Archive of Our Own

The city is so cold and grey today, Mark keeps thinking it must be reflecting his own soul these days. He feels extensively tired of this. His shoulders burn when he shifts, his ribs protest when he breathes too deep, even chewing hurts.

Still, he chews. All lazy, like he’s got all the time in the world. The sweet bread in his hand is soft, probably too good for a night like this, but it doesn’t taste right. It’s thick with sugar, but all he really gets is the metallic tang of blood. The inside of his cheek stings where it split open earlier, knuckles slamming into his face over and over. Four different men, taking turns. Just another day. The perks of saving this damn city.

Mark lets out a quiet breath and tilts his head down, gaze drifting toward the street below. That’s when everything else fades. The noise, the ache, the city. All of it just cuts out, because behind the slightly fogged glass of a small restaurant, is the only thing that matters.

There aren’t many people inside. Three, maybe four customers scattered across tables, heads bent low, conversations quiet. And there’s nothing special, except him.

Donghyuck moves between tables with that same practiced ease, a pen tucked between his fingers, scribbling down orders like muscle memory. His smile is there, all polite and charming in that almost too-perfect way. The kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes if you look long enough. That’s his robotic charisma.

Mark watches him from above like he’s starving. Spiderman gets out of the way pretty quickly. When it comes to times like this, he’s just some guy sitting alone on a rooftop, bruised and bleeding, staring down at someone who doesn’t even know he’s there.

Donghyuck looks tired, but he still moves fast, still smiles, still plays the part he’s supposed to, even when the exhaustion is so clearly there, tucked into the small things. 

Mark swallows the rest of his bite, forcing it down. The sugar hits his tongue again and it tastes so bitter. His throat tightens before he can stop it.

God, he misses him.

Down there, Donghyuck laughs at something. It’s not loud enough to reach him, it never really is, but Mark knows that laugh. He can fill in the sound from memory alone. The way it starts low, then breaks a little in the middle when it’s real. This one isn’t real, Mark can tell, because he used to be the reason for the real one. 

His fingers curl tighter around the empty plastic wrapper in his hand until it crinkles loudly in the quiet around him. For a second, he considers tossing it and letting it fall, watching it disappear into the city like everything else, but he doesn’t. He just holds onto it like he does with everything.

Donghyuck finishes writing, nods, gives that same perfect smile again and turns away. For a split second, he pauses near the counter, shoulders slumping ever so slightly when no one’s looking. But Mark sees it.

His chest tightens, pressing against his ribs, and he shifts again, this time more restless than before. His body protests immediately. His side flares with pain, his lip splits open a little more when he presses it too hard between his teeth, but he barely reacts. He’s had worse. What he hasn’t had is this. This version of Donghyuck that exists completely separate from him, like Mark was just edited out.

Mark huffs out a quiet, humorless laugh, dragging a hand over his face. It stings when his fingers brush over the bruises, over the dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath, voice rough, almost lost to the wind. “Makes sense, Mark.”

When he looks again, Donghyuck’s at another table, leaning down slightly as he listens, nodding along, pen tapping lightly against the notepad. He’s so close. Close enough that Mark could be there in seconds if he wanted to. All he’d have to do is move.

Drop down, walk in, push open that door and Donghyuck would look up. And that’s the part that stops Mark, because there would be no recognition behind those orbits, just that same polite smile with him saying, “Welcome, what can I get you today?”

The idea hits harder than any punch from earlier. Mark should stop imagining these scenarios, but he tortures himself like this six out of seven days a week. He keeps one night off, not because he wants to, not because he needs the rest, but because if he doesn’t draw some kind of line, even a stupid, meaningless one, he’s pretty sure he’ll lose whatever’s left of his mind. The other six days, he shows up to suffer every single time.

Doesn’t matter if he’s bleeding, limping, half-dead from whatever went wrong earlier. Doesn’t matter if it’s raining so hard the city turns into a blur of neon and water, or if the cold bites straight through his suit and settles into his bones. Doesn’t matter if he hasn’t slept. Mark is always there. 

Always somewhere above, somewhere close enough to see the door. Just to watch. Just to make sure Donghyuck clocks out, grabs his stuff, and makes it home safe. Just to do what he used to do, back when a rooftop wasn’t the closest he could get. Back when that stupid spell hadn’t gone and rewritten everything like Mark was some kind of loose thread that needed cutting. Back when Donghyuck knew him. 

Knew his voice, his habits, the way he’d tap his fingers when he was nervous. Knew what was under the mask. Knew him as Spider-Man and still stayed. Chose him anyway. Back when they were friends. Lovers.

It’s been two years since the world reset around him. Two years since every single person who ever looked at Mark and knew him, just didn’t anymore. 

“For the greater good,” he mutters to himself, voice dull, because he repeated it too many times for it to mean anything anymore. 

It sounds stupid now and it always kind of did. He says it anyway, because if he doesn’t, then what was the point? What was the point of letting everything go if it didn’t matter?

Maek presses his tongue hard against the inside of his cheek, right where it’s still torn up, chasing that sharp sting. It helps a little, at least it’s a pain he understands.

Every night he sits here, watching Donghyuck smile at strangers, talk to people like they matter, move through a life that doesn’t have space for him anymore and every night, it feels like something in his chest caves in all over again. That’s a pain he will never understand.

After some time, down below, the restaurant door finally opens and Donghyuck steps out. He’s shrugging on his jacket and for a second he just stands there, blinking out at the street. He checks his phone, frowns at something, then shoves it back into his pocket with a small, annoyed huff. He mutters something and there goes the little crease between his brows. He’s pissed.

Donghyuck starts walking and Mark moves with him. Keeping to the rooftops, to the shadows, to the spaces in between streetlights where he won’t be seen. His body complains with every step, every jump, every swing, but he ignores it like he always does. This is the only part that matters.

He’s always a few steps behind, always out of sight, until Donghyuck disappears inside his apartment building, all safe and sound. Only then does Mark leave. Only then does he let himself go. And then, he does it all over again the next night. And the next. And the next.

That’s been his routine for two years now. His painful, endless routine.

Eventually, Mark lets out a slow breath, shoulders slumping as the tension drains out of him all at once, leaving him heavier than before. He watches Donghyuck light up the lights of his room, watches him open the window of his apartment and lean on his elbows, looking around as if searching for something.

“Oh God, will you ever remember me?”

The city doesn’t answer that and Mark stays exactly where he is.

Sometimes, on the rare days when the anger isn’t clawing at Mark’s chest and the sadness isn’t sitting heavy behind his ribs, he lets himself think about the spell in a different way. Not as this huge, tragic, world-saving thing, but as something stupidly inconvenient. Like, if it was going to ruin his life, it could’ve at least been a little more specific.

He huffs out a quiet, bitter laugh under his breath, dragging his sleeve over his mouth out of habit, as he walks down the hallway to his class.

“Could’ve added a clause or something,” he mutters to no one.

The spell could have something like everyone you know will forget you, Mark Lee. Except your university administration. Seriously. Because having to sit through days of explaining that, no, he’s not some random guy trying to sneak into records, yes, he was enrolled, yes, those were his grades, no, he can’t “just provide proof” because all the proof was tied to people who don’t remember him anymore was an absolute nightmare.

At some point, they just gave up trying to verify anything properly and dumped everything back on him. Redo assignments, retake evaluations, sit for make-up exams that cover years of content like he hadn’t already lived through all of it once.

His life got wiped and now he’s stuck replaying the boring parts. How incredible. Save the world, ruin your GPA. It’s not even funny. The only upside, if he can even call it that, is that it only set him back a year. One whole year behind, which means he doesn’t run into Donghyuck on campus. Not in the hallways or between classes, or accidentally passing by and pretending not to look too long. Nothing.

They’re on completely different schedules now, different buildings even. A whole block apart. It should feel like a relief and in some twisted way, it kind of is, because Mark’s not sure he could handle that.

Seeing Donghyuck close enough to hear his voice or to catch the way he laughs with other people would ruin Mark further beyond. He’d rather keep the distance. At least like this, it’s controlled and he chooses when to see him.

He barely leaves his own university building these days anyway. Only when he has to or when it’s necessary. The rest of the time, he stays put and sticks to the same spots like they’re safe zones. Same seat, usually near the back. Head down, low profile. Invisible.

Right now, he’s slouched in his chair, half-listening to nothing, the buzz of students around him blending into white noise. His phone sits in his hand, screen cracked bad enough that it splits everything into jagged little sections. There’s a thin line running right across the middle, like it’s been cut in half but still stubbornly holding together. 

It’s annoying as hell. He should fix it or just get a new one immediately, but that’s not happening, because that means money and money means more shifts, more effort, things he doesn’t really have to spare right now. Food, bills, staying afloat, basic survival comes first. A phone is optional, even if it makes everything ten times harder. So the phone stays broken, just like everything else.

Mark exhales through his nose, thumb lazily scrolling anyway, the glass rough under his fingertip where it’s chipped. It could be worse, he knows it could. So, he’s fine.

His fingers tap idly against the table, a restless habit he hasn’t been able to shake, as he sees tweets everywhere about the hostages he saved last night. There’s a shaky clip, zoomed in too far, people screaming in the background. A flash of red and blue swinging into frame. Someone cheering, someone else crying. Mark stares at it and watches himself move like he’s watching a stranger while seeing all types of comments below.

He’s insane.

He saved all of them???

I think I’m in love with Spider-Man.

He never fails, man. My goat.

Mark lets out a quiet breath, something dry and empty. His fingers keep tapping against the desk, a little faster now, because none of them know. None of them see the part where he limps home after, or when he sits on a rooftop bleeding and stares at someone who used to love him like he’s nothing.

To them, he’s a hero. Some untouchable thing, someone they trust to show up and fix everything without ever asking what it costs him. To himself, he’s a fucking failure. Didn’t save enough and didn't fix anything. Didn’t even manage to keep the people that mattered.

The thought cuts off the second the classroom door swings open. Mr. Park walks in, talking already. The room shifts around Mark instantly. Mark leans back in his chair a little, dragging a hand down his face before forcing his attention forward. It’s easier like this. Easier when his brain has something else to chew on besides itself.

For the next few hours, he doesn’t think about rooftops or broken memories. Or Donghyuck. He just listens, writes a little, zones out a lot and survives. By the time it ends, though, it all starts creeping back in. Inevitably. 

“Mark.”

Most of the class is already packing up, chairs moving, people talking as they head out. Mr. Park stands near the front, flipping through some papers before glancing over at him. Mark sighs under his breath, dragging a hand over the back of his neck as he pushes himself up from his chair and walks over.

“Yeah?”

Mr. Park adjusts his glasses slightly, giving him a look that’s not quite strict, not quite amused. Somewhere in between.

“You know you’ve got one of those evaluations coming up, right?”

Mark lets out a long, tired sigh while nodding.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. “I’m aware.”

“Good,” Mr. Park hums. “Because since it’s my discipline, I decided to be merciful.”

Mark squints at him immediately. “That sounds fake.”

Mr. Park snorts, ignoring that. “I elaborated something easier than an exam that lasts almost three hours and completely fries your brain.”

Mark’s shoulders drop in instant relief.

“Thank God,” he breathes out, genuine this time.

“Don’t celebrate yet,” Mr. Park adds, holding up a finger. “You’re going to do a project with one of the students from the other class.”

“Okay, now I’m suffering again.”

Mr. Park smiles like he expected that. “It’s not complicated, I promise. Just research, write maybe ten to twenty pages, give or take. Then, I want a short presentation. Sounds good?”

“Everything above five pages sounds bad,” Mark deadpans. “Actually, maybe I do want the exam.”

“You sure you want to dive into a whole year’s worth of content,” Mr. Park shoots back, raising an eyebrow, “instead of writing about one topic and splitting the work with someone else?”

Mark opens his mouth and then immediately shakes his head. “Yeah. No. I do not want the exam.”

“Thought so,” Mr. Park chuckles under his breath, stepping closer and ruffling Mark’s hair like he’s still a kid. Mark grimaces, swatting his hand away half-heartedly. “It’s easy. Elaborate, but easy. I’ll send everything to your email. The topic, the guidelines, and the contact for the other student.”

Mark groans quietly already. “Sure.”

“Make sure you message him today, alright? You’ve got a month, maximum.”

“Only a month, man?” Mark almost whines.

“If I make it more than this, I’m adding ten more pages per week.”

Mark recoils instantly. “Okay, yeah, a month is great. Love it. Big fan.”

“Good.”

Mr. Park pats his shoulder once, satisfied, already turning back toward his desk. Mark lingers there for a second, running a hand through his already messed-up hair, exhaling slowly.

The rest of the day just keeps going. Mark barely even registers it passing. One minute he’s in class, the next he’s on his bike, helmet slightly crooked, weaving through traffic with a thermal bag strapped to his back, trying not to think too hard about how underpaid he is for this shit.

Pizza delivery. Up and down buildings, stairs when the elevator’s broken, customers who take forever to answer the door, or don't tip. The smell of grease sticks to his clothes, his hands, his hair.

By the third delivery, he’s already over it. By the sixth, his legs feel like they might give out. Still, he keeps going because rent doesn’t care if he’s tired.

Later, when the streets quiet down just a little, he’s back home sitting hunched over his laptop, headset half hanging off one ear, dealing with people through a screen.

Freelance online attendant. Which is just a fancy way of saying he spends hours answering the same dumb questions over and over again, pretending to be polite while his soul slowly leaves his body.

“Have you tried restarting the app?”

“Yes, ma'am, I understand your frustration.”

“No, unfortunately I cannot access your account directly.”

Click, next. Click, next. Again and again. By the time he’s done, his brain is actual mush. Mark leans back in his chair for a second, staring at the ceiling before dragging himself up with a quiet groan.

A few minutes later, he’s pulling the suit on, muscle memory taking over as fabric slides over bruised skin, clinging to him like a second layer. Mask on. And he’s gone again, out the window. and into the night.

The wind cuts through him, cool against his skin, the city stretching out beneath him in a blur of lights and movement as he swings. Usually, it’s chaos but tonight is weirdly calm, almost suspiciously so. No screaming or explosions. So instead of chasing trouble, Mark ends up doing nothing, which feels wrong, but he does it anyway.

He lands on the edge of some abandoned building, and after a second of hesitation, just sits. Legs stretched out, arms resting behind him, posture loose in a way it rarely is.

He watches the street below. Drunk people stumbling their way home, walking in messy zigzags, laughing too loud, bumping into each other like the world’s tilting under their feet. A couple arguing on the corner. Someone singing off-key.

Messy, human, loud. Mark huffs out a quiet breath, then shifts, lowering himself down until he’s laying flat on his back, staring up at the sky. He lets himself stop and do nothing. The sky’s actually pretty tonight. Clear enough that a few stars manage to peek through the city lights, faint but there. The kind of view people don’t usually notice. Mark always does.

His chest rises and falls slowly, the tension in his body easing just a little as he lets himself sink into it. He doesn’t even want to fall asleep, just wants to be there. For a second, it’s peaceful. Then his phone buzzes and ruins everything instantly.

Mark groans before fishing the phone out of his pocket, squinting at the cracked screen. Email from Mr. Park.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters, already opening it. The brightness stings his eyes a little as he reads.

Sorry for the late night email, Mark. Thought I hit send way earlier. My apologies. Here’s the information about the project and how to contact Donghyuck so you guys can start it. Good luck! 

Mark’s brain, already fried beyond repair, takes a second too long to catch up. He sits up so fast it makes his head spin.

“No.”

The word comes out flat. Disbelieving. He stares at the screen hoping it might change if he looks hard enough. Maybe he read it wrong. Probably there’s another Donghyuck in the other class. There has to be, right?

Mark lets out a short, shaky breath, thumb hovering over the screen as he scrolls back up, then down again. But the information doesn't change. The night doesn’t rewind.

He knows that email, that number. Knows it so well it’s basically burned into him at this point. His thumb hovers for half a second, then he taps it. The contact opens.

Old messages flood the screen. Lines and lines of conversations stacked on top of each other. Something he prohibited himself from looking at. His chest tightens instantly. At the top of the screen, “baby” with a stupid little heart emoji.

“You’re actually joking.”

His eyes flick over the messages without really reading them, just flashes of the last conversation they had. Pieces.

Did you eat?

I’m on my way.

If you jump in front of a bomb again, I swear to God I will slap you.

I love—

Mark locks the phone immediately. The screen goes black and reflection stares back at him. Distorted through cracks, eyes wide, breathing uneven. And just like that, whatever small, quiet peace he had a second ago is terribly gone.

“Fuck me.”

Two days go by and Mark does absolutely nothing about it. No “hey.” No pretending he doesn’t know who’s on the other side of that contact. Nothing.

He doesn’t even reply to Mr. Park. In fact, he straight up acts like the email never existed and he didn’t read it three times that night just to make sure it was real. He just ignores the whole thing, deletes the notification and moves on. He knows he’s basically signing up to fail if he keeps this up. And there’s a part of him that’s like, fine. Just add another failure to the list.

And then there’s the other option to stay up for days, do the entire project alone, turn it in and just ask Mr. Park to accept it without the partner part. Avoid Donghyuck completely. That one sounds slightly less insane. 

And so, he goes on with two full days of pure denial. He goes to class, goes to work, does his usual routine like nothing’s wrong, like there isn’t a ticking time bomb sitting in his inbox with Donghyuck’s name on it. And it almost works because he doesn’t think about it, until it shows up anyway. Right in front of him.

Mark’s walking out of his last class of the day, bag slung lazily over one shoulder, already half lost in thought. He’s tired, hungry, running on nothing but caffeine and bruises.

For once, he’s actually considering eating real food instead of instant ramen or whatever cheap crap he can throw together in five minutes. He is thinking of something decent, to heal something inside his heart.

“Lasagna sounds good,” he mutters to himself, dragging a hand through his hair as he steps into the hallway. “Like, a big piece. Hot.”

Mark’s already planning where he could go, what won’t destroy his already dying bank account, whether that one place down the block still sells decent lasagna by the slice. That’s when life decides to ruin his day, because right outside the classroom is the absolute worst thing his life could throw at him right now. His whole body locks up instantly, muscles going stiff, breath catching somewhere halfway in his chest.

“Oh, hi.”

The voice hits him straight in the chest, knocks the air out of him because it’s been such a long time since the last time his voice was directed to Mark.

“Mark Lee, right?”

Those brown, warm eyes are looking straight at him like nothing’s wrong. Mark feels his throat close up instantly. His breath catches somewhere halfway in, and he has to force himself to inhale again. His eyes sting out of nowhere, vision blurring just slightly and it takes everything in him not to break right there in front of him.

“I’m Donghyuck,” he says, introducing himself to a stranger that already has his name live carved into his chest. “I tried to call you yesterday, but maybe Mr. Park gave me the wrong number? It went to voicemail.”

Of course it did. Mark made damn sure of that. Muted everything tied to that number the second he saw it in the email, just in case. Just to avoid this exact moment. And now here it is anyway. Nothing ever goes his way like that.

Mark just stands there, staring a second too long,  because Donghyuck is right there. Not across a street or behind a glass. He’s close enough to touch, to ruin whatever is left of him.

“Yeah,” Mark finally says, voice rough, a little uneven. “Probably. Or maybe my line was down.”

It’s weak, it barely even sounds like him, but it’s the only thing he can get out without his voice completely breaking, without everything sitting in his chest spilling out right here in the middle of the hallway. Because being looked at like a stranger hurts a hell of a lot more than watching him from a rooftop ever did.

“Right,” Donghyuck nods. “Didn’t want to, like, jump you right outside of class, but we’ve got a short period to finish the project, so I was worried about wasting time.”

Anxious, always so anxious. Mark used to tease him about it all the time, used to find it cute. Endearing, even. In any other situation, he’d be smiling right now. Making some comment, poking at him just enough to make Donghyuck roll his eyes. But right now, it just makes his chest ache a bit more.

“Don’t worry,” Mark says instead, forcing something that almost sounds normal into his voice. “It’s okay.”

It really isn’t. Can you go away?

“Do you think we can start tomorrow?” Donghyuck asks, shifting his weight slightly, fingers fidgeting with the strap of his bag. “I would suggest today, but I don’t know your schedule, so…”

“I can’t today,” Mark cuts in, a little too fast. He clears his throat immediately after, trying to smooth it out. “Tomorrow is fine.”

“Sure,” Donghyuck says. “Library or…?”

“Library,” Mark says quickly. “Better if it’s here. Easier to manage what we’re doing, schedule and all that, right?”

Because there is no way in hell he’s stepping into Donghyuck’s apartment. Not when he knows exactly how that space used to feel. He wouldn’t survive it.

“Okay, then,” Donghyuck says, easy as ever. “Around lunch?”

“Yeah,” Mark nods quickly. “It’s fine.”

“Great. See you tomorrow, Mark.”

Donghyuck lifts a hand in a little wave and turns away, already moving down the hallway, blending into the crowd like he was never anything more than a passing interaction. Mark stands there, watching him go. And the second Donghyuck disappears around the corner, something in Mark’s chest just drops. His internal clock starts ticking immediately, a countdown he can’t stop.

He forces his legs to move, barely registering where he’s going as he walks down the hall, past people, past noise, past everything. His vision feels a little off, like the world narrowed down and he’s stuck in it.

Mark goes to the nearest bathroom he can find. He pushes the door open a little too hard and walks straight to the first stall he sees, not even checking if anyone else is there. He locks it and leans back against the door. For a second, he just stands there, breathing unevenly, staring at the chipped paint in front of him. Then it cracks.

Six months. It's been six months since the last time he let himself do this. Mark’s hand flies up to his mouth, trying to physically stop the sound from coming out, but it doesn’t work. His shoulders shake, breath hitching hard as the first sob hits him, raw and ugly and way too loud in the small space.

He squeezes his eyes shut, but it only makes it worse. Everything comes rushing back all at once. Every memory, every version of Donghyuck that knew him, that loved him, that said his name like it meant something. And now, there’s nothing. Just “Mark Lee, right?” Like he’s nobody.

Mark presses his forehead against the stall door, gripping the edge of the sink beside him just to have something solid to hold onto, breath coming in uneven, broken pulls. In a cramped bathroom stall, he lets himself fall apart for the first time in months.

The next morning doesn’t feel like a new day. It just feels like the same one continued.

Mark fell asleep crying, and somehow, he woke up like that too. Not actively crying anymore, but it’s still there, very tight in his chest, heavy behind his eyes, like the tears never fully left, just settled into something quieter. His head hurts and his eyes burn.

There’s that gross, dry feeling on his skin, like he didn’t even properly wipe his face before passing out. He stares at the ceiling for a long minute, not moving, not thinking, just existing in that dull, leftover ache. He doesn’t check the time. He already knows the day’s going to be as bad as the day before.

Yesterday, he didn't clock in for the delivery job or even tried to come up with an excuse. The freelance shift was completely forgotten too, he didn’t log in or warn anyone. He didn’t care. Everything just slipped.

But when the night came, he still put the suit on. He was already crying before he even left the building. Just quiet tears slipping down under the mask, soaking into the fabric, sticking to his skin. His breathing’s uneven, his chest tight, and he still went there to do his superhero job. Because he doesn’t know how not to.

At some point, he ended up stopping a guy trying to pickpocket someone near a corner store and pinned him against the wall, webbing his wrists up without much thought. And the guy just stared at him with brows furrowed, eyes squinting a little.

“Are you crying, dude? Why are you sniffing?”

“Mind your business,” Mark shooted back, voice muffled under the mask. He sniffed right after, which really didn’t help his case. 

Then he dropped him off for the cops, didn’t wait around or did his usual check. Just left to his usual torture. He sat there, knees pulled up slightly, arms resting loosely over them as he stared down at the restaurant. Time passed, Donghyuck worked, then clocked out. Mark followed. Donghyuck got home safe. Same as every night.

When Mark got home, he curled in on himself, pulled the blanket up and pressed his face into the pillow to muffle the sound as his shoulders started shaking again.

A pitiful day, really. Just like today will probably be too.

When it’s finally time to face Donghyuck, Mark turns into something barely functional, like a walking bundle of nerves stitched together just well enough to move forward, but not enough to actually handle what’s coming. 

His brain won’t shut up for even a second, it keeps looping the same thoughts, the same worst-case scenarios, the same stupid what-ifs that don’t help at all. His chest feels tight in that annoying, constant way, like he can’t get a full breath no matter how hard he tries, and his hands feel slightly off, too cold, and he doesn’t know where to put them or what to do with them. 

It’s ridiculous, honestly. He’s faced way worse than this, literal life-or-death situations, and still, walking into a library is what makes him feel like he’s on the verge of dying. 

Every step toward the library feels heavier than it should and with every single step, the thought comes back, begging him to listen. Don’t go. It hits him again and again, over and over. 

Turn around and leave. Say you got sick, say something came up, say literally anything, just don’t walk in there and do this to yourself. 

And he considers all these thoughts. He actually considers it seriously, like thirty times before he even reaches the entrance. His pace slows without him realizing, his steps getting smaller, more hesitant. He buys himself time, because maybe if he drags this out long enough, something will happen and he won’t have to go through with it.

When he finally reaches the door, he just stops. Stands there for a second, fingers tightening around the strap of his bag, eyes fixed on the glass. He could still leave. No one would stop him or would even notice. He could just turn around, walk away, go back to his safe distance, back to rooftops and silence and pretending that’s enough. He’s so very clearly not ready for this. And yet, before he can talk himself out of it again, he pushes the door open.

The quiet inside hits him immediately, that soft, controlled silence of a place where everyone exists in low volume. It should be calming. But, if anything, it makes everything inside his head louder and harder to ignore. 

Donghyuck is already there, at the same table he always likes to be. He is completely focused, sitting with his laptop open in front of him, something on the screen that has all his attention while his fingers move across the keyboard in quick, practiced motions. At the same time, his other hand is scribbling things down in a notebook. Doing two things at once like that, because it works for him. 

Nerd. 

His hair catches the artificial light above him, soft honey brown, glowing even without sunlight. It looks warm, soft, the same way Mark remembers, a little longer now, styled slightly differently, but still him. Still unmistakably him.

Mark could still leave, Donghyuck hasn’t noticed him yet. He could turn around, walk out, pretend this never happened, go back to pretending distance is enough. The thought lingers, very tempting. Safe.

He swallows hard, forcing his throat to work, fingers twitching slightly at his side before he finally makes himself move. One step, then another. Closer and closer. Until there’s no distance left to hide behind anything.

Mark’s feet feel heavier the closer he gets, like each step is a decision he can still undo if he just stops moving. But he doesn’t. He keeps going, even with his chest tightening more and more, even with that voice in his head still telling him to save himself the trouble.

Too late for that now. I guess.

He reaches the table, standing there for a second that stretches just a little too long, like he forgot what comes next. Donghyuck is still focused on his laptop, fingers moving, pen scratching against paper, completely unaware until Mark’s hand grips the back of the chair across from him and pulls it. The legs scrape lightly against the floor and Donghyuck looks up immediately. For a second, his eyes go a little wide, caught off guard.

“Oh, hi,” Donghyuck says, a little breathy. “You’re—”

“Late,” Mark cuts in before he can even finish, words coming out a little too defensive. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

“I was about to say here,” Donghyuck says, tone light, trying to smoothing over the awkwardness without making it a thing. “But late works too.”

Mark huffs out a quiet breath through his nose. “Yeah,” he mutters, glancing down at the table for a second before looking back up. 

Donghyuck shifts slightly in his seat, turning his laptop a bit to the side, making space for Mark now that he’s actually there. His notebook is already half-filled with scribbles, quick notes scattered across the page, arrows pointing in different directions, words circled, crossed out, rewritten.

“You already started,” Mark says, nodding toward the notebook.

Donghyuck always started things early. If there was a group project, he’d already have a document created before people even exchanged numbers. If there was a trip, he’d have three backup plans and weather forecasts. If there was a possibility of failure, he’d try to outrun it by being prepared. Back then, Mark used to make fun of him for it. You think the world explodes if things aren’t color coded? Donghyuck used to roll his eyes and say yes and, somehow, they always ended up following his steps anyway.

“Yeah, I got a little ahead of myself,” Donghyuck says, scratching lightly at the back of his neck with the pen. “Didn’t want us to run out of time.”

Anxious. Still the same.

“Right.”

Donghyuck glances at him for a second longer than necessary.

“So,” he says, tapping the pen lightly against the notebook, “I was thinking we could split the research first, then combine everything later. That way it’s faster.”

Mark nods automatically, even though his brain is only half processing the words, too busy trying to keep up with everything else. Donghyuck is right here, talking to him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Makes sense.”

And it does, everything Donghyuck says always makes sense. That hasn’t changed either.

Another small pause settles between them and Mark leans back slightly in his chair, trying to act like this isn’t the most difficult thing he’s done in a long time. He glances around the library, at the rows of books, anything to keep from staring.

“Okay,” Donghyuck says, pulling his notebook closer. “So I was thinking we could focus on the social impact of urban planning in post-industrial cities. But if you have something else in mind, we can—”

“No, that’s good,” Mark cuts in, a little too quickly. “That’s fine.”

The truth is Mark could not care less. Urban planning, industrial transitions, economic redevelopment or whatever it is, it’s fine. He could write fifteen pages defending the existence of underwater shopping malls if that meant sitting here without completely unraveling. The less he has to decide, the better, because the actual assignment currently happening inside his head is much harder.

Don’t cry.

“Okay,” Donghyuck says again. He starts talking about sources, about where to find articles, how to structure the outline, about deadlines and who writes what. He is in full student mode, all business. Mark just nods along, forcing himself to follow and be normal. Donghyuck’s fingers move as he talks, gesturing slightly, mapping out the whole project in the air.

Mark’s eyes catch the movement, it’s such a small thing. There is nothing inherently dangerous about hands moving across paper, except Mark’s brain has never been particularly interested in fairness and immediately, automatically, traitorously fills in everything else.

Those hands pressed flat against his back through thin shirts and hoodies. Those hands cupping his face with impossible gentleness after nights where Mark came home bruised and tried to act like getting punched repeatedly was okay. Fingers running through his hair while telling him to stay still for one second, Jesus Christ, you’re bleeding on my pillow. These hands still have the same precision, same focus, just used for entirely different things now.

Mark looks away before the thought can settle deeper. He reaches into his bag and pulls out his laptop, giving himself something physical to do. The screen lights up immediately and the brightness hits harder than he remembers setting it. Mark squints, blinking and leaning back slightly while his eyes adjust. His desktop appears with a photo of the city skyline, something that could pass as nothing special to anyone else.

The image is old, taken on a phone that had worse quality than his current one, slightly grainy. It wasn’t even a particularly pretty sunset, just one of those random moments where the city looked prettier than it usually was. Mark remembers exactly when he took it, sitting with one knee pulled up and his ribs hurting from something he doesn’t remember anymore. He just remembers sending it to Donghyuck and Donghyuck telling him that he would love to watch the sunset by his side. Mark never changed the wallpaper after that.

Donghyuck glances shortly at the screen, a little curious, there’s this tiny frown in his face, but then he looks away just as fast.

“So,” he says, leaning forward a little, pushing his notebook closer and opening a document that already has sections and bullet points. “What do you want to start with? Research? Outline?”

“Research,” Mark says, because it’s the simplest answer. 

“Alright,” Donghyuck agrees easily.

Mark opens a browser, typing the topic into the search bar with shaky fingers. He hits enter and the page loads fast, articles and studies and PDFs filling the screen in neat rows, titles stacked over descriptions, names of authors, dates, all of it organized and useful and completely impossible for him to process. His mind is blank in the most useless way, clean as a whiteboard after someone wiped everything off.

He picks a title about gentrification and reads it slowly, eyes dragging over each word hoping the effort alone might make the meaning stick. Then he moves to another one about community displacement, skims the abstract and immediately realizes he has no idea what he just read. The words are there, perfectly clear, black text on a white background, but they don’t connect to each other inside his head. They just sit there, separate and useless. He reads the same sentence once, then twice, then a third time, and by the end of it he can’t even remember how it started. 

His pulse is too loud in his ears, beating fast enough to make him feel slightly sick, and his chest has that tight, annoying pressure again. 

Just breathe, Mark. Please.

“Are you okay?” Donghyuck asks, and the question lands so suddenly in the middle of Mark’s useless spiraling that he nearly flinches. It pulls him straight out of his own head. “You look a little tired.”

It’s such a normal thing to say, so casual and harmless, and somehow it hits Mark exactly where he has no defense. His heart gives this awful lurch in his chest, painful enough that for a second he forgets how to answer.

“I’m fine,” he says, and the words come out flat. He clears his throat. “Just a bit tired, I’m sorry. My work doesn’t help.”

It’s true enough to count as an answer. Pizza deliveries, online shifts, patrols, sleepless nights, and the small little detail of seeing Donghyuck every night from rooftops like some pathetic ghost haunting the edges of his life. His work really doesn’t help. None of it helps.

Donghyuck’s expression shifts with understanding. “Oh, I can send you my thoughts through e-mail, if you want—”

“No, it’s okay,” Mark cuts in before he can stop himself. “Keep going.”

Donghyuck’s eyes dart on him, not in a suspicious way, just a brief glance, before he goes back to his own screen. It’s enough to make Mark’s skin prickle.

“So I was thinking we could split it into three main sections,” he says, his voice cutting cleanly through the mess in Mark’s head. “Historical context, case studies, and then modern implications. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “That works.”

And it does, probably. Mark would agree to anything right now if it meant keeping the conversation moving.

He types a few words into the document on his own laptop mostly to convince himself he’s doing something, but the sentence looks wrong the second it exists.   He just deletes the whole thing, then he types all over again. Three words in, he already hates it. He deletes that too.

An hour passes like that, dragged out in the most painful way possible, every minute stretching too long and still somehow slipping through his fingers with nothing to show for it. Donghyuck is typing steadily, making progress. Mark is staring at a half-empty document, occasionally scrolling through an article, highlighting random phrases, then immediately unhighlighting them because he doesn’t know why he selected them in the first place.

The silence between them is so loud it’s almost screaming.

Mark clears his throat. “Did you find anything good?” He asks, because it feels like he should say something.

“Yeah, actually,” Donghyuck says, sounding genuinely interested. He turns his laptop slightly so Mark can see. “There’s this study about a city in Germany that completely restructured its public transit and it, like, revitalized the entire downtown area without displacing the original residents. It’s pretty cool.”

Donghyuck’s clearly excited in that contained, academic way, like he knows it’s just a project but still can’t help getting invested once something catches his attention. Mark remembers that too, unfortunately.

Mark forces himself to look at the screen, at the charts, at the text. He nods slowly. “Cool,” he says.

That’s it. That’s all he’s got.

“Cool,” Donghyuck repeats under his breath, amused in a way that feels too gentle to be mocking. “Very detailed feedback. Thank you.”

Mark exhales through his nose, almost a laugh. 

“Sorry,” he says automatically. He rubs at the back of his neck, eyes dropping back to his own laptop. “I mean, yeah. That sounds useful. We could use it as one of the case studies, probably.”

“Exactly,” Donghyuck says, turning the laptop back a little but keeping it angled enough that Mark can still see. “It’s a good contrast because a lot of revitalization projects end up pushing people out, so having one where they actually managed to keep the community in place gives us something more balanced to talk about. We can compare it with a worse example later.”

Mark nods again, but this time he actually follows part of it. Enough to type a short note into his document, though he still has to focus too hard to make the sentence make sense. 

“So, uh, which section do you want to take?” Donghyuck asks after a while.

Mark looks down at the notes they’ve gathered so far, at Donghyuck’s messy but somehow organized outline, at his own sad little document with a few half-useful sentences and copied quotes. 

“I’ll do the case studies,” he says, maybe a little too quickly, but at least the words come out steady enough. “You do the history stuff?”

“Okay,” Donghyuck agrees. “Sounds good.”

Another hour drifts by in that strange, slow way time has when nothing dramatic is happening and everything still feels exhausting. Donghyuck throws a few questions around whenever he finds something useful, not demanding too much, just enough to keep them connected to the same task. He turns his laptop toward Mark once to show him a paragraph about industrial cities shifting toward service-based economies, then again to point out a chart comparing housing costs before and after redevelopment, and Mark nods every time, agrees every time, says short little things that sound like participation if nobody looks too closely.

The light outside starts to shift, dimming as afternoon begins to fade. Mark’s stomach rumbles quietly, a small, embarrassing betrayal in the quiet space. He hasn’t eaten anything that day. The lasagna plan from yesterday is a distant, pathetic memory.

Donghyuck hears it. He glances up, a small, uncertain smile touching his lips. “Hungry?”

“Little bit,” Mark admits, his voice rough.

“Yeah, me too,” Donghyuck stretches, arms over his head, his shirt riding up just a little, exposing a sliver of skin at his waist. Mark’s eyes catch it for half a second too long before he forces himself to look away, a hot flush creeping up his neck.

He remembers that skin. He knows exactly what it feels like under his hands, knows the way Donghyuck used to squirm when Mark’s fingers brushed there unexpectedly, knows the small breathy laugh he made when he was trying not to give Mark the satisfaction of knowing he was ticklish.

“Maybe we should call it a day?” Donghyuck suggests, pulling Mark out of the memory before it can fully form. “We made a decent start, I think. We can pick this up again later this week.”

Relief washes over Mark so strong it almost makes him dizzy. “Yeah,” he says, maybe a little too eagerly. “Okay.”

“We should do this again soon,” Donghyuck starts packing up, closing his laptop, sliding it into his bag, gathering his notebook and pens. “Maybe the day after tomorrow? Same time?”

“Can’t,” Mark says, a little too fast. “I work.”

“Oh. Right.” Donghyuck nods. “Okay, well, just let me know when you’re free.”

“Yeah,” Mark says, shoving his laptop into his bag. “I will.”

It’s another lie and it tastes bitter in his mouth. He knows he’ll probably stare at their message thread for an unreasonable amount of time later and then do absolutely nothing about it. He knows he’ll make excuses, delay, avoid, work around him, maybe even try to do his entire part alone just to keep future meetings short and survivable.

They walk out of the library together, the silence between them stretching. Once they’re outside, the noise of the campus rushes back in. Students talking, laughing, heading in a dozen different directions. It feels normal. It feels like a world Mark isn’t part of.

“Alright, well,” Donghyuck says, stopping at the intersection. “I guess I’ll see you around, Mark. Hope your work doesn’t go too hard on you this time.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Mark says, forcing the response. “See you.”

Donghyuck gives one last little nod, then turns and walks away, blending into the stream of students almost immediately. Mark watches him go even though he tells himself not to. He watches the back of his jacket, the strap of his bag across his shoulder, the slight tilt of his head when someone passes too close and he shifts out of the way. In a matter of seconds, the crowd starts swallowing him piece by piece, students crossing in front of him, blocking and revealing him, until finally Donghyuck disappears completely like he was never even there. 

Mark stays where he is for a moment, staring at the empty space he left behind, feeling ridiculous and hollow and somehow more exhausted than he had been when the meeting started. Then he turns and walks in the opposite direction.

He doesn’t go home,  doesn’t go to work. He just walks aimlessly. Down one street and then another, until he gets swallowed by traffic and the dull rush of people who actually seem to know where they’re going. Mark doesn’t. So he keeps walking until his legs ache, until his shoes start rubbing wrong, until the cold starts settling through his hoodie and under his skin.

By the time he gets back to his apartment, the sun has long since set. The city is a blur of lights outside his window, but he doesn’t see any of it. He just collapses onto his bed, not even bothering to turn on the lights. He lays there in the dark, the quiet, the empty space where Donghyuck used to be, and the emptiness feels so much bigger now than it did this morning.

It was only a few hours of sitting in the same room, of talking about nothing important and it wrecked him completely. He’d spent two years building a fragile kind of peace around himself, a routine of distance and observation that, while painful, was manageable. It was a known quantity. He knew exactly how much it would hurt.

Today, he’d stepped out of that fragile safety net. He let himself get close, or maybe life dragged him there and he didn’t fight hard enough, and it was so much worse than he ever imagined. From a rooftop, Donghyuck had been beautiful and unreachable, a person Mark could love quietly without disturbing. Up close, he was unbearable. 

He’d seen the way his eyes crinkle when he’s trying to be polite. He’d seen the small, unconscious tap of his pen against the table when he’s thinking. He’d seen the small, uncertain smile when he’s not sure what to say. All the little things Mark used to love were still there, intact and painfully ordinary. And none of them were for him anymore.

Mark turns over, burying his face in his pillow, and for the second night in a row, he cries.

The next few days blur into something Mark barely knows how to name. Avoidance, probably. Survival, if he wants to be generous with himself. Cowardice, if he’s being honest for more than two seconds. 

He keeps his life quiet and narrow, shrinking it down to the places where Donghyuck is least likely to appear and the routines that require the smallest amount of emotional thought. He avoids the library, taking longer routes across campus even when they make no sense, slipping through side entrances and empty corridors just to keep from passing anywhere near the table where they sat together. He avoids the road that leads directly to Donghyuck’s apartment. He avoids the restaurant too, at least technically, because he doesn’t let himself stand across from the front windows anymore where he can see too much. 

Instead, he settles one street over every night, close enough to see the restaurant’s sign glowing from the corner and far enough to pretend he’s being less pathetic about it. He waits until the light goes off. Then he waits again until, later, in the apartment building down the block, one familiar window comes alive.

Mark puts himself to exist in a self-imposed quarantine, trying to stitch himself back together after a single, devastating interaction. He needs to learn how to deal with it.

Spider-Man becomes less of a duty and more of an anesthetic. He stops a carjacking in progress, foils a back-alley drug deal, helps an old woman carry groceries up four flights of stairs because the elevator in her building is broken again, then spends almost an hour untangling a kid’s kite from a power line while the kid cries dramatically below and his mother keeps yelling that Spider-Man does not have to do that. Mark does it anyway. 

He does everything, anything to keep his body moving, to keep his mind from circling back to the library, to the way Donghyuck said his name.

It almost works.

On the fourth day, the text comes through while he’s sitting on the edge of a rooftop with his mask pushed up just enough to drink from a cheap bottle of juice. He has a scraped cheek, a sore shoulder, and a headache pulsing behind his right eye from getting slammed into a brick wall a little too enthusiastically by a guy that was half a bull, who really, really didn’t want to be arrested. 

The city below is still moving, alive and bright, late enough that most people should be tired but apparently not enough for New York to shut up. His phone buzzes once against the concrete beside him, and Mark glances down without thinking much of it, expecting an app notification or work schedule reminder or something equally miserable.

Donghyuck’s name lights up the cracked screen.

heyyy, just checking in about the project. let me know when u’re free to work on it again!!!

Nothing inside the message deserves the way Mark’s throat closes around nothing.

He could be honest, some stupid part of him thinks. Not fully honest, obviously, because what would that even sound like? Sorry, I can’t meet because you used to love me before a spell erased me from your life and now sitting across from you makes me want to peel my skin off. Too much, maybe. But he could at least say he’s overwhelmed. He could say this week is hard. Instead, he types another lie.

Hey, sorry, been swamped. Work’s been crazy. Maybe next week?

The excuse looks flimsy because it is. Work has been crazy, sure, but work is always crazy, and they both know students with jobs still manage to schedule things when they actually want to. He could make time.

Still, he hits send before he can second-guess it, then immediately regrets it. Because next week means it’s not over. It just means the inevitable is postponed, he only shoved the inevitable a few days further down the road and gave it time to grow teeth to bite him once again.

His phone buzzes again less than a minute later.

no worries, next week works for me. take care, mkay?

Mark reads that last part until the words stop looking like words. He lets the phone drop loosely into his lap and tips his head back toward the sky. Down below, someone screams two streets over, sharp and sudden, and Mark’s body reacts before his mind fully catches up. He pulls the mask down, shoves the phone away, and stands.

There. Something easier than answering a text.

A week later, the inevitable arrives with the quiet, awful patience of something Mark knew was coming but still somehow hoped would forget about him. 

It shows up on his phone first, tucked inside a short message from Donghyuck asking if the coffee shop near campus would work better this time because the library is apparently booked with some event, and Mark stares at it for too long before agreeing because he has run out of excuses that don’t make him sound actively insane. 

He spends the whole day moving toward that meeting like a person walking into weather he can see forming in the distance, dark clouds gathering slowly over his head while everyone else carries on like the sky is perfectly fine. By the time he gets there, his body is already tired from bracing for it.

The coffee shop turns out to be worse than the library in almost every possible way. At least the library had been quiet, built around rules that made everyone speak softly and move carefully. This place has none of that. It’s warm, loud, and crowded. 

He stands near the entrance for a second, one hand tight around the strap of his bag, and feels painfully alien in the middle of it all.

Donghyuck is already there. He has taken a table closer to the back, away from the worst of the crowd but still surrounded by the constant movement of the place, a textbook open in front of him and a cup sitting beside it. His laptop is still closed, his notebook stacked neatly underneath one elbow, and for one strange second Mark just looks at him before Donghyuck notices. 

“Hey,” Donghyuck says, marking his page with a receipt he must have grabbed from the counter. “Got here a little early. Hope that’s okay.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mark says, sliding into the chair opposite him. He does it carefully, because everything about him feels too loud already. Under the table, his hands curl into fists against his thighs, nails pressing into his palms until the small bite of pain gives him something simple to focus on. He knows he looks weird. 

Donghyuck’s eyes drop for half a second, maybe noticing the stiffness in his shoulders, maybe not. He doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he nudges the textbook slightly to the side and reaches for his notebook. 

“I ordered coffee already because I was falling asleep over this chapter,” he says, tone light, casual enough that Mark can almost pretend this is easy if he doesn’t look directly at him. “You want anything? The line’s kind of annoying, but it moves fast.”

“No,” Mark shakes his head immediately. “I’m good.”

Donghyuck gives him a little glance over the rim of his mug, something caught between curiosity and doubt. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, even though his stomach is empty and the smell of pastries is actively making that fact harder to ignore. He’s too nervous to eat. “I’m sure.”

The look stays for one extra second before Donghyuck lets it go, and Mark hates the way Donghyuck keeps giving him small openings to be taken care of without knowing that each one feels like a hand pressing directly over an old bruise. 

Donghyuck takes another sip of his coffee, grimaces slightly like it’s gone cold, and Mark nearly smiles despite himself because he knows that face. The almost-smile dies before it reaches anywhere visible, swallowed down with everything else Mark can’t afford to show.

“So,” Donghyuck says, setting the cup aside and opening his laptop now, “I worked a little on the history section. Not a lot, before you panic. Just enough to get the general direction. I also cleaned up the shared document a bit because the formatting was driving me crazy.”

Mark reaches for his own laptop, thankful for the excuse to look away. “Yeah. That sounds like you.”

The words leave his mouth before he thinks about them. Donghyuck stills. It’s subtle, barely more than a skipped beat in the motion of opening his laptop, but Mark catches it instantly because the mistake hits him just as fast. His fingers freeze on the zipper of his bag. 

“Sounds like me?” Donghyuck looks at him slowly.

Mark’s throat tightens.

“I mean,” he says, keeping his voice as even as possible, “you seem like the type.”

Donghyuck huffs a small laugh and looks down, breaking the moment before Mark can suffocate inside it. “Fair,” he says, opening the document. “I do hate ugly formatting.”

Mark lets out a breath so quiet it barely exists. “Yeah.”

The meeting starts after that, or at least the version of a meeting that can happen when one person is prepared and the other is trying not to implode. Donghyuck walks him through the history section, explaining how he wants to connect the decline of manufacturing industries to shifts in housing, transportation, and local economies. 

He talks about how cities try to reinvent themselves after factories shut down, how redevelopment can either support existing communities or push them out under the excuse of progress, and Mark tries to listen because he knows this matters. The project matters, and so does his grade and Donghyuck’s time matters. But the coffee shop keeps pressing in around him and Donghyuck’s voice keeps slipping too close to old memories, and Mark’s attention moves in uneven waves, catching on certain words before losing the thread again.

He contributes where he can. A note there, one article he found about public transit planning and economic revitalization that Donghyuck actually seems interested in. Each time Donghyuck responds positively, Mark feels a ridiculous little flare of relief, like he’s being praised for passing as functional. The feeling is embarrassing, but he holds onto it anyway. He needs something to hold onto. 

Donghyuck leans closer at one point to read a section on Mark’s screen, and Mark goes so still he can feel it in his jaw. Donghyuck doesn’t notice at first, too focused on the paragraph, his shoulder hovering inches from Mark’s, his hair falling slightly forward as he narrows his eyes at the text. He smells like clean fabric and something Mark remembers from mornings he tries not to think about. Mark grips the edge of the table under his palm and stares at the screen until the words blur.

“This one’s very useful,” Donghyuck says, pointing at a line. “We can use it in the comparison section.”

Mark nods, unable to trust his voice immediately. “Okay.”

Donghyuck looks at him then, close enough that Mark can see the faint tiredness under his eyes. 

“You’re really quiet,” he says, and then seems to realize how that sounds and softens it quickly, leaning back a little as if to give Mark some space. “I mean, maybe you’re just quiet in general and that’s fine. I just don’t know if I’m talking too much.”

That almost makes Mark laugh, but it gets stuck somewhere in his chest. Because yes, Donghyuck talks too much when he’s nervous, excited or trying to fill space, and Mark used to love that too. He used to let him ramble while pretending to complain, used to make fun of him for needing three business days to explain a simple thought, used to kiss him mid-sentence when the rambling got especially dramatic just to watch him get offended and flustered at the same time. 

Mark looks down at his laptop, blinking enough times to force the memory back where it belongs right with the tears that threaten to appear.

“You’re not,” he says. “It helps.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mark nods, still looking at the document. “I’m kind of useless at organizing stuff.”

“That’s okay,” Donghyuck says, so easily it nearly breaks him. “I like organizing stuff.”

“I can tell,” Mark says, and this time he manages to sound almost normal.

Donghyuck smiles at that, and for a second Mark forgets the coffee shop and everything else. For one stupid second, it feels familiar in the way a dream feels familiar before you wake up. Then Donghyuck looks back at the document and the moment passes.

Mark swallows hard and forces himself to type. He writes a short sentence comparing urban renewal strategies, something about how transit-focused redevelopment can produce different community outcomes depending on whether local residents are included in the planning process, and immediately knows it sounds wrong. A better version of him would fix it, maybe smooth the structure out, add nuance, make it sound like he actually has thoughts about the subject beyond using it as a shield against emotional collapse, but he doesn’t have that version of himself available right now. So he leaves it there. 

Then he moves to the next sentence, and then the next, building a wall of mediocre text between himself and whatever is happening under his ribs. The more words he puts down, the less empty the document looks, and the less empty the document looks, the easier it becomes to pretend that this is progress and not just survival dressed up as productivity.

Time slips by in that strange way, measured more by the number of cups of coffee Donghyuck drinks and the number of times Mark rewrites the same paragraph because every time he tries to focus, his eyes drift to Donghyuck’s face without permission, to the way his lashes lower when he reads, to the soft crease between his brows when he’s deciding whether a source is useful, to the slight movement of his lips when he silently rereads something to himself.

Donghyuck doesn’t seem to mind Mark’s quiet contributions anymore, or if he does, he’s too polite to say it. He fills the space with explanations and suggestions, with little comments about sources, with ideas about where the final sections could go and which arguments might make their project stronger, and Mark follows along enough to nod at the right times and agree to the small tasks Donghyuck assigns him.

Sometimes Donghyuck asks, “Does that sound okay?” and Mark says yes because it usually does. Sometimes Donghyuck pauses and waits for him to add something, and Mark manages to scrape together one usable sentence before going quiet again. It’s not graceful, but somehow they keep moving.

Later, as the afternoon light starts to soften and the coffee shop crowd thins, Donghyuck pushes a sticky note across the table. On it is a website and a password.

“This is an online journal archive,” he says, tapping the note. “Some of the best sources are in there, but they’re behind a paywall. I figured you could use mine, so you don’t have to worry about access.”

Mark looks at the sticky note and sees the familiar handwriting he used to see everywhere. On the fridge in Donghyuck’s apartment, stuck there with little magnets shaped like fruit because Donghyuck bought them as a joke and then got weirdly attached to them. On napkins at restaurants when Donghyuck got bored and started doodling little faces beside Mark’s name. On notes left beside Mark’s laptop when he had a long night of studying ahead of him. 

Don’t forget to eat, idiot. And drink water, for the love of God. 

I left cake in the fridge, but don't eat too much. Your tummy will ache. 

Coffee is not a meal, Mark Lee. Eat the fruits before they get ugly!

The notes were always about ordinary things, but Mark used to keep them all. Some of them probably still exist somewhere in a box he refuses to open, folded and worn and carrying a life the rest of the world decided never happened.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Donghyuck says. “I mean, don’t share it around or anything. Technically it’s my cousin’s account, and I’m already abusing his kindness.”

Mark lets out a short breath that almost becomes a laugh. “Academic crime.”

“Exactly,” Donghyuck says, pointing at him with his pen. “And if I’m going down for academic crime, I need it to be for something more exciting than urban planning sources.”

Mark’s mouth twitches. “Like what?”

“Stealing exam answers, maybe,” Donghyuck leans back in his chair, thinking with unnecessary seriousness. “Hacking the university system to erase attendance records. Starting an underground essay-writing empire.”

“You’d get caught immediately,” Mark says, and the words slip out too naturally.

Donghyuck’s eyebrows lift. “Wow. No faith in me?”

“You talk too much to run a secret operation.”

Mark hears what he said only after it leaves his mouth, hears the familiarity tucked inside it, the easy knowledge that shouldn’t exist between them anymore. His fingers still against the laptop. Across from him, Donghyuck doesn’t answer right away. When Mark forces himself to glance up, Donghyuck is looking at him with that strange, unsettled expression again. Recognition without memory, maybe. A feeling with no file attached.

Then Donghyuck huffs, looking away with a small smile that doesn’t fully hide the crease between his brows. “Okay, fair,” he says. “I do talk too much.”

Mark should leave it there. He should nod, turn back to the document. Instead, because apparently today is the day his self-preservation gives up completely, he murmurs, “It’s not bad.”

Donghyuck’s eyes return to him, but Mark keeps looking at the screen, pretending the sentence he’s editing requires his full attention. His heart is beating too hard again, but this time it’s quieter somehow, less panic and more ache. 

“It helps,” he adds, because he needs the words to sound normal, needs them to belong to the present and not the past. “Makes the project easier.”

For a moment, Donghyuck doesn’t say anything. Then he gives a soft little hum, almost thoughtful, and looks back at his own laptop. “Good,” he says. “Because I don’t think I know how to shut up once I’ve started.”

Mark knows. God, he knows. And maybe this is ruining him, but Mark also feels like maybe he can survive one more hour at the table.

“Your name is very different, y’know?"

He’s making small talk. Mark has no business making small talk. He should be keeping his head down, doing his part of the project, answering only when absolutely necessary and getting out before he says something that sounds too familiar again. He has rules for a reason.

It’s stupid, because he knows the answer already. He knows more than the answer. He knows the exact shape of this conversation because they had some version of it years ago, back when Mark first tried to get Donghyuck’s attention in the middle of class with a comment just like this, awkward and interested and pretending to be less intentional than it was. Back then, he had wanted Donghyuck to look at him. Now, he has no idea what he wants, except maybe to hear him talk a little longer.

“Oh?” Donghyuck says, glancing up from the document with a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth, like he’s amused but not bothered. “Yeah. It’s not common here, but it’s common in Korea.”

Mark nods, careful to keep his expression neutral even though his chest twists at the familiarity of it. He remembers Donghyuck explaining this before, remembers being younger and clumsier and trying not to make it obvious how much he liked the way Donghyuck’s name sounded when he said it himself. He remembers practicing it quietly later, feeling ridiculous in his room because he didn’t want to mess it up. He remembers Donghyuck laughing at him eventually, not meanly, just bright and pleased, telling him his pronunciation was decent enough that he could keep his kneecaps. 

Mark presses his thumb against the side of his laptop now. “It sounds nice.”

“When people know how to pronounce it, yes. But I always have to spell it out for them. Or they just panic halfway through and start calling me something entirely different, which is always fun,” Donghyuck rolls his eyes lightly, but there’s no real annoyance in it, just that familiar dramatic suffering he used to use for things that were mildly inconvenient at best. “But my English name sucks bad, so I’d rather have people getting my birth name wrong than anything.”

Peter. That’s his English name. Mark remembers it too well, remembers making fun of him for it the first time Donghyuck said it, because Peter had never fit him in any universe. It sounded too plain on him, too buttoned-up, too much like someone who wore tucked-in polos and politely asked for extra napkins. Donghyuck had been offended for maybe three seconds before deciding Mark was right, then still got mad every time Mark brought it up because agreeing did not mean he was allowed to be teased forever. 

Mark remembers calling him Peter Parker once just to be annoying, and Donghyuck had thrown a pillow at his face with enough force to make him choke on his own laugh. The memory flickers through him with such warmth that it nearly hurts worse than the grief.

“English name?” Mark asks, and it feels like stepping straight over a line he drew himself. He’s going against his own rules now, knowingly, pretending he doesn’t know something that used to belong to him. “What is it?”

“It’s Peter,” Donghyuck groans immediately. “Don’t laugh, please.”

Mark couldn’t laugh even if he wanted to, the memory is too close. It rises up whole and merciless, Donghyuck sprawled across his bed complaining about paperwork, Mark repeating “Peter” under his breath in increasingly bad voices until Donghyuck threatened to break up with him for five minutes, both of them laughing too hard to keep the threat alive. 

Donghyuck narrows his eyes at him. “You’re judging me.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But it feels like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re mentally writing an essay about how much it doesn’t fit me.”

“I mean,” Mark says, trying to sound normal, trying not to sound like he is standing in the wreckage of another memory, “it doesn’t really fit you.”

Donghyuck makes a small victorious sound. “See? Judgment.”

“It’s not judgment.”

“It is. It’s polite judgment, which is worse.”

Mark lets out a laugh that slips through before he can fully stop it. 

“You have a nice laugh,” Donghyuck says suddenly, then he blinks and looks down. “Sorry. That was random.”

Mark’s hands are under the table again, curled tight enough that his knuckles ache.

“It’s fine,” he says, but his voice doesn’t come out right. 

Donghyuck glances back up, the awkwardness settling over him in a faint flush at the tips of his ears. “For the record, you’re right. Peter is terrible and I blame my parents all the time. They said it was easy.”

Mark’s mouth moves before he can stop it. “It is easy.”

“Exactly,” Donghyuck points at him again. “Easy and boring.”

This time, Mark lets himself smile a little.

“You have a nice name too, though,” Donghyuck says after a moment, and his voice changes just slightly, losing some of the teasing edge. “Mark.”

Donghyuck has said his name a thousand different ways before. Half-asleep, irritated, laughing, scolding, breathless, worried, angry enough to make Mark feel six inches tall, soft enough to make him feel like he could survive anything. Mark knows every version of his name in Donghyuck’s voice, or at least he thought he did, until now. 

This one is new. Curious, empty of history. It should not matter, because it’s only his name, one syllable, plain and easy and nothing like the kind of thing that should crack him open in a public place. Still, something deep in his chest twists so hard he has to look down at the table for a second.

“Yeah, well, can't mess it up too bad,” Mark says, trying for a joke he doesn’t feel.

“Exactly,” Donghyuck says, smiling again, and this time the smile comes easily, brightening his face in a way that makes Mark’s eyes want to linger. “You’re lucky. People see Mark and relax. People see Donghyuck and immediately start sweating.”

Mark lets out a breath. “Sounds stressful.”

“For them, maybe,” Donghyuck says, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve accepted my role as a linguistic challenge.”

The conversation is light, nothing too personal, nothing too dangerous on the surface, just names and teasing and Donghyuck’s dramatic complaints, but underneath it all Mark can feel the past pressing close. Not in a violent way this time. More like something standing quietly behind him, hand hovering near his shoulder. It would be so easy to fall into the rhythm of it. That is what scares him most. It would be so easy to forget that Donghyuck doesn’t know him and let his mouth run ahead of his better judgment, to tease him like he used to, to say things with the comfort of someone who has no right to be comfortable anymore.

Donghyuck stretches his arms over his head then, pushing back from the table with a small groan as his shoulders rise and his spine arches slightly against the chair. “Okay, I think I’m officially done for the day. My brain is fried.” 

His voice is tired but satisfied, the way it gets when he feels like they actually accomplished something, and Mark watches him close his laptop. Relief washes over him so strongly it almost feels like a high. It’s over. For today, at least. He made it through another meeting without saying anything impossible, without reaching across the table, without letting the truth spill out of him like blood from an old wound. 

“Same,” Mark lies, though his brain isn’t fried from the project so much as completely wrung out by the experience of sitting across from Donghyuck for hours. He closes his own laptop and shoves it into his bag with a little too much haste.

Donghyuck slips the textbook into his bag, checks under the table once like he’s always forgetting something, then grabs his empty cup and brings it to the counter before coming back for his things. Mark stands with his bag already on his shoulder, hands tucked into his hoodie pocket.

They walk out of the coffee shop together, and the cool afternoon air hits Mark’s face like a slap after the warmth inside. The sun is lower now, painting the edges of buildings in gold and making the glass storefronts shine too brightly. 

They stand there for a second on the pavement, neither of them moving right away. It is a small pause, the kind of thing that happens when two people walk out of a place together and need a moment to decide which direction to go. Mark knows that. He knows it is nothing. Still, Donghyuck used to linger like this when he wanted Mark to walk him home but refused to say it directly. Mark used to pretend not to know, just to make him huff and roll his eyes before hooking two fingers into Mark’s sleeve and dragging him along anyway. The memory comes so gently that it hurts worse than if it had arrived screaming.

Donghyuck shifts beside him, looking down the street, then back at Mark. “So,” he says, drawing the word out a little. “Same time next week? Or are you still being consumed alive by work?”

Mark should say he’ll check. He should create distance immediately, leave room for another excuse, keep the door mostly closed because every meeting makes him worse before it makes him better. That would be the sensible, safe thing to do. But Donghyuck is looking at him with that small, curious almost-smile, sunlight catching along the side of his face, and Mark is tired of wanting to stay and forcing himself to leave. Tired of every ordinary question feeling like a battlefield.

“Same time is fine,” Mark says before he can stop himself.

Donghyuck’s smile widens slightly. “Yeah?”

Mark swallows, already regretting it and somehow not regretting it at all. “Yeah. I’ll make it work.”

Donghyuck nods, looking away first this time. “Okay,” he says, softer than before. “Good.”

Nothing about this is good, Mark thinks. Still, when Donghyuck gives him one last little wave and turns toward the crosswalk, Mark doesn’t move immediately. He watches him go, just like he always does, but this time it feels different. Less like watching from exile and more like standing at the edge of something he should absolutely turn away from before it ruins him further. 

Donghyuck joins the small crowd waiting for the light to change, one hand gripping the strap of his bag, the other pushing his hair away from his forehead. The signal turns, people start walking, and he goes with them, becoming part of the city again.

Mark stays on the sidewalk until Donghyuck reaches the other side. Only then does he turn away, heart too heavy and too warm at the same time, the worst possible combination.

Later that night, Mark sits on the ledge of a rooftop overlooking a block of quiet brownstones, legs dangling over the edge. The wind is colder than it has been, carrying with it the promise of a storm that’s been holding off for hours. His suit is damp against his skin, a thin, uncomfortable layer of sweat and humidity from chasing a getaway car through three different boroughs and nearly getting clipped by a delivery truck. His left knee feels a little wrong. 

He should go home. He’s exhausted in that deep, aching way that has settled into his bones, the kind of tired that usually sends him straight to his bed. But home feels too small right now, too full of silence. So Mark stays where he is, perched above the street like the world’s most pathetic guardian angel, doing what he told himself he needed to stop doing and apparently never will.

The restaurant is kind of empty tonight, there are only a couple of tables occupied. Donghyuck’s shift was supposed to end in thirty minutes, at least according to the routine Mark has memorized, but apparently Donghyuck has reached whatever limit he has for the day and decides to clock out early. 

Mark sees him disappear toward the back, then return with his jacket already half on, movements sharper than usual, his bag pulled over one shoulder with the kind of irritated force that makes the strap catch wrong before he fixes it with a frustrated tug. His face is slightly scrunched, that specific expression he gets when mild irritation is clearly making serious progress toward becoming full-blown pissed, mouth pressed into a thin line, brows drawn together.

Mark wonders what did it. Honestly, it could be anything. A customer being rude, a manager saying something stupid or a paper cut, Donghyuck has always had a dramatic range when it comes to minor suffering. 

When Donghyuck closes the restaurant door behind him, Mark rises automatically, body already moving before he fully decides to. He rolls his stiff shoulder, winces a little under the mask, and prepares to follow the usual route, the one he knows too well by now. Rooftop to corner building, fire escape to narrow alley, swing low only when the street clears, keep enough distance that Donghyuck never feels watched, always stay above and behind, leave once the apartment light turns on. 

But Donghyuck doesn’t take the usual turn. He walks the other way, crossing the street with his head dipped slightly against the wind, still frowning like whatever annoyed him inside the restaurant followed him out. Mark pauses on the roof, one foot already lifted toward the ledge, and narrows his eyes.

“That’s not your way,” he mutters under his breath.

Frowning now too, Mark moves across the rooftop, stepping over a rusted vent and ducking under a loose cable as he tracks Donghyuck’s path from above. Donghyuck crosses underneath the building Mark is on and disappears from view, tucked below the edge too quickly for Mark to see exactly where he went. 

Usually, beneath this building, there are a few beauty supply stores, a nail salon, maybe a tiny cosmetics shop Mark has only ever noticed because their window display glitters aggressively even at night. Most of them look closed from up here, their signs dimmed and doors locked, but maybe one stays open late. Maybe Donghyuck needs eyeliner or lip balm. He loved that kind of stuff. Still does, probably. That makes Mark remember that he needs to buy another concealer to hide his new bruises.

Mark decides, after a second of standing there like an idiot, to sit his ass back down and wait until Donghyuck comes out. He can just wait a few minutes.

Mark lowers himself back onto the ledge, legs dangling again. He swings one foot lazily, then the other, looking down toward the sidewalk as much as the angle allows, scanning the reflections in the dark shop windows and listening for the faint chime of a door opening somewhere below.

“Why are you always watching me?”

The voice comes from behind him, sudden and way too close, and Mark yelps, one hand flying to his chest as he twists around so fast his balance slips on the ledge for half a second. He catches himself by instinct, fingers sticking to the brick before he can tip forward, heart slamming so hard it feels like it’s trying to break through the suit. 

“Holy shit,” he blurts, voice cracking slightly under the mask. “What the hell?”

Donghyuck is standing behind him on the rooftop. For one long, completely useless second, Mark’s brain refuses to process anything beyond that fact. Donghyuck, in his jacket and work clothes, bag still hanging from one shoulder, hair a little messy from the wind, cheeks faintly flushed from what must have been several flights of stairs or some extremely questionable rooftop access route. 

“You scared the shit out of me, dude,” Mark says, because apparently that is all he can access right now. Not denial, not explanation, not the smooth, casual Spider-Man voice he normally uses with civilians. 

“Yeah, well, you’ve been doing that to me for a while, so I think we’re even.”

Mark goes cold. The rain still hasn’t started, but something icy moves through him anyway, slipping under the damp fabric of the suit and straight into his spine. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, and it sounds bad even to him. Too much like Mark and not enough like Spider-Man.

“Really?” Donghyuck tilts his head slightly, eyes narrowing. It’s the look Donghyuck gets when he knows someone is lying and is deciding whether to be polite about it. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve been seeing you for the last two years.”

Mark’s mouth goes dry.

“At first I thought I was imagining it. Or, you know, being dramatic, because I do that sometimes. Then I kept noticing you. Same rooftop, same general timing and always near the restaurant. Always when I was leaving.”

Mark has talked his way out of worse situations. He has lied to cops, criminals, reporters, strangers with camera phones, old ladies who wanted to know if he was eating enough. He should be able to laugh this off, say he patrols the neighborhood, say he keeps an eye on lots of places, say the city is dangerous and Donghyuck is reading too much into a coincidence. But it’s the move of his life confronting him. He’s kind of fucked.

“So I changed my route tonight,” Donghyuck grips the strap of his bag, knuckles tightening. “Went into the beauty store downstairs, waited a minute, then used the back stairs because the owner lets employees from nearby shops cut through sometimes. And there you were, waiting for me.”

Donghyuck has never been careless, no matter how dramatic or scattered he pretends to be. He observes people and pieces things together. He pays attention to patterns even when he claims he doesn’t. Mark used to love that too, back when being seen by him felt like safety instead of exposure.

“Why do you  do that?” Donghyuck asks again, softer this time, and that softness is so much worse than anger. “And please don’t say you don’t. I know what I saw.”

Mark looks at him, and for the first time in a long time, the mask feels useless. It covers his face, sure, hides the bruises, the fear and the way his mouth has gone tight with panic, but it doesn’t protect him from being known in all the ways that matter. Donghyuck doesn’t remember him. Donghyuck doesn’t know his voice without the filter of history, doesn’t know the exact shape of Mark’s face beneath the fabric, but somehow he still makes Mark feel exposed.

“I patrol this area,” Mark says finally, weakly.

“I know you patrol this area, you patrol everywhere in this city. But you don’t just patrol near me, you wait for me. You watch the restaurant and my apartment building,” Donghyuck’s voice tightens a little on that last part, and Mark flinches inside his own skin. “I thought maybe I was being paranoid, but I’m not, am I?”

The storm finally breaks with one soft drop landing against the side of his mask, then another against the brick beside him. Donghyuck doesn’t move and neither does Mark.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” Mark tries.

“Coincidence my ass. I’ve noticed your pattern for two whole years, don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” Donghyuck inhales slowly.

The silence that follows is awful, stretching between them while rain begins to speckle the rooftop. Mark feels sick and caught. He feels like the ugliest parts of his grief have been dragged out into the open and set between them where they can’t be disguised as devotion or duty anymore.

Donghyuck’s voice comes quieter when he speaks again. “Why?”

Mark shuts his eyes under the mask.

Because I love you and I lost you. Because you used to know me and watching from far away was the only way I knew how to keep surviving. Because I’m selfish and couldn't stay away. Because I’m sorry.

He says none of it.

“I wanted to make sure you got home safe,” he says, and the answer is true enough to hurt.

Donghyuck doesn’t respond right away. When Mark finally risks looking at him again, Donghyuck’s expression has changed. The anger is still there, somewhere underneath, but now it is tangled with confusion, concern, and something that looks dangerously close to fear. Not fear of Spider-Man. Fear of not understanding why this feels the way it does.

“You don’t even know me,” Donghyuck says.

Mark’s heart cracks clean down the middle. He laughs, all soft and miserable, before he can stop it. It isn’t funny, but the sound escapes anyway, rough through the mask and swallowed almost immediately by the rain starting to fall harder around them.

“Well, I don’t know all the civilians in town but I still want them to get home safely,” Mark tries to lie once again. “This part of the city is very dangerous.”

“Fuck off, man,” Donghyuck almost shouts. “You’re pissing me off. You did that for two years, then you stopped doing this for a few days and I thought, okay, it’s over, and now you come all the way back to do the same shit.”

Donghyuck has always hated feeling cornered, always hated being treated like something fragile, and Mark knows that, knows it so well it almost makes him sick. He should have known this would happen eventually. He should have known Donghyuck would notice.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Then give me a real answer,” Donghyuck says, stepping closer, and Mark’s first instinct is to step back, which is ridiculous considering he’s the one in a Spider-Man suit and Donghyuck is the civilian who climbed up here through some back staircase with nothing but rage and apparently questionable survival instincts. “I’m not some damsel in distress, you know. I’ve lived here my whole life. I can take care of myself.”

“Right, but—”

“No, there are no buts.” Donghyuck cuts him off immediately, pointing at him. “Just a real answer.”

The real answer would take Donghyuck’s life and split it down the middle, and Mark has no right to do that just because he’s tired of carrying it alone. 

“I can’t give you that,” he retorts, and hates himself for the way Donghyuck’s expression tightens.

“Am I involved in some kind of criminal shit?” 

“No.”

“Am I a mutant or something?”

“Most likely no.”

“Most likely?” Donghyuck repeats, offended despite the situation, his brows shooting up. “Why?”

“I mean, I don’t think so,” Mark says, frowning under the mask. “You’d probably know.”

“Am I some kind of entity?” Donghyuck pushes, voice gaining that frantic, irritated edge he gets when he starts talking faster than his thoughts can properly line up. “Like, do I get possessed in my sleep and need to be watched so I don’t cause trouble?”

“No,” Mark says, his frown deepening beneath the fabric. “Where did you get that from?”

“Horror movies,” Donghyuck retorts, clicking his tongue. The droplets of rain start clinging to his lashes now as he narrows his eyes at him. Mark needs to get this over before he gets sick, Donghyuck’s immune system sucks bad. “Did someone ask you to watch over me?”

Well, that’s a door. Not a good door, not an honest door, but a way to step around the truth without falling directly into the worst lie. 

“Kind of,” Mark says with little to no conviction.

“Kind of?”

“I mean, yeah?” Mark nods a bit hesitantly, already hearing how bad it sounds and still reaching for it because it is better than the truth. Better than telling Donghyuck that the person who asked was Mark himself, the person who loved him, lost him, and never learned how to stop standing watch. “Yeah, I’m doing someone a favor.”

Donghyuck stares at him for a long second.

“Is it my boyfriend?” he asks, expression going flat.

The word hits Mark so hard he forgets the rain.

Of course Donghyuck has a boyfriend now. Why wouldn’t he? Two years have passed. Donghyuck’s life moved on, grew around the empty space Mark left behind, filled itself with other people and other routines and maybe someone who gets to walk him home without hiding on rooftops. Mark knew that was possible. He knew it in the vague, theoretical way people know knives are sharp before one actually cuts them. 

“Boyfriend?” he repeats, and the word comes out thinner than he wants it to.

“Uh, yeah,” Donghyuck says, and for the first time since climbing onto the roof, some of his certainty falters. He swallows, eyes flicking away for half a second before coming back. “Was that him?”

Mark shakes his head because he doesn’t trust his mouth immediately. His tongue feels bitter and useless behind his teeth, and every part of him suddenly wants to leave. 

“Then who was it?” Donghyuck asks.

“I can’t tell you that,” Mark says, voice rougher now. He turns his face slightly toward the street, away from Donghyuck’s eyes, though the mask should make that unnecessary. “Promised I wouldn’t tell.”

“That’s not fair, you know?” Donghyuck says, and his anger softens. “But okay, that’s better than lying to me. You can stop doing it now, okay?”

Mark scratches the back of his head over the mask, a nervous habit made stupid by the fabric. “I can’t do that either.”

Donghyuck’s face goes blank. “Why not?”

“That’s kind of important to the person.”

Donghyuck stares at him, tongue poking against the inside of his cheek the way it always does when he’s holding back words that would probably start a fight. 

“Then you can only do that twice a week.”

“What?”

“Stop coming every day,” Donghyuck says, each word precise. “You’ve got a life outside of this suit. You don’t need to be here every day, and no, this is not a request. It’s a demand. Keep coming every day and I will make a fuss about Spider-Man harassing me.”

“But I’m not—”

“Twice a week,” Donghyuck cuts in, unimpressed and completely unmoved by the start of Mark’s protest. “That’s it. Two. I don’t care if your mysterious friend is anxious, overprotective, or secretly dying of guilt somewhere. Tell them I said twice a week is the compromise, because I’m being extremely generous right now considering a superhero has been watching over me like a sleep-deprived gargoyle.”

“I’m not a gargoyle,” Mark says, because apparently that is the only part of this he can safely respond to.

Donghyuck gives him a look that could peel paint. “That’s your defense?”

“I’m more flexible than a gargoyle.”

“Congratulations.”

“And I’m not sleep-deprived,” Mark adds, immediately aware that the lie is terrible.

Donghyuck’s eyes narrow. “You sound sleep-deprived.”

Mark shuts his mouth.

“Twice a week,” Donghyuck repeats, quieter this time, but no less firm. “And from farther away. No watching my apartment window like a creep. If this is about making sure I get home, then you can make sure from the street corner or whatever. Once the building door closes, you leave.”

Mark’s chest tightens. The rules sound unbearable because they are reasonable, and that is somehow worse. “Okay.”.

Donghyuck studies him. “Okay as in you actually agree, or okay as in you’re saying that so I’ll get off this roof and then you’ll do whatever you want?”

Mark huffs. “You really don’t trust me.”

“I just met you. Technically. Don’t make me regret not reporting this to literally everyone I know.”

“I won’t,” Mark says, and this time he tries to make it sound like something solid. “Twice a week. Farther away. I leave when you get inside.”

Donghyuck holds his gaze for another long moment before nodding once. “Good.” 

Then he turns toward the rooftop door, finally seeming to register how wet he’s gotten because he grimaces down at his sleeves with open disgust. He reaches the rooftop door and pulls it open, the hinges complaining softly. For a second, he pauses there with one hand on the handle, and when he looks back, his expression is different again. 

“And tell whoever asked you,” he says, voice lower, “that I’m fine. I don’t need protection or a bodyguard.”

Mark’s throat tightens so suddenly he nearly can’t answer, but Donghyuck waits.

“I’ll tell him.”

Donghyuck’s eyes linger on him for one strange, searching second. Then he disappears into the stairwell, and the door shuts behind him.

Mark stays on the rooftop in the rain long after he’s gone, sitting back down on the ledge because his legs don’t feel entirely trustworthy. The rules settle into him one by one, painful and necessary, and beneath all of it there is still that one word turning over and over in his head like a blade.

Boyfriend.

He tips his head back into the rain and lets it wash over the mask, because at least this way, for once, he can’t tell what is rain and what is not.

The next few days are the worst he’s had in two years, which is a dramatic thing to think considering the last two years have been mostly composed of exhaustion, injuries, unpaid bills, and a very carefully maintained routine of emotional self-destruction. Still, there is no better way to describe it. 

Something about the conversation on the rooftop tears through the thin layer of control Mark had been pretending was recovery, leaving everything underneath raw and exposed again. He doesn’t patrol that night after Donghyuck leaves. He stays on the roof for too long in the rain, long enough that the suit sticks to his skin and his fingers start to feel numb, then finally drags himself home. He takes a hot shower that does nothing to warm the cold seeping through him, changes into dry clothes, leaves the damp suit in a heap on the bathroom floor because he cannot make himself care, and sits on the couch in the dark, staring at the wall.

His phone buzzes on the coffee table sometime later. It’s probably Donghyuck, checking in again about the project, and Mark can’t bring himself to look at it. He will deal with it tomorrow, or the day after. He has no more energy left to perform casual indifference.

He falls asleep on the couch, tangled in a blanket he doesn’t remember grabbing, and wakes up to his alarm shrieking from the bedroom at seven in the morning. He has a shift at a coffee shop in an hour, it’s a new gig he managed to get a few days ago, way better than the pizza delivery. He’s already going to be late today.

Mark gets through the day like a ghost. He gets dressed badly, leaves his apartment with his hoodie inside out and only notices halfway down the stairs, then decides he has no dignity left to preserve and keeps going until he gets to the subway bathroom and fixes it there. By the time he reaches the coffee shop, Odessa is already behind the counter, tying her apron and giving him a look that says she noticed the late entrance but is too tired to start anything before eight in the morning. Mark mumbles an apology, washes his hands, and slips into the routine.

Odessa asks him if he’s okay around late morning, when the rush has softened just enough for them to breathe between orders. She does it without making a big scene, leaning her hip against the counter while Mark wipes the same spot for too long, her eyes narrowing slightly. Mark tells her he’s fine. He says he didn’t sleep well, which is true in the same way a paper cut is technically a wound.

Odessa looks like she doesn’t believe him but has decided not to force the issue. People are used to Mark being quiet. They don’t expect much from him, and most days he is grateful for that. 

His break is fifteen minutes long, and he spends it sitting on an overturned crate behind the store, head in his hands, trying to remember how to breathe. The alley smells like damp cardboard, old coffee grounds, and the sour edge of the dumpster a few feet away. It is not peaceful, but it is private enough, and privacy is all he really needs because the moment he sits down, the word comes back with the full weight of it. 

‘Boyfriend’ has become a physical presence in his chest, a bruise pressing from the inside. He tries not to picture it, but then he thinks about some faceless, nameless person that gets to see Donghyuck tired in the morning, hair messy and voice rough, complaining about work while making coffee or rummaging through a fridge. This person gets to hear him talk too much about something stupid. This person gets to touch him.

The jealousy hits him so hard it feels like a punch to the gut. 

Donghyuck is allowed to move on, he does not know there is anything to move on from. In his world, Mark is no one important, just a quiet classmate. He has every right to have someone. He has every right to be loved by someone who can actually stand beside him in daylight, someone whose existence doesn’t require lies stacked on top of more lies. Mark knows all of that. 

Mark stands abruptly and starts pacing the small, grimy space between the back door and the dumpster. He needs to stop. He presses both hands against the back of his neck while every reasonable thought dissolves before it reaches the hurt. It feels like trying to hold hot water in cupped hands, grief leaking through every gap no matter how tightly he presses his fingers together.

Mark thought the grief had become solid over time, something he could carry because he had learned its weight. Now it is flooding everywhere, spilling out of its old boundaries, filling his throat and lungs. He doesn’t know how to swim in it. 

The back door opens before he can fully pull himself together, and Odessa pokes her head out, one eyebrow lifting when she sees him pacing like a trapped animal. 

“Break’s over in two,” she says, then pauses, her expression shifting again. “You sure you’re good?”

“Yeah,” Mark lies just like any other day. “I’m good.”

Odessa doesn’t believe him, her face makes that very clear. But after a moment, she just sighs and pushes the door wider with her shoulder. “Then come be good inside. The espresso machine’s doing that possessed noise again.”

“Great,” Mark mutters, stepping past her back into the warmth and noise of the coffee shop. “Love that for us.”

He finishes his shift with a headache pulsing behind his eyes and a knot of nausea in his stomach. He doesn’t want to go back to his apartment. He doesn’t want to be Spider-Man. Usually, no matter how bad things get, the mask gives him something. Purpose, distance, a direction to throw his body in until his mind goes quiet. Tonight, even that feels like too much. For the first time in a long time, Mark doesn’t know what he wants at all, except for the world to rewind about seventy-two hours.

He ends up on a different rooftop, one he hasn’t been to in years, overlooking the East River. The water is dark and choppy, reflecting the city lights in jagged streaks. He sits, knees pulled to his chest and just exists. He doesn’t think or plan anything. He lets the noise of the city wash over him, the distant sirens, the rumble of the subway, the constant hum of a place that never sleeps. He used to love this sound. Tonight, it just feels loud.

“Rough night?”

The new voice is calm, feminine, and familiar. Mark head snaps toward the source of the sound.

Standing near the roof’s access door is a woman in a dark, tactical suit, the material shimmering slightly under the city’s ambient light. The only color is the deep crimson of the stylized spider emblem on her chest. 

“Hi, Jessica.”

“Spider-Woman, dummy. Don’t be careless.”

They don’t work together often, their patrol patterns are different, their methods even more so, and Jessica has always carried herself with the kind of competence that makes Mark feel like he should stand up straighter around her whether he wants to or not. Still, they run in the same circles. They’ve crossed paths enough times that she doesn’t feel like a senior trying to teach him something or a junior he has to worry over.  

Ever since the spell, she is also the only one Mark has shown his face to again. The second time they met had been a lot better than the first, mostly because by then he knew how to dodge her kicks.

“Something like that,” he says, voice rough. He didn’t even hear her land.

She walks over, but doesn’t come too close, giving him space, settling onto the ledge a few feet away, looking out at the same view. “You look like garbage.”

“Feel like it too,” Mark mutters, rubbing at the back of his neck. He’s not in the mood for company, but Spider-Woman isn’t exactly company. She’s just another shadow on another roof.

“You’re slouching,” she notes, her tone conversational. “Your posture is terrible and your usual brooding vigilante stance has more integrity.”

Mark huffs a weak laugh. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Everyone’s entitled to an off night, just thought I’d check in. Haven’t seen you on the west side at all. Kingpin’s people are getting antsy.”

“Busy elsewhere,” he says, vague and noncommittal.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward the general direction of Donghyuck’s neighborhood. “You’ve been running a very specific, very long-term patrol route over there. For a long, long time.”

Mark’s blood runs cold. He’s been so focused on hiding from Donghyuck, he forgot about hiding from people who might actually see what he was doing.

“I patrol a lot of places,” he says after a moment, and even he can hear how bad it sounds.

Jessica turns her head just enough to look at him. “Sure.”

“That area has been active,” Mark swallows. 

“That area has been boring as hell,” she says, very calmly. “Which, for the record, I think is lovely. I love boring, because it means fewer shattered windows and fewer men with terrible tattoos trying to swing crowbars at your face, but it does make me wonder about the sudden commitment you have for that neighborhood. You don’t like being bored.”

Mark looks away again, jaw tightening. “Are you tracking me now?”

“No,” Jessica says, unbothered by the edge in his voice. “I’m noticing you. There’s a difference.”

“It’s nothing, okay?”

“Looked like a whole lot of something for two years,” Jessica says, her voice losing its casual edge, sharpening with perception. “Now you’re over here looking like someone stole your dog. Did the ‘something’ end?”

Mark just stares at the water and feels a strange, detached sort of panic. This is what happens when you build a house of cards in a wind tunnel. The pattern he thought belonged only to him has apparently been visible from miles away, 

“I’m not prying,” she says, though that’s exactly what she’s doing. “But if it’s messing with your head this badly, maybe it’s a good thing it’s over.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe not,” she concedes easily. “But I know what it looks like when a mission gets personal. And I know that kind of mission has a way of getting you killed. Or worse, getting someone else killed.”

“It’s not a mission.”

“Okay. My bad, then. I’ll back off,” Jessica stands, stretching her arms. “Just be careful, Spider-Man. Your pattern has been predictable. That’s dangerous.”

She gives him a short, professional nod, and then she’s gone, a silent leap into the night, leaving him alone again with the weight of her observations. 

Predictable. He’s been a ghost haunting the same two blocks, too many times, for two years, and he thought he was being subtle. He thought he was invisible.

The shame is immediate and suffocating. He’s not just failing Donghyuck. He’s failing at this, too. The one thing he is supposed to be good at, the one identity that still has use when everything else in his life has been stripped down to bills and bruises and dead-end shifts. Spider-Man is supposed to know better, but he’s letting a personal grief compromise his work, his safety, and the safety of the person he’s supposed to be protecting. The rules Donghyuck gave him aren’t just a compromise to make him feel less watched. They’re a lifeline. He’s been a fool to think he could keep this up forever.

Mark forces himself to stand. He needs to sleep and needs to stop being this person for a few hours.

He goes back to his apartment, but just lies there in the dark, thinking someone gets to have the life he lost. It’s a new kind of torture. Before, the grief was a museum, something he could visit and observe. Now, it’s a live grenade in his hands, and he has no idea when it will go off.

He goes to their next project meeting with a new, fortified kind of dread. He’s spent the last few days oscillating between numb avoidance and hyper-aware planning. He’s mapped out a new patrol schedule in his head. Tuesdays and Fridays. He will swing through the neighborhood, stay on the rooftops across the street, and once Donghyuck’s key is in the lock, he’s gone. He will be Spider-Man, not a lovesick ghost.

Still, knowing the plan does not make walking into the library any easier. If anything, it makes him feel more aware of every single thing he has done wrong.

He finds Donghyuck already at their usual table. He sits with his laptop open but not really working yet, one elbow on the table, chin lightly propped against his hand as he scrolls through something on the screen. He looks tired, there’s a faint shadow under his eyes. And this time, Donghyuck has two cups of coffee. He pushes one toward Mark as he sits down.

“I don’t know what you like, but I got you this anyway,” Donghyuck says kindly.

It’s a small, ordinary act of kindness, but it feels like something Mark doesn’t deserve. He ignored Donghyuck’s texts for days, gave him flimsy replies, postponed meetings, acted like the project was something he could pick up and drop whenever his emotional capacity allowed it, and this is what he gets. Consideration.

“Thanks,” Mark mumbles, wrapping his cold hands around the warm cardboard. “You shouldn’t bother yourself with this.”

“It wasn’t a bother. I was buying mine anyway,” Donghyuck shrugs. “And you never have anything while we are studying, it makes me worried you survive through photosynthesis.”

“I eat, okay?” Mark says, trying to sound convincing, even though they both probably know he absolutely does not have a stable relationship with meals. 

“I hope you do,” Donghyuck says, looking at him with a weirdly sincere concern again. “Don't let work consume you.”

How ironic. Donghyuck is worried that his shifts are too much, that he’s tired, that he doesn’t eat properly, when Mark is the one who has made himself into a shadow at the edges of Donghyuck’s life.

“I’ll try,” he says, the words tasting like ash.

After a moment, Donghyuck clears his throat and nudges his notebook closer, apparently deciding to spare them both whatever silence was beginning to form.

“I saw your part of the project and it’s good,” he says, tapping the side of his pen against the notebook, eyes already drifting toward the shared document on his laptop, “and I know your pace is way slower than mine, but like, we’ve got a deadline that is closing on us.”

“Yeah, I know.” Mark rubs his thumb against the cardboard sleeve of the coffee cup. His part is not good, not really. It is functional, at best.

“So, I went through the archive again and found two more articles we can use for the case studies, so we can hurry up the process,” Donghyuck turns the laptop just a little, enough for Mark to see the highlighted blocks of text and the short notes Donghyuck added in the margins. “One of them is kind of dense, though, so I highlighted the useful parts in the shared document.”

“Thanks,” Mark says, nodding as he leans closer to read the section. “This helps a lot.” 

“No problem,” Donghyuck replies, already typing again. “I figured if we get the hard stuff out of the way now, we can focus on the presentation later. You’re good with presentations, right?”

The question catches Mark off guard. He hasn’t even thought about the presentation. He’s been so consumed with surviving the research phase that the end of the project feels like a distant, abstract concept. 

“I’m alright,” he says, which is not a lie. He used to be good at them when he had Donghyuck to bounce off, when they could trade the talking back and forth with the easy rhythm of people who knew each other’s thoughts before they finished forming. Now, the idea of speaking for more than thirty seconds in front of him makes his palms sweat.

“Good,” Donghyuck says, not noticing the lie. Or maybe he’s just too polite to call it out. “Because I hate them. I always talk too fast or forget what I’m saying halfway through. So you can be the calm, collected one.”

Calm and collected. Donghyuck used to call him that, teasing him for being the steady one when Donghyuck’s brain was moving too fast for his mouth to keep up. He’d grab Mark’s arm and say, Okay, talk slow for me, Mark, I need to borrow your brain for a second.

“I can do that,” Mark says, and it’s the truest thing he’s said all day.

“Great,” Donghyuck smiles at him, then turns back to the document. “Then I’ll handle most of the slide structure, and you can be in charge of making us sound like we know what we’re talking about.”

Mark hums, looking down at his laptop as he opens the shared file. “Big responsibility.”

“Terrible responsibility,” Donghyuck agrees immediately. “Very heavy. I’m trusting you with my academic dignity.”

“You have academic dignity?”

Donghyuck gasps softly. “I bought you coffee, be nice.”

“Right,” Mark’s mouth twitches before he can stop it. “Sorry. Very dignified.”

“Exactly,” Donghyuck points at him. “Respect me, young man.”

They work for a while after that, and this time Mark manages to be more present than he expected. Not fully, because fully present is still a little too much to ask, but present enough that the words on the screen start turning into actual meaning. At first, everything is still a jumble of zoning laws and demographic data, a dry mess of statistics and policy language that makes his eyes want to slide off the page, but he blinks hard and eventually the details begin to resolve into something usable.

For the next hour, they get more done than they managed in all the other meetings combined. Donghyuck explains a concept Mark doesn’t quite understand without making him feel stupid for asking, leaning over the table with his pen in hand, drawing little arrows between ideas until the mess turns into a structure Mark can follow. Mark finds a data point Donghyuck missed in one of the case studies, something about neighborhood retention rates after a transit reform, and Donghyuck lights up when he sees it, immediately pulling it into the shared document with a pleased little hum that makes Mark feel absurdly proud over one line in an academic article.

“Okay, I’m getting hungry,” Donghyuck announces about an hour later, closing his laptop with a snap that sounds much louder in the quiet library than it probably is. He stretches back in his chair with a small groan, rubbing one hand over his face. Then he looks at Mark, with too much expectation. “Are you hungry?”

Mark is starving. He has been surviving on coffee, adrenaline and the occasional sad piece of toast for the better part of the week, which his body has been trying to tell him with increasing aggression since morning that just that is not enough. Still, the question makes him freeze for half a second because food means longer together and that means more room for mistakes. But he looks at Donghyuck, who is already starting to pack his things with an easy confidence that assumes Mark will say yes, and he knows he can’t say no.

“Sure.”

Donghyuck’s face lights up. “Great. There’s a new taco place around the corner that’s cheap and doesn't suck. My kind of establishment.”

Mark nods, shoving his laptop into his bag with a little less haste than usual.

The taco place is small and full over sticky tables that have been wiped down a thousand times but still feel vaguely grim. The laminated menu above them is slightly crooked, the floor has scuff marks near the soda machine and there’s a small television in the corner playing a sports channel with the sound turned low. It is exactly the kind of place Donghyuck has always loved, indeed.

They order at the counter. Donghyuck gets three tacos and a large soda, and Mark, trying to remember how to be a person who eats in public, gets two. They find a small table in the corner, pressed up against a window that looks out onto the bustling street.

“So,” Donghyuck says, unwrapping his first taco with practiced ease, already leaning over the foil a little so nothing spills on his shirt. “Tell me something interesting about yourself that isn’t urban planning.”

Mark freezes with a taco halfway to his mouth. Interesting, what a terrible word. He has nothing interesting left that belongs safely to this version of himself. Spider-Man is interesting, but that is locked behind a mask and a thousand lies. Loving Donghyuck is interesting, in the most devastating way, but that belongs to a past Donghyuck doesn’t have access to and Mark can’t revisit without bleeding all over the table. His life right now is a grayscale photograph of survival.

“Um,” he says, taking a bite to buy himself a second. The taco is good, but he barely tastes it, too busy panicking over the idea of personal information. He chews longer than necessary. “Not much to tell.”

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. “Everyone has something. What do you do for fun? Besides letting your life be consumed by work.”

The irony is so sharp it almost makes him laugh. Mark vaguely remembers fun as a concept. Every hour of his day became divided between making money, saving strangers, and trying not to lose his mind over someone who doesn’t remember him. 

“I don’t know,” he says, wiping his thumb against the edge of the foil. “Read? Listen to music.” 

“Safe answers,” Donghyuck teases, but his eyes are curious. “What kind of music?”

“All kinds.” 

It’s another lie. He mostly listens to the saddest music he can find, wallowing in it like a pig in mud. Donghyuck used to make fun of him for it, calling him an old man before he was even twenty-five.

“Elaborate, please,” Donghyuck leans back slightly, taking a sip of his soda, still watching him with that same bright curiosity that makes Mark feel both warmed and cornered. “Like, do you listen to sad indie music? Are you secretly into heavy metal? Classical? K-pop? Weird experimental sounds recorded in someone’s basement?”

“Mostly sad stuff, I guess.” 

“You probably stare out of windows while listening to songs with titles in lowercase.”

Mark feels heat crawl up his neck because that is, unfortunately, not wrong. “That’s very specific.”

“Because I’m right. You look like you have a playlist for walking alone at night.” 

“I do too, actually,” Mark pouts slightly. He has a specific playlist to swing alone at night, but Donghyuck doesn’t need to know that much. “It’s not always sad, but, like, dramatic. I like songs that make normal situations feel important. Walking home from work is way better when the music makes you feel like you’re in the last scene of a movie.” 

Donghyuck smiles, pleased in a quiet way, and takes another sip of his soda. “See? That’s interesting.”

“Me listening to sad music is interesting?” Mark gives him a doubtful look. 

“It’s something,” Donghyuck says. “Something is better than not much to tell.”

Mark doesn’t know what to say to that, so he takes another bite and actually tastes it this time. The salsa is surprisingly good, a little smoky with a kick of heat at the end, and the combination of cilantro and lime is so fresh it makes his tired brain feel a little less foggy.

“What’s that?” Donghyuck asks suddenly. His brows pull together, eyes narrowing as he leans forward across the table, not enough to make a scene but enough that Mark’s body goes instantly rigid.

“What’s what?” Mark asks, frowning too.

“Your lip is busted,” Donghyuck says, pointing at the corner of Mark’s mouth. “Right there.” 

Fuck, the concealer must have melted from the heat of the taco, or maybe from Mark himself wiping his mouth without thinking. He had checked it twice before leaving his apartment and the split looked covered enough, faintly discolored if someone stared too long, but nothing obvious. He should have bought the other concealer, the more expensive one that usually didn’t smudge even through sweat or rain.

“Don’t worry,” Mark says, reaching up too late and touching the corner of his mouth with his thumb. It stings immediately, a small bright flare that makes him regret drawing attention to it at all. “I just hurt myself a bit.”

Donghyuck’s frown deepens. “A bit? That looks like it split open.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Mark says, folding one of his hands under the table and rubbing his thumb against his jeans where Donghyuck won’t see. “I bumped into something.”

“You bumped into something with your mouth?” Donghyuck arches his brows.

“Technically, yeah.”

“That is such a bad answer.”

“It’s the answer I have, right now.”

“It’s a terrible one.”

Mark lets out a tired breath through his nose, almost a laugh but too nervous to become one properly. “I’m aware.”

“Is someone messing with you?” Donghyuck asks, way too serious.

“What? No.”

Donghyuck doesn’t look convinced. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Mark says, too fast again. He forces himself to slow down, shoulders stiff under his hoodie. “Yeah. No one’s messing with me.”

“You come in looking half-dead every time we meet, you avoid messages for days, and now your lip is split open under what looks like—” His eyes narrow again, and Mark feels true terror take physical form in his spine. “Is that makeup?”

“No?” Mark squints his eyes. “I mean, yeah. It is, just a bit of concealer.”

“Mark,” Donghyuck sighs. “You can just say it’s none of my business if it’s none of my business. I’ll shut up.” 

“It’s not like that,” Mark retorts, fast. “No one’s hurting me.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m just clumsy,” Mark says.

Donghyuck’s expression goes flat. “You are not serious.”

“I am, actually.”

“You’re telling me you’re clumsy enough to split your lip?”

Mark winces. “When you say it like that, it sounds weird.”

“Because it is weird,” Donghyuck sighs, dragging a hand through his hair, and for a second he looks genuinely frustrated. “But okay, I’m not trying to interrogate you. I have ointment in my bag, hold on.”

“No, it’s fine—”

“Shut up, Mark,” Donghyuck says without looking at him, already leaning down and rummaging through his bag with single-minded determination. Mark sits there uselessly with his taco half-wrapped in foil, watching Donghyuck search through his bag until he makes a small triumphant sound and pulls out a little tube. “Aha. Got it.”

Donghyuck uncaps it and squeezes a fair amount onto his pointer finger before Mark can come up with a convincing reason to stop this. He leans closer across the sticky little table. “Lean over a bit.”

Mark’s cheeks heat instantly. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Hurry up,” Donghyuck almost groans, impatient in that dramatic way that would be funny if Mark’s entire nervous system wasn’t currently turning against him. “It’ll take two seconds.”

And because Mark is Mark, because his body still remembers listening to Donghyuck long before his brain can remind him this is different now, he leans forward.

Donghyuck is impossibly careful. He sets his free hand under Mark’s chin, fingers light but steady, tilting his face just enough to get a better look at the split skin. His touch is warm, his thumb rests along the edge of his jaw and Mark stops breathing for a second, then forces himself to inhale through his nose before Donghyuck can notice and ask another devastating question.

“The food is probably going to taste a bit bitter, I think,” Donghyuck says, his voice lower now because they’re close enough. He dabs the ointment carefully onto the corner of Mark’s mouth, his pointer finger barely pressing against the cut, so soft that it should be nothing. It is too much and too little at the same time, a touch so familiar in shape and so unfamiliar in meaning that Mark feels something inside him buckle. “Try to eat it sideways.”

If Mark had a functional brain at that moment, he would mock him for it, because what does eating sideways even mean? He would ask if Donghyuck expects him to rotate his entire head like an owl or approach the taco from a strategic angle. He would say something stupid enough to make Donghyuck roll his eyes and threaten to let the wound get infected out of spite. In another life, he would have. 

In another life, Donghyuck would already be calling him dramatic while still holding his face with both hands, and Mark would be pretending the ointment hurts more than it does just so Donghyuck would fuss at him longer.  But in this life, Mark only nods softly.

Mark barely registers the physical sensation of the ointment making his lip sting because tears are suddenly prickling behind his eyes with humiliating force. They come so fast he almost panics, a hot pressure building under his lashes, threatening to show up right there while Donghyuck is leaning close enough to see everything. 

He looks down as much as Donghyuck’s hand allows, focusing on the edge of the little smear of salsa near his wrist. It doesn’t help, because the problem is not what he’s looking at. The problem is that Donghyuck is touching him, and it has been two years.

Two years since Donghyuck last touched him like this, close and careful, irritated because Mark had failed to take proper care of himself. Two years since those hands had any reason to hold his face. Two years since Mark had been allowed to feel that kind of care without knowing the person giving it had no idea how much history his fingers were carrying. 

Donghyuck’s hand stills under his chin, and the restaurant noise seems to swell around them, too loud and too far away at the same time. 

“Does it hurt?” He asks, all soft.

Mark shakes his head once, barely. The motion shifts Donghyuck’s fingers against his jaw, and that almost makes it worse. “No.”

Donghyuck doesn’t look convinced. His eyes search Mark’s face, and for once Mark can’t hide behind silence, distance or a laptop screen. He is stuck there, being studied by the one person who has always known how to find him even when he doesn’t remember learning his own map. 

“Then why do you look like that?” Donghyuck adds.

Mark swallows carefully. His throat feels tight, and the cut pulls with the movement. “Like what?”

“Like I’m hurting you.”

The words land so gently they almost destroy him. Mark closes his eyes for half a second, which is a mistake because the darkness behind his eyelids fills immediately with old rooms, old light, old versions of them. 

Donghyuck sitting on the bathroom counter with a first-aid kit in his lap and scolding him under his breath while pressing a bandage over his ribs. Donghyuck kissing the corner of his mouth after Mark complained that the antiseptic hurt. Donghyuck saying, you’re so annoying, and touching him like he was precious anyway.

“You’re not hurting me,” Mark says, opening his eyes again before the memories can swallow him completely. His voice comes out rough, scraped thin around the edges. “Sorry. I’m just tired, I was holding a yawn.”

Donghyuck watches him for another second, and Mark can tell he doesn’t fully believe it. There is something unsettled in his expression, something almost frightened by its own concern, but he doesn’t push. He just lets out a quiet breath and finishes smoothing the ointment over the split skin with one last careful touch. Then he pulls his hand back, and Mark hates the immediate loss of warmth so much.

“There,” Donghyuck says, recapping the tube. “Try not to attack your taco with that side of your mouth.”

Mark lets out a weak breath that barely counts as a laugh. “I’ll do my best.”

“You better. I didn’t waste my medical expertise for you to ruin it in five minutes.”

“Medical expertise?”

“I own ointment,” Donghyuck says, very seriously, sliding the tube back into his bag. “That makes me basically a doctor.”

“Right,” Mark’s mouth twitches, and this time the smile hurts both because of the cut and because of everything else. “My bad.”

Donghyuck sits back, picking up his taco again, but his eyes don’t leave Mark immediately.  Mark takes another bite of his taco from the wrong angle, gets a flash of bitter ointment mixed with lime and salsa, and hears Donghyuck click his tongue in immediate disapproval.

“I said sideways, Mark,” Donghyuck complains. “What happened to following instructions?”

Mark finally laughs, quiet and helpless, ducking his head over the foil so Donghyuck won’t see too much of his face.

For one second, it almost feels like being alive.

Mark doesn’t patrol anywhere else before heading toward the restaurant. That’s probably against the spirit of the compromise, or maybe against every lesson Jessica has ever thrown at his head about predictable patterns and not letting personal shit turn him stupid, but Mark can’t make himself swing aimlessly around other neighborhoods tonight pretending his body isn’t pointed in one direction the entire time. 

He goes directly there, landing on a rooftop across the street from the restaurant instead of the old one he used to favor. It is higher than before, farther back, tucked behind a large vent unit and partially hides him from view if anyone happens to glance up. This is the new spot. Far enough to not be a creep, at least according to the very generous definition he is clinging to, and it’s still close enough to see the door. He crouches down first, checking the sightline from behind the vent, then lowers himself into a seated position with his back against the metal and his knees drawn up loosely. He sits, and he waits.

He came way later tonight than he used to, because he is trying. That should count for something, even if the bar is currently buried under the ground. Donghyuck’s shift ends at ten, so Mark shows up ten minutes before ten, no earlier, because the old version of him would have been there for hours already, watching the restaurant slowly empty out, cataloging every customer who looked at Donghyuck too long or spoke too sharply. 

Tonight, Mark gives himself the last ten minutes only. He checks the street below, checks the restaurant door, checks the rooftops around him because Jessica’s voice has been living rent-free in his head since she caught him over the river. Predictable is dangerous. He is being less predictable now, even though he is sitting across from the same restaurant for the same reason. Baby steps, maybe. Extremely pathetic baby steps.

Five minutes before ten, Donghyuck comes out carrying several black trash bags, and Mark straightens before he can stop himself. The bags look too heavy and Donghyuck has two looped in one hand and one gripped in the other, his shoulders hunched slightly with the effort. He walks toward the alley by the side of the restaurant, and Mark frowns behind the mask. That doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t need to come out the front to do that when the restaurant has a side door that leads directly into that alley. Mark knows this because two years of rooftops have made him the world’s most depressing expert in the layout of Donghyuck’s workplace. 

Donghyuck disappears into the alley just to appear on the street again only a few seconds later, empty-handed now, and his head is tilted up, searching above the buildings. He scans the rooflines with narrowed eyes, standing there under the glow of the restaurant sign. Mark presses himself back a little more against the vent as if the metal can absorb him completely.

“I’m out of your sight like you asked,” Mark murmurs to himself, voice low and defensive even though Donghyuck can’t hear him from down there. 

Donghyuck pouts slightly, or maybe that’s Mark projecting from too far away, but there is definitely an irritated press to his mouth as he keeps scanning the area. He opens the restaurant door with one hand, body half-turned to enter again, and for a second Mark thinks that’s it. He passed the test. Donghyuck looked, didn’t find him, and now he’ll go back inside until his shift is properly done. 

Then Donghyuck stops in the doorway and, slowly, he leans back out and looks directly at the building Mark is on.

“Shit,” Mark hisses, dropping into a squat so fast his knee bumps the vent with a dull metallic thud. He freezes immediately after, one hand braced on the rooftop, the other pressed against the vent, wishing he can physically hold his own stupidity in place. His heart kicks against his ribs. 

He waits there for ten seconds, because ten seconds should be enough time for Donghyuck to roll his eyes, call himself paranoid and go back inside. Ten seconds is a reasonable amount of time for a normal person to give up on staring at a roof. Except Donghyuck has never been reasonable when he’s suspicious, and Mark knows this. He knows this so well that the fact he still counts to ten makes him feel like a fool.

Mark slowly rises, just enough to peek over. Despite all his efforts, Donghyuck is still standing in the middle of the sidewalk, hands on his hips, staring straight up at him. The expression on his face is impossible to read clearly from this height, but the body language is unmistakable. 

For a second, Mark just stays half-hidden, as if continuing to crouch awkwardly will somehow undo the fact that Donghyuck has already spotted him. Donghyuck waits, still as anything except for the little tilt of his head that says he knows exactly how stupid Mark is being and is prepared to stand there all night if necessary. Eventually, Mark realizes he is, in fact, fucking stupid, and slowly rises to his full height, shoulders tight and dignity somewhere in the alley with the trash bags.

Donghyuck points at him, then points at the restaurant. Mark frowns under the mask and tilts his head. Donghyuck repeats the gesture, finger aimed at Mark first, then at the restaurant door, his whole body radiating impatience from across the street.

Mark points at himself, because apparently when cornered, his brain can only operate through pantomime. Donghyuck nods once, exaggerated and irritated. Then Mark points at the restaurant. Donghyuck nods again, clearly rolling his eyes hard enough Mark can feel it from the rooftop.

Mark stands there in silence, processing the fact that Donghyuck is apparently summoning him into the restaurant. He points down at the street now, then at himself again, just to make sure they are both understanding the same deeply insane request.

Donghyuck throws both hands out in a what else would I mean gesture, then points at the door one more time with the kind of authority that has made Mark obey him in far less reasonable situations.

“This is such a bad idea,” Mark groans under the mask, then steps off the roof.

He swings low and careful, crossing the street in one clean arc before landing in the alley. His feet hit the pavement silently, just in time for Donghyuck to appear in front of him with an expression so unimpressed it could qualify as a physical attack. Up close, he looks tired from his shift, cheeks faintly flushed from the warmth inside, eyes bright with irritation.

“You are really bad at following instructions,” Donghyuck says.

Mark points up at the rooftop. “I was farther away.”

“You were very visible.”

“You found me because you were looking.”

“Yeah, and I found you.”

“That doesn’t mean I was visible to normal people.”

Donghyuck narrows his eyes. “Are you calling me abnormal?”

“No,” Mark says carefully.

Donghyuck stares at him for another beat, then looks satisfied enough to let it go, which is frankly suspicious. “Come inside.”

“What?”

“I said come inside.”

“I heard you. I’m asking why.”

“Because I’m not standing in an alley, yelling at Spider-Man while anyone can come here,” Donghyuck says, already turning toward the door as if the decision has been made for both of them. “Are you coming or are you going to make this weirder?”

“What about the customers?"

“There’s no one in there,” Donghyuck says, looking over his shoulder with impatience. “Come the fuck inside.”

For at least two full seconds, Mark imagines shooting a web at the nearest building and getting the hell out of there before whatever this is becomes another thing he lies awake thinking about. But then Donghyuck steps inside, holding the door open with his shoulder, and looks at him with that annoyed, expectant expression that makes Mark’s resistance fold in on itself like cheap paper.

The kitchen is cleaner than Mark expected. Stainless steel counters reflect the overhead lights, the pans hanging near the stove shine way too much, there are a couple of plastic containers stacked near the prep station, a damp towel folded over the edge of the sink. It’s perfectly ordinary. 

“Sit.”

Mark looks at the chair nearby, then at him. It’s one of those plain metal chairs tucked beside a small table used for breaks or paperwork, probably uncomfortable, probably exactly the kind of thing Donghyuck has sat on a hundred times while scrolling through his phone during slow moments. 

“You’re very bossy.”

“You’re very stalkery. Sit.”

Mark sits anyways.

Donghyuck stands across from him for a second before leaning back against the edge of the counter, arms folding loosely over his chest. He studies him for a long moment, eyes moving over the mask like if he looks hard enough he might find a person underneath. Mark stays perfectly still. Then Donghyuck sighs.

“I thought we agreed on farther away,” he says.

“I was farther away, dude. You were not supposed to look up.”

“Farther away and less obvious.”

“I was behind a vent,” Mark presses his lips together under the mask, which is pointless because Donghyuck can’t see it. “I’m trying.”

“I know,” Donghyuck says, and then looks almost annoyed with himself for saying it. He taps his fingers once against the table. “I mean, I think I know. You look like you’re trying, which is weird because I don’t even know what you’re trying to do exactly, but you go girl.”

“Man,” Mark corrects. “Misgendering is not nice.”

“It’s a meme,” Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “Anyway, did you eat anything today?”

“Why does it matter?”

“You’re a human being, that’s a first,” Donghyuck says, counting on his fingers. “You’re a human being that saves lives every day, that’s a second. It’s past dinner time, that’s a third.”

“I don’t need food, don’t worry. It’s time for you to clock out anyway.”

It’s not even the worst lie Mark has told this week, but it might be the most insulting one, at least judging by Donghyuck’s face. There’s a slow, incredulous flattening to his expression. 

“You don’t need food,” Donghyuck repeats, voice dry.

“I mean, I do. I’m a human being with physiological needs,” Mark corrects, because apparently he is determined to dig the hole with both hands. “I’m just saying you don’t have to feed me.”

“I’m not adopting a stray cat,” Donghyuck says, pushing away from the counter. “I’m giving a person food because he’s sitting in my kitchen after stalking me from a roof.”

“Calling me a stalker is a bit too much.”

“Then what am I supposed to name it?”

Mark sits there uselessly, watching Donghyuck pull out a small paper tray and move around the kitchen. It feels too familiar and too foreign at the same time. A version of care shaped by hands Mark remembers, offered to a person Donghyuck doesn’t know he knows.

“You seriously don’t have to,” Mark says.

Donghyuck doesn’t look back. “I seriously know.”

“I can’t exactly eat with the mask on.”

That makes Donghyuck pause, then he turns just enough to give Mark a look over his shoulder. “I’m not asking you to take it off, I’m not stupid. I know you’ve got your whole secret identity thing going on. You can lift it to your nose or whatever. I’ll turn around, I don’t care.”

Donghyuck opens a container and starts assembling something quickly, not a full meal exactly, but more than Mark expected. Rice, leftover meat, a little sauce, something green from another container, all folded together with the practiced efficiency. 

“Also,” Donghyuck adds, tone returning to casual irritation as if the brief softness embarrassed him, “don’t come here while starving, don’t want you to pass out in front of me.”

“I’m not starving?” He is. “And I’m not going to pass out either.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think I’d know. It’s my body.”

“You didn’t know you were visible behind a vent, so forgive me for doubting your self-awareness.”

Mark huffs a laugh despite himself. Donghyuck glances back at him when he hears it, but seems to catch himself just as quickly and turns away, clearing his throat.

“Anyway,” he says, a little too briskly, setting the food into the paper tray. “Eat before I change my mind and throw you back onto the street.”

“I thought I was cool because I save lives every day?”

“Then save yours for once,” Donghyuck sets the tray down in front of him, then grabs a plastic fork and places it beside the food with a little more force than necessary. “I’m turning around now. Don’t be weird.”

“You don’t need to turn, though,” Mark retorts. 

Donghyuck squints. “What?”

“You don’t need to turn,” Marm repeats. “I’ll just lift the mask a little. You won’t see anything.”

“Okay,” Donghyuck says slowly, dragging the word out while looking at him with open suspicion. “Why are you being weirdly confident about that?”

“I’m not being weirdly confident,” Mark lies, he absolutely is being weirdly confident. He doesn’t mean to be, but he knows Donghyuck. He knows Donghyuck can be curious enough to drive a person insane, but he isn’t cruel with boundaries when they’re clear. “It’s just not necessary.”

“Well, if you say so then go ahead, I'm not going to look at your face,” Donghyuck says, leaning back against the counter again, pointedly looking at the wall behind Mark.

Mark’s fingers hesitate at the edge of the mask. He has eaten with the mask on before, of course. He’s had to. There have been nights where he shoved granola bars or cheap sandwiches under the fabric in alleys, turning his back to security cameras and hoping no one with a phone wandered too close. It’s miserable every time, awkward and suffocating, fabric sticking to his mouth, crumbs getting everywhere, the whole thing somehow more humiliating than getting thrown through a window. 

Lifting the mask, even for a few seconds, is a calculated risk he almost never takes outside the safety of his apartment, and even then he sometimes catches himself checking the window twice before doing it. Tonight, the stakes feel infinitely higher.

He lifts it carefully, just enough to uncover his mouth, the fabric pressing above his upper lip. He keeps his head angled down slightly, just in case, and takes the fork.

“I don’t know why I’m feeding you. Those Reddit theories are probably true and you probably eat bugs or something for protein. That’s what spiders do, right? Do you eat bugs? Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”

Mark carefully spears a piece of meat and rice and brings it to his mouth. It’s the first proper bite he’s had all day.

“I don’t eat bugs and I’m not a spider,” Mark says with his mouth half full and flushes immediately, horrified by the lack of manners. Donghyuck, mercifully, is still looking at the wall like he hasn’t noticed.

“You’ve got the theme going on.” Donghyuck retorts. “You can’t blame me for assuming.”

“I’m not responsible for my brand, it kind of just happened,” Mark says, chewing faster.

“So what’s the story there? You got stabbed in a lab or something?"

“Radioactive spider, dude,” Mark retorts, kind of offended. “You don’t know my lore?”

“Sorry I didn’t read your wiki page,” Donghyuck says, turning slightly now, just enough to show he’s not going to stare. “And even if I did, I’d assume half of it was conspiracy theories written by people with too much free time.”

“The wiki is surprisingly accurate,” Mark says, taking another bite. The food is warm and savory in a way that’s making him realize how truly empty he is. 

“I’m sure the bug-eating theory is on there too, then. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

“That’s definitely on there, but I promise I never did that,” Mark says. “I have standards.”

“Good. I’d hate to have fed my leftovers to someone who eats bugs, that shit would be weirder than cannibalism.”

“Now that's an exaggeration.”

“I know, shut up.”

Mark almost laughs again, but he swallows it down with another bite of rice. 

Donghyuck shifts against the counter. “So, do you have like… enhanced taste too? Is my leftover kitchen rice secretly blowing your mind right now?”

“I think I’m just hungry.”

“That’s a boring answer.”

“Most true answers are.”

“Fair,” Donghyuck turns his head a little more at that, eyes flicking toward him before stopping somewhere around the edge of the mask. “But disappointing. I was hoping for superhero food commentary.”

Mark takes another bite, slower now. “Warm and salty. Three stars.”

“It’s free food and you’re bitching, I knew you heroes were ass,” Donghyuck says, clicking his tongue jokingly.

Mark chews carefully, fighting the smile that wants to pull at his mouth. “Four and a half stars, then.”

“You're never eating for free again.”

Mark finishes the rest in silence. He wipes the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin, the one Donghyuck slid to him earlier, and lowers the mask back into place. The familiar pressure settles over him again, a barrier both comforting and suffocating.

“Okay,” Donghyuck says, pushing himself off the counter and starting to clear the small space. “I’m officially done being a Good Samaritan. My shift was supposed to end twenty minutes ago.”

“Right,” Mark stands up, the chair scraping lightly against the floor. “I’m just going to—”

"Take me home." Donghyuck says casually.

Mark freezes with one hand still near the back of the chair. “What?” 

“Take me home,” Donghyuck says casually, wiping down the counter with a damp cloth. “You can swing me. I’m not walking all the way back.”

Mark stares at him through the mask. He has no idea what he’s asking for. 

Donghyuck has no idea that the first Mark took him for a swing, he screamed so loudly in Mark’s ear that Mark almost lost grip from laughing, then pretended afterward that he had been perfectly brave. He has no idea he held Mark's shoulders, face pressed against his neck, half-terrified and half-thrilled, then begged to do it again once the fear wore off. Mark does.

“You can’t be serious,” Mark says.

“I am dead serious,” Donghyuck says, his face has that stubborn set to it, the one that means this is either already decided or will become decided after a lot of unnecessary arguing. “My feet hurt. I’m tired. And you, Spider-Man, owe me a ride for making me feed you and for being a general pain in my ass.”

“I don’t even bother you.”

“You don’t know that,” Donghyuck says immediately.

“You don’t want me to swing you,” Mark says after a moment, because that feels safer than arguing about whether he’s a bother. “It’s not like in videos. People think it’s fun until they’re actually up there.”

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. “Are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m trying to warn you.”

“That’s worse. You’re so bad at it, makes me want to do it twice,” Donghyuck folds the cloth and tosses it near the sink, then starts untying his work apron with short, tired movements. “I’m not asking you to give me a guided romantic tour of the skyline. I’m asking you to take me home because my feet are killing me and, again, you owe me.”

“It’s dangerous,” Mark says, and his voice comes out lower.

Donghyuck scoffs. “Everything in this city is dangerous. Walking home is dangerous, apparently being employed is dangerous too. Being watched by a guy in red and blue spandex is also deeply dangerous, but look at me.”

“It’s different.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’ll literally be there with me, I don’t think I need to be worried.”

That shuts Mark up. Donghyuck seems to realize what he said a second after saying it, because his expression shifts. Not regret exactly, but some awareness of the trust folded inside the sentence. 

Mark needs to remind himself that Donghyuck doesn’t know who he is. Donghyuck is talking to the mask, to the public figure, to the hero he cornered into a compromise after catching him lurking across the street. But Mark hears it like a person, like himself. 

Swinging around means Donghyuck would have to cling to him, and Mark would have to wrap an arm around him, secure him against his body, feel the weight and warmth of him in a way he has not had in two years. It is exactly the kind of thing he should refuse. It is exactly the kind of closeness that will ruin whatever fragile progress he’s made at keeping boundaries intact. It is also the safest way to get Donghyuck home if he’s exhausted, and that is the excuse Mark knows he will use to betray himself.

“No,” Mark says anyway, because some final, dying shred of reason deserves to be heard before Donghyuck crushes it.

Donghyuck squints. “No?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re tired and you’ll panic, and if you panic midair, that’s bad for both of us.”

“I won’t panic. You don’t know me.”

Mark almost laughs. It comes too close to escaping, bitter and wounded, hysterical even. Instead, he shakes his head. “No.”

Donghyuck grabs his bag from a hook near the door, shoving his apron inside with the same energy he does everything else when he’s tired and stubborn. Then he looks back at Mark, chin lifted, face set. “My apartment is close. You can either take me home in, like, two minutes, or you can follow me from whatever sad little rooftop you picked and watch me limp dramatically for fifteen. You’d hate that.”

“You’re manipulative.”

“And so tired,” Donghyuck whines. “You’re supposed to save civilians, this is a great opportunity for you to save me. I can get distracted enough to get hit by a car or something.”

Mark closes his eyes behind the mask. He can feel the fight draining out of him, replaced by that old, familiar surrender. He has always been terrible at saying no to Donghyuck, even when he should.

“Fine.”

“Really?” Donghyuck’s face brightens so quickly. “Great.”

“But,” Mark says immediately, raising one finger, “you do exactly what I say. No moving suddenly or trying to look down if you get scared.”

“I’m a big boy,” Donghyuck says, lifting his chin with completely undeserved confidence. “I will not get scared.” 

Mark should not smile. He does under the mask anyway. “You’re going to regret this.”

“Probably,” Donghyuck says, already moving toward the back door with his bag over one shoulder. “But that’s future me’s problem.”

Mark follows him outside into the alley, as watches quietly as Donghyuck locks the back door with practiced hands, tugging the handle once to make sure it catches, then turns toward Mark with a confidence that falters only slightly when he seems to realize what he actually asked for. Up close, under the alley light, he looks suddenly smaller than his attitude, tired around the eyes, mouth set like he refuses to admit nerves have arrived. Mark’s heart melts at the sight. It’s like replaying that first time, just under new circumstances, with all the old tenderness stripped of context and handed back to him like a cruel gift. 

“Okay,” Donghyuck says, rocking back on his heels. “How does this work?”

Mark steps closer, the space between them shrinking until he can see the individual threads in Donghyuck’s worn-out sneakers. “You’re going to need to hold on. Tight.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Donghyuck mocks slightly. “Where, genius?”

Mark rolls his eyes. “I’m going to hold you around the waist, you hold onto my shoulders. Tight, but don’t choke me. Keep your legs closed around my waist.”

“That sounds very intimate for public transportation.”

“It’s not public transportation.”

“You’re right. Public transportation has rules and seats.”

“I also have rules.”

“Do you have seats?”

“Dude.”

“I will shut up now.”

Mark steps closer, sliding one arm carefully around Donghyuck’s waist. Even through the layers of clothes, the contact still knocks the air out of him. Donghyuck is against him. His hand lands on Mark’s shoulder first, cautious, then the other, fingers gripping tighter as Mark shifts them both into position. 

Donghyuck still smells like the same soap Mark remembers from years ago.

“You ready?” Mark asks, voice rougher than he wants.

“No,” Donghyuck says honestly.

Mark almost laughs. “Good answer.”

Then he shoots a web upward and pulls them into the night.

As expected, Donghyuck’s reaction is immediate. His arms lock around Mark’s shoulders so tightly that Mark lets out a strained little breath, and one of his knees jerks upward a second too late before he remembers the instruction and clamps his legs properly around Mark’s waist. 

The first swing takes them out of the alley and into open air, the ground dropping away beneath them in one smooth, stomach-turning rush. The city opens around them all at once, lights stretching in every direction, windows flashing past, the street below turning into streaks of gold and red and white. Donghyuck makes a sound directly into Mark’s shoulder that is not quite a scream and not quite a curse, but something deeply close to both.

“You said you wouldn’t get scared,” Mark says, because if he doesn’t joke, he might think too much about the way Donghyuck is holding him.

“I’m not scared,” Donghyuck snaps, voice muffled against him. “I’m experiencing surprise aggressively.”

Mark swings them higher, but not as high as he would go alone, just keeping the arc smooth and controlled so Donghyuck doesn’t get jerked around too much. His arm tightens around Donghyuck’s waist on instinct as they rise and Donghyuck presses closer, fingers digging into the suit near Mark’s shoulders. It hurts a little, but Mark doesn’t mind. He minds how much he doesn’t mind. He minds the familiarity of it, the weight of Donghyuck against him, the shape of his fear. That might be the cruelest part of all. 

“Don’t look down,” Mark reminds him.

“I’m literally looking down.”

“Why?”

“What? You made the city look cool. That’s your fault!”

Mark’s angles them between two buildings, slower now, letting the swing carry them in a wide, careful arc over a quieter street. Donghyuck lifts his head just slightly from Mark’s shoulder, enough to see the city without fully trusting it, and the sound he makes this time is different. Something like wonder creeping in under the fear. 

The ride is painfully short, because Donghyuck’s apartment really is close and Mark is too careful to take the scenic route even though some selfish part of him wants to stretch the distance until it becomes an excuse for more time. He could swing them around another block and show him the river from above. He could do a hundred things old Mark would have done just to hear Donghyuck gasp and curse, just to pretend he didn’t love it. But this isn’t that. So he takes him home.

He lands them on the flat roof of Donghyuck’s apartment building instead of the sidewalk, setting down carefully with one hand braced against the ledge and the other still firm at Donghyuck’s waist. Donghyuck stays attached to him for a few seconds after they stop moving, face pressed near Mark’s shoulder, arms still locked tight. Mark doesn’t say anything. He couldn’t if he tried.

After a moment, Donghyuck lifts his head slowly. His hair is messier from the wind, cheeks flushed, eyes wide and bright in a way that makes him look younger, freer, too much like the version Mark lost. 

“Okay,” he says, breathing hard. “I hated that.”

“You did?” Mark tilts his head.

“No,” Donghyuck looks at him, still gripping his shoulders. Then he seems to realize he is still holding on and quickly lets go, stepping back with the kind of awkward little movement that tries to pretend the last two minutes did not involve his entire body pressed against Spider-Man. “I mean, it was fine. Weird and very unsafe.”

“Oh, my apologies for the bad service,” Mark looks toward the rooftop access door, then back at him. “You can get down from here?”

Donghyuck points at the door. “I live here, genius.”

“Right.”

“And you,” Donghyuck says, fixing him with a look that is slightly less steady now but still determined, “leave when I get inside.”

Mark nods. “I know, I know.”

For a second, Donghyuck looks like he wants to say something else, but maybe he doesn’t know what. Maybe the swing shook something loose or, maybe, Mark is desperate enough to imagine all of that because hope is crueler than grief sometimes.

“Thanks for the ride.”

Mark’s throat tightens. “Thanks for the food.”

“Four and a half stars,” Donghyuck’s mouth twitches. 

“Four and a half stars,” Mark agrees.

Donghyuck nods, then turns toward the rooftop door. Mark watches him go because that is what he does, but this time Donghyuck knows he’s watching and that changes everything. At the door, Donghyuck pauses with his hand on the handle and looks back once.

“When are you going to show up again?”

“Friday?”

“Alright. Stop hiding behind vents like an idiot.”

Mark huffs softly. “I’ll try.”

Donghyuck gives him one last look, then he opens the door and disappears inside. Mark waits until he hears the door close behind him to finally be able to leave.

Friday comes with the realization that Mark will see Donghyuck twice today. As Mark and as Spider-Man. The thought hits him while he’s brushing his teeth in the morning, one hand gripping the sink, toothpaste still in his mouth, eyes lifting slowly to meet his own reflection in the mirror as the information slowly downloads inside his tiny, dumb brain. He simply forgot. 

Somehow, between project deadlines, shifts and rooftop rules, Mark forgot that their next project meeting is also supposed to be on Friday. The day has become a minefield before it even properly starts. 

Donghyuck texts him around nine, right when Mark is sitting on the edge of his bed with his socks mismatched and his brain already running through every possible schedule disaster. 

maaark, can we meet up at my house tonight? i know it’s not convenient but my day will be busy and i can only do our stuff around eight maybe

if it’s too late for u we can do it over zoom or something

let me know if it’s okay

i will give u the address

Staring at the message, Mark knows there is only one right answer. The right answer is to say that Friday night is too late for him and that they can meet on Saturday, or Sunday, or during lunch next week. Or he could say that Zoom works perfectly fine because the year is modern and people do not need to sit across from each other in person to argue about slide structure. The right answer is literally anything that does not involve seeing Donghyuck twice in one day, hours apart, in two different lives. Mark should be practical about this. Instead, he opens the keyboard and types, sure, night is fine.

He presses send before he can second-guess himself. The little checkmark appears immediately.

great! thank u <3

Mark throws his phone onto the bed and groans into his pillow like the teenager he apparently still is, deep down.

At first, he thinks it will be manageable. That is his first mistake, and honestly, he should know better than to trust any thought that begins with maybe this will be fine. He puts two and two together and realizes the time periods between one and the other are very close to one another. 

If Donghyuck can do their project stuff around eight, that means he probably isn’t working until ten. Which means Spider-Man has to show earlier than that if he wants to stick to the spirit of the Friday rule, because the point is checking that Donghyuck gets home safely after work, not appearing at midnight like a creep. 

And that will hardly happen, because Mark is leaving an extra gig around six, which gives him barely enough time to shower, eat something if the gods are generous, then somehow become Spider-Man a few minutes before he has to become little student Mark. The whole thing is a logistical nightmare wearing the skin of a Friday.

Fuck. He has to choose which one he is going to be tonight.

He sits up slowly and stares at nothing while the choice arranges itself in front of him with insulting clarity. On one side, there is the project. The project is important for both of them, objectively. They have a deadline, a presentation, sections to finish and Donghyuck has already done more than enough of the heavy lifting because Mark spent the first half of this partnership emotionally blacking out over gentrification articles. 

More importantly, the project is what normal Mark does. Normal Mark is fragile, awkward, full of lies, but at least he is allowed to sit across from Donghyuck in daylight. At least he has a reason to be there that doesn’t involve surveillance or the old wound he keeps reopening with his own hands.

On the other side, there is Spider-Man. Spider-Man is what weirdo Mark does. Spider-Man is the version of him Donghyuck yelled at in the rain, caught behind a vent, dragged into a kitchen and fed out of concern. Spider-Man is the part of him that scares Donghyuck and protects him at the same time, the part wrapped in the ugliest pieces of Mark’s grief and the clearest proof that he has been letting love rot into something too close to obsession. 

If Mark skips Friday, technically he is not breaking the agreement, because Donghyuck did not ask him to come. But it feels like breaking something anyway, because the whole compromise only works if Mark proves he can follow structure instead of impulse. If he skips, does that mean he is improving or does it mean he is choosing the version of himself that gets Donghyuck’s smile over the version that keeps him safe?

The rational answer should be obvious. Donghyuck isn’t working til late tonight, apparently, so there is no dangerous work-to-home route to watch. The project meeting matters more. Normal Mark should win. 

By the time he leaves for class, he has made a decision that feels less like maturity and more like chewing glass. Mark will go to the project meeting. No Spider-Man tonight, unless there is an actual emergency unrelated to Donghyuck, because that is the line he has to learn how to draw if the rules are going to mean anything. 

He gets home at a reasonable time and actually eats this time, standing in his small kitchen with a plate in one hand and his phone facedown on the counter so he doesn’t keep checking the time. It’s nothing impressive, just bread and eggs and whatever else he can throw together quickly, but it’s food, and after the week he’s had, that counts as personal growth.

After eating, he takes a shower that is properly nice, if he ignores the bruises and the faint sting along his shin from where he scraped it the day before. He lets the hot water run through his hair until his shoulders loosen a fraction, scrubs off the smell of pizza grease and street dust. 

He wants to show up at Donghyuck’s apartment as someone who took the time, which is dangerous because wanting anything in relation to Donghyuck has never led him anywhere safe. 

Still, he chooses a nice shirt, something he usually never does for a casual library session, darker than his usual faded hoodies and actually fitting him properly around the shoulders. He checks himself in the mirror and immediately feels stupid. Then he looks again and feels worse because he does look nice, or at least nicer than usual, and some pathetic corner of him hopes Donghyuck notices. 

He decides to text Donghyuck that he’ll be a little late, just enough to give himself time to get there in a relaxed way instead of arriving sweaty and breathless. 

That’s when the phone buzzes. It’s a news alert from one of the local stations he follows. Accident near the bridge. Injuries Reported. Possible structural damage near bridge access. 

Mark shoves a slice of bread into his mouth, chews without tasting, and is already pulling the mask over his face before he has even swallowed properly. The suit comes on fast, muscle memory taking over, fabric sliding over skin still warm from the shower, hiding every little effort he made to look human tonight. He yanks the window open, the city sounds rush in cold and immediate, and he leaps out without a second thought.

Being Spider-Man is not a choice when things like this happen. Unfortunately.

An hour and a half later, he is sticky with river water, the left leg of his suit torn from shin to knee, and a dull ache throbs in his shoulder where he had to stop a car from sliding into a newly formed crater near the bridge access. The accident turned into a chain reaction because emergencies in this city never know how to stay in one lane. 

Mark spent the first twenty minutes pulling people out of cold water, the next twenty webbing unstable sections of railing and metal supports, then another stretch dragging a half-submerged vehicle away before it could sink completely. He did what he was supposed to do and now he’s going away before reporters piss him off.

He lands on top of a nearby building for exactly thirty seconds, breathing hard, river water dripping from his suit onto the concrete in dark spots. He checks his phone with wet fingers, and the screen nearly slips from his hand. There are messages from Donghyuck, of course. The first is around eight asking if he’s on his way. Another fifteen minutes later saying it’s fine if he’s late. Another just a few minutes ago with only, are you okay? 

Mark is late. Very late.

He can still go. He has to go. Canceling now would be kind of cruel, and Donghyuck has already been more patient with him than he deserves. 

Mark swings toward Donghyuck’s apartment completely the opposite of what he wanted, cutting through the city with soaked fabric and aching limbs. No careful walk, no relaxed arrival, no nice shirt. He stops a few blocks away in an alley with a broken streetlamp and a dumpster that smells like something died there. He pulls the mask off, shoves his Spider-Man stuff into his bag with hands that are still trembling from adrenaline, and tries to look the least sweaty possible, which is a joke. He is damp everywhere. 

The nice clean smell from his shower is gone, replaced by river, sweat, and whatever metallic grime ended up on him near the bridge. He changes into the clothes he packed badly, wiping his face with a spare shirt until the fabric comes away grayish and wet, then stares at the torn leg of the suit sticking out of the bag and has to force himself not to laugh in a slightly hysterical way.

He checks his reflection in the dark window of a closed store on the way out of the alley. It’s not good. He looks pale under the streetlight, mouth tight with pain, one side of his jacket sitting wrong because his shoulder hurts too much to settle it properly. He tries to smooth his hair, then gives up because there is only so much a man can do after pulling four people out of a river and stopping a car from falling into a crater. He takes out his phone and types with shaking fingers.

sorry, emergency came up. i’m almost there.

He shoves the phone into his pocket and starts walking, each step sending a fresh jolt through his shoulder.

Donghyuck opens the door before Mark even has the chance to knock twice. He is standing there in a pair of soft sweatpants and a t-shirt that looks worn and comfortable, a faint smear of what looks like highlighter on his cheek. The sight of him hits Mark with such horrible domestic force that for a second, all the pain in his shoulder becomes background noise. 

His expression is careful, hovering between annoyance and that deep well of concern Mark has become intimately familiar with again.

“You are extremely late,” Donghyuck says, but the words lack their usual bite. His eyes scan Mark from head to toe, lingering on the damp patch on Mark’s jacket sleeve and the slightly unsteady way he’s holding himself.

“Yeah,” Mark says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, the movement pulling at the sore muscles in his shoulder. “Sorry. Building thing.”

That is the worst lie he could have possibly chosen. It's so vague and obviously false.

“Building thing?” Donghyuck repeats slowly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, stepping further into the apartment before Donghyuck can decide to leave him in the hallway. “Pumbling problems, I mean. It’s fine now. Sorry I made you wait.”

“It’s fine,” Donghyuck says, closing the door and leaning against it for a second. “Are you okay? You look not okay.”

The apartment looks almost the same as the last time Mark saw it. It still feels warm, still smells faintly like those patchouli sticks Donghyuck loves even though Mark used to complain that they made the whole place smell like a yoga studio. It’s small but comfortable, mismatched blankets thrown over a worn-out sofa, a succulent on the windowsill that looks suspiciously alive despite Donghyuck’s general track record with plants. Mark forces himself not to stare at the photos on the shelf, at the faces in them that are not his anymore.

“I’m fine,” Mark lies, shifting from one foot to the other. “Just tired. Had to fix the... pumbling thing. I'm all sweaty now. Terrible.”

That’s another lie, but this one is closer to the truth.

“Your plumbing problems made you wet?” Donghyuck asks.

“That can happen. Water is involved.”

“Very technical explanation.”

“I’m too tired to form an elaborate sentence.”

“I can tell,” Donghyuck pushes himself off the door, and for a second Mark thinks he’s about to interrogate him properly, but instead he just steps aside and gestures toward the living room. “You’re always tired.”

Mark looks down immediately. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and take off your jacket,” Donghyuck says, already walking toward the small table where his laptop and books are set up. 

Mark freezes for half a breath. “I’m okay.”

“Mark.”

Donghyuck used to say his name like that when he found blood on his sleeve, when Mark tried to hide a fever or lied badly about having eaten. The spell took the memories from Donghyuck, but it did nothing to stop Mark’s body from reacting like the old rules still apply.

“I’m okay,” Mark repeats, weaker this time.

“You’re damp and pale,” Donghyuck says. “Take off the jacket or I’m going to start being annoying.”

Mark almost says you’re already annoying, because the response is sitting right there, but he bites it back. He shrugs the jacket off carefully, trying not to move the bad shoulder too much. It still pulls. He can feel Donghyuck watching the movement, and he hates how much attention his own body is drawing tonight. Under the jacket, his shirt is cleaner than his outer layer but still slightly damp around the collar. He holds the jacket awkwardly until Donghyuck points at a chair near the door.

“Put it there. I’ll give you a towel so you can take a shower.”

“That’s not necessary—”

“Please don’t make me say shut up twice in one week.”

Mark closes his mouth and puts the jacket on the chair. 

Last time he was here, Donghyuck had leaned against the bathroom door complaining that Mark was taking too long and using all the hot water, then handed him clothes afterward with that dramatic sigh he used whenever he was doing something kind and wanted to pretend it was a burden. Now Donghyuck is walking down the hall to grab him a towel because he is just a project partner that showed up late and damp.

Mark sighs sadly, as usual.

Donghyuck comes back with a towel and tosses it at him gently. Mark catches it with the wrong hand, which is lucky, because the right shoulder protests enough already from the movement. Donghyuck notices that too. His eyes flick briefly to Mark’s shoulder, then away, and he doesn’t say anything, which makes it even clearer that he noticed.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m still deciding if I’m mad at you for being late.”

“You said it was fine.”

“I lied to make myself look emotionally mature.”

“Did it work?” Mark asks.

“No,” Donghyuck says immediately, walking back toward the table. “But I attempted it, and personal growth is about effort.”

“Sure.”

“Do not sure me in my own house,” Donghyuck says, pulling one of the chairs out with his foot before sitting down. “Go shower. Bathroom is down the hall, left side. You can leave your stuff by the door if you don’t want it getting wet.”

Mark’s grip tightens around the towel. His stuff. The bag. The suit. The torn, wet, incriminating suit shoved under his laptop and spare clothes like a secret with teeth. He glances at the bag on instinct before he can stop himself, and Donghyuck’s eyes follow the movement. Not fully, not obviously, but enough. Mark’s whole body goes cold.

“I’ll keep it with me,” he says too quickly.

Donghyuck pauses, one hand resting on the back of the chair. “Okay.”

There is no accusation in the word, but there is attention. Too much of it. Mark swallows, adjusts the strap of the bag on his good shoulder, and instantly hates the way the weight makes him tense. Donghyuck’s gaze dips again, catches the stiffness, then lifts back to his face. Still, he doesn’t ask. 

It is becoming almost unbearable, the way Donghyuck keeps letting questions sit instead of forcing them. Mark used to think Donghyuck had no restraint. That was never true. Donghyuck has always known exactly when to push and when to let someone trap themselves with their own silence.

“Take your time,” Donghyuck says finally, softer than before. “I’ll set up the document.”

Mark nods, and then because he is incapable of being normal, he says, “I won’t take long.”

“I said take your time.”

“I know.”

“Then do that.”

Mark nods again and walks down the hallway before he can make the conversation worse. 

The bathroom is exactly where he remembers, but also different enough to hurt. New shower curtain. Different soap near the sink. Same annoying little shelf arrangement, because apparently Donghyuck still needs five products within arm’s reach and none of them can be thrown away even if nearly empty. Mark steps inside and closes the door quietly, then leans back against it for a second, eyes shut, towel pressed to his chest.

He locks the door, puts the bag down carefully on the closed toilet lid, and crouches to open it. The suit is damp and heavy at the bottom, the tear along the leg ugly under the bathroom light. He stares at it for a second, then shoves it deeper under the spare shirt. The bathroom smells like Donghyuck’s soap, faintly sweet, and the familiarity of it presses so hard against his ribs that he has to brace a hand against the sink.

He takes the shower because there is no way to avoid it now. The hot water hits his sore shoulder and makes him suck in a breath, pain flaring first before loosening into something almost bearable. He washes quickly, almost mechanically, scrubbing river water and city grime from his skin while trying not to think about the fact that Donghyuck is just outside the door, barefoot in the living room, waiting for him. 

Mark tries not to think about the old version of this, about borrowed clothes and jokes shouted through walls, about stepping out of this bathroom into a life where he belonged. When he’s done, he dries off carefully, checks the bruising near his shoulder, and pulls back his clothes. It’s still not comfortable, but less disgusting to be wearing it.

When he opens the bathroom door again, the apartment air feels warmer than before. Donghyuck is sitting at the table, laptop open, chin propped in one hand as he scrolls through the document. He looks up when Mark appears, and his eyes scan him again. The highlighter smear is still on his cheek. Mark wants to tell him. He wants to touch it away. 

“Better?” Donghyuck asks.

“Yeah,” Mark nods. “Thanks.”

Donghyuck points toward the kitchen without standing. “There’s tea if you want it. I made it before deciding if I was mad, so don’t read into it.”

Mark looks toward the kitchen and sees the mug with steam faintly rising from the tea. “I won’t.”

Donghyuck clears his throat and scrolls again. “Sit down, plumbing boy. We’re behind schedule.”

He taps the chair by his side with two fingers and Mark obeys instantly, pulling the chair in carefully to avoid jarring his shoulder. Mark can smell the chamomile tea before he even reaches for it. Predictable. 

“Okay,” Donghyuck says, turning the laptop so they can both see the screen. “I added the research on zoning laws you missed, and I started the conclusion section, but I hate it. It sounds like a robot wrote it while emotionally compromised. Which, to be fair, is how I feel about zoning laws, but the professor might not appreciate the artistic integrity.”

The text is better than Donghyuck is giving it credit for, probably because Donghyuck is always meanest to his own work after staring at it too long, but Mark can see what he means. The conclusion has all the right academic pieces, the words arranged in a respectable enough order, but it is overstuffed in that way student writing gets when the writer is trying to sound smarter than the argument needs. 

Mark reads the paragraph twice, partly because his brain is tired and partly because Donghyuck is warm beside him. 

“It’s not that bad,” he says eventually.

“It’s terrible. I used the phrase systemic inequity three times in one paragraph.”

Mark’s mouth twitches. “A bit on the nose.”

“A bit,” Donghyuck agrees, clicking his tongue as he scrolls back to the top of the section. “That’s where you come in. My brain is too fried to make a decent conclusion.”

“I can try.”

“You do that, please,” Donghyuck nudges the laptop closer to him. “But don’t make it boring. We already have zoning laws against that.”

Mark huffs a laugh.

“But that's not really what I want to discuss tonight,” Donghyuck says. “I started our presentation slide and I need your artistic opinion if it looks dope or silly.” 

Donghyuck clicks to a different window and a brightly colored slide appears. The title is in a bold, almost aggressive font, and the background is a photo of a city street at night, blurred with motion lights.

Mark stares at it for a moment, trying to find the most diplomatic version of the truth. “That’s… a lot.”

“Is it too much? I feel like it’s too much. But also I feel like we need to be more aggressive with our presentation.”

“Maybe dial it back a little bit? Like, ten percent?”

“Ten percent is not enough,” Donghyuck says, pulling the laptop back. “I’ll go for thirty.”

Mark watches as Donghyuck adjusts the brightness and the font size. Donghyuck keeps muttering under his breath as he works, something about visual hierarchy and how their professor probably doesn’t deserve this level of effort, but Mark is only half-listening now. His attention has snagged somewhere smaller. 

There is a small cut on Donghyuck’s thumb, right near the side of the nail, the kind of thin little line that probably stings whenever it brushes against anything. It’s barely anything, really. But Mark sees it and, because it is Donghyuck’s hand, the rest of the room immediately fades around it.

“Did you hurt your hand?” Mark asks, cutting right through whatever Donghyuck had been saying about slide three.

Donghyuck pauses, glances down at his thumb, then goes back to the screen with a small shrug. “Yes, I got distracted while my workplace was getting on fire, so…”

Mark’s body goes cold all at once. “What do you mean on fire?”

“The nature element, you know? The one that burns,” Donghyuck mocks.

“I know what fire is, dude,” Mark says, leaning forward. The movement pulls at his shoulder and sends a dull pulse of pain down his arm, but he ignores it entirely. “What happened?”

“Nothing important,” Donghyuck says, clicking through the slides. “It was just a small fire in the kitchen when I started the shift. Everything’s fine now. Nobody got hurt.”

“You got hurt.”

“It’s barely a thing,” Donghyuck gives him a look, half-exasperated and half-tired. “And I was distracted, anyways. There’s a newbie at the restaurant and I left him unsupervised for a second. He bowed, like, ten times after the fire was dealt with, so I think he suffered enough spiritually.”

Mark knows Donghyuck is trying to make it sound stupid and harmless, but his chest tightens around the fact that he wasn’t there. He wasn’t even aware. 

“How do you know this newbie guy is trustworthy?”

Donghyuck frowns, finally turning his attention away from the laptop. “I have no idea. Manager liked him, so I have to endure the newbie either way.”

“What if he’s a bad guy?”

“Because he unintentionally set a tiny fire on his first day?” Donghyuck stares at him, the frown deepening into something more incredulous. “He was just clumsy. He’s a nice guy, very funny.”

“That’s usually how villains and criminals act before showing their claws.”

Donghyuck just looks at him trying to figure out if Mark is joking. When it becomes clear that Mark is, unfortunately, at least partially serious, Donghyuck leans back in his chair.

“How many action movies do you watch in a year, Mark? Because that’s a kind of unhealthy thought.”

“It’s a logical one.”

“It is a paranoid one. Not everyone is a villain.”

“No, but not everyone is a good person.”

That’s Spider-Man speaking through Mark’s mouth. He knows danger too well and looks for it before it arrives. He expects people to have hidden motives because sometimes they do, and sometimes noticing a second too late means someone gets hurt. But Donghyuck doesn’t know that. Donghyuck only sees Mark, his exhausted project partner, getting weirdly intense about a kitchen accident that has nothing to do with him.

“Taking this train of thought, should I be suspicious of you too, Mark?”

The correct answer is no, obviously, but suspicion is the smartest thing Donghyuck could offer him.

“Maybe,” Mark says.

“Oh God, it was just an accident.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“Should I have?” Donghyuck asks, and there’s no real rudeness in it, just confusion. “It’s not like it’s your problem, you don’t have to care about it.”

“But I care.”

Mark realizes too late that the words came out wrong. 

“You care about a fire in a restaurant you’ve never been to?” 

“I care about fires in general,” Mark says, trying to save his ass. “They’re dangerous.”

Donghyuck’s stare turns flatter. “Is being a fireman your dream job or something?”

“I’m not really qualified for that.”

“You sound very emotionally invested for an unqualified guy.”

“I’m just saying,” Mark says, trying to pull the conversation back into something less revealing, “small fires can turn into bigger fires fast. Things spread.”

“Right,” Donghyuck says slowly, turning back to the laptop, though his hand doesn’t move on the trackpad immediately. “Well, don’t worry. I’m fine and so is the restaurant.”

Mark only hums, trying not to be stupidly over protective all over again.

“But, speaking of dumb little accidents,” Donghyuck says, and his gaze drops to Mark’s mouth for such a short second. “How’s your lip?”

“Oh, it’s better,” Mark nods shortly.

“It looks the same.” Donghyuck tilts his head slightly, eyes narrowing. “Did you hurt it again?”

Mark didn’t hurt it again, technically. He hurt a different part of the same general area. The original cut had mostly healed, thanks to Donghyuck’s ointment and, unfortunately, Donghyuck’s care, but then some guy with more muscle than sense threw him into a wall two nights ago and opened a fresh little split near the corner of his mouth. It isn’t serious, barely counts as an injury by Spider-Man standards, it only makes Mark mildly annoyed when eating salty food. 

“Uh, maybe?” Mark says, instantly aware that this is not a strong beginning. He clears his throat. “I mean, I’m very careless when I eat.”

“I can see that,” Donghyuck says, rolling his eyes, before raising his hand.

It happens too quickly for him to move away without making it strange, and maybe he wouldn’t have moved anyway. Donghyuck’s thumb touches the corner of his mouth with two tiny taps against the wounded skin. 

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

Physically, it’s just a faint sensation, a tiny itch under the healing cut. Emotionally, it breaks Mark just like any other touch. 

“No, it’s just a faint sensation, I guess,” Mark shrugs, or tries to. His shoulder is still not helping.

Donghyuck’s thumb stays there for one more second, hovering near the split as if he’s deciding whether Mark is lying. “You need to stop hurting yourself.”

“I’ll add it to my schedule,” Mark lets out a small breath, almost a laugh, almost not. 

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Donghyuck gives him a tired look. “Because you say that a lot and then show up looking worse.”

“I’m trying,” Mark murmurs.

“Okay,” Donghyuck says at last, softer than before. “Then try harder.”

“Such a great advice, I never thought of that. Thanks, dude,” Mark raises a thumbs up.

Donghyuck reaches for the mug of tea and nudges it slightly closer to Mark’s hand. “Drink that before it gets cold.”

Mark looks at the mug, then at him. “You’re bossy.”

“You respond well to orders.”

The sentence lands too easily and they both seem to notice at the same time. Donghyuck’s brows pull together like he doesn’t know why he said it, and Mark goes still because there are so many ghosts in the room now that he can barely tell which ones are real. He usually never wants the memories to hit, but he really doesn’t want to dive deeper into those unfiltered memories right now. 

“Anyway,” Donghyuck says, clearing his throat. “Slide two. Be honest. Does this look like public policy or a nightclub flyer?”

Mark looks at the screen, then takes another sip of tea to hide the way his hands are not entirely steady.

“Nightclub flyer,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Fuck!” Donghyuck groans so dramatically that the tension breaks, and Mark lets himself breathe again.

Donghyuck used to be so bad at hiding irritation that it never really counted as hiding in the first place. Mark doesn’t think Donghyuck ever seriously tried. His whole face would turn into a weather report, every little shift announcing some new emotional climate before he said a single word.

Mark remembers how easy it used to be to look at him and think, ah, what did I do to make him grumpy this time? Sometimes the answer would arrive before the question even fully formed. 

Sometimes Donghyuck was mad because Mark forgot to text back, even though he was mid fighting someone. Sometimes it was because Mark didn’t eat or because he bled on a towel Donghyuck liked. 

Either way, every time, Mark would have to spend what felt like a lifetime pampering the hell out of him until Donghyuck finally cracked and snapped at him properly, which was usually the beginning of forgiveness. Mark used to love that. He loved the process, loved the way Donghyuck’s irritation was rarely cold, loved how even being mad at him meant Donghyuck cared enough to react.

It has been a long time since Mark had to go through this, and that realization hits him with a weird, almost guilty happiness as he watches Donghyuck move around the restaurant kitchen now. It should not make him happy. Donghyuck is currently irritated at Spider-Man, not at Mark. Still, seeing it with his own eyes again, the little storm of Donghyuck’s silent displeasure, makes him happy.

Donghyuck is humming while he reorganizes a stack of containers he already organized five minutes ago. He wipes down a counter that is already clean, adjusts a tray by half an inch, checks the napkins, then checks them again.

“Are you seriously not going to talk to me?” Mark asks from behind the mask, sitting once again in the same chair as last time.

Mark sits with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging loosely between them as Donghyuck keeps humming while rearranging the same set of plastic lids into a neater stack.

“I thought I was supposed to not be too close to you.”

More humming.

“You literally told me to be far away and not be a creep.”

Still ignored. Donghyuck opens a drawer, looks inside, then closes it again with a little more force than necessary. 

“Why did you open the door and let me in if you’re not going to answer me?”

Donghyuck stops humming. That, Mark realizes, may have been the wrong question. He turns around slowly and his expression is flat in a way that could have scared someone who didn’t know how much emotion was actually packed underneath it. Mark knows, unfortunately.

“I let you in,” Donghyuck says, voice calm enough to be suspicious, “because you were standing by the door looking like a stupid dog who eats plastic.”

“That's oddly specific.”

“You have a very specific pathetic energy.”

Mark presses his lips together under the mask, because the smile is coming whether he allows it or not. Donghyuck has one hand tucked under his opposite elbow, the other tapping irritably against his own arm, and he is looking at Mark like Mark is personally responsible for ruining his night. It is so painfully familiar that Mark almost forgets to be devastated by it for a second.

“Okay,” Mark says, carefully. “Then I’m very pathetically asking, what’s up with the attitude?” 

“You didn’t show up,” Donghyuck says finally, but he doesn’t look at Mark while saying it. He goes back to being busy with the towel, even though he is barely moving his arm anymore. “It’s been like, four days.”

“You told me to only show up twice. I was going to visit on Friday, but I got delayed,” Mark defends himself. “There was an emergency.”

“I saw,” Donghyuck’s voice loses some of its bite. “The bridge thing.”

“Right?” Mark leans back slightly in the chair, then regrets it when his shoulder pulls again and sends a dull ache down his arm. “It was bad. So I didn’t show up. And you clocked out earlier anyway.” 

“How do you know?” Donghyuck asks, turning his head slowly.

“Uh,” Mark’s fingers flex once against his knee. “When I got here it was closed, so I just assumed.”

“You know where I live.”

“Was I supposed to go there?”

“You’re supposed to check on me, aren’t you?”

“You’re making some really confusing demands,” says Mark, and some of the tension turns to exasperation, because at least that much is true. “Didn’t you say lights out, I leave?” 

Donghyuck’s jaw shifts. “I waited all night and you didn’t show up anyway.” 

“Didn’t know I was supposed to,” Mark says quietly, because there’s nothing else that he can say. 

“You never know anything,” Donghyuck says, rolling his eyes as he walks through the kitchen, but this time there is no real cruelty in it. He sounds frustrated, like Mark’s ignorance is inconvenient because Donghyuck himself does not fully understand what he expected. He reaches for something near the prep counter. “Why are you so stiff?”

“Bad fight,” Mark says, he shifts slightly, trying to find a position that doesn’t make the ache in his shoulder throb so insistently. “Got caught by surprise and, bang, body to concrete. The dude looked like a lizard. Weird fucking shit.”

Donghyuck pauses mid-motion and looks at him. “Don’t you have, like, the Spidey tingle thing?”

“Spider sense,” Mark corrects automatically, a little offended. “Yeah. It warns me about danger when I’m not paying attention to said danger, but that doesn’t mean it frees me from getting beat up.”

“Why didn’t your tingle thing tingle when I was on the rooftop, then?” Donghyuck asks, dropping a plate full of chicken in front of him without asking this time. Mark’s stomach reacts before his brain does. It looks too good, considering he already ate something earlier and is absolutely not going to complain about being fed again. 

“Because you were not a threat,” Mark says, lifting the bottom of his mask just above his upper lip. “Because you didn’t want to harm me.”

“I wanted to smack your head. Your tingle thing doesn’t work that great.”

“It works incredibly fine,” Mark retorts while chewing.

“Just like your superhuman healing?” Donghyuck says, giving him a pointed look. “You’re always bruised and messed up.”

True. There’s a faint bruise somewhere along his jaw, hidden mostly by the shadow of the mask but probably not enough if Donghyuck gets too observant, and his lip is still slightly split, though that is becoming such a recurring feature that Mark should probably start getting used to it. His shoulder is throbbing under the suit, his ribs ache when he breathes too deep, the torn part of the suit along his leg is hidden only because he angled himself strategically under the table, and he cannot even begin to count the injuries scattered down his body. He’s been too reckless lately, worse than usual.

“I don’t heal immediately, smarty,” Mark says, chewing slowly because the soreness at the corner of his mouth pulls if he moves too fast. “I heal faster than normal people. There’s a difference.”

Donghyuck clicks his tongue. “That sounds like something a guy who is constantly getting his ass kicked would say to make himself feel better.”

“I save a lot of people for someone constantly getting his ass kicked.”

“And then you get your ass kicked.”

“Sometimes as part of the saving process.”

“Try updating your saving process method, maybe.”

“Tell that to weird fucking people with weird fucking powers, please,” Mark sighs. “I’d love to have a structured conversation with them about how they could be more considerate during crimes.”

Donghyuck’s mouth twitches before he turns away too quickly, pretending to busy himself with something by the sink. “Are you going to take me home tonight?”

“No, sir.”

Donghyuck turns back, offended down to his bones. “And why not?” 

Mark points vaguely toward the ceiling with his fork. “You think me swinging through the city goes unnoticed by everyone? Do you know how many videos there are of me on the internet? I have a dedicated fan base. Some of them make edits, terrible ones, but the exposure is dangerous for you.”

Donghyuck considers this for a second. “You didn’t seem too concerned about that last week.”

“Last week it was necessary and you were tired,” Mark says, trying very hard to sound firm. “I’m not making it a habit.”

“I’m tired today too, so?”

“Hard fucking no. Saw your shift, it was ass. You barely did anything today.”

Donghyuck pouts sideways. “What a shame.”

“You will walk,” Mark says, setting the fork down so he can point at him properly now, “and I will be following you, very carefully, from up the rooftops as it is supposed to be.” 

“You’re so generous,” Donghyuck says with a flat tone.

“You’re very welcome.”

“I walked enough today,” Donghyuck says, dragging a container across the counter only to put it exactly where it already was. “My feet hurt.”

“You stood in one place and glared at customers for most of it.”

“You don’t know my life.”

“I watched your life for the last two hours.”

“That sounds terrible when you say it like that.”

“Weren’t you complaining about me not showing up just now? Now you hate that I was watching?” Mark teases.

“Fine. No swinging,” Donghyuck says, though he sounds like he resents being reasonable. “But if I get hit by a car because I’m walking, that’s on you.”

“If you get hit by a car while I’m following you from the rooftops, I’ll retire out of shame.”

“You should retire out of shame anyway. You hid behind a vent.”

Mark groans. “You’re never letting that go, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Donghyuck smiles childishly. “That was the highlight of my month.”

He meets Donghyuck as Mark again the next day. Donghyuck texts him in the afternoon asking if they can meet at his place again, and Mark stares at the message for only a mildly embarrassing amount of time before answering yes. 

The project is almost fully done by now, which is kind of miraculous considering one half of the team has been living two lives with no mental health. They only need to fix the last paragraph of the conclusion and edit some tiny things on the presentation, small adjustments really. 

Despite being a two-lives dude, as he has so kindly started calling himself, Mark has actually managed to contribute. He wrote comments and added citations during nights he couldn’t sleep until two in the morning. He also cleaned up the case study comparison while sitting on a rooftop after patrol, still in the suit. It wasn’t graceful, but it worked.

This time, everything goes according to plan, which is such a rare development in Mark’s life. 

He gets home with enough time to function, so he eats properly, an actual meal with protein and everything. He showers slowly because he has time. The bruising on his jaw has faded enough to hide with a little concealer, and this time he uses the better one, the expensive one he absolutely should not have bought but did anyway because his financial irresponsibility now includes maintaining secret identity aesthetics and not worrying Donghyuck across multiple identities. 

Mark looks good, smells nice, slept well, and is well fed. The whole nice man package, which is a ridiculous phrase his brain supplies with such deadpan confidence. 

He’s been here thirty minutes now, and it has somehow been the most nerve-wracking thirty minutes of his life so far, which is absurd considering his life includes falling off buildings, being slammed into concrete, and once having a man with mechanical wings try to drop him into traffic. 

Nothing dramatic is happening, which means Mark has no obvious enemy to punch, no collapsing structure to hold together, no civilian to pull out of danger. There is only Donghyuck sitting beside him, close enough that Mark can feel the warmth of his arm whenever they both lean toward the laptop at the same time, and the possibility that Donghyuck might be flirting with him. Maybe. Possibly. 

He has been surviving on crumbs of Donghyuck’s attention for so long that he has become embarrassingly good at noticing when those crumbs arrive buttered. And he might be fucking delusional, or just very fucking hopeless for an inch of affection, but he genuinely thinks Donghyuck is flirting with him. Maybe not intentionally. Maybe not in a fully conscious, planned, I-am-now-flirting-with-Mark-Lee kind of way, because Donghyuck doesn’t seem like he has gotten that far with himself. 

It’s a slippery thought, he’s feeling something tucked into the edges of conversation, hidden under teasing so it can be denied if needed. Donghyuck keeps looking at Mark’s mouth when Mark talks, which could be because the cut is still faintly there and Donghyuck is an obsessive little menace about injuries, but Mark is not entirely convinced. 

But maybe, and this is by far the most probable explanation, Donghyuck is simply being friendly, and Mark is a lonely disaster who has been reading tenderness into every single small thing for weeks because his soul wants to be loved again just as much as he just keeps loving Donghyuck all over again, every single day, for the past 730 days.

Now, they’re sitting at the table, laptops open, side by side. The document is between them, almost finished, and the screen light casts a soft glow on Donghyuck’s face as he scrolls through the last few slides of their presentation.

Donghyuck looks softer tonight, maybe because he is tired in a peaceful way rather than the sharp exhaustion from work, maybe because Mark is stupid and wants him. His hair keeps falling near his eyes, and there’s a little frown line between his brows as he reads over their slide notes. Mark has to physically stop himself from reaching out to smooth it away. The impulse is so natural, so old, that it arrives before thought, and he has to curl his fingers around the edge of his laptop to keep his hand exactly where it belongs.

“Can’t believe we are almost done,” Donghyuck says, more to himself than to Mark. “I’m actually proud of us. We didn’t fight once this whole time.”

“Are you sure?” Mark says, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. “Because I remember a very heated argument about the font for the title slide.”

“You have terrible taste,” Donghyuck says, dropping his hand from the trackpad and turning to look at him. “That doesn’t count as a fight. That’s me educating you.”

Mark huffs a laugh. “Right. My mistake.”

“It was,” Donghyuck says, smug satisfaction. Then he turns back to the laptop and adjusts one of the slide titles by half an inch. “And now look at it. Gorgeous, balanced and academically hot.”

“Academically hot?”

“Yes. Don’t act like you don’t see the vision.”

Mark looks at the slide, which is admittedly much better than the first version that had looked like urban planning was about to drop an underground album. “I see a vision.”

The silence that follows is comfortable enough to be dangerous, the only sounds being the gentle tapping of their keys as they each make a few final adjustments to their respective sections. Mark is trying to focus on the words in front of him, but his awareness is entirely on Donghyuck beside him and the way he keeps biting his lower lip in concentration.

“Do you have anything else to do after this?" Donghyuck asks. 

“After this project?” Mark frowns. “I don’t think I have any other project, though.”

“No, Mark,” Donghyuck says, rolling his eyes, but there’s a smile tucked at the corner of his mouth. “Tonight. Before going home.”

Mark’s brain empties out in a very specific, humiliating way. “No, I was planning to go home and sleep.”

Donghyuck snorts softly. “Sounds like a fun Friday night.”

“It’s my specialty,” Mark says, trying to keep his tone light.

“Do you want to stay for a bit? I cooked too much, and I can’t finish it all by myself,” Donghyuck looks at him with expectant eyes. “We could watch a movie, too. Decompress about this whole project for a bit.”

Mark knows Donghyuck too much to the extent of knowing that saying yes is possibly the worst idea he could ever have. He knows it with absolute clarity, the same way he knows rooftops are high and broken bones hurt. Staying means dinner and a movie and the kind of ordinary intimacy Mark has spent two years mourning from the outside of buildings. But the craving rises anyway, immediate and desperate, because he wants to stay. 

God, he wants to stay so badly it makes him feel sick. He wants dinner at Donghyuck’s table, wants the low noise of a movie neither of them fully watches, wants to be chosen for something as simple as sharing food and company. He wants it in such a raw way that refusing feels impossible before he even opens his mouth.

“Sure,” Mark says, knowing it’s a bad idea and wanting it too much to refuse. “I’d like that.”

Donghyuck’s smile widens, just for a second, bright and pleased before he turns back to his laptop with renewed energy. “Great. But you’re helping with the dishes.”

“Deal.”

They finish the project ten minutes later, or at least Donghyuck declares it finished with the authority of someone who refuses to let one more transition adjustment ruin his night. He closes the laptop with a satisfied little snap and leans back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head. Mark looks away on instinct, because even now, especially now, he cannot be trusted with the careless slip of skin that appears at Donghyuck’s waist when his sweater rides up. 

“Okay,” Donghyuck says, pushing his chair back and standing up. “Time for food. I made beef with broccoli.”

“Do you need help?” Mark asks, already moving to get up.

“Sit your ass down. I got it.”

Mark stops halfway out of the chair, then slowly sinks back down. He watches Donghyuck move toward the kitchen, barefoot, with sleeves pushed slightly up his forearms. The apartment fills with a rich, savory aroma a few seconds later, when he reheats the food and Mark’s stomach clenches with a hunger he hadn’t noticed until now. He did eat before coming here, but his body seems to have decided that food made by Donghyuck occupies a different category entirely. 

Donghyuck comes back with bowls and chopsticks, setting everything on his small table. Mark sits there feeling both useless and overwhelmingly present, hands resting near the edge of the table. Donghyuck settles into the chair beside him with his own bowl, tucking one foot underneath himself.

“It smells really good,” Mark says, because he has to say something before the silence starts showing too much of him.

“It’s a recipe I found online,” Donghyuck replies, picking up his chopsticks and poking at the beef in his bowl. “Apparently, it’s foolproof, which means it was designed for me.”

Mark smiles. “I’m sure you did fine.”

“You haven’t tasted it yet.”

“I’m optimistic.”

“Don’t be, sometimes I embarrass myself.”

Mark huffs a quiet laugh and finally picks up his chopsticks. The beef is tender and the sauce balanced in that perfect way between salty and a little sweet. It makes him remember how Donghyuck used to insist he couldn’t cook, but whenever Mark was too hurt to move or too tired to think, he would produce the most comforting meals like it was nothing. 

“This is really good,” Mark says, around another bite, because one compliment isn’t enough and because lying would be impossible with warmth spreading through his chest like this. “Not foolproof. Just really good.”

Donghyuck’s ears turn slightly pink, and he immediately looks down at his bowl. “Don’t exaggerate.”

“I swear I’m not.”

Donghyuck eats with one knee pulled slightly up on the chair, shoulders relaxed, while Mark eats slowly, trying to make the meal last without making it obvious that he’s doing it. He tries to memorize the taste, the quiet little wrinkle of Donghyuck’s nose when he gets too much sauce on a piece of broccoli, the feeling of sitting across from him while doing something they used to do all the time in another version of the world. 

Mark wants to store the entire sensory experience somewhere safe as something to replay later when he’s alone in his own apartment, when the suit feels too tight and the city too loud and he needs proof that for one evening, he got to sit at Donghyuck’s table and be fed without having to bleed first.

“Your lips seem to be healing,” Donghyuck says, and Mark’s chopsticks pause halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t realized Donghyuck was watching him that closely.

“Oh, yeah. It’s almost gone. I'm trying to be careful,” Mark lies, of course. The cut is healing at its own accelerated pace, but it’s not gone. 

Donghyuck hums, taking another bite of broccoli. “That’s good.”

They go back to eating, but the silence feels different now, charged with observation. Mark is hyper-aware of every movement Donghyuck makes, every glance that lingers a little too long. He feels like he’s on a tightrope, and one wrong word could send him falling.

After dinner, they do the dishes together in Donghyuck’s small kitchen. Donghyuck washes, Mark dries, and the arrangement is so simple it almost makes Mark angry. The sink is shallow, the counter too narrow for two people to move around without negotiating space, and the warm water fogs the little window above it while Donghyuck complains under his breath that the sauce always sticks more than it should. 

Their elbows bump once, and Donghyuck says sorry without thinking, then immediately bumps him again on purpose just to be funny. Mark huffs a laugh and takes a wet bowl from him, their fingers brushing around the slippery ceramic. It’s domestic and easy just like it used to be and that is tearing Mark apart from the inside out.

Mark wants to lean in and press a kiss to Donghyuck’s neck, right where a stray drop of water has landed near his collar. He wants to wrap his arms around Donghyuck’s waist and rest his head on his shoulder. He wants to complain that Donghyuck got soap on his sleeve and then let Donghyuck kiss his hand in fake apology. He wants so many things he can’t have that the wanting becomes physical, something heavy enough to make breathing feel like dying.

“I think the movie choice should be mine,” Donghyuck says, drying his hands on a dish towel once the last bowl is done. “Since I cooked.”

“That’s fair,” Mark agrees, leaning against the counter because his knees feel a little less reliable than he’d like. “But I get veto power.”

Donghyuck scoffs immediately. “No, you don’t.”

“I just washed dishes. I have rights now,” Mark just shrugs, a small smile playing on his lips.

“You dried dishes,” Donghyuck narrows his eyes at him. “Don’t inflate your contribution.”

“You gave me the easy job, it’s not my fault you’ve got a soft spot for me.”

It’s unthinkable, really, because Mark doesn’t consciously decide to flirt. It just happens because some part of him still recognizes Donghyuck as the person he teases into softness, just enough to make him huff and blush and threaten violence without meaning any of it. 

Flirting with Donghyuck used to be as natural as breathing, maybe more natural, considering Mark has never been particularly good at the breathing part when Donghyuck is close. Mark can bury a lot of himself under grief, fear and a secret identity, but apparently he cannot bury the instinct to make Donghyuck look at him like that.

And Donghyuck does look at him like that. 

“You know,” he says, taking a deep breath, “for the record, giving someone the easy job doesn’t automatically mean there’s a soft spot. It could mean I have low expectations.”

Mark tilts his head. “Do you?”

“Of your dishwashing skills? Absolutely.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Donghyuck opens his mouth, then closes it, looking briefly betrayed by the fact that Mark hit a spot. “That’s beside the point. Let’s just go watch the stupid movie.”

They end up on Donghyuck’s worn-out sofa, a bowl of popcorn between them and the TV casting soft shifting light across the living room. The sofa is the same shape of uncomfortable-comfortable Mark remembers, the cushions a little too sunken in the middle, the throw blanket bunched messily at one end. 

Mark sits carefully at first, trying to keep a reasonable distance, but Donghyuck drops down beside him and immediately tucks one leg under himself, making the whole arrangement closer than it needs to be. He can feel the heat from Donghyuck’s leg, the subtle shift every time Donghyuck moves to scroll through movie options, the soft bump of his knee when he laughs under his breath at some ridiculous title. It is making it hard to focus on the screen, which is unfortunate because Donghyuck is asking for opinions like Mark is capable of forming them.

Donghyuck eventually settles on an old black-and-white film, something with a lot of shadows and a woman with impossibly long cigarette holders. 

“You’re a classic film snob,” Mark accuses, but he’s smiling, partly because it’s true and partly brcause he wants to be annoying.

“I have taste,” Donghyuck corrects, settling back into the cushions with the remote resting against his thigh. “You should try it sometime.”

For a while, Mark is able to lose himself in the movie. Not fully, but enough that the shadows on-screen and the weak dialogue start pulling his attention away from the impossible softness of the room. Donghyuck makes small comments every now and then, not enough to ruin it, just little reactions under his breath when a character makes a terrible decision or when the lighting does something dramatic enough to please him. Mark answers sometimes, quietly, because he likes hearing Donghyuck like this, relaxed and opinionated. 

Donghyuck doesn’t throw himself against him or rest his head on Mark’s shoulder like something out of a movie, but he simply shifts, leaning into him a little more. His shoulder presses lightly against Mark’s upper arm, his knee stays against Mark’s and Mark doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t dare breathe too loudly. He keeps his eyes fixed on the TV with such intense focus that the woman on-screen could start confessing to murder and he probably wouldn’t process a word.

Donghyuck doesn’t say anything and that might be what makes it worse.

If he made a joke, Mark could answer. If he acknowledged it, Mark could pull away or pretend it was nothing. But Donghyuck just stays there, watching the movie, one hand resting near the popcorn bowl, his body warm and easy against Mark’s side. Maybe he doesn’t even notice. Maybe this is casual for him, friendly, thoughtless. Or maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing, which is the most likely answer. 

Mark knows Donghyuck, that’s the thing.

“You’re so tense,” Donghyuck says quietly, eyes still on the screen.

Mark’s heart nearly stops. “Am I?”

“Yes,” Donghyuck’s shoulder presses a little more firmly against his, like he’s testing whether Mark will flinch. “You’ve been sitting like you’re being held hostage by me.”

“I’m just paying attention to the movie.”

“You are absolutely not.”

Mark swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. “I am.”

Donghyuck turns his head just enough to look at him, close now, too close for Mark’s stability. “Then what just happened?”

Mark looks at the screen, where a man in a suit is standing in a doorway with a deeply troubled expression. “He… entered a room.”

“That happened fifteen minutes ago,” Donghyuck retorts.

Mark closes his eyes for half a second. “Okay.”

“You’re so bad at lying,” Donghyuck’s laugh is quiet, pleased, and too close to Mark’s shoulder. 

“I’m usually better.”

“That’s what worries me.”

Mark looks at him before he can think better of it. Donghyuck is smiling, but there’s something observant and very dangerous in it. The movie keeps playing, but Mark can barely hear it over the sudden rush of his own pulse. Donghyuck looks down at the space between them, at their touching knees, at the way Mark’s hand is curled tightly against his own thigh as he physically restrains himself from moving. When he looks back up, his expression has changed again.

“You can relax,” Donghyuck says.

Mark lets out a breath that almost hurts. “Can I?”

The question comes out too honest and in a very fucking stupid way. It sounds like something tired and bruised that slipped out from a place Mark hadn’t meant to leave open. Donghyuck hears it. Mark knows he hears it because the teasing drains from his face, replaced by a quieter kind of attention. He doesn’t move away. If anything, he stays exactly where he is, giving Mark the chance to decide whether to retreat without forcing it.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck says softly. “You can.”

Mark looks at him and it all feels like standing at the edge of a rooftop, except this time the danger isn’t falling. It’s staying still right at the border. It’s letting himself have the warmth of Donghyuck beside him without turning it into a debt, a prophecy, a punishment. His body is so tired of being careful. His heart is even worse. Slowly, with the kind of caution he usually reserves for unstable structures, Mark lets his shoulders loosen by one tiny degree.

He lets out a shaky breath and then, consciously, uncurls the muscles in his back. He lets the tension leave his shoulders, lets himself lean back against the sofa properly. The movement brings them even closer, a fraction of an inch that feels like a mile.

“There you go,” Donghyuck murmurs, like he’s coaxing a stray cat from under a car.

Mark doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t move away either. That feels like an answer on its own, and maybe Donghyuck understands it because he doesn’t push.

The movie continues, the black-and-white drama unfolding on-screen while Mark sits very still, feeling the weight of Donghyuck’s arm against him. The popcorn is half-forgotten between them. The woman on screen says something tragic about love and timing and Mark thinks he might actually be sick.

After what feels like an hour, but is probably only twenty minutes, Donghyuck shifts again, a natural movement as he gets more comfortable, and in the process, his arm slides slightly down the sofa back. His knuckles brush against the back of Mark’s neck.

It’s a touch so light it could be accidental, but Mark’s entire nervous system lights up anyway. He waits for Donghyuck to move away, laugh it off or say something that will break the tension. Maybe say sorry in that light way people do when they bump into someone by mistake. Mark waits for the escape route to appear. Instead, Donghyuck does something worse, he does it again. 

His fingers trace the line of Mark’s neck, from the collar of his shirt up to the hairline. A fucking test. Mark’s eyes flutter shut, because he can’t help it. The touch is so gentle and it’s been so, so long. He doesn’t even trust himself to look.

Donghyuck’s thumb presses gently against the knob of bone at the top of his spine.

“Mark,” he says, softer than anything Mark has heard from him in two years. His name in that voice almost ruins him.

Mark opens his eyes. Donghyuck’s face is very close, the shifting light from the TV carving shadows into his cheeks. He’s looking at Mark with an expression that’s layered with things Mark can’t name, but underneath all of it, there is a question.

“What are you doing?” Mark whispers, and the words are barely audible, so thin they almost get swallowed by the old movie still playing in the background. 

Mark doesn’t know why he asks that when he already knows there is no answer good enough to protect either of them. He only knows that he needs to hear something, needs a name for the cliff they’re standing on, needs one last chance for Donghyuck to step away before Mark does what he has been trying not to do for the past two years.

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck whispers back, and it’s the most honest answer he could give. He sounds as lost as Mark feels. His other hand comes up, slow and careful, and cups Mark’s jaw. His thumb brushes over the corner of Mark’s mouth, over the last faint trace of the cut that’s almost gone. 

Mark should pull away. He should tell Donghyuck that this is a mistake, that he can’t do this, that it’s too complicated, too dangerous. He should protect Donghyuck from himself, because that is what he has been trying to do this whole time, badly and selfishly, with more harm than grace, but still.

He’s so tired of being the hero, so tired of denying things to himself. He is tired of standing outside windows, tired of leaving when doors close, tired of pretending that not touching Donghyuck has made any of this less painful. So he leans in instead.

It’s the barest movement, a shift of millimeters, but Donghyuck meets him halfway. The first touch of their lips is hesitant, a question asked and answered in the same breath, so soft that for a second Mark isn’t even sure it happened. Donghyuck’s lips feel as soft as Mark remembers, and they taste faintly of butter and salt from the popcorn. Mark’s hands are still clenched in his lap, but he manages to uncurl one and bring it up to rest on Donghyuck’s knee.

Donghyuck’s fingers tighten slightly on his jaw and he deepens the kiss, a silent encouragement that lands directly in the place Mark has been trying to keep locked. It’s still slow, still careful, but there’s a hunger to it now, a yearning that has been simmering beneath the surface for what feels like a lifetime even though Donghyuck has only had a few weeks of this strange pull between them. 

Mark has had two years of remembering what this felt like and thinking he would never have it again, two years of grief turning every memory of Donghyuck’s mouth into something sacred and untouchable. He tilts his head, angling for more before he can stop himself, and a soft sigh escapes him, small and wrecked as Donghyuck’s hand slides from his jaw to the side of his face. 

For a few seconds, Mark lets himself fall into it. He lets himself have the impossible softness of Donghyuck’s lips, the warmth of his palm. Then approximately one hundred and forty-four thoughts invade Mark’s head at once. He pulls away.

“We can’t do this,” Mark says, eyes wide and breath uneven, one hand still caught uselessly on Donghyuck’s knee. “Oh God, you’re cheating. We can’t.”

Donghyuck sighs, then leans in and kisses him again, with enough certainty that Mark’s protest dissolves for one humiliating second. 

“Am not cheating,” Donghyuck murmurs against his mouth.

“But your boyfriend—”

“Broke up,” Donghyuck says, and pecks his lips lazily. His tongue runs lightly over Mark’s bottom lip, not demanding, just there. “We broke up.”

Mark feels fireworks inside his gut. Bright, panicked explosions lighting up every part of him at once. 

“I don’t want to be a rebound,” he says, because even in the middle of being kissed by the person he has mourned for two years, his fear has excellent timing. His voice comes out strangled, terrified, and then Donghyuck is moving, passing one leg over Mark’s thighs and settling on top of him. Donghyuck’s weight lands across his lap, his knees on either side of Mark’s legs, his hands still holding Mark’s face as he leans in again, kissing him as if it is extremely urgent.

Mark is going to panic any second now. He can feel it gathering at the edges of his body, all that frantic energy looking for somewhere to go, because Donghyuck is on his lap, touching his face, kissing him like this is not a disaster waiting to happen.

“You’re not a rebound,” Donghyuck says, close enough that the words brush against Mark’s mouth. “I broke up because of you, Mark.”

“What?” Mark frowns, the panic cutting through the daze just enough for confusion to take over. “What do you mean because of me?”

Donghyuck sighs against his mouth, then finally puts a little distance between them, though not nearly enough for Mark’s poor survival instincts. He is still sitting on Mark’s thighs, still holding his face, still close enough that Mark can count the tiny shifts in his breathing. 

“Do you really need me to explain it right now?”

“Yes?” Mark says immediately. “Please? I’m very confused.”

Donghyuck stares at him for a second, then huffs. “I got a big, fat crush on you,” he says, blunt as hell. “And I couldn’t let him touch me or kiss me without thinking that it should be you. Is that enough answer for you?”

Mark forgets how to respond. There are no words in his head for a second, only a bright, stunned silence. Donghyuck has a crush on him and broke up because of him. Donghyuck, who doesn’t remember anything, who doesn’t know about the spell or the grief museum Mark has been living inside, still found his way here somehow. 

Then Donghyuck holds his face with both hands and leans back down, kissing him with too much fervor for Mark’s system to manage or understand. The kiss is hotter now, but somehow still soft at the same time. 

Mark makes a broken little sound and kisses him back because there is no universe where he can do anything else. One of his hands rises to Donghyuck’s waist, stopping there first, and when Donghyuck presses closer instead of pulling away, Mark’s fingers curl into the fabric of his sweater. The other hand finds his thigh, steadying him, or maybe steadying himself. He has no idea anymore. Donghyuck is warm above him, solid in his lap, mouth moving against his as if he has been holding himself back for longer than Mark dared to imagine.

It brings tears to Mark’s closed eyes. He feels like exploding. Two years of yearning and grieving and feeling sad get thrown far away, not gone or erased, but pushed aside by something blooming so fast inside him that he doesn’t know how to survive it. 

It feels like a flower forcing itself through cracked concrete, delicate and violent all at once. He has spent so long being the only one who remembered. So long loving someone from a distance that made love feel more like punishment than hope. And now Donghyuck is kissing him. Donghyuck is choosing him with no memory forcing him to, no obligation, no shared history he can consciously point to. Just this this tender, terrifying thing growing between them despite everything the world tried to take.

A tear slips free from Mark’s left eye and runs sideways toward his ear, disappearing into his hair. He hopes Donghyuck doesn’t feel it in his hands. He hopes Donghyuck does. He doesn’t know which would be worse.

Donghyuck pulls back just enough to breathe, forehead hovering close to Mark’s, his thumbs still pressed gently to Mark’s cheeks. 

“Hey,” he whispers, and the softness of it nearly finishes what the kiss started. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Mark says instantly, his grip tightening at Donghyuck’s waist. “No. God, no.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to sob?”

Mark looks at him, and his heart aches so violently. 

Because I missed you. I love you. Because you’re here and you don’t even know how long I’ve been waiting. Because this is the best thing that’s happened to me in two years and I’m terrified it’s going to disappear if I move wrong. 

He swallows those words and lets his thumb move once over Donghyuck’s sweater, a tiny, careful stroke at his waist. “Because I really don’t want to mess this up.”

Then Donghyuck scoffs softly. 

“Shut up,” he leans back again, lips landing softly on the corner of Mark’s mouth, a small, careful kiss, like a punctuation mark. “You worry too much.”

It is so simple, so confident, and it cuts through Mark’s fear with impossible precision. Donghyuck doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t know about the late nights on rooftops or the careful distance Mark tried to maintain for what felt like a noble reason. He just knows this small, fragile thing between them.

Mark surges up to kiss him again, a little more desperate this time, a little more honest. Then there is only the slide of lips, the soft press of tongues, the quiet sounds of a movie they have completely forgotten. Donghyuck’s hands leave Mark’s face, one sliding into his hair, fingers carding through the strands at the back of his neck. The other moves down to Mark’s shoulder, holding on as if he’s afraid Mark might try to pull away.

Mark’s hands move too, because at some point the part of him that has spent years restraining every impulse simply gives out under the warmth of Donghyuck’s body. One hand slides up Donghyuck’s back, feeling the heat of him through the thin sweater and the other stays on his thigh, fingers resting carefully at first and then curling with a little more confidence when Donghyuck doesn’t pull away, when he only makes a soft sound against Mark’s mouth and presses closer. 

That’s when Mark’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

For one impossible second, he genuinely considers pretending he didn’t feel it. It vibrates against his thigh, beneath Donghyuck’s weight, and because Donghyuck is insanely on top of him, because his hips are pressed over Mark’s lap and his hands are still holding Mark’s face, the buzz is impossible to miss. Mark’s entire body goes cold with recognition. 

He has no one else who would text him. No one who would reach him through that channel unless something was happening. No casual friend checking in, no group chat, no harmless notification. If that phone is buzzing now, it means there is a fucking emergency happening for Spider-Man.

God fucking damn it.

He has the love of his life on top of him, kissing him after such a long time that Mark had started to think the memory of it would be the only version he ever got to keep. He has Donghyuck choosing him with no idea how impossible that choice feels. He has spent two years wanting this and grieving this, punishing himself for wanting it, and now the city needs him. Now. 

For half a heartbeat, a selfish, ugly part of him wishes he could ignore it all. Let the city be someone else’s problem for once. Let someone else answer. Let him stay on this sofa with Donghyuck’s mouth at his jaw and the whole world outside the apartment locked away. Jessica could save whoever was in need.

But the phone buzzes again. And once more.

“I need to leave,” Mark murmurs, so deeply regretful against Donghyuck’s lips that the words almost don’t sound like words. “I need to do something real quick.”

“Something?” Donghyuck murmurs, but he doesn’t pull away fully. His mouth drifts to Mark’s jaw, kissing a line that makes Mark’s brain nearly collapse under the cruelty of timing.

“I’m sorry,” Mark says, voice rough and embarrassed and already wrecked with apology. He hates how fast the shame rises, how familiar it feels, how quickly desire becomes guilt in his hands. “I really need to go. I’m so sorry.”

For one terrifying second, Mark thinks this is where the spell punishes him another way. This is where Donghyuck pulls back, offended, confused, maybe hurt because Mark has just kissed him like he was drowning and then immediately tried to leave. 

This is where he asks what could possibly matter so much, where Mark has to lie, where the evening collapses under the weight of all the things he still hasn’t said. But Donghyuck only looks at him for a moment, close enough that their breaths mix, his eyes searching Mark’s face with concern and something softer than either.

“It’s okay,” Donghyuck says, and kisses him softly. Just one careful press of his lips against Mark’s, gentle enough to make Mark feel like his chest is being opened from the inside. “Come back to me after?”

Mark melts all over again. He has never nodded so fast in his life. It is immediate, almost frantic, his hands tightening briefly on Donghyuck’s waist and thigh. 

“Yeah,” he says, breathless. “Yes. I’ll come back.”

Donghyuck’s eyes soften, and that nearly kills Mark more thoroughly than any emergency waiting outside could manage. 

He moves off Mark’s lap slowly, and the loss of his weight is so abrupt that Mark almost reaches for him again on instinct. Donghyuck stands in front of him, sweater rumpled, lips flushed from kissing, hair slightly messy, looking like every dream Mark ever punished himself for having. Mark gets up too quickly and nearly bumps into the coffee table, then curses under his breath while Donghyuck huffs a tiny laugh that sounds both fond and confused.

“Okay, go,” Donghyuck says, quieter now. “Whatever it is.”

Mark looks at him for half a second longer than he should. “I’ll be back.”

“I know,” Donghyuck nods. “I’ll be here.”

The words follow him all the way out of the apartment. Mark barely makes it down two flights of stairs before he ducks into the corner of the stairwell, pulls out the phone, and reads the alert with his heart still beating like Donghyuck’s mouth is on him. 

Hostage situation, eight civilians, armed suspects. Police perimeter overwhelmed. Location fifteen blocks away and getting worse by the second. 

The switch happens brutally fast. Mark disappears under the weight of Spider-Man, not because he wants to, but because people are in danger and wanting has never been enough to exempt him from duty. He finds a shadowed exit, changes with shaking hands, shoves his clothes into the bag, and pulls the mask on while Donghyuck’s kiss is still warm on his mouth.

He has never finished a job so fast in his life.

The hostage situation is bad, but Mark moves through it like he’s possessed. He doesn’t rush recklessly, not exactly, because that would get people killed, but there is a speed to him that feels sharper than usual, a terrifying efficiency born from the fact that Donghyuck is waiting for him. 

He maps the building in seconds, listens through walls, counts voices, counts weapons, counts heartbeats where he can. Four suspects, one injured guard near the back hallway, two men arguing in the main room. One by the exit, one near the stairwell, pacing too hard. 

Mark drops in through a skylight before anyone sees him coming, webs the first gun to the ceiling, kicks the second suspect into a stack of old office chairs and moves before the shouting can fully begin. His shoulder screams from the earlier injuries, his ribs protest when he twists wrong, but his body keeps going because the faster this ends, the faster he can return to the love of his life.

He gets the civilians out in groups, whispering instructions through the mask, keeping his voice steady even while his heart tries to run ahead of him. An older man won’t leave without his wife, so Mark webs a door shut, doubles back and finds her in a storage room with two other people, terrified but alive. One of the suspects tries to make a final, stupid move with a knife, and Mark webs his wrist to a pipe with maybe more irritation than strictly necessary.

“Terrible timing,” Mark mutters, knocking him down with a clean hit.

By the time the police breach properly, most of the hard work is already done. All suspects restrained, no civilians dead. Paramedics flood in, officers shout questions, reporters are probably gathering outside like vultures with microphones, and Mark does the usual quick scan to make sure nothing is about to explode, collapse or reveal another villain hiding dramatically in a corner. For once, the emergency has the decency to end when handled.

Mark leaves before anyone can thank him for too long.

Swinging back feels unreal. The city rushes under him in cold streaks of light, wind whipping against the suit, and all Mark can think about is Donghyuck’s hands on his face. Donghyuck’s thumb at the corner of his mouth, saying he broke up because of him. 

Come back to me. 

The words have no right to exist in his life and yet they do, bright and impossible, pulling him across rooftops faster than exhaustion should allow. His body is sore, his shoulder worse after the fight, and there is a new scrape along his side he hasn’t had time to inspect, but none of it reaches him clearly. He feels weirdly weightless, terror and hope tangled so tightly he can’t separate them.

He lands on the roof of Donghyuck’s building and changes in the rooftop access stairwell, with the desperate speed of someone trying to outrun fate, peeling off the mask and suit, shoving everything into his bag, pulling his clothes back on even though his hair is a disaster and his face is flushed from adrenaline. 

When he gets back to Donghyuck’s door, his hand hovers before knocking. For once, he is afraid of the good thing waiting behind it, even though Mark has spent years convincing himself he doesn’t get to have either of those things anymore.

The door opens almost immediately, so fast that Mark barely has time to pull his hand back and shiny, hungry eyes are waiting for him.

“You really came back,” Donghyuck says.

Mark looks at him, and the relief in those words almost undoes him. “You told me to.”

Donghyuck’s expression softens, and then he reaches out, catches Mark gently by the front of his jacket, and pulls him inside. The door closes behind them with a quiet click that feels much louder than it should.

“Thank God,” Donghyuck murmurs.

And then he kisses him again. It’s the kind of kiss that feels like conquering the whole world and still wanting more. Mark kisses him back like a starving man, hands finding Donghyuck’s waist again, because that seems to be the only place they know where to be. He can feel the faint tremor in Donghyuck’s fingers where they rest against the back of Mark’s neck, and it steadies something deep inside him to know Donghyuck is nervous too.

They end up on the sofa again, except this time the space between them doesn’t survive the fall. There is no careful inch left, no polite distance for Mark to hide behind, no room for him to sit stiffly on the edge and pretend this is something controlled. Donghyuck pulls him down with both hands already fisted in his clothes, and Mark follows too easily, like his body has been waiting for permission longer than his mind can admit. 

The cushions dip beneath them, one of Donghyuck’s knees pressing against Mark’s thigh, their mouths meeting again before either of them has properly settled, and it’s messy in a way that makes Mark’s head spin. It’s all too much of everything he has spent two years starving himself from.

Donghyuck’s hands slide under Mark’s jacket, fingers dragging over the fabric of his shirt as they push the jacket off his shoulders. It catches awkwardly around his elbows for a second, and Mark barely has the patience to shrug out of it off without wincing in pain. 

The jacket falls somewhere beside the sofa, maybe half over the coffee table. Mark doesn’t care. Right now, the only thing he can care about is Donghyuck underneath him, hands on him, pulling him closer like he wants Mark there and has absolutely no interest in pretending otherwise.

Mark’s body is buzzing with leftover adrenaline, with the high of the fight and the higher, sharper high of having Donghyuck’s hands on him. It’s a dangerous combination, and Mark knows it. He knows that if he lets himself, he could get lost here. He could burn everything else down and never look back.

He pulls back just enough to breathe, though even that feels like asking too much of himself. His hands brace against the sofa on either side of Donghyuck, arms tense because there’s the fucking pain ticking his shoulder, but he forgets all about this as he looks down at him. It is a terrible mistake, because Donghyuck looks unreal like this, spread across the cushion with his hair slightly mussed and splayed soft against the fabric, cheeks flushed from kissing, lips parted as he catches his breath. 

Donghyuck’s eyes are darker than before, focused entirely on Mark in a way that makes the room feel impossible to escape. There is nothing polite in his expression now, nothing uncertain enough for Mark to use as an excuse to run. Donghyuck looks at him like he has already decided exactly what he wants, and Mark, pathetic as he is, feels something inside him go weak with relief at being wanted that clearly again.

Even after two years, even after magic and memory loss and all the cruelty in between, Donghyuck’s gaze holds the most dangerous thing in this universe. It’s his predatory self, the version of him that gets quiet before he gets bold, the version that used to make Mark nervous in the best possible way because Donghyuck could be all soft smiles and teasing warmth until suddenly he looked at Mark like he was something to be hunted down and kept.

Mark had seen it so many times before that his body remembers before his mind can protect him from it. He remembers Donghyuck backing him against kitchen counters with that same look, remembers laughing breathlessly because Donghyuck was smaller than him and still somehow managed to make Mark feel caught. He remembers hands curled in his hoodie, a mouth hovering near his ear, Donghyuck murmuring some smart comment that sounded sweet until Mark heard the intention underneath it. He remembers being devoured in pieces, not cruelly, never that, but thoroughly, with the kind of focused affection that made him feel like Donghyuck was taking him apart just to learn how to put him back together softer. He knows exactly what is about to happen.

He is going to be devoured.

The thought should scare him. Maybe it does, a little, but only in the way standing too close to a ledge scares him when he knows he could fly. Mostly, it makes something happy twist painfully in his chest, because Mark has spent so long being untouched by the one person who knew how to touch him right. And now Donghyuck is here, under him, looking at him like he is hungry too, like whatever the spell erased wasn’t strong enough to teach his heart to be indifferent. 

Mark doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know what it will cost. He doesn’t know if this is a miracle or the beginning of another punishment. But Donghyuck’s fingers slide into his hair and pull him down again, and for once, Mark lets himself stop thinking before it ruins him.

Donghyuck kisses him like he is making up for lost time, though Mark is the only one here who knows how much time has actually been lost. His tongue slides against Mark’s, wet and hot, and Mark makes a soft, broken sound against his mouth. Donghyuck arches up against him, and that sends fire through Mark’s veins. It is all it takes for his control to snap. His hands find Donghyuck’s sides, sliding up under the rumpled sweater, palms pressing against warm skin.

Donghyuck inhales sharply against Mark’s mouth, a small, surprised sound that makes Mark pause for half a second, worried he’s overstepped. But then Donghyuck’s hands tighten in his hair, pulling him closer again, and he tilts his head, deepening the kiss with a new urgency that leaves no room for doubt.

“I want to touch you,” Mark whispers, the words feeling raw and vulnerable in the quiet of the room.

Donghyuck’s breath hitches. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, his thumb stroking over Donghyuck’s hip. “Is that okay?”

Donghyuck blinks up at him, lashes low, mouth still parted around the breath Mark keeps stealing from him, and there is something almost impatient in the way his hand slides from Mark’s neck to his jaw. His thumb brushes along the corner of his mouth like he is trying to memorize the shape of Mark by touch. Mark’s heart gives an awful, aching twist at that, because Donghyuck used to touch him like this when he was sleepy, when words were too much effort but affection still needed somewhere to go.

The memory hits harder because Donghyuck does not know he is repeating himself. He does not know that his body is walking through old habits with no map, finding Mark in the same places it used to find him before the spell ripped everything apart and left Mark holding all the evidence alone. But Mark just lets himself be touched, lets himself breathe shakily through the ache of being remembered by hands even when the mind has no idea what it is doing. 

The sofa is too small for them, too cramped and badly positioned for the kind of closeness they keep trying to reach. One of Mark’s knees is pressed awkwardly between the cushions, his elbow keeps threatening to slip, and Donghyuck’s shoulder is half against the armrest in a way that cannot possibly be comfortable, but Mark cannot bring himself to care. He would stay there forever if Donghyuck let him. He would fold himself into whatever impossible shape the couch demanded, let his legs go numb, let his back complain, let the whole city burn down into background noise outside the windows if it meant staying tangled up with Donghyuck like this.

He shifts anyway, trying to get closer because his body has stopped understanding anything except that. Donghyuck makes a frustrated little sound into his mouth, not angry but annoyed in a way that is so familiar Mark almost smiles against him, and then he pulls back with a small huff, pushing at Mark’s shoulder until Mark lifts himself just enough to look at him.

“This couch is a piece of shit,” Donghyuck mutters, breathless, hair mussed from Mark’s fingers. He pushes at Mark again, more firmly this time, though his hand lingers even while pretending to shove him away. “Get up for a second.”

Mark blinks, momentarily disoriented. “What?”

“Get up,” Donghyuck repeats, wriggling out from under him and standing up. He holds out a hand to Mark. “Bedroom.”

Mark’s breath catches in his throat. He takes Donghyuck’s hand, lets himself be pulled to his feet, and follows Donghyuck down the short hallway. 

He’s been in Donghyuck’s bedroom before, of course. He has memories of this space that are so vivid they sometimes feel more real than the life he is actually living now. He remembers being loved there so easily that he used to forget love could be anything else. 

The dim light from the street lamps filters through the blinds, casting long shadows across the room. The bed is unmade, the covers thrown back like Donghyuck got out of it in a hurry this morning, and there are small pieces of his life scattered everywhere in ordinary ways. A hoodie abandoned over the chair, a book lying open facedown on the nightstand, a charger half slipping from the outlet. The sight of it should make him sad, but the sadness is folded into something warmer now because Donghyuck is still holding his hand. 

Donghyuck stops at the edge of the bed and turns to face Mark. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and Mark feels that familiar warmth spread through his chest, the one that used to be a constant presence in his life and now feels like a rare, precious gift.

He has no idea how much of Mark’s life is standing in this room with them. He does not know that every shadow has a memory attached to it. Mark feels the old warmth spread through his chest, the one that used to be so constant he almost took it for granted and now feels rare enough to be holy.

“Come here,” Donghyuck says, and it isn’t exactly a command, but it is close enough that Mark’s body obeys before his mind can pretend it has a choice.

Mark steps forward, and Donghyuck’s hands are on him immediately, pulling him in, one arm wrapping around his waist, the other cupping the back of his neck as he kisses him again. Mark lets himself get lost in it, his hands settling on Donghyuck’s hips, pulling him flush against him. He can feel the heat of Donghyuck’s body through their clothes, the steady beat of his heart against Mark’s chest.

Donghyuck’s fingers toy with the hem of Mark’s shirt, a light, teasing touch that sends shivers down Mark’s spine. Mark wants to beg him to just do it, to take it off, to touch him everywhere, but he holds back, terrified of breaking the spell, of scaring Donghyuck off. Mark loves him so much it hurts, and the weight of that love is crushing him, because he can’t tell him. 

He leans in and kisses Donghyuck again, hoping to convey everything he can’t say with the press of his lips. Donghyuck responds like he understands enough, or maybe like he doesn’t need to understand to want him anyway. His hands finally slip under Mark’s shirt, palms flattening against the bare skin of his back and Mark gasps into the kiss, his hands tightening on Donghyuck’s hips. 

Mark has spent two years being hurt by strangers, patched up by his own shaky hands, sleeping alone with bruises no one saw and pain no one asked about. He has missed this so much, the simple, overwhelming pleasure of being touched by Donghyuck. Mark feels the loneliness of those years loosen inside him so violently it almost makes him dizzy. 

“Mark,” Donghyuck whispers against his mouth, and even breathless, even impatient, his voice still hits that same place in Mark that has never learned how to defend itself. “Touch me. Hurry. I can’t do this slow shit, need you closer.” 

Mark obeys, of course. As usual, as always, in every life, in every version of them, Mark has always been embarrassingly weak for Donghyuck asking him for anything with that voice. He pulls Donghyuck’s sweater over his head, and the sight of him, bare-chested in the dim light, is enough to make Mark’s knees weak. He has seen Donghyuck shirtless countless times, but this feels just like the first time all over again. And in a cruel, technical way, it is. For Donghyuck, it is new. For Mark, it is memory meeting reality so suddenly that the two almost blur together. 

He leans in and presses a kiss to Donghyuck’s collarbone, then another, trailing a line of soft kisses up his neck. Donghyuck tilts his head back, a soft sigh escaping his lips. His hands are still under Mark’s shirt, his fingers tracing patterns on Mark’s back, sending shivers down Mark’s spine.

Mark’s hands explore Donghyuck’s chest, his fingers tracing the lines of his muscles, the smooth skin of his stomach. Donghyuck shivers under his touch, a soft gasp escaping him. The reaction gives Mark a strange, aching surge of pride, something almost possessive but too tender to be sharp. 

He wants to make Donghyuck feel good, wants to give him everything, every tender thing he saved and had no one to give to, every apology he could never say, every touch he kept locked inside his hands until they forgot how to be gentle with anyone else. He wants to worship him until Donghyuck forgets the world outside the room, until Mark forgets it too, until there is no version of them separated by memory. Just this. Just Donghyuck’s body beneath his hands and his name on Donghyuck’s mouth.

He guides Donghyuck back toward the bed with a hand at his waist, gentle despite the desperation buzzing under his skin. Donghyuck lets himself be moved for approximately half a second before taking control again, falling back onto the mattress and pulling Mark down with him. They land in a tangle of limbs, the bed dipping under their combined weight, one of Mark’s hands catching beside Donghyuck’s head to keep from crushing him completely. Donghyuck laughs breathlessly against his mouth when they nearly knock foreheads, and the sound is so warm, so alive.

“What?” Donghyuck asks, his voice soft, a little breathless, and there is enough nervousness under the teasing that Mark feels his heart squeeze.

“Nothing,” Mark says, shaking his head, but the lie is useless and too small for the moment. His voice comes out quieter when he adds, “Just… you’re beautiful.”

One of Donghyuck’s hands lifts to cup Mark’s cheek, his thumb brushing once over the skin there, and the touch is tender enough to make Mark’s throat tighten all over again. 

“And you’re so cheesy,” Donghyuck says, but there’s a smile in his voice, soft and embarrassed and pleased despite the words.

“It’s true,” Mark says, because he cannot lie about that. He leans down and kisses him again, trying to press the truth into him the only way he can. Donghyuck accepts it for a few seconds before his hands get busy again, sliding down to Mark’s shirt and tugging at the fabric with renewed impatience.

“Get this off,” Donghyuck demands against his mouth.

Mark laughs, low and breathy. “Bossy.”

“You love it,” Donghyuck retorts immediately.

Mark does, he really does. He loves this, loves Donghyuck, loves the easy intimacy that somehow slips through the cracks even when neither of them should have access to it anymore. 

He sits up, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. He knows he's bruised all over, a mess of yellow and purple that tells a story Donghyuck can't read. Self-consciousness flickers through him before he can stop it, sudden and uncomfortable. Mark’s hand almost moves to cover one of the worse bruises at his ribs, but Donghyuck is already looking, eyes roaming over his chest with a hungry, appreciative focus that makes heat crawl up Mark’s neck. Then the look shifts. Not away from want, exactly, but through it. 

Donghyuck notices the bruises and concern flickers across his face so quickly Mark nearly misses it under the flush and the desire. His fingers lift, hovering for a second near Mark’s side like he wants to touch but doesn’t know if it will hurt.

Mark prepares himself for the question. He can feel it coming, can already hear himself lying badly, can already feel the fragile warmth of the room threatening to crack under the weight of everything he still hasn’t told him. But Donghyuck doesn’t ask. Not yet.

“Come here,” Donghyuck says, and Mark goes, their bare chests pressed together, skin to skin. It’s overwhelming, the sheer sensation of it, the warmth, the friction, the soft sounds Donghyuck makes as Mark’s lips find his again.

Mark’s hands explore, relearning the planes of Donghyuck’s body, the sensitive spots that make him gasp, the way he arches into Mark’s touch. It’s a familiar dance, but it feels new, too, charged with the memory of what they lost and the promise of what they’re finding again.

Donghyuck’s hands are not idle. They map Mark’s body with a desperate, claiming pressure, sliding down his back to grip the swell of his ass, pulling him closer. Mark can feel the hard line of Donghyuck’s dick against his thigh, and it sends a jolt of pure, unadulterated want through him. He rocks his hips, a slow movement that makes Donghyuck moan into his mouth.

“Mark,” Donghyuck gasps, breaking the kiss just enough to speak, his mouth still close enough that Mark feels every word against his lips.

“Yes?” Mark asks, even though he knows, because there is something devastatingly sweet about hearing Donghyuck ask anyway.

“Enough of this,” Donghyuck says, his voice raw with need. “Want to feel you everywhere.”

Mark doesn't need to be told twice. He kisses a path down Donghyuck’s chest, his tongue flicking over a nipple, earning him a sharp gasp. He continues down, tracing the lines of Donghyuck’s stomach with his lips, his hands sliding down to grip Donghyuck’s hips.

He looks up at Donghyuck, finds him watching with dark, hungry eyes, his chest heaving. Mark smiles as he hooks his fingers in the waistband of Donghyuck’s pants and Donghyuck lifts his hips, an unspoken permission. Mark pulls them down, along with his underwear, and then Donghyuck is naked, stretched out on the bed, a feast for Mark’s starving eyes.

Mark’s breath catches in his throat. He’s seen Donghyuck like this before, but it’s been so long, and the memory doesn't do it justice. He’s beautiful, all golden skin and long limbs, his dick hard and flushed against his stomach.

“Don't just stare at me,” Donghyuck says, his voice a little shaky. “Don't make me impatient, please.”

Mark presses a kiss to the inside of his thigh, close enough to make Donghyuck’s hands fist in the sheets, far enough to make him huff in frustration. “You’re already impatient.”

Donghyuck’s breath hitches, and Mark smiles again. He takes his time, kissing and licking a path up Donghyuck’s thigh, savoring the little sounds Donghyuck makes, the way his hands fist in the sheets.

Finally, he takes Donghyuck in his mouth, and Donghyuck cries out, a sharp, broken sound. Mark starts slow, a gentle suction, his tongue swirling around the head. Donghyuck’s hands find their way into Mark’s hair, his grip tightening as Mark takes him deeper, as he finds a rhythm that makes Donghyuck’s hips move, seeking more. Mark knows him, knows what he likes, how to make him fall apart. He uses that knowledge now, his tongue, his lips, his hands working together to drive Donghyuck wild.

It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. Mark wants more, wants to be inside him, wants to feel Donghyuck around him and, apparently, Donghyuck thinks the same. 

They make it just as indecent as it used to be, with Mark fumbling in the drawer of the nightstand, following instructions, with Donghyuck’s legs wrapping around his waist, with Mark’s slick fingers pressing into him, stretching him, making him ready.

Donghyuck is loud, a string of curses and pleas, a constant, desperate movement against Mark’s fingers. Mark watches him, fascinated, as he falls apart, as he begs for more. He’s beautiful like this, lost in pleasure, all for Mark. And when Mark finally pushes into him, it’s like transcending. Donghyuck’s breath hitches, a sharp, pained sound that quickly turns into something hungry and desperate. Mark pauses, giving him a moment to adjust, but Donghyuck is having none of it.

“Move,” he demands, his voice raw, his nails digging into Mark’s shoulders.

Mark does. He starts slow, a gentle rocking motion, but Donghyuck wants more, wants it harder, faster. Mark gives it to him, his hips snapping forward, a relentless rhythm that makes Donghyuck cry out, that makes the bed slam against the wall. 

Mark feels like he’s burning, like he’s flying, like he’s finally, finally, where he’s supposed to be. He looks down at Donghyuck, at his flushed face, at the sweat beading on his forehead, at the dark, hungry eyes that are fixed on him. Heaven.

“Come on,” Donghyuck says, his voice a ragged gasp. “Give it to me how I want it.” 

And that's an invitation Mark cannot, for the life of him, refuse. He lets go of the fear, of the guilt, of the weight of the secrets he’s carrying. He lets go of everything but the feel of Donghyuck around him. He grabs Donghyuck’s legs, pushes them up and changes the angle. The next thrust makes Donghyuck arch off the bed.

“Yes,” he gasps. “Right there, Mark, don’t stop.”

Mark could never. He finds a rhythm, a relentless assault on that spot that has Donghyuck writhing beneath him, that has him begging and cursing and coming apart, piece by piece. He watches Donghyuck’s face, the pleasure-pain, the desperation, the surrender. Mark feels it all too, the tight heat of Donghyuck around him, the friction, the overwhelming sensation of being inside him, of being connected to him in this most primal way. He knows he is not going to last long, even though he wants to make it last forever.

“Can’t hold it anymore,” he warns and it’s almost a whine. He doesn’t want to let go.

Donghyuck’s hand wraps around his own dick, stroking it in time with Mark’s thrusts. “Me too,” he gasps. “Come on, Mark. Let me feel it.”

That’s all it takes.

Mark takes the opportunity while Donghyuck is too close to notice right away, while the room is too warm and both of them are breathing too hard, losing their minds together, while there is sweat slipping between them and making every point of contact feel even more real, to finally stop holding the tears back. He doesn’t make a sound at first. He just lets them happen, lets them spill hot from the corners of his eyes and disappear into the flushed mess of his face, because for once they aren’t coming from the same old place inside him. 

They aren’t being dragged out by grief or loneliness or the unbearable sight of Donghyuck looking through him like he is nobody. They are not the kind of tears that leave him empty afterward, curled into himself in a dark room with his pillow pressed against his mouth. They come from happiness, which almost feels like a language Mark forgot how to speak. From joy and disbelief twisting together in his chest until his body has no idea what else to do with it. 

He cries because Donghyuck is here, because Donghyuck’s hands are real against his skin and the warmth of him is not some cruel little memory Mark’s brain made up to punish him. He cries because he has spent two years waking up from dreams exactly like this, dreams where Donghyuck remembered how to hold him, dreams where Mark got to come back and be wanted and hear his name in that voice again, only to open his eyes to the same lonely ceiling and the same cold silence waiting for him.

But he isn’t waking up now.

Mark wakes up alone, and for one horrible second, his whole body forgets how to be a body.

It happens before he even opens his eyes properly, that sudden wrongness cutting through the soft blur of sleep with enough force to make his chest seize. The bed is too quiet and the space beside him is too empty. There is no warm weight pressed against him, no arm thrown carelessly across his waist, no sleepy breath against the back of his neck. His mind catches on the absence before it catches on anything else, and panic rises so fast it almost knocks the air out of him. Because he thinks that his brain finally got cruel enough to make something too real, something that sounded like Donghyuck and tasted like Donghyuck and felt like Donghyuck’s hands learning him all over again, only to drag him back into the same lonely morning he has been waking up inside for two years.

His eyes snap open, and the ceiling above him is not his. That stops the panic before it can fully swallow him. 

Mark lies there frozen for a second, breath caught somewhere high in his throat, staring at the unfamiliar-familiar shadows stretched across the ceiling, at the thin lines of daylight slipping through the blinds, at the pale wash of morning moving quietly over the room. Then his brain catches up piece by piece. The bed beneath him is too soft to be his own. 

Mark exhales, and the sound comes out shaky enough to embarrass him even alone. 

He isn’t waking up from some hyper-detailed punishment his mind invented to keep him miserable. He is in Donghyuck’s bedroom, in Donghyuck’s bed, with the faint ache of last night still settled into his body and the warm, unmistakable scent of Donghyuck clinging to the sheets around him. That is what finally makes his mouth tremble into something dangerously close to a smile. That’s what calms him down, that same familiar smell Mark used to breathe in almost every morning and fall asleep to almost every night.

His eyes sting before he can stop them, but this time he doesn’t cry. He just breathes in slowly, deeply, like someone taking their first proper breath after being underwater too long. 

Mark turns onto his side slowly, careful because his body is sore in several different ways now, some from last night and some from everything that came before it. The movement makes the sheets slide against his bare skin, and his face heats all over again, a quiet, helpless laugh escaping into the pillow before he can swallow it down. He feels ridiculous. Terrifyingly, embarrassingly happy. The kind of happy that makes him want to hide because it feels too visible, too easy for the world to notice and punish.

Somewhere beyond the bedroom, there is a faint sound from the kitchen. A drawer opening, something ceramic set down a little too loudly. Donghyuck moving around.

Mark’s smile gets worse before he can control it.

He presses his face into the pillow for a second like that might contain whatever his expression is doing, but it only makes the smell stronger, which makes the whole thing hopeless. Donghyuck didn’t disappear the second Mark stopped looking at him. He is somewhere outside this room, alive and close and probably making a mess of something simple, and Mark gets to hear it. He gets to lie there and listen to the small domestic proof of him existing nearby. It is so much it feels like a fantasy.

He stays there longer than he should, just listening. The soft pad of footsteps, the low hum of the fridge, a muffled curse, then the distant clink of a spoon against a mug. Every tiny noise feels like a gift, like a secret Mark is being allowed to keep, even though nobody is trying to stop him from hearing it. This is what normal people get to have every morning, he thinks, a thought so strange it barely feels like it belongs to him. This quiet, unguarded rhythm of two lives sharing a space.

Eventually, Mark forces himself to sit up. He does it slowly, body protesting with a series of aches he chooses to interpret as good ones. He glances at the rumpled bed beside him. The sheets are a mess, the pillows dented where Mark’s head was, and there’s a faint, unmistakable damp spot that makes him blush again anyway. He looks away quickly, feeling weirdly shy about it, which is ridiculous given everything they did last night. He runs a hand through his hair and then glances down at himself, taking stock of the damage.

Mark is covered in a patchwork of fading bruises and new ones, some from the fight, some from Donghyuck’s hands, and some from being kissed so hard he lost track of where furniture ended and he began. He is the happiest disaster he has ever been.

He finds his jeans on the floor, kicked into a heap near the foot of the bed. Mark leans down slowly to grab them, wincing a little when his side pulls, then pulls them on, the denim rough against his sensitive skin. He exhales through his nose, then looks around for his shirt and finds absolutely nothing useful. The floor has socks, Donghyuck’s sweater, a pillow that has no reason to be down there, but his shirt has apparently chosen to vanish into another dimension.

So Mark accepts his fate. Shirtless, bruised, hair ruined, jeans sitting low on his hips because he is too distracted to fix himself properly, he stands in the middle of Donghyuck’s bedroom and feels his heart start doing that awful, hopeful thing again. Then he opens the door and pads quietly down the short hallway, his bare feet silent on the floorboards. 

Donghyuck is standing with his back to the doorway when Mark reaches the kitchen, one hip leaned against the counter, phone in hand as he scrolls through something with his head slightly bowed. He is wearing low-slung sweatpants and Mark’s missing shirt. The shirt hangs loose on him, the fabric slipping a little at one shoulder, just like it used to be. God, exactly like it used to be. 

Donghyuck used to steal Mark’s shirts constantly, claiming they were more comfortable even when Mark pointed out that they owned shirts made of the same material, and then he would get annoyed when Mark stared at him for too long as if he had not deliberately chosen to walk around looking devastating in something that belonged to him.

Mark stops in the doorway, suddenly unable to move. Donghyuck looks effortlessly beautiful like this, almost cruelly so, bathed in pale morning light with his hair still a mess from sleep and one foot tucked lazily over the other. He is doing nothing at all. Just scrolling through his phone, breathing, existing in his own kitchen. And Mark’s heart gives a little squeeze because this is the kind of thing he missed the most.

Mark feels shy about it. Absurdly, painfully shy. After everything, he feels like he is intruding. Maybe because, for two years, he really wasn’t meant to see it. He had watched parts of Donghyuck’s life from rooftops and alleys and the edges of streets, always outside, always careful not to disturb the world that no longer had room for him. Standing in the doorway now, inside the apartment, inside the morning, feels so intimate it almost scares him more than last night did.

He clears his throat softly before he can overthink himself into retreating. 

Donghyuck turns around, and the second he sees Mark, his whole face changes. The sleepy neutrality disappears, replaced by a smile so bright and immediate that Mark feels genuinely unprepared for it. The sun outside should probably be embarrassed for even trying. 

His eyes dip over Mark for half a second, taking in the shirtless mess of him, and then they come back to his face with something pleased and tender tucked into the corners.

“Hi,” Donghyuck says softly, setting his phone down on the counter.

Mark’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out right away. He has faced guns, collapsing bridges, explosions and strangers screaming his name from falling buildings, but Donghyuck smiling at him manages to turn him useless.

Donghyuck’s smile grows a little, like he knows exactly how gone Mark is even if he doesn’t know all the reasons why. Then he opens both arms. 

It is such a simple gesture, just Donghyuck standing in the kitchen with his arms open, silently calling Mark to him. Mark has seen this too many times before. In old mornings when Donghyuck wanted to be held while coffee brewed. In late nights when Mark came back injured and Donghyuck was angry but still opened his arms first. In quiet afternoons when Donghyuck didn’t say anything at all, just looked at him from across a room and made space against his chest like Mark belonged there. His body remembers it instantly, painfully, joyfully.

So Mark goes, because there is no version of existence where Donghyuck opens his arms and Mark does anything other than walk straight into them. 

Donghyuck hides his face in Mark’s neck immediately, like that is where he belongs. His cheek presses warm against Mark’s skin, his nose brushing just under Mark’s jaw, and Mark’s whole body goes still for half a second before he remembers he is allowed to touch back. Then his arms come around Donghyuck slowly, one hand settling at the small of his back, the other lifting to the back of his head with almost unbearable care. Donghyuck’s hair is soft under his fingers, still messy from sleep, and Mark feels something in his chest fold in on itself at the simple domesticity of it. 

“Good morning. Slept good?” Donghyuck asks, voice muffled against Mark’s bare skin, warm breath spilling over his neck and making him shiver before he can pretend otherwise.

“Yeah,” Mark says softly, fingers tightening slightly in Donghyuck’s hair before he makes himself loosen them. “Yeah, I did.”

Donghyuck hums, pleased, and the sound vibrates against Mark’s throat. “Good.”

“I’m just a bit sore,” Mark admits.

Donghyuck goes still against him for half a beat. Then Mark feels the slow curve of Donghyuck’s mouth against his neck, smug and wicked. 

“Yeah?” he says, voice still muffled, but now there’s a dangerous kind of amusement threaded through it. “I wonder why.”

“Ah, me too,” Mark says, trying for dryness even though his voice comes out a little strained around the warmth creeping up his neck. “I can’t even imagine what caused my hips to hurt like that.”

Donghyuck finally pulls back just enough to look at him, and the expression on his face is so pleased with itself that Mark almost regrets saying anything.

“You didn’t complain when I was riding you last night,” Donghyuck says, too casually.

Mark makes a wounded little sound before he can stop it, half whine and half laugh, dropping his forehead briefly against Donghyuck’s shoulder.

“Are you always this lewd in the mornings?” he asks, voice muffled now, hiding like a coward. 

Donghyuck laughs, low and pleased, and one of his hands slides up Mark’s back with lazy affection. “Maybe you’re just easy to mess with in the mornings.”

“I’m easy to mess with all the time,” Mark mutters, then immediately realizes what he said and lifts his head just in time to see Donghyuck’s eyes sharpen with delight. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Donghyuck’s smile spreads slowly. “I was thinking respectfully.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“No,” Donghyuck admits, completely shameless, his fingers curling lightly at Mark’s waist again. “I really wasn’t.”

Mark huffs. “You’re alright? I didn’t go too hard on you?”

“I was literally begging you for it,” Donghyuck says, with the bluntness that has always made Mark’s ears burn. “I’ll be fine. Might need a cushion for my desk chair today, but I’ll live.”

Mark flushes, the heat of it crawling up his neck to the tips of his ears. He has spent so long burying every reaction, every hint of what he feels, that being with Donghyuck like this feels almost like being unbound.

“Okay,” he says, but the word is embarrassingly quiet.

Donghyuck’s eyes soften instantly. He lifts a hand, cups Mark’s cheek, thumb stroking gently over the skin there, and it’s such a tender shift from the teasing that Mark’s breath catches.

“Don’t hide from me,” Donghyuck says, quietly.

Mark swallows. “I’m not.”

Donghyuck’s thumb presses a little harder, a silent demand for honesty that Mark has never been able to resist. “I can feel your face getting hot.”

“Yeah, well,” Mark starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish that. Because what is he supposed to say? That being teased by Donghyuck after not having this for two years is overwhelming? That the thought of what they did last night makes him want to do it all over again right now?

Donghyuck doesn’t wait for him to figure it out. He leans in and kisses him, soft and slow, a completely different kind of kiss from the ones last night. There’s no desperation in it, no frantic need. It’s a morning kiss, a we-have-all-the-time-in-the-world kiss.

Mark’s hands tighten on Donghyuck’s waist, pulling him closer, deepening the kiss. He can’t help it. He’s been starving for this for two years, and now that he has it, he can’t get enough. Donghyuck lets him, lets him take what he needs, his hands sliding up to cup the back of Mark’s neck, fingers tangling in his hair.

“I don't know what you eat in the morning, so I just made coffee,” Donghyuck murmurs against his lips. “There’s some leftover cereal from last week if you’re brave. Or we could go out and have something, there’s a nice place nearby.”

Mark looks at him for a second, at the way Donghyuck’s hair falls into his eyes, at the sleepy warmth still clinging to him, at the shirt he stole. Going out means walking through the door and back into a world Mark has spent the last two years trying to survive in a different way. Going out means sharing Donghyuck with strangers, with sunlight, with the possibility that someone will see them and something will go wrong, because in Mark’s life, something always goes wrong eventually.

Staying in means the quiet intimacy of a morning he never thought he’d get to have again.

“Here,” Mark says, the word softer than he meant it to be. “I just want to stay here. If that’s okay.”

Donghyuck’s face softens instantly, that predatory morning charm melting into something else, something so tender it almost hurts to look at.

“Alright,” Donghyuck says, reaching up with one hand to brush Mark’s messy hair back from his forehead. “Let’s stay, then.”

And Mark sighs deeply, dreamily. This is all that he wants. But, just like any other day, wanting something has never meant he gets to keep it. 

Their little bubble is popped by a loud explosion somewhere down a few blocks. It comes muffled through the walls and windows, dulled by distance, but still strong enough to make the kitchen tremble, a deep, ugly sound that rolls through the building and rattles something faintly in the sink. 

Donghyuck’s arms jerk around him, his face lifting from Mark’s neck with a startled little inhale, while Mark’s head snaps toward the direction of the noise, eyes narrowing instinctively at the window even though there is nothing useful to see from here. A muscle in his jaw tenses hard enough to hurt. His body, traitorous and well-trained, begins sorting the sound before his mind even gives permission. 

For Donghyuck, it is just a loud, scary noise. For Mark, it is the sound of a problem waiting for him. He can almost feel the suit calling to him.

“What was that?” Donghyuck asks, and he is looking at the window now, a little worried.

Before Mark can even think to answer, the sirens start. One, then two, then too many, rising and falling in the distance, their wails cutting through the quiet morning like knives. Mark’s heart sinks. He knows exactly what it means.

He steps toward the window, more on instinct than choice, and Donghyuck’s hand slips from his arm as he moves. There isn’t much to see from this angle, just the opposite building, the pale reflection of morning on glass, a thin smear of gray starting to rise somewhere beyond the next block where the view breaks apart between rooftops. But Mark can hear enough. 

The sirens are coming from multiple directions. There are voices too, faint and rising, the distant scatter of panic carrying oddly through the streets. Somewhere below, a car alarm begins shrieking, then another. Mark’s fingers curl at his sides.

Of fucking course.

One morning. He got one ridiculous, precious, half-naked morning in Donghyuck’s kitchen, and now some awful fucker has decided to crawl out of whatever sewer of villainy he came from and ruin Mark’s fucking day. Maybe it’s just a bomb or it is some idiot with stolen tech. Mark doesn’t know yet, but he fucking hates whatever it is.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“Mark?”

Donghyuck’s voice cuts through the rage spiraling in his head, and Mark blinks like he has been pulled out of somewhere dark. Only then does he realize how tightly his fists are clenched, nails digging into his palms, shoulders pulled rigid, every soft line from the last few minutes gone from his body. Donghyuck looks at him and just nods, his hands coming up to rest on Mark’s arms.

“You should go check that,” Donghyuck says softly. “I know you have to.”

For a second, Mark genuinely cannot move.

In all his years of being Spider-Man, in all the half-finished meals abandoned on counters, the classes missed, the wounds hidden under hoodies, he has never felt more conflicted in his entire life. He thinks relief might be in there somewhere, but the surprise gets him first and leaves him staring at Donghyuck with his mouth parted like an idiot. Because what does he mean by that? I know you have to. The words should not exist here. Not now. Not when Donghyuck isn’t supposed to know enough to say them.

There’s an urgent need to stay, to hold onto this fragile peace he’s found in Donghyuck’s kitchen, to pretend the world outside doesn’t exist for just a little while longer. But there’s also the undeniable pull of duty, the knowledge that people might be hurt, that he is one of the few who can help. And then, beneath even that, there is the most terrifying part of all. 

Donghyuck letting him go like this means Donghyuck knows. Maybe not everything, but enough to understand that Mark’s place is suddenly divided. 

Mark looks at him, at the calm in his face and the worry he is trying to keep from becoming fear, at the painful understanding sitting in his eyes, and something overwhelming rises through him.

“Donghyuck.”

“Go,” Donghyuck says, and then his voice sharpens, not cruelly, but with that familiar edge of command, “but come back to me in one fucking piece, Mark.”

Mark swallows hard, still half surprised, still half panicking.

“I don’t care how long you take,” Donghyuck continues, and his eyes flick briefly toward the window as another siren cuts across the morning, closer now, louder. Then he looks back at Mark with the kind of seriousness that leaves no room for jokes. “Be careful and come back to me safely. We can talk once you’re back.”

The ‘we can talk’ is what seals it. 

He knows. He knows. He knows. 

The thought repeats until it becomes almost loud enough inside Mark’s skull to drown out everything else for half a breath. Donghyuck knows, or at least he has found the edge of knowing and put his hand on it. 

Mark wants to stay and ask, but outside, the sirens keep screaming. He knows too that there are people who need him. So he does the only thing he can think of. He leans in and kisses Donghyuck, a hard, desperate kiss that says all the things he doesn’t have the words for now.

I love you. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening. I’ll come back to you.

Donghyuck kisses him back like he hears at least some of it. His fingers tighten in Mark’s hair, and for one dangerous second Mark almost refuses to leave. The thought comes fast and selfish. Let someone else go and  handle it. Let him have this one morning, this one person, this one fragile chance at being happy without immediately paying for it in blood. Then another distant crash rolls through the streets, followed by the rising sound of people shouting from somewhere below, and Mark pulls back before the selfish part of him can win.

He stays close for one more second, breathing hard, forehead almost touching Donghyuck’s. Donghyuck’s eyes are wet but focused, his fingers still curled against Mark like letting go is taking just as much from him. That knowledge nearly destroys Mark. 

After two years of being the only one devastated by leaving, having Donghyuck look like this makes the floor feel unsteady beneath his feet.

Mark gives him one last, long look. He tries to memorize everything in the space of a second, even though he already knows he’ll fail because no amount of looking ever feels like enough, then he runs.

The whole thing is a fucking mess and a half, which Mark expected, mostly because experience has taught him that explosions before breakfast rarely turn into neat little situations wrapped up in twenty minutes or less. He had expected it to be harsh because it always is, because every single person with too much power and not enough emotional regulation seems to wake up with the same world domination fantasy and somehow decides New York is the ideal stage for whatever deeply embarrassing villain monologue they’ve been rehearsing in their bathroom mirror. What he had not expected was for the whole thing to stretch through the entire day.

It starts with one explosion and turns into six different emergencies. Three blocks evacuated, two bridges jammed, a subway line shut down. Mark loses count somewhere around noon.

Jessica saves his ass twice. Ironheart shows up sometime later like an extremely expensive answer to a prayer Mark did not have time to make, and Mark is too tired to even be embarrassed by the relief that punches through him. Lord knows what would’ve happened if backup hadn’t arrived. Probably nothing good.

By the time it is finally over, or at least over enough that someone else can handle the aftermath, Mark feels less like a person and more like a collection of injuries loosely arranged inside a torn-up suit. The fabric is ripped across one shoulder, burned near his thigh, sticky with drying blood at his side, and clinging to him in places where sweat has long since cooled into something gross and uncomfortable. 

His mask is still on because taking it off in the middle of a street full of cameras would be stupid, but underneath it his face feels swollen, one cheek aching sharply when he moves his mouth, his lip split again because apparently his face is legally required to suffer at least once a week. 

Every swing back toward Donghyuck’s building hurts. His shoulder screams every time he shoots a web. His ribs send a bright, hateful spark through his body whenever he twists too fast. That’s what he is. Spider-Man, beloved hero of the city, currently one strong breeze away from becoming municipal litter.

Still, he goes back.

Usually, this is when Mark would drag himself home alone, peel the suit off in his bathroom, clean whatever he could reach, and pass out with blood still under his nails. Usually, he would tell himself that surviving was enough. Tonight, that thought feels unbearable because someone is waiting. 

He reaches Donghyuck’s building late enough that most of the windows are dark. His movements become careful on instinct as he climbs the wall, sticking close to the shadows, avoiding the windows where blue television light flickers behind curtains. He knows Donghyuck’s bedroom window will be open because Donghyuck used to leave it open for him always, even when he complained about the cold. And sure enough, it is open.

His foot catches slightly on the sill, his shoulder bumps the frame, and he lands inside Donghyuck’s bedroom with a muted, painful thud that sends a fresh wave of agony through his ribs. Mark bites back a curse, one hand braced against the wall as the room tilts for half a second. And there, sitting on the edge of the bed, is Donghyuck, hunched forward with both hands near his mouth, biting at nails that are already too short to bite.

Donghyuck’s head snaps up and the relief that washes over his face is so raw it feels like a physical touch. His eyes go wide first, then wet, then furious in the space of a heartbeat, and Mark knows that expression so well.

Mark steps in from the window, suddenly shy. His shoulders curl slightly, guilt already creeping in because he is late and Donghyuck has clearly been sitting there worrying himself into pieces for hours. 

Donghyuck stands so fast the mattress creaks behind him. He crosses the room in a rush, hands reaching for Mark before he seems to know where to put them. They land everywhere, frantic and careful all at once, skimming over his shoulders, his arms, his chest, his sides, checking for missing pieces like he expects Mark to fall apart if he doesn’t hold him together manually. Mark lets him because there is no universe where he could deny Donghyuck this. 

Donghyuck’s fingers brush the torn fabric at Mark’s side and Mark flinches despite himself. His face tightens. 

“Jesus Christ.”

“It looks worse than it is,” Mark says automatically.

Donghyuck lifts his eyes to him slowly, and even through the mask Mark can feel the full force of the glare. “Do you have a medical condition where you physically cannot shut the fuck up when you’re lying?”

Mark’s mouth closes instantly.

Donghyuck huffs, sharp and shaky, then turns away only long enough to go to the window. He closes it firmly, locks it, then pulls the curtains. Donghyuck used to do this too, to make the room safe before he let himself panic properly.

Mark reaches up and pulls the mask off. The air hits his face all at once, cool against sweat and dried blood, and he finally takes a deep breath that doesn’t have to pass through fabric. He lowers himself onto the edge of the bed carefully, but even careful isn’t enough to keep pain from flaring hot along his side. He winces, one hand gripping the mattress as his body reminds him, in several languages, that today was a terrible idea.

Donghyuck turns back just in time to catch it. His expression goes flat with alarm.

“Don’t move,” he says.

“I’m sitting.”

“Don’t sit so aggressively, then.”

Mark almost laughs, but it turns into a pained breath halfway through. “That’s not a thing.”

“It is when you do it. Don’t try to be funny, I’m not fucking laughing.”

Donghyuck is already moving before Mark can answer, crossing the room and dropping to his knees beside the bed to reach under it. There is a box there, still in the same place. Mark’s throat tightens when he sees it dragged out from beneath the frame. The medical kit. Bigger than it used to be, maybe newer, maybe restocked and reorganized, but still unmistakably Donghyuck’s version of a first aid kit, which means it is less of a kit and more of a small emergency room packed into plastic.

The Spider-Man protocol, that’s what Donghyuck used to call it, half-mocking and half-terrified, after the fifth or sixth time Mark came through his window bleeding and tried to argue that he could handle it himself. It had become a routine eventually, as much as anything involving superhero injuries could become routine. 

Donghyuck shouldn’t know the protocol anymore, but he moves like he does. Not perfectly or with the same old certainty, but close enough. Donghyuck pulls on gloves and his fingers find the torn edge of the suit, he begins to peel it back with careful precision. The fabric sticks in one place where blood has dried, and Mark sucks in a breath through his teeth before he can stop himself. Donghyuck freezes instantly.

“Sorry,” he says, too fast.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

When the wound is finally visible, Donghyuck goes very still. Mark glances down and immediately regrets it. The cut along his side is ugly, not deep enough to be catastrophic but definitely bad enough to justify the amount of blood on the suit. There are bruises blooming around it, new ones layered over older ones, plus a scrape near his ribs that looks worse than it feels and a burn mark higher up that he honestly forgot about. Donghyuck inhales once through his nose in a way that tells Mark he is one bad second away from losing that control completely.

Donghyuck looks up and his eyes are wet now, furious, but also devastated. “You’re bleeding on my bed.”

Mark blinks, startled by the sentence, and then a laugh breaks out of him before he can stop it. It hurts his ribs, which makes him wince, which makes Donghyuck glare harder, but the laugh is real and stupid and shaky. “Sorry.”

Donghyuck reaches for the antiseptic with a little more force than necessary.  Mark lets his head fall slightly forward, exhausted beyond words, watching Donghyuck tear open a packet and brace himself to clean the wound. His hands are steadier now. His breathing still isn’t. Mark wants to reach for him, to apologize, to explain, to say that he came back because Donghyuck told him to and that sentence was the only thing keeping him moving near the end. But Donghyuck presses the antiseptic to his side, and every thought disappears under a bright, vicious sting.

“Fuck,” Mark hisses, body jerking.

Donghyuck catches his shoulder with one hand, holding him still. “I know. I know, baby, I’m sorry.”

Mark’s breath is caught halfway in his chest because of the nickname. Donghyuck used to call him that when he was scared. It slipped out in the bad moments, when Mark was hurt enough for Donghyuck to forget his anger and grab for whatever tenderness came first. 

Baby, stay with me. 

Baby, don’t fall asleep yet. 

Baby, if you die on my bathroom floor, I’ll kill you myself.

Hearing it now feels like being resurrected.

Donghyuck works with methodical speed after that. Cleaning, applying pressure, wrapping gauze with a practiced tightness that speaks of experience he shouldn’t have. Mark watches him, fascinated, as Donghyuck’s hands move over him with the kind of expertise that can only come from repetition. 

When he finishes with the main wound, he doesn’t stop. He takes care of the rest with the same frightening ease, the burn near Mark’s shoulder, the scrape along his ribs, the smaller cuts on his knuckles. Eventually, Donghyuck snaps the kit shut, looks at the blood on the ruined suit, looks at Mark’s face, and sends him straight to the bathroom. No complaining allowed. 

The shower is long and divine in the way only showers after terrible days can be, the kind that makes him feel like a person being returned slowly to his own body. It stings everywhere at first, then fades into warmth that sinks through his muscles and pulls some of the fight out of him piece by piece. By the time he turns the water off, he feels partially not dead anymore, which is honestly a significant improvement.

Donghyuck is waiting when he comes back out. He has found him clothes, soft sweatpants and a shirt big enough to fit. Mark puts them on carefully, moving slowly so he doesn’t pull at the bandages, and lets Donghyuck help him back to the bed. The mattress dips when Mark crawls onto it, wincing, and Donghyuck’s hand immediately goes to his arm, steadying him with quiet concern. Once Mark is settled on his side with pillows arranged behind him, Donghyuck sits beside him, close enough that his thigh presses lightly against Mark’s.

The room is too full of all the things they haven’t said yet. Mark can feel the questions Donghyuck is holding back, can feel his anger too, but it doesn’t feel directed at him. Not exactly. It feels bigger than that, angrier at the shape of the situation, at the missing pieces, at whatever force has made him sit here with bloody gauze and half-memories and a boy he apparently knows how to bandage without knowing why.

So Mark waits.

It’s hard. It might be one of the hardest things he has done all day, which is saying something considering the whole superpowered nightmare tour of the city he just survived. But he waits because Donghyuck deserves to choose where to start.

“You’re comfortable?” Donghyuck asks eventually.

Mark looks at him, then down at the pillows tucked around his side. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Doesn’t hurt as much like this.”

“Okay.”

Donghyuck’s fingers find Mark’s hand on the blanket, cautious at first, then he laces their fingers together. Mark looks down at their joined hands,  and squeezes back, carefully. 

The silence stretches again, but this time Mark feels brave enough to step into it.

“You know about me?” he asks, voice low.

Donghyuck’s shoulders slump a little, the last sharp line of tension from the day finally giving way. Instead of answering right away, he shifts carefully and lowers himself against Mark, resting his head on Mark’s chest with extreme caution, and goes quiet for a long moment, just breathing against him, and Mark waits because he is not going to ruin this by rushing.

“I didn’t, at first,” Donghyuck admits finally, the words muffled against Mark’s neck. His breath is warm there, and Mark has to close his eyes for half a second because even now, even with the room full of tension, his body still reacts to the closeness like a prayer being answered. “I mean, as Spider-Man, I was always suspicious because my gallery is full of pictures of Spider-Man. Like, actual pictures. Not just blurry news screenshots or random ones from online. Pictures I took. Pictures where I’m close enough that it made no fucking sense unless I knew him.”

Donghyuck’s fingers tighten around his. “At first I thought maybe I was just weird. Which, fine, I am, but not usually that kind of weird. I kept looking at them like there was something obvious I wasn’t seeing. Because what are the odds that I was just casually best friends with a superhero, right? Or obsessed with him enough to have a whole fucking gallery? That was the kicker, I think. It made me start paying attention to everything you did as him. Made me start looking at Spider-Man differently whenever he showed up around me.”

Mark swallows, his eyes fixed on the ceiling because looking at Donghyuck might actually kill him. “Donghyuck…”

“No, let me finish,” Donghyuck says, not sharply, but firmly enough that Mark shuts up immediately. His thumb moves once over Mark’s hand, almost apologetic. “I figured out you were watching me from rooftops before I knew anything else. I didn’t know your identity, just knew that Spider-Man kept being where I was in ways that couldn’t be coincidence forever. At first, I told myself maybe you were patrolling the area or whatever, because that made more sense than thinking a superhero had me on some kind of weird nightly schedule. But then it kept happening. And I started watching you too.”

Mark’s heart kicks stupidly in his chest. He has spent two years thinking of himself as a ghost in Donghyuck’s life, unseen and untouchable, close only because height and distance made it possible. He had thought the watching belonged to him alone, one more pathetic secret folded into the rest of his pathetic secrets. The idea that Donghyuck had looked back, even without knowing who he was looking at, makes Mark feel exposed in a way no torn suit ever could. 

“You noticed since the first night?” 

“First week, I think,” Donghyuck says. He lifts his head a little now, enough to give Mark a look that is tired and fond and incredibly unimpressed. “I started watching for patterns and you are absolutely fucking careless.”

Mark frowns. “Careless?”

“Careless,” Donghyuck repeats, like the word deserves emphasis. “You stayed watching me from the same rooftop for two years. Two years, Mark. How did you not get yourself killed yet?”

“In my defense,” Mark says, and he already knows there is no defense, but he decides to try anyway, “the rooftop was pretty dark and I was very careful every night. To not be watched.”

Donghyuck stares at him for a second. “Didn’t work very nicely, look at what I just told you.”

Mark scoffs, weak and breathy, because laughing properly still hurts his ribs. “I was not expecting you to have a clue from the start.”

“Clearly,” Donghyuck mutters, but the bite in it is softened by the way his hand tightens around Mark’s. He is angry, Mark can tell, but it is the kind of anger that has nowhere simple to go. 

For a moment, neither of them says anything. Donghyuck shifts a little, careful not to press against Mark’s side, and keeps going.

“But I still didn’t know who you were. Then we started the project, and I met you. I thought you were just this weird, exhausted guy. You were awkward and quiet, and also kind of terrible at pretending you weren’t uncomfortable around me, but that didn’t mean Spider-Man. It just meant you were weird.”

Mark lets out a weak little breath. “Thanks.”

“You were just a normal guy to me,” Donghyuck says, and this time there is something almost fond tucked under the words. “A very weird normal guy, but still.”

“Wow,” Mark murmurs. “You really know how to make a guy feel seen.”

“You were seen,” Donghyuck says, and the sentence lands heavier than the joke that carried it there. His thumb stills over Mark’s hand. “I just didn’t understand what I was seeing.”

Mark goes quiet.

“Things got weird when I saw your laptop wallpaper. That city picture. I have the same one on my phone.”

Mark never really thought about this. He didn’t think he was being watched that closely.

“I didn’t think much of it at first,” Donghyuck continues. “I mean, I was confused, obviously, because it looked exactly the same. Same angle, same sunset, same grainy quality. But people take similar pictures all the time, right? That’s what I told myself. Maybe it was from somewhere online, because I didn’t remember taking that picture. Or maybe I was overthinking it because you already made me feel weird and I didn’t know why.”

Donghyuck lifts their joined hands slightly, looking down at them like the sight gives him something solid to hold onto while he talks. Mark watches too. Donghyuck’s hand looks small wrapped around his.

“But then you kept saying things like you knew me. Nothing huge enough to accuse you of anything, but enough to make me notice. I tried to ignore it, because it sounded insane,” he exhales slowly, and Mark feels the breath move against his chest. “What was I supposed to think? That the weird project guy knew me when I didn’t even see him once in my life? It was easier to think I was just stressed.”

“But you kept being careless,” Donghyuck adds. “The first real evidence I had was the split on your lip. When you showed up at the restaurant, I saw it.”

Mark widens his eyes. “You said you weren’t going to look.”

“I lied,” Donghyuck says immediately, without shame. “I looked twice. Couldn’t help it. Sorry.”

Mark turns his head slightly to look at him, incredulous despite everything. “You did not.”

“Of course I looked. Anyone would do the same. You’re a superhero, Mark,” Donghyuck’s eyes narrow, but there is something fragile underneath the annoyance now. “And I thought it was too much of a coincidence that I met another guy with the same fresh split on his lip the same week. I didn’t want to be paranoid. I tried to talk myself out of it, but connecting the dots started getting fucking easy after that. You were way too reckless with me.”

Maybe Donghyuck has a point, grief made him sloppy. Maybe part of him wanted to be caught so badly that even his body stopped helping him hide.

“The day I texted you to meet here,” Donghyuck continues, “I was trying to test the waters. Just to prove that I was wrong, honestly. I thought if I watched you closely enough, if I put you in the apartment and paid attention, I’d realize I was making it all up. That there was no way, because there shouldn’t have been a way. But you gave me a whole fucking dossier that night. I was fucking speechless.”

“I was not expecting to be needed that night, I was going to show up all nice and dry.”

“As Spider-Man, I think you should be ready to be needed any night,” Donghyuck tilts his head.

Mark knows he’s right. “So, you confirmed it that night?”

“Yeah. A plumbing problem, really? Who even says that?”

“My building is very old, alright?”

“And still didn’t make sense that you showed up that way. If it was true, you could’ve changed clothes before dropping by, dummy,” Donghyuck says. His fingers tighten, just slightly, around Mark’s. “That was when I realized I wasn’t crazy. You’re just an idiot.”

“Hello?” Mark frowns, offended enough that it almost manages to look real. “I think my lie deserves a little sympathy.”

“It deserved an F,” Donghyuck says immediately. “Maybe a D if I’m being generous because you looked pathetic enough to distract me.”

“Wow.”

“And then,” Donghyuck continues after a second, “you were all overly protective with a project partner you’d only seen a couple of times. I could not pretend things didn’t make sense.”

“I didn’t mean to be weird,” Mark says, which is a lie and the truth at the same time. He meant to be careful and to keep distance. He meant to act like a normal project partner, a normal guy sitting in Donghyuck’s apartment with no history and no heartbreak under his skin. He just failed at all of it.

“I know you didn’t,” Donghyuck says. “That was the problem. It didn’t feel like you were trying to act strange. It felt like you were trying really, really hard to act normal, and whatever was underneath kept slipping through.”

Donghyuck doesn’t smile this time. His brows draw together slightly, and his voice goes lower. 

“The worst part was that it didn’t scare me,” his thumb keeps tracing the edge of Mark’s knuckle. “It should have. I mean, I had this guy in my apartment who might have been Spider-Man and who definitely knew things he shouldn’t know, and he kept looking at me like I was made of glass or like he’d die if something happened to me. That should’ve freaked me out more than it did. But it didn’t. It made me safe. Which is insane, right? Like, objectively, that’s insane.”

Even through the spell, through the missing memories, through every cruel, invisible wall that should have kept Donghyuck’s heart from recognizing him, some part of him had still trusted Mark. Not enough to know his name in the right way or remember the years they lost, but enough to feel safe. Mark feels his eyes sting so suddenly it almost embarrasses him, the burn rising fast and hot behind his lashes, because that might be the best and worst thing he has heard all night.

“Don’t cry,” Donghyuck says softly, though his own voice sounds dangerously close to breaking. 

“I’m not,” Mark lies, because maybe he will. Probably he will. At this point, crying around Donghyuck has become less of a threat and more of a scheduling issue.

Donghyuck huffs, but the sound comes out weak. 

“I barely knew you,” he says, quieter again, the confession returning to him in pieces. “I was just crushing heavy on you. I shouldn’t have felt safe. And that pissed me off because I couldn’t explain it.”

Mark’s brain catches on the wrong part so hard. There are, objectively, more important things happening. Donghyuck is slowly describing how his missing memories pressed against the edges of his present life, how trust survived without context, how the shape of their love might have left fingerprints even magic couldn’t erase. And still, Mark’s ego, battered and exhausted and apparently still alive under all the blood loss, trips directly over one word and refuses to move on.

“When did you start having a crush on me?” he asks.

Mark knows this is not the main point. He knows he should probably ask about the memories. But Donghyuck just said he had a crush on him, heavy, and Mark has spent two years believing he was unlovable by default in this new version of Donghyuck’s life. He deserves one stupid question, maybe. Just one.

“Really?” Donghyuck asks, voice flat, though there is a faint, incredulous laugh hiding somewhere underneath it. “That’s what you’re taking from all this?”

“Let me know, please,” Mark begs. “I’m curious.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes, but the gesture is softer than it should be. His face changes a little too, frustration loosening into reluctant embarrassment. He looks away for a second, toward the dark window and the closed blinds. 

“I always thought you were cute,” he says, and the words come out with an irritated kind of honesty, like he is annoyed at himself for giving Mark exactly what he asked for. “Since the first day. Very attractive, actually.”

Mark’s whole chest warms. “Very?”

“Don’t make me regret answering.”

“I am injured. Please, let me have this.”

Donghyuck gives him another look, but his mouth twitches. Then the humor fades into something more complicated. 

“I had a boyfriend, so I tried to shove it off. I was not trying to be that person, you know? The one who meets some awkward project partner and immediately starts thinking about his stupid face too much,” he exhales, slow and frustrated. “But the crush kept consuming me anyway. It was embarrassing.”

Mark’s smile fades a little at the mention of the boyfriend, not because he has any right to feel anything about it, but because the idea still sits strangely in him. But hearing Donghyuck say it now, in bed beside him, while their fingers are laced together, makes the jealousy feel small and ugly. Mark swallows it down before it can show too much.

“It wasn’t really good,” Donghyuck says, quieter. “My relationship. It was just convenient to me, if I’m being honest. Boring, but stable enough that I didn’t have to think too hard about being lonely. I think I got too accommodated with it. Like, I wasn’t happy, but I also wasn’t miserable enough to leave, and sometimes that’s more dangerous because you can keep pretending forever.”

Mark hates that Donghyuck had been lonely. Hates that while Mark was grieving a love Donghyuck forgot, Donghyuck had been standing in some dull, convenient version of affection, feeling the absence of something he couldn’t name.

“Then I started thinking about you too much,” Donghyuck continues, and his voice goes lower, more embarrassed but also more honest. “Not just during the project. Outside of it. I’d be at work and wonder if you’d eaten. I’d see something stupid and think it would make you laugh, which was ridiculous because you barely laughed around me at first. I kept wanting to text you even when we had nothing project-related to talk about. I kept wanting to see you beyond doing the project, and that was unsettling.”

Mark’s eyes sting again, worse this time.

“It felt like missing someone I didn’t know yet. That’s what I couldn’t stand. Having a crush would’ve been simple if it was just, oh, he’s cute, I want to kiss him. Annoying, but normal. But with you it kept feeling like there was something behind it, like I was late to something. And every time you looked at me, I almost remembered why my chest hurt.”

Mark’s hand tightens around his before he can stop it. Donghyuck looks down at their fingers, then back at Mark. “So yeah,” he says softly. “First day, technically. But I think maybe it started before that and I just didn’t have access to it anymore.”

Mark closes his eyes because that one lands too deep. It makes Mark want to laugh, cry and apologize all at once.

Donghyuck’s hand leaves his and comes up carefully to touch his cheek. “Hey,” he murmurs, his thumb brushes under his eye before the tears can fall properly. “You asked.”

“I know,” Mark whispers.

“So don’t look at me like I stabbed you.”

“You kind of did,” Mark lets out a broken little laugh.

Donghyuck’s face crumples slightly, just for a second, and Mark immediately regrets the joke even though it wasn’t really a joke. But then Donghyuck leans closer, careful around Mark’s side, and presses his forehead against Mark’s temple.

“I still don’t understand why,” Donghyuck says. “I have almost all the pieces, Mark. But I don’t have the most important one. What happened to us? Because there’s no way there wasn’t anything.”

That is what finally makes the tears spill. Quietly, stupidly, with no dramatic sob this time, just a hot streak sliding down toward Donghyuck’s thumb. Mark closes his eyes again, but Donghyuck is already there, wiping it away like he has done it a hundred times and is only now remembering the motion.

“It’s a long story,” Mark says, voice barely above a whisper.

“Okay.”

“And it’s going to sound so fucking weird.”

Donghyuck leans back down against Mark’s chest like the answer does not scare him at all, that whatever truth is coming can be met from the safety of Mark’s heartbeat, even if Mark currently feels like that heartbeat might collapse under the pressure. Donghyuck just lets out a breath against his skin, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. 

“Everything that has been happening to us is very fucking weird to me already, Mark. What’s one more weird thing to know about the weird fucking guy I’ve been falling for?”

Falling for. Present tense. Something that is happening now, not just something that happened before and got buried under magic and sacrifice. Mark has to breathe through slowly, because if he lets himself react fully to that, if he lets himself stop and think about Donghyuck falling for him again without even knowing he had done it once before, he might never make it to the part where he explains anything. He might just cry until the sun comes up and hope Donghyuck somehow understands through osmosis.

Mark tries to gather the story in his head and immediately fails, because there is no clean way to organize something like this. There is the before, and there is the after, and in between is a wound dressed up as a sacrifice. He takes a deep breath. It hurts his ribs, but the pain helps a little. 

Eventually, when he takes too long to answer, Donghyuck lifts his head.

His eyes are red, his face damp, his mouth set with a trembling determination that almost undoes Mark more than the tears did. He looks terrified, but not like he wants to run. Mark knows that face. He has loved that face in every version of light, in every hour of day, across arguments and deep, dark fear. Donghyuck has always been braver than people realize, mostly because his bravery doesn’t usually arrive as something loud. It comes with shaking hands and a stubborn mouth and the refusal to look away when it would be easier.

“Tell me everything,” he says.

Mark’s heart stutters. “Everything?”

“Everything you can,” Donghyuck says. “I don’t care if it takes all night. I don’t care if it sounds impossible. I want to know what happened to us.”

Mark looks at him, at the boy he lost, the boy who found his way back without even knowing the path, and feels something like hope rise through the wreckage. 

And Mark realizes, with almost no thought at all, that maybe this was always going to happen. Not exactly like this, maybe. Not in this room, with blood still drying somewhere in the bathroom trash and gauze wrapped tight around his ribs, but in some way, somehow, in some universe or another, Donghyuck would have found him. Mark knows it with a certainty that settles deeper than reason. 

Maybe the spell could erase recognition, maybe it could cut Mark out of photographs and conversations and ordinary records of belonging, but it could not teach Donghyuck’s heart to stop knowing the direction of home.

Human history could erase itself, magic could rewrite every name, time could fold and fracture and scatter them across impossible variations of life, and still, somehow, Donghyuck would look at him and feel safe before he knew why.

No matter what universe they could exist in, no matter what version of Earth, no matter whether it was a million years further ahead or decades before this one, or whether the world was made of steel towers and sirens or dust roads and candlelight, something in them would still turn toward each other. 

They would still be each other’s square zero. The start point. The place the map returns to when everything else stops making sense. 

Mark gives him a tiny, wrecked smile. “I’ll explain. Just… know that that’s where it starts for me, okay? It starts with you.”

“With me,” Donghyuck repeats, like he is testing the words.

“Yeah,” Mark whispers. “Always with you.”