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Never properly introduced, Donghyuck has always been there, both in passing and not at all.
Mark can’t remember the first time he heard his name, how he came to learn it, the moment he started to link it to wavy sand hair and scattered moles. Like an elongated shadow born from late afternoon sun, Donghyuck lingered around the corners in quiet, fleeting, stare-or-you’ll-miss-him moments.
Some people sound like a broken record. An old song you’ve heard a thousand times—on the car radio, on the elevator, on the speakers of a shop while you wrestle your body into stiff pieces of clothing in a too-small fitting room—but you don’t stop and listen because it’s never the right moment. It's always about the moment.
Missing the beat, Mark spends years muttering half-words under his breath before he starts making up the lyrics because he’s never paid enough attention to learn the words in the right order. Until suddenly, someday, just one more day, the song comes on shuffle when he’s standing in the middle of an almost empty dance floor with one of those movie-like mirrorballs showering glitter-lighting over his fancy, dirty suit. Mark sings the whole way through and he doesn’t stutter, not even once. But he’s still off-pitch, a key too late.
Donghyuck stands in front of him like that, now. Just like an old song that’s been out for years but that Mark has only learned a few seconds ago. And when he stops and thinks about their first meeting, Mark comes up empty-handed, black-headed, nothing-but-shadows.
But Donghyuck still stands there as if he’s always been there, always meant to be there. Always always.
“It’s over,” Donghyuck says, slumped shoulders and hands shoved into the pockets of his Adidas sweatpants as if trying to dig for something meaningful.
Meaningful to him or meaningful to them, that Mark doesn’t know. Is there even a them? They’ve never shared anything but space.
Mark’s fingers curl around the doorframe, his naked toes stretching over the cold floor as if they are dying to snail closer.
And Mark doesn’t even know how Donghyuck knows where he lives.
He asks, “Again?”
---
“Donghyuck is crying outside,” Renjun says, chopsticks tight between his fist as he stabs an almost empty bowl of rice.
It’s always the same melody. Mark doesn’t know when always started and he doesn’t know if it has a definite ending, but it’s always the same melody and empty seats at both sides of Renjun while Mark sits in front of him.
“Again?”
Huffing through his nose, Renjun glares at small white grains. “I don’t know what he sees in that asshole,” his mouth curls to the side, the inner skin of his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. “It ends like this every single fucking week.”
“Jaemin’s also your friend, though,” Mark reminds him, his eyes jumping through the college dining room, searching for familiar pink hair he never finds.
“Still a fucking asshole.”
And Mark can’t agree nor disagree, because he doesn’t know either of them well enough. He doesn’t know Donghyuck at all, he only knows he’s always there, either glued to Jaemin’s side or in a corner with puffy eyes.
He takes a bite of his sandwich, tongues at the cheese that sticks to his molars, drinks his water with food still in his mouth. He gulps until his belly fills up like a balloon.
“Relationships are stupid,” he says, licking water off his lips. “Who even has time for that in college?”
Renjun snickers, grains of rice slipping between his teeth and spreading out all over the table.
“You’re just lonely.”
And maybe that’s it. Maybe he is. But, at least, Mark’s got clear eyes and a decent sleep schedule, straight A’s on his record for two years in a row.
---
“It’s over,” Donghyuck announces. He throws his bag on the floor, right on top of Renjun’s feet, and he flops down after it, long legs stretched over the shiny tiles. “For good.”
Mark doesn’t know when was the first time he’s heard him say that, he just knows it won’t be the last.
“Yeah,” Renjun kicks the bag away, books rustling inside of it as it falls into Donghyuck’s lap. “We’ll see for how long.”
Arms stretching over his head, Donghyuck grunts loudly, “Didn’t you hear me?” He leans back on his hands, and the tip of Mark’s left foot fits right in the curve created by his thumb and index finger. “I said for good.”
Renjun rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it’s always for good until the next morning.”
“Not this time,” Donghyuck swears, pushing his foot into Renjun’s lap to kick at his belly.
---
It’s always—always always—for good until the next morning.
Mark is leaning against the gates of their faculty building when he sees them. Donghyuck jumps off the bus first, lingers around the corner of the stop as people keep flooding out the open doors. Jaemin jumps out last, two backpacks on his shoulders.
When they walk past Mark, hands pressed together but without their fingers intertwined, they are too busy looking at each other to offer a greeting.
Are they even at that point, though? Familiar enough to greet each other in the hallways? Mark doesn’t know.
He never—always never—knows.
---
Donghyuck singsongs when he laughs.
---
Like a song that means nothing one second but means everything the next—like verses you only listen to in passing until the moment you google them and suddenly they dismantle you, drop words into your palms that depict you like a lab rat, cut open and paged-through against your will—Donghyuck is always there in passing or not at all until, some days, he’s there too solid and too much and too often.
Class after class, Donghyuck’s shoulder brushes against Mark’s when he leans over the shared table to doodle stars in glossy ink with Mark’s stolen blue pen. He singsongs under his hand with puffy eyes and never pays attention and chases after Mark once the big handle of the clock tells them they are free to go.
Like a shadow, popping up in every corner and stepping on the back of Mark’s shoes as if he can’t help it, as if he’s been glued to his heels. Stepping on the back of Mark’s shoes as if he’s trying to get them off so Mark can’t keep walking away from him. Stepping on the back of Mark’s shoes, some days only, and alone.
---
Donghyuck is single for a moment and he stops Mark in the middle of the transparent automatic doors and asks, “Do you want to come back to my dorm with me?”
And Mark is tempted to say yes, but he lives with glue as fingertips and he has the bad habit of clutching everything he touches. He doesn’t believe himself able to let go after an hour of sweat and sex and leave Donghyuck up for someone else to come and taste Mark on his skin.
“Too much homework,” Mark says, tugging at the straps of his backpack.
Donghyuck smiles. A one-sided, soft-looking, I-don’t-believe-you kind of grin. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
---
Tomorrow never exists with Donghyuck because he’s only ever alone for a moment. It’s always over for good until the next morning Jaemin holds his hand with white knuckles, but their fingers never intertwine.
Mark walks behind them, eyes to the floor, and counts the space between them in steps.
---
Donghyuck moves away to study abroad for a year and Mark doesn’t think of him at all.
By at all, he means only in passing.
He catches glimpses of red hair on the screen of Renjun’s phone when he scrolls through Instagram. He catches Renjun’s one-word answers when Jeno asks him how Donghyuck’s been doing. He catches Jaemin kissing Jeno’s neck at the gates one day he leaves class earlier than usual.
But they’ve never known each other well enough for Mark to miss him. They’ve never grown close enough for Mark to have the right to care.
Mark sticks his fingers into spaces he doesn’t know how to cross and wonders if he should ask, but the permanent empty seats at either side of Renjun speak loud enough.
---
When Donghyuck comes back, he is still there.
Always there but never there enough to touch.
Outside of the faculty—late-summer sun simmering over Mark’s nape, red skin sticky with beads of sweat—Donghyuck stretches out his right leg, the sole of his sneaker snailing across the grass towards Mark’s body. He stops between Mark’s legs, his feet occupying the space between Mark’s old shoes, eyes on Renjun the entire time.
Donghyuck is leaning against the gates, shoulder pressed up to Jaemin the way it once—some days—pressed against Mark in class.
Mark only owns the memory, though. Jaemin owns years.
---
They barely see each other, but it’s okay because it has always been this way. Even though Mark still doesn’t know when always begins and if it even has an ending, because he doesn’t know anything. He’s never—always never—known anything.
It feels like he’s the only one singing along to an old song everyone else might have forgotten. He keeps getting the lyrics wrong and he has no one to ask how it goes because everyone else has already moved on.
Donghyuck keeps showing up to class with swollen eyes and he keeps leaving campus holding onto Jaemin’s hand.
At lunch, Renjun curses under his breath and holds chopsticks the way one would hold a knife.
“I don’t get why they keep doing this,” he growls into his almost full bowl of rice. Mark wonders if he’s talking to him or if he just needs to talk, period. He listens anyway because that’s the only thing he can ever do. “They’ve never been happy. It’s like they stick together out of habit.”
Mark sticks a finger into his glass of water, watches as the liquid rises to meet his pad, how it buckles up when he threatens to take the touch away. “At least they have each other.”
“Do they, though?” Renjun looks up, eyes setting on Mark’s finger. “Better happy and lonely than sad like this. Look at you, you’ve never dated anyone and you’re doing quite alright.”
Is he, though? Is he doing alright? He keeps reading too much into everything, jumping between spaces he has no right to fill.
Mark takes his finger out of the glass, rubs his pad dry against his jeans.
By dry, he doesn’t mean clean.
---
“How come you never go out with us?” Donghyuck asks, voice slurred as he speaks into the mouth of a bottle of beer. “First time I’ve seen you do something other than eating and studying.”
Mark frowns at his feet, squirming over the stone stairway they are sitting on. Are they even close enough to hang out? How often does Donghyuck see him? How often does he look?
“You’ve never asked,” he shrugs, feet shuffling over gravel.
Donghyuck leans closer, bumps his shoulder against Mark’s, crushing the space between them for a moment. Just a moment. Always a moment. Always always.
The bottle dangles between them like an offering and a curse. Like too much and too little. Like nothing at all.
“You sound too sober,” Donghyuck says as an explanation when Mark lifts questioning eyes to his face.
Palm cold and sticky, Mark’s fingers click in the spaces between Donghyuck’s as they wrap around opaque crystal.
---
When they dance, their legs step together like dominoes. Donghyuck buckles a second before Mark does, eyes on the floor and hands off each other.
Jaemin lingers in the periphery like a too-bright shadow, eyes intertwined with the crowd. Who he’s looking at, that Mark doesn’t know.
That night, he doesn’t know anything but the lyrics to every song they dance to.
---
They barely see each other. They see each other just enough for Mark to notice when Donghyuck is missing.
“He’s not sick,” Renjun fills him in even though Mark never asks—always never. “He’s just too sad.”
Mark frowns, taps his foot against Renjun’s to a tune only he can hear, the two of them sprawled over the cold tiles of the hallway as they wait for a professor that’s always late. “Again?”
Renjun shakes his head, lips pursed. “Not again. It’s never been quite like this,” he sighs, his head falling against the white wall behind them. “Jaemin has someone else, apparently.”
“Oh.”
“You can message him and ask, you know? If you’re worried,” Renjun suggests, his head sliding down the wall to land on Mark’s shoulder. “But he’s fine. He’s just being dramatic.”
Mark scrunches his nose. “It’s okay. We’re not that close anyway.”
He drops his cheek on top of Renjun’s head, and he feels it everywhere when Renjun laughs.
It feels good when space is not all there is.
---
Donghyuck singsongs when he laughs.
It’s been years. Mark can’t say how many because he’s never known when it first started. But it’s been years and the cafeteria still seems to quiet down when Donghhyuck laughs, head thrown back over the backrest of his chair, phone shaking in the loose grip of his fingers.
He singsongs when he laughs and Jaemin used to be right there to play the tune.
Jaemin is still there. He’s not laughing, though. He’s slouched over a deck of UNO cards, pink strands shadowing his eyes as he throws out face-down numbers to other people at the table.
“Wasn’t it over?” Mark asks Renjun in a hushed whisper because it is Renjun and he will end up filling Mark in even if he doesn’t ask.
In front of them, Donghyuck singsongs once again, his nose scrunched up at whatever is playing on the screen of his phone. Jaemin turns to him, shushes him over his shoulder, one of his hands slipping underneath the table to slap Donghyuck’s thigh, fingers erasing spaces Mark has never even dreamed to think of.
“I should’ve known better,” Renjun spits under his breath, eyes rolling white. “It’s never fucking over.”
Donghyuck leans towards them across the table, the phone still in his hands as his stretched arms slide right in between Mark’s. “Are you into wrestling?” he asks, eyes wide open.
And Mark has never seen a wrestling fight in his entire life, but he presses sticky fingertips to the smooth surface of the table and slides his chair closer until the edge fits between his ribs.
---
They have one class together during their last year.
Donghyuck draws stars all over the table with Mark’s stolen blue pen, and Jaemin’s prying eyes aren’t there to witness how the sticky nib ends up crawling up Mark’s pale skin.
After class, Mark gets his hands under the yellowish water of the faculty bathroom and pretends to scrub hard enough to not leave prints behind.
---
There’s nothing between them—it’s always been nothing—until one day, suddenly, oh, so suddenly, they are neck-deep into the shadows.
“Come to my dorm with me?” Donghyuck asks after class, standing in the middle of the transparent automatic doors one of those end-of-the-year weeks where no one bothers to take the bus to campus.
Mark still shows up because he ran out of straight A’s after the second year and his mom is still not happy about it. That’s the only reason.
Donghyuck shows up because he lives on campus. Mark tends to forget, too used to seeing him jump on and off the bus with Jaemin, backpack too full for it to be only books.
The only reason why Mark walks alongside Donghyuck to the dorm building is that it’s on his way to the bus stop. He doesn’t mean to get close enough to reach the front steps, but Donghyuck stands at the top and leads Mark closer by his shoulders, grabbing at his shirt with the very tip of his fingers.
“I can’t do this,” Donghyuck whispers, but he says it when he’s already halfway in, lips brushing the corner of Mark’s mouth, the tip of his tongue fitting right in the curve drawn by the seam of Mark’s lips.
And Mark can’t do this, either, but his hands are already pressed to the small of Donghyuck’s back like superglue, and he’s afraid he might tear off skin if he pulls away now.
---
Graduation night and Mark misses more than half of the songs because someone is crying on the dirty tiles of the bathroom floor.
It’s Renjun for a change, dried up puke all over his shiny silver dress shirt and eyes red with rejection.
“He told me he was over Jaemin,” Renjun curses with slurred words, his sweaty forehead rubbing against Mark’s black shirt. “He said we could try after college. He promised. And now he’s pissing off I don’t even know where to forget about him,” he hiccups, the glass of vodka in his hand spilling sticky alcohol on both of their tacky trousers. “I got so mad I didn’t even listen. Fuck, it sucks.”
And it does indeed suck. Not that Mark knows what being in love with Jeno feels like. Jeno is a song he never quite figured out, someone else’s shadow.
But Mark might be, maybe, perhaps, a little bit, in love with Donghyuck. And Jaemin is still part of that equation, somehow. He’s part of every equation.
“Jaemin doesn’t even like him like that, for fuck’s sake,” Renjun cries, eyes overflowing. “He’s so fuckin’ obsessed with Hyuck. God.”
Mark pads at Renjun’s cheeks softly, gathers tears with his thumbs and presses his mouth to sweaty hair. “You’ll find someone better.”
“Could be you,” Renjun whispers, like a joke, like a lie. Like wishful thinking. “But you are also too fuckin’ obsessed with Hyuck.”
Now, it should be the moment Mark kneels to confess that he might’ve erased spaces he was never meant to touch and that now he doesn’t quite know how to exist around Donghyuck anymore. Not that he knew how, before. Not that he’s ever had the right to exist around him in the first place.
He should’ve stayed in the corners. Jaemin learned to sing far earlier than Mark.
Words stick to his throat like tears, and he thinks he might take the taste of Donghyuck’s lips to the grave.
---
Mark only walks out of the bathroom because Jeno walks in searching for him.
“Donghyuck’s been asking for you all night,” he says, blown-out eyes fixed on Renjun’s swollen tears.
---
Mark walks out of the bathroom and the dance floor is dirty and almost empty. Music is still playing, and he knows all the lyrics but he can’t sing them quite right.
He’s off-pitch and off-balance and a key too late. Donghyuck is sitting down on someone else’s lap, pink hair in his fists, and Mark is too late, losing everything under the pretty glitter-lighting of a movie-like mirrorball.
Mark is losing everything and he can’t even pinpoint what. He can’t grab at it because he’s never had anything to hold onto in the first place. They’ve never had the chance to share anything but blue pens and the spaces Jaemin wasn’t careful enough to fill.
Nothing. Mark loses nothing because he owns nothing. Always nothing. Always always.
---
“It’s over,” Donghyuck says, shoulders slumped down and hands shoved into the pockets of his Adidas sweatpants as if trying to dig for something meaningful, something they’ve never had.
Mark claws at the door frame, fingertips getting damp and sticky and far, far more eager than they have the right to be.
He asks, “Again?”
Donghyuck singsongs when he laughs, his eyes disappearing behind swollen eyelids. “For good. I haven’t seen him in two months.”
And Mark doesn’t even know how Donghyuck knows where he lives. He doesn’t even remember when he first met him or the first time he heard his name or the moment every shadow started to look like his face.
He does remember, though, that the last time he saw Donghyuck he still belonged to someone else. But, today, Donghyuck’s laughter rings like a song Mark knows by heart.
“You haven’t seen me in two months.”
“I haven’t seen you in two months,” Donghyuck repeats, slowly taking his hands out of his pockets as he walks towards the open door. One of his street-dirty shoes steps right in between Mark’s bare feet. “But I’ve been wanting to see you for two months. I’ve been wanting to see you for years.”
Mark takes his hands, pulls him into the apartment, and he makes sure to glue his fingers through the spaces between Donghyuck’s before he kicks the door closed.
---
Tomorrow never exists with Donghyuck until, the next morning, just one more morning, it does.