Chapter Text
Every time Mark enters a room, the first thing he will inevitably notice is Donghyuck.
He doesn’t know how it happened. During Rookies, he chalked it up to Donghyuck’s laughter—bright and unabashed even then, echoing so loud through the sprawling trainee cafeteria that you had to either be deaf or God to not turn your head. When that didn’t work, Mark’s petty fifteen year old sensibilities reasoned that Donghyuck’s favorite red puffer jacket was so hideous, that he just can’t help but stare at him in some type of morbid fascination.
But then Mark turned seventeen, and Donghyuck— Haechan now, Mark had to remind himself—has somehow begun to make himself scarce.
Mark knew it wasn’t deliberate. They all had their own schedules now that they’ve officially debuted—salon appointments, recordings, individual fittings or what have you. And it’s all well and good, except Mark would begin to find himself walking into a room fully expecting Donghyuck to be there, tending to Coco on his DS or what not, only that he wouldn’t, and Mark would have to go through the rest of his schedule dazed, feeling like his center of gravity has shifted, in the same way the Earth would probably fling itself into the ether without the Sun to hold it down.
Okay, so maybe Mark does know how it happened, but the fact of the matter remains. Everything boils down to Donghyuck in the end—his presence, non-presence, his very existence—and Mark figured that it would simply be in his best interests not to question how things have decided to fall into place.
And so even now at twenty one, when Mark strolls into the training room for afternoon practice, his eyes automatically flit around the brightly lit space to pick Donghyuck out from the crowd.
He finds him slumped against the couch on the far end of the room next to the water dispenser, hair floppy and soft, his forehead pinched in concentration while he steers his whole body into what’s probably a sharp KartRider drift.
Donghyuck doesn’t wear bright puffer jackets anymore, opting instead for blacks and muted greens that make him look a little fuzzy around the edges, but it doesn’t matter.
To Mark, Donghyuck is a standout all the same.
✨✨✨
But the gag is that Mark notices Donghyuck all the time, not just when he enters a room.
All those years of training, living, and performing with NCT has given him a sort of sixth sense for movement—a watchful eye for detail and an intuition for bodies in motion. Even though that technically means he’s trained to keep tabs on everyone in his vicinity, the thing is that Mark finds that his eyes will always—without fail—gravitate towards a certain figure first.
It’s nearly halfway through practice when Mark catches it.
They’re being taught new choreography for yet again another comeback—a Japanese release that no one will get to see until the new year tides over. Everyone’s exhausted. It doesn’t come as a surprise, not really, since nearly all the members of 127 are on their third, maybe fourth set of promotions for the year. But Mark can’t help but notice that Donghyuck in particular is tense, more than usual.
Donghyuck has always had trouble with his back, but the last time Mark remembers it acting up was forever ago. Probably towards the tail end of the North American tour, when the constant flying around in between concerts got too much and the janky weather started to settle uncomfortably in his bones.
The time they’d scheduled in each city back then had been too short to get an actual therapist, so to survive the last two stops, Donghyuck had to be half high and loopy on over-the-counter painkillers just so he wouldn’t hurt and keel over on stage. It had been difficult to watch, honestly. And so Mark had been immensely relieved to find out that they had a whole month to rest in Seoul before they’re set to fly out to Bangkok for the Asian leg of the tour.
Currently, Mark watches Donghyuck from the other side of the room and takes note of the slight rigidity of his posture, the discreet hand cradling the curve of his lower back.
It’s nothing too noticeable yet. In fact, Mark suspects Donghyuck doesn’t even realize that anything is wrong. Knowing Donghyuck, he probably just thinks he’s dehydrated, or that he shouldn’t have spent all night gaming, or that the choreography is just that much more difficult without Taeyong around to break it down for them.
Donghyuck bends down to lean his hands on his knees as he listens to the instructor repeat the last sequence of the chorus. Mark sees a slight grimace break across his features, reminiscent of this glazed look in his eyes that Donghyuck gets when something is bothering him and he thinks no one is looking.
But Mark’s always looking. Mark can never not be looking.
When they review performances backstage, Mark’s eyes would always zero in on Donghyuck first before himself. Unable to tear his eyes away from how Donghyuck seems to glide effortlessly on stage, the way he’s able to pick apart the choreography’s every little shape and form, only to magnify it and sell every move as if it were his own.
It sucks, honestly. Cause if it weren’t for his own knack for self-critique, Mark’s certain he would have had no trouble just staring at Donghyuck the whole time. And sometimes he does. Sometimes, Mark would only be reminded that he’s supposed to be monitoring himself when halfway through the song, his own figure would cross the camera’s line of vision and snap him back into reality.
This constant awareness of Donghyuck—the sheer larger than life quality that there is to him, is the only thing that alerts Mark to his slipping out of the room before Mark even realizes that their instructor had given them a break.
He’s on his feet in seconds, and Mark follows Donghyuck out only to see him slumped against one of the couches in the lobby, eyes closed, looking every bit the tired boy Mark knows he must be.
Five comebacks in a year, and now this. Mark halts his steps, feeling a seed of guilt drop into the pit of his stomach. Because if Donghyuck had gone all the way here just to sit on a couch identical to the one they had inside, it can only mean that Donghyuck had intended to be alone.
But just as Mark’s about to walk away, he hears a faint rustling, and when he turns his head he finds Donghyuck already looking at him.
“Mark Lee,” Donghyuck mutters, looking a little bewildered at the sight of him, before he recovers with a quirk of his lips. “Hiding from Jungwoo?”
Mark shrugs, ambling over to sit next to him. “Something like that,” he says, even though he doesn’t even remember having talked to any Snoopies at all over the last couple of hours.
Donghyuck gives him a non-committal grunt and then they’re just sitting there, doing nothing but stare into space in silence.
It’s comfortable like this, as with most things that involve Donghyuck.
The sky outside turns pink and purple over the course of a couple of minutes, and somewhere in between one shade and the next, Mark finds himself resting the back of his hand on Donghyuck’s thigh—palms opening and closing in between arbitrary beats—an open invitation for Donghyuck to take the bait.
It’s a little game they used to play when they were kids, passed down from an older trainee whose name Mark can’t seem to remember. You dip your pointer finger into someone’s open palm, and then you just have to try not to get caught in the close like some fucked up game of tag.
Objectively speaking, it’s a strong contender for just about the worst game to ever exist, but Donghyuck’s letting out a snort that lights up his whole face, and Mark doesn’t have to wait long before he gives in and finally dips a finger into the palm of Mark’s hand.
It’s gone in a flash—back down again for a touch—and then again and again, too fast for Mark’s reflexes to catch him even after all this time.
“How are you still so bad at this?” Donghyuck asks after a while, shoulders shaking softly from laughter. “It’s been, what—seven years? Being this slow should be a crime!”
“That’s because you’re cheating,” Mark intones, hands still working overtime to catch Donghyuck’s elusive finger. The back of his palm isn’t even on Donghyuck’s thigh anymore, but Donghyuck sounds like he’s having the time of his life stringing Mark around, so he guesses it’s fine. “Everyone knows you’re supposed to keep your finger down until the chant is over.”
“Yeah, but none of us remembers the chant, dumbass.”
Mark lets out an amused huff, because it’s true. The original game had been in a language that none of them spoke, but if Mark was being honest, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the rules of the game. He’d gladly let Donghyuck win every single time.
And so in a quick succession of events: Mark loses a couple more rounds, the sky turns darker, and the door swings open to reveal Jungwoo (there he is) who’s been sent out to reel them back into practice. They still have two hours left on the clock before they can head home, and Donghyuck’s already halfway to the door when Mark asks him if he’s free tonight.
“What?” Donghyuck freezes, turning around to stare at Mark for a second before he blurts out, “Why?”
“Why not?” Mark only shrugs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his track pants when he gets up from the couch. Donghyuck is still looking at him like he had grown a second head, and Mark tries his best not to cower in his scrutiny. “I feel like it’s been a while since we last hung out, you know? Like, just you and me?”
Donghyuck narrows his eyes at him, lips pursed in suspicion. “Alright, fess up,” he says, folding his arms on his chest. “Who are you and what have you done with Mark Lee?”
“Dude. Can’t I just—” Mark can’t help the bubble of laughter that erupts from his chest. “I don’t know, hang out with my best friend without being accused of identity theft?”
“No,” Donghyuck says, but there’s a small smile on his lips. “No, you may not. My real best friend wouldn’t ask. He’d just barge into my room without taking a shower and stink up the whole place until I give him the time of day.”
“Oh shut up,” Mark rolls his eyes, feeling incredibly fond. “You always said you’d trade me for one corn chip, so why are you all protective of me now?”
“Is that what you think of me?” Donghyuck gasps, clutching his chest in feigned shock. “Oh, Markie, you’re wrong. You’ve never been more wrong,” he says, eye wide in earnest. “I’d never trade you for a cornchip. I’d give you away for free.”
“Wait, hold on—are you for real?”
“Are you serious? I’d even pay them to take you away if I could,” Donghyuck replies solemnly. “But I won’t have money to do that if we don’t get this comeback in the bag, so let’s go,” he says, tipping his head to the direction of the door before making his way back.
Mark just stands there for a couple seconds, grappling with the complexity of Donghyuck’s non-answer when Donghyuck halts suddenly—hand suspended above the doorknob as if a thought had just struck him out of the blue.
“We can hang out later, I guess,” Donghyuck says in the end, eyes flitting to his feet for a second before coming back up for air.
“Yeah,” Mark breathes out before he can even think, feeling like his lungs have collapsed in on themselves. “Yeah, just. Give me an hour? We can hang out in my room.”
“I just agreed to grant you an audience, and then you’re going to make me wait ?” Donghyuck bleats, nose scrunching in the process.
“Dude, I need to shower!” Mark says, unable to stop himself laughing at the way Donghyuck’s nose flares out in indignation. “You’re not gonna let me hear the end of it if I don’t.”
“Fair,” Donghyuck hums, arms folded around his chest. There’s a smirk on his face when he juts his hip against the door, head tilted on its axis when he raises a brow at Mark. “But when have I ever let you hear the end of anything?”
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Mark will never win against Donghyuck, but not because he’s slow to catch elusive fingers or because Donghyuck’s smart mouth has worn him out over the years. It’s because Donghyuck looks like that, shining under the harsh fluorescence of the office building, tired out of his mind but still smiling at Mark like he’s got himself a Crayon Shinchan plush from the UFO catcher in Lotte World on the first try.
Donghyuck always looks at Mark like he already won. And although Mark has never allowed himself to think that he was the prize, he’s never once denied himself credit for putting that smile on his face either. If there’s anything Mark can pride himself in, it’s that. And looking at him like this, Mark feels like he’s won too.
“That’s what I thought,” Donghyuck says, after Mark seals his yesses in silence. He shoots him one last smile—a heart thumping thing—and says, “See you later. You’re buying dinner.”
Then he disappears into the training room with a string of laughter, taking the last of the sunlight with him.
🌆🌆🌆
“I said dinner, Mark. Not the whole damn menu, what the fuck.”
Mark hasn’t even gotten around to texting Donghyuck to come up yet, since the delivery guy had arrived a little later after getting lost in the maze of identical looking apartments. But it looks like there’s no need to do that now. Donghyuck’s right on time—a rare feat in and of itself—standing in the middle of Mark’s doorway looking like he’s never seen so many containers in one place before. Or maybe he’s never seen so many of them on his bed in particular, Mark’s not too sure.
“Well, someone’s gotta eat all this and I’m not doing it alone,” Mark says, trying to untangle the plastic’s bunny ears out of their knots and failing. “So come on.”
There’s a beat that stretches wherein Donghyuck just watches him struggle, before Mark finally hears him shuffle into the room. “You’re hopeless,” he clicks his tongue. “Gimme that. Go set the table or something.”
Mark lets himself be pushed to the wayside, not really all that miffed to watch Donghyuck work his nimble fingers.
In the hour since they got home, it looks like Donghyuck has showered as well and is now warm and bundled up in one of his well worn house hoodies. It’s a deep purple one from time immemorial, and Mark knows Donghyuck had originally bought it to grow into, except that he stopped growing at the cusp of 20, and so it perpetually hung a little too big on his slight frame. Mark thinks it makes him look like a teletubby—if teletubbies could be cute.
“The bed table’s behind the door, doofus,” Donghyuck says, when Mark doesn’t move.
“I know,” Mark points out, even though he totally didn’t. Normally, it’s Donghyuck who can’t keep track of any of his belongings, which annoys Mark to no end. But for some strange reason, Donghyuck always knows where Mark’s things are before he even knows he needs them.
“ Okay, I take it back. You’ve seriously outdone yourself,” Donghyuck says, after Mark sets up the little folding table and they finally settle on the bed. He’s got his fist to his mouth, Mark swears he sees his eyes practically sparkle at all the unhealth spread out before him. “How did you even know what to order?”
Mark doesn’t answer, he just plucks the meatiest looking deep fried squid from the bunch and places it on Donghyuck’s makeshift plate. “Eat up. It’s gonna get cold,” he says, to which Donghyuck only responds with enthusiastic squiggling. Mark can’t help but huff out a smile.
To be honest, Mark only wanted to pick out the basics: tteokbokki, sundae, an order of those squid things Donghyuck worships so much and that’s it. But every single time he’s about to check out, his eyes would catch another little something at the last minute—Didn’t Donghyuck say he liked shrimp too? or I think he’s been really wanting to try this new sauce. And so in the end he got everything he originally wanted—plus fried chicken, an order of just about anything anyone can ever deep fry, and extra hard boiled eggs for the rice cakes just in case Donghyuck would wanna steal his.
And with that they dig in, spending the next couple of hours talking about promotions, random staff whispers, and how the kids are wanting to sneak a cat into the dorms (again). They watch a couple videos on Mark’s phone, and what do you know—in the end Donghyuck does end up stealing Mark’s food, and you know what? He’s totally okay with that.
It’s just like old times, Mark thinks. He’s seriously enjoying himself, but he can’t help but want to keep poking Donghyuck’s shoulder so that he’d sit straighter, so that he didn’t aggravate whatever’s brewing at the bottom of his spine.
Mark doesn’t bring it up though, at least, not until all the food’s been eaten and he slinks away to the kitchen to throw evidence into the trash. When he returns, he’s got a six pack of beer in one hand and a hot pack in the other. Donghyuck stares.
“I should have seen this coming,” Donghyuck says, pursing his lips. “I knew there was something fishy when you asked me if I was free.”
“Hey, I wanted to hang out with you,” Mark replies, closing the door with his foot and shuffling over to where Donghyuck was shrimped against his headboard. “This just happened to be on the agenda as well.”
To his surprise, Donghyuck doesn’t put up much resistance when Mark pulls him by the shoulder to arrange the hot pack amongst the pillows. “Comfy?”
“Mhm,” Donghyuck nods, closing his eyes with a sigh when he leans back. “S’good. Thanks.”
Despite being a year older, Mark felt like he never got many opportunities to take care of Donghyuck. He’s always either too far—out on a schedule with SuperM some couple thousand miles away, or too near—struggling alongside him with no means to make things better when he’s barely getting by himself.
He watches as Donghyuck snuggles into the plush warmth, making another pleased sound at the back of his throat that settles in Mark’s chest. It feels good to be able to do something for Donghyuck, even if it’s just as simple as pressing three buttons on a microwave.
“When did it start?”
“You see,” Donghyuck starts, eyes still closed. “When babies are born they usually come with spines—”
“ Hyuck, ” Mark breathes out, rubbing his temples to quell the tiny stirrings of frustration. So much for no resistance. “I’m serious. How long has it been hurting?”
Donghyuck just shrugs, reaching for a beer and popping it open with a crisp sound.
“It doesn’t really hurt.” Donghyuck takes a tiny sip and nods his head. “Maybe just a little sore, but it’s okay. Nothing sleep won’t fix,” he waves off, before taking a pointedly longer sip and letting out a small ahh. “God, I love this shit. Do you guys still have soju in the fridge? We can make soju bombs with these...”
He’s always doing this, Mark thinks. Always deflecting, always steering conversations where Mark can’t reach him. They’ve known each other for years but he still can’t believe that Donghyuck hates being fussed over so much that he’d rather suffer another potential injury than tell the truth. It’s frustrating.
“Nothing sleep won’t worsen, you mean?” Mark ignores Donghyuck’s rambling, but treads carefully knowing this is how everything starts. The pointed answers. The piercing glares. The eventual silent treatment. “You know you’re not supposed to lay on your back so much when it acts up, right? It’ll only make it worse.”
There’s a smidge of annoyance in Donghyuck’s features—a telltale tongue against his cheek, but Mark can see him tamping it down with another purse of his lips and a deep breath. They’ve come a long way from the shouting matches they used to have when they were teenagers, and if Mark weren’t so worried about Donghyuck right now he’d be so proud.
“Mark, listen.” Donghyuck takes a swig of beer, and Mark unconsciously follows the line of his throat when he swallows. “I know you care, alright? And I appreciate it. But I want you to understand that I mean it when I say I’m fine. Probably stressed, maybe a little high strung, but otherwise? Fine.”
And then he laughs, as if his next words wouldn’t hit Mark like a ton of bricks.
“To be honest with you? I probably just need help jacking off or something,” he shrugs, like he’s talking about the weather. “I dunno.”
The wind gets knocked out of Mark and he finds himself wheezing, putting his left foot down the carpeted floor in an attempt to pull himself back to earth.
Mark came into this room fully prepared, having already run at least five different iterations of this conversation in his head before they even made it to the dorms. He expected an argument, a full blown fight, maybe Doyoung having to come up just to pull them apart. Everything but this.
“Wha—” Mark sputters, throat dry and suddenly in no control of his mouth. “ Why ?”
“Are you seriously asking me why I need to jack off?” Donghyuck stares, lips twitching in amusement.
“No…?” Mark tries to be careful and subsequently fails, settling to run his hand through his hair instead. “I meant, like—why would you even need help? ”
Donghyuck wrinkles his nose, and then looks away. If Mark didn’t know better, he’d think Donghyuck almost looked embarrassed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“It’s not—” Mark stops, instinctively hunching his shoulders and looking around in case anyone would hear. As a regular boy with regular needs that require satiating almost every single night, there’s very little he thinks he wouldn’t understand when it comes to jacking off. “You don’t have trouble getting it up, do you?” he asks, voice hushed.
The reaction is instantaneous.
“What?” Donghyuck rips his gaze from the wooden cabinets lining the side of the room to glare at Mark, looking all shades of offended. “No! Fuck you. I can get it up just fine, asshole!”
“Oh. Well, then what’s the problem?” Mark says, leaning back on his elbows, oddly relieved at the confirmation that Donghyuck is not, in fact, suffering from some sort of premature erectile dysfunction. After a second, Mark felt sane enough to sit back up to swipe a can from the folding table in between them.
“I just—” Donghyuck stops, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh.
Mark stays quiet, knowing from the furrow in Donghyuck’s brows that he’s having an intense debate in his head about whether or not to continue that sentence. There’s also something red blooming across his face, but for all he knows it could just be the alcohol.
Mark pops the tab and the sound of all that air escaping expands in between them like a buffer. He takes a long, nervous swig.
“I don’t think I come with my hands anymore.” Donghyuck says, after a while, his voice so quiet that if Mark had breathed any louder he’s certain he would have missed it.
“I’m sorry, what ?” Just like that, he’s on a tightrope again. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. What do you mean you can’t come with your hands ?”
“I meant exactly that,” Donghyuck deadpans, sounding completely done, betrayed only by the deepening blush on his cheeks. “I don’t know why, but these babies just aren't cutting it for me anymore. And it’s starting to get really annoying.”
Mark gapes. “So you just jack off and then…”
“Nothing,” Donghyuck supplies, exasperated. “Absolutely fucking nothing.”
For a second, Mark just sits there trying to wrap his head around the whole thing.
He gets it, really—wanting to get off but not being able to sounds like an absolute nightmare. He sees now why Donghyuck seems so tense beyond the usual soreness, and he knows he should feel bad, but all it really does is send him down a rabbithole of adjacently inappropriate mental images, the ones where Donghyuck’s lying on his twin bed downstairs, teary and flushed pretty down to his chest as he palms himself through his sweatpants to no avail.
Mark shivers, shakes the thoughts off his head, and downs the rest of his beer in one go in hopes to stave off the thirst. But that might have been the wrong idea though, because when he sets the empty can with a clink down the table, there’s crazy coming out of his lips.
“Why don’t I help?” he asks, tone surprisingly stable.
Mark watches in high definition how Donghyuck’s features flicker from shock, to embarrassment, to full blown bewilderment. “Excuse me ? ”
“I mean,” Mark shrugs, trying to feign nonchalance even when all he really wants is to fling himself out the window. “You said your hand wasn’t doing it for you anymore, right? So use mine. I have two.”
And from here, life can go one of two very different ways for Mark. Either Donghyuck laughs in his face and promotes him to being the funniest member in NCT the next time they go on variety, or he kicks him off of his own bed for even suggesting to be anywhere near his dick.
Mark would have been fine with either choice, if only for the sake of his sanity. But of course, in true Donghyuck fashion, he does none of that.
“You wanna help me?” Donghyuck scoffs, voice laced with intrigue and something else Mark can’t place. He raises a brow. “What makes you think you can get me off?”
The question slips out of Donghyuck’s lips like a challenge, and Mark knows that the correct thing to do now is to back out, laugh it out like he normally does with literally anything Donghyuck says and ideally, never revisit the topic ever again.
But it’s not that easy. Not when Donghyuck’s right there—eyes searching and a dark—looking at Mark like he knows he’s all Mark has ever wanted. It’s as if Donghyuck is daring him to give into one of his little games for once. And Mark realizes there’s suddenly so little distance between them, and that Donghyuck is on his bed, where he spends night after night imagining what it would be like to make Donghyuck tick.
This is not going to end well for him, Mark knows it. But he’s stupid and stubborn so he opens his mouth anyways.
“C’mon, it’s not like I don’t get around,” Mark finds himself saying. “I’ve had a bunch of repeat customers, so I’d say I do a pretty good job.”
“Debatable,” Donghyuck interjects, but Mark catches his gaze for a second and thinks he saw him flush a deeper shade of red.
Mark pointedly ignores him, used to Donghyuck’s brand of constant resistance. He can believe whatever he wants, Mark’s just here to offer solutions.
“And it doesn’t even have to be me exactly either, you know?” he shrugs, trying to play it off cool. “I think I have something else that can help.”
At that, Donghyuck manages to huff out a laugh.
“If you seriously think I’d use your nasty little fleshlights, you’re out of your mind.”
Mark isn’t sure how Donghyuck even knew he owned one of those, but he brushes it off for the meantime because, “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what?” Donghyuck asks, crossing his arms, seemingly unimpressed.
Mark has known him long enough to know when he’s interested in something though, and right now, Donghyuck’s basically vibrating with curiosity.
Instead of answering, Mark just hops off the bed and shuffles towards the wooden cabinets lining one side of the room. It takes a while for him to unearth, but after rummaging for a couple of seconds, a black box the size of a sleeping cat emerges from the bottom of his sock drawer.
“I told you, I don’t want a fucking sex to—”
Mark just shushes him, padding back onto the bed with the box in hand. It’s not that heavy, but it’s where he keeps all the stupid gag gifts the members got him over the last few years. If he’s not mistaken, there should be an expired bottle of ketchup in here from Donghyuck himself. He seriously needs to throw that out.
“Do you remember what Yuta got me for my birthday?” Mark asks.
“This year?” Donghyuck blinks a couple of times, trying to remember. “Didn’t he get you a necklace or something?”
“Yeah.” Mark nods. “But he also got me something else.”
The box had a bunch of things in it, like boob mousepads, and fish wallets, and a wind-up twerking butt that could have only come from Ten. True enough, the ketchup’s in there too, but Mark disregards all that in favor of an amber hued pump bottle sitting sealed and unused at the top of the pile.
Donghyuck takes it from his hands and squints at the tiny silver inscription, fingers tightening around it when he realizes what it says.
After Midnight
Aphrodisiac Massage Oil
“Holy shit—is that…?”
“Yeah,” Mark says, voice tightly clipped.
This is a solid plan, he reminds himself, but still it doesn’t erase the fact that his face is probably red, burning hot the same way as when Yuta had walked in on him jacking off to some kinky massage porn the one time he forgot to lock the door.
The adrenaline rush from getting caught had been crazy, but even that couldn’t help him both hide his dick and shut his laptop fast enough for Yuta to not possibly know what he likes to get off to in the middle of the night. It was in Japanese and everything, too. Looking back, there was no escaping it.
All things considered, Yuta had actually done a wonderful job at letting Mark keep his dignity by saying nothing about the incident in the days that followed. And that mercy had continued for so long that Mark had almost completely forgotten about the blunder, only to find himself face to face with a nondescript paper bag sitting on his bed six months later, with a card that says, “Happy Birthday Markie! Saw this and thought of you!”
“Why’d he even get you this?” Donghyuck asks, his eyes seemingly stuck in a permanent state of shock. His slender fingers drum around the girth of the bottle before he’s bringing it up to his face, trying to see if he could sniff a scent despite the bottle being sealed.
“Who knows with him?” is all Mark says, because he doesn’t want to give Donghyuck even more ammo than he already has just holding that bottle.
It’s one thing to have Yuta know what he likes, but if Donghyuck ever found out, Mark would never hear the end of it. What if Donghyuck starts moaning into his ear in public unprompted? What if he starts intentionally quivering in feigned oversensitivity when Mark even so much as grazes his arm? What then?
Donghyuck has done worse for far less than this, and Mark’s better off just letting him believe a gag is all there is to it.
“I’m pretty sure he just gave it to me as a joke,” Mark trails off, hoping Donghyuck doesn’t hear the harsh thumpthumpthumping of his chest. “You know how he is.”
“Uh huh,” Donghyuck says, his tone halfway between absentminded and unbelieving. He fiddles with the pump and looks at Mark from under his lashes as if to ask permission to bust it open, and then unscrews the sealing mechanism anyway before Mark could even say anything.
Not that he was going to say no anyway, Donghyuck knew that. Mark can never say no to him.
“Smells like…” Donghyuck sniffs again, pauses, and then gives up the guessing game altogether to pump a tiny puddle in the well of his hands. The liquid is a viscous golden thing, and Mark thinks it would look pretty spread out on Donghyuck’s skin. “It smells normal, actually. Like a spa.”
“I guess that checks out,” Mark says. “If it smelled weird it would defe—wait, Hyuck —oh my god, what are you doing?”
Mark can only watch in mute horror as Donghyuck flips his hand over Mark’s arm, gripping him for a second before he’s slathering the oil all over his skin.
“How does it feel?” Donghyuck asks, the slick up and down motions of his palm against Mark’s forearm positively torturous. His face is blank when he looks up at Mark. “Is it tingly?”
“Dude, you can’t just—”
Donghyuck slaps his arm before he could continue, sending him a glare that Mark could hardly register with the way his brain is going on overdrive. There are simply way too many things happening right now, way too many sensations. Mark thinks he might pass out.
“Oh shut up, hyung. Have you seen how much of this shit they use in those videos?” Donghyuck spits out, and oh, doesn’t that just help Mark’s situation right now? Knowing that Donghyuck knows exactly the kind of content these things are used for, and that he’s probably had his fair share of orgasms to it. Fuck. “This is basically a patch test. It’s not gonna kill you.” A pause, and then he realizes, “Oh. It might, actually.”
At Donghyuck’s words, a sort of panicked laughter filters out of Mark’s lips. He supposes it doesn’t matter. He’s about halfway dead now anyways, with the way Donghyuck’s palm hasn’t stopped rubbing the oil all over his arm, all over his skin, all over him. Truth be told, he doesn’t actually feel all that different. But Donghyuck is so near and so warm that Mark feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise all the same.
“I’m—It’s alright,” Mark manages to say when he finally relearns how to breathe. Blood circulation though, is a completely different matter. He coughs, never been more thankful for his penchant for thicker sweatpants. “It is a little tingly, I think. But not in a bad way. Maybe there’s eucalyptus in there? Like, minty.”
Donghyuck hums in acknowledgement, his hand continuing it’s rubbing for a couple more seconds before suddenly disappearing to retrieve his opened can of beer.
There’s a pensive look in his eyes before he throws his head back to chug, and though Mark knows he had just been complaining about the recklessness of Donghyuck’s actions just a minute ago, the sight of Donghyuck’s fingers wrapped elsewhere—somewhere that isn’t his skin—makes Mark realize that on him is where he really wants Donghyuck to be all the time.
“It seems safe,” Donghyuck concludes, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “At the very least, we don’t seem to be breaking out in hives?”
What hives? Mark almost asks, before Donghyuck rearranges himself against the hot pack on his back, and Mark suddenly remembers every little thing that had built up to this—the back pain, Donghyuck’s problem, and his offer to help.
That part of the conversation felt so long ago compared to the ghost of Donghyuck’s touch that for a second Mark is petrified, fully convinced that the person who had so bravely propositioned his best friend had not been him, but instead a stray gust of horny wind that had blown in from the open window. That would have made perfect sense because wind obviously does not have a brain. He fidgets in his seat a little more.
“Yeah, same,” he finds himself parotting, sounding lame even to his own ears. He steers the conversation back to controlled territory. “It’s starting to get warm, which I think it might help with your back a little. And if things go well we can, uh,” he scratches the back of his head, sheepish. “I guess we can try to fix that other problem of yours too.”
Donghyuck doesn’t say anything for a second and just stares—a short blip in time honestly, but long enough for Mark to start to panic and try to take back everything that he said.
If Mark could swallow his tongue right now, he would, and he’s just about to apologize for even bringing it up when Donghyuck speaks up again, suddenly softer and more shy than he remembers him ever being tonight.
“I’m not gonna lie, Mark. That’s—” he starts, blinking a couple of times as if to recalibrate his systems. “That’s actually kind of hot.”
Everything suddenly feels like he’s underwater, like when he was seventeen, having just woken up in their old dorm room—wet and sticky from a honey colored dream.
“Wait—what?” Mark says, eyes flitting around, not sure if he heard that right. “Hold up. You’re seriously like, actually considering this?”
“Yeah,” Donghyuck says, the same way he drawls duh at Mark sometimes, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He bites his lip, and Mark finds himself fixated on how soft they look, shaken out of his reverie only when he registers the pointedly hard edge to Donghyuck’s voice when he asks, “Why do you sound so surprised? You’re the one who wanted this.”
More than his sharp tone, there is an usual height to Donghyuck’s shoulders that Mark hasn’t seen in a long time. They’re hunched upwards to his ears, tense and tight, the way they did back then when they were young and angry and none of what they wanted to say could come out of their mouths right.
“I just—I mean, I didn’t—” Mark is twenty one this year but tonight he’s seventeen, stumbling over words that should come easy after so many years. “Wait, what does that even mean ? I didn’t want this. I mean—I offered, but I just wanted to help —”
He finds them eventually, but it takes saying them out loud to know that they’re the wrong ones—bad take after bad take, slipping between his teeth before he could catch them. Donghyuck’s syrupy eyes turn icy in a matter of seconds, and Mark feels his own hackles rise, cutting himself off before he can do more damage.
“God,” Mark sighs, arms falling limp at his sides. “What the fuck is even going on…”
He didn’t really expect Donghyuck to answer, but when a heavy silence stretches miles over the single meter wedged between their bodies, Mark knows he’s somehow fucked this up before they even started.
“ Shit.” Donghyuck scoffs—a harsh, resigned sound in the silence of the room. He closes his eyes like he can’t bear the sight of Mark, rubbing his hand aggressively across his face. “You don’t even know what you’re offering, do you?”
Donghyuck looks at Mark like it’s obvious he didn’t think this through and it shows. But for the record, that’s because Mark didn’t even think he would even get this far.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into,” Mark says in the end. “The last thing I wanna do is to make you uncomfortable.”
Donghyuck levels him with an unimpressed stare, like he always does when the jig is up, and Mark shrinks into himself despite having meant every single word he just said.
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself and not me.” Donghyuck purses his lips, as if contemplating on what next to say to pull the ground from right under Mark’s feet. “Tell me, hyung. Do you know what you’re getting into? Is this making you uncomfortable?”
It would have been so easy to say yes and no respectively, but Mark can’t bring himself to follow that route.
This is uncharted territory for both of them. And while he and Donghyuck might be the best of friends, there are just some things that even the strongest friendships will struggle to recover from. It doesn’t take a genius to know that jacking your best friend off is one of those, and even if Donghyuck would be able to look at this like a one off thing and move on with his life afterwards, Mark doubts he himself would be able to do the same so easily.
At his lack of a response, Donghyuck laughs—if you can even call it that.
It’s more like a huff, a breathless sound of disbelief, and Mark feels his heart drop to his stomach when he looks at Donghyuck and sees confirmation in sharp lines and a hardened stare—softened, if only by a smidge of hurt that stays for but a second before getting blinked away.
“Fuck, Mark.” Donghyuck shakes his head, unfolding himself from the sheets and straightening out of the bed. The hot pack that Donghyuck had been leaning on slips from the pillow when he moves, still bloated with warmth. “For a second there, you sounded so sure and I—” he sighs. “You know what, forget it.”
Mark winces when Donghyuck rises from the bed, swiping up beer cans from the table to slip into the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie. “Where are you going?”Mark finds himself asking, even if he knows that the answer is far, far away.
Donghyuck doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look his way, but curses under his breath when he struggles to fit the third can into his pocket. In the end he leaves it on the table, and begins to pad his socked feet all the way to the door.
All Mark wants is to tell him to stay, but all he manages is a quiet, “I’m sorry,” instead.
That makes Donghyuck stop in his tracks.
“You don’t even know what you’re sorry for,” he says, voice quiet. Donghyuck doesn’t turn around but Mark hears the exhaustion in his voice all the same. “Good night, Mark. Talk to me when you figure out what you actually want.”
And just like that, he’s out the door.