a heart still wanting

by linens

Summary:

Mark would die if he was stripped of his knighthood, it is all that has mattered to him for so long. He doesn’t know how he would leave it. The only thing that has changed is he’s not sure whether he wouldn’t die if he lost Donghyuck as well.

His wanting has made itself known, taken shape in him. He knows there’s no going back now.

Notes:

tw for mild violence if it wasn't obvious there will be swords, mentions of blood & very very minor character deaths

title is from the troubadour (11th/12th cent. medieval french poet) bernart de ventadorn: “i cannot keep myself from loving / one from whom i shall get no favor … she left me nothing / but desire and a heart still wanting.”
enjoy!
edit: in light of the recent information to come to light about taeil, i have decided to edit him out of this and change the character, pls remember to always support victims.

 

 

 

 

 

"I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for the evening calm, I’m waiting for our time, the oblique light, this pause between day and night. Peace will come, surely. But I can imagine no other peace than that of our two bodies bound together, of our gaze given over to each other - I have no other homeland but you."

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, July 17, 1949

 

 

There is a journey to be made and a role to be carried out for everyone in the land. Mark has his journey to make and his role to fulfil and that means he is settled in what his life has turned out to be. Frore has always been a city of discovery, of purpose and belonging. No one can come and not itch with that wanting for more. He is one of the few that is happy just being here — he astutely reminds himself of this as he routinely mucks the mud out from his horse’s shoe. It has dried and flecked on the edges of welded iron so he scrapes extra hard, Eun brays softly from above.

“It’ll be over soon.” He says lightly, stroking a hand over her silver and grey patterning. He tips his head against her warm mane briefly, letting his eyes shut and pretending like he can’t hear Johnny calling to him from somewhere nearer to the castle. Mark had always preferred the stables and training grounds rather than the stuffy halls and courtrooms of the gentry, his position as Johnny’s favoured knight and thankfully close friend left him uniquely predisposed to not have to go in there often. 

“Mark! You bastard! I know you can hear me!” 

The man in question plants a kiss into Eun’s hair and leaves the stables, wiping his muddy hands on a cloth before throwing it into Johnny’s handsome but steadily growing irked face. 

“Yes, my liege.” He flourishes his hand before lowering into a deep bow, one leg pointed and outstretched before him. He can physically feel Johnny’s eyes roll. 

“Very funny. I know how you detest the castle but follow me now will you? There’s something we have to discuss.” His tone is still light and Mark easily falls into step beside him.

“Anything for you, John.” The nickname comes out slightly stilted.

“Don’t call me that, I’m the king now.”

“I’ve called you a lot worse, King Johnny.” Mark tries to not let his face twist into a smirk, knowing how those words sound. From Johnny’s slightly pink cheeks he knows as well.

It’s a strange attempt to get them back to normal. Things had been weird since the Marean embassy had visited, since the marriage had been announced. Mark swallows around the strangeness, reminds himself that this — this is not his anymore. 

“Enough for the stocks, I’d say.” Johnny smiles while Mark shudders, remembering when a practical joke may’ve gone a little far and Jeno had ended up being pelted with rotten tomatoes by his supposed closest friends. At least Renjun’s aim was shit. 

“What is it you need to discuss with me?” He asks as they climb up the stone steps to the castle. Johnny tenses infinitesimally, Mark can only feel it as their arms are pressed together. Mark swallows and steels himself as they climb the winding staircase up to the grander rooms, whatever news this is, it doesn’t appear to be good.

Johnny sits down and gestures for Mark to as well, he refuses, news is always easier to take when standing. Johnny simply rolls his eyes again, familiar with his habits. He could probably guess how Mark was going to respond to a situation better than himself. 

Mark stands in the room that smells slightly like dust and the sheen of sweat that appears on a politician’s brow when things aren’t working out their way, awaiting the news of his task. For some reason, his mind catches on the smell, and he dwells on how much he dislikes the stone walls of the castle once more. 

Johnny takes a deep breath, rubbing briefly at the sides of his head. “I have been asked, well, I’ve been softly commanded to choose a soldier to head on a journey. Protect someone.” He says slowly. “It’s to do with alliances and friendship between kingdoms but really everyone knows I have the best knights in the land, and I have the best of my knights. You.”

Mark flushes at the compliment though he knows it already, its pleasure sits unsteady in his twisting chest. He had often left Frore for trips but never at least without Renjun, and well, he’ll just miss his city, his friends, the forests he loves to ride through. But, he is a knight, first and before everything he has a duty. 

“Where?”

Johnny inhales, this seems to be the bad news, “Dyre.” 

Dyre. His birth place by name only, the place where his father died before Mark could even make words. Where his mother and gasped wetly her last breaths. But he nods, slowly, mechanically, as he does each time he gets a mission and it settles into his bones. Dyre is a nine-day ride alone by him, and if he has to do something it will probably be longer, which means he’ll miss all the festival occasions.

The Summer Festival is Mark’s favourite time of the year, he loves the flowers and the dancing 一 it has always reminded him of Dyre in a way that didn’t hurt, which Johnny knows. Mark opens his mouth and closes it. Johnny and his relationship might not be the most professional 一 but when it comes to duty, Mark’s is unwavering. 

Johnny reads him anyway. “Mark, you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need the best. But I do, and the best is you. You’re the only person I can rely on to do this.”

Johnny could phrase it as a command and leave Mark with the choice to desert, die and lose his honour, or go anyways, but he phrases it as a plea, voice gentle that he’s used on every night they’ve spent staring at the stars since he arrived at Frore in his fourteenth year. When he turned twenty and Johnny had kissed him for the first time on his birthday. The husky voice that whispered into his collarbones every night they’d spent ignoring the stars and in bed. His chest feels like a well piled up with stones, the timing for this mission is almost too perfect. Time for this thing between them to truly be cut off. He swallows though his throat is dry. Duty before anything a frantic voice repeats in his head. He could say no but it seemingly would risk everything, Mark doesn't trust anyone but himself to do such an important task, whatever it may be he knows he’ll achieve it. 

“What’s the task?” Outside, the clanging sound of swords as young hopefuls train in the courtyard.

Johnny seems relieved that there is no immediate denial, “You have to escort one of the princes back to here, where he’ll be in meetings with my father about Dyre’s role in the upcoming war. Especially with,” his voice falters a moment, “the new alliance with Mare.” 

Mark feels bile rise in his throat, Johnny looks at his signet ring, unable to meet Mark’s eyes and that hurts even more. “It sounds odd that I would send you but the journey requires stops and taverns — he will become our responsibility and we cannot risk anything happening to him. There’s still tensions from the war so to be as inconspicuous as possible, many people blame Dyre in our kingdom though it was the fault of many different things. For the sake of remaining unnoticeable it will be a mission alone.”

Mark nods, he understands completely, but his voice stays flat when he asks, “When do I leave?”

“As soon as you can.” Johnny stands and puts his palms against Mark’s shoulders, the warmth seeping through his thin white tunic. “Thank you Mark, truly.”

“Anything.” He replies and slightly inclines his head, Johnny’s eyes soften.

Duty before anything. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark’s bedroom is spattered with sunlight from where it leaks in through his one window, it fragments even more when it moves through a glass on his bedside where a single flower lies. Johnny had picked it and given it to Mark with a wink when they were hunting in the nearby forest weeks ago, its blue petals now shrivelled slightly but still permeating the air with a  faint scent of earth. Mark stares at it for a moment, the yellow rot. He thinks of Doyoung’s sharp eyes when he met him all those years ago, his entrancing face, the way Johnny had looked at him when the arranged marriage had been announced, he tears his eyes away. 

Renjun leans against the wooden doorframe, arms crossed against his chest and long light brown hair combed behind his ears, eyes carefully trained on where Mark packs things into a sack.

“And you’re sure, you’re positive you heard hyung ask you to do this. Alone.”

“Yes, Jun, how many times?” 

He packs another tunic and runs his finger over the books on his one shelf, choosing between a medical one and an empty book his mother gave him so he could continue writing poems. He hasn’t written one in weeks, but sighs and takes both anyway. Maybe being away from the weight of the stares of the knights, away from Renjun’s gentle eyes on him every time Doyoung’s name gets mentioned, the constant replay of the last eight years on a loop in his head — maybe he’ll be able to write something again.

“It doesn’t make sense. I accompany you for almost all of these types of things.”

Mark almost smiles but his stomach has felt like stone since the meeting, Renjun is fiercely protective over the people he loves and he knew he wasn’t going to escape to this mission unquestioned.

“I know,” he murmurs, “But Johnny will have a good reason. He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t put me in danger alone. Jun-ah you know it’s to be inconspicuous, bigger groups draw more attention, you know that. ”

“I do.” Renjun comes up and puts his hand lightly on Mark’s lower back, “And no, he wouldn’t.”

“I’m okay, Jun.”

“When did I imply you weren’t?”

Mark ignores him and, again, the flash of Doyoung’s smooth face through his mind, instead he takes a look around his small room. It’s located in the knight’s quarters and has little to it but a wooden bed that was surprisingly comfortable, one shelf, a side table and a chest where he keeps all his armour and clothes. He swallows. Something about this journey feels different and he can’t put his finger on why exactly. He feels a tug under his ribs, like he should be saying goodbye.

And, well, he knows. He does know why it’s different.

“Hey,” Renjun says softly, after the silence has bled through the air, an arm coming to rest comfortingly over his shoulders, Renjun pretending he isn’t on his tip toes. “Just like any other, okay? I know you’re going away after… all this stuff with the arranged marriage, but it’s just like any other. You’ll come back to me. To Jeno. ” His voice softens even more to the end, head falling onto Mark’s shoulder. “To Johnny as well.”

He brings his hand up to rest on top of Renjun’s briefly, eyes stinging dangerously. He appreciates the comfort, but Johnny can’t be his home anymore.

He can’t help drawing the comparison, Dyre isn’t his home anymore either. Home is the light beige walls of his bedroom, the cracked window that he sees stars through on restless nights, that clean flowery scent Renjun somehow always smells like even after three duels. Johnny’s sheets, his mind whispers traitorously, Johnny’s hands, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.

Mark knows why this feels so different, he knows, he is not just leaving Frore behind. He feigns that he doesn’t, but Mark knows Renjun does too. 

Mark brushes his fingers along the blue plant, touching the stalk and the leaves, his finger pokes through a hole made in the matter of the plant. A caterpillar, or another small critter has eaten away at it, brown edges stark against the green. More rot. Deeper, and hidden. 

Renjun’s lips find his neck and press softly there once or twice, Mark only sighs.

“I know. It just feels different.” 

The sun shining through the window moves behind the clouds, the room dulls. He drags Renjun out without another word, and shuts the door behind him. Leaving is his duty, he reminds himself, and duty before —

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The goodbyes happen at dawn, Jeno wraps his arms around Mark’s waist and hooks his chin onto his shoulder, wishing him a good trip. Renjun’s hands are fierce and strong around him, a whisper in his ear of come home safe. He only looks at Johnny, raises his head, Johnny nods back, eyes browner than ever before. Mark can’t move into his arms like he normally would, can’t kiss his cheek happily and promise to bring him something back from the mission, he can’t even shake his hand. 

He’s done such a bad job trying to hold together his cracked heart that even the smallest of things could make it splinter again. Renjun only looks between the two and something in his expression fractures, it hadn't been just them for a while and Mark thinks it might not ever be again.

Johnny, though, moves forward and clasps his shoulders, as he did the day before, the leather pads he has on them thud dully as he does. His eyes are so serious, so unlike when they were kids. 

But he is a king now. 

“Goodbye Mark.” He whispers. Mark feels something break. 

Still, he mounts Eun and endeavours to not look back. 

He has a mission to focus on now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The journey there is easy, quicker because he’s alone. He has no doubt the prince he’s picking up will slow him down significantly. His heart aches a little, he won’t get to see all the preparations for the festival. Or go down to the castle town to have the children braid flowers into his hair. 

He stops twice at two different taverns so Eun can have water and he can stretch his legs, he spends so much time training he forgets what these are like 一 nothing but the lulling sounds of nearby rivers and the sound of Eun’s hooves at the roads to keep him company.

It’s peaceful. Lonely. He’s used to it. 

He checks the slip of paper that Taeyong, one of Johnny’s advisors, had written all the details on, he would be meeting the prince in an inn just outside Dyre. He was endlessly relieved that he wouldn’t have to actually go into the city, but even seeing the high grey stone walls was enough to make his veins thrum with grief. He wished Renjun was here.

His rotten heart wished Johnny was too. Despite being the king, he often accompanied them on missions, wearing the same livery and pretending to be a knight with the rest of them.

He jumps off Eun when he reaches his destination, the sun setting gently, The Praying Mantis, he almost laughs, Dyre always were the outliers. Not The King’s Head or The Queen’s Ruff but of an animal instead. He puts Eun in the stables, briefly touching his forehead to hers, bracing himself for whatever may lie ahead. 

The innkeeper is a sweet young girl with rosy cheeks and an awed expression when he hands over the paper and says which room he is to be brought to. Clearly, she had recognised the prince. 

“Ah, ah, yes, he’s in the room above, let me take you!”

He bows his head in thanks before following her up a wooden staircase, he didn’t expect a prince would willingly come here — most of them wouldn’t dare come to a place like this. They prefer only the most vetted, luxurious of accommodation. But, then again, he knew Johnny, who had been so unlike any other prince he’d met, he quickly corrects his assumption. 

She opens the door with a key from around her waist, Mark notes that there was only one exit and entrance, his body tensing and shifting into his work mode. He is a knight to this man now, and he had to protect him with his life. For Frore. 

He quickly walks through, bowing his head under the low door frame and straightening up to see his new prince.

His breath stutters in his chest.

Prince Lee Donghyuck, as Mark had memorised in the debrief, is breathtakingly beautiful. His soft dark brown hair is parted off his forehead and his cloak is a deep green which offsets his bright eyes and tan skin. His eyes are narrowed, calculating but without haughtiness, only simple curiosity shines there as he scans Mark from head to toe.

Mark feels his ears turn red from the attention and thanks all the saints he can remember that his cloak hood is up. 

Mark comes to quickly when the prince arches an eyebrow, he kneels down on the ground, hiding a wince as the thud of his bone on stone sounds through the room, and bows his head. 

“Your Highness. I am a knight of Frore and now in your service.”

A pause. 

“You may rise, sir…?”

He stands. “Lee, but just call me Mark.”

Donghyuck nods slowly, a strand of hair falling into his eyes with the action and Mark’s eyes follow it helplessly. “Mark, then.”

A lick of something Mark doesn’t want to name runs down his spine when Donghyuck says his name. This is unprofessional; a low mantra of the word duty circles around his brain. 

He scans the simple inn room, if Taeyong had picked this it’s already been generally checked out, but his eyes analytically scan everything — the large satchel dumped on the bed, the small window, the lack of weapons the prince has on him, only one sword — before landing back on Lee Donghyuck again.

“I am Prince Lee Donghyuck.” He says quietly, eyes not having left Mark during his scan. “If we are travelling together don’t bother with formality, you may call me Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck. Mark nods, but knows he’ll struggle with the lack of formality. His first instinct in meeting beautiful people on a job is to stay a large distance from them. 

“We’ll stay here tonight, Your Highness,” Donghyuck makes a slight discontented face at the honorific, his ignored ask, “and leave at first light.” The girl was gone and had closed the door behind — in his stupor Mark had forgotten about her and the guilt hit harder than ever; he had to work now.

“Yes, yes alright.” Donghyuck said haltingly. 

The room was a simple one with a large bed in the corner and a couple of other pieces of furniture. Mark eyed the floor, his back wasn’t going to thank him tomorrow morning.

Donghyuck, however, takes his cloak off and lays it on the bed. He is beautiful, quiet, he may draw attention but doesn’t seem the type to look for it. Mark thinks that the journey should not be too bad — as a representation of the famously unruly citizens of Dyre, Mark finds himself quietly surprised at his gentle and kind demeanour.

First impressions rarely ever last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Your Highness!” Mark hisses, almost tripping over his 10-year-trained feet to hurry down the stairs after Donghyuck who, after loudly complaining that he simply could not stay cooped up in a room for the rest of the night, dipped under Mark’s arm to go down and eat in the tavern. 

Donghyuck pauses his surprisingly nimble run down the stairs at the base, eyes still sparkling but brow furrowed. “Donghyuck.” He says slowly, before tilting his head, irritated, “That’s three times you’ve disobeyed the order from, I dare to remind you, Mark, a prince. Dong-hyuck. Donghyuck. Say it for me, please.”

It takes an iron will to prevent his cheeks from heating, he stands aimlessly at the top of the stairs, not knowing what to do with… this. Mark is used to prissy princes, or serious nobles that he quietly escorts back, he’s never had to deal with this. Donghyuck’s gaze sharpens on Mark’s face which has started to look a little like a lost lamb’s, and Mark knows he’s only going to say it again.

“Donghyuck-ssi. Please can you at least let me go downstairs first?”

Donghyuck smiles, slow. “Well since you asked so nicely.”

He stays standing at the bottom step, Mark approaches him like he would a wild animal on hunt. 

He arrives at the step and Donghuyck clearly has no intention of moving, only stares at him. The weight of it is heavy, unreadable. Mark has never felt this jittery out on a quest before in his life. He squeezes down against the other side of the staircase’s wall, his palms settling on Donghyuck’s shoulders. He finds no shoulder pads, or the clink of steely chainmail, only soft warmth pressing into muscle — Mark is almost reluctant to move his hands away.

“Excuse me, your— Donghyuck-ssi.” 

Donghyuck is eerily quiet given the amount of words Mark has heard him say in the last few hours in that small room, Mark was about to dig out his book in peace when Donghyuck started taunting. He had lain on the bed relaxedly and started telling Mark about how the inn couldn’t compare to the ones in the city, before finding a thousand things to say about what Frore was like and how the climate couldn’t compare. Mark had gritted his teeth and feigned disinterest in everything in an attempt to get him to stop talking. But — well, has Mark mentioned Donghyuck’s sparkly eyes?

First impressions indeed. 

Mark moves on and opens the wooden door to the bottom of the tavern, it isn’t too busy — the same sweet girl that directed Mark upstairs had moved behind the bar whilst three isolated older men drank in different corners. He spots a booth in the corner and pokes his head back into the stairwell. “You can come through now.”

Donghyuck follows and slides into the wooden long seat, he sits a steady distance from Mark and looks around the low-lit floor with interest. Almost like he'd never been in a place like this before. 

Mark keeps on having to glance between the surroundings and the candlelit prince. His tunic is white and gold, which makes Donghyuck look like he’s glowing. Dyre is known for its preference of the sun saints, the two princes known as the Two Suns. Mark can see why. 

Mark feels himself tense, he cannot afford… distractions, Donghyuck is his to protect for the next week and a half at his estimate. He must do his duty.

“You look one second from cracking this table in half, Mark.” Donghyuck drawls lazily, Mark sees his white knuckles and quickly folds his hands onto his lap under the table. Donghyuck just looks at him. Again. 

Mark clears his throat, “My apologies, Your Highness.”

“Isn’t the whole point of this mission to stay invisible? I won’t be if you keep doing that. If you don’t stop with it I’m going to start calling you it as well.”

“What—”

“How long is the journey to Frore, sire?”

Mark sucks in a breath. “Donghyuck-ssi, stop.” 

“But, Your Highness…”

He releases his hands from the table and buries his face in them. “Donghyuck.” 

Donghyuck’s eyes seem to glow brighter at Mark’s irritated tone. “Ah, so this is what it took.”
Thankfully, any more of his comments are swallowed by the arrival of mead and two plates of steaming stew. Mark hides the beginnings of his smile behind a spoon. 

Donghyuck reminds him, in some ways, of Renjun, chatting and whining through their journeys, laughing with Mark. The loneliness has subsided from the journey here and Mark feels a little more whole, a little less of a servant to his mission alone. 

“You are right, I am here alone so you can stay inconspicuous. The next time I slip up, please forgive and correct me.”

“I would’ve done so anyway.” Donghyuck sips at his drink. “I heard they sent you alone for a different reason.”

Mark eats his food but raises an eyebrow a little to let him know he’s listening.

“I’ve heard you passed into knighthood before you had even come of age, a whole summer before. Age 17. An unprecedented and skilled youth. You were quite the talk of the four kingdoms.”

Mark flushes, simple compliments from Johnny are easy to deal with as he is used to them, he doesn’t know how to take them from people who he would never have imagined to know who he was. “There are more who deserve such praise.”

Donghyuck hums, unconvinced. 

Mark finishes his food efficiently before leaning back against the bench, Donghyuck eats his slowly, looking around the room and cooing sometimes at a large tabby cat that has curled at his feet. 

Mark watches Donghyuck throughout all of it and tries to learn the way he moves; it’s elegant but somehow clumsy at the same time, he keeps on looking around the room wide-eyed and staring at the people drinking at the bar.

Someone raucously laughs and another cheers, a bet clearly won, or a celebration to be had, but Donghyuck looks up at the sound like a deer under the glare of an arrow. 

“Why are you looking around like that?” The question slips out before Mark means it to.

Donghyuck looks a little surprised to be addressed directly but smothers it after a second, “This is the furthest out of Dyre I’ve been. Due to the uncertainty with the war, I’ve either been in healing tents or the city. I just — it’s a bit different out in the country. I was just looking.”

If Mark wasn’t looking so closely he may not have noticed the slight pink tinge to Donghyuck’s cheeks. “I see. Why the healing tents?” 

Mark is fascinated by his embarrassment, most princes keep their emotions tightly under wraps, protecting the image of their kingdom and family, but Donghyuck is free with his. 

“I was there to be so pretty that it inspired people to heal for me.”

Donghyuck curls his hand under his chin and blinks slowly a few times at Mark, long lashes brushing the apples of his cheeks. Mark gulps. He’s not sure the story is entirely false. 

“Donghyuck-ssi.” 

He laughs. “I worked as a healer, I’m not overly gifted with a sword but capable with a dagger. Not ideal for combat on the field. My best friend is a healer and I helped him in the tents. I became pretty good at it too.”

Mark tries to hide a little of his surprise. “It’s a valuable skill, you should be proud of it.”

Donghyuck looks at him quickly, “This is quite a few more words and questions than I was expecting from the renownedly stoic knights of Frore. I thought it may take a couple more days for you to break.”

Mark scoffs at the implication. 

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow, “You don’t think I could, knight?”

Mark thinks about the slow blink, the soft warm light on Donghyuck’s clothes, the enchanting way he had run down the stairs like a river rushing towards the sea. 

Mark shuts his mouth and looks away, letting that be his answer. Donghyuck finishes his stew smugly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They make their way upstairs afterwards, Mark going behind Donghyuck up the stairs but first in through the door of their room. It always makes him uneasy, leaving a room for a while, as you never know what you can walk back into.

Donghyuck is brave enough for making this trip, Mark thinks admiringly, Dyre and Frore had been sucked into the war of the other two kingdoms and neither had come off cleanly. Towns and villages lost. To be walking through previously enemy territory like that takes guts.

Trusting a knight, who could have a personal grudge, or who could have ulterior motives to rid the sunny prince of Dyre of his life, also takes bravery.

Donghyuck settles into bed surprisingly quietly, as if preparing himself for the journey ahead. He sits up in bed and watches as Mark prepares his. He lays out two blankets and a rolled up sheet as a makeshift pillow on the floor. He sleeps at the end of Donghyuck’s bed, between him and the door, like a dog. 

It may not be the most dignified, but it is where he can protect Donghyuck the most efficiently without getting into bed with him. 

Mark decides to stop that kind of thinking in its tracks.

Mark has settled down, his weapons free from the shackles on his body and lying in a menacing pile beside his head. He lies down and thinks of the empty notebook in his bag, of the dagger under his pillow, of the two windows and one door in this room.

His mind is always restless on missions like these, always relentless. Every time he comes back it takes a while for him to be able to sleep peacefully again. It used to be Johnny’s soft voice, his arms around him, that lulled him into the black. But no more. 

Mark turns his head harder into the pile that makes his pillow, trying to will his body into relaxing.

Suddenly, and near-silently, he hears the sound of Donghyuck get out of bed, his feet softly padding against the wooden floor. Mark keeps his eyes shut, thinking that he may read before he sleeps, or he needs to use the outhouse. 

Instead, after a moment, the warm layer of an extra blanket falls onto Mark's body, and gentle hands shift it, tucking it a little into his ribs so that he stays warm on the floor.

Mark’s heart pounds in his chest as the footsteps recede. So hard he feels it in his mouth.

Donghyuck’s breaths become slow and long, clearly fallen into the cloud of a dream.

Only then, Mark opens his mouth. “Thank you.” He whispers it out into the dark, and somewhere, deep in the stories of Donghyuck’s mind, the ocean he rides shimmers with gold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark wakes him the next day, hair like a bird's nest where he had slept, face peaceful, soft, innocent like a baby. 

The prince now stands, his forehead against the ribcage of his horse, valiantly pretending like he hasn’t closed his eyes.

Mark snorts at the sight, loading the last of the food he kindly got from the cook into his bag and strapping it to Eun’s side. A prince, sleeping against his horse’s body. Mark has no idea how he’s going to stay asleep as they ride, long across Dyre until they reach the border of it and Eurus, the kingdom of the east which Dyre had allied with in the war. 

Frore to the north by the mountains, Eurus to the east by the caves, Dyre in the south by the hot plainlands and rivers, and Mare to the west by the open ocean.

Mark vaguely wondered if the queen of Dyre, Donghyuck’s mother, had also secured a marriage for one of her sons for the alliance. He wonders if Donghyuck and his sleepy eyes would be given to one of the royals of Eurus to secure the gold that sits in the Eurean mines. Or the other way around, for the remedies in the apothecaries at Dyre.

Mark ponders this as he mounts Eun and they start the slow meander down the road. He thinks about asking Donghyuck, but worries that it would come off as too political, that it might be prying into a space Mark is not permitted to go to.

He imagines, for a moment, telling Donghyuck he in fact hails from Dyre, and that it would be breaking no allegiance for him to sate Mark’s curiosity. He smiles to himself as he brushes the thought away. In every way that counted, Frore has been his home. 

The clopping hooves of Donghyuck’s horse ring behind him where he is slightly ahead of Mark on the road. The rhythmic sound slips in between the calls of the birds in the boughs of the trees above their heads. 

Donghyuck’s hair has fallen slightly into his eyes. Mark pretends not to notice.

Donghyuck slows then and equals Mark’s pace so they ride side by side, as if he could hear Mark thinking of him. He lasts through the typical silence of Mark’s journeys for only a moment longer before nodding towards Eun and opening his mouth.

“What’s her name?” 

“Eun.” Mark looks down at her fondly.

“She’s beautiful.”

Mark nods, Eun knocks her head up as if she could hear him and Mark strokes the side of her neck lovingly. “And yours?” Donghyuck’s horse is a dark chestnut brown, coat glossy and clearly well loved.

“Hae.” Sun in the common tongue, a language used universally when brokering peace between the four kingdoms but rarely known by anyone but royalty and knights. 

Mark wonders about why Donghyuck called her that, if it was just a patriotic whim or there is some story behind it. He wonders whether Donghyuck likes dark brown, whether he’d noticed that the shade of his horse is almost exactly the same as his hair. If he buried his head in the mane, Mark would not be able to see where one figure started and the next.

For the first time, Mark finds himself on a mission wanting to ask and ask and ask. He berates himself for a brief moment, clamping his mouth shut to contain the questions in his throat. His mother had always fondly tweaked his nose, telling him that if he asked any more about which herb is useful to which body part, or why people avoid foxgloves, or the merits of mugwort, then her voice would be lost from explaining and she could tell no one how to heal what ails them. Mark remembers his chest filling with worried shame, running from his mother so he did not accidentally lead someone to die. She had laughed and kissed his tears away that evening, telling him she did not mind and he can ask whatever she likes.

Mark tears his eyes from the roots of a tree, where his gaze had landed as the memory ripped through him. 

“Will you tell me what Frore is like?” Donghyuck asks, calling backward to a distracted Mark, who stopped on his horse. He brings himself back to Donghyuck’s gentle question.

“It’s beautiful, greener than Dyre, and filled with hills and small creaks, which lead down to your country to become the Rivers of the South. The climate is cold enough for some snow but not usually in winter, more often in the beginning of spring. The summers are probably less hot than what you’re used to. Johnny is a just king, the kingdom is prospering.”

Donghyuck nods at the words for a moment, before snorting. “And how many people have you delivered that to? It could not have sounded more monotonous.”

Mark flushes, “I do mean it though.”

Donghyuck strokes down Hae’s mane a couple of times before actually facing Mark, the sun falls down through the tree leaves and dapples his tan skin with shine. He’s wearing a dark blue tunic, clothes mirroring Mark’s own dark uniform closely, for a second Mark’s eyes dip to the triangle of collarbone visible through the lacings of his shirt. The bones are sharp, two bulbs poking out like an open locket. 

“Will you tell me something sincere?” Donghyuck’s eyes are unreadable.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck looks embarrassed. “Forget it.” 

Something sincere. He assumes it’s something that he hasn’t delivered to the nobles that have bothered to ask before. Mark, with great difficulty, drags his own eyes up. 

“My closest friends are called Renjun and Jeno.” He blurts it out before he can think better of it, they're in a public space, he should be focusing, but Donghyuck is so open, so softly asking. “Renjun pretends to be prickly but loves people fiercer than anyone I know, Jeno is like a huge puppy, and great to go to if you need consolation. I wouldn’t have made it in Frore without them.” Mark pauses. “And Johnny. I wouldn’t have made it without him either. He is the king but also my friend.”

The word tastes bitter, something of the rot of that blue flower feels like it swirls in his mouth as he shaped the syllables. 

The path starts to wind through a forest as Donghyuck soaks up the information, the first of many they’ll likely see on the journey home. Mark looks at Donghyuck, who now watches him slightly confusedly. 

“Were you not born there? You said you would not have ‘made it’ without them.” 

“No.” Mark says, and lets that be the end of his answer.

Donghyuck acquiesces, “Your friends sound lovely.”

Mark makes a noise of affirmation, a low hum that tingles the apple of his throat.

They ride in silence for a while. Mark counts in his head the guessed 45 seconds it will take for Donghyuck to ask a question and break it. He gets down to thirteen when—

“Won’t you ask me about mine?”

Mark snorts. “I don’t remember you asking specifically about my friends.” 

“You gave that information all by yourself.”

Mark opens his mouth to retort before remembering that Donghyuck is a prince and he should be more respectful. “My apologies, Your Highness.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes.

“My closest friend in the palace is Ten but there is Jaemin and Jungwoo also. Ten is the healer, I grew up with Jaemin, he is a devil but one you love anyways, Jungwoo is so endearing he’d have your kingdom wrapped around his finger in a day.” 

Mark lets the knowledge, the pieces of Donghyuck he’s starting to put together, take place in his head, but outwardly he raises an eyebrow, “I don’t remember enquiring.”

“And yet you listened so attentively! The stoic knight, I must just be too irresistible.” Donghyuck’s eyes shine with teasing, Mark squeezes his thighs to make Eun go slightly in front of him, unable to bear it. 

Donghyuck’s laugh chases him as it echoes throughout the forest. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark sits in a chair, opposite where Donghyuck sleeps soundly, eyes flickering between the last wax slowly dripping from the last alight candle and the slope of Donghyuck’s nose. Mark almost dreads the coming days. 

“Prince Lee Donghyuck.” He says softly, almost rueful, and blows the candle out.

 

 

 

 

 

The knight they’ve picked to take Donghyuck is taller than him.

Only by a fraction, but enough that Donghyuck has to look up in the slightest, it irks him, an irk on top of a whole load of annoyance at this situation in the first place. He doesn’t need a babysitter, and he certainly doesn’t need one who looks like he’s Donghyuck’s age for god’s sake. 

Donghyuck thought he’d resigned himself, but Mark Lee looks up with his beautiful, dark eyes and Donghyuck — well Donghyuck has to rethink his ingrained hatred a little.

An hour later and Donghyuck feels a little lost.

Mark Lee is awfully, compellingly, sincere.

Donghyuck was told he was receiving the best knight in the four kingdoms, he thinks he may have received a little more than that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tavern of the fourth inn they stay at is much fuller than all the previous ones, Donghyuck can tell that Mark is on edge by the way his hand keeps half-straying towards the hilt of his sword. His eyes flit rapidly from Donghyuck’s profile to the thick crowd in the room. Donghyuck takes a gulp of his mead and tips his head up so he knows the line of his throat is accentuated — he feels many eyes turn to him, unfortunately not the ones he wants to be burning into his skin.

Desire is odd — it burns hot into him, holds him by the throat as Mark does something mundane like lean over him for a moment. But it also makes Donghyuck notice more, makes him want to learn everything about Mark. He appreciated moments into knowing Mark that he may want him, yet he fears it has already gotten slightly out of hand.

Mark still has a knot of anxiety between his eyebrows and his shoulders look one second from turning into stone. Donghyuck covers a snort, it’s absurd. Absurd that he thinks he could know someone so well four days into knowing them. 

But then again, they spend entire days on horseback in between conversation and a pleasant silence. Donghyuck had never found the height of someone’s cheekbones so fascinating before. 

Mark’s eyes are deep and brown, his eyebrows ridiculously expressive whilst he tries to keep the rest of his face impassive and utterly fails. He moves like a warrior though, Donghyuck can feel the corded muscle of his arm where they press together on the bench. He could pretend the closeness of their bodies is only for his own, lewd reasons — but the atmosphere of the room is slightly overwhelming. Especially for him, in unfamiliar land, fresh after a war. 

Mark is steady beside him, warm. He smells like the fresh leather straps of his armour, sweat and something sweet underneath it all. Donghyuck suspects Mark’s entire personality is being sweet underneath it all as well. 

He is not free from his own hauntings, though. Donghyuck cannot forget the way Mark had stared at the base of a tree in their first conversation on horseback. He had stopped in the road, so abruptly that Donghyuck had not noticed until he was a few metres ahead of him. Mark had stopped, and stared. Something played behind his eyes that made them seem too sorrowful for a man so kind. Donghyuck asked something then, to rip Mark from whatever ghost he was facing. He had looked relieved for it.

Donghyuck faces back to the room again, to Mark’s now steady grip of his sword, his food and drink untouched before him. Donghyuck sighs, knowing he’ll have to remind Mark to eat something before he sleeps so he doesn’t pass out on Eun the next day.

Someone has picked up an instrument and soft tones echo through the loud room, Donghyuck finds him settling into Mark’s side and humming lowly. It reminds him of home, mostly, of visiting Doyoung and singing with him, of Jaemin’s low rasp when he endeavoured to play along with Donghyuck’s antics. Ten’s sweet voice harmonising with his. For a second he aches a little, the longing spreading through his body. 

It only happens for a second — but it seems Mark has attuned himself to not only Donghyuck’s actions, but also his emotions as well. 

“Why’d you stop?”

Donghyuck tilts his head in question. “Hm?”

“Humming.”

The longing blooms into something else, takes a new tone. “I didn’t think you could hear.”

Mark’s eyes are still fierce, tracking each exit of the room, but his words are for Donghyuck. “Of course I could hear. Of course I was listening.” 

Donghyuck sings a little line, the ancient words of an old song coming back to him, and Mark, finally, turns fully to him. His chest rises and falls a little quicker. They should never put Mark in espionage, Donghyuck thinks, he is entirely too much like a silver pool of water. One that Narcissus could fall readily into, in love with its gentle clarity. Mark wears his emotions in his eyes and eyebrows, if you look hard enough, pay attention to someone Donghyuck thinks has spent much of his life melting into walls, he is completely readable. He should suggest it to King Johnny, Donghyuck thinks, that Mark should be given to only trustworthy tasks where people get to see him beautiful in the candlelight. They would fall at his feet, Donghyuck thinks, one glance and you could get all the answers you need. 

Instead of voicing these thoughts, Donghyuck continues, closing his eyes and losing himself in the melody, he picks a song Doyoung and him used to sing, Donghyuck always up in trees and Doyoung sitting at the base of them. He picks one he learned was written for a girl taken quick by sickness, too early to the saints of the winds. Her lover had written it, grieving by her bedside, and had wandered into a forest, lost in his pain, singing it to every tree he saw to ask them to bring her back to him. Donghyuck remembers it now: “Of every kinnë tre, of every kinnë tre, the hawthorn blowëth swetest, of every kinnë tre, my lemman she shal be, my lemman she shal be, the fairest of every kinnë, my lemman she shal be.”

He finishes, his final note ringing out louder than he thought, the inn is quiet and he notices the eyes of most of the people in there on him. The innkeeper’s expression is rueful, but looks up to smile at Donghyuck gently, who gets the sense there was rarely any singing in the war.

Donghuck flushes, and dips his head. There is a long moment before the noise picks up again, after a couple of claps and stray whistles. Donghyuck builds the courage to look at Mark and finds himself being watched already.

“It’s an old song, I… I picked it up from some maids at the castle.”

Mark is still looking at him — deep emotion in those open yet suddenly unreadable eyes. “Your voice is beautiful, Donghyuck.” Without any formality to it, hushed and warm in the corner of an inn on his way to Frore. Donghyuck’s hands twitch. “It reminds me of my mother.” He adds quietly, eyes wistful. For the first moment of the night, Mark looks relaxed, tension bleeding out of him.

Donghyuck thinks of those curling tree roots. 

“Did she sing to you a lot?”

“Every night when I was little.”

“It’s a shame they think we don’t like it anymore as we age. I could be twenty summers and wishing my mother still sung me to sleep.”

Their voices are so quiet, so hushed. The pause between words, peaceful.

“She stopped because she died.”

Donghyuck winces, though he couldn’t have known. “How old were you?”

He follows the bob of Mark’s adam’s apple with his eyes, “Thirteen.” He whispers. Donghyuck tries to imagine Mark at thirteen, same sparkly eyes, arched eyebrows — more baby fat lingering on his now sharp-cut cheekbones. Shoulders more slender, smile more obvious, more freely gifted. His heart aches. He wishes he could wrap Mark in his arms then, and wishes he could do it now, too. He’s starting to not know the difference.

“I’m sorry. It couldn’t have been easy.”

Mark takes a steady swig of his drink, swallows, turns to face Donghyuck. His eyes search Donghyuck’s face — for what, he doesn’t know — sincerity, maybe. 

“It wasn’t.” He whispers.

Donghyuck takes the piece of vulnerability, the fragment Mark has put in his palms — and treasures it. His hand moves slowly, taps once at Mark’s temple and brushes his hair back where it had fallen in his eyes. He tries to get away with lingering.

It is the most intimate they have ever touched, but not as intimate as Donghyuck has craved. This longing is taking shape into him now, it has given itself a name which Donghyuck cannot ignore anymore. 

Mark’s eyes close for a second at the touch before his hand comes to lift Donghyuck’s hand gently out of his hair. “Donghyuck.” He says, but it doesn’t really feel like a rejection. 

He barely stops looking at Donghyuck for the rest of the night, eyes open, and searching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the seventh day they’re staying in a tavern on the edge of the Forest of Ysbrydion, an area that was especially damaged by the war — an entire Frorean village lost to the useless violence. The forest crosses the border between Eurus and Frore; the tavern they stay in now at one side, Eurean. The burned and shakily rebuilt village and inn they reach on the other side of the heavy trees, Frorean. They've taken the curving root up the eastern side instead of through Mare. Eurus and Mare, as the two biggest kingdoms, were where the fighting was concentrated, Mark only wanted to cross through one of them if he had to.

Mark walks into their room, readily putting his arm out as he knows Donghyuck will dump his cloak on him immediately. 

Somehow, in the week that has passed, Mark has learnt several of Donghyuck’s habits. Either through his close study of how to best protect Donghyuck or through the persistent way Donghyuck has become something like a friend. A friend, he reminds himself and repeats it over and over in his mind until he is sure it is painted to the walls of his skull.

Donghyuck bounces his knee sometimes, so much so that the wooden floor shakes, Mark rests his palm on Donghyuck’s thigh when it happens, and it immediately stops at the same time Donghyuck goes bright pink. Donghyuck also sleeps with his mouth open, and sings under his breath any time he’s doing a menial task like cleaning and replacing the hay in Hae’s stable (which — to Mark’s surprise — he says he has always done himself). 

As predicted, a second later a wad of dark green cloth lands on his shoulder with a whoosh. Mark sighs, “Donghyuck.” He says, long-suffering. 

Also routinely, Donghyuck turns and shoots him his most brilliant  smile and, after a moment of Mark’s exasperated glaring, they move up to settle into their room.

By the seventh day, Mark understands that Donghyuck is equally beautiful as he is utterly infuriating. And that Mark likes it an impossible amount, a dangerous amount. He is much more fun to ride with than anyone else he’s ever transported.

“Can we go down for dinner again today?” Donghyuck asks — removing half the linens of the bed onto the floor, shaping them for Mark’s bed before he could himself.

“Yes. This forest is more dangerous than the others have been though, Donghyuck, stay by my side.”

Mark watches a prince kneel on the floor to smooth out Mark’s bedsheets. His brain feels like breaking — but he says nothing, only watches.

“Don’t I always?”

“No, you don’t.”

Mark doesn’t have enough fingers to count the times Donghyuck has ducked away from Mark and ran through the floors where people are eating to hide from him. Mark constantly finds him by the fire, stroking the cat of the house, or sitting entertaining the children. One time he was singing for an old blind man, holding his hand gently. 

Every time Mark has stood and watched, letting the warmth in his chest unfurl alongside the relief that no, Donghyuck has not been kidnapped, only escaped Mark’s grasp and grinned as he does it, like he relishes the way Mark will search for him endlessly. 

Donghyuck is grinning in the same way he does then and Mark braces for what is going to come out of his mouth. 

“Oh Mark-yah,” Mark is wholly sure he is the elder here, “When you work you just aren’t the best of company.”

Mark shoots him a look, “I’m always working.”

Donghyuck hums, slow and sweet, smoothing the bedding once and getting up off the floor. His gaze turns to where Mark sits on the end of Donghyuck’s bed. It sharpens like Mark’s sword against stone, like the end of a crow’s beak glinting in the sunlight, or a moonbeam when it is fractured through a window.

Mark ricochets between thinking he can predict what Donghyuck is going to do next and knowing that he can never foresee Donghyuck’s actions. He looks down to his thighs, where bands of leather run over them, holding daggers against his legs. Instead of looking at Donghyuck he starts removing them.

He is completely aware of Donghyuck’s presence a few metres from him, as he has said nothing into the silence yet. 

Mark wants him to come over here. He wants to run away.

Donghyuck slowly walks over to the bed where Mark sits taking the third of the seven daggers strapped to his body from its sheath. He does it nightly so he can rest easy, but never when Donghyuck is not in bed. It feels like undressing somehow, a private action. Mark does it now.

Donghyuck’s hand comes to rest over Mark’s, where he’s removing the fourth one from his boot. Mark stills, eyes locked on Donghyuck’s face. There’s no faux-innocence now, Donghyuck’s eyes burn. 

He thinks of the odd moments there have been in the last week. Mark, unable to tear his eyes from Donghyuck’s neck when he tilts it back to bask in the sun. Mark walking out from bathing as he was putting on a shirt and finding Donghyuck’s eyes glued onto his torso, looking a lot like they do now. 

Mark retracts his hand whilst Donghyuck fastens his own around the hilt of the dagger, it’s engraved with the word héahlufe — old Frorean language for something Mark doesn’t quite remember. The word is decorated with vines around it; he remembers admiring it on the belt of one of Johnny’s father’s old generals who had a soft spot for Mark. He had given it quite seriously to Mark, saying it was sacred, deadly, and beautiful. That he should keep it close to him and never lose it. Donghyuck withdraws it slowly from where it sits sheathed in Mark’s boot, the dark metal hilt of it makes Donghyuck’s hand look stark by Mark’s leg.

“Would you let me have this?” Donghyuck’s eyes still trail hotly over his shoulders, his neck, his jaw. Mark has to take a deep, steadying breath. 

He leans his hands back on the bed, letting them curl, fisting the scratchy material of the blanket. If just to resist reaching out and getting Donghyuck’s touch so near to him again. Even as innocent as close to his ankle. He notices, absently, that Donghyuck has knelt before him. It makes him lightheaded. Donghyuck is a prince. He should kneel for kings and queens only. 

Mark is no king. 

But what he says is: “I am here to protect you, Your Highness, and you also have a sword of your own,” Donghyuck’s mouth moves into a pout, “But yes.”

It changes from pout to smirk so quickly, Mark still can’t help himself.

“Yes, I will let you have this.” Mark takes the dagger from Donghyuck’s soft, uncalloused hands, and holds the blade end, covered by its leather holder, offering it up. He sits up slightly so Donghyuck’s body shifts in front of him, he has moved between Mark’s legs, looking up at him in a way Mark tries to stop his brain from making obscene.

Twice in an hour has the prince of sunny Dyre kneeled for him. An unworthy, bastard knight from the north. 

Donghyuck nods, burning eyes dulling, taking the dagger completely and tucking it into his side. “Thank you.” His voice is croaky. 

Sacred. Deadly. Beautiful.

Mark feels it’s quite fitting, slotted into Donghyuck’s belt. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boughs of the trees press overhead as they ride through the Forest of Ysbrydion. Donghyuck doesn’t think he’s seen so much green ever before in his life.

Dyre is beautiful in a different way, stone and wet greens by the rivers. The sea glinting out in the distance, the stone buildings covered in writhing vines and flowers, fresh with the scent of magic. 

He has never seen the world like this before. So relentless.

The number of trees and their thick, wide trunks have become so dense that sunlight has escaped them. Mark rides unperturbed by Donghyuck’s side, so he has no fear, but he is used to forests like this.

He can see why it was used in the war, the warfare must’ve been cruel. It is easy to get an arrow in the back when you cannot see where it is safe to take cover, where people are hiding if they wear dark enough clothes.

The forest is scary, it is so verdant that Donghyuck thinks it breathes, wetly and heavy. The trees shake in the wind, but it is like they sway in irritation at the disturbance, not because of the wind itself. 

It is eerie, the air thick with spirits, but it is peaceful too.

It is the location of the fairytales Donghyuck had been told, the stories his father had whispered to them in the fields of Dyre, of the old fairy kings and queens in the forests of Frore. He can imagine their transparent bodies twisting around the trunks, kissing headily behind branches and snatching young children to suck on their bones.

All the stories come alight in the living forest. The forest of ghosts.

Unconsciously, Donghyuck has reached over. They ride so closely together, Mark wary of the dangers of the forest, that Donghyuck can reach over to Mark’s body. He has grabbed his hand, and his clammy fingers cling onto it. 

“We will be through it soon, Donghyuck. I will not let—”

“Do not say that here.” Donghyuck finds himself whispering. “I trust you, Mark, and appreciate the sentiment but there are beings listening here who will try and prove you wrong.”

Mark fastens his hand around Donghyuck’s, squeezing it tightly three times. At the pace of someone’s heart thudding in their chest. Mark’s palm is calloused, skin cracking a little. Donghyuck remembers the three ingredients that make a salve to make the cracking go away, and promises to himself to make some for Mark when they reach Frore.

Mark squeezes once more, before letting go, Donghyuck meets his eyes then. “I am here.” Mark says, the boughs weighing over them again. 

Donghyuck nods, they ride a little faster through, their horses sensing some of the fear of the riders. 

Sometimes, Donghyuck reaches for Mark. Sometimes, Mark for Donghyuck.

Their hands tangle in the dark, watched by all sorts of things. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Predictably, Donghyuck’s social bubbliness had to end badly at one point. 

He’s at the other end of the tavern playing with some children who have clearly come with their parents as they drink themselves dead — Mark has nothing to do but watch him and his sweet smile as a little girl laughs until she cries when Donghyuck plays peek-a-boo. 

Donghyuck eyes raise to look up at Mark, he’s clearly pleased that he finds himself already being watched. It’s my duty, Mark almost says, wants to shake him and say it until Donghyuck understands. It can never be more than his duty.

The scene in their room had shaken Mark. He had wanted… wanted things as Donghyuck was in front of him, things he knows he can never have. Riding through the forest even more so, though he is relieved they made it out the other side, to the tavern at the other end of the woods. He thinks of Donghyuck’s hand in his, the difference in their size, the shades of their skin, Donghuck’s slender fingers where Mark’s are thick, palm smooth where his becomes rough. How badly he had wanted to keep holding him as they had dismounted their horses, free from the eyes of the tree spirits at last. 

The little girl notices Mark’s fixed gaze. Whilst Donghyuck keeps amusing a boy she waddles over to where Mark sits. He leans forward as she latches onto the material of Mark’s trousers, “Hello.” She says, sweet and twinge of an eastern accent. The accents of people who live in the forest had always blended together, east and north colliding together. 

“Hello,” Mark replies, giving her one of his best grins. She giggles and decides that is enough for Mark to be labelled a friend — she half crawls onto Mark’s lap before he helps her, swinging her slightly until she shrieks. The woman behind the bar watches them, hawkeyed, her ink black hair mirrored onto the girl in front of him, he nods slowly at her, ready to let her go if her mother so wishes, but the barwoman simply smiles and shakes her head a little.  

“Are you a knight?” The girl asks, she cannot be more than six summers.

Years, Mark reminds himself, not summers. The Frorean word wintergerim. Mark could never break the Dyrean habit of counting one’s age by the summers you have seen. He looks down at the girl’s sweet face, the freckles that sit like stars on her nose, and thinks she deserves to see the bright summers of the south and have her life counted on that joy.

“Yes,” Mark says eventually, “not a bad one, at that.”

She looks at him, her eyes somehow getting wider, so cute that Mark immediately begins to tickle her, until she’s screaming and squirming happily.

He is so distracted by lifting her up and down that he almost misses when three men corner Donghyuck. Almost.  

“I recognise your face,” one of them sneers and Mark’s heart drops, “I went to Dyre when I was young — you look exactly like your traitor father, prince.” He says the honorific like a bad word.

Donghyuck looks unshaken, almost amused, and that does not bode well for the room. Mark puts the girl down quickly, hand coming to rest steadily at his sword. He won’t interfere until Donghyuck speaks, he is to protect Donghyuck, but often running in, blades out, can escalate things. 

He also cares and respects Donghyuck, which makes his job more difficult. He knows Donghyuck will deal with this how he sees fit and Mark doesn’t want to interfere, even though he knows he should. If he was a better knight he would.

“Well I do not recognise yours, if my father was a traitor surely yours was not easy on the eyes.” His tone is light and airy, but his body has moved in front of the children behind him. Mark can’t help the grin he has to bite back at Donghyucl’s airy defiance. It makes something proud glow in his chest.

A couple of scattered laughs echo through the rapidly quieting room, which seems to enrage the man further.  It’s funny how silent it becomes at the precipice before a fight. How eyes dart to locate their child, how glasses are clenched tightly between hands, as if recalling the anger and violence of the past years. The silence is rumbling, moving. Mark does not think this is going to go well. He puts the girl down gently and points her to the bar, where she runs to her mother with a pout. He puts his sword down too, aware that it could just slow him, and as gently as he can, aware of the silvery sound it may make, unsheathes one of his daggers. 

Mark watches the man’s hands ball into fists — the others speak up then.

“We do not want you here. Leave.”

“You’ve soured a good night, get out!”

“The war is over, sirs.” Donghyuck replies quietly. 

“That does not take back what we lost.” Another hisses and Donghyuck hides his flinch so well it’s imperceptible to anyone but Mark. 

“No, it does not, but people in my kingdom lost too.” Donghyuck looks up grief-stricken and angry, the room comes alive with murmurs, Mark winces at what Donghyuck has just accidentally admitted.

“So you are the prince.” The barwoman sounds awed, hushed.

“You killed our people. Get out.”

“Get away from my son!”

More people shout and Donghyuck’s strong facade breaks for a second at the glare a mother shoots him, dragging the confused children away from him. Mark decides enough is enough when he sees how Donghyuck laments the children being taken away like he is something to be feared. He is about to get up from his seat and approach them slowly when a man sitting, leering at Donghyuck, speaks up. 

“I don’t know, he might be too pretty to leave out on the streets alone. I could think of a couple things to do with him, or more to him. What do you say, little prince—”

Mark has kicked the side of his chair before he even remembers moving, the man falls to the ground with a humiliating thud. Mark takes his place in front of Donghyuck.

“I am a knight of Frore,” he says, “this kingdom is my kingdom. He is on the way to our king, and if you touch him you will not only lose several of your limbs, but you will face the wrath of both me and the crown.”

The room quiets at that, eyes filled with hatred of Donghyuck now look at Mark with respect, maybe a slight air of fear as well. Everyone knows the role the knights played in the war, at the forefront of the action for the whole year. Johnny would never let them sit at the side. 

It doesn’t matter though, Mark cannot see, cannot hear, over the blood in his ears. 

“We speak of peace, you know this. You know better than all that peace is what we need.” Mark gestures to Donghyuck, his hand gesturing behind him sharply, “He is here to cement that. To protect more life, to protect the safety of all your children and their children. You cannot fault a war on one man.” 

Donghyuck inhales sharply at that, some people raise their voice at it, shouting. Mark ignores them, instead focusing his anger onto the man on the floor. “And,” Mark spits, still slightly blinded by fury, he stalks over to the man, whose face looks resentful and put out. Mark ignores it, wishes he could have the man out of his sight at once, instead he presses a foot onto his chest. “If I hear a threat like that again, it is not just limbs you will lose, but your life also. We knights are not just trained in chivalry.”

His voice goes deadly at the end of it, pushing down with his foot until the man has reddened suitably, gasping for air, before letting him go.

He turns back to Donghyuck, who is looking at him with wide eyes and pretty lips dropped into an ‘o’ shape. Mark shakes the wrath off him as best he can before going to Donghyuck’s side. 

“Upstairs,” He says sharply, waiting for Donghyuck to go first, ignoring the hushed whispers. He forcefully slams the door from the inn to the tavern shut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark is angry, that is clear enough. Donghyuck had heard of the stoic chasteness of the Frorean knights, suitable to the cold north  — he doesnt think those words should be used anymore. Mark may be Frorean, but he runs hot, hot, hot. It could be some Dyre in him, Donghyuck muses.

Mark moves around the room, reverting back into the tense state that he was starting to relax around Donghyuck. He paces, before turning around quickly to where Donghyuck is standing in the doorway.

“Are you alright? I forgot to ask.”

His eyes scan every inch of Donghyuck’s body, as if he can see some invisible injury that he needs to heal. His eyes are always like that, never still, always busy scanning every inch of every area. Having Mark’s attention wholly on you is like the force of a thousand suns. 

His hands fall to Donghyuck’s shoulders, just like in the corridor on the first night they’d spent together, when Donghyuck had tried to see what Mark was made of, and found that it was all earnestness. 

Maybe something else as well, Donghyuck thinks, recalling the way Mark had pressed his foot onto the man’s chest. 

Donghyuck feels a little shaky, but fine. It is no worse than things he overheard in the healers tent, when the odd enemy soldier was brought in as they wanted to question him, or a young one who deserved healing. They would spit in his face as he was binding their wounds, he is not unused to this. The leering is more uncommon, people make those kinds of observations about a royal in secret, around a campfire. Donghyuck has overheard a couple, has had to hold Ten back from running in and trying to punch through soldiers twice his size, though it still made Donghyuck feel a little sick every time. With Mark at his side it is difficult to feel the usual lick of fear, though. Mark who is shaking as rage ricochets through his body. 

Rage, relief, adrenaline, Donghyuck sees all of it.

“I’m fine, Mark.” The hands press, firmer. “I’m fine — saints, you’re meant to be my protector, why are you more shaken than me?”

“It’s not that I… I’m sorry I didn’t get involved sooner.”

“Do not apologise,” Donghyuck’s hands curl around Mark’s wrists, “it could have resolved itself.”

“They also could’ve been armed.”

Mark seems to be relaxing as Donghyuck brushes his thumbs across the blue veins of his wrists, a featherlight touch. 

The silence lasts a peaceful moment but it goes taught as soon as Donghyuck moves.

“You forget,” he says, leading Mark’s hand off his shoulder and onto his hip, pulling their bodies closer together. He places it directly on the scabbard of his new dagger, Donghyuck leans to whisper in Mark’s ear, “that I am armed too.”

Mark touches the dagger, traces the word with his finger before curling his hand around Donghyuck’s hip.

Donghyuck watches the conflict unfold in Mark’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to think about the knight, in the daytime they ride through the forest, Donghyuck coaxing some kind of story out of Mark about one of his scars. Sometimes Mark asks Donghyuck to sing. Those are the hours he likes best, Mark’s face when he sings is something else — open, sweet, he looks in love with the sound. 

In the evening, they drink and eat, Donghyuck finds himself being quieter then, pressing his side against Mark’s for warmth and wishing he’d stop sleeping on the cold floor. 

Mark, Donghyuck has found, is someone who is very easy to fall in love with. A little bit. Casually. 

The hand tightens for a second, Donghyuck watches Mark’s eyes flit between his lips and irises, he watches and waits. Mark will not kiss him, this he knows for sure.

Mark will not kiss him because it is becoming more and more obvious how bound Mark is to his knighthood, to his journey. His earnest eyes can only go so far, his head always stops him.

Donghyuck tries to remind himself of this periodically, that Mark will not kiss him, that he will not kiss Mark. Things are more tied up in Frore about standing than they have ever been in Dyre — Donghyuck’s first kiss was a servant in the castle, Chenle, they had made out against a column in the courtyard and were reprimanded by his tutor but nothing more than that. His second, Ten, a childhood friend and someone else with a role in the castle. It is nothing at home — the standings, the titles. Mark clearly thinks it is more than nothing. 

Donghyuck remembers the way Mark didn’t want to open up about his childhood, about how he got to Frore in the first place and wonders, wonders, wonders. 

This ‘duty,’ these ‘standings,’ Donghyuck wonders where they are. Why can't he see these invisible ties that hold Mark back to his castle, to within his armour? He wishes he could take the words, mould them to clay in his fist, and break them apart. They would dissipate and weave themself into the wind, Donghyuck imagines, and the weight on Mark’s shoulders would lift.

It is not that simple, Donghyuck knows that. But still he wishes. 

Slowly, Mark takes a breath, his hand slides up Donghyuck’s side, leaving hidden goosebumps in its wake, until it’s back at his shoulder.

He’s so handsome, black hair falling into his eyes. 

Donghyuck waits for it.

“Goodnight, Your Highness.”

He doesn’t whine about the honorific, only gets into the cold bed quietly, and longs for a warm body next to him.

He tries to not let himself admit that the warm body he longs for is Mark’s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You will not subject me to your abhorrent cooking again, I am royalty.” 

“Donghyuck.”

“Please can we just stop? I had a friend who worked in the kitchens and I won’t burn myself.” Donghyuck lets go of his reins to make a show of shaking his hands, “These royal beauties will remain unscathed so pretty please can we stop?”

“Donghyuck.” 

“Yes, Sir Mark?”

Mark is one second from burying his face in Eun’s fur, “Please, for the love of the saints, stop announcing you’re royalty in the public road of a forest and listen.” 

Donghyuck pouts at that, “I always listen to you, and, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

Mark waves off his contriteness, “We cannot stop here, when we leave the forest road, we may.”

“Ah, another time where my illustrious knight’s logic makes no sense.”

“Trust my battle history before my person, Donghyuck, and come on now.” Mark sighs, shimmying Eun along. Suddenly, Donghyuck is by his ear.

“Oh but I so prefer to trust your person, it’s what makes you interesting.”

“Glad to be of some entertainment, Your Highness.”

“None of that, you called me Donghyuck a moment ago!”

“An unprofessional mistake, my prince.”

Donghyuck stops talking, Mark turns quickly to check he’s alright and sees him staring resolutely ahead, cheeks aglow with pink. Mark smiles and thinks about the book stuffed in his bag, filling with ink stains once more. He keeps looking at Donghyuck, seeing his soft breaths when he sleeps and the movement of his neck when he sings — he sees him and he cannot stop the words filling his brain. His book keeps on filling with poems. 

For the first time in months, Mark writes and writes and writes.

It’s starting to become difficult to ignore something in his brain, the tug on his senses. Mark thinks back to last night, to how he had been shaking with anger — filled with it so irrationally and irresponsibly for a knight. 

He’d berated himself heavily, lying on the floor on the blankets. He’d been angry at his own reaction, being that emotional would not save Donghyuck if he was in trouble. His chest had been swirling with feeling, he could hear the sound of the rustling sheets as Donghyuck moved around on the bed. He wanted, for a moment, to climb in and hold him. If just to be sure he was safe. Mark hadn't been thinking about what this was like for him, being in a hostile place with only one friendly face.

He thought, lying there in the dark, that it was probably lonely. 

Mark brushes the thoughts out of his mind just as he did last night — if he recalls Donghyuck's face again as the children had been taken away as that man said…

Mark’s hands tighten on his reins so hard his knuckles turn milky white. 

“Mark, I—”

His stare is ripped forcefully up from his hands when he hears Donghyuck yelp in fear.

Three of the men from last night have jumped out from the side of the road and are dragging Donghyuck off his saddle.

“Mark!”

Mark moves. He’s off his horse in a second, his sword out. He slashes the nearest man to him across the arm, the one who had recognised Donghyuck in the inn, and kicks him down to the ground. 

The next one is prepared for him, a sword clutched in his own hand.

Mark strikes.

As he parries, not wanting to kill the man if he can but looking for a chance to knock him out, he sees the final man — the one who had leered — pin a struggling Donghyuck down to the ground. 

“Mark!” Donghyuck sounds panicked, scared. 

Mark sees red, plunging his sword into the man’s stomach in three short moves and rushing past. 

He grabs the man by the collar and tears him off Donghyuck, shoving him to the ground.

“He’s not worth your effort, o noble knight.” The man hisses. 

Mark’s voice is guttural, “I don’t remember asking for your opinion.” 

He presses the tip of his sword to the man’s heart, whose face has become pallor. 

He presses harder before reluctantly turning his head, the other two lie on the ground — one in a pool of his own blood, the other struggling to get up, clutching his bleeding arm.

Mark will try and lock away the consuming guilt later — but they had come for Donghyuck, who he finally turns to.

Donghuck is still lying on the ground, looking at Mark with wide, relief-filled eyes.

“Hyuck.” Mark says, a whisper, then louder. “Hyuck-ah, did he hurt you?” He doesn’t recognise the tone of his voice.

Donghyuck shakes his head mutely.

Mark nods in response, turning back to the vermin on the ground. “I made a promise to you, didn’t I? Of what would happen if you came back for him. I can make good on that.”

“No! Please, please—”

“But I won’t.”

Mark feels Donghyuck’s eyes boring into him. “I will do with you what my prince commands.”

Donghyuck has stood now, shakily, and he comes next to Mark.

“Traitor.” The man bites at Mark, Donghyuck flinches. He fantasises ripping out the man’s throat for a moment.

“Would you like me to kill him?” Mark asks instead, glad his hands are on his sword so he can suppress the urge to cup Donghyuck’s face and hold him close. 

Donghyuck seems to have regained some of his composure, the warmth returning to his skin. “No,” Mark grips his sword tighter, but nods, “I will.”

Donghyuck’s voice doesn’t shake. 

Mark moves aside, placing a foot on the man’s chest — just as he did the night before — and presses so he cannot move. Mark offers up his own sword. 

Donghyuck withdraws héahlufe instead and hisses over the man: “This is for what you said to me. What you threatened to do to me and no doubt would do to another.” 

He slits his throat, closing his eyes. Mark does not look away from Donghyuck.

When he stands Mark steadies him with a hand on his back and takes him a little away from the body. He takes the dagger out of Donghyuck’s shaking, blood-spattered hands. He wipes it on his tunic and sheaths it into Donghyuck’s belt. 

He doesn’t know what to say, he hasn’t been overthinking anything in the past moments, like whether this was appropriate. The way he said my prince. The way the man said traitor. 

When battle breaks out Mark’s mind thins and focuses like a blade of grass, this move, the next, his body half taking over to eliminate whatever threat lies in front of him. He’s shaking, though. Just as he was yesterday, this violence, these threats are getting to him more than usual. He knows why, but doesn’t want to put a name to it, doesn’t want to consider it now. 

Instead, he folds Donghyuck into his arms. 

Immediately, Donghyuck clasps his hands into the fabric at Mark’s back, in between the leather straps of his armour, his face coming into the junction of Mark’s shoulder and neck. Mark rests his cheek on Donghyuck’s temple. “You’re okay.” He says, for lack of anything more meaningful.

It’s half for himself, to remind himself. 

“Mark.” Donghyuck says wetly into his chest. 

Donghyuck leans back out of his arms, the moment between them charged, both of them bloody and thinking of what has just happened. Both of them open and looking at each other, like a sunflower turning to the sun. Mark raises his hand, it doesn’t quiver in the air like he thought it would, and wipes some of the blood spatter off Donghyuck's cheek. He rubs his thumb over the space, over Donghyuck’s soft skin. 

“Hyuck.” He says. 

The moment grows in significance tenfold, something grows in Donghyuck’s face — courage, maybe. 

And then—

Without knowing why, he moves, he steps slightly and angles Donghyuck’s body away. When he looks back on it, he’ll dismiss it as instinct, and thank the fact that he did it. He won’t remember the whisper that a breeze carried into his ear and told him in a language he doesn’t know. That word, echoing throughout his mind, move. The trees had twisted and swayed in answer, so he moved. 

For a moment there is silence, the abstract sound of blade on flesh. One that none but soldiers and butchers know. 

Then, blinding, white hot pain erupts in Mark’s side. He turns, seeing the man he had knocked out first, up and holding Mark’s dropped sword high. Blood glints off the metal — Mark’s blood.

He is not unaccustomed to being injured, having to patch up himself and his friends is a near daily occurrence on missions, but his hand comes to the side and finds the wound is deeper than expected. He feels blood gush out and spill into his palm. Mark presses against it, knowing he has to stop the bleeding, but it is wide, stretching along the flesh underneath his ribcage.

Donghyuck is saying his name, almost screaming it. 

The world grows a little hazy, Mark vaguely sees the man limping and running away as best he can. Donghyuck starts after him, but is stopped as Mark collapses.

The world glows blue and green and yellow.

His side keeps worsening, he needs to bandage it, he needs… needs to… he can’t think as Donghyuck’s face looms over him

“Mark,” He says, tears spilling over his cheeks, washing the blood on them away. “Mark, oh fuck, Mark, what… where are your supplies? Where… oh, saints, Mark…”

“Eun.” Mark croaks. He feels more blood spill out of him as he speaks.

Donghyuck runs to Eun, grabbing his satchel off the side and digging out his basic medical supplies. 

He runs back over, to kneel at Mark’s side, clearly trying to quell his own panicking. 

Mark groans at the pain, with great effort he props himself up against a tree. He needs to tell Donghyuck he… he needs to make sure Donghyuck will be fine. Donghyuck takes his dagger and rips into the side of his shirt. Mark feels the wind in the air sprout goosebumps on his skin. Donghyuck then replaces Mark’s hand with his own, pressing white pieces of cloth to the wound, hands bare on Mark’s skin. Mark watches in his hazy vision as the white goes red over and over again. 

Mark decides that if he dies right now his last actions need to be ones that keep Donghyuck safe. He interrupts Donghyuck, who is talking, trying to keep Mark tethered to the world of the living with his voice alone. 

“If I do not make it back,” Donghyuck lets out an anguished noise that makes Mark’s heart hurt, “send word to Taeyong at the castle, stay at the inn and they will send you someone new to protect you for the rest of the way.”

“Shut up, Mark, you are fine. You… you are fine. Keep your eyes open.” The tears on his face betray him. Mark raises his arm with his last shred of energy and cups his cheek. The tears flow faster at that. The world is fuzzing in and out of Mark’s vision. 

“Hyuck, do not— do not waste your tears on me. I am but a knight. A replaceable one.” 

Donghyuck frantically grabs at Mark when he says that, no longer shocked and sobbing. One hand grabs the back of Mark's head and the other to his cheek, forcing Mark’s closing eyes to stay open. Donghyuck’s eyes are distressed and wide with rage, fear 一 deep and arresting emotion. 

“You are not replaceable.” He hisses fiercely, voice breaking towards the end. “Mark Lee, you are not replaceable to me.” 

Mark smiles, his side feels so on fire that it… stops. He stops feeling it. The world grows into different colours, everything is so beautiful. Mark looks at Donghyuck, so beautiful. He thinks he says it, as Donghyuck starts crying again. “Mark.” He says, over and over and over.

“Hyuck.” Mark replies, and promptly passes out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark thinks he’s in some kind of limbo state. He feels his body being moved at times, a wave of warmth, being raised onto a table.

All the time he dreams.

He dreams of sunflower fields, of the tree he climbed in Dyre. Of his mother singing to him at night, of her washing a blue dress in a huge tub, scrubbing it at the sides. Her hands in his hair, picking and combing at it every morning. 

He dreams of being eight years old, running through the cobblestone alleys of Dyre until his feet bled, cursing, using words one shouldn’t know too young for a man he hated. He thinks, his mother’s wrist in that man’s grasp, he thinks, I hate how I look like you. Mark dreams of going home and smashing the mirror in his room until it fractured like a spider’s web.

He dreams of meeting Donghyuck at that age, chasing him through the roads and stealing honeycombs so they could lick the drip off their fingers. His face, rounded, cheeks like apples, still grinning with bright eyes. In this dream he wears the same clothes as commoners, he is there, beside Mark, reachable for Mark. He wonders whether they would have liked each other then… Mark’s not sure. Donghyuck was probably even more of a devil when he was younger.

He dreams of Johnny, of Renjun, of Jeno. Of his first kiss. Of what his last will be. 

Of the tall, tall mountains, and the heavy press of the trees. 

Somehow, every dream of Frore brings him back to Donghyuck. Training for hours. Donghyuck’s gentle touches. Getting told off with Johnny. Donghyuck’s laugh. The dancing and joy of the Summer Festival. Donghyuck being there, glowing in the middle of the room. 

He loves as he sleeps.

And love wakes him up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donghyuck does not know how much time he’s spent staring at Mark’s peaceful face. Peaceful, he thinks, only you, Mark Lee, would be peaceful as you put me through unknowable torment. 

He has noticed exactly three new details about it since Mark collapsed and Donghyuck had to deal with his heart sitting in his mouth for hours on end. One, he has a small scar, just below his left eyebrow, it’s shaped like a crescent moon. Two, he has a mole just beneath his lips, hidden by the bough of his bottom lip, dark brown like Donghyuck’s own moles. Three, when he dreams, his eyelids shake, like his eyes are moving, still searching underneath them. Even in a state of relaxation he is still alert, still looking and craving for consciousness so he can do his duty.

Donghyuck is coming to hate the word. Was it duty that got Mark hurt in his place?

Donghyuck only knows that he has never felt how he did when Mark fell into his arms. Mark, who had protected Donghyuck every step of the way. 

Maybe only when Donghyun said he was going to war did he feel like that, or when Ten said he wanted to travel, out and away from home. It was the same paralysing fear of someone who he loves being put at risk — leaving Donghyuck, dying. 

But Mark’s face has colour in it now, and he will wake otherwise Donghyuck is going to kill him. He will wrench him from the clutches of death just so that he can kiss him, fiercely, and then send him back himself, for being so utterly stupid. For doing his duty to Donghyuck. For getting hurt. 

He reaches forward and brushes his hand through Mark’s hair. 

“Mark.” He says, and the man he loves opens his eyes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The minute the room comes into focus, a low roof lit by a fire with herbs hanging, Mark gets an armful of Donghyuck, forcing the air out of his lungs with an oof. 

“Mark!” Donghyuck’s body sags against him.

“Hi, Donghyuck-ah.” His voice is a whisper, barely sounding. 

Donghyuck has buried his head into Mark’s neck, his arms curling around his shoulders so as to not go near his waist. Mark curls his arms around Donghyuck’s waist, unable to raise them higher than that where he lies prone on the bed. 

“Mark, Mark, Mark.” Donghyuck won’t stop saying it, he sobs it. 

Mark holds him tighter. “I’m here.”

Donghyuck’s body relaxes a little. He pulls back quickly, his eyes bloodshot.

They’re in a house, warm and small. Mark is under blankets, lying on a bed, yet he has no idea where he is. Mark feels a spike of anxiety at what Donghyuck may have given away in getting him here. 

Before he can speak, Mark has to ask, “Donghyuck, where are we? How… how did I…”

“How did you survive , you mean?” His voice is flat, like he is forcing it to be free of emotion. “Someone came across us, thankfully, she lives just outside the local village and helped me take you back here. She healed you.”

Mark can think of about eight things that are dangerous about that story. “Donghyuck.” He says, reprimanding.

His voice is croaky from disuse, how long had he been asleep for? He takes in the simple room, the single plain pallet and the stool that had been dragged to the bedside. The indent in the sheets makes it seem like Donghyuck had been half lying there asleep moments ago. 

“What would you have preferred me to do, Mark? Let you bleed out and die? I will not apologise.”

The world still feels a little hazy, Mark can’t believe he's awake, as he dreamed of Donghyuck so much. He imagines the agony it would’ve been if Donghyuck had lain in his place. Donghyuck, bleeding out on his lap. Mark thinks he might’ve torn out his organs, taken each bit of his lifeblood and placed it in Donghyuck to heal him. In Mark’s fuzziness, the scene appears to hima live in front of his eyes, he grabs Donghyuck’s hand to reassure himself that he is, in fact, fine. Donghyuck still looks angry, but falters and slots their fingers together. 

“But I will apologise, I’m sorry Donghyuck, I did not think of that.” Mark bows his head, his stiff muscles moaning in relief.

Just then a woman, clearly the one Donghyuck was talking about, comes into the room, her grey hair falls on her shoulders, neatly tied into a plait. She takes in the scene slowly, and contemplatively, her eyes settling on where their hands intertwine. “Ah, you are awake. I am Hyeonjoo, but you may call me halmeoni. Dinner was hours ago and we fed you then. You need to rest, and then eat lots at breakfast in the morning.”

“Uh,” Mark tries to sit up but Donghyuck shoots him such a fiery glare that he timidly lies back down, “My thanks for healing me, and caring for my companion. You have my sincere gratitude.” 

Hyeonjoo snorts, “You are welcome for the first part, knight, but I could not get Haechan to leave your side. I could barely get him to eat. So it falls on you to get him to sleep. His care, as you put it, has been unfortunately beyond my reach.” She shoots a fond glare at Donghyuck, who turns sheepish. 

“Halmeoni.” He whines.

Mark again wonders how long he’s been out. 

She moves gracefully around the room, her face wrinkly yet young at the same time, Mark can place what’s off about her until her silver hair glows a little, almost like she’s a — Mark’s eyes widen and he turns to Donghyuck, who gives him a small, knowing smile.

Hyeonjoo comes to check Mark’s side once, fingers prodding at the tender flesh, and then tells them to sleep as it is late once more before leaving the small room.

“She is a mage.” Mark says, voice awed.

“Yes. It was remarkable watching her work on you.”

“Was it, Haechan?” Mark smiles and jokes because Donghyuck still looks withdrawn. The word meaning full sun in the common tongue, Mark wonders why he picked it as an alias. Maybe he has noticed how Mark looks at him. 

“I couldn't think of anything else. I am Haechan, but I used Mark for you. We are… she could not understand why I would not leave you.” Donghyuck says slowly, his panic turning to embarrassment for a moment. Mark raises an eyebrow. “So I told her we are married.”

He says the last bit in a rush. Mark feels like he’s been suckerpunched. “I… you…”

Donghyuck looks embarrassed but Mark feels a sudden, heady rush of something dangerously satisfied in him. He just breathes for a second. “Okay. Quick thinking, well done.”

Donghyuck nods.

“How long was I out?”

“A whole night and day.”

Mark recalculates their journey in his head, “I see. We will leave tomorrow, then.”

“We will leave when you are hale again.” Donghyuck almost spits it, his voice suddenly angry again, before blowing the candle out and sliding off the bed. He makes to lie on a makeshift pile of sheets made up on the floor, where Mark has slept all the nights before. Mark winces. “Go to sleep now.” Donghyuck adds, voice still cold.

“Donghyuck.” Mark groans, frustrated, “Get up from there. You’ll get sick if you sleep on that floor, so just—”

“And what would you rather, Mark?” Donghyuck asks, his voice is still sharp, rising and falling, like he’s still overwhelmed from all the emotions of the past few days. “If you think you’re getting out of that bed I will stab you again myself.” 

Mark feels his face heat, a flush climbing up from his neck. “No, I—”

“What then? If you think you can order me around again when you almost died. You almost died, Mark! You…” Donghyuck’s voice grows in hysteria, Mark immediately sits up, despite how his abdomen begs him to lie still. Donghyuck is looking at the floor where he has thrown the bunch of linens to the ground, his face a complicated mess. Mark wants to fix it, wants to be honest. 

Donghyuck has been raised in courts, ready to convince and please and do all sorts. Mark spent half his life running around the cobblestone roads of Dyre barefoot, he has no idea how to be gentle with his words, and keeps on making mistakes. He doesn’t know where he should stop and start with his sentences, or how much he is allowed to tell. If he was given free reign, in some echochamber of the afterlife where Donghyuck and he existed outside of the constraints of the court, he knew what words would leave his mouth. The reassurances, the admiration, the thing that sits heavy in Mark’s mouth like a stone.

But they are not by the side of the saints in an utopian afterlife. They are in a cabin, Mark, injured and Donghyuck, hurt. 

Her curses himself and how inconsiderate he came off, he doesn’t know how to do this but he is willing to try. Gentleness does not come easy to him, but Donghyuck does, Donghyuck’s presence beside him is always easy. Mark wants and wants to just… allow himself something.

He makes his voice soft. “That is not what I was saying, Donghyuck. I was asking… I want you to lie with me. Here. It would make me feel better and it would help me know that you are safe.”

Mark’s honesty tires him, and yet it also tires him that he cannot say more. Donghyuck freezes, and mulls over these words for a while. 

“Ah.”

“Yes, ‘ah’.” 

“You should’ve said, knight.” His voice has forced levity, as he slowly makes his way to the small pallet. 

“I tried to.” Mark chokes out, half-laughing, and Donghyuck is suddenly sliding in next to him.

All of a sudden, Mark realises what a terrible idea this is. The mattress is way too small for two people, Donghyuck’s entire back is immediately pressed against Mark’s side.

It is almost unbearable — the way Donghyuck smells like a fresh bed in his hometown despite being on the road for days.

“You’re so tense, Mark. Will you please relax so I can sleep?” 

Mark takes a deep breath. A second. A third. Gentleness, he remembers. The gentleness he wants Donghyuck to have, that he wants to give. 

He rolls onto his unhurt side so that Donghyuck’s back is pressed to his front and slips his arm round, so that his hand comes to rest on Donghyuck’s belly. He wants to keep Donghyuck in his arms all night so he knows nothing will happen, he just wants… he wants. He wants Donghyuck. In any way.

His thoughts are interrupted by Donghyuck’s voice, quiet in the dark. “You almost died, Mark.”

“I know.”

“You almost died for me.” 

Mark wishes he could see Donghyuck’s face at this moment, as he can hear the wetness in his voice.

“Do not do that again, Mark, I beg of you.”

“You know I would. If I could go back I would do it over and over again. I would make the same choice every time.”

Donghyuck gasps, sobbing softly now. “I know, I know that you would and it scares me. I wish I had planted myself between that sword and you instead.”

“Do not— do not say that. Your life means so much more than mine.” Mark’s own tears spill onto his cheeks,  he wants to hold Donghyuck closer and closer until they meld into one.

“You are important to people, as am I. What weighs us so differently? The blood in our veins? Words that disappear from people’s mouths? This ‘standing’ you so often talk of?” 

“Yes, Donghyuck, you know it does.”

“I would burn it all. You may not die for that reason Mark, that I am a prince and you a knight. I deem it unworthy.”

“And dying for love?” Mark asks, the words coming easier under the shroud of darkness. “Where does that sit on your scale of unworthiness?”

Donghyuck’s whole body seems to shiver. “Worthier.” He says quietly, as if he doesn't want to say it, as if he knows what it means in Mark’s mind. “Far worthier.”

I have no reason, then, Mark thinks, to worry. I would die for you because the spirits of this Earth and people as well deserve to see your smile and know you. Deserve the peace that your presence and politics will bring. I would die for you, Mark says even quieter in his mind, for love. 

His fingers flick up Donghyuck’s silk tunic a little and trace patterns on his bare, warm skin. Mark feels greedy for the first time in his life. He wants more and more. 

“Is this okay?” Mark whispers into the smooth skin of Donghyuck’s nape.

“Yes.” Donghyuck says, voice hoarse. “Yes, Mark.”

Donghyuck’s hand rests over Mark’s. 

Mark burrows in closer; this is his tonight. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sunlight through a window they forgot to shut wakes Mark up the next morning, blinding his eyes.

Donghyuck, like a dream, lies in his arms. His hair has gone all messy, poking up, he is sprawled across Mark’s chest, one leg thrown over Mark’s thigh.

His breaths are slow and deep, the sunbeams glinting off him.

Mark extracts himself gently before his heart cracks and spills any further. He tucks the linens over Donghyuck’s body and smooths his hair a little, his hand brushing over his cheek and the side of his neck for a moment.

He pads out of the door and into the kitchen, moving slowly so as to not irritate his wound. Donghyuck will probably be angry at him for getting out of bed in the first place. Mark imagines the way his eyes will light up with fire and smiles.

He steps out into a small but homely kitchen and is met with Hyeonjoo’s voice, like she could sense his entrance.

“Your husband is still asleep, I take it?” Her voice is warm, smooth, slightly accented to a region Mark doesn't recognise. 

Hyeonjoo is wandering around the small kitchen, something bubbling on a black stove — Mark takes a second to watch her and reorient himself after the question before replying. 

“Yes, I’ll let him rest. He’s slept far less than me in the past few days from what I can tell.”

Hyeonjoo hums, reaching up to pluck some herbs where they dangle down from the roof. She moves quietly around her home, singing lightly every now and then. Awkwardly, Mark sits on a stool by the table. He watches her sleepily, thinking of his mother.

Eventually she sits in front of him, holding two steaming bowls of broth with rice in them. He accepts it, bowing his head in thanks. She makes a sprinkling motion with her hand over her soup, muttering a word and salt pours lightly from her fingers like snow.

Mark gasps quietly, it is not often you are able to see magic so casually in Frore. “You are a mage.”

Hyeonjoo observes him, probably ascertaining as to what this reaction holds for her, before slowly nodding, a smile playing around her lips. “Your husband knew the minute he saw me, he came and clasped at my skirts, begging me to help you in the name of the saints that grant us power. You are lucky I found you when I did.”

Mark fights the urge to go back and gather Donghyuck in his arms.

It makes sense that he would know, in Dyre they have mages wandering the streets, as part of daily life and apothecaries. In Frore it works slightly differently, having been driven out hundreds of years ago by a rageful king who could not find the key to eternal life in his mages and punished them for this exceedingly.

They fled to Dyre and few ever came back after, their communities having been established in the south. Johnny’s father had been the one to finally eliminate every law prohibiting magic but the stain had been left on the people, who were fearful of the mages’ power, as the king had led them to believe. Taeyong, Johnny’s most trusted advisor and Mark’s own friend, is a mage and had come to Frore both to take a job and to try and build the connections between peoples back to their former strength.

Mark has seen Taeyong light candles blue for fun when he was younger, or absentmindedly lift books beside his head instead of carrying them, but magic still catches him wide-eyed. He’s sure he looks exactly that whilst Hyeonjoo stirs her tea absentmindedly with only her finger hovering over the cup. 

“I thank you for it.” He says eventually, tasting the soup and finding it warms his body from head to toe. Mark does not fault her in any way for being a mage, but he still has to figure out whether Donghyuck is fully safe here. Whether he offered anything else for Mark’s safety. “Why did you help him? You did not have to.”

“He’s very pretty. Don’t sorceresses love pretty things?” She grins with all her teeth, whilst Mark cuts her a glare on reflex. “Put your daggers away, knight.” Her smile fades into something softer. “I did it because of his love for you.”

Mark pauses with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Hyeonjoo idly stirs her tea, oblivious to the way Mark’s heart has stopped.

“He looked as if he would keel over and die himself if you did. My lover was born in Dyre, I could not rob them of their sun-filled prince.”

Mark almost drops the spoon. “You knew.”

Hyeonjoo looks almost offended at the assumption she wouldn’t know. “I have not been back there for decades, but I could see the mark of the royal line in him easily. Though I did not know he had married.” 

She looks at him as he nods as casually as he can before continuing eating. He ignores his shaking hands and hopes she will too. I did it because of his love for you. I did it because of his love for you. His love for you. 

She opens her mouth to say something when Donghyuck stumbles in, cutting her off. 

“Mark, why did you get up?” His voice is croaky from sleep and filled with a familiar tone of whining. Despite stumbling around with sleep still in his eyes, he sits on the stool beside Mark, half on his lap and trying to check his injuries.

His slow moving hands paw at Mark’s shirt before landing on his chest. They rest there, tapping lightly along with Mark’s heartbeat. As if Donghyuck is reminding himself that Mark is still alive. It pains Mark to see it. How he must’ve worried him. 

Donghyuck looks so beautiful in the morning, the warmth from his palms seeping through Mark’s shirt and into his skin. 

“I didn’t want to wake you, cariad.” The final word is tacked on quietly, reflexively said in Dyrean, the sweet thing Mark called the girl that gave his family bread on Sunday mornings. Mark hopes Donghyuck didn’t hear it, if he did he shows no sign of it. 

“You should have, the bed got cold.”

“I’m sorry, Haechan-ah.” Mark says, and because he can’t help it, he leans over and presses a gentle kiss to Donghyuck’s jaw.

A whisper of warm skin against his lips. It almost breaks him.

Mark’s wanting is spilling over the edges. 

Donghyuck freezes for a moment before continuing, smiling and helping himself to a portion, whilst Mark digs the nails of his hands so hard into his thighs he knows they’ll leave marks.

Donghyuck leans his body completely into Mark’s, telling him he forgives him for it — or that they’re okay despite it. The weight is somehow both alien and familiar at the same time. Donghyuck leaning on him, settling into him, being beside him, all of this is like Mark’s native tongue to him. He still shakes, though. He still shivers at every shift of Donghyuck’s skin against his. In this way it is alien —  addictive. 

Mark doesn’t know how long he can act this charade before it swallows him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They spend the day helping halmeoni in her herb garden, or looking after the house as she goes out and runs errands. It’s peaceful in a way Donghyuck hasn’t experienced before. Hasn’t experienced since before the war. 

Halmeoni shows him how to dig his hands into the soft earth, how to take the vegetables out gently, without ripping them, which pansy leaves will taste the nicest with crushed sugar in the middle. She whispers to the plants lightly, almost singing, they bend gently towards her. Donghyuck thinks it is a beautiful thing — as he finds most nature-related magic. 

What’s not so peaceful is the way Mark looks in the morning sun, or the flushed smile on his face every time Donghyuck turns to look at him. At least he isn’t pale anymore. Pale, and dying, the red looking so stark against his ribs, against Donghyuck’s palms.

Donghyuck can’t speak the words of what it felt like to be in that moment, cradling Mark’s head in his lap, sobbing. Or the waiting. The day and a half of waiting despite halmeoni insisting he would be fine. She had tried to coax him from Mark’s bedside, even threatening to knock him out — they had gone far past formalities almost immediately — but Donghyuck hadn’t been able to look away. He counted every breath Mark took, he watched his ribs rise and fall over and over to remind himself that breath coursed through Mark’s veins and that, most importantly, he would live. 

It scared him, the waiting, but not nearly as much as the reason for it. Mark dived in front of a knife meant for him. The threat to Donghyuck’s life had suddenly felt very vivid, red on his hands, heart laying in his lap. Even more so, that it could kill Mark, kill more innocent knights. Donghyuck endeavoured to be better. To try some… restraint. He would get to Frore soon and put some distance between them. 

Mark is not making that easy. 

He’s reminded that Mark is, in fact, alive and hale each time  he… does something. It started with the kiss in the morning, and continued with the hand on his lower back as they walked out the garden door, handing Donghyuck cups of water as they plunge their hands into the soil, putting ointments halmeoni gave them for the roots. 

Cariad in Mark’s husky morning voice… all of it is almost too much for Donghyuck to bear.

It’s not abnormal. Mark had been like this sometimes in the taverns too but it has become no easier to bear it. His hand would curl protectively around Donghyuck’s wrist, or hold his waist as he brushed past. But the kiss was odd, odd and torturous. It was only a moment, but it haunted Donghyuck every time Mark came near. 

Donghuyck smiles to himself, as a prince, he has not had to beg often. He has only done it once before, on his knees with Mark’s blood staining his fingers. 

He is thinking about doing it again if only so Mark would kiss him properly. So much for restraint. 

When the sun is high in the sky at noon, halmeoni sits Mark down to check his wound. Mark strips off his shirt easily, covered in sweat from the field work. Donghyuck’s eyes linger hotly on the lean lines of muscle on Mark’s chest, the curve of his arms as they stretch above his head, the sinews shifting under skin for only a moment.

Well, a little longer than a moment.

But what his eyes truly catch onto is the myriad of scars marring Mark’s bare chest. Long white scars of slices, a particularly bad burn, bruises on bruises on bruises. Donghyuck has drifted over before he can think better of it.

His hand finds his way to a patch of paler skin, an unnatural pinky-white below his left collarbone, stretched over the shape of a burn, something with a pattern on it, a torture device.

“Mark.” He says, his voice more raw than he expected.

Mark places his hand over Donghyuck’s. “That one was a long time ago.”

Halmeoni carefully applies ointment onto Mark’s side, he hisses as it stings and holds Donghyuck’s hand tighter. Donghyuck knows halmeoni must find this suspicious, his reaction of shock as if he had never seen his own husband naked before. But he also knows that she is aware of the lie — and is letting Donghyuck live it out. If Mark and him get to be each other’s for a few days then Donghyuck doesn’t particularly care. 

Mark grunts in pain again, and Donghyuck, for an odd, distorted second, wishes he was the firstborn in his family. He has never resented Donghyun and has always been partially relieved that he will never have the weight of an entire kingdom on his shoulders. 

And that he has the freedom to choose what he wants, love who he wants. 

But — for a second — he wishes he was king of Dyre, just so he could take Mark and keep him forever. Bathe him every night until the scars go away. He wishes he could hunt down all the men that have hurt Mark and, and—

Mark looks at him as if he can read Donghyuck’s thoughts. “Haechan-ah.” 

Halmeoni is watching them so Donghyuck pulls himself together. “I always both love and hate it when you take your shirt off.” He jokes, and hopes it doesn’t come off flat.

Mark snorts, but it turns into another hiss when halmeoni keeps applying the paste which Donghyuck had helped grind to his cut, his grip on Donghyuck’s hand softens. “If nothing I can always trust your one-track focus, cariad.”

Donghyuck feels his face heat. “Mm.” He says like Mark doesn’t have this spellbinding power over him. One word and he’s in pieces. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They settle into bed easier that night, Mark gets in first, carefully manoeuvring his body so there is less weight on his injury, before opening his arms. Donghyuck stares for a moment, making Mark feel awkward, but crawls in anyway.

Instead of pressing his back into Mark’s front like the night before he faces Mark.

“Would you tell me something again?”

Mark recalls the second day they’d met. The conversation in the forest.

There’s one candle dying out on a stool beside the pallet, the shadows flick over Donghyuck’s face. Mark has been cracking and spilling all day. He places a hand on Donghyuck’s waist.

“What would you like to know?” 

Mark has never known himself to sound so warm. A day of gardening and relaxation from being constantly on guard, one day of Donghyuck caring for him like he isn’t a prince, and Mark is practically ready to live here permanently. 

“Will you tell me about Johnny?”

Mark blinks in surprise, he had never expected to hear Donghyuck say his name, never thought of this question. 

“Why?” Mark’s voice is croaky, but still soft.

“He is the king of the kingdom we’re in now, Mark, but…” Donghyuck looks a little uncomfortable. “He is also someone special to you.”

The air leaves Mark’s lungs.

“Your tone, that day when we talked about your friends. When you talked about Johnny, even in that prepared sentence, it was just… different.” 

Mark swallows and looks up at the dark beams of Hyeojoo’s roof. He knew this would come up, eventually. He knew he’d have to talk about it. Eventually.

Donghyuck looks at him so gently, without a shine of judgement in his eyes. He’s tried to talk about this to Renjun, but he’d just been too close to it. 

“We are husbands, you know, we should know these things.” Donghyuck jokes, thinking he has misstepped. 

“Donghyuck-ah…”

“You don’t actually have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that it’s just…”

“Just?”

“I… he was the first person I met when I came to Frore, he found me on the streets when his father was touring around the town and took me in. I don’t know what he saw in me but got me into training — the only way I could stay in the castle as Johnny’s friend and I just… trained. Without stopping. I trained until my feet were bleeding every night and I knew how to hold a sword better than even speak.”

Donghyuck lets out a wounded noise, “You were only a child.”

Mark smiles ruefully, “I had nothing else.”

Donghyuck nudges the side of his arm to continue. “I don’t know when it changed, I was twenty and Johnny was still crown prince and… I’d always known that I loved him in ways he could never love me. I’d known that since I was seventeen. But we ended up just falling into each other and I was always in deep because Johnny is just.. Johnny. He kisses so sweetly and loves so earnestly I was sure… but then, the arranged marriage happened and he fell in love at first sight. Doyoung is very beautiful. I understand it.” 

A moment of silence, Donghyuck has placed his hand on Mark’s forearm, where he is still gripping Donghyuck’s waist. 

“I’ve just been taking orders dutifully, dealing with the subtle way he stopped inviting me into his bed and the small ways he’s been trying to let me forget him. He’s too kind to outright say it, but I don’t think he understands how cruel that kindness has been.”

Mark didn’t expect to get to the root of the problem so quickly, something about Donghyuck makes it easy, he doesn’t know, doesn’t know what he needs, doesn’t know why his eyes feel damp. But Donghyuck gathers all the broken pieces of Mark in his arms and holds him tight. This is the closest they’ve ever touched and Mark is so aware of it. The most their bodies have ever been touching. Tentatively, he wraps his arms around Donghyuck’s waist and, forgoing all his rules, buries his face in the space between Donghyuck’s shoulder and neck.

He’s known him for eight days and Mark finds the soothing clean scent of Donghyuck’s skin more comforting than anything else in his life. 

Soon they lie like that, sleeping under the moonlight, curved towards each other. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day Mark decides they have to leave, if they stay much longer Frore will send out people to look for them. Mark imagines it with horror — the arrival of the knights, Donghyuck no longer all to himself.

Hyeonjoo thinks he’s well enough to leave, though Donghyuck seems unhappy with the decision. 

They pack quickly, the weight of Mark’s leathers and weaponry familiar on his skin.

“Thank you, halmeoni.” Both her and Donghyuck’s eyes shine with unshed tears. They hug fiercely whilst she whispers something in Donghyuck’s ear which makes him blush and nod. 

He walks quickly to his horse, like if he lingers he would not be able to bear leaving. 

Mark walks forward and bows deeply. “Thank you again. For all of it. We will visit you.” 

Hyeonjoo smiles, and pulls Mark gently to her, bringing his cheek to hers affectionately. Mark feels a wave of emotion, a longing for his mother that he has not for years. She smells like gentle sage and freshly cut wood, Mark presses their faces together in response. 

“Do not take it for granted, Mark-yah, the love you have for him. And his for you. You must let it bloom and cherish it. It is worth more than anything. Do you hear me? Do not take it for granted.” 

Mark feels overcome, he hears in her sentence the story of her lost lover from Dyre. “I won’t, halmeoni.” 

She nods, kisses his cheek once before retreating into her home. 

As they sit on their horses, only one more inn to stay at, one more night, Mark thinks about it.

He doesn’t know when it happened, why, how he let it go so far. No, really he knows the answer to all of those questions. Mark doesn’t know how he’s supposed to give Donghyuck up when they get to the capital. It is easier in Dyre, the rules are not as strict, but in Frore knights are not to act with impropriety. They are not to engage in relations with people above their status. It’s an archaic rule but a rule nonetheless. 

Mark would die if he was stripped of his knighthood, it is all that has mattered to him for so long. He doesn’t know how he would leave it. The only thing that has changed, is he’s not sure whether he wouldn’t die if he lost Donghyuck as well.

His wanting has made itself known, taken shape in him. He knows there’s no going back now. 

The tree line they had been following, plodding along silently, slowly through opens out in front of them. Slowly, through the spaces in between branches, a burst of colour erupts into their vision.

The field is wide and expansive, filled with the rich yellow petals of sunflowers. They look endless. Mark’s mouth parts in shock and he hears Donghyuck’s sharp gasp.

It’s not common to get sunflowers in Frore, but they are just far enough away from the mountains, on the cusp of the middle months of Summer, that sunflowers can bloom. Still not far from Hyeonjoo’s home, Mark wonders if this is her doing. The flowers have always been a beautiful flower to Mark, but they mean something altogether different now, as their faces open beneath the sun. 

At that thought, Mark manages to look at Donghyuck for the first time yet, and sees the red rimming his eyes, before he knows what he’s doing he gets off Eun.

“Come on.”

He stands by Donghyuck and offers a hand to help Donghyuck down. They walk into the field, thick yellow petals brushing their thighs. 

Donghyuck trails his fingers over the petals, smiling sweetly. “I never thought I’d see them again.”

“War makes everything feel hopeless.”

“I can still scarcely believe you were at the front the whole time. Saints, Mark. I don’t know how you did it.” 

“I don’t either. We all just had to have things to keep us going.” 

Donghyuck looks at Mark at that. “Yeah? What kept you going?”

Mark thinks on it for a moment, “The thoughts of children in the streets, or peaceful forests. The sun and moon.”

“The sun?” Donghyuck suddenly sounds a little hoarse.

“Yes.” Mark tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear. Donghyuck leans his face into the palm of Mark’s hand where it comes to rest on his face. “You know, now at least, you are like the sun, Donghyuck-ah. You are the sun for me. If war resumed and I was taken away the thing I would think of to keep me going would be you.”

“Mark.” Donghyuck says, his eyes welling with tears, “Mark.” He buries his face in Mark’s neck suddenly. “What am I supposed to do about this, Mark?”

Mark strokes a hand down his back, staying silent. His chest abrim with agony. He can barely get the words out, his voice wet as tears well in his own eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

They stay like that for longer than Mark can count, Donghyuck sniffling sometimes, but warm in Mark’s arms. 

He could swear the sunflowers turn towards them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night Mark cleans quickly, stripping methodically out of his boots and removing the knives slotted into different places in his clothing. He can see Donghyuck moving through the room, limbs heavy from the events of the day. He crawls into bed without his usual flair. 

Mark feels his stomach pulse with worry — with longing and everything coming towards them in reaching the castle the next day. Mark feels sick with all his emotions. 

He knows it's their last night, he’s sure Donghyuck knows it too. He lifts the cover and slides into the already-warm bed. Warm like the sun, like, like…

He had debated settling onto the floor as he had in previous inns, but he just didn’t want to. He’s had Donghyuck’s warmth next to him and he can’t imagine sleeping without it again. 

Donghyuck is lying next to him, breathing softly. Mark has spent every last minute of the last 9 days learning every way he functions: he’s not asleep yet, Mark knows from the slightly shallower depth of his breaths. The rise and fall of his ribs is just a shade too light.

He should say something, he wants — he wants so badly to say something. 

But his brain comes back at him: what? What can he say to a prince? To someone who is an impossible distance from him?

Donghyuck doesn’t feel like he’s far away, though. And this is nothing like lying in bed with Johnny, this is nothing like the sad silence of their last night together, this is charged. Mark feels almost alight in anticipation. 

“I can hear you thinking.” Donghyuck interrupts the silence, clearly tired with the pretending.

“I’m not—”

Mark loses his words, his cut off sentence fades into the darkness around them. He turns to his side and finds Donghyuck having shifted over, his head resting on his two hands, palms pressed together. His hair is messed slightly, and his eyes unbearably soft as he looks at Mark, but filled with an unnameable something that Mark feels reflected in himself. 

“Not what?”

“Donghyuck, I just…”

“Won’t you call my name like you did before? After— those men had come for me?”

Mark doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Donghyuck is talking about. He ignores the urge to put distance between them. He ignores the fact that Donghyuck is a prince and that everything in him, everything in him says it wouldn’t be a good idea. 

But he wants it. He has not ceased for days in wanting it. 

“Hyuck. Hyuck-ah.” Mark says gently, and leans forward to kiss him. 

Donghyuck makes a soft wounded noise but responds immediately, his hand flying to Mark’s hair, legs moving to tangle with his. Their lips move against each other, the room filled with quiet wet smacking noises.

Mark feels like his heart has poured gold into the rest of his body, Donghyuck has always been like the sun, but he tastes like something inexplicably sweet, and his warmth is melting Mark to the bone. His hands fall to Donghyuck’s waist and he moves so he’s over Donghyuck, chests pressed tightly together. Donghyuck opens his mouth and Mark goes with it, kissing him while the cicadas outside buzz softly. Mark’s hands brush up and down Donghyuck’s ribs, greedy. His fingertips brush over Donghyuck’s nipple under his tunic and he moans loudly into Mark’s mouth — high and breathy and Mark can’t take it. 

He pulls away and looks at Donghyuck beneath him.

Prince Lee Donghyuck of Dyre.

He’s blushing, panting and looking up at Mark, so infuriatingly open.

“Mark.” He says, like a prayer.

Mark leans down to kiss him before anything stupid could come out of his mouth, or Donghyuck realised his own vulnerability and undoubtedly would’ve thrown in a cutting remark he didn’t really mean. The kiss is hungrier, teeth clashing at moments, and filled with desire. 

Donghyuck shifts back for a moment to pull his shirt off.

Mark has never seen Donghyuck out of his clothes before, he kisses down the planes of his stomach, relishing every sound he makes in response. Mark’s teeth graze Donghyuck’s stomach and he moans loudly into the night.

“Donghyuck.” He says, his voice like a groan. He sucks bruises into Donghyuck’s soft tummy, and then down on his thighs, everywhere Mark can see he wants to touch, to mark, to hold.

Eventually, Donghyuck can’t take it any longer and hauls Mark back up to meld their mouths together once more, his face flushed from the attention.

“You cannot know, you could not fathom how long I have wanted this.” Donghyuck says against his mouth. He pushes Mark down and straddles his lap, their mouths fastening together as their hips meet over and over again.

“I know, Donghyuck-ah, I know because I am the same.” Mark manages to reply between gasps, his focus zoning in on the hot grasp he has of Donghyuck’s hips. 

Mark opens him up while they kiss, Donghyuck giggling as Mark drops the oil three times as his hands shake. Donghyuck stops giggling moments later, as his mouth drops open in silent cries as Mark fingers him open with all the efficient focus he injects into his job. 

When Mark finally fucks into him, Donghyuck makes a sound that Mark endeavours to remember for the rest of his life. It’s nothing like sex with Johnny. It’s something altogether different. Mark feels ruined for anyone else as Donghyuck’s nails scratch down his shoulder blades.

They find a rhythm, their mouths barely ever leaving each other. Donghyuck seems to have something addictive in his bloodstream, something that Mark can taste on his skin. Mark wants to swallow Donghyuck whole.

Mark kisses every place he can reach, he thrusts particularly hard as he kisses over Donghyuck’s ear, who suddenly spills over their stomachs. Mark follows him moments later, moaning into his neck, gold clouding his vision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark cleans them both up, though Donghyuck will not stop kissing him and making it more difficult. They bask in the afterglow, swapping stories and laughing as the candle burns down. 

“I am originally from Dyre. That is where I ran from when I came to Frore.” Mark confesses

Donghyuck smiles gently, “I had guessed it, you are far too fierce for Frore. But thank you for telling me.”

“When I said my prince, I wasn’t joking.” Mark grins. Donghyuck kisses it off his lips. 

“Will you tell me your name then?” Donghyuck asks. “Your birth one, I mean.” 

Mark traces Donghyuck’s nose in the dark, mulling over the tradition. In Dyre they name you twice, once at birth, a name for your family and beloved ones only. Then a chosen name, picked yourself when you reach your twelfth year, the age picked to represent all the months. The royal family does not get a chosen name as a gesture to all their people being family, but Mark did. 

“Minhyung.” Mark says softly. He’s never told anyone that before. Not even Johnny. “My mother named me Minhyung.” 

“Minhyung.” Donghyuck replies, shaping the name on his tongue. Mark shivers. “It suits you.”

Mark shuffles forward on the bed, his hand tracing patterns onto Donghyuck’s ribs, he spells out words that he hopes Donghyuck can’t sense. “If you had gotten a chosen name, what would you have picked?”

Donghyuck smiles. “We did all choose them anyway, and only told a few people. I picked Donghyun-hyung’s whilst he picked mine.” 

It’s the first time Donghyuck has talked about his elder brother, his voice warm and affectionate. 

“What was yours?” 

“Guess.”

Mark thinks on it for a second before it clicks. “Haechan.” 

“Mm.”

Mark smiles and pulls a blushing Donghyuck into his chest. “Haechan, how fitting.”

“Stop, it’s embarrassing.” 

Donghyuck giggles as Mark tickles his sides a little, unable to help himself with the boy in his arms. “Is that why your horse is called Hae?”

“Yes. If I couldn’t be Haechan at all then at least my horse could.”

“And your life can be filled with sun,” Mark brushes his soft dark locks back. “My sunflower.”

Donghyuck buries his face more into Mark’s chest, “You’re so embarrassing. You’re so lucky it works for me.”

He is sleeping soon, his breaths deep. Mark whispers into his hair the truth in reply, “I am lucky on all accounts. I am yours.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standing the next day, about to mount their horses for the last time, Mark doesn’t let himself regret it. Donghyuck has an expression he can’t read, staring at the walls of Frore in the distance, he looks back at Mark suddenly.

He comes over and presses their mouths together chastely, the stables of the inn mercifully empty. Mark follows his lips as he draws back. “I fear I have not told you, when you have told me so much. I am a prince, and have been offered affection of all kinds throughout my life. But I feel as if I didn't know the feeling until I met you.”

“Donghyuck-ah.”

“I just — I just want to say, Mark, that even if there was a prince from the richest kingdom in the world, who was good and kind and said he loved me, he would still hold no candle to you.” 

Mark makes to speak again, unable to bear it.

“Don’t, don’t, Mark.” Donghyuck laughs. “Saints, you really can’t take a compliment, can you?”

“No, I guess I can’t.” 

“Don’t grin like that, I’m saying something serious here!”

“Oh?”

“Mark. Hyung. I…” He scans Mark’s face, before kissing him bruisingly. His hand goes to Mark's hair, who licks into his mouth in response. When he withdraws he speaks against Mark’s lips. “I care for you. Unendingly. I need you to know that before we go there and things change.”

Mark kisses him softly, but feels himself sober from the laughter of the earlier moments. “I know that. Things will change, Hyuck, they have to. But I know that. You know the same from me as well.” 

Donghyuck nods, then turns away as if to reign himself in to compose himself back to the peerless prince Mark first saw in a whimsical inn in Dyre. 

Mark mounts his horse. He knows not how things will play out, nor if he will be allowed any moment more with Donghyuck. He will find one, if it comes to it he will use his leave for it.

He wishes they could’ve stayed in this bubble forever, but nothing like this lasts for a knight, there is always the next, the duty, the journey. 

The place that had been a solace to him for so long looks so different now. It’s walls high and stone and containing people that Mark almost wishes he could hide Donghyuck from, hide himself from. 

Mark takes a deep, cracking breath. He looks to Donghyuck at his side.

Frore looms before them.

 

 

 

Notes:

thank you for reading! comments & kudos appreciated

some of the language stuff (for anyone interested):
– the song dh sings is an old poem translating to 'of every kind of tree, / of every kind of tree, / the hawthorn blows sweetest / of every kind of tree. / my lover she shall be, / my lover she shall be, / the fairest of every kind / my lover she shall be.'
- 'ysbridion' is welsh for ghosts and 'cariad' for darling/beloved
- 'wintergerim' is old english for quantity of years
- pretty much every word i use i haven't made up & is either old english or welsh to stick with the kind of arthurian vibe i was writing this with :)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of my kingdom for a kiss upon his shoulder