’s just been sucker punched in the gut and puts his head in his hands. “God, you just suck the fun out of everything.”

He keeps his head down and hears the telltale sound of Mark opening his trash can and tossing it in, the metal clanging against the walls as it descends down being the worst music to Donghyuck’s ears.

“Traitor.”

“You can’t finish your degree if you go into cardiac arrest before you even turn 21.” He sits down in front of Donghyuck, and the specs he’s got on make him look even more like an innocent tutor. “Come on, let’s get started.”

Donghyuck removes his head from his hands and eyes Mark suspiciously. “What’s in it for me?”

Mark scoffs out a goofy laugh. “Why does there always have to be a reward?”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Positive reinforcement.”

“What are you, a dog?”

Donghyuck starts to pant and bark loudly at him just to piss him off, and they bicker for five whole minutes before Mark can get him settled down enough to at least open his laptop, Jesus, Hyuck.

“How do you solve 2 plus 2?” Donghyuck asks like he’s back in kindergarten, eyes skimming over a business model like he’s thinking very hard.

“Can you be serious for once in your life?” Donghyuck knows that Mark is completely done with his shit, has been for years, but he’s still here dealing with him, so he’ll milk it while he still can.

“Hmmm…” Donghyuck taps his pen against his bottom lip, pretending that he was just asked the most complicated question in the world. “Okay, fine.”

He finishes a fifteen page essay in record time, starts a powerpoint for his environmental business class, and responds to people’s discussion posts with complete nonsense to get those precious extra grade points. He takes one single break when Mark gets frustrated and practically forces a sandwich down his throat, and Donghyuck wonders to himself why he pushes away the things he appreciates the most. By the time he’s pretty much done, the sun is setting.

”Finished!” Donghyuck yelps as he types out his last sentence. Mark doesn't respond immediately, and Donghyuck looks up to see him staring at him in that heartstopping way of his, eyes open and earnest. But he looks at everyone like that. His dark hair is covering half of his eyes, and God, he needs a haircut. Donghyuck’s heartbeat speeds up like it’s running a marathon.

“You did a good job,” Mark finally says, and his smile doesn’t waver. Mark pats his head affectionately and Donghyuck clears his throat loudly, ignoring the turmoil in his stomach.

“I know I did.” He pauses. “Have you ever thought about going blond?”

Mark’s eyebrows shoot up to the very top of his head. “Huh?”

“You should go blond.” Donghyuck slams his laptop shut and leans forward, crossing his hands in the space between them. “Let’s do it.”

Maybe he’s a fucking loser, but Mark is pretty easy-going, and that’s how they end up at a blindingly bright convenience store at 7pm, stalking the aisles for bleach and hair dye. They end up agreeing on a dirty blond, and Donghyuck doesn’t even make Mark pay for it like he makes him pay for everything else because he’s feeling generous.

“Please don’t burn my scalp off,” Mark joke-not-jokes as Donghyuck sits him down again at the dining table and throws an old t-shirt at him, sliding on a pair of latex gloves like a mad scientist.

Donghyuck pouts dramatically. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

Mark’s hair does not end up bursting into a ball of flames, and Donghyuck ends up giving him a bleach mohawk for his own amusement before putting an old grocery bag over his head.

“I’m really very good at this.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

The final bleach job isn’t too bad, if Donghyuck says so himself, and he does, because it’s mostly even and that’s really all that they could ask for in these bootleg circumstances. Donghyuck dyes his hair and then rinses him off in the bathtub in comfortable silence, and when he towels Mark off like a wet puppy, he gasps at his masterpiece.

“It’s beautiful,” he gasps, placing a hand over his heart. Mark looks like a little golden retriever, hair shaggy and falling over his eyes in dirty blond hues now, and he pinches his cheek to get on his nerves. “But you need a haircut.”

Mark’s eyes widen like they’re going to pop out of his skull, and he backs away slowly. “I am not letting you anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors.”

But Mark is weak, and a liar, so that’s exactly what he ends up doing.

“I used to cut my brother’s hair all the time because we couldn’t afford to go to the hair salon,” Donghyuck reassures him as he snips away. “I even gave my sister bangs once.” He smiles a little at the nice memory, except it kind of makes him sad now. “Have some faith.”

Mark sighs dramatically as his leg bounces up and down.

“And stay still!”

When Donghyuck deems him complete, his own breath catches at his own work. He cleaned up his undercut and trimmed his bangs, freshly dyed blond hair cropped boyishly over his thin eyebrows.

“I look cool,” Mark says with wide eyes as he looks in the mirror, mouth in a perfect O shape. “Wow, you weren’t lying.”

Donghyuck rests his hands on his shoulders behind him and looks at him in the mirror. “I never lie.”

He can finally see Mark’s entire face again, and maybe it wasn’t the good idea he previously thought it was. He can see him more clearly now, can make out his pupils and the warm brown of his irises under the shitty bathroom light as he pats Donghyuck on the shoulder, blond dye smeared all over his ratty t-shirt.

“Thank you,” he says gently, like Donghyuck had just laid his life down for Mark and not just given him a much needed haircut, and Donghyuck wants to die a little.

He also wants to kiss him really badly, so he clears his throat and says, “Don’t mention it.”

—

Three days later, Donghyuck gets a call.

“She’s n’really responding to treatment,” his aunt slurs lowly over the line, “But they’re doing everything they can.”

Donghyuck hangs up on her and grabs his hair so hard that he rips out a couple of strands, his hair lying innocently in his open palm.

The next time he sees Mark, he just tells him. She’s not really responding to treatment, he repeats emptily, like he’s reading from a cue card. But they’re doing everything they can.

Mark sits down next to him on the couch slowly, watching him like he’ll run away at any second. Donghyuck doesn’t look at him. “Are you okay?”

“Stop asking me that,” Donghyuck says suddenly, red hot anger burning a fiery trail through his chest. “What do you think? Of course I’m not fucking okay.”

Mark eyes him for a second like he wants to get angry, but instead he just gives him an earnest look of pity, like he’s watching a coyote gnaw its leg out from a trap. Donghyuck wishes he would get angry instead–anything but this. Anger is what he knows how to deal with. Especially when it comes from Mark. But when he looks at him with those loverboy eyes, Donghyuck wants to kill him and dump his body into a river.

“I’m sorry,” Mark carefully decides upon, like he doesn’t want to scare Donghyuck away. He sounds like he’s sorry for more than one thing. Maybe Donghyuck is too. “I wish there was something I could say…or do.”

Donghyuck shakes his head so hard he gets dizzy and runs a hand through his tangled hair. “No, you’ve already helped enough. Look, I–I’m sorry for getting mad at you. I’m not mad at you. I’m just taking it out on you.”

Mark sends him a little smile that Donghyuck can’t figure out. “I’ve always been an easy target, haven’t I?”

“Rub salt in the wound, why don’t you?”

He scoots closer to Donghyuck and puts a hesitant hand on his knee, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch him. “You can get through anything, you know that?”

Donghyuck stares at the veins in his hand and the neatness of his nails. “Hm?”

“I know you’re strong,” Mark assures him. “But you don’t always have to be. It’s a really shitty situation, Hyuck. And I wish I could give you advice or some answers, but I’m fucking lost.” He squeezes his knee like he’s trying to ground him. “Just take care of yourself, okay? And talk to me. Please?”

Donghyuck swallows down the lump building up in his throat and nods. “Okay.”

Maybe he’ll mean it this time.

—

There are scattered bottles of pills in Mark’s bedside drawer.

They’re for anxiety, and Donghyuck could’ve sworn he had stopped taking those a long time ago.

He shoves one bottle into the left pocket of his jeans and shuts the door quietly behind him.

He won’t notice that it’s gone.

—

Time stops for no one, obviously, so Donghyuck goes on with his life despite the ever-present heaviness riding on his shoulders. Class is fine, work is fine, Donghyuck is fine, everything is finefinefine.

Donghyuck stops at the gas station after class and buys some Marlboro Reds.

He sighs, longsuffering, as he leans his back against the dirty wall and lights one up. He lost his trusty old lighter from high school, so now he has a pink one with a unicorn on it that he found in a bargain bin.

As much as he hates it, he can feel his muscles relaxing as he takes his first drag, inhaling and then letting the smoke blow out of his lips into the cold air. One cigarette wouldn’t hurt.

Except one turns into two turns into ten, and soon Donghyuck is chain smoking half a pack a day. It calms his nerves, but now he’s got a nasty cough from the chill and the nicotine that he plays off as allergies whenever someone mentions it.

Mark starts to visit him during his lunch breaks at the restaurant, and they sit against a wall in the lot out back, staring silently at the cracks in the gravel before them.

“Thought you quit those,” Mark tries to say casually when Donghyuck digs a cigarette out of his pack and lights it, but Donghyuck can hear the concern and disappointment in his voice loud and clear.

“I did. But then.” He gestures vaguely. “You know.”

Mark frowns, and Donghyuck wants to slap him for caring about him more than he cares about himself. “You need to take your health seriously, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck is too tired to even get mad, so he just sighs. “I know.”

When his break is over and Mark leaves, he throws the pack into the dumpster outside. Maybe he can last without them. He does need to worry about his health more, if he’s gonna help his family.

Except it’s not really about his health, or his family, really. It’s about Mark.

When Donghyuck gets back to his dorm, he tosses his apron haphazardly onto the floor and falls heavily onto his bed.

He reaches into his side drawer, and pulls out a bottle. It’s Mark’s anxiety pills he had stashed into an old prescription bottle. Benzodiazepine. He’s never taken any before, and he knows how regulated and illegal this shit can be because of addiction and backwards laws. He doesn’t have class tomorrow. He dumps a couple into his mouth and lays down on his back, chasing it with a flat beer he left open on his bedside table.

He vaguely remembers kids at shitty high school parties, swapping pills like they were candy and giggling into each other’s ears like they were telling the world’s funniest joke. He remembers his aunt, when she was first prescribed painkillers for her back. He remembers when she started to become dependent on them, and he remembers when she started to swap out breakfast for little white tablets when she thought no one was looking.

He doesn’t feel anything at first, and all he can hear is the sound of his own breathing. Some time later, maybe an hour, maybe an eternity, his breathing starts to slow down, and he feels himself sink into the bed. This floaty feeling settles over him, like a comforting fog, and his chest rises and falls slowly. The feeling in his legs is disappearing, and he lets himself go.

It’s nice, is what he thinks distantly, his breathing shallow and his eyes falling shut when the room gets too blurry. Realistically, most people know that you shouldn’t mix drugs and alcohol, but Donghyuck has always had a knack for doing the unreasonable. And it was only one time anyway, right?

As the buzz travels from his fingertips to his chest and he drifts away from consciousness, he thinks about his aunt and her little white pills.

He doesn’t die, which is as relieving as it is disappointing. He’s had blackouts before, usually when he had time to go to a bar or a club and get sloshed enough to forget his name, or when his body gives out after running on caffeine and sugar for days on end. A cocktail blackout isn’t anything he can’t deal with; he’s sluggish, his head is pounding, but most importantly, he can’t remember the past twelve hours.

He’d fallen out of bed and onto the floor some time during the night, and he stays crumpled up on the ground like old litter until he can gather enough energy to stumble to the bathroom and splash himself awake with cold water.

His dark hair has grown a bit too long, there’s faint freckles forming on the bridge of his nose from too much time in the sun, and his dark circles are turning purple. Pretty normal.

He shrugs on a threadbare hoodie and bikes to Mark’s place.

“What is that?” Donghyuck asks Mark from where he’s slumped over at his dining table and itching for a cigarette.

“Birdhouse,” he responds absentmindedly, smoothing down a piece of wood with sandpaper. “So they stop hitting my windows.”

Donghyuck laughs and brings his thumb up to his mouth to gnaw on until it’s raw and he’s satisfied. “You know, you could just buy one.”

Mark shrugs and sticks out his tongue in concentration, the sound of wood scraping against granite filling the room. “I get bored.”

“I can see that.” Donghyuck raises his head up from where it's planted on cold dark wood and turns to him. “Hey, you should make me something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything.”

“Okay,” he says simply.

A week and some days later, Mark knocks on Donghyuck’s door while he’s in the middle of a heated battle between himself and a recorded applied statistics lecture he missed the day before.

“Made you something,” Mark says casually as he comes in, walking over to where Donghyuck is hunched over his desk and placing a folded piece of paper in front of him. “Have a good class later.”

He exits as quickly as he came, and Donghyuck shrugs and opens up the piece of paper. It’s a drawing. A portrait, it seems, and upon further inspection, it looks suspiciously like Donghyuck. Even though he can’t draw for shit, Mark’s got the important features down. There’s comically large eyes looking in two different directions, a smattering of wonky moles on his cheek that make him look like a chocolate chip cookie. But most importantly, he’s got five cigarettes in his mouth and smoke blowing out of his ears like an angry cartoon character.

A laugh startles out of Donghyuck’s mouth, and he reaches for his phone to send a text to Mark.

3:35 p.m.

fuck you

His phone dings immediately.

3:35 p.m.

:)

He tapes the drawing above his bed.

—

The academic year starts to come to an end, and Donghyuck isn’t sure if he would rather stay in the city or go home. Everywhere he goes is shit, just in completely differing, life-altering ways.

He decides to spend the break back at home, although it was less of a decision and more of an obligation. He almost asks Mark if he wants to come with him, but why would he?

His aunt greets him at the train station with an arm around his little brother like everything is normal and things have not completely gone to shit, and Donghyuck is too tired to do anything but play along.

“We missed you,” she tells him on the drive home in her old hatchback, glancing at him where he’s looking out the window as familiar streets pass him by. “It’ll be nice to have you back for a little.”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck agrees. He keeps his eyes on the road.

Not much at home has changed; same creaking wood floors, same cracked drywall, same sink that won’t stop dripping. His sister’s room is dark and tidied up.

It becomes harder to sleep than it usually is, and when every method to get his brain to shut off becomes counterproductive, he sits on the couch and stares at the blank television.

“She’s doing better,” his aunt mutters into the hallway when she catches him staring through the creak in his sister’s bedroom door one night. “Just need to take it one day at a time.”

“Why are you awake?” Donghyuck asks in lieu of an answer. It’s an ungodly hour and he can only make out a sliver of her face in the darkness. She looks tired.

“Go to sleep, Hyuckie.”

She hasn’t called him that since he was little. She shuffles over to him and places a hand on his shoulder hesitantly, like she’s scared of how he’ll react. It’s supposed to be a comforting gesture, but all it does is leave a cold itch in his bones. “Get some rest.”

She lets her hand fall tentatively to her side like she isn’t sure if she should stay or go, and disappears into the dark shadows down the hall.

In the cold moonlight seeping through her small window in his sister’s room, Donghyuck catches the beady black eyes of a stuffed unicorn staring back at him in the center of her bed. He closes the door shut.

The days begin to blend together as Donghyuck wastes his days away sleeping on the couch, the creaky dinner table, the floor, and other questionable places. It wasn’t intentional, really. His body had just finally started to physically give up on him after his final exams.

He helps his aunt hold up the unsteady Jenga tower that is their household, looks after his brother and teaches him how to catch Pokémon on his old hand-me-down Gameboy, and visits his old friend from preschool who works as a mechanic now in the city. He finally has something to think about besides his degree, Mark, and sticking his head into an oven. He feels normal–at least, as normal as someone like him can feel, and he visits his sister at the hospital four times a week to read her fairytale books and doesn’t let himself plummet into a defeated, blue funk.

The place where he grew up hasn’t changed much just like their apartment, everything in its right place. It’s then that he realizes why he left in the first place. He decides to finally turn his phone back on and call Mark, who he certainly hasn’t been avoiding for absolutely no reason at all.

“Hyuck,” he rasps through the phone like he’s just woken up at 4pm, “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay,” Donghyuck laughs into the phone while he attempts to reassemble his brother’s lego aircraft that he had accidentally destroyed with his feet. “Are you okay?”

“It's been two weeks,” Mark tries to say casually, but it comes out as more of a whine, and Donghyuck’s barely concealed snickers aren’t helping much. “Whenever you wanna go M.I.A. in Seoul, I can just barge into your dorm–”

“But now I’m back out in the sticks,” Donghyuck finishes for him, stabbing himself in the hand with a lego in the process. “Mark, if you missed me that much, you could’ve just said so.”

“Your phone was literally off.”

“So you admit that you missed me?” Donghyuck says with a greasy smile, wishing he could reach through the phone and pinch his ear.

A pregnant pause. “Wait, that’s not-”

“You didn’t deny it so it’s true,” Donghyuck sings into the speaker. “You miss me so much, you can’t even hide it. I understand.”

Mark huffs out a laugh. He goes quiet for a moment. “I do miss you, though.”

Whatever, Donghyuck wants to say as he bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from doing something stupid like smiling. “Yeah, you too.”

There’s stilted shuffling from the other end and Donghyuck knows what’s coming.

“How is she?” Mark asks gently like something will shatter to pieces if he speaks any louder. Donghyuck isn’t sure what.

“I’ve been visiting her a lot. Seizures less frequent. She looks happy anyway, even though, well. You know.”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna hear a joke?” Donghyuck changes the subject abruptly, not trying to be subtle like usual. Mark lets out a mildly irritated sigh on the other end.

“Fine.”

‘What’s a balloon’s favorite type of music?” Donghyuck asks very seriously, like they’re contemplating the meaning of life. He sticks the last lego onto the plane and admires his work.

There’s a pause on the other line like Mark is genuinely searching for an answer. “Uh. I dunno, what?”

“POP!” Donghyuck shrieks into the receiver, and he can barely hear Mark’s pained groans over the sound of the maniacal laughs that startle out of him. He really needs to get more sleep.

“Very funny,” Mark says impassively once Donghyuck calms down.

“I know.” Donghyuck picks up the airplane and observes it. He definitely made it better. “Wanna see the lego plane I just made?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer and removes his phone from his ear to take pictures of his hard work.

“I sent it.”

Mark laughs a little. “Sick build.”

Donghyuck’s face breaks out into the only sincere smile he’s had since he went back home.

—

Two months of break feels like an entire lifetime wasted, and Donghyuck finds himself almost wishing he was back in Seoul analyzing market trends.

He watches as his little brother sneaks into their sister’s room to grab one of her dolls and makes it hold hands with one of his action figures. He just wants to leave already.

Everything is passing him by in a sort of suffocatingly hot yellow haze, and he sleeps so much that he starts to confuse dreams with reality. He isn’t sure which one of them is worse.

“You still doin’ coke?” Donghyuck asks his aunt casually one morning a couple days before he was due back to Seoul, pouring himself a bowl of cereal.

He hears a wet choke and then loud coughing, coffee that was in her mouth splattering onto the table in front of her.

“...Excuse me?”

Donghyuck uncaps the milk. “There’s no way you thought I never noticed, right?”

He finally looks up, and she’s blinking at him like he’s the most perplexing thing she’s ever seen.

“I…”

She trails off and she looks scarily sober in the moment, the most aware he’s seen in her in months. “Hyuck.”

“I’m not gonna tell you what to do, because you clearly don’t care.” Donghyuck makes his way from the kitchen counter to the tiny dining table, sitting across from her. “But all I ask is that you don’t do it so close to the kids anymore. If you wanna get high, don’t do it here. Please.”

He continues to stare resolutely at the cereal floating around sadly in his bowl, the only sound in the apartment being the hum of the old refrigerator and his brother thumping around in his room.

After what feels like hours, she finally speaks up.

“I’m sorry.”

Donghyuck shakes his head and puts down his spoon, finally looking up at her. She looks older these days, and her eyes are more tired than usual.

“It’s not your fault. Well, it is, but it’s mostly not.” A stroke of hurt flashes over her face, and Donghyuck feels a twisted sense of satisfaction at his sick form of poetic justice. “It’s okay, though.”

He makes sure to look directly into her eyes so that she really understands him. “I’m gonna get you some help. I don’t know how, or when, but I will. And I’m getting us out of here.” Her bottom lip starts to tremble, but she doesn’t say anything. Donghyuck doesn’t think he wants her to.

“I will,” he says again, but it’s more for his own self than for her. “Even if it kills me.”

—

His sister gives him a drawing the night before his train back to Seoul. It’s of their family, messily drawn in black crayon stick figures in a row. Donghyuck is the only tall one. The sun is shining down on them and it has a crooked smiling face. He folds it up carefully and puts it in wallet.

Only his aunt is there to see him off because his brother had already started school. He was mad at Donghyuck for showing up and then preparing to disappear again and wouldn’t even look at him, so maybe it was for the best.

“This is it,” Donghyuck says as he stops in front of the third car of the train. His aunt is painfully sober, and he’s sure she’s itching for the next hit, so he appreciates the effort. “I’ll come visit again soon.”

She nods solemnly like she’s sending him off to his death, wrapping her coat tighter around herself even though the days have only been getting warmer. “I love you, baby,” she tells him huskily, looking at the top of his head instead of meeting his eyes. “Stay safe.”

He steps inside and smiles at her, and he hopes she’s too out of it to tell that it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I love you, too.”

He walks down the aisle to his seat in the back and doesn’t look out the window.

An old man with a nasty cough sits next to him a couple of minutes later, and Donghyuck hopes it’s something contagious. Something fatal.

The train arrives in Seoul in no time. Donghyuck lugs his suitcase off the platform and out of the station and is met with a warm breeze as he looks for a taxi to stop.

He eventually finds one to hail, and tells the man driving his dorm address. He looks out the window and watches Seoul glimmer past him as the car takes off into the evening rush hour. The skyscrapers sparkle where the setting sun is reflecting off of them and burning into his eyes. Donghyuck wishes he could stay in a big yellow taxi forever, watching the world pass him by. The taxi would never stop.

When he starts to recognize the area around him, he can smell the torment and despondency of the little complex he lives in from a mile away.

Donghyuck leans forward out of seat. “Excuse me, actually, could you take me downtown instead?”

The taxi driver narrows his eyes at him through the rearview mirror. “Gonna cost you extra.”

“That’s fine,” Donghyuck insists, and he feels a little bit of the pressure on his shoulders leave. He tries not to think about why.

He gives him the new address. As soon as the cab pulls up in front of Mark’s apartment complex, Donghyuck tosses his suitcase haphazardly out of the door and onto the sidewalk, apologizing profusely.

“Thank you!” he says to the driver as he hands him a wad of cash and bolts out of the car before he can respond. The taxi takes off as Donghyuck lugs his suitcase up the stone stairs and punches in the building code. He trudges the one million miles upstairs to Mark’s floor, and is heaving by the time he’s in front of his door.

His key to Mark’s place is back at his dorm, so he raps his knuckles forcefully against the door like he’s the Feds.

Seconds pass, and Donghyuck knows that Mark is looking through the peephole in case he needs to flush his goods down the toilet and/or make a run for it.

The door swings open, and Donghyuck is met with an eyeful of puppy eyes. “Dude!” Mark squeaks, staring at him like he’s a crazy person. “What the hell?”

“I don’t even get a hello?” Donghyuck looks down at his dirty shoes and frowns deeply. “I came all the way here from the train station to see you.”

“Wait, I was just surp–”

“Just kidding!” Donghyuck beams up at him, and the concerned downturn of Mark’s mouth turns into an unimpressed thin line. “Well? Aren’t you gonna hug me?”

Mark rolls his eyes but relents anyway, wrapping his arms tightly around Donghyuck’s middle. Donghyuck does the same and very platonically rests his head in the crook of his neck, very platonically inhales. He smells like laundry detergent and something so distinctly Mark that it makes him a little dizzy.

“Missed you,” he mumbles into his neck because he doesn’t feel like hiding it.

“I missed you, too,” Mark says as Donghyuck reluctantly lets go. “Give me your suitcase.”

“Such a gentleman,” Donghyuck sings after him, shutting the door behind them. The apartment is just like he remembers, in the same confusing state of disarray and neatness as it always was.

“Why didn’t you go straight home?” Mark asks as he sets Donghyuck’s luggage near the shoe rack. “You must be tired.”

Donghyuck catapults himself onto Mark’s lumpy couch and sinks into the familiar feeling. “We need to catch up.”

Mark plops down next to him and clicks the first TV program he finds. “You were on break, not dead.”

Donghyuck turns to look at him and huffs indignantly. “If you keep talking to me like this, I’m leaving.”

Mark sends him a deceptively innocent smile. “Stay.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes and looks away, focusing on the comedians hitting each other on the head on some variety show. “Whatever.”

(He remembers when they were younger, and Mark would go stock-still and stiff-tongued whenever Donghyuck would tease him or say something kind of mean in a deceptively sugary sweet voice just to get under his skin. Now, Mark just gives it as good as he gets it.)

He’s not sure if it's real or his imagination running away from him, but he feels Mark move a centimeter closer to his side. “That can’t be just it, though.” Donghyuck can feel Mark’s inquisitive eyes burning into his cheek. “What’s wrong?”

Donghyuck recoils and turns to look at him again. “Who said anything was wrong?”

Mark stares at him patiently.

“What?” Donghyuck asks more defensively than he meant to, which makes him look even more guilty.

“I know you,” Mark says simply. His gaze flickers down somewhere on Donghyuck’s neck, and suddenly he looks a little sad. Donghyuck’s heartbeat picks up a little. “Why don’t you ever… confide in me?” Mark cringes at his own words and his eyes stay resolutely on Donghyuck’s neck.

“That’s not true,” Donghyuck shakes his head. His mouth goes a little dry at the look on Mark’s face. He shakes his head again. “Not true.”

Mark shakes his head back and finally meets Donghyuck’s gaze. Donghyuck’s throat twitches a little, but he’s never one to lose a staring contest, so he blinks back at him. “It kinda is. You hide from me sometimes, and it… it fucking scares me.” Donghyuck’s mouth itches to say something, to reach out and touch, to do anything, but Mark keeps going. “Sometimes you look so… sad. It’s like you’re not even there sometimes. I know I can’t, like, magically fix things, but… don’t you trust me?”

Donghyuck’s brows furrow, and he scoffs incredulously as he feels his eyes start to well up a little with stinging tears, thrown off guard by the change in conversation. “God, Mark. No. I trust you.” He pauses for a second. “I trust you more than anyone.”

And it’s unfortunately, tragically, shockingly true just how much Donghyuck trusts Mark. He’s one of the few people he cares about in the whole world which already makes him special, and besides that, well. He’s Mark.

“It’s not that,” Donghyuck insists, wringing his hands together in his lap.

Mark tilts his head to the side like a lost puppy. “What is it, then?”

He exhales all of the air out from his body. “I don’t like you seeing me like that,” Donghyuck breathes out, making his face blank so as to not betray anything he’s feeling. His chest hurts.

“What?” Mark asks, scooting a little closer. Donghyuck wishes he would fuck off. “Me? What do you mean?”

Donghyuck shrugs casually like they’re talking about something like the weather, picking at a hangnail on his thumb. “Yeah. It doesnt make sense ‘cause you’re fucking lame, but.” He shrugs again. “See, there, I confided in you. Happy?”

There's a funny little confused look on Mark’s face, and Donghyuck wants to punch him in the throat. “Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” Donghyuck moves to get up off of the coach. “Anyway–”

Mark’s cold hand wraps around his wrist and pulls him back down, landing back on the coach with a whump.

“Ow.”

Mark lets go of him, and Donghyuck wants him to wrap his hand around wrist again. “Why don’t you want me to see you like that? You comfort me when I feel like shit all the time. Why can’t I do the same?”

Donghyuck ignores the fact that he’s just lost an intense eye contact contest for the first time in his life and shrugs again. “It’s embarrassing.”

Donghyuck can hear Mark’s eyebrows shoot up to the ceiling and resists the urge to roll his eyes. “The Lee Donghyuck is embarrassed?”

“Very funny,” Donghyuck smiles fakely at him, and it only makes the shit-eating grin on Mark’s face bigger. “You should consider a career in comedy.”

“This is unprecedented,” Mark continues, suddenly looking at Donghyuck like he’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “But, wait.”

He reaches across the miniscule distance between them (when did they get so close?) and rests his hand on Donghyuck’s knee. “I don’t want you to feel like that, though. Like, ever.”

It’s scary how fast he can switch from playful to deadly serious, a master of his craft. Donghyuck nods solemnly, all of the witty one-liners and snarky comments usually floating around in his brain nowhere to be found. “Yeah, well.” He shrugs uselessly.

Mark looks at him earnestly, and Donghyuck wonders how a boy with eyes as sweet as Mark’s is who he is. He’s been a walking contradiction for as long as they’ve known each other. He’s somehow managed to keep a lot of that frustrating innocence despite what he’s been through, what they’ve been through–a boy who deals people poison and builds birdhouses, a boy who’s kind and honest despite everything that happens to him.

He’d never admit it out loud, not even at gunpoint, but Donghyuck used to feel scared of Mark. Just when he felt like he’d got a grasp on Mark, who he was as a person, when he could see through him like a clear window the way he could through most people, he was thrown for a loop. There’s always been too many sides to him; he’s too multifaceted. Mark shows him something new every day. Donghyuck doesn’t like that.

“Remember when I broke my fingers in third year and you carried my backpack for me everyday until they healed, even though you didn’t have to?”

“I was a pretty good friend,” Donghyuck nods slowly at the memory.

“Mm, sometimes.”

Donghyuck sends him the nastiest glare he can manage, and Mark raises his hands up in surrender. “Kidding. Anyway, you’ve always looked out for me. And I guess I’ve always looked out for you, too. But there’s still space to let me in. So.” Mark seems to lose whatever confidence he had mere moments ago and shrugs. “Yeah.”

Donghyuck sighs heavily like he’s just finished a hard day’s work, and he kind of has, if you consider talking about your feelings ‘work.’ Which he does.

“I’ll try harder. I don’t wanna push you away. Or be distant. It isn’t fair to you. I’ll try.” Donghyuck finally turns away from Mark permanently because his body physically can’t take any more of his face or he might explode. “You’re my best friend. Oh, hey, I love this show!”

Donghyuck pointedly moves on from the topic and cackles as someone on television gets sprayed in the face with water as a penalty for losing some game.

He rests his hand atop of Mark’s for the rest of the night.

—

Donghyuck wakes up with sawdust in his eyes and a crick in his neck. His head had somehow found itself on Mark’s shoulder in the middle of the night, and he groans in pain as he sits upright.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep or stay the night at Mark’s, but he doesn’t have control over many things these days, so he sighs and smacks Mark on the shoulder.

“Wake up,” he sings into his ear, and Mark groans something incoherent and slowly lifts his head from the back of the couch.

“The hell…”

“We accidentally fell asleep. Good morning, I guess.” Donghyuck nudges him in the side and Mark scrunches his eyes back shut like the mere feeling of being awake is killing him. “Hey, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a sleepover, huh?”

Mark snorts a little and opens his eyes into slits, staring up at the bars on the ceiling. “Yeah, I guess it has.”

Donghyuck remembers the first time they ever slept in the same room, when they were both a little scrawnier and a little cautious around each other. It wasn’t by choice; his aunt had been ripe with anger and had told him to get out of the apartment for some reason Donghyuck doesn’t even remember, so he walked to Mark’s house because he wasn’t sure where else to go. When Mark actually let him inside despite his habit of keeping family matters private, that’s when Donghyuck knew that they were actually friends.

That seems like a far away time now. Even though they’ve come far, they’re also in the same exact place they were. Donghyuck cracks every single bone in his body and gets up from the couch even though his body is fervently begging him not to. “We need to clean up. If you actually comb your hair, I’ll make you breakfast.”

An offended look flashes over Mark’s devastatingly sleepy face before he purses his lips and shakes his head solemnly. “I haven’t had a real meal in like two months.”

“Funny how I’ve been gone for two months,” Donghyuck sends him a smug look from where he’s standing, and Mark manages to look sheepish.

He scratches at his neck and avoids his gaze. “Yeah, well.”

“Yeah, well,” Donghyuck mocks him in a reedy voice as he makes his way to the bathroom, and Mark squawks in indignation.

“Hey! I don’t sound like that!”

After Donghyuck scrubs off the remnants of home and tiredness from his skin so hard he turns red and Mark combs his hair like he promised, Donghyuck stands in front of Mark’s refrigerator in pure horror.

“How are you not dead?” Donghyuck asks as he rummages through its contents. Or, well, lack of content.

“That’s what food delivery apps are for,” Mark tells him matter-of-factly.

Donghyuck is still frozen in front of the refrigerator, eyes stuck on an egg carton with one single, lone egg in it. It's like witnessing a car crash that he can’t look away from. “This is seriously horrifying.” He turns to where Mark is sitting at the table with a perturbed look on his face. “I need to go to the grocery store. Right now. This is unacceptable. Do you even know what breakfast is–”

“Dude,” Mark stops him, “You just got back here. I’m not actually gonna make you cook me breakfast.”

Donghyuck crosses his arms over his chest like his aunt used to do when she had the energy to scold him and leans against the refrigerator. “I’m literally offering. You’re not making me do anything.”

Mark picks up his phone from the table and squints at the screen like an old man. “Well, that’s nice and all, but.” He pauses and a satisfied grin crawls onto his face. “There’s a really good Thai place some blocks away from here...”

The thought of eating something at the moment makes Donghyuck want to throw up every single one of his organs all over the place, but he sits across from Mark at the table and sends him a tight-lipped smile. “As long as you’re paying.”

Mark sends him an unimpressed look from over his phone, and Donghyuck smiles for real.

 

---

 

Donghyuck has been back in Seoul for one week when he meets Na Jaemin.

Donghyuck had made a crucial effort to avoid any and all business guys in his department, even if they seemed nice or approachable; they just weren’t to be trusted. He’s subjected to them enough in his classes: pretentious kids who think they know everything there is to know about anything, rich scumbags who are bound to take over the family business after they graduate, future multimillionaires. They wanted to make Donghyuck blow his brains out most of the time.

Na Jaemin was no exception–just in a completely different way.

Donghyuck gets an invitation from a nice girl in his macroeconomics class to some beginning-of-the-school-year party, which he didn’t know was a thing that existed, but he’ll take any excuse to get out of his dorm even for a minute.

It’s at some engineering major’s family house, and it’s the biggest thing Donghyuck has ever set foot in in his life. He was half-convinced that houses with winding staircases didn’t exactly exist.

By the time he arrives, it’s only 8pm, but everyone already seems to be absolutely sloshed. He almost trips over a group of what looks like drunk frat boys playing Twister as he makes a beeline to the kitchen for a drink.

There are all kinds of alcohols in the colossal kitchen, ranging from shitty, fruity canned drinks for lightweights to Grey Goose Vodka.

Nursing one of those shitty, fruity canned drinks for lightweights is Na Jaemin. He’s talking to some girl who’s gesticulating animatedly, and he’s smiling like he’s interested in what she’s saying, but Donghyuck can see right through him. He’s seen Jaemin around campus before and they’ve shared a class; he’s sort of a people person, but only because people come up to him first. A people person but in an unattainable way, like he can’t be touched. He’s pretty, Donghyuck can smell his money from a mile away, and he’s too smart for his own good. Donghyuck makes sure to stay away as far as possible.

But Jaemin is standing near the nasty vodka that Donghyuck so desperately wants to chug until he can’t feel his legs, and of course he is.

Donghyuck sets his eyes resolutely on the bottle. He’ll get it if it kills him.

“Lee Donghyuck, right?” the boy in question asks when he tries to reach for the bottle stealthily and unnoticed, shiny sharp teeth glinting in the chandelier light. Donghyuck assumes his smile is supposed to be welcoming, but he just looks like a predator watching his prey.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck says casually but cringes on the inside, suddenly feeling self-conscious in a way that he rarely does. “Hello, Jaemin-ssi.”

“Have we met?” Jaemin asks with a furrow of his brow, taking a sip of his drink. “Forgive me if I’ve forgotten.”

Donghyuck snorts at his words and tears the plastic off of the bottle with his teeth. “Everyone knows you.” He shrugs and takes a gulp straight from the bottle. It tastes like a whole lot of nothing, but it’s bitter and it doesn’t burn, so Donghyuck considers this a win.

“Do they?” Jaemin asks with a cheeky smile, and Donghyuck is sure he knows. Jaemin watches him force down more vodka with the fervor of an alcoholic with a curious glint in his eyes.

“Sure they do,” Donghyuck says and puts down his bottle on the marble counter next to him. “Na Jaemin. Second year, business major with a concentration in marketing. Single. Sought after. You hang around that girl with the weird hair and that mean short kid. You’re very popular.”

Jaemin throws his head back with a laugh that actually sounds genuine, and Donghyuck follows the bob of his defined Adam’s apple with his eyes. He smiles at Donghyuck when it’s over, and he feels a little less on edge. Maybe it’s the alcohol.

“You’ve done your research,” Jaemin says like he’s impressed. “The girl is Seo Younghee. And that mean short kid is Huang Renjun.”

Donghyuck hums and takes another sip of his overpriced alcohol water. “I accidentally stepped on his shoe once when I was in the art department for my gen ed. He didn’t take it well.”

Jaemin certainly looks amused. “Renjunnie is a nice guy,” he laughs, finishing his drink. “You wanna meet him? Officially.”

“He’s here?” Donghyuck asks with a gasp, looking around quickly. He can barely make out anyone’s face in the crowd of people dancing, making out, and doing other things that would probably get them arrested if they were in public. “I need to hide.”

Jaemin tosses his can into the trash and laughs again, beckoning Donghyuck with a tilt of his head. “C’mon, come meet them.”

As if he’s under some sort of spell, Donghyuck follows him through the crowd and into what he assumes is a den room. He almost tears up a little when he realizes he left behind his vodka.

There’s less people, but the energy is just as charged. There are open bottles, cans, and red solo cups everywhere, and there are people sprawled all over the sectional couch and luxury armchairs. There’s a huge bay window that overlooks the city, and another chandelier above them that casts the room in a warm and sparkling glow.

“Everyone,” Jaemin announces in a customer service voice as they make their way over to the middle of the couch, “Meet Lee Donghyuck. He’s in our year.”

His friends are lucid enough to acknowledge his existence, Younghee greeting him enthusiastically with a wave, and Renjun looking him up and down like he’s trying to psychologically analyze him.

“Hi!” Younghee smiles, reaching out to give him an excited handshake. “Seo Younghee. I’m in the linguistics department.”

Donghyuck sends her his most charming smile and returns the handshake. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Renjun,” the Mean Short Art Kid speaks up next in a melodic voice. He does not reach out for a handshake which Donghyuck duly notes. “I’m studying fine art.”

Donghyuck sighs. “I’m sorry for stepping on your shoes that one time. I was in a hurry. I would offer to buy you some new ones but they looked really expensive, so all I have are my condolences.”

Younghee cackles and Renjun finally smiles for what’s probably the first time in his life, like he’s passed the test, which makes Donghyuck smile back.

Jaemin insists that he sit down and get comfortable like a fussy mother, and that’s how Donghyuck ends up in the middle of a Renjun-Jaemin sandwich. Someone passes him a cup full of what smells like gasoline and battery acid, and Donghyuck shrugs and downs it in one gulp.

“You’re studying business like Jaemin-ah?” Renjun asks him over the chatter of the room, sipping daintily on some clear drink.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck says, watching a girl who’s definitely on something do karaoke in front of the giant flat screen television in the middle of the room. “I’m concentrating in econ.”

“Smart guy,” Younghee sings and takes out a pack of cigarettes from somewhere in her skirt. She offers one to Donghyuck and he hesitates, immediately thinking of Mark, who he surprisingly has avoided thinking about all night. But Mark isn’t there, so he shrugs again and takes it, ignoring the twinge of guilt in his chest.

“Maybe a little bit,” Donghyuck laughs as he puts the cigarette in his mouth and Younghee lights it. “But not as smart as Jaemin-ssi here.”

They laugh and ooh and ah, Jaemin rolling his eyes good naturedly. “Whatever you say.”

Jaemin begins to tell some embarrassing story about Renjun, who looks two seconds away from violently strangling him to death. Donghyuck relaxes into the leather of the couch as the buzz of the alcohol sets in and he takes a slow drag of his cigarette. It’s the most calm he’s felt in months.

A half hour or maybe a lifetime later, someone brings out bags of free candy with an excited whoop. People cheer. Donghyuck’s drunk brain is ecstatic.

But upon further inspection, Donghyuck’s muddled brain notices the seemingly innocuous symbols on them. There are smiley faces, hearts, stars, peace signs, skulls.

It’s definitely molly.

“Fuck yeah,” Younghee chirps as she takes a small baggie, immediately opening it and pouring the contents into her manicured hand. They remind Donghyuck of candies he used to eat when he was younger. She offers one to Renjun and then Jaemin, and then looks at Donghyuck expectantly.

“You want?”

There are many things Donghyuck can do. There are a couple things he may do. There is one thing he should do.

It is not popping molly with people he just met at a college party.

He’s only ever drank alcohol, smelled weed on other people, and, sure, there was that time he popped a couple of Mark’s benzos without him knowing. But Donghyuck isn’t a drug person. He never wanted to be one. Considering.

Donghyuck just stares at her which she takes as a yes, putting a yellow pill into his hand.

People around him start popping them like candy, and someone lights up a joint by the window. Younghee takes a blurry photo of herself with her mouth open, a heart shaped pill on her tongue. Renjun, who looks like the type to run a Say No To Drugs campaign, puts a peace sign delicately in his mouth like a fancy appetizer. Jaemin rolls his eyes and hands his smiley face to Donghyuck.

He looks down at it like a newly discovered artifact, scared to touch like it’ll bite. It sits next to the yellow star innocuously.

He thinks of Mark. He thinks of his aunt. He thinks of the kids.

It's just a star. It’s just a smiley face.

He puts them on his tongue and swallows.

—

Donghyuck has felt a lot of things in his short life. He’s felt anger, he’s felt sadness, and he’s felt happiness. He’s felt hopelessness, and he’s felt desperation. He’s felt triumph, and he’s felt defeat.

He’s never felt this before.

He knows two things about molly: one, most of it is fake, only containing a percentage of MDMA or none at all. He doesn’t know where people get the pure shit. And two, despite this, it still gives you a hell of a high.

Twenty-six minutes in, and he’s convinced some dumb rich kid was scammed into buying Smarties. All he feels is the effects of the alcohol, dizzy and uncoordinated, lack of inhibition, but most importantly, giddily intoxicated. He’s about to open his mouth to say something when it hits him.

All of the control leaves his body at once, leaving him a heap of bones and organs and flesh. He suddenly feels like jelly, like his soul is sinking through the couch and running away from him. His heart rate quickens and everything tingles, like there’s a lack of blood flow everywhere. But blood is rushing wildly through his ears, and he can vaguely make out sounds of people shrieking and laughing, the heavy bass of an r&b song rumbling in his chest. He can feel the phantom touch of a clammy hand wrapping around his wrist, pulling him off of the quicksand couch and onto the dancefloor in the living room.

Younghee’s mess of electric blue hair is like a satellite beckoning him forward as the neon darkness of the room blurs into messy watercolor. He can hear the tinkling laughter of Renjun somewhere around him, can make out the oil slick of Jaemin’s black hair. He’s on cloud nine, and his body starts to move without much thinking, gliding through the sea of bodies and grinding on any willing warm body.

He feels good.

He’s hot all over and there’s nothing to think about except the next move, the next hit, the next high. He finds himself back near the ocean of drinks and picks up where he left off with his Grey Goose.

He eventually loses his new friends and himself, stumbling up the Alice in Wonderland staircase that never seems to end with so many twists and turns it gives him vertigo. There are couples making out on the steps, some scattered circles of people smoking cigarettes, and friend groups gossiping.

Donghyuck isn’t sure exactly what he's looking for or why he went up there in the first place, but suddenly he wants to lie down, a chill overtaking his body. He hiccups and tries to open the first door in the hall that he sees, but it’s locked. There’s muffled thumping noises and loud moaning coming from behind the door, and Donghyuck sighs heavily as he makes his way to the next one. It’s some storage space of some sort, and if he were in his right mind, he’d probably snoop around. He eventually stumbles upon an unoccupied bathroom and shuts the door behind him.

It’s the most luxurious bathroom he’s ever been in; it seems that tonight is a night of firsts. He trips over his feet on the slippery marble floor and fumbles his way to the sink, making eye contact with his blurry reflection. He looks good in the glittering light and the sweat above his brow makes him glow, his pupils dilated to hell.

Someone is splashing cold water on his face, or maybe it’s himself, and he suddenly really needs some fucking water and he has to pee and he wants to PeelAllOfTheClothesOffOfHisSkin. The Earth tilts off of its axis a little, and that’s all that Donghyuck remembers.

He feels good.

—

Donghyuck isn’t sure exactly where he is.

When he opens his eyes it’s cold and blurry. Everything around him looks clinical and white, like a hospital.

There’s something soft beneath him and his bones are aching. He can’t really remember what happened the night before, and a rush of dread runs through his body as he reckons he’s landed himself in the hospital.

There’s muttering from far away, and Donghyuck imagines he’s in a coma, people murmuring and watching over his unmoving body. Or maybe he died, and this is the start of his eternal punishment.

“…sleeping beauty… Wake up sleeping beauty!”

There’s a voice ringing near his ear, and he thinks he’s hearing things, maybe a nurse, maybe an angel, before ice cold water is splashed on his face.

“What the fuck!” Donghyuck shoots up from what he realizes is a plush couch and blinks into the bright light of the room.

“He’s alive,” Jaemin muses from where he and Renjun are standing in front of the couch, looking down on him.

“Barely,” Renjun comments offhandedly, and Donghyuck notices he’s holding an empty glass in his hand.

“Well, I’m definitely awake,” Donghyuck grumbles, blinking water out of his stinging eyes. “Where the fuck am I?”

Jaemin gives him a pacifying smile and hands him a fluffy towel. “No bad words in the Na household.”

Donghyuck blanches and finally looks around him. They’re in a giant living room with bay windows looking out into the outdoor patio. It’s homey despite its neatness and order, large fireplace in the corner, abstract art on the walls.

“Oh, Jesus,” Donghyuck stands up and almost falls over, steadied by Jaemin’s strong hand on his arm. “Get me out of here.”

Jaemin looks way too smug for Donghyuck’s liking, and Renjun just looks unimpressed. “You don’t wanna stay for breakfast?

“If I even step near food right now, I’ll projectile vomit everywhere.”

His eyes have completely adjusted to the light, and both of them look way too put together after what they’d done last night. Donghyuck really only remembers the molly.

“At least let me drive you home,” Jaemin says like he’s trying very hard not to laugh, and Donghyuck doesn’t know what’s so fucking funny. “You had a wild night.”

Donghyuck weakly attempts to walk away but then immediately gives up. “Didn’t you guys, too? Jesus, how are you even functioning?”

“You bumped two mollies,” Renjun says like Donghyuck is stupid, “And drank an entire bottle of vodka. I feel like shit, but at least I can stand up. And Jaemin-ah barely even drinks.”

“You disappeared and hours later we found you passed out in the bathroom. We thought you were dead,” Jaemin adds cheerfully. “Good thing it's the weekend!”

Donghyuck’s stomach turns out of nowhere and he cringes. His own actions rarely surprise him anymore, but he’s really done a number on himself. “I changed my mind, I don’t care. Get me out of here.”

He ends up in the passenger’s seat of Jaemin’s dumb Mercedes, contemplating jumping out of the car and into ongoing traffic.

“It might take some time for you to completely come down,” Jaemin says matter-of-factly like a doctor, eyes focused on the road as he speaks. “You’ll probably feel pretty bad. Depressed, irritable, anxious, things like that. Could last a week. They call it ‘Suicide Tuesdays.’”

The creaky radio static of Jaemin’s vocal fry grates on every nerve in Donghyuck’s body and makes his eye twitch, and yeah, there goes the irritability. “That’s really reassuring to hear, thank you, Jaemin-ssi.”

He turns to flash Donghyuck a reptilian smile. “Anytime.”

Donghyuck is too fucked up to worry about scarily handsome, bubblegum chewing, silver spoon up his ass Na Jaemin seeing the shitty complex he lives in until they’re pulling up in front of it.

“Oh, God,” Donghyuck says out loud before he can stop himself, staring at the old white building that’s definitely seen better days.

Jaemin slows to a stop and kills the engine, looking out the window. “Do you need me to walk you up?”

Donghyuck rasps out a laugh and immediately regrets it as a metaphorical sledgehammer starts to repeatedly slam into his head again. “I’m not incapacitated, I’ll survive.” It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jaemin is good at making his face do exactly what he wants it to do, but Donghyuck has quickly come to realize that his eyes hardly lie. His gaze must linger outside too long, because Jaemin gives him a look.

“Bye, Jaemin-ssi!” Donghyuck yells before he can open his big shark-toothed mouth, opening and slamming the car door shut and hightailing it into the building. He runs all the way up the stairs to his room and flings the door shut so hard the impact rattles through his bones.

He kicks his shoes off into outer space, tosses his jacket into his laundry hamper, and sprints as fast as he can to his tiny bathroom to vomit his guts up into the toilet.

It feels like his entire throat has been completely corroded to nothing by acid, and he’s not even sure when he last had an actual meal. He gives a half-assed attempt at brushing his teeth, chugs a hot water bottle, and promptly passes out onto his bed.

—

When Donghyuck comes to, he still feels like a pile of dog shit, but he’s at least still breathing, so he counts his blessings. His phone is buzzing in the back pocket of his jeans, and he groans as he reaches blindly for it to stop the sound destroying his sensitive eardrums. He squints at the blue light of the screen and sees that Mark has texted him a couple of times within the past few hours.

“Shit,” Donghyuck mumbles into his pillow.

8:53 p.m.

there’s a star trek marathon on that oldies channel if you wanna come over

8:54 p.m.

i know you hate that show but i’m still offering

11:25 p.m.

well the power went out so you dodged a bullet hahaha

11:25 p.m.

it’s back on though. obviously

6:03 a.m.

i know you hate when i do this but i’m not even sure you’re alive half the time so can you blame me?

6:04 a.m.

so if you’re alive text me whenever you can

1:52 p.m.

what kind of flowers do you want at your funeral?

It makes Donghyuck smile even though it hurts to do so. That was two hours ago.

3:59 p.m.

i’m unfortunately alive

3:59 p.m.

you’re cute when you worry about me (´ ∀ ` *)

4:01 p.m.

please never use that face again

4:02 p.m

and i wasn't worried

4:02 p.m.

ok i was a little worried

4:02 p.m.

are you okay?

Donghyuck is many things, but the most important thing that he is is a liar.

When he was little, his tummy would ball up into a knot, and he would trip over his words if he even tried to say something that wasn’t true. His palms would sweat oceans, and he didn’t like the way it felt. Now, it came naturally. It’s a state of being. And it never feels good, but it feels better than being a disappointment. And the fact that it’s Mark Lee of all people that he would be disappointing, one of the few people in the whole world that Donghyuck actually cares about extremelytrulydeeply, is what helps him justify it all.

4:04 p.m.

came down with something

4:05 p.m.

i’ve been dead to the world for the past 20 hours. coming back strong though

Half truth?

Donghyuck can almost see the concerned crease between Mark’s eyebrows as he sends,

4:06 p.m.

do you need me to bring you anything?

Donghyuck wonders what would happen if Mark found out he did drugs with strangers, simply put. What he would do, what he would say, what his face would look like. Donghyuck doesn’t plan on finding out.

4:06 p.m.

i’m not a baby

4:07 p.m.

thank you markie. i hope you’re okay too

He throws his phone across the room and goes to sleep.

—

Donghyuck doesn’t go to work for an entire week after that. Pro: he finally gets some well-deserved rest. Con: he does not get paid for the nonexistent hours he worked.

The comedown had been hell, just like Jaemin (and Google) had predicted. The hangover depression on top of his normal day-to-day depression left him catatonic in his bed, stewing in his own dark cloud of misery. He didn’t eat, and he struggled to stay asleep for longer than an hour. Mark stops by in the middle of the week to give him a little teddy bear that he assumes is meant to say “Get well soon!” or “You’re full of shit.” Hopefully the first one.

Donghyuck still doesn’t even feel completely like himself, but he’ll work through paranoia and irritability for a paycheck.

Was the temporary euphoria of the high worth the devastating comedown?

He isn’t sure that he can answer that question.

“You win some, you lose some,” is what he mutters to himself as he ties his apron around his waist in the backroom, slamming his storage locker shut with a long-suffering sigh. He’s managed to avoid his boss so far, and hopefully it stays that way, because he’s 60% sure he’s about to get fired.

Donghyuck puts on his award-winning customer service smile as soon as he steps back into the restaurant and dives into the battlefield, taking orders, making small talk, flirting with rich married women, the usual. He’s an actor, and he has an audience to impress; it’s what he’s best at.

He can feel the evil eyes of his boss boring into the back of his head as he works the floor, and he’s sure there are sizzling holes forming on his nape.

To his surprise, he doesn’t get fired. His scary, tall, well-put-together, high maintenance boss pulls him to the side during the evening rush hour and simply tells him, “You look better, kid.”

Donghyuck isn’t sure how many people have noticed that he more often than not looks like shit as of late, but he knows he can’t count the number on just one hand.

Him and Mark sit against a wall in the lot out back during his lunch break like they always do, and it’s always the only good part of his work day.

“I’m bored,” Donghyuck says to Mark, watching a lone ant crawl across the gravel. He’s itching for a cigarette, but he’s promised himself that he won’t smoke around Mark anymore, so he shoves a toothpick in his mouth instead. “Fuckin’ hate this job.”

Mark nods sympathetically, picking mindlessly at his fraying shoelaces. “Just remember you’re doing it for your family, I guess.”

Donghyuck nods and imagines blowing smoke out of his nose like a dragon. “Yeah.”

“How are they, by the way? Your family, I mean.”

Donghyuck squints into the sun peeking beneath the overcast clouds and shrugs. “They’re okay. My brother is mad at me. And noona, she’s gonna snort her nose clean off one day.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

Mark frowns and pushes him to the side halfheartedly, but Mark’s version of halfheartedly almost sends Donghyuck toppling over onto the pavement.

“Imagine if she didn’t have a nose,” Donghyuck continues undeterred, taking the toothpick out of his mouth and flicking it to the ground. He stomps it under his shoe like he would a cigarette, but it’s not the same.

Mark’s face scrunches up in confusion or maybe disgust. “Like Voldemort?”

Donghyuck swallows down the automatic reflex to call him a nerd and laughs. “Yeah, like Voldemort.”

A cool breeze blows Donghyuck’s hair out of his eye, and he realizes he hasn’t been able to see properly for the past few weeks. He needs a haircut.

Donghyuck turns to Mark. “Wanna go swimming?”

Mark gives him the look he always gives him when he doesn’t know what the fuck Donghyuck is talking about. “Swimming?”

“Yeah, in the old outdoor pool downtown.” His craving for nicotine keeps increasing by the minute, so he pops his thumbnail into his mouth and bites hard.

“Your shift isn’t even over.” Mark reaches over to pry his hand gently away from his mouth. “Also, don’t you need a membership for that shit?”

“It’s late, we sneak in after it closes. Which is in,” Donghyuck glances down at his watch, “approximately sixteen minutes.”

Mark squints at him like he’s wondering if trying to reason with him on this is worth it. “What about your paycheck?”

Donghyuck shrugs as the setting sun hides back behind the gray marshmallow clouds like it’s shy. “Lately, I’ve been realizing how miserable I am. I wanna do something fun.”

He stands up from his spot on the gravel and looks down at Mark who’s looking up at him curiously. He reaches out his hand toward him expectantly.

“C’mon,” Donghyuck beckons with a cock of his head. “It’ll be fun.”

Mark places his cold hand into Donghyuck’s warm one and raises his eyebrows in resignation. “Lead the way, I guess.”

Donghyuck runs back inside quietly to grab his stuff from the storage locker room, and then they walk all the way to the other side of downtown with the dull sun setting behind them to the pool frequented by little kids, PTA moms and old grannies.

“How are we even gonna get in?” Mark side-eyes Donghyuck as he whistles an improvised tune into the air, subdued by the sound of evening traffic. “It’s a private pool.”

Donghyuck smiles at him innocently. “You’ll just have to find out.”

By the time they get there, the sun has completely set, and the only light is coming from streetlights and businesses open late. The creaky old fence leading to the pool at the edge of the city looms threateningly before them in the moonlight, long overdue for a renovation, and Donghyuck wonders where all of their taxes are going.

“Watch and learn,” Donghyuck tells Mark when he eyes him suspiciously as he makes his way to the fence. “Let me teach you something, Mark Lee.”

Donghyuck claws his fingers into the rough holes of the fence and hoists himself up. Mark scoffs from where he’s standing on the pavement. “Fence hopping? C’mon.”

The fence creaks under his feet as Mark hoists himself up next to Donghyuck and gives him a sly smile. “I could do this in my sleep.”

Donghyuck swings right to kick at his knee and starts to climb higher up the fence. “Race you there!”

“Hey!” Mark shrieks as he regains his balance and starts to race him to the top. He passes Donghyuck up quickly and eventually reaches the top and looks down at him, the wind whipping in his faded blond hair. He sticks out his tongue and hops over the fence, disappearing from Donghyuck’s line of sight.

“Cheater,” Donghyuck complains, even though he knew from the start that he was gonna lose. He clears the top of the fence and lands on the pavement with a loud thud of his feet. Mark steadies him with a firm hand on his arm even though he doesn’t have to. “I don’t know how you cheated, but you did.”

Mark lets go of him and laughs. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

The pool night light is still on, casting the surrounding area in an intangible blue light. There’s a dull lone star in the sky, and Donghyuck makes a wish on it before yelling,

“Cannonball!”

He jumps into the pool with all of his clothes still on, a shock running through his body as he plunges into the ice cold water. He floats back up to the surface and gasps for air, blinking chlorine out of his stinging eyes. Mark is bent over laughing at him, and Donghyuck knows that the soggy underwear in his future will be worth it.

“Come on,” Donghyuck beckons him with a wet hand. “We don’t have all night.”

Mark sighs and shoves his hands in the pockets of his tattered jeans. “You’ve had a lot of bad ideas since I’ve known you, but I think this one might be the worst.”

Donghyuck blinks at him with his best angel face, and Mark sighs again.

“Whatever.”

Before Donghyuck can react, Mark is launching himself into the water and plunging Donghyuck’s head underwater, holding him down.

He wraps Donghyuck in a headlock as he struggles for air and tries to kick at his shins. When he finally lets go, Donghyuck rises to the surface and gasps for air, the night sky coming back into view.

“What the fuck!” He sputters and pushes Mark as hard as he can, sending him careening to the side. It only makes him laugh even harder. “You almost killed me!”

“That was the point.”

Donghyuck splashes water in his face in retaliation. Mark yelps as it hits his face and yells, “Dude, my mouth was open!”

“Choke on it, Mark Lee,” Donghyuck taunts, but before he can even celebrate his victory, Mark lunges towards him and grabs him by the hips, throwing Donghyuck back plunging into the water like a ragdoll.

When he resurfaces, he doesn’t even yell at him. He just shoves Mark’s head underwater and holds him down for as long as he can. When Mark reemerges, he’s laughing so hard he’s hyperventilating. “Okay! Truce! Truce.”

Donghyuck lifts his hands up from where he was about to splash Mark in the face again. “Truce?”

Mark tries to school his expression into something serious and raises his hands up in surrender. “Truce. Swear.”

Donghyuck wants to splash him in the face again just for the hell of it, but Mark is looking at him with puppy-dog eyes and brushing his wet hair out of his face, and he gives in.

“The moon is full tonight. C’mon.” Mark swims back to the edge of the pool and hauls himself out of the water, blue sweatshirt clinging to his back. Donghyuck ignores it and follows behind him.

They sit down criss-cross applesauce on the ground above the pool with their soggy clothes, and Donghyuck shivers. Mark turns to him and frowns, hair water-dark and cheeks tinted a rosy red. He wraps his arm around Donghyuck’s shoulder and pulls him into his side, their knees knocking together.

“Freezing is better than flirting with lonely housewives at work,” Donghyuck comments offhandedly as he looks up at the moon. It casts them in a ghostly glow, and Donghyuck wonders just how many people in the world are looking at the same moon. Or maybe, if someone on the moon is looking back down at them.

“You’ve been working your ass off,” Mark says pensively.

Donghyuck follows the see-through clouds floating in front of the moon with his eyes. “Don’t really have a choice.”

Mark doesn’t take his eyes off of the moon above them, but Donghyuck can feel his arm tighten a fraction around his shoulders.

“I know.”

Things are silent for a while, and Donghyuck can only hear the sound of cars in the distance, Mark’s chest rising and falling next to his.

“One day, we’ll be in a better place,” Donghyuck speaks up as his eyes start to droop and his body sags further into Mark’s warmth. “Don’t worry.”

He feels Mark nod against him. He lets his eyes fall shut and matches his breaths with Mark’s, in and out.

Donghyuck isn’t sure if what he’s told Mark is true, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try to make it a reality.

—

It’s about a week later when Donghyuck gets a call from Mark in the middle of his morning lecture.

He ignores it at first, because Mark knows his schedule. He probably forgot, or maybe expects Donghyuck to be irresponsible and answer it in the middle of class. But then it rings again, and Donghyuck knows that something is wrong.

“Mark,” Donghyuck says into the receiver, ignoring the looks he gets from his classmates. “What’s wrong?”

“Mom…” His voice is muffled and he sounds terribly distressed. “Alcohol poisoning.”

Donghyuck slams his laptop shut so hard the sound reverberates throughout the lecture hall.

“I’m coming.”

He hangs up and packs up his things in a hurry. His professor stops mid-sentence about international trade, and he can feel everyone’s eyes on him.

“I’m sorry.” He bows quickly and dashes out of the door, loudly slamming shut behind him.

He runs all the way to Mark’s place despite the weakness in his legs, and when he gets inside there’s already a crack in his door.

“Mark?”

He walks in slowly and struggles to catch his breath. Mark is sat hunched over the dinner table, hands gripping his hair so tightly his knuckles have turned paper white.

Donghyuck rushes over to his side to kneel down on the floor next to him and gently pries his fingers away from his tangled mess of hair. “Hey. Talk to me.”

Mark continues to stare in disbelief at the black screen of his phone on the table.

“Mark…?”

“She’s been binge drinking,” he starts vacantly, eyes still stuck in the same place. “She drank too much, and…” He trails off and just continues staring ahead, blinking in rapid one-two-threes.

Donghyuck tries to keep his voice calm even though his hands are shaking. “And…?”

Mark lets out a trembling breath and turns to finally meet Donghyuck’s eyes. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy and his cheeks are blotchy stains of pink and crimson. “She’s in the hospital. Unconscious.”

Unconscious. Donghyuck sucks in a sharp breath and racks his brain for a reason that this should be happening to someone like Mark.

Maybe it's atonement.

“Are you gonna go see her?”

Mark nods his head vehemently and it gives Donghyuck his own headache. “Yeah. I have to. Yeah.” His sentences start to rush together into one word, and Donghyuck places a hand on his shoulder to ground him. He’s shaking.

“I shouldn't have left home,” he panics with a crackling paper-thin voice, gripping his chest over his heart like he’ll go into cardiac arrest any moment now. “She needed me. I shouldn’t have–”

His breath cuts him off and quickens so fast Donghyuck is afraid that he’ll choke himself to death. “Breathe,” Donghyuck whispers, managing to keep his voice steady. “Match my breaths.”

He grabs one of Mark’s trembling hands and rests it over his heart, inhaling slowly. Mark takes a shaky inhale in, and Donghyuck nods affirmatively. He lets his breath leave him slowly, and Mark tries his best to follow. His eyes are wet but no tears fall down his face.

“She needed me.” He huffs it out like it physically pains him to do so, letting his hand fall from Donghyuck’s chest and limply to his side. “And I left. Just like dad did.”

“That’s not true,” Donghyuck tries to reason. His knees are starting to ache. “Your brother is there to take care of her. And you send her money all the time. Nothing is your fault.”

“I still left her.”

Donghyuck grips his shoulders tightly and turns his slouching body entirely towards him. “This was out of your control. You know that, don’t you?”

Mark doesn’t look him in the eye, and that scares him bad. He blinks distantly at the hollow of his throat instead. “I need to see her.”

Donghyuck drops his hands from his shoulders and nods. “Now?”

Mark nods back slowly, and Donghyuck rises from the floor, bones moaning and groaning in one thousand different places.

“Let’s go.”

—

Donghyuck wasn’t planning on going back home so soon.

The impromptu train ride back is eerily silent and empty, and Donghyuck feels like they’re marching toward their own doom.

Or maybe it’s just Mark’s.

The sky is cloudless and gray when they arrive, and Donghyuck isn’t sure if the chill that runs through him is from the wind or something else.

The air in the taxi ride to the hospital is deathly still, and he wishes he could say something, anything, but he’s frozen up and deadlocked in his seat. Mark is staring out of the window as if he’s in a trance, and Donghyuck looks up at the dents in the roof and silently prays to anyone listening. He doesn’t know what exactly he’s praying about.

Donghyuck hates hospitals; they’re too clinical, too sterile, too suffocating. The smell of antiseptic and death clogs up his nose and wraps around his lungs with disquieting fingers, and he chokes on every inhale.

Mark’s mother is lying corpse-still in her hospital bed, the harsh fluorescent light of the room making her look paper white. There’s a tube down her throat and she’s hooked up to an IV drip, shiny machinery surrounding her like plastic tree branches. The electrocardiogram beeps rhythmically to the pattern of her heartbeat. His brother left hours ago, a worn out blanket crumpled up on the chair by her bed.

Mark slowly makes his way over to her bedside like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he goes any faster. Donghyuck watches from the door with his heart in his throat.

He reaches out to touch her cheek gently, and Donghyuck is sure it’s cold to the touch from the way he flinches a little when his fingers meet her skin.

“She suffered from acute respiratory failure and alcohol intoxication from binge-drinking,” the doctor says in a scarily clinical voice. The sound of it is distant to Donghyuck, somewhere far away from him. “As of now, she is completely unresponsive to verbal and physical stimuli except for reflex movements. We’ve treated her hypoglycemia and ministered hemodialysis to reduce blood ethanol concentrates. She’ll be here until her vital signs return to normal.”

Donghyuck isn’t listening to any of it, stuck on the way Mark is so still.

Mark takes her limp hand into his without looking up at the doctor. “So, she’ll wake up.” He says it as more of a statement than a question.

The doctor nods sympathetically and offers him a small smile. “Yes. It will take some time for her to feel completely back to normal. She should recover most of her lung function in several months, and she’ll need supplemental oxygen for the time being. She’ll be okay.”

Okay, is the word that finally registers. Donghyuck deflates a little from where he’s standing, but Mark doesn’t seem to budge at all. He’s got that vacantness in his eyes again, and Donghyuck looks away.

“Okay. Thank you,” Mark bows politely in the doctor’s direction and then turns back to his mother. The doctor takes that as her cue to leave, and she offers Donghyuck a kind smile on her way out.

He wonders how many times she’s seen someone die.

Donghyuck unsticks his feet from the ground and silently makes his way over to the other side of her bed, unsure of what to do with his hands.

Mark looks up at him from where he’s sitting, and Donghyuck tries not to flinch at the somber expression on his face, spooked ghostly white.

“She fucked up her lungs,” Mark says with a little laugh, but there’s no humor in it and instead disbelief. “She almost died.”

Donghyuck kneels down on the cold linoleum floor and rests his hand atop her cold one and swallows drily. He feels like there’s an anvil stuck in his throat, choking him from the inside. “She’s gonna be okay.”

Mark shakes his head like he doesn’t believe it. “I need to get her into inpatient rehab. Like, now.”

Donghyuck bites his lip so hard it stings. “Inpatient is really expensive.”

“I don’t care. I’ll go bankrupt, I’ll do whatever.”

“Mark–“

“I’ve already decided.” Mark’s hand tightens around his mother’s, and when he meets Donghyuck’s eyes again, he looks determined. “Even if she refuses to go.”

Donghyuck knows that it’s not his place to argue with him, and he doesn’t want to. He sees himself in Mark then, because it's something he would do if the roles were reversed. He’d die a thousand times to keep his family safe, would risk everything for them. It doesn't matter what happens to him as long as they're safe and taken care of. Mark had always liked that about him, but he also found it maddeningly frustrating, his stubbornness. Donghyuck felt the same way about Mark’s stubbornness that Mark did about his. An unstoppable force and an immovable object. It's funny now, because Donghyuck has long since come to realize that they’ve always been just the same if you looked close enough, two chips off the old block.

With a quiet cold seeping into his skin through the rips in his jeans, Donghyuck takes Mark’s mother’s hand in his, the woman Mark never wanted him to know, and squeezes tight.

—

Mark doesn’t go with him on the train ride back to Seoul.

He has things to straighten out and business to take care of and he’ll be back the next morning. He gave Donghyuck a crumpled up wad of cash for the taxi ride he takes back to his dorm, because that’s just how he is.

Donghyuck understands.

When he gets to his dorm and sits down at his creaky desk, he’s greeted with an email from his macroeconomics professor when he opens his laptop.

He only vaguely remembers hightailing it out of his afternoon lecture after Mark had called him. He closes his laptop back shut. It’s a problem for his future self to deal with.

He feels restless and on edge; he tries to distract himself with games, makes a paper airplane out of an old napkin, sings to himself. All he can hear repeating in his head is Mark’s mother almost died, over and over and over and then over again. He’s tired of always being in close contact with death. And if he’s really being honest with himself, he’s scared.

He’s not too sure of what.

In the middle of watching an episode of an old romance drama on his phone, he hears a knock at his door.

It’s strange, because no one knows where he lives except for Mark. And, well, Na Jaemin. There’s only two people it could be, but Mark is back home, and Donghyuck doubts that someone like Jaemin would be paying him a visit just for the hell of it.

Donghyuck physically cringes at the memory of Jaemin hauling his drugged up ass back to his place in his expensive car and gets up to answer the door. But then he pauses. The sleazy loan sharks he shook hands with definitely know where he lives. The last time he saw them, he took out another loan to repay his other one, which was no surprise at all. It was their way of fucking you, chaining you to them further and sending you into further amounts of life-changing debt. Interest rates, whatever. He doesn’t care.

They’re probably here to set his bed on fire or something. Or maybe stick his head down the toilet.

His personal shithole doesn’t have a peephole to check who’s outside of his door, so he grabs the unnecessarily thick textbook about the fundamentals of global strategy on his desk and flings the door open.

He’s greeted with a faceful of Younghee, who he only barely remembers from the party two weeks ago. Her hair is a garishly vibrant purple now, and it makes him go cross-eyed.

“It’s nice to see you too?” She looks alarmed but mostly amused at the econ textbook he’s raised above his head in defense in case of an unwelcome guest.

Donghyuck drops his hands to his sides and blinks at her. “Oh.”

She takes that as impetus to barge into his dorm without permission, looking around like there’s anything to see in the first place. “Vintage,” she comments lightly, sitting down on the edge of his brick bed and leaning back on her elbows.

“Funny,” Donghyuck says as he tosses his textbook back onto his desk with a loud thump. “What are you doing here? Also, how do you know where I live…?”

She laughs like he’s said something hilarious and crosses her legs, miniskirt rising up her thighs. “The president of the Association of International Students is throwing a party. Right now. It’s everywhere on Insta and it looks fuckin’ crazy.”

Her ignoring of his second question is duly noted, but he’s actually not sure if he even wants to know the answer in the first place. Donghyuck leans against his front door and raises his eyebrows. “And you want me to go?”

“Duh.”

He tries to think of an excuse, think of all the reasons why he shouldn’t go. The list goes like: he has assignments, he has work in the morning, there will definitely be drugs, he barely knows Seo Younghee and her friends, he’s sad and tired, Mark wouldn’t want him there,

“Fuck it, why not?”

No one ever said he has his priorities straight. Younghee cheers and bounces herself off of his bed, her chunky black platforms almost making them the same height. “Let’s go.”

She links her arm with his like they’ve been lifelong best friends and manhandles him out of the dorm, surprisingly strong for her size. As they’re walking down the street, Donghyuck belatedly realizes that he’s wearing the same outfit he tossed on for the lecture he ditched in the morning, which consists of track pants and a leather jacket. Well, at least he doesn’t care about what other people think about him. Usually?

“It’s totally subversive,” Younghee assures him when he brings it up as a joke. “Wearing lounge clothes to a super cool party, so avant-garde. It’s a statement.”

Donghyuck genuinely cannot tell if she’s pulling shit out of her ass or if she’s being dead serious, so he just takes the compliment.

The party is, as usual, at some rich asshole’s place. Or, they could actually be a really nice person for all he knows, but it didn’t matter. Donghyuck is feeling extra spiteful.

Loud music starts to thump through his body like a livewire as soon as they step through the threshold. It’s one of those penthouses that has floor to ceiling windows, giving everyone a glowing view of the Seoul skyline.

Younghee immediately drags him over to the drink bar with an insistent hand, and he follows willingly. Getting fucked up has never sounded better. “His Highness and Renjunnie should be here soon,” she says as she pours herself a shot of something clear. “Here.” She shoves a shot glass into his hand and pours him the same drink until it's almost overflowing.

“Cheers!”

Donghyuck shrugs and knocks it back, alcohol rubbing his throat raw and burning a fire in the center of his chest. She pours them another, and then another, and the night kicks off without a hitch.

Younghee eventually disappears off to God knows where, and Donghyuck gets roped into a very passionate game of beer pong with some juniors. He’s winning by a landslide, only mildly tipsy, and some pretty girl is making eyes at him from across the room.

Maybe he should fuck somebody. His sex drive has been practically nonexistent lately because of, well, everything, but it would take his mind off of things even more so until the thoughts were completely gone. Maybe a warm body would temporarily snap him out of it. He’s feeling good, the events from the morning already pushed to the back of his mind, a buzz running through his body. He eventually wins the whole game, and then Younghee is appearing out of nowhere like a magician and dragging him over to sit on a large couch in the corner. It sinks under him like quicksand, and he isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol talking or if the couch is stuffed with something real fancy, like mink fur or some shit.

A tall shadow looms over him, and Donghyuck looks up from the solo cup that Younghee had just handed him to be met with an eyeful of impeccably straight sharp white teeth.

“Lee Donghyuck,” Jaemin greets him cheekily, staring at Donghyuck down his nose and looking more like an apex predator than a human being.

“Mr. Na.”

Renjun follows close behind and sends Donghyuck a friendly smile, plopping down next to where Younghee is struggling to light up a cigarette. He takes pity on her and snatches the lighter out of her hands.

Jaemin settles down next to Donghyuck carefully and offers him a smile that’s most likely meant to be friendly but just comes off as slightly threatening. “I didn’t think I would see you again after what happened.”

Donghyuck suddenly realizes it’s becoming increasingly harder to form words, any witty remark he would usually make getting stuck in his burning throat. Jaemin’s unnecessarily intense gaze burns craters into his face, and he averts his gaze to his inky black hair instead. “I don’t seem to recall what you’re referring to.”

Jaemin huffs out a charming little laugh, and the one split second he averts his eyes gives Donghyuck space to breathe. “I’m sure you don’t.”

Donghyuck proceeds to ask him how his fifty maids are doing just to see if it pisses him off, (it doesn’t, but Jaemin doesn’t seem like a person you can shake easily) and soon enough, someone in the distance is flashily unveiling their hidden weed stash like a magic trick.

Moments later the penthouse looks more like a sauna than a place of residence, and Donghyuck is stuck in the middle of a clusterfuck of inebriated snot-nosed kids. He watches as a haphazardly rolled joint gets passed around like salt on a dinner table and wonders how many years of jail he would land if some cop detected even an iota of marijuana in his system. He’s sure that half of the students around him could buy their way out of a prison cell if they wanted to, maybe bribe some corrupt police officer, while Donghyuck would be left making friends with dust bunnies in solitary confinement.

Renjun and Younghee lean back and get smoked out, Renjun going on a tangent and waxing poetic about philosophy. Jaemin stays terrifyingly sober the whole time, and Donghyuck wonders why he even comes to these things if not to get high.

Someone offers Donghyuck a hit, and he considers it for a split second before waving his hand in what he hopes comes off as dismissive and not fucking lame. Not that he cares that much.

Smoke fills his lungs and it makes an itch rise up his throat and his eyes start to prickle. He holds back a cough to avoid looking like a fucking loser, and gets up from the couch to get some fresh air. He stumbles over nothing on his way to the balcony, but no one is lucid enough to notice.

When the cold night air hits his flushed face, he sighs and slides the balcony door shut behind him, making his way over to the railing. The sky is clear tonight, and he can see a smattering of tiny little stars twinkling over the city. He wonders how long the drop down over the balcony is, what his body would feel like plummeting down and slamming into the ground.

Wind whips insistently around him and turns his hair into ringlets as he fumbles around in the pocket of his jacket for his emergency pack of Reds to push away his intrusive thoughts. He’s not going to die.

He takes one out and lights it, finding the pink unicorn on his lighter more amusing than he normally would if he was in his right mind. The city thrums before him to a beat only it can hear, and he takes a long drag from his cigarette.

He hears the balcony door side open again behind him about a half hour later, and he’s on his second cigarette. The music and screaming and laughing from inside fills his ears again for a split second before it’s drowned out again by the shutting of the door.

Someone creeps up behind him, and he’s too drunk to react. The mystery person stands beside Donghyuck and settles their arms gently on the railing in front of them.

He takes another drag from his cigarette before turning his head slowly, immediately met with the side of Jaemin’s scarily perfect face. “Huh,” Donghyuck says, blinking slowly. Jaemin turns and tilts his head to the side. Donghyuck is a bit surprised, and it must show on his face because Jaemin laughs at him and scoffs good-naturedly.

“I didn’t come here to see you. I wanted some fresh air and this is the place to get it.” He frowns suddenly. “But you’re stinking up the place with nicotine, so now it’s kinda ruined.”

Donghyuck looks down at the cigarette hanging loosely from his numb fingers, watching its wisps of smoke disappear into the air. “Sorry.”

He takes another drag anyway, and Jaemin laughs again, louder this time, watching Donghyuck blow the smoke out of his mouth in the other direction. “Apology accepted.”

They both turn back to the city and say nothing for a while, Donghyuck too drunk to be on edge but sober enough to keep some guard up. The cars on the road look like specks of dust below them and businesses cast small glows onto the crowded streets, truly a city that never sleeps.

“Why don’t you get high?” Donghyuck blurts out minutes or maybe eternities later, finishing his second cigarette and stomping it under his sneaker. “Or, at least, like. Completely fucked up.”

Jaemin seems to take this question very seriously and contemplates his answer, humming quietly under his breath. He can never tell what he’s really thinking. Donghyuck has noticed that he’s the type to pause before he speaks, like he’s very precious about the words that leave his mouth. He wonders if it’s for people-pleasing purposes, or because Jaemin simply doesn’t let many people in.

“There are different ways to have fun for different people,” he finally says simply, a car honking in the distance. “My way of having fun doesn’t apply here.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck mutters dumbly, flicking his lighter on and off absentmindedly over the balcony like he used to do when he didn’t smoke because Mark was around. Even in his drunken stupor, he’s thinking of Mark. Maybe it’s just impossible to get rid of him.

“Then why do you come? To these parties.”

Jaemin leans forward and rests his chin on his hands, the pale moonlight giving his eyes a mischievous twinkle. “Why does anyone do anything?”

Donghyuck is too drunk to roll his eyes, so he scoffs instead. “Okay, Aristotle.”

Jaemin shoots him a darling smile and then turns back forward to look at the skyline.

“So, is campus prince Na Jaemin the type to stay home with his nose in his books all day, then?”

The corners of Jaemin’s lips tug up again in a half-smile, and he hums.

“Something like that.”

—

He doesn’t feel good, but Donghyuck isn’t completely fucked up from a molly high or dead asleep on some stranger’s couch, so he considers the night a win.

He’s gotten radio silence from Mark ever since he came back to Seoul, and he wonders if he should call him or give him some space. (When has he ever given Mark space?)

He knows that he’ll be back in a matter of hours and a sunrise, and that it’s stupid to miss him. But there’s a hollow feeling inside of his chest, like someone’s scooped out some of his insides, and he realizes that as long as they’ve known each other, they’ve never been apart for long.

When they were younger, his aunt used to joke that they were joined at the hip even though they bickered like cats and dogs. Donghyuck used to tsk and stick his tongue out at her, but it’s reigned true ever since.

By the time he gets back to his dorm, the sky is starting to brighten again. He can’t check the time because his phone is long dead, but he’s sure that it’s at least 4am.

That means that he has class in 4 hours, and he mentally decides to skip it immediately, before Mark’s voice rings through his head, the ever-present angel on his shoulder.

Skipping class won’t get you your degree, he told Donghyuck once. You wanna be like me?

(He’d kill himself before he ever admitted it out loud, but sometimes Donghyuck would give anything to be like Mark. He’s the most beautiful thing Donghyuck has ever had the chance to witness.)

He haphazardly unlocks his creaky old door and flops down onto his bed, crushing the teddy bear Mark gave him under his weight. Something bounces off of the sheets from the force and falls noisily to the floor. He sighs and raises his head sluggishly, stretching his arm and blindly feeling around the floor. His hand eventually knocks against the side of a plastic, and when he brings it up to his face, it’s Mark’s benzos.

He blinks tiredly at the white label swimming before his eyes he can barely keep open and can just make out Mark’s Korean name printed neatly in small letters.

He never said anything to Mark about it even though he was a little pissed that Mark dared keep something from him, when they never keep anything between them secret. But given the anxiety attack he had just shy of a day ago, maybe Donghyuck knows why he still has them.

His own anxiety and stress has been reaching annoyingly unbearable levels lately too, so he can't say he blames him.

Maybe it's less about the pills and more about his dependency on Mark. His need to know every little thing about him, to live inside of him.

Donghyuck rolls over onto his back and smooths down the worn label with his thumb, lingering over Minhyung like it’ll bring Mark back to him.

If he shoves a whole white bar of pills into his mouth, that’s his business.

The high is more intense than the last time, two metaphorical anvils falling onto his shoulders and making him slump further into the bed. He becomes even more sluggish than before, and there’s no need to even try to keep his eyes open anymore. Violet and black and red dance under his eyelids, and a warm feeling washes over his body and leaves his toes and fingertips tingling.

It just feels good.

Every single thought he had moments before is immediately thrown out of the window, and he lets himself fall through the mattress.

He has weird dreams.

Donghyuck’s not sure if it’s because of what’s in his system or if it’s just another instance of his recurring nightmares, and he isn’t sure what exactly he’s seeing or where he’s been transported to. His first one starts innocuously enough; he’s flying. In the next one he’s falling, but he never hits the ground. The rest is incomprehensible nonsense. In his last one, what he can just barely make out is unnerving. He’s being chased, which isn’t new, but he’s not sure by what. It's just a dark force, a shapeless and bodiless stain trying to overtake him.

It wants to drag him down to hell, and a split second before it’s about to wrap its dirty dark hands around him, he gasps awake.

It looks like the sun has finally risen, a tiny sliver of light coming from his sad excuse of a window dancing on his face. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he tries to catch his breath, mouth dry and throat rubbed raw.

“What the fuck, Donghyuck?”

He feels like a bucket of ice water has been dropped over his head when he hears Mark’s voice. He thinks he’s hearing things for a second, maybe manifesting the object of all of his desires into existence from missing him too much, but then he’s met with an eyeful of messy faded blond hair and dark eyes.

“Wh–” Donghyuck tries to speak, but his voice scratches out of his throat like wood on a sandpaper block and he coughs hard. Not a lot of time must have passed because he still feels inebriated, and the edges of his vision are still blurry. “Mark?”

“I’ve been trying to wake you for like five minutes straight,” he says with thinly-veiled concern in his voice, and Donghyuck belatedly realizes that he has his hand on one of his shoulders where he must have been trying to shake him awake. “What the fuck are you on?”

Mark is speaking too fast for Donghyuck to keep up, and his head is throbbing in time with his heartbeat. “What?”

“What,” Mark’s grip on him tightens a fraction to the point it hurts, “The fuck. Are. You. On.”

Donghyuck is fucked up, but not fucked up enough to miss the anger in Mark’s voice. His defenses immediately go up, and he sits up straighter.

“I dunno… what you’re talking about.”

Mark stares him straight in the eyes without wavering, and Donghyuck tries not to clam up. He’s rarely one to cower and run off with his tail between his legs when it comes to Mark, but the emergency sirens inside of his brain are going off, and he wants to crawl into a hole and die there. But he’s made his bed, and he must lie in it.

(How does a high person bullshit a drug dealer? The beginning of another punchline. Not much is funny about this one.)

“I’m fucking serious,” Mark raises his voice a little, and it wavers as he does. Donghyuck is sure that if Mark’s death grip on his shoulder gets any tighter, his arm will detach from his body. “Not only do you reek of booze and weed, you can barely move. What did you take?”

Donghyuck is too out of it to react immediately, his processing time drastically stunted. “What the fuck did you take?” Mark demands louder, voice shaking from anger, or fear, or both.

Donghyuck winces and squeezes his eyes shut. “Don't yell, please. Hurts.”

Mark immediately drops his hand from his shoulder and takes a deep, deep breath like it pains him. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” Within a half second he goes from looking like he’s about to physically slug Donghyuck to ghostly pale with worry. He places one of his cold hands onto his forehead, and Donghyuck involuntarily leans into the touch. “Donghyuck-ah, Hyuck, can you tell me how much you took? And what?”

“In your bedside drawer,” Donghyuck whispers, putting all of his strength into not toppling over rather than speaking. “A bar.”

Mark is silent with confusion for a moment before something washes over his face. There’s still thinly veiled panic in his big watery eyes, but another expression Donghyuck is too high to figure out takes over his features. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He closes it back, opens it, closes it. “I–okay, fuck, okay, I’ll get you some water. Stay right here, okay? Don’t move.” Donghyuck tries to respond, tongue heavy in his mouth, but Mark jumps to his feet without waiting for an answer.

There’s clammering and thumping coming from somewhere that seems far away, and if Donghyuck was lucid enough he would ask Mark what the fuck he was doing. Moments pass, and Mark comes back with the #1 Dad mug one of Donghyuck’s high school classmates gave to him as a joke in his hands. He sits on the edge of the bed and gently wrangles Donghyuck’s lax body into an upright position.

Mark tries to hand him the mug but then thinks better of it, bringing the edge to Donghyuck’s mouth and tipping up. Donghyuck is suddenly made aware of the fact that he’s severely dehydrated and gulps down the tap water like a starving man, half of it splashing coldy onto his neck in the process.

“I’m here,” Mark says once Donghyuck has gulped down the entire mug, droplets of water dribbling down his face. Donghyuck slumps forward and his head knocks into his chest.

He doesn’t dream this time.

When he comes back down to Earth for a second time, he’s in bed, sweating like a sinner in church. His eyes feel completely rubbed raw and his bed’s duvet is tucked uncomfortably tight around him. He sits up slowly, and the world is spinning a bit less. He turns to his left, and there’s Mark slumped against the wall, eyes twitching in his sleep.

Donghyuck’s heart drops to hell now that he’s aware enough to realize what the fuck just happened.

Mark caught him out.

With bile rapidly rising up his throat, Donghyuck hurriedly feels around his bed for the prescription bottle and comes up empty.

As if sensing Donghyuck’s distress, Mark slowly stirs awake. He looks older than he is, darkness under his eyes that seems permanent these days. He’s overdue for a shave, his hair is tangled, and he’s in the same clothes Donghyuck last saw him in. Most of all, he just looks… tired. Scared. Disappointed. If it’s even possible, Donghyuck’s heart sinks even lower, and he feels like he’s going to throw up.

What’s lower than hell?

“Don’t be mad,” Donghyuck tries to say calmly, but he feels panic and helplessness rising up inside of him like a whirlwind.

“You promised me you would never get involved in that stuff,” Mark replies, and his face is suddenly scarily blank, like he’s feeling something that can’t even be expressed at all. “You promised.”

Donghyuck stumbles out of bed and crawls over to where Mark is sitting. “I know,” Donghyuck pleads, but he doesn’t know what he’s pleading for. “I'm sorry,” he whispers, gripping onto Mark’s ice cold knee through the rip in his jeans like his life depends on it, and maybe it does. “I'm sorry.”

“Why?” Mark blinks rapidly like he’s in a daze. “No, I know why. I–I should’ve watched you closer, you’re not happy–”

“Mark–“

“It’s my fault,” he says now, lower, his voice a millisecond away from breaking. “I shouldn’t have–we should have never–if I didn’t–”

“No,” Donghyuck shakes his head hard, and he would yell if he had the energy. There are scorching hot tears that he refuses to let fall stinging his eyes to hell and back. The sharp jutting bone of Mark’s knee flexes under him as he digs his nails into the skin hard enough to bleed. “It’s not your fault, it's my fault–”

“It is,” Mark swallows, and Donghyuck can see the telltale sign of frustrated tears wanting to fall and make their way down his sharp cheeks, his face blotchy red. “My fault. We shouldn’t have become friends. I should've just… left you alone, I–” his breath hitches suddenly, and he clutches his chest in pain like he’s about to have a heart attack, breathing becoming faster and faster. “I fuck up everything–”

“No, no, no,” Donghyuck panics, and he can feel a hot wetness on his cheeks. He did this. “Stop,” he pleads. “Please, stop.” There's bloody marks in the shape of the dull crescent of Donghyuck’s bitten down nails on Mark’s knees as he lets go of him when he hunches over and starts to sob, body shaking like a leaf.

Donghyuck holds him through his second panic attack of the week, tears and snot seeping through his ratty old t-shirt as Mark heaves into his chest.

“Why…” Mark whispers between shallow breaths, and Donghyuck doesn’t know what he’s asking. Mark probably doesn’t know himself.

He shushes him and runs his hand up and down his hair gently, rocking them back and forth as Mark’s body shakes through the aftershocks.

“I need you, Mark. I always have. Don’t say things like that.”

He coughs wetly into Donghyuck’s shirt, and when his sniffles finally die down, he detaches himself from Donghyuck. His eyes are bloodshot, face soaked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Donghyuck shakes his head, wiping the back of his hand across his face quickly even though Mark has probably already noticed him crying. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I made the decision. Me.”

Mark is looking down at the floor instead of meeting his eyes. “Don’t… you can’t do it again. Please.”

“I won’t,” Donghyuck says resolutely, and he means it. “I promise.”

He means it, but nothing has been fixed; there’s still broken trust, still loans to pay and money to send, still drugs to push and treatment to pay for.

Donghyuck doesn’t bring up the molly.

Mark finally meets his eyes, and Donghyuck wants to avert his gaze away from the terrifying intensity in them. Donghyuck can almost see his reflection.

“I’ll pay more attention. I’ll help you with assignments, bills, whatever. I’ll do anything.”

In any other situation Donghyuck would laugh, maybe make a joke, maybe scoff, but in this one, he just stays silent.

He’s been doing things on his own since he came out of his mother’s womb, always deflecting, always calculating his words and his expressions and what he lets people see and not see. The terrifying emptiness, the heaviness, he was always used to carrying it himself. But he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or maybe, he just can’t.

He buries his face into Mark’s wet neck and cries.

—

Mark doesn’t take his eye off of him after that. Which is saying something, given the fact that they’re always watching each other.

Not much changes, but for some reason Donghyuck also feels that everything has changed if you look close enough. If Mark was secretive about his drug business before, he’s completely shut Donghyuck out now. Donghyuck is only allowed to come over if he’s not sorting or if he’s already been out on runs. Donghyuck thinks it’s a little dramatic; he’s not some junkie. So a guy does molly once and pops a couple of stolen benzos, that doesn’t make him an addict. Necessarily.

Mark is gentler with him, too, and more often than not Donghyuck finds himself being treated like a child, or maybe an adult really lacking in the intelligence department. Mark keeps asking him stupid stuff like Are you okay and Do you need help with any of your assignments and is there anything you wanna talk about? Jesus Christ, Donghyuck, it’s like talking to a brick wall.

He cares too much. It’s a little scandalous.

In the past, Mark would talk to him like a kindergartener as a joke, or when he had just woken up and couldn’t handle loud noises, or to patronize Donghyuck when he was mad at him. Or sometimes just to piss him off for no reason. Now, Mark treats him like he’s something breakable, an antique set of fine china.

Donghyuck hates it.

Maybe he hates it because deep down he loves it just as much; something vaguely Freudian about the fatherly love he never received as a child, attention he never received from his mother because she died before he could even begin to know her. The neglect he received from his aunt struggling with opioid addiction. The product of bottling up all of your feelings since adolescence, when you hold it in for so long that when someone finally acknowledges you, sees you and your pain is a godly feeling.

But what would Mark do if he knew what else Donghyuck had gotten up to?

Would he think he was nauseating, a no good junkie just like the people he pushes drugs to, the lives he ruins?

He doesn’t plan on finding out.

Donghyuck’s sister is discharged from the hospital a week later.

He doesn’t feel as relieved as he always imagined himself being. If anything, everything that’s happened to him in the past year has him preparing for the worst.

A big part of him wants to just wash his hands of college and Seoul all together, to pack up his bags and go back home and take care of his siblings like he always did. But the other part of him, the selfish, careless part of him, wants to hang everything he’s ever known out to dry and go away somewhere far away where no one would ever be able to find him.

Maybe he’d take Mark with him.

It’s cliché, but Donghyuck doesn’t feel like he’s fulfilling his purpose in life. Whatever that means. He never wanted to go into business in the first place; ever since he was young, he always had an affinity for more artistic things. He would doodle on his aunt’s clothes with broken crayons, sing along to the shrill voices of his favorite cartoons’ theme songs, slow dance with his sister to 80s ballads on their old radio. He doesn’t want to be charting up graphs and crunching numbers for the rest of his life, and even though he thought that he could pretend for the sake of security and safety for his family, it isn’t true anymore. Maybe he never really believed it in the first place.

He falls into a cycle of complacency after that. He calls home everyday so that he can hear his siblings’ voices, he goes to work, he does his assignments at Mark’s place and teaches him about marketing schemes, rinse and repeat. Things have calmed down, and what has replaced the chaos is a dull, tingling sense of uneasiness.

There’s a buzzing beneath his fingertips that won’t go away, and he chain-smokes half packs of cigarettes whenever Mark isn’t around. He runs out of body wash from scrubbing off the haze of nicotine stinking up his clothes everytime he goes to see him.

Midterm season approaches, and it’s safe to say that he’s going a little crazy.

Mark has been acting strange, or, well, stranger than he naturally is, and Donghyuck takes out another loan out of pure obligation because he is still, unfortunately, tragically broke, which means he can’t pay them back. Mark had helped him, but it still wasn’t enough to cover the sheer expenses of medical bills, and with his mother now in rehab, there wasn’t enough money to go around for both of them. Not that Donghyuck would let Mark help him anymore, anyway.

Being under mountains of debt was better than being bruised and bleeding in a ditch somewhere for missing a repayment, so Donghyuck counts his blessings.

His first round of midterms goes well, because even though he’s a smiling, high-functioning depressive with an abundance of personal and behavioral problems, he can’t afford to be put on academic probation right now.

He waves off multiple party invites and shoots down badly-executed flirting attempts, and he isn’t sure who he is and what he’s done with Lee Donghyuck.

No one could ever tell there was any type of turmoil from the outside, because no one really cared to look closer; nails bitten raw, knees constantly bouncing, puffy under-eyes from lack of sleep, even bonier wrists when he doesn’t eat. He wears an award-winning smile through it all like he always does, and Mark, as usual, is the only one who can see through his bullshit.

“You’re such an actor,” he tells Donghyuck one day, offhandedly like he was really just making an observation out loud.

“I know,” is all Donghyuck says.

He quits his job at the grocery store near campus the next day, which means that all he has left is the restaurant because he called off his babysitting gig days ago. Being around kids just made him want to go back home.

He has no idea what the fuck he’s doing or how he’s ever going to get out of debt, or if he ever will at all. But his sister is safe and getting better, and that’s all that really matters.

Shark isn’t a vicious enough word to describe the men after Donghyuck. He wonders if one day they will kill him.

He barges unannounced into Mark’s apartment the weekend he finishes midterms. Everything is neater and even more meticulously hidden ever since he found Donghyuck in his dorm and knocked out from a depressant cocktail, and as uneasy and ashamed as it makes him, it also makes him laugh a little.

Mark is nowhere to be found in the living room, so he tiptoes down the hall to his bedroom door and quietly pushes it open. At that moment, he realizes that he’s not sure if he’s ever knocked on any of Mark’s doors ever in his life, always comfortable enough to barge in and make himself at home. He’d feel a little sorry if he didn’t know that Mark secretly didn’t mind at all.

He’s asleep on the edge of his bed, curled up into a childish ball over the covers. His hair is back to its boyish black, and it’s finally grown back to its original length, falling softly over his forehead in waves. When Donghyuck steps closer, he sees a fresh purple bruise underneath one of his eyes, almost black. His lip is busted again, and there’s angry red cuts all over his soft face.

He feels anger flash through him immediately on the inside, but he doesn’t physically react. He just calms his breathing, and walks over to the other side of Mark’s bed, gently lying down next to him and wrapping his arms around Mark’s waist. He’s gotten skinnier, the sharp jut of his ribs unmistakable through his t-shirt.

He stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake up, and Donghyuck rests his head in the crook of his neck, careful not to touch another violet patch on the smooth skin of his neck. He closes his eyes and doesn’t sleep for a second, listening to Mark’s breathing the whole time.

By the time he finally stirs awake, hours have passed and the sun is starting to set, casting orange rays on them through the window. He jumps in Donghyuck’s hold for a millisecond and then immediately relaxes because he must recognize who’s touching him. He turns around to face Donghyuck, and Donghyuck lets his arms fall off of him and to the bed.

“Hyuck?” he croaks out, and Donghyuck flinches when their eyes meet and one of Mark’s is bloodshot, one of the vessels busted. They’re still a beautiful brown anyway, and his gaze is warm, like he’s not bruised to hell and back and like they’re not who they are. It makes Donghyuck’s heart beat a little faster in his chest.

“Who did this to you?” Donghyuck whispers like Mark will shatter if he speaks any louder, and he’s suddenly reminded of months ago when Mark asked him the same question, their roles reversed.

Mark frowns like he had completely forgotten about the state of his body and sighs. “I asked for a front. Said I wanted to do even bigger things.” He doesn’t waver, looking Donghyuck straight in the eyes instead of avoiding the subject they’ve danced around for so long. “I was supposed to sell it and then deliver the funds, and I’d get a cut. But I didn’t ask because I was gonna sell it to customers over the next couple of weeks. I gave it to another pusher, and he gave me a suitcase full of cash. I used it to check mom into rehab.” He pauses, and Donghyuck realizes he’s been holding his breath for a whole minute. “I was supposed to report back and give the money I made. But I didn’t.”

He ends his story there, but Donghyuck doesn’t need to hear anymore to know what happened next.

“Mark,” Donghyuck whispers again, and he reaches out to brush his fingertips across the purple splotch beneath his left eye. He doesn’t know where his sentence was even supposed to go, doesn’t even know what to say. Maybe there isn’t anything to say at all.

Mark winces a little when the pad of Donghyuck’s thumb meets his face, but he doesn’t move like he normally would. He watches Donghyuck carefully, but Donghyuck is too focused on the wounds marring his skin, all for his mother.

“You can’t keep doing this,” is what Donghyuck settles on, and he trails his fingers down his cheek to his bloody lip.

“I know,” Mark says, and his breath ghosts against Donghyuck’s fingertips.

Donghyuck just nods because that’s all he can really do. If he had more energy maybe he’d yell, maybe cry, maybe bang his fists against Mark's chest so he could hurt like he hurts, but he doesn’t. And deep down, he knows that Mark doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter anymore. The option to just walk away expired a long time ago.

“We could run away.” Donghyuck offers even though he knows it’s ridiculous, and Mark laughs against his fingers. “Flee the country, change our names. We could live on a farm or something.”

Mark hums in agreement, humoring him. “A farm. We could have a dog. Chickens, pigs, cows.”

“I’ve always wanted a mini goat.”

“And a mini goat,” he nods. Donghyuck drops his hand from his lips and finally looks at his face again. He regrets it immediately, because Mark is looking at him with those frustratingly earnest eyes that he can see right into, and it burns through him. He can’t help but want, want, want.

The room is silent for a while, and all that can be heard is the hooting of an owl somewhere outside the window. Donghyuck closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to look at Mark anymore.

—

He stays with Mark all weekend and the Monday after despite various weak protests and half-hearted arguments. Even though Donghyuck is skipping class to keep an eye on him, he’s too beat to properly smack the shit out of Donghyuck like he normally would, so he eventually gives up.

Donghyuck puts all of his energy into cooking for him, doing his laundry, and forcing him to sit still long enough to clean his wounds. Mark eventually stops giving him the evil eye and accepts his fate, and after all the things Mark has done for him, it's the least that Donghyuck can do.

His aunt calls him on Tuesday. Even though he said that he would leave in the morning, Donghyuck is still crashing on Mark’s couch and force-feeding him so he doesn’t shrivel away into a husk.

“Donghyuck-ah?” she says immediately when he picks up, and it’s the first time she’s called him by his full name in years.

Donghyuck closes Mark’s bedroom door behind him after shoving him into bed and forcing him to turn off his phone and ignore his regulars fiending for their next hit. “Noona?” He walks down the hall and back into the living room, plopping down on Mark’s shitty couch, as uncomfortable as ever. “Is everything okay?”

“I look up to you so much, you know that?” She sounds startlingly clear, and Donghyuck realizes that she’s sober.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve always been stronger than me.” There’s nondescript rustling coming from the other end of the line, and Donghyuck furrows his brow, still confused. “Your mother would be so proud of you.” A pause. “I miss her, you know?”

Donghyuck nods along even though he has no idea what she’s trying to say, ignoring the panic and suspicion rising in his chest. “Yeah.”

“She loved you so much,” she continues, either ignoring the hesitancy in his voice or not noticing it at all. “She would’ve taken care of you. Of all of us.”

Donghyuck never foresaw this happening, the last time they ever discussed his mother years ago in passing, so he just shrugs. “Ah, yeah.”

“I know I’ve made mistakes. I know that… I failed you kids. My babies. And I always knew that you knew I was using, but we never said anything so I just pretended it wasn't real…and I’m sorry for that, okay? You have to know that I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t fail us, noona,” Donghyuck says, and he feels hurt that she would even say something like that. “You’re just sick–”

“I did,” she interrupts resolutely, and by the sound of her voice he knows that she won’t accept any of his comfort. “I wanted to get clean, I swear. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry. I love you so much, okay? All three of you. Don’t forget that. And your mother, my sister. I love her so much.”

Donghyuck blinks his eyes rapidly in case they do something stupid like start to water, and he feels a sense of helplessness settle into his chest. He doesn’t know what for. “I love you, too.”

There’s silence on the other line, and all Donghyuck can hear is the telltale sign of their leaking kitchen faucet, dripdripdripping.

“Take care of yourself, Hyuckie.” Her voice has lost all of its power and is a whisper now. “For me.”

Hot tears finally well up in Donghyuck’s eyes, but he wipes them away harshly with the sleeve of his hoodie before they can fall. “Okay.”

She hangs up, and Donghyuck is left in silence.

There’s an old soap opera playing on the television on mute, and Donghyuck gently places his phone next to him and stares at it for the rest of the afternoon.

Hours later, Mark is gingerly settling beside him on the couch, and Donghyuck nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Sorry!” Mark raises his hands in defense as Donghyuck curses and almost kicks him in the leg out of shock. He looks like he’s holding back a laugh, but Donghyuck doesn’t find anything funny. “Are you okay?”

Donghyuck takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

Mark must sense the weird mood he’s in, because his smile drops and he scoots cautiously closer. “What happened?”

Donghyuck isn’t that sure himself, and he shrugs to brush it off, but then he realizes he really doesn’t have anything to hide from Mark anymore. “Dunno. My aunt called me. She kept saying she loved me and that she was sorry for failing me. It sounded like…she was saying goodbye or something.”

Mark’s eyebrows raise so high they almost fly off of his face. “Do you know…if she’s safe?”

Donghyuck shakes his head slowly, and he doesn’t feel like he’s in his body anymore. “No.”

Mark looks at him like he’s searching for something, but Donghyuck can barely feel his eyes on his face, mind floating toward the ceiling. He collapses back into the couch and lets himself sink in. Mark rests a tentative hand on his knee. “I’ll call home and get someone to check on her, okay?”

Donghyuck feels himself nod numbly, and Mark jumps up from the couch and disappears somewhere in the apartment. He hears the low rumble of Mark’s voice somewhere distant, but he’s too out of it to look back, his aunt’s voice reverberating through his head.

Your mother would be so proud of you.

Mark sits back down what seems like hours or maybe many minutes later, giving Donghyuck space.

“I asked my brother to check up on her. She’s okay.”

He sounds like he’s not sure if he should say more or even be speaking in the first place, and Donghyuck mentally slaps himself for acting so strange, but he can’t snap himself out of it. Your mother would be so proud of you.

“I tried molly,” Donghyuck says after a prolonged silence, and he can hear Mark physically flinch at his words but doesn’t turn to face him. “Months ago at this party I got invited to. The high was good, but the aftermath wasn’t. It fucked me up pretty badly.”

There’s another silence that stretches on for lifetimes, and Donghyuck can hear his heart thumping loudly in his ears but doesn’t move or look away from the television.

“Why?” Mark asks once he can find words again, and his voice is full of hurt like Donghyuck had socked him directly in his face. “Why did you do that?”

Donghyuck shrugs and watches a couple argue over something melodramatic on the screen. “I was really fucking tired. I’m still tired but it was even worse back then. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to…I don’t know. Look at me differently.”

Mark seems to consider this deeply for a moment and reaches out to touch Donghyuck’s wrist.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Donghyuck wills himself to finally turn to face Mark again. There’s no pity in his eyes, just the same sincerity he always holds in his gaze, and maybe a hint of somberness.

“I don’t think anything you could do would ever make me look at you differently.”

Donghyuck scoffs. “That’s not possible.”

Mark smiles a bit, like he knows something Donghyuck doesn’t. “It shouldn’t be. But with you, I think it is.”

Donghyuck watches him carefully, and his face is stupidly open because that’s just how he is, not much to hide, at least not the things that really matter. Because in contrast to Donghyuck’s smothering, being straightforward is Mark’s way of telling him that he loves him.

It sounds like a confession of sorts.

Mark lets go of his wrist like he forgot that he was holding it in the first place. “Don’t say things like that,” Donghyuck says, encircling his own hand around where Mark had been touching him to try and stop the burning. “You can’t take them back.”

Mark shrugs his shoulders like they’re discussing something very simple. “I don’t want to.”

Maybe it doesn’t have to be that complicated, after all.

—

There are a lot of things that have happened in life that Donghyuck regrets.

For one, Donghyuck regrets being born in the first place, but he didn’t have much say in the matter. Regardless, since he’s here, everyone around him should feel lucky enough to be graced with his presence.

But aside from that, he regrets leaving home. He regrets not being able to help his aunt, regrets that he only has one memory of his mom, regrets the fact that he’s wasting his time in a strange city for a degree he never wanted in the first place. He regrets not being able to help his family, he regrets not being born into wealth, he regrets being a fucked up, no good piece of shit.

But most of all, he regrets meeting Mark Lee. Because if he never met him, then he wouldn’t be so afraid of losing him like he loses everything else.

He’s tired of caring too much, he’s tired of things being taken away from him, and he’s tired of trying so hard just to fail anyway.

Donghyuck quits his last job on a Monday.

He doesn’t really mean to, not really, but it happens anyway. He had already woken up in a stormy mood, and it was only made worse by a shift at the restaurant for the afternoon.

Donghyuck is the type of person made for dealing with rude customers and hardass coworkers, but the last of the patience that he was born with has dwindled down to microscopic amounts. Normally, he brushes them off, or politely laughs in their faces, or says something equally passive-aggressive with a customer service smile on his face.

A lot of things have changed.

What must be his last straw is when some asshole complains about the service; not only are they understaffed and overworked, but they’re also in the middle of lunch rush hour and it’s a full house.

“I’m sorry that you’re not satisfied, sir,” Donghyuck grits through his teeth, trying not to let his irritation show. “But we’re really in a bind right now, so some things might take a little longer than usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The man scoffs and rolls up a crisp white sleeve, steeling him with a gaze that’s probably meant to be seen as intimidating, but Donghyuck just wants to punch him in his face. “I’ve been to plenty of establishments like this before; the number of staff is not an excuse for poor service, don’t you agree?”

On a good day, Donghyuck would resist the urge to roll his eyes, but today he lets them touch the sky. “Maybe you’re just a little impatient, sir.”

Donghyuck isn't really sure what happens next, doesn’t really care that much, but the next thing he knows, the man is up on his feet and his manager is scrambling over to do damage control. He isn’t listening to anything he’s saying to the guy, no doubt apologizing profusely for something that’s completely out of their control. Donghyuck is smart enough to know that he’s expected to apologize, but he keeps his mouth shut when his manager and the customer look at him expectantly, like he owes them anything.

“Fuck this,” Donghyuck says lightly, drawing the attention of other patrons to the pitiful scene being caused. He tears off his apron and throws it to the floor. “I quit.”

He walks off as his manager yells after him, and he can hear the other man start to complain again, louder this time, saying some nonsense about manners and respect. But it’s all of little importance, because Donghyuck only has one place where he wants to be, only one person on his mind.

He runs all the way from the restaurant to Mark’s apartment, knees almost giving out from the shock of the loud slamming of his feet against hard pavement. The harsh wind tries to push him back and his heart is beating so fast he’s afraid it might fail, but he keeps running.

By the time he reaches the complex he’s afraid he might collapse, but he punches in the building code and runs all the way up to Mark’s floor anyway, his footsteps echoing off the walls in the empty hallways.

He reaches his door and slams his fists against the old wood so hard they almost split open. The door swings open almost immediately, and Donghyuck barely gets a good look at Mark’s wide eyes before he’s cupping Mark’s face in his bruising hands and closing the distance between them.

Mark stumbles back from the force of Donghyuck’s body against his, and they fall into the apartment, the door slamming shut behind them. His brain seems to malfunction before he finally seems to get the picture, steadying Donghyuck against him with a bruising grip on his hips.

Donghyuck can’t breathe, but he doesn’t think he wants to as Mark shoves his tongue in his mouth and the rest of the oxygen leaves his body in one fell swoop. He could die like this, he thinks, with Mark’s spit-slick mouth moving against his.

They’re still connected as they stumble all the way to Mark’s bedroom and fall unceremoniously onto his bed, Donghyuck falling on top of him and shoving a greedy hand between his legs and against his crotch. Mark’s hands fly to grip roughly at the lean muscle of Donghyuck’s thighs as he lets out a broken moan into his mouth, and the sound makes all of the blood in Donghyuck’s body rush south. He rocks against him and swallows up every single one of Mark’s desperate grunts into his own mouth, until they fill him to the brim and he feels like he might break.

Donghyuck has wanted this for so long, and now that it's right in front of him, rock solid and tight muscle and calloused hands, he doesn’t know what to do with it. Mark’s hands slip away from his thighs and up under the rough material of his work shirt. His touch burns Donghyuck up, so much so that he’s convinced the shape of Mark’s hand will be branded onto his skin forever. Donghyuck rocks against him harder, seeking friction wherever he can find it, and it’s still not enough. Mark groans against his lips and slides his hand down from his back to grab roughly at his ass over the fabric of his jeans, Donghyuck giving up on trying to kiss him stupid and panting wantonly into his mouth instead as he jolts forward.

He’s dizzy. He presses himself up against Mark until it’s impossible to get any closer, and he nips and bites and licks and devours, because he knows that this might be his only chance to do so. They won’t work, can’t work, the stars aren’t aligned enough for them to be together and live like they aren’t who they are, so he takes and then takes again until he’s full and dumb with it. It’s hot, too hot, and after what seems like an entire lifetime, they pull away for air, a string of shared saliva breaking apart between them.

“What the fuck,” Mark rasps, pupils dilated to hell and back, making his eyes look completely black. Donghyuck resists the urge to lean back in for another kiss and settles his entire weight atop of Mark’s hips.

“What?”

Mark licks his bitten raw lips subconsciously and doesn’t try to hide the look of pure shock and lust on his face, chest rising up and down harshly with each breath. “Why–” his voice breaks and he tries again. “Why…why did you…”

Donghyuck thinks he understands, so he takes pity on him. “Why did I kiss you?”

If it’s even possible, Mark’s ears get even redder than they already were, and Donghyuck is afraid that he might explode before he gets to explain himself. “Uh. Yeah.”

Donghyuck tries to hold back a laugh but fails, and Mark scowls at him a bit. “What, are you rejecting me?”

Mark scrambles to sit up against his headboard which jostles Donghyuck further up his lap, making them impossibly closer. “What? No, I–that’s like, not what I–”

“You don’t want me enough?”

He’s mostly joking, but a hint of insecurity and realization of what he’s just done seeps through. Mark abruptly stops his rambling and frowns at Donghyuck like he’s said the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said in history. “No. Hyuck-ah…I think I’ve always wanted you. Like, more than anything.”

And here Mark goes, with his overly emotional and profound sentiments immediately after saying some stupid bullshit. Donghyuck feels himself tossed off of his axis a little bit, because he was supposed to be the one doing the confessing, not Mark.

He’s stunned into silence for a moment, which must freak Mark out, because he opens his mouth again to say what Donghyuck assumes is more stupid and/or emotional bullshit before he interrupts him with another kiss.

It’s slower this time, but the energy is just as charged as Donghyuck sits up straighter in his lap and Mark is the one cradling his face in his boyish and gentle way. He’s still hard against Donghyuck’s thigh, but he ignores it and takes his time, like he’s trying to memorize every inch of Donghyuck’s mouth against his.

He’s finally shoving himself into Mark’s space and making a home for himself inside of his body like he’s always wanted to do, and Mark is letting him take whatever he wants with his greedy, selfish hands. It’s just like he’s always wanted to do since Mark broke two of his fingers in second year and smiled at Donghyuck like it didn’t hurt very much at all, since he had first started smoking to stop the shaking in his hands and Mark kept giving him packs of bubble gum to get him to stop, since Mark let him rest his head on his shoulder and cry when his aunt first came home high, manic and screaming until her throat was rubbed raw.

They break away for air again, but Donghyuck doesn’t stray far, just rests his freezing forehead against Mark’s warm one and lets his breath ghost across his lips. “Remember when you thought you were straight?”

That startles a surprised laugh out of Mark’s mouth and into Donghyuck’s, and he roughly shoves him off of his lap which sends him plopping onto the mattress next to him. “Dude, time and place.”

“I just felt your boner against me and now you’re calling me dude?”

Mark sputters and throws the nearest pillow he can find at Donghyuck, hitting him square in the face. “Would it kill you to be nice to me for, like, two seconds?”

Donghyuck launches the pillow back at him with even more force. “Yeah, it would.” He pauses thoughtfully. “You like it when I’m mean, though.”

Mark rolls his eyes and lies down next to him. Donghyuck scoots into his space until they’re almost nose to nose, and Mark goes cross-eyed trying to look him in the eyes. “Maybe a little bit.”

Mark’s entire face is now impossibly red, but Donghyuck finds himself being the one who averts his gaze as the weight of what he’s just done washes over him and finally settles into his heated skin. “Fuck.”

“What?”

Donghyuck flicks his eyes back up to meet Mark’s gaze directly, and his eyes are still dark but sparkling in the sunlight coming from the window. “I fucking love you.”

Mark’s eyes widen even further like they’ll pop out of his skull any moment now. “I–”

“Just shut up and listen, asshole. This is already embarrassing enough.” Mark promptly shuts his mouth and Donghyuck continues. “God, I like you so much. Ever since high school. I don’t know why, you’re so fucking lame, but–”

“Hey–”

“–I still like you so much. I didn’t even think that we would become friends, let alone still be friends after graduation and even move to the same city together.” Donghyuck takes a deep breath and Mark is listening intently, like Donghyuck holds the key to all the secrets of the universe. “I don’t know why I had to fall in love with a drug dealing idiot.” Mark must hear the change in his tone because he doesn’t interject, just continues looking at him with his devastating, loverboy eyes. “I’m always so scared of losing you. I wish we could just…I don’t know. Start over. I wish we were born different people. Maybe then, it would work.”

Donghyuck averts his gaze back to Mark’s Adam’s apple. He can feel the rise and fall of Mark’s chest against his, and he closes his eyes and makes a mental note of every one of his five senses; the feeling of the soft cotton of Mark’s oversized t-shirt against him and the knobby press of his knuckle against his arm, the familiar scent of his laundry detergent, the taste of Mark lingering on his lips, the quiet sound of his exhales, the fireworks bursting beneath his eyelids. He takes a picture and hopes it lasts.

Mark reaches out to touch his face, and the ghost of his fingertips burns against Donghyuck’s skin. “Hyuck, I’m gonna turn myself in.”

And there it is, the final nail in the coffin.

Donghyuck opens his eyes and watches him. Because surely he’s not serious. He’s joking. But Mark is looking at him earnestly, a little sad, and Donghyuck’s heart cracks in one hundred different places.

He can feel himself start to shake and Mark grips him tighter. “No. You’re not.”

Mark smiles at him and it’s the saddest he’s looked in a while. “I am.”

He says it like he’s already made up his mind, like there’s no room for argument, like he’s not breaking Donghyuck’s heart like he always does.

“No,” Donghyuck says, and he doesn’t even try to stop the tears that are gathering in his eyes from falling down his cheeks. “You can’t.”

Mark shakes his head and wipes under his eyes with the pad of his thumb. “I already decided. I’m in too deep, but I can’t just quit. I was able to put mom in rehab, but I have to deal with the consequences of stealing the money. They won’t let me make it out of Seoul alive.” Donghyuck stifles a pained cry and Mark holds him even tighter, letting him cry into his palm. “I’m done living like this. This way, I can pay for…everything I’ve done and…try to clear my name. Start over with a clean slate.”

Donghyuck shakes his head so rapidly he thrashes in his hold, but Mark slides his wet hand away from his face and to the nape of his neck to steady him. “No, are you fucking crazy? You know what drug charges are like here, they’ll put you away for a long time–”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mark interrupts him gently, stroking the downy hairs at the bottom of his nape to calm him, but it has the opposite effect, making him buzz out of his skin. “If I cooperate, maybe they’ll give me a reduced sentence. And if I…ah, disappear for a while, the more chance I have of people…forgetting about me.”

Donghyuck squeezes his eyes shut so hard it hurts, and more hot tears drip down his face and soak his neck and crumpled work shirt. The world has never been kind to either of them, so why should they have to answer for what it’s done to them, the bad things that it’s made them do? The extremes it made them go to just to survive?

“Mark, please–”

“It’s over, Hyuck.” He reaches back to cup his face again and squeezes his cheek. “Trust me, it’s safer for me in prison than it is for me out here. And that’s saying something.” He laughs a bit but there’s not really any humor in it. Donghyuck wishes he would cry instead, wishes he would do anything but try to make Donghyuck feel better about it. “This is why… I told you all those years ago that you shouldn’t have gotten involved with me, hm? Look at us.”

Donghyuck feels his lip quiver like a child and he tries to calm himself down. “Stop hurting me.” He whispers it into the air, and Mark smiles a little, soft and a little watery. “Ever since I met you, all you’ve done is hurt me.” It’s probably unfair, but he doesn’t think that anything he could say to Mark right now would hurt him just as much as Donghyuck is hurting. “I can’t imagine you not being here with me.” He knows what Mark’s answer will be, but he tries again anyway. “Please. We can–we can–I don’t know, run away, fix it somehow, kill them, something, anything. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Stop,” Mark tells him, not unkindly. “I’ve made up my mind, okay?”

Mark, goddamn him. He could be a bastard, could let his life completely ruin him, could continue to sell people poison and keep running for the rest of his days, but he’s settled on penance instead. Maybe he’s destroyed his life, but he won’t let it destroy him.

Donghyuck knows that Mark has done bad things. But he’s selfish and he loves him so much that he doesn’t want him to have to pay for it. But most of all, he knows that this is a fight that he can’t win.

“I love you,” Donghyuck mumbles in surrender against his hand. “And I hate you. So, so fucking much.”

He can feel the exhale of Mark’s quiet laugh, a real laugh, against his forehead, and he takes another mental picture because he knows that he’ll never be here again.

“I love you, too…a lot. And I’m sorry. For hurting you. For everything, really.”

Donghyuck can feel his tears going cold on his eyelashes. “I’ve always hurt you, too.”

Understatement. But the way they hurt each other makes their good moments that much better. It’s probably a little messed up, but even though he feels some remorse, Donghyuck wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mark smiles, a bright and genuine one this time and thumbs at his bottom lip, sending a painful shiver down Donghyuck’s spine. “Maybe that means we’re meant to be?”

Donghyuck sighs against his thumb. “You think we’ll see each other again?”

Mark drops his hand and closes his eyes. Donghyuck can feel the flutter of his eyelashes against his own. “I’ll make sure of it.”

It’s the most Donghyuck can ask for.

—

As most things in his life go, Donghyuck’s aunt overdoses the next morning.

He gets the call from the hospital right when the sun starts to rise and he’s still crumpled up next to Mark in bed. One of their neighbors back home had stopped by only to be met with silence and an unlocked door, and found her unconscious on the floor of her bedroom.

He stumbles out of bed as Mark mumbles something incoherent in his state of half-sleep, but he immediately shoots up from bed when he sees Donghyuck hurriedly shoving his feet into his shoes near the door.

“Hyuck? What–”

“Noona overdosed,” Donghyuck breathes out, trying and failing to get his foot into one of his sneakers. “She–she was passed out on the floor, she–”

Mark rushes over to him and puts his hands on his shoulders to calm him down. “Hyuck–”

“I have to go, I have to see her, I need to–”

“Hyuck–”

“I have to go–”

“Donghyuck!” Mark yells, trying to snap him out of it. “Breathe, okay? Talk to me. How is she?”

Donghyuck stops talking and starts to cry for what seems like the thousandth time this week alone, and Mark shushes him. “No, no, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He tries to keep his voice calm, but Donghyuck knows that he’s panicking. “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

Mark wraps him in a tight hug and Donghyuck buries his face into his neck so hard he’s almost suffocating, soaking his skin with tears and snot. He whispers into his hair like he’s talking to a child, and Donghyuck wishes he were one again, back when he didn’t understand as much as he did now.

“She had a heart attack. She survived but I don’t know the damage, I don’t know if she has any longer, they said they would tell me more at the hospital.” He can feel Mark nod against him and he deflates a little. “Mark, I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

He’s not sure what exactly he doesn’t want to do anymore, but Mark seems to understand.

“I know.”

Donghyuck allows himself five more seconds before he detaches himself from Mark and widens the distance between them. Mark looks just as tired as he is, with his hair sticking up in different directions and the dull bruised violet underneath his eyes that seems to be permanent these days. He’s everything that Donghyuck has ever wanted.

“I think I might drop out.”

It’s Mark’s turn to be silent as he peers at Donghyuck in confusion. “What?”

Donghyuck shrugs like it’s not a big deal which seems to piss Mark off. “There’s no point in me being here anymore. I need to go back home; when–if noona makes it, I need to get her help, I need to look after my siblings. And the loan sharks, God.” He laughs a little and wipes his nose with the back of his arm. “Running is probably the best option, anyway.”

Mark barely raises his voice at him, but when he does, Donghyuck knows that it’s serious. That’s what Donghyuck is expecting, but instead his voice goes impossibly quiet and it makes the air in the room go still. “Oh.”

Donghyuck bristles; he knows that it was always Mark’s dream to go to school, to create things. But it was nothing more than a pipe dream, unless he wanted to be burdened with lifelong debt like Donghyuck did. In their world, dealing drugs was easier than getting an education.

Mark always made sure that Donghyuck didn’t slack off or give up on his degree, even if it was something that he didn’t want to do. He looked after him, scolded him in his gentle but firm way, and helped him whenever he could. But maybe it was all in vain.

“You can’t say anything,” Donghyuck replies pitifully. “You’re voluntarily throwing your life away and going to jail.”

Mark’s eyes soften and he reaches out to wipe his tears with his thumb like he did the night before, his touch burning Donghyuck from the inside out. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. But at least think about it, hm?” He rubs the thin and delicate skin under his eyes and Donghyuck finds himself leaning into the touch even though he wants to push Mark away and bang his fists against his chest until they bleed.

“Okay.”

Mark walks Donghyuck back to his dorm to help him pack up his things, holding onto his arm the entire time like he’s scared Donghyuck might collapse.

They throw his clothes and bare necessities haphazardly into his suitcase, and the silence between them is burdened, like they know what’s about to happen. To them and to everything else.

As he gently places his teddy bear into his suitcase, he catches Mark staring at the drawing he gave Donghyuck months ago taped above his bed, next to the drawing his sister gifted him before he last left home.

“You hung it up?” he asks quietly.

Donghyuck simply nods and gets up to gently untape them from the wall. He smiles as he looks down at the two versions of himself: the tall, gangly version of him that his sister sees, and the big-eyed chainsmoker that Mark sees. He wonders which one is the truth. “I’m taking them with me.”

Mark nods to himself and very suddenly Donghyuck realizes that he’s missing something.

Will you come with me? is what he wants to say, but he stops himself before the words can leave his mouth. He doesn’t mean forever; he knows that he’s not allowed that and probably never was. He just wants one last train ride. Someone to sit beside him and tell him that it’ll be okay, even if it won’t.

But maybe that isn’t that much of a good idea. Because once he latches himself onto Mark, it’s always hard to let go.

Maybe in another life, he has Mark in the way that he really wants him; where he can hold him, can make him laugh a laugh that’s unburdened, can make love to him. But he’ll push down his greed and convince himself to be satisfied, because it is a miracle that he could know Mark in this lifetime at all.

Mark is looking at him like he wants to say something, and Donghyuck knows that he feels the same.

They walk together to the train station in tense silence because Donghyuck can’t stand still long enough to wait around for a cab. As soon as they step inside, there’s a rush of collective chattering and people sprinting past them in a hurry, but it’s all garble to Donghyuck. He can feel Mark’s eyes on him, but if he turns to meet his gaze, he might not ever be able to leave him.

When they’ve reached the platform, they stand next to each other as Donghyuck waits for his train, and the silence feels burdened again. Donghyuck is always hesitant to go back home, but this time it’s for far larger, life-shattering reasons.

“I’ll take a leave of absence instead,” Donghyuck says to the train tracks instead of Mark to prevent himself from saying something stupid. “Just until…I fix everything.”

Mark nods and turns to stare at the train tracks himself when he realizes Donghyuck doesn’t plan on looking at him any time soon. “You don’t have to fix everything, you know that, right?”

Of course, he does. But he feels like he has to, anyway.

“Yeah.”

The silence stretches on for lifetimes, and Donghyuck wishes that it would drown him already.

“I’m gonna miss you.”

Donghyuck inhales sharply even though he was waiting for it, because he hates the way Mark says it. With finality. With resignation. (And with devotion. But maybe that was never a question in the first place.)

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Mark has been a constant in his life since they met, and he doesn’t know what things will be like without him. Missing him will be more like losing a limb than physical distance being put between them.

Donghyuck finally looks at him because he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to again. He sees the Mark he saw on the day they met, impossibly young and vulnerable. Innocent, despite what the world has done to him and what he’s done to it in turn. Someone whose skin he wanted to dig into until it was bloody and stay under for eternity.

“You’ll come see me again, won’t you? Whenever you can?”

Mark steps forward and embraces him in one last bruising hug, leaning down to line up his mouth with Donghyuck’s ear. He’s squeezing him so hard that he thinks he might burst, and it gives him the strength he needs to not fall completely apart.

“I said that I would make sure of it. And I meant it. Promise.”

Don’t say things you don’t mean, is what Donghyuck would usually respond. Life has thrown him to the ground too many times for him to indulge in things like hope. But one thing Mark has taught him is that some people are actually worth believing in.

So maybe this time, he’ll let himself believe.

Notes:

if you made it this far, thank you. (gif of that one guy falling to his knees and crying and screaming) it took me 4 months to finish this and a month before that to finalize the idea, so all the life has been Completely sucked out of me. it was kind of hard and emotional/personal for me to write and complete this, (i am also just very lazy) and all of your support and enthusiasm means a lot to me <3

questions comments complaints incoherent screaming etc. are always welcome in my inbox and/or at my twitter & retrospring

much love