Archive of Our Own

In the darkest nook of their closet, a middle-size cardboard box rests, a messy B written-out in bold black grayed-out letters on one of the sides, all corners worn out with time and use. It’s been there from the moment they bought the apartment, not too many years ago, but it has been around for much longer – Mark thinks that if he has to put a date for its beginning, he might not be able to.

It’s not filled, even if it’s heavy when you pick it up, and what lays inside has been picked with caution, not everything can – not everything will.

The most important thing about it is the fact that Donghyuck doesn’t know about it.

It’s always been there, always placed carefully in the farthest corner, dark and on Mark’s side, and still, Donghyuck has never even acknowledged it – Mark doesn’t know how is it even possible, but turns out Donghyuck is the smartest boy he’s ever had the luck to meet and also the biggest love-fool - he tends to do this thing where he’ll get so distracted by Mark that he’ll forget to use his brain. Kinda how when Mark first put it there, a day after they started moving things inside the apartment, and Donghyuck almost caught him and was about to question him, Mark grabbed him by the nape and started pecking him all over his face and Donghyuck forgot what was he gonna ask Mark.

So he doesn’t know about it.

Until Friday comes and Mark is caught red-handed, box in hand, his star-eyes wide and the air stuck in his lungs.

It happens like this:

Mark comes back from work at around eight in the evening, and because it’s the middle of winter, sun had already set long before. When he opens the door of their apartment, the first thing he hears is loud gunshots and Donghyuck’s screams, mostly curses, so he already imagines that if he goes into the living room, the first thing he’ll see is his boyfriend playing some kind of video game – don’t ask Mark which one, he’s not good at this kind of things, and no matter how much Donghyuck and Jeno try to explain to him the good in them, he cannot seem to find it –.

That’s exactly what happens, then. He puts his briefcase aside, just beside the shoe rack where he just left his black dress shoes, and, just as he’s taking his tie off, he steps into their living room, finding Donghyuck sitting at the edge of the big L-shaped couch, legs spread open and leaning forward as much as he can, elbows pressing against his thighs. Eyes set on the big TV and hands gripping his joystick, Donghyuck clearly is playing some kind of video game, and clearly losing it, because Mark may not be big in those things but he’s smart enough to understand numbers.

Mark chuckles at the sight, finds it even a little bit cute, how Donghyuck puckers his lips and frowns just a little bit, how he always does it when concentrated. It’s not weird for Donghyuck to be playing games, ever, but much less when night’s approaching; Mark knows better than to interrupt him, so he just takes his jacket off and leaves it and his tie on the back of the couch. When he does, Donghyuck quickly looks in his direction, finally noticing Mark arrived and flashes a smile at him.

Mark presses a peck into Donghyuck’s neck, and giggles when Donghyuck shivers and mumbles “You cold” under his breath, eyes glued to the TV again.

He goes into the kitchen next and finds it dim-lighted and sort of cold, the warmth from the heater not quite reaching that point of their apartment. He takes a mug from one of the cabinets, the one reading ‘#1 Boss’ in big block-like black letters, and turns on the coffee machine that lays in a corner of the kitchen counter.

Fridays usually go like this; Mark was a routine-based person, so unlike Donghyuck, and still, Fridays usually go just like this.

It goes down when Mark, mug in hand, tells softly to Donghyuck that he’ll be in the bedroom, and Donghyuck hums, still over-fixated on the TV screen, with a new round started and a good score he’ll hate Mark if he makes him lose.

When Mark reaches their bedroom, and the heat sinks in finally in every piece of that part of the apartment, Mark places his mug on his nightstand – the one on the left, Donghyuck had whined enough for months to him about letting him sleep in the right side and Mark had learned long ago to just jump then fall when it comes to Donghyuck so no was erased from his vocabulary – and finally takes his dress shirt and black suit pants off himself, quickly putting on a shirt that he doesn’t remember who does it belong, a worn-out black that looks now gray and an erased stamp he doesn't remember what was it before, and some Adidas black sweatpants he knows are Donghyuck’s.

That’s when he gets this urge to open his side of their closet and dig far enough to take the box out. He doesn’t know where the impulse comes from but it digs into his ribs and leaves him kind of breathless.

So he does. That’s where that Friday varies from the routine, Donghyuck-like.

He takes the box out of the closet fast enough that he barely registers it, closes the closet, and puts the box down on the bed. Mug forgotten on the nightstand and previous clothes forgotten on the floor, Mark sits down on the bed and opens up the box.

That Friday varies from routine once more when Donghyuck drops the videogame mid-round, giving up on it and already hungry enough that it seems impossible to concentrate, so he takes his phone, which he tossed somewhere on the couch hours ago, and opens his favorite app to order food.

Mark should’ve noticed, that the gunshots weren’t loudly roaring from the TV, or that Donghyuck’s loud steps were closer by the minute – but he didn’t, and it’s already too late when Donghyuck opens the bedroom door, leaning on the door frame.

“I’m about to order some food, Key, what wou-” When Donghyuck looks up from his phone, he finds an eyes-wide-open Mark, frozen with the box’s lid on his hands. Confusion takes up his brain, never having seen the box or whatever it contained.

“What’s t-”

“Nothing!” Mark reacts, late, but he does, closing the box and grabbing it firm with both his hands. He does this thing where he closes in on himself, trying to hide the box inside his chest, and Donghyuck finds it adorable but doesn’t waste time thinking too much about it because confusion had just gone out of his brain’s back door, and from the front one came curiosity.

“Oh my god, now I wanna see” He climbs on the bed as fast as he can, and reaches for the box when he’s close enough. Mark stands up from where he was seated, and turns around, box still tight inside his arms.

“No! You can’t” And Donghyuck finds it so fucking adorable when Mark only turns his head to look at him, slightly frowning and with his cheeks pink-ish.

“Why? Is it something bad? Oh my god- Key are those se-”

“God, Donghyuck, no! Why would I hide those from you?” Mark scoffs, like what Donghyuck said was unbelievable, and turns his head to his front again. Donghyuck can only giggle and shrug.

Mark doesn’t look like he wants to show him, and Donghyuck is about to give in, but he tries one last time.

“Key, what’s inside of the box?” Donghyuck stands up and positions himself right behind Mark, close enough that his shirt rubs against Mark’s whenever one of them moves. He puts his chin on Mark’s shoulder and looks up at him, it’s an uncomfortable position but he doesn’t care.

Mark looks down and, truth be told, he has learned long ago that, when it comes to Donghyuck, he can only jump then fall.

[July 24th, 2017]

[a ticket to Spider-Man]

Granted, Mark should be sleeping right now. Tomorrow is Tuesday and he has to wake up extra early because Jungwoo booked the meeting room to discuss the whole ‘Jung’s Cosmetic’ thing, which he should be really awake when doing, because is a big thing, a turning point, and Mark had just recently become a Sales Manager, so it’s important that he shows he’s suitable for the job.

Also, Donghyuck has himself an early meeting, even if it’s a virtual one, so both of them should be asleep by this hour in the night. Donghyuck is, in fact. Curled on himself and smelling like his favorite lavender soap, Donghyuck lays beside him breathing paused, sound asleep.

Mark, on the other hand, has his laptop open in front of him, way-too-bright and way-too-noisy, but he’s on a mission so he cares little to nothing right now.

He’ll probably feel bad tomorrow, when he starts to doze off in the middle of a meeting Jungwoo so persistently wanted them to have and tried so hard to make everyone be able to attend; now, though, he is far more interested in finding a single cinema in Seoul where Spider-Man: Homecoming can be seen – which sounded like an easy task at first, and that’s why Mark decided that doing it at 10pm wouldn’t affect his sleeping hours at all, but it's past midnight and all the places he can find either are sold out for the next three days or are not possible for them to go to because of their schedules, at least for a week.

And Mark wants to go this week because Donghyuck leaves for ten days to Jeju next one and then Mark has a work trip that is five days long, and by then the movie won’t be in the cinema anymore.

So he’s basically jeopardizing his sleep hours and his job to get this to work. Until he hears and feels Donghyuck shuffling around on the bed, and takes his eyes off his laptop to look at him – when he does, Donghyuck’s got a single eye open and a frown adorning his face.

“Mark?” is the only thing he says, and Mark can only smile. Donghyuck looks like everything he has ever dreamt of right there and then, with his messed up back-to-brown hair and his moles-full body all spread out, wearing Mark’s t-shirt and covering his face with both his arms to shield himself from the bright light that Mark’s laptop emanates – all soft and tired and pretty. 

Being with Donghyuck means falling in love with him, over and over and over again, Mark finds out – it’s as easy as waking up in his arms, or watching him fall asleep on clothes too-big, too-old; as easy as kissing him close enough to the mouth it makes him frown and chuckle. So, when Mark looks at Donghyuck like that, he can’t help but to close his laptop, leave it on the nightstand and reach down to take Donghyuck’s arms out of his face, just to kiss him.

“Sorry, bub, did I wake you?” Mark mumbles, only a few inches away from his face, still smiling, still wanting to kiss Donghyuck numb. Donghyuck makes an affirmative noise, some kind of humming, and closes his eyes again.

“Heat is killing me, also” he says, words chewed up and dragged “Can you turn the AC up, Key?”

“Sure”

Mark lays down on Donghyuck’s bed again after doing so, and finds out that Donghyuck had opened his eyes again, and is looking at him in the darkness of the room. They just look at each other, for minutes, like just locking eyes is enough for them to survive, no sleep needed, not even air.

“What were you doing?” Donghyuck whispers, wanting to break the silence but still keep the calm atmosphere they had created.

“Nothing, really”

“Key-”

“‘s silly, doesn’t matter” Now Mark closes his eyes, and he feels Donghyuck coming closer, sneaking a leg in between his. Mark, almost like a reflex, wraps Donghyuck’s waist in one of his arms and opens his eyes.

“C’mon, you even woke me up” Donghyuck shortens the distance even more, throws his other leg over his and Mark’s tangled ones, and places his hands on Mark’s chest.

“I was-” Mark laughs, mostly at himself, because he looks away from Donghyuck face for just a second and he catches a 1:15am on the clock on Donghyuck’s nightstand “I was booking us tickets for the new Spider-Man movie”

Donghyuck breaks the silence completely when he snorts out loud, then, and Mark tells him to ‘Shut up, God’ while hiding his face on Donghyuck’s neck.

“This late?” Donghyuck asks, Mark groans and nods.

Still hidden, he mumbles “It’s just that we’re so busy lately, we can barely go out anymore” Mark sighs, and Donghyuck’s hand travels from his chest to his hair, untangling the black strands of hair “Just wanted to give ourselves a date before you go to your mom’s house and I go to Japan for the conference” Donghyuck shivers when Mark presses a kiss into his neck, and Mark giggles softly “Also, it’s the new Spider-Man movie, c’mon , we both have been dying to watch it”

Donghyuck giggles too. “You’re so cute, Mark Lee” he says, then, and Mark doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s smiling, he can hear him doing it.

That night, they don’t fall asleep until the tickets are bought, and maybe Donghyuck has to cancel a meeting this Thursday, and Mark will have to try to escape work earlier, but at least they’ll watch their favorite franchise’s new movie together, finally.

And when they eventually go to sleep, they do it so close it’s probably going to make them sweat even with the AC cooling down the room, so close their heartbeats sync – that night, Mark finds out why it was so easy to fall in love with Donghyuck: because everything is easy with him, everything is light and effortless and so damn simple – it somehow becomes inevitable.

[June 6th, 2019]

[a used birthday candle]

Donghyuck’s birthdays are always a mess, Mark concluded. He has gone through six of them by now, and every single one of them was just pure chaos.

Donghyuck likes to say it’s all because of his friends, because they are all adults now, all living adult busy lives with packed work-full schedules and little to no time to spend time as a group, all six of them – so when someone’s birthday comes, they all clean their agendas and leave the adult custom back home and have fun like they forgot how to after they all graduated from college. Mark thinks that it’s because Donghyuck is messy and chaotic and, by association, his birthday is the messiest and most chaotic thing Mark has encountered.

Though it is true none of Donghyuck’s friends help much.

Chenle’s screams can be heard from the living room of Donghyuck’s apartment, fighting with a Donghyuck that can only laugh at Chenle’s turned-red face, like his anger is the funnier thing ever; Jaemin is thrown over the black-leather couch – Mark has told Donghyuck so many times it so doesn’t match with the rest of his house, Donghyuck ignores him every single time –, phone and hand and smile in mouth, seemingly not paying attention to his surroundings, but Mark can see he too laughs every time Donghyuck says something that fuels Chenle’s anger.

Renjun is seated just beside Jisung on the table, head resting on his shoulder, and now and then he is the one to throw sarcastic comments at Chenle, only to irritate him a bit more. Jisung laughs so loud every single time, it’s kinda adorable.

Jeno and Mark are in the kitchen, Jeno filling up bowls with more snacks and Mark taking the chocolate cake out of the fridge. Both of them watch the whole scene from there, half-wall letting them do both things at once.

“Your boyfriend’s on fire today, man” Mark looks at Jeno and finds him staring at Chenle, laughing silently.

“Your boyfriend doesn’t help” Jeno turns around to look at him, and Mark rolls his eyes.

“You know Donghyuck, he can be a pain in the ass” he says, jokingly, because Donghyuck is reckless but Mark loves every side there is to him.

“Oh, I know ” And both of them burst into more laughter. There’s so much noise inside Donghyuck’s tiny apartment that Mark fears they’ll get another noise complaint, but he cannot seem to be bothered right now – they’re all having fun. Except maybe Chenle.

“What are they even fighting about?” Because the TV is turned on, Chenle screams loud enough that he doesn’t understand the majority of the words and he swears he’s mixing Korean and Chinese.

“Hyuck just said Legally Blonde The Musical is way better than both of the Legally Blonde movies and Chenle got mad, I think”

“Damn, he must really like the movies” Mark chuckles, but he isn’t that surprised. Even now, most of the fights that Donghyuck’s group of friends have are about silly things, like movies and food, and their mixed opinions on the variety there is of them.

“Oh, he doesn’t” Mark frowns at that though, and tilts his head to the right, questioning Jeno “Hyuck’s just making fun of him and he probably just got worked up”

“Mhm, makes sense”

Minutes after, Jeno goes into the living room again, with two hands full of snacks, and tells Chenle to ‘drop it, you know Donghyuck won’ even if there wasn’t something to win – it seems to work though, because Chenle shrugs and stops complaining – Mark thinks it’s crazy how Jeno seems to always be able to calm Chenle down, bring him back to earth, and Chenle is always able to make Jeno go crazy, scream out of the tops of his lungs, go out his comfort zone; Mark thinks that’s how their relationship goes, maybe, they just complement each other –. 

Mark and Donghyuck's relationship isn’t about complimenting each other, even if they’re pretty different from the get-go and they bring different sides to the relationship – it’s more about knowing, understanding. They’ve known each other for so long, been together for so long, and shared with the other so many parts of their lives that it’s difficult not to know, but it goes beyond that. It’s not only knowing each other’s birthdays or their entire family tree, but to look at each other’s eyes and catch whatever they say in record time. Just like that, when Donghyuck looks at Mark from his place on the living room’s carpet, Mark sees the ‘I’m happy’ that his eyes scream, like shining, and he winks at him.

After that, the apartment is quiet for only about five minutes, because after they eat a couple of snacks, they start chatting and laughing and, maybe they are going to get a noise complaint because Jaemin gets up from the couch, turns off the TV and turns on Donghyuck’s speaker and puts on Michael Jackson on maximum volume. They all sing, and at some point, obviously , Donghyuck even starts dancing in the small space between the dining table and the couch. Mark forgets about the cake, so focused on his boyfriend. 

When he remembers, he quickly looks for the candle he bought and left in the silverware drawer.

Then, he places the ‘82’ candle in the middle of the cake and turns around to tell Jaemin to take down the music for a bit.

Donghyuck’s birthdays are always a mess. There are always way too many things going on at once, and they all laugh too loud at all times. Mark has learned this over the years, and no matter that the age is always one digit higher, Donghyuck and all his friends look like kids when they’re all together.

Donghyuck’s sixth birthday with Mark is no different, even if Jisung and Renjun casually announce they’re engaged while everyone is eating their slice of cake – Donghyuck almost committed murder, believe him –.

It’s not different when all leave either, because there’s only him and Mark, and Mark holds him against his chest and whispers ‘Happy birthday, bub’ in his ear. And it’s still all chaos. The kind that takes down cities and makes whole systems collapse from how big it is, deafening, messy – the kind of chaos that travels throughout Donghyuck’s entire body as soon as they kiss like they haven’t been doing it for almost seven years, like it’s their first, like it’ll be their last.

When they all leave and the apartment is silent, Mark knows tomorrow they’ll have a noise complaint, just from how loud they love each other in the intimacy of their arms.

[April 21st, 2021]

[a neon green post-it]

“I should really go” Taeil chuckles when Mark says it, all frowny and pouty but with a half-empty beer still secured on his right hand.

“ Yeah , me too, Johnny’s gonna be so pissed off if I don’t” and Taeil means it, but he sips from his beer once more. Mark imitates him, and shakes his head no , like talking to himself, or something , Taeil can’t tell.

“Lemme just finish my beer and I’ll call a cab for us” Mark takes another sip, and he thinks Donghyuck won’t be pissed off now, he’s done worse things than going out mid-week to drink with his coworkers, but if he wakes up tomorrow all hangover, then he will be. He can’t risk it, so immediately after finishing his second beer, he grabs his phone and calls a cab for Taeil and him.

By the time he arrives, it’s so late Mark fears he’ll wake Donghyuck up if he even steps too loud, so when he enters their apartment, coat still on and with a growing headache, he tries as hard as he can to not make any kind of sort-of-loud noise. He places his briefcase as slowly as he can on the floor and takes his dress shoes slowly.

The watch on his wrist says is already past 3am, and Mark should’ve come home at least 6 hours ago, but not only did work got too piled up in front of his desk and Mark – not Key Mark, but Sales Director Mark – got too determined to empty it out, finish working through all the paperwork and review every email, but also, Taeil had invited him to have a drink on their favorite bar, just across the company’s building, and he had no way of refusing such a tempting offer. Therefore, Mark has to tiptoe his way around the apartment because he knows Donghyuck’s asleep and he should not be awake wandering around.

With his coat already hanging, and his shoes already placed on the shoe rack, Mark checks the hallway and when he sees their bedroom door closed, he goes into their kitchen to have a glass of water. His throat is dry, his head is starting to pound a bit and he can still taste the beer on his tongue, so he needs to drink water right now or he’ll go to sleep worse than how he should if he wants to wake up decently okay tomorrow. 

Mark’s probably not going to attend work tomorrow, he feels it in his bones, but if something good came with being promoted, is the fact that working from home is something he can totally do without filling like his failing half of his team; still, that doesn’t mean he wants to wake up feeling like he’s been run over with a truck the night before.

When he goes inside the kitchen, he turns on the lights – the fear that maybe Donghyuck will wake up from that is there, but it takes him half a second to understand how stupid it sounds because Donghyuck is sensible to light when sleeping, but it’s not like he’ll catch the kitchen’s one with the door closed –.

It’s when the lights are already turned on and he’s already on his way to the fridge that he catches from the corner of his eye a Tupperware laying lonely on the kitchen’s small island. When he goes closer to inspect it he is met by a blue-plastic Tupperware with Tteokbokki, already cold but looking so inviting to Mark’s empty stomach – maybe that’s why he feels dizzy after only two beers; damn, Donghyuck’s right, he should only drink with him after all –.

Also, stuck to the lid, lays a post-it that has, written in Donghyuck unmistakably bad calligraphy he’s used to by now, the following reminder: Don’t forget to eat!

Mark’s side of the stomach where only Donghyuck can hurt, burn, bloom, does these flips – it’s weird he can’t quite pinpoint a name to it, but it’s the same feeling he gets when Donghyuck comes back from somewhere and says ‘Home’ to no one in particular, or that time he got him a shirt he said once that he liked, or when Donghyuck looks at him from across a crowded room and smiles at him like his life revolves around Mark, tunnel-vision-like; or every time he sends him random pictures or videos of things that reminds him of Mark without saying nothing, just attaching a file to their chat and ignoring Mark’s stomach hurting, burning, blooming all at once.

They’ve been dating for so many years, and still, Mark feels like a newborn when Donghyuck does these little acts of service, all clumsy and pink-cheeked and emotional – it’s crazy to Mark how a cold meal and a neon green piece of paper with somewhat intelligible letters can make him want to hold on to Donghyuck forever, until the end of his days, kiss him numb and tell him how much he loves him by just whispering it to his ear, top-tier secret style.

He doesn’t forget to eat that night, then – he warms up the Tteokbokki, puts it on a plate, and finishes it all, clean plate, and when he’s already drank a good amount of water and washed the used plate, he turns the lights off and goes into the bedroom.

Really, for Mark, it’s things like these: Donghyuck’s warmed-up food in the middle of a quiet evening, Donghyuck’s sing-songy voice every afternoon when Mark feels like playing his old guitar, Donghyuck’s hugs when sunset hits and everything is orange and windy, Donghyuck’s shiny eyes when he wakes up after too many sleep hours on weekend noons, Donghyuck’s lazy and quick goodbye-kisses all mornings before going to work even if they share the same car and go together – Donghyuck’s warmth after a long day, hands-in-chest, head-in-neck, tangled up in a don’t-know-where-one-ends-and-the-other-starts way.

Just like now, when Mark, as carefully as he can, wraps himself all-over Donghyuck at 4 o’clock in the morning and leaves a single peck in Donghyuck’s temple as a ‘thank you’ he wishes he could say loudly but can only murmur for now.

See, for Mark, it’s things like these: knowing that, no matter what, he’ll go back home to Donghyuck.

[October 23rd, 2015]

[a single gold earring]

Mark it’s freaking out, just a bit, a small amount, for sure a healthy amount. Or so he wishes, really.

The situation’s this: He’s in front of Donghyuck’s bathroom mirror, dress shirt almost completely buttoned up, hair still somewhat wet and hands still somewhat shaking; he’s going to meet Donghyuck’s sister in about 2 hours, which means that he’ll meet a member of Donghyuck’s family for the first time since they officially became boyfriends almost a two years ago. Donghyuck said something along the lines of she’s back from her honeymoon over in Italy and she wants to go out and have dinner around Itaewon, and then suggested that for Mark to come along.

So, he’s freaking out.

Not because he thinks Haesoo will hate him or because he thinks she’ll be awful, if she’s related to Donghyuck she can’t be, and he also keeps telling Mark that she is very excited, she-already-loves-you kind of thing. He’s freaking out because he thinks he will mess up, embarrass himself, spill something over the table and ruin someone’s outfit for the night and stumble over his own words, mess up nouns and adjectives and end up spitting whatever comes to his mind – even worse, he won’t, but in the middle of ranting about this and rambling about that, he’ll say something out of place, or a humiliating detail about his life no one needed to know.

See? It’s only a healthy amount of fear.

But enough that he’s sort of overthinking even what he’ll wear, because – for sure he’s going with his black button-up, Donghyuck gave it to him and he looks actually good in it, but other than that he has no idea what to wear. So now he’s in someone else’s bathroom, kind of shaking, and with nothing but a black shirt on.

That’s the image Donghyuck gets when he abruptly opens the door, no knocking, no asking, just opens it and sticks his head inside. He’s got his recently-dyed black hair thrown back and Mark can see a glister of lip-gloss on his heart-shaped lips and eyeliner on his dark-brown eyes when he really focuses on him – Mark wonders how did he –messy and unfinished and soft around the edges– ended up dating someone like Donghyuck –messy and unfinished but always ready to kick ass–.

“What’s taking you so long?” Donghyuck asks him, tilting his head to the right, still not fully inside the bathroom, and eyes Mark’s entire body in one go “And what happened to your pants?” he lets out a small laugh, not mocking, more like delighted.

“I have like three different pants options, I’ve been just trying to decide which one will fit the most, which one looks better on me because I wanna cause a good first impression with you si-” Mark says it all quick and messy and unfinished, and Donghyuck finally enters the bathroom just to stop him, putting his hands on his shoulders and pecking him out of the blue.

“Mark,” he says when parting, with a smile on his face “Haesoo gives a fuck about those kinda things” And Mark wants to laugh because Donghyuck says that while wearing makeup and having his hair all brushed and pretty.

“Still” Mark lets his shoulders relax under Donghyuck’s touch, fingers squeezing them.

“Seriously, though, you could wear, say, my Hello Kitty shirt and she would love it because she gifted it to me or something, y’know?” Donghyuck moves his hands to Mark’s waist, squeezing it too, and leaning into the bathroom vanity behind him “Relax, Key” he says, slightly pushing Mark against him.

Silence surrounds them for a couple of minutes, and Mark thinks he’s okay here – in Donghyuck’s arms, against him inside a tiny bathroom even if the tile under his bare feet is way too cold and he's not wearing any pants.

After a bit, Donghyuck taps Mark’s lower back with his left hand and pushes away to open the door. “C’mon, let’s go to my bedroom, I’ll help you pick an outfit” he steps out of the bedroom and disappears into the hallway, Mark takes a couple more beats to grab the three pairs of jeans from where he left them on the closed toilet lid and follows him.

“I like those the most'' Mark turns in every possible angle, looking at himself in a pair of black ripped-on-the-knees jeans on Donghyuck’s full body mirror. Donghyuck, comfortably half-laying on his bed, has his eyes glued to Mark’s thighs, smiling cheekily.

“Aren’t they too casual?” And it’s the fourth time Mark asks the same question, like when he put on the other two pairs of jeans and when he tried on one of Donghyuck’s denim jackets. Donghyuck, for the fourth time, rolls his eyes.

“We’re going to a bar in Itaewon, Mark,” Donghyuck stands up, grabs the jacket Mark put on just a few minutes ago, and walks towards Mark “Put it on, it looked good on you” He hands him the jacket, and Mark looks at him wearily through the mirror.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Key”

Twenty minutes later, they’re back inside of the bathroom, Donghyuck behind Mark, drying his hair with a hairdryer. Donghyuck lightly pushes Mark every time he turns his head to the wrong angle, and Mark whisper-shouts a ‘Hyuck’ every time the hair dryer is too loud or too close to his head it kind of burns.

When Donghyuck finishes, he turns Mark around and pats his hair with a frown until he looks pleased with his work. When Mark looks at himself in the mirror, he wonders how did he –messy and clumsy and everything except confident enough– end up dating someone like Donghyuck –messy and super clumsy but always ready to make himself and everyone around him the best version of themselves–.

Then, Donghyuck opens up a drawer and takes a see-through plastic box filled with jewelry.

“Take these, as a final touch” And he hands him two made-of-gold earrings with little snakes on them.

“Babe, this feels like too much” Because Mark barely uses jewelry, and if he uses they’re nowhere near as bold.

“C’mon, you’re saying that as if I’m not literally wearing eyeliner ” Donghyuck laughs and puts the pair of earrings on Mark’s hands.

Mark ends up wearing the jacket, and the ripped jeans, and the black dress shirt, and the snake earrings. He doesn’t know when or how, but he loses one though, and Haesoo points it out.

Donghyuck laughs at it but also glances at Mark, some sort of reassuring look – bright eyes, smirk, scrunched nose. Mark thinks it’s a little bit embarrassing – not him losing an earring, but looking at Donghyuck’s sister watching them with bright eyes, a smirk, and his nose scrunched, like it's palpable how much they mean to each other, like she can sense it in the air.

[August 2nd, 2018]

[a CD jewel case]

They get inside Mark’s black Honda around 11am, after having had breakfast at Mark’s favorite cafe with Jungwoo, Taeil, Johnny and Jaehyun.

With backpacks full of recently-bought snacks and drinks, they make themselves comfortable in their seats – Mark insisted a lot for Donghyuck to be the one to drive because Mark is not as familiar with the road as him, but Donghyuck always finds a way to win, especially if the prize is Mark, one hand in the steering wheel, other hand resting on the open window, hot air messing up his hair, sunglasses on and bouncing his head to whatever song plays on the radio. So Mark ends up in the driver seat and Donghyuck in the passenger one.

Plan for the day is something along the lines of a road trip; they’ll drive to Mokpo, almost four hours away from Seoul, rest for a little while there, probably just admire the view from some mountain, and then go to Busan, which would take three more hours, and spend the rest of the day there. Then they’ll have tomorrow to come back to Seoul.

Donghyuck thinks it’s a cute idea, really, and they’ve never traveled by car to anywhere further than Daejeon, where Mark’s brother now lives with his wife and Minnie, the most adorable Jindo puppy Donghyuck has ever met. This is just another opportunity for them to make memories together, to have adventures – Mark laughed at that, because Donghyuck, beauty mask on, ready to go sleep, and half naked, being overly excited about his plans for Mark’s birthday, calling it an adventure , was just a really cute Donghyuck.

Donghyuck thought it was a cute idea, really, and that’s about every reason Mark needed to agree to it.

Mark takes a deep breath while turning the engine on, and Donghyuck laughs at him from where he got all spread out comfortably on his seat. And like that, they take off to Mokpo, at 11:15am, on a Thursday.

They’re half an hour into the trip when Donghyuck sighs and says something about the music on the radio boring him. Mark thinks it’s not that bad but still doesn’t complain at all when Donghyuck starts to look for something inside his red backpack.

It’s when Donghyuck takes out a CD that Mark frowns and gets really intrigued.

“Bub?” Donghyuck turns almost his whole body towards him “What’s that?” Mark points at the CD with his chin, trying hard to not take his eyes from the road.

“Oh, this ?” Donghyuck shrugs and Mark now knows Donghyuck has been dying to show it to him – it makes him grin.

“Yeah, that ”

“You see, this is part of your birthday gift, Key” and he takes the CD out of the jewel case.

He’s about to put it inside the car’s built-in CD player when Mark grabs his wrist, still careful to pay all the attention he can to the road in front of him. “What does it say?”

“Ah, that” Mark can’t grant himself the luxury to look at Donghyuck, but he doesn’t need to do it to know that he’s probably smiling, pink-cheeks kind of smile. “It says ‘Songs I sing with you in my mind’”

Mark’s chest closes up, and the part of his stomach reserved for all things Donghyuck is filled with butterflies, the kind you get the first few times you fall in love while in your teenage years. Donghyuck does those kinds of things to him, it still amazes Mark.

“You could’ve made, dunno, a playlist ” he says, because he’s never been that good at saying exactly what he feels, and because he knows Donghyuck knows .

“But this is more romantic, isn’t it?” He inserts the CD into the CD player, and presses play.

“More romantic than the ‘#1 Boss’ mug from last year? For sure” says Mark, with a mocking air to him, and Donghyuck just shrugs him off and gets comfortable on his seat again.

I Think He Knows by Taylor Swift starts playing.

“You sap” Mark says, and laughs out loud.

He got my heartbeat

Skipping down 16th Avenue

Got that, oh! I mean

Wanna see what's under that attitude

Mark does this thing, where he grabs the steering wheel with the hand he had laying in the window and places the one he had on the steering wheel on Donghyuck’s thigh. Then, he squeezes it two times, like he did when Donghyuck met his parents for the first time, or that one time when Jaehyun told them ‘You’ll last, believe me, it’s so clear’ .

Donghyuck places his hand over Mark’s as the song’s last chorus resonates in every corner of the car.

I want you, bless my

I want you, bless my soul

I ain't gotta tell him

I think he knows

It’s funny, Mark thinks, the amount of times they’ve listened to this album, the number of times they’ve screamed Lover’s songs, volume as up as possible – enough times Mark knows these lyrics like the palm of his hand, and still, none of them sing a single line.

Maybe because neither has ever said, out loud, ‘take this song, it’s yours, you’re everything I think when I listen to it so it belongs to you now’ , and now that Donghyuck has, Mark feels like he has to actually listen to it, closely, to not miss any word Donghyuck is trying to tell him through it.

When it ends, though, Mark is met with a song he’s never heard before. When he looks at the car stereo, it says Track 2: Canada .

What if we move to Canada

And buy some things we don't need?

Bring your mother's dog

Your paintbrush and some candy

Donghyuck squeezes Mark’s hand twice.

The tracks go by, and Mark’s hand never leaves Donghyuck’s thigh. Just like Donghyuck’s hand doesn’t leave Mark’s.

And when they talk about those

People who up and leave

That could be us

That could be you and me

When they’re already in Busan, night setting in, the moon already shining proudly in front of them, air sort of cold even in the middle of the summer, Mark asks, seated in one of the outside chairs on the balcony,

“Would you? Move to Canada with me out of the blue, I mean” and it’s just a whisper, like he’s afraid that it was just a song, insecure and honest to the bone.

“Mark” Donghyuck says, and it makes Mark turn his head to him. When he does, Donghyuck looks at him like he holds the whole galaxy inside his eyes – maybe he does.

“I’d go anywhere if you’re by my side”

Mark, star-eyed, believes him. 

Donghyuck, honest to the bone, means it.

[May 18th, 2020]

[a broken cabinet knob]

There are still about ten boxes full of unlabeled stuff in the living room when they stop folding clothes and storing glasses in the kitchen cabinet they should’ve cleaned but didn’t quite feel like. They are in the middle of the almost-empty room, blank space in the wall where they’re supposed to put Donghyuck’s TV as soon as it arrives, floor containing nothing else apart from the boxes, heavy with furniture they have to assemble and place, and Mark’s books, somewhere there in the mess of things they were too tired to keep putting names on – Donghyuck lays, exactly where they’re thinking to put the brand-new carpet that they had to temporarily leave in their bedroom because it wouldn’t fit now and it would get too dirty, phone in hand and disheveled hair all over the filthy floor, scrolling down what Mark supposes is Twitter.

Mark, on the contrary, is seated, cross-legged against the TV-wall, guitar in hand, strumming to random chords, all quiet and small like to not interrupt whatever peace there is in the room. Mark thinks he can get used to just this – laying on the floor of their own house, surrounded by things both his and Donghyuck’s, a space they shape-shifted to make it theirs , not Mark’s or Donghyuck’s but MarkandDonghyucks , tangled-up and messy and sweet but strong on the tip of their tongues, the kind of theirs that can only ever come from a well-done mix between willpower and just love.

“Wanna order something?” Donghyuck turns his head to Mark, and turns his phone off only to leave it on top of his stomach “‘m getting hungry” and Donghyuck looks at him like he’s scared that Mark’ll say no, but Mark knows it's all for show. Mark has long forgotten how to deny Donghyuck’s pleas, he sort of just jumps and hopes for the best.

He learns the best always comes when it’s Donghyuck he’s falling for.

“Sure, bub” Mark stops playing the guitar for a couple of seconds, only to focus on Donghyuck’s face – he’s doing that thing he usually does when his too tired, where he closes one of his eyes and leaves the other one open half-lidded, and brings his arms to cover almost the entirety of his face, stretching his back cat-like. Donghyuck looks so warm in the middle of their dirty cold tile floor, Mark kind of wants to close the distance only to curl himself in the warmest spots of Donghyuck’s body.

His belly, for example, showing itself when Donghyuck stretches and his t-shirt rails up; the junction of his neck and his shoulder, too, right where the moles show themselves, sprayed-out on Donghyuck’s beautiful skin, painting it with soft stokes and full-on galaxies; mostly inside his chest. Mark just wants to hide there, hoping problems and responsibilities never reach him if Donghyuck puts his arms around him and he just lays his head over Donghyuck’s heartbeat.

“Key?” Donghyuck asks, head emerging from under his arms, both eyes open, and just then he realizes Donghyuck has been talking to him.

“Sorry, wasn’t listening, can you repeat?”

“I was just wondering if you prefer Kimbap or Kimchi stew is okay with you” 

“Whatever you want, babe”

“Kimchi stew it is”

When the bell rings and Donghyuck hastily pushes away from Mark’s embrace, he pulls him in again, grabbing the sleeve of his t-shirt and gripping it, closed-fist and all, with a face that he hopes says ‘Don’t you dare’ . Donghyuck gets him because he always does, but he has always been stronger than Mark too, so he chuckles, leaves a barely-there kiss on Mark's exposed forehead, and gets up to open the door to the delivery guy.

Mark hears thank you’ s and goodbye’ s and the rustle of plastic bags and before the door closes he stands up from the floor and goes to where Donghyuck is, standing with the bag of take-out and about to close the wooden door as the guy turns around, checking if the order is right, all cozy and with strands of hair going in all directions and with his shorts low on his hips, looking like he just woke up even if it’s 10pm and the last time he slept was way too many hours ago.

Mark doesn’t think twice when he pushes through all the boxes and goes to hug him, craving touch like they haven’t been dating for almost seven years, like he’s still on that needy honeymoon stage that should’ve ended like, maybe, six years ago.

In the middle of it, he drops a box, and both of them can hear something breaking inside of it, but Mark’s way too occupied thinking that he could and will get used to this – Donghyuck opening the door on behalf of them both, closing it and finding Mark always there, goodbye 's that no longer mean ‘I’ll see you when I have the time to come’ . Donghyuck’s way too occupied trying to fit Mark’s love inside his arms, his chest, his belly, everywhere in-between his neck and his shoulder.

And making sure the Kimchi stew doesn’t fall, it’s already enough that the box and both him and Mark already did.

(“Ok, so, my bed, your TV, we can bring both our drawers, your fridge, my bookcases, and- What couch?” Mark knows the answer to that, and honestly, after nearly four hours of discussing the topic, he has to say he hasn’t been looking forward to this one.

“C’mon, we’re obviously keeping mine” Donghyuck rolls his eyes when he says it, like it’s a matter of fact.

“Babe, I’m sorry but you know I hate that couch” Mark looks at Donghyuck with pleading eyes, but Donghyuck, as foolish as he gets when near Mark, doesn't look like he will accept anything but his opinion when it comes to his couch.

“Mine’s staying, yours is trashy anyway” He says, and is about to write it down on the paper Mark has been annotating everything they agreed to so far. Mark takes the paper out of Donghyuck’s hand.

“First of all, you’ve barely even been in my apartment” Donghyuck’s stoic eyes soften a little at the mention of that subject, nights of Mark’s bare and raw feelings being sprayed all over Donghyuck’s hand pass his mind, but Mark just coughs it away and keeps talking “Second , we can buy a new one”

“Oh, please, that couch has been through so much with us, you can’t just expect me to get rid of it” Mark wants to laugh at how much Donghyuck seems to love the shitty, uncomfortable leather couch, but honestly they have been through a lot with that stupid couch.

“Can’t you have it in your office?” Because it is still not quite enough to convince Mark that it should be in the middle of their living room, as iconic as it may be.

“And hide it away? C’mon , Mark”

If only Mark had never unlearned how to deny Donghyuck, maybe he wouldn’t have found himself sighing and whispering

“Ok, fine, but you own me like three weeks of homemade dinner after we’re finished moving in”)

[November 15th, 2014 ]

[a Hello Kitty keychain]

Mark knocks three times on Donghyuck’s apartment door when the clock just hits the 4pm mark. That’s something he does –knocking thrice, that is–, not for any particular reason, it’s just something he has been doing for quite a long time now, and not only with Donghyuck, but it helps to know who is that’s knocking.

He has to wait for a few short minutes after he knocks, a ‘Wait a second’ being screamed from the inside of the place. That’s something that Donghyuck also does, because no matter if it’s a minute you have to wait or it’s actually a single second, Donghyuck has that habit of letting you know he’s there about to open – even if you already knew that.

When Donghyuck finally opens the door, Mark’s met with glossy lips and a small waist and black-and-white casual-but-intended attire and Donghyuck’s wearing these golden earrings that make Mark open his mouth in surprise because one – since when did Donghyuck had his ears pierced? and two – how can he look even more beautiful than on a regular day, it couldn’t be possible. Donghyuck just looks at him from the doorframe with a sloppy smile, eyeing him back.

“You ready?” Mark asks not long after, smiling back to Donghyuck now.

“Wait, I’ll grab my keys and we can go” and he turns around, door still open, to grab them from where they were on the little entryway tall table “Let’s go”

Mark talked about where to go for their first anniversary for a couple of days, planning this and that and then coming up with something slightly better and planning it all from scratch – from a simple coffee date to going to the cliché amusement park to just watching some interesting movie on the closest cinema, none of the dates seemed to click just right for the special occasion, and since they met on an elevator, going to the first place they met on wasn’t an option whatsoever. Donghyuck said going to the place they had their first date in, but it got discarded as soon as they looked for the KBBQ place’s Instagram and it said that there were doing remodelations and so it was closed for a couple of months, all in the pinned post.

It got them distracted in work meetings and the middle of movies, but Mark finally just sent Donghyuck, two days ago, a simple no-explanation text that said ‘Arcade’ that was responded by a simple no-explanation ‘That’s it’ .

Still, cliché, and Mark doubted a bit because they were sort of old to go to an Arcade and not get weirded looks sent to them, but it did the work and it felt special enough for them. They fully get that when they arrive at the Arcade and, even feeling a little bit old, they go straight to the games to compete against each other, not really giving a single fuck about the little kids who watch them with parents that frown at them, but enjoying their date.

The first game they go to is the Air-Hockey, and Donghyuck wins with a much higher number on his side of the scoreboard, and it keeps going like that for the next four or five games, but Mark thinks it’s okay, he doesn’t care, the important things is that they’re here, one year down the road, enjoying themselves in this dim-lighted, packed place but still only looking at each other, laughing to their own jokes, whispering ‘you suck’ s and ‘I hate you’ s that mean everything but that. Tunnel-vision-like, top-tier secret style.

Then, Mark says something in the midst of a dual-shot electronic basketball match, that goes along the lines of ‘At least now I’m doing it with you’ and it was meant to be a light-hearted joke, just an easy-going comment, but Donghyuck drops the orange ball from his hands and looks at Mark with eyes that say ‘sorry’ and ‘I love you’ in a single blink, and then he says, words-out-loud not eyes-that-speak, ‘It’s better this way’ .

Mark finds it amusing and even a little bit funny how Donghyuck can turn seriousness into laughing-out-loud and right back, like a superpower, or maybe he always seems to catch that in-between Mark’s jokes hide truths he’s quite not ready to say yet and in the middle of his ‘let’s talk’ s something not worth the tears. Donghyuck catches the ‘I love you, I’m glad we happened’ in-between Mark’s joke and it makes Mark melt a little, enough to drop the ball on his hands too and kiss Donghyuck in the middle of a kids-full Arcade.

It’s past 8pm when they come back to Donghyuck’s apartment after two hours on the Arcade and two extra ones in a cafe near it, after a ‘Stay the night at my apartment’ from Donghyuck and a little laugh and a ‘Sure’ from Mark.

When they step out of the elevator and cross the hallway until they’re in front of Donghyuck’s door, Mark wonders why is Donghyuck not opening the door. He turns around to look at him, and Donghyuck looks like he won’t move anytime soon, so Mark asks him

“What are you waiting for? Open the door” with a little frown and a confused laugh escaping his lips. Donghyuck just keeps looking at him, foot glued to the floor a couple of steps away from his door.

“You open it,” Donghyuck says, then, and Mark doesn’t have superpowers like Donghyuck has, so he doesn’t quite catch the seriousness behind the joke, he kind of just awkwardly stands there, frown still there.

“Hyuck, I don't have the key, you do, how am I gonna open it?” and Mark knows it was dumb to not understand, but Donghyuck rolls his eyes and he gets even more confused.

“Oh, but you do have the key” Really dumb, like another level of stupidity, because Donghyuck says it in a tone that makes everything crystal-clear, but Mark still doesn’t get it at all, and Donghyuck laughs in disbelief “Just check your pocket, Mark”.

He gets it when he checks both his jacket’s pocket and in the right one, he finds what feels to the touch like a key. He opens his eyes wide, and it’s really dumb, but Donghyuck looks at him with softened eyes and Mark wants to scream loud enough that it gets them in trouble. For now, he just takes out the key, sees the little keychain attached to it, and finds himself really glad they happened.

“I so hate you”

And it means everything but that.

[August 6th, 2013]

[a stained music sheet]

Mark’s late. Again .

It’s probably the fourth time he finds himself in this situation in only a month, but his brother is about to marry and hours seem to stretch themselves out of their margins every time he has to rehearse the song he’s going to play for them, and Mark decided weeks ago he prefers Doyoung whisper-yelling at him to stop the foolery than to blank out mid-wedding.

So when he finally crosses the enormous glass door that welcomes him to the company, the clock shows a 6:15pm instead of a 5:50pm. Mark thinks it could be worse, it has been worse; regardless, he walks as fast as his legs let him, with a bunch of music sheets still squeezed in one hand, and the red portfolio tagged ‘Kim-Yang’ Taeil asked him to lend him and an Iced Tea in the other.

He barely even notices Jungwoo over at the front desk, welcoming him with some joke, and only acknowledges the greeting with a quick nod of the head. 

When he gets to the elevator, he has to do a bunch of maneuvering to press the button without everything falling from his busy hands, but he does, and the elevator dings when it reaches the ground floor about two minutes later. Damn Neo Tech’s skyscraper.

It’s when he’s already inside the elevator, 7th-floor button already pressed, that someone, last minute, rom-com-like, puts a hand on the automatic door to stop it from closing and, messy-hair and unknotted-tie, gets inside too.

The guy breathes heavily, and if Mark focuses enough on him, he can even see droplets of sweat traveling down his forehead and reaching his neck, and he turns around to look at himself in the elevator’s mirror, fixing his hair franticly and knotting his tie in a way that makes Mark want to reach for him and just do it himself. The guy looks like he’s late.

It makes Mark smirk a little, small enough that is not perceived. The guy looks cute.

Then he turns around, wide-eyed, and is about to press the button to the 7th floor until he notices it’s green, and he swiftly looks at Mark. Mouth twisted into a smile and cheeks turning pink, he just turns around for a millisecond to glance at Mark, and Mark’s smirk becomes a full-on grin. 

The guy is cute.

Mark inspects him from his place in a corner of the metallic box, eyes everywhere – the strands of hair the guy didn’t quite manage to put in place, the tan arms that show themselves from the way he has his sleeves rolled up, the long fingers gripping a paper envelope strong enough it gets creased, the anxious way his long legs move up and down. And when he turns around once more– the four moles on his cheek, and the ones on his neck.

The guy is gorgeous.

Mark thinks he could look and he’ll find a constellation that looks just like the one on the guy’s face. It’s funny, how he expected to come to work and be miserable about it because of his poor punctuality but instead, he found out he got to the building just in time to catch a boy with stars on his skin and blush high on his cheeks.

They spend the next few minutes in complete silence, just them two in the 2 by 2 elevator, and when it finally arrives on the 7th floor, both of them let out a relieved sigh. Mark wants to laugh at the fact that they did it exactly at the same time, but the clock ticks to a too-late 6:21pm, and not only do both of them know it but also does Doyoung, who appears in front of them as soon as the doors open, tapping his feet against the clean tile floor and checking his clock.

“Goddammit, there you are,” he says when he sees them both, Mark hears the guy swallowing, and he clears his throat, getting out of the elevator first. The guy follows shortly after.

“Mark, Taeil has been looking for you for the past 20 minutes, go find the poor guy” Doyoung tells him, rubbing his forehead with one hand.

Mark wants to stay long enough to hear the guy's name, to catch it somehow, but he understands that, after all, even if he got lucky, he’s more than half an hour late and if he actually wants to get promoted, he needs to start working right about now; he just says,

“Noted” and he’s about to go to Taeil’s office, just a hallway away from where they are, until Doyoung grabs him by the forearm, turning him around. The force in which he does it messes with Mark’s equilibrated way of holding a cup full of Iced Tea and a portfolio with only five fingers, and when he's turning around, the tea splashes over him, the portfolio, and even some of the music sheets secured in his other hand.

Doyoung lets out a whispered ‘Shit, sorry’ , and Mark swears he heard the cute guy chuckling. Mark looks at him, now him being the one with an embarrassed smile and pink cheeks, and then whispers back to Doyoung a ‘´s okay’ .

Doyoung clears his throat, and looks at Mark half apologetic, half tired “Just, go to Taeil, clean yourself and stop the foolery Mark, it’s like the fifth time this happens”.

“Fourth actually”

“Mark” Doyoung looks at him with warning eyes, and Mark chuckles a bit because he knows Doyoung’s warnings are always meaningless and because the boy is still looking at him from somewhere behind Donghyuck and Mark doesn’t need to embarrass himself more by actually getting scolded by Doyoung.

When he actually goes away and is about to make a turn to the left to get to Taeil’s office, he hears a “Now, Donghyuck , let me show you around” and forgets where he even has to go because, even with his dress shirt turning brown from the tea and some of his music sheets somewhat ruined, the only thing he can think about is Donghyuck .

Who cares about being on time and being promoted if he can get another glance at the new guy on his floor that looks like taken out of a rom-com and put right in front of Mark’s weak heart.

(Honest to the bone, Mark doesn’t remember when did this whole keeping-our-memories-in-a-box started, when did the box even come to life. Still, when Donghyuck asks him about the B written-out in it, and why isn’t it a D or maybe even an H, Mark’s mind goes directly to this day:

[November 15th, 2013]

[a black bold-lettered B]

Things with Donghyuck go sort of like this: they go out on dates, they flirt until either they get too embarrassed or they run out of stupid pick-up lines, they start to kiss goodbye on the fifth date, they start to steal kisses on the middle of a conversation by the seventh, and in the midst of it, they fall. Deep, fast.

It’s been almost four months when November comes and Mark is in so deep, really, it’s ridiculous – so, he concludes, he should just ask Donghyuck to be, officially, his boyfriend. Because no matter how many times Mark has stayed until the sun is rising in Donghyuck’s apartment, or how many of Mark’s t-shirts Donghyuck has inside his closet – they’re not official.

Now, Mark’s a man on a mission.

So, it’s Friday night, it’s cold inside Donghyuck’s apartment, and Mark really hates how plastic-y Donghyuck’s couch feels under him, but there are sacrifices he has to make in order to date Donghyuck, and honestly, he’s willing to take them all for him.

Donghyuck is just beside him, joystick in hand, eyes on screen, pout on mouth, and Mark just wants to reach and pull him as close as he can. Satiate the need for heat with one of Donghyuck’s hugs – instead, he gets to watch Donghyuck play and fail some kind of racing game on his console.

Not quite the plan he had in mind when he knocked on Donghyuck’s door with take-out and a smile, honestly.

Don’t get him wrong, he likes watching Donghyuck, admire him – over the past three months or so he has been doing it a lot, and he cannot get tired of it, because it can only be luck that he gets to see Donghyuck in every possible scenario – but he came here to ask the boy to date him, not to watch him paying more attention to the TV than to him.

Also, the first time was funny, Donghyuck sighing and whisper-screaming curse words; the second time was okay, but by the fourth Mark just wanted to turn the game off and cuddle Donghyuck.

When Mark eventually just gets a bit too tired of Donghyuck failing and failing every round, he plans out his next moves –in his opinion, the decisive ones–, and when a plan is mapped out on his head, he slowly gets up from the couch. Just when he reaches out to put his jacket on, he hears the game coming to a stop. Mark declares it a victory for him.

Donghyuck gets up quickly, like only now he realizes what he has been doing for the past hour and so, and stops Mark from further moving by throwing his arms over his shoulders, in some sort of hug.

“Sorry, my god, sorry, sorry ” he says, fast, mumbled.

Mark looks at Donghyuck right in the eye, then, and Donghyuck feels for the first time in a while like he doesn’t catch whatever hides inside Mark’s star-like eyes. It tastes quite unknown on the tip of his tongue, and it disorients him.

It’s this slightly-annoyed look mixed up with something strange, teasing but not quite, Donghyuck really can’t tell and it shows and Mark wants to laugh but he decides to keep up the facade a little bit longer – to see if Donghyuck crumbles under him, or if he catches whatever the shine in Mark’s eyes are trying so hard to tell him.

Mark slightly pushes him away not short after - he grabs him by the shoulders and puts space in where, before, there wasn’t. And right there and then, still staring him down, Mark smirks a little bit and says

“ Oh , so now suddenly because all else fails you've decided to come crawling back to me?"

And it’s there, shouting at him to get it, and it takes Donghyuck a couple of beats but then, Donghyuck figures out what Mark’s pupils hide.

Love .

Love with a spark of annoyance, sure, and a whole lot of bicker, but still, love .

It sparks inside of Donghyuck’s body, this rush of energy he feels everywhere on his body as soon as he realizes, and Mark looks at him like he’s been so oblivious is actually funny – all half-lidded eyes and smirk still present in his mouth, ready to give Donghyuck his word as soon as Donghyuck catches the message. It makes Donghyuck scream internally, Mark thinks it’s just so damn adorable .

“Sorry” Donghyuck says, once more, but this time lighter and with his heart beating rapidly not because of low-key fear, but because of high-key excitement, and stares right back at Mark.

“Are you gonna pay attention to me or what, baby ?”

Mark can see Donghyuck swallowing down at the pet name, like trying to chew it down, taste it properly – Mark’s smirk gets bigger. Through the months, Donghyuck just seems to get cuter and cuter, and- You get it.

Then, Donghyuck, slowly, puts his arms back where they were, on Mark’s shoulder. And, just like that, he kisses him.

And the kiss is like any other they’ve shared till now – unpredictable, out-of-the-blue, bold, messy, never quite getting the tempo right for the first seconds, but the difference lays in the fact they don’t rush. At all.

They take their time, for the first time, they slow time around themselves and dive head-first into each other – Mark likes kissing Donghyuck because he does it every single time like you are the only person in the whole world, like the rest evaporates at the single touch of lip over lip, like it doesn’t matter what can possibly happen outside of the kiss. Mark likes kissing Donghyuck because he feels invincible when doing it, too, like nothing can take him down as long as Donghyuck stays like this – glued to him from head to toe, smiling in-between the kiss, tasting like wild nights and peaceful mornings –and a sting of that god-awful Red Bull he drank minutes ago– right in the tip of Mark’s tongue.

And, to the very core, Mark likes to kiss Donghyuck because he feels worshiped, touched by an angel, lucky as ever.

Donghyuck likes kissing Mark simply and not-at-all, because of this: it feels like home .

“Stop messing with me, Mark,” says Donghyuck as soon as they let go, and pecks him once more “Though you were actually mad” Another peck.

“I am?” And they would’ve believed it if Mark wouldn’t have kissed him once more.

Mark really hates Donghyuck’s couch, with a burning passion, but he lays there, with Donghyuck laying on his chest, and thinks maybe he can get used to it.

“Y’know, I like ‘baby’ ” Donghyuck breaks the silence and slightly pushes himself up, now having an elbow on each side of Mark’s body, and rests his head in one of his hands. He stares down at Mark.

“Yeah? You like pet names?” Donghyuck rolls his eyes at Mark’s joking tone, but still nods “What about bub, or babe, or dunno, buttercup? Bunny?”

Donghyuck laughs, and Mark does just the same. “Why do all of those start with ‘B’?” Donghyuck asks him, eyebrows raised and laugh still present when he talks.

“I dunno, first ones that came to my mind” Mark shrugs.

“Oh, so Buttercup came to your head first instead of, I don’t know, love ? Or honey ?” Donghyuck frowns down at him and rolls his eyes once more.

After a couple of beats of just silence, Donghyuck speaks again,

“Babe and bub are cute, like’em”

“Buttercup?”

“Buttercup’s a big no, Mark Lee”

“What about Boyfriend ? You like that ’starting with B’ one?”

“Mhm, kinda”)

For Donghyuck, it’s things like these: Mark, star-eyes wide open, looking at him that way he does when he lets all his walls down and strips himself to skin and bone for you to watch him as he is, without cover-ups or costumes or jokes to dissipate the moment, squeezing his thigh two times, like when he gets overwhelmed and feelings get all bottled up on his throat – raw and messy and unfinished and soft around the edges, looking ten years younger, almost as young as the day they met, almost as young as the day they fell in love.

He needs not more than a two-second glance to realize that Mark is the solidification of his best dreams.

For Donghyuck, it’s things like these: the empty space in the box he keeps inside the vanity’s drawer, the special-edition popcorn bucket somewhere in their kitchen, the framed picture of him and his friends hanging on the entryway, the hole in their dresser, the keys to his old apartment that he still keeps, the pinned playlist on their shared Spotify account, the blue-plastic Tupperware set his mom gifted him inside the kitchen cabinets, the recording of Mark singing ‘Lover’ dressed in a forest-green tuxedo.

The trinkets they accumulated that now crowd all the corners of their home like reminders of all the moments they spent right beside the other, holding each other up, kissing the bad days away, laughing until they cried, stumbling their way into life together, filling every empty and dark space with smiles that make your cheeks hurt and all the stars they’ve gathered from skin and eyes.

Trinkets just like this one: the blue velvet box that rests in the darkest nook of the last drawer on Donghyuck’s nightstand, golden ring secured inside ready to be displayed, accepted, worn.

[December 31st, 2022]

[a blue velvet box]

It’s the first time neither of them is going to celebrate New Year’s Eve with their families, they plan on going each to their hometowns tomorrow when 2022 becomes just another turned page, but right now they are eating take-out food on the comfiest clothes they could find clean and watching Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2 for the nth time since they started dating. They really are living their best life.

It’s not that they didn’t want to spend this holiday with their respective families, but having traveled for Christmas already, and Donghyuck only returning home two days ago, they were craving alone time. Just wasting time doing nothing productive for hours, escaping the cold with the warmth of each other’s bodies, and having zero responsibilities whatsoever for what remains of the winter holidays.

So there they are, with the blanket Mark’s mom knitted for him last Christmas thrown over their bodies, that find themselves limbs-over-limbs underneath it –it’s not The comfiest position ever, Donghyuck feels Mark’s elbow buried on his hip, sort of painful, and he knows his knee pressed to Mark’s thigh can’t be much different, but they make it work–, Donghyuck’s head laying on top of Mark’s left shoulder, watching Dr. Octopus and Spider-Man’s last fight with gripped teeth and tensed jaws like they don’t know what’s going to happen next. They have Chinese take-out on their hands, laying atop the blanket, on their covered laps, but they stop eating when a big metal roof piece is about to crush MJ.

Ridiculous, really, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Though for sure it isn’t quite what Donghyuck had in mind – neither for this year’s New Year’s Eve or for his proposal. He had in mind, for the first, something along the lines of last’s year one, being surrounded by his family, Haesoo laughing too loud, Donghee telling bad jokes with a straight face like she always does, Minhae running around and cheering too high and screaming like his life depends on it, his mom and her smile and her homemade Kimchi and that looks she has on her face everytime Mark’s mentioned, even if it’s a two-seconds-long whisper, and his dad, giving him the warmests of hugs, and always happily being the butt of everyone’s joke. He was picturing noise and so much food and his mom bringing the karaoke machine from where it’s gathering dust in their basement, 12 o’clock so far away and so close at the same time.

For the second, he didn’t have much planned, but at least he hoped for the whole long-emotional-ment kneeling-down-on-one-knee thing.

Neither happen, at all, but Donghyuck now knows that things can go a million and one way differently, and he’s okay with that just as long as he goes through those with Mark just like he is right now – pressed onto him, not quite fitting right in all the spaces he’s supposed to but secured by his side like saying ‘no matter if we aren’t perfect, no matter if we don’t really fit together, we’ll make it work, always’.

MJ is running away from the church, all dressed in beautiful white, when Donghyuck grabs the remote and disentagles himself from Mark, standing up. Mark looks up at him, still covered on itchy red-blue wool.

“Something happened?” He tilts his head to the right, and his eyes sparkle in the middle of the dark night. There’s two minutes more to go until midnight hits and the year is officially done and over, and as soon as Donghyuck realized, he knew that was it – still, he doesn’t quite know how to explain it to Mark’s confused self.

“Wait a sec” Instead, he dives into the hallway and then, only a turn to the right, he goes inside their bedroom. He doesn’t have to look to long for the little box inside the last drawer of his nightstand –the one on the right side, obviously – to find it; he had memorized the placement of it from how many time he took it out while Mark was working just to stare at it, looking for a sign that it was the moment to open it and take the ring out.

He bought the ring around five months ago, a week or so after he caught Mark with the B Box, and he showed every trinket and piece of their life that was inside of it, re-telling stories like Donghyuck wasn’t part of them, fairy-tale-like, with big doe eyes and an excitement Donghyuck wanted Mark to have everyday of his life, details and laughs and Donghyuck’s tears rolling down the carpeted floor and then Mark’s t-shirt. It was this golden dedicated ring, thin and with no piece of stone at sight.

When Donghyuck takes it in his hand, he knows this is it. It screams to him to do it now before the rush of adrenaline from New Year and silly Spider-Man dissipates and he hides it away again. He goes for it.

“Mark?” Donghyuck will always find it amusing how with the simple call of his name, Mark perks up and pays every bit of his attention to Donghyuck, every single time it happens. Donghyuck, back from the bedroom and with one hand behind his back, like trying to hide something so big it shows anyway, sits down on the couch once again and stares into Mark’s starry eyes.

“You are the love of my life” Donghyuck says it like it’s a fact, like no matter how much time goes by, Mark will always be the one, imprinted on his soul and there to say however things turn out – reality is, it is a fact. “I love you with my whole heart” he says then, and that’s a fact too. One so true it could go into history books, one so loud Donghyuck thinks Mark doesn’t need to hear it in order to know it, but Donghyuck likes saying it out loud regardless, just for the hell of it, just so they never forget.

It’s exactly midnight when Donghyuck’s hand comes in front of Mark’s eyes, fingers holding on to a little blue-toned box. Mark’s eyes tear up at the speed of light, and he opens them wide enough Donghyuck is kind of worried.

The question is in the air, Donghyuck knows they both feel it, up on their throats, over every surface, filling their lungs, hidden in every nook of the house – still, Donghyuck can’t say it, maybe because he’s scared even after so many years of ‘you should get married’ s and ‘if we ever have a wedding…’ s and ‘when’s the wedding, guys?’ s, his heart still heats too fast and his throat is closed-off and it feels like too much and nothing at all is happening. Maybe it is because, in the back of his head, he knows he doesn’t need to for Mark to understand it, and he’s always thought that was the magic of it all – the way they communicate without saying a world at all, the way they share so many things with only looking at each other’s eyes and seeing every sign on the other’s body, catching things no one can when it comes to them, like having learned each other out so well, so in-depth.

Donghyuck can see Mark’s answer in the first tear, falling down slowly from his cheek, Donghyuck puts a hand on his cheek and cleans it away softly; in his smile, how big it is, how it shows in Mark’s face like it belongs there, all crooked and shiny; but mostly, in the way he leans forward only to put one hand on top of Donghyuck’s thigh and he squeezes it two times.

Donghyuck doesn’t need more than that to open the box, take Mark’s hand and put the ring on his left ring-finger, golden band wrapping his finger like a promise.

To the core, for Donghyuck, it’s this: Mark.