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This comeback schedule is not much different from the five million that preceded it, but Yuta tries to have fun anyway. It's his turn to stand up and deliver an introduction of Mark's charming points, and he's going to make it painfully obvious how bad everyone is at this but him. It's easy, for one, to compliment Mark and watch him squirm, but it's also easy because Yuta witnessed Jaehyun's best attempt at a compliment for Johnny begin and end with "he's a nice hyung." It's as if they're baiting him.
"Mark, get up so they can see you, there we go," Yuta says, sliding him a glance until Mark stands. Dressed in an oversized sweater because the stylists always want to make him as non-threatening as possible, Mark looks small and wary, his eyes darting around the studio like someone can save him from this. "He raps, he writes, he dances, he can sing, he's a good MC. My baby is multi-talented." That gets a few laughs, mostly from Taeyong and Johnny, and even if Yuta can't see him, he knows Donghyuck is in the back row falling over with excitement that Mark is being embarrassed on TV again.
"Okay," Mark says, half-hunching like he'll sit back down, but Yuta is nowhere near done.
"He's our visual, too, look at those eyes. You can get lost in Mark-yah's eyes," Yuta says, straight to camera. He adjusts the mic in his hand while he gathers his thoughts and debates what else will send viewers into a feeding frenzy. His hesitation allows them to get some excruciatingly close footage of Mark's eyes too. "Mark, show them your cheekbones."
Giggling nervously, encouraged and/or threatened by all of 127 and the program hosts staring at him expectantly, Mark jerks his head to the left, showing his profile, the sharp angles of his face.
"Better than a model," Yuta says, raising the mic so he can be heard clearly over the laughter. "Ah, Mark is as beautiful outside as he is inside. So you can see why he's the pride of NCT 127."
"Yuta is in love," one of the insufferable hosts coos, and Yuta almost bites his lip with how easy it is.
"Yes," he says, and sits down and tries to pass the mic to Taeyong, who is wheezing on Johnny's shoulder like this is the first time Yuta's ever been ridiculous in public. He ends up just giving the mic to Donghyuck.
"Oh my gosh," Mark says as he sits. Yuta sees Doyoung pat him. He shakes his head, his mouth open in something more like a grimace than a smile. "Yuta is too good at this. He's the best at jokes."
Donghyuck is already launching into his affectionate roast of Doyoung, and the moment is over. Yuta sends Mark a glance across the people between them and notices Mark won't look in his direction.
Yuta puts a pin in that for later, when he's not being recorded.
---
Mark's bad mood is visible from space and lasts until after dinner. Yuta lets him have it, because he's not about to apologize and set a dangerous precedent. Mark fell asleep on his shoulder the night before, and now he's acting like Yuta's a stranger, and just because Mark gets embarrassed over compliments.
Still, Yuta's not heartless, and he's impatient. Mark will likely get over this on his own after a night of sleep, but that's too long for Yuta, who is in the middle of showing him Anohana and doesn't want to derail their marathon. He knocks on Mark's door and opens it without waiting for a response, and he's carrying a tub of watermelon he cajoled the dorm auntie into cutting up for him.
"Do you want to watch another episode?" he asks. Mark is on his bed, guitar next to him, phone in his hands as he scrolls through it, pretending whatever's on there is far more engrossing than Yuta. "Mark? Are you really still mad at me, huh?" He sits next to him and puts the Tupperware full of watermelon on Mark's stomach. "Look what hyung made you."
Mark snorts at the blatant lie and pops the top off, fishing out a cube with his bare hands. "I'm not mad at you," he says petulantly, and then munches. The little flashes of his teeth as he eats should be disgusting, but Yuta is only endeared.
Yuta waits. He'll get it out of him; Mark caves at the slightest pressure, and Yuta's aware that positive reinforcement works even better on him than that, which is why he brought the watermelon. "If you say so," he says, once Mark's eaten a few more bites.
"Okay, I can't stay mad at you," Mark corrects. "Ah, hyung, I just wish…" He sits up straighter and rubs over his face, despite the fact that he's probably sticky with juice. "I know it's all part of the game, but I wish you wouldn't make fun of the way I look."
The smile is wiped off Yuta's face. "What?"
It's possible this isn't Mark being shy; it's something else. Yuta keeps himself steady and waits for more information.
Mark sighs, and the next bite he chews seems melancholy. "I know we have to do it, but like. It sucks to get teased for the way you look. Even if I know it's a joke."
The breath Yuta takes feels like a massive balloon, stretching him out with tension from the inside. This definitely is something else. It makes Yuta mad, and bewildered, which are historically two of the emotions he's the worst at navigating, but also, Mark looks older than his age, tired, run down from thinking Yuta has been making fun of him. Which, yes, he has, but not because of Mark's adorable face. It's because of the expressions he wears when Yuta does it.
"Mark," he says, firm, staring at him head-on so Mark sees his face, his eyes, and gets how serious this is. "I'm not making fun of you. I'm complimenting you."
"No, I get it, it's not like you're saying Mark's weird-looking, everybody, haha, but pointing out the way my cheekbones stick out is—"
"I'm not making fun of them, I'm saying—"
"—a little much. We all know I'm not a visual—"
"—they're hot."
Mark's mouth forms an O of surprise, and Yuta's is in a line because he's going to start getting actually mad soon if Mark keeps making these assumptions. If the lump of weight in his stomach from knowing how poorly Mark thinks of himself gets any bigger, he doesn't know what he'll do.
"What?"
Yuta shifts on the bed until he's fighting with Mark's drawn-up knees. He ultimately wraps his arm around them to give himself something to lean on. "Do you think I make fun of people's faces? What the fuck, Mark."
"Maybe? I don't know? Everyone makes fun of something at some point."
Okay. That's news. Mark thinks it's on the table that Yuta could make fun of his face and mean it.
He's sure he's said awful things to Mark over the years, sometimes very intentionally and sometimes unfortunately not. They all have. Yuta's not the most tactful member, and sometimes he's spiteful to a point that still surprises him, but he's struggled enough with the scrutiny of his own face to know it's a deep, painful bruise to poke. If he deliberately goes after a weak spot, it's not going to be that. Thinking back, he remembers calling Taeyong ugly as a joke a few times, but in the same way he'd call Doyoung a bad singer. Just things made up to be annoying. "You better get it in your head that I don't joke about that. I've never said anything about you that I don't mean."
Mark rolls his eyes. "Oh yes, I definitely have cheekbones better than a model."
"You do," Yuta insists. "You're really cute."
Yuta can feel himself simmering in frustration. He knows if it keeps up, pretty soon he's going to lose the ability to think about what he says before he says it. Yuta's lizard brain has decided that Mark is being ridiculous, and worse, it doesn't know what to do to make him stop, so it's going to start throwing things soon, and that will blow back on Mark.
"Do you think it's all a joke?" he asks. "Do you think you've been one big joke for me?"
That this is partially his fault, is the worst part. Yuta makes enough cracks about the company's talking points or acting like a robot that Mark might think he means it. He doesn't, not really; he's used to the idol persona enough to not have to think about it now, and he has fun testing the limits of that cage and seeing how much of his actual self can be seen. He's a shill, obviously, but a shill with a personality.
If he ever gets really good at English, he's coming for the MC crown. He'll be unstoppable.
But Mark's sitting in quiet thought, looking uncomfortable, finishing off another piece of watermelon. Yuta reaches over and snags one, and juice drips onto Mark's sweatpants. "Well, I know you care about me," he says, and Yuta doesn't even feel relief because he looks so uncertain. "But I know when the company tells us to do skinship and stuff, we have to do what they say—"
"The company has told me to stop, actually. I got a memo about it during Hero promotions." Technically, it was a text message from staff, but a memo sounds more official.
Mark's mouth drops open. He closes it quickly, staring at Yuta, who is fumbling the too-big watermelon chunk into his mouth. Mark's eyebrows draw together over solemn eyes.
"I do it because I want to," Yuta says, all garbled with the piece of fruit tucked into his cheek.
Mark lets that hover over both of them, and Yuta chews and swallows the grainy, sweet fruit. It's good, fresh and flavorful, but he doesn't get Mark's ability to eat the same thing all the time. He'll eat it every day if he can get his hands on it, the same way he ate the same chicken soup for lunch as a trainee.
"Why, though?" Mark asks.
He weighs how much he's already said versus what else is left in the bank of things he keeps to himself, and then how much it matters to him that Mark doesn't think Yuta is some sort of school bully who makes fun of his cheekbones. "Because you're a very cute boy, Mark-yah, and I like cute boys. Okay?"
On the list of things Yuta thought he might do today—the schedule, having a big lunch, maybe using weights, jerking off before bed—telling Mark he fucks men with minimal plausible deniability was not one of them. He gets light-headed with surprise at himself, with relief that he's done it. Mark joins the tiny club of people who know because Yuta told them: Ten, Hansol, Taeyong, and now Mark. A few of the members could probably guess, but Yuta doesn't go out of his way to make it easy for them. He's got enough to worry about without having to manage the expectations of dozens of people he works with.
"O-oh, okay. That's cool!"
Yuta laughs, loud and hard, squeezing Mark's leg. Mark looks bamboozled, but he's trying his best to pretend otherwise. The feigned nonchalance on his face, the thin, cracking way he'd tried to reassure Yuta—it's too much. "Are you done sulking over me calling you cute? Can we watch anime now?"
"Yeah, I—" He fumbles to close the container, and Yuta draws back so Mark's got full use of his legs again. He hunts around for the phone he had in his hand a second ago, and Yuta can see a blush creeping up his cheeks, staining his ears. "Hold on."
"I'll go make sure no one took over the TV," Yuta says, and gets up. He ruffles Mark's hair for good measure, pinches his red cheek. "You worry too much. Relax, yeah?"
Yuta isn't immune to the new tension between them, even if he thinks it's funny, but Mark seems grateful he isn't pinning him down and making them talk about it. Taeyong would, or Doyoung would get all serious about it, but Yuta can be counted on to avoid seriousness whenever possible. It's fine; they're fine, and the rest will work itself out like it usually does.
"Oh, you want me to relax but you picked a crying anime to watch? That totally makes sense."
Yuta exits Mark's room with a smile, ready to kick anyone out of the living area who dares interfere with Yuta's attempt to get Mark to like things that aren't DBZ. They could always watch in Mark's room, but Yuta avoids that, preferring to sprawl out on the couch. Anyway, right now, squeezing together on Mark's bed would be unbearable.
"Please," Yuta tosses over his shoulder, "you haven't even cried yet."
---
True to form, the next day, it's like nothing even happened. Mark joins him for a late breakfast, hoodie up over his sleepy head, stealing pieces of tofu off Yuta's plate because that's closer than the bowl the dorm auntie set out. He plays music off his phone, answers questions with monosyllables, but that's normal too, and wakes up slowly, drinking his juice sip by sip.
"What are we watching next?" he asks, when Yuta mentions they're closing in on the end of Anohana. "Not another crying show, I hope."
"No," Yuta lies. It's Hunter x Hunter. Mark's not getting respite with some inspirational sports anime for a while. "I want to go to the bookstore later, you want to come?"
Mark nods, finishing off his juice and scooping up his dirty dishes to deposit them at the sink, where auntie is already busy prepping food for lunch. "Yeah, I could shop. Lunch out?"
"My favorite place is in Itaewon, so yes." Yuta gulps down the rest of his yogurt drink and collects his stuff too, getting a swat from the auntie for trying to help her, and backs away with his hands up. He turns to Mark before they split to get ready in their separate rooms. "Jaehyun probably wants more books on channeling his inner tree, since he keeps finishing them." He's only half joking; Jaehyun's obsession with learning about method acting has snowballed into some really obscure texts. "Should we ask him?"
Mark wrinkles his nose. "Nah, I think Johnny might need him for JCC. Let's have it be us two."
Maybe not quite like nothing happened, then, going by the nervous glance Mark gives him, like he'd suggested something odd. Like Mark and Yuta hanging out alone is odd, and also important. He should have known his good luck would run out and Mark would want, or need, to talk about it.
Yuta agrees to go it alone. "No staff?" he asks, to be sure, and Mark nods emphatically.
Well, Yuta thinks, here's hoping Mark doesn't want to have a heart-to-heart in front of the manga section.
---
After loading up with a huge bag of books and manga, Yuta scopes out a nearby Mexican place he's been wanting to try, though he'd planned to go with Johnny. When they arrive, Yuta asks about a thousand questions about the menu, which Mark tries to answer. He gives up when Yuta demands to know the difference between a burrito and a chimichanga, which he's pretty sure the Itaewon-trendy place filled with health-conscious chaebol heirs doesn't even offer.
"Dude," Mark says in English, then, "my Spanish is terrible, I don't know what half these things mean. I ate Mexican food as a kid, so all I got was like, quesadillas and tacos. It was a big deal when we moved somewhere with a Taco Bell."
Yuta follows that, more or less, but gives Mark a long, blank look anyway.
Mark shrugs. "Just ask what's good and get that."
"You're no fun," Yuta says, but he surrenders his menu to the waiter and lets Mark ask for recommendations.
They end up with essentially a tasting menu of different dishes to share, and it looks a lot different than the Mexican food Johnny's made at the dorm or the stuff Yuta tried in America, the contents of the plate more colorful and with sedate portion sizes, but it's good.
After they start climbing their mountain of food, Mark gets the waiter to bring him a cocktail and a second order of guacamole. He's smearing it onto every single bite he takes, and it ends up on his chin. Yuta's usually the one who turns into a vacuum when he finds something he really likes. Mark is generally a polite eater but occasionally will plow through an entire dish, glance up (usually with sauce on his chin), and get sad-eyed over realizing he'd deprived everyone else of trying it.
Yuta grabs his napkin without thinking. "You big baby," he says, maneuvering so he doesn't knock into Mark's fork as he shovels more food to his mouth. He dabs the green away. "No one's going to take it from you. Slow down."
Mark's forkful of meat and rice stalls in the air, and he swallows hard enough that Yuta sees his Adam's apple bob. "Sorry," he says. He picks up his own napkin and wipes it across his face, as if Yuta would miss a spot. Yuta quickly goes for a bite of the meat dish to Mark's right, in case he decides that's his next target.
He knows this is when Mark will want to talk about it, since he's had time to process. It's understandable that Mark has questions. He's clearly not too torn up, if he's managed normalcy through half the day and grabbed Yuta's wrist to drag him to look at a display of tie-in novels. Mark's too kind; if he thought Yuta was some kind of degenerate, he would be so sad about it that Yuta would notice from a football field away.
Mark looks up from his drink and gives Yuta serious, shining eyes. So this is going to happen not in front of the manga but at a restaurant. Fine.
"Hyung," Mark says slowly, running his finger around the salted rim of his cocktail. "When you say I'm cute, do you mean, Ay, that's my dongsaeng, he sure is cute, or do you mean… Mark is hot?" He stumbles and switches to English. "Like, I'd—I'd tap that. Uh, I mean—"
"The second one." He chews a crisp, salty chip dipped in scorching-hot salsa, and the burn is a nice distraction. "I thought I was obvious when I said I liked boys, though. Was I unclear?"
"No, you were… clear," Mark admits. He slaps his hat on top of his head like there's someone with a phone nearby and not like they got the most private seats in the place. "But there's a difference between cute and hot, so—"
"Are you that worked up about this?" Yuta asks incredulously, snagging another forkful of meat while Mark's distracted. "Jungwoo compliments you all the time, all your hyungs do—"
"None of my hyungs try to kiss me, though. Just you." Mark pauses, dips his head, and sheepishly acknowledges, "Well, Jungwoo. But no one else."
Yuta smiles and covers it with his hand, since he's still working on a chip. "Cowards."
Mark laughs wearily, then takes a sip of his cocktail, puckering at the taste. "I can tell when he's kidding, I guess. You know what I mean."
"I never kid," Yuta jokes. He taps his water glass against Mark's cocktail, savoring the clink, hoping his unease doesn't show. "At least not about wanting to kiss you."
He's said the truth, even if he smiled through it. Mark needs to know that Yuta's teasing isn't malicious. That Yuta thinks Mark is hot. If nothing else, he hopes it will help his confidence.
He half expects Mark to choke on his next sip, or for his eyes to widen, or for him to laugh with a sharp edge of embarrassment to it, but he does none of that. His gaze flickers around a bit, landing on the food, on Yuta's hand curved around his glass, but then goes back to Yuta's face, shy. "Thanks," he says, low. "Um, do you mind if I ask… about you? Your, um"—he hunches closer to the table, tossing a paranoid glance over his shoulder, as if the restaurant staff is waiting with secret recording devices—"sexuality?"
He does mind; it opens a pit inside his stomach to talk about this, and none of the words he knows in Korean or Japanese quite fit. The list of times he's tried to communicate this part of himself is small on purpose. But Mark deserves his honesty, especially if he may be trying to make sense of his own life. "You can ask."
"Does anyone else know?"
"A few people," Yuta hedges, not wanting to violate anyone's privacy. "Ten knows," he admits, since Mark's known about Ten since the first year they met as trainees.
"That's… good," Mark says awkwardly, and clears his throat. "Um, how does it work? Are you, you know, gay? Or bi? Or something else?"
"How it works is I'm a pervert," Yuta says. "I like everything."
Mark cracks a grin, then rolls his eyes. "Okay, I get it, I'll stop poking my nose in your business." Yuta isn't doing as good of a job of playing it cool as he assumed, then. Too bad. Before he can think of how to respond, Mark fixes him with a typical Mark Lee expression of earnestness. "Thank you for telling me. It means a lot."
"Anything for you, Mark-yah," he says, and drops the tension in his shoulders now that Mark seems to be ready to move onto another topic.
They're fine. Mark isn't confused or fucked up about Yuta's teasing. During the rest of the lunch, he giggles the same amount at Yuta's stupid jokes, eats a bite off Yuta's fork. He lets Yuta sling an arm around his neck when they're walking out to the company car. It's the same as it always is.
---
Everything's the same until their next big filming day, a week later, and even then, Yuta doubts his own perception.
It's not like Mark doesn't play along with him; Mark yelping and trying to get away from his hugs is playing along, part of the bit, but that's usually the extent of it. He'll call Yuta oppa with his teeth gritted, cringing for the cameras, and then say it again to Yuta earnestly later that day. Oppa, listen to this, I just wrote it. Oppa, you coming to dinner? Ya, Oppa, you're so weird.
But this is… new. Yuta's been tame in public and private, aware of the changed understanding between them. He steps back like the company wanted him to months ago. Mostly. He keeps his hands to himself, at least. Yet when Mark wins the round of the game they're all forced to play, he can't help the fond "That's my baby" that slips out of him, or the gentle pat to Mark's chin.
"Oppa," Mark croons, and pushes his face into Yuta's hand for the briefest of moments.
Yuta feels lightning crackle up his spine. He drops his arm, fingers trembling.
Things move on quickly from there, a mad rush of them scrambling to complete the next inane variety-show task, but Yuta's head isn't in the game. He's still stuck on Mark, the way he looked, eyes glimmery, smiling up at Yuta like it was only the two of them and not several cameras, studio staff, the hosts, and their members.
He doesn't know what it means. It shouldn't mean anything. The dissonance gets under his skin, as well as the fact that he's still thinking about the stupid shit they did on the show, through changing in the green room. Yuta prefers to dump the memories of variety shows as they happen, but he keeps reliving this one. Thinking about what it means that Mark did it with the full knowledge of Yuta's proclivities. Thinking about how pathetic he is for thinking this much.
The shuttle ride home is a test of his patience. He sits next to a window, staring out, while Jaehyun tries to talk to Johnny about fantasy football. Yuta can feel Mark sneaking glances at him. Stubborn, Yuta doesn't give him the satisfaction of looking back. It works to rattle Mark; when Taeyong tries to talk to him, Mark can't get out a coherent sentence.
When they're almost home and Mark's distracted, Yuta turns from the window and stares at him until Mark notices. When Mark looks over, Yuta smiles, slow and deliberate, refusing to break eye contact.
Mark stammers some more, cheeks pinking, and jerks his head to ask Taeyong, "Um, what was I—? Um."
Interesting.
---
They keep up a pretense that everything is normal at the dorms. Luckily, the rest of the floor lets them.
Probably, to them, everything is normal and not a fever dream of confusion. Mark's always been one person in public and another in private, and the members have no idea about how complicated things have gotten.
Or maybe Yuta's the one complicating things.
Before Yuta sits down to eat, he tucks a napkin into Mark's collar, and Mark twists to look up at him with a smiling, bashful, "Thanks, Oppa." Jaehyun muffles his laugh with a huge bite of noodles, but no one says anything.
When they watch a movie on the couch, Yuta makes a big production of wanting to sit next to Mark, elbowing Jungwoo out of the way, who curls up next to the couch arm and takes an entire bowl of popcorn as recompense. As the movie progresses, an action-horror thing with the thinnest writing Yuta's seen in a minute, Mark leans into him. During a scary part, Yuta covers Mark's eyes with his hand and yells, "My baby can't see this," and Mark giggles and waits the scene out until Yuta drops his hand. By the time it's over, he's got a crick in his neck from resting his head on Yuta's shoulder.
Yuta reaches across Mark to grab a piece of kimbap, and he puts his other hand on Mark's knee in the process. Mark leaves it there for the rest of the meal.
Yuta offers Mark a taste of his drink, holding the straw steady for him. When he hears Jaehyun snort, he cuts him a deadly look. Do not fuck this up for me, it says, and Jaehyun straightens and looks away as Mark sips and says, "It's good, hyung."
No one sits between Yuta and Mark, not even Taeyong, although sometimes Johnny tries. Yuta gives him a smile like the edge of a knife, and Johnny, now on Mark's other side, raises his eyebrows and puts his arm around Mark's waist, hand at his hip. He's lucky there's staff around, makeup artists they haven't worked with much, and probably cameras Yuta doesn't see. Otherwise, Yuta would see his bet and raise it. Mark, though, doesn't deserve to be in the middle of a tug-of-war, especially since Johnny clearly thinks it's a big joke.
It should be a joke. Sometimes Yuta thinks Mark's playing along to reassure him it doesn't matter what Yuta said over lunch weeks ago. But then he wonders if Mark has other reasons. The quick vacillation between telling himself it means nothing and telling himself it means everything has him gritting his teeth, clenching his fists.
Yuta's not going to do anything. He's not going to make a move to amp this up if he can help it.
Mark's too important to play games with. He matters more than some choreographer's assistant Yuta hasn't thought about in years.
---
There's a knock at Yuta's door, and Mark pokes his head in, glasses on and hair askew. "Hyung, can I borrow that shirt I like?"
"Which one?" It's a pointless question. He already knows he's going to agree even if it's the most expensive piece in his wardrobe, or if he stole it from the stylists and is expected to bring it back pristine. Yuta's lounging on his bed scrolling through a group chat of non-members he's neglected, his laptop open to a show he's barely paying attention to. He needs a shower, and lunch, and a hair tie for his too-long hair, but he's too comfortable to move.
"The one with the white splotch things?"
Yuta thinks he knows which one Mark means. He only owns so many nice shirts. "Yeah," he says. "Don't you dare spill anything on my clothes again."
"Ah, I won't. Thanks!"
He comes the rest of the way into Yuta's room and starts digging through his closet. Yuta keeps an eye on him, and he's gratified to see Mark pull out one of his favorites too. "We're going into Hongdae if you want to come," Mark says.
Yuta makes a face. He'd have to shower, and he wants to spend his day off as horizontal as possible, for once. His legs are still aching from too much rehearsal and not enough stretching. "No, you'll have to find some way to have fun without me."
Mark chuckles, and Yuta puts his attention back on his phone, typing a quick reply.
That turns out to be a mistake. When he glances up again, Mark is turned to face him, one hand gripping the neck of his shirt and lifting it up. Yuta can see his hip bones, his underwear band above his loose-fitting jeans, and the dip of his navel. His ribs shift as he raises his arms.
Mark's changing. In front of Yuta.
They've suffered through a thousand quick changes in cramped backstages or dressing rooms. Yuta's seen Mark nearly naked or naked enough times to count the moles and freckles on his body. He keeps his eyes to himself as much as he can, he's not a total pervert, but idol life means he's surrounded by people's bare asses more than the most sordid of imaginings can guess, but in the least sexy ways possible.
This... feels like a taunt. Yuta thinks he's going insane.
It's over in a few short moments, though Mark goes to the effort of shaking out the borrowed shirt before he pulls it on over his head. It's too loose on Mark, slipping at the shoulder, gaping enough so Yuta can see a mole dotting Mark's skin.
Mark's not looking directly at Yuta despite being so close Yuta could reach out and touch him. "Thanks again, Oppa, you're the best," he says in a cheery voice, and waltzes out of Yuta's room like this was a totally normal exchange. Just another day, where Mark Lee comes into Yuta's room to strip in front of him. And wear his clothes.
Yuta pauses the show he's no longer got any attention span for and studies his ceiling. His heart feels oddly sore, like Mark squeezed it in his fist on his way out.
He's even less certain of what's going on than he was before.
---
Between all the rush and exhaustion of the comeback, Mark and Yuta manage to find time to finish Anohana in the living room. It's late, too late given the early start they have tomorrow; everyone but Jungwoo—puttering around making himself a snack—is in bed. The TV volume is kept low, though Yuta's the only one who can understand anyway.
Anohana is short, which is half the reason Yuta picked it. Every episode twinges in one way or another, but he knows the extent of the bittersweet that's coming. In the penultimate episode, Mark goes quiet and still and stops asking questions about the accuracy of the English subtitles, falling into the story. Yuta goes quiet too; despite having seen it before, he finds himself subdued, braced, filled with sharp emotion that he's learned to chase in fiction to get through the monotony and chaos of idol life.
It happens when they're finishing the last episode. When everyone starts crying on the screen, he hears a distinctly labored inhale from Mark. They're sitting separately, though Mark's socked feet are tucked up against Yuta's thighs to keep warm, and when Yuta glances over, Mark's shrunk into his hoodie like a turtle.
"You all right?" Yuta asks gently, a little tease with a scratchy voice, a pat to Mark's bony ankle. "You made it this far; I thought you were immune."
Mark only shakes his head, and Yuta's concern perks up. Mark may actually be crying. Mark hates crying, especially in front of other people. It's like he picked an arbitrary date—his seventeenth birthday, maybe—and decided that it was unacceptable to show weakness from then on. Yuta also hates crying in front of people, but when it hits him, it's an ugly, unstoppable force; Johnny's picked him up off the bathroom floor before, and Jaehyun's rubbed his back when he got too drunk and homesick a few times.
"Fuck, dude," Mark says, and smears his tears on his hand, then his hoodie. "Oh my God."
"It's okay," Yuta tries, clumsy at this in the best of times but especially now, since for all his jokes about crying anime he never thought Mark would crack.
In the dim light, Yuta sees Mark's eyes swimming with tears, his face a rictus of emotion, before he launches himself at Yuta. He comes in at an awkward angle on his knees, half on Yuta's lap. His breath is scorching against Yuta's neck and shoulder through his shirt, and he's not paying attention to the episode still playing. Or more like he's deliberately hiding from it.
"Mark-yah." Yuta pats him awkwardly until his surprise fades, and then he smooths his hand up and down the soft material of Mark's hoodie. He hopes Jungwoo has already left the kitchen and just forgot to turn the light off again, so Mark's breakdown is as private as possible.
"They found her," Mark says in the smallest voice, and sniffs wet and gross before crying harder, making sounds Yuta hasn't heard from him in years.
"Yeah, they did, jagi."
Mark, predictably, doesn't take long to get himself under control, though Yuta can feel him tensing to suppress any further sounds. Yuta doesn't remind him to breathe or murmur more nonsense at him; Taeyong's good at that, or Johnny, but Yuta thinks the quieter he can keep this, the less Mark will burn with shame later.
Eventually, Mark sighs and slumps off to the side. He scrubs at his face under his glasses, uses his hoodie to wipe up the rest. He tugs his hood back from his face, fiddling with the strings, and his hair sticks up everywhere. He doesn't look at Yuta, or the TV; he stares at the coffee table in front of them, covered in half-eaten snacks.
Yuta doesn't say anything. He lets the credits wash over them. He lets Mark reach over and grab his hand, even though he can feel it damp with sweat, tears, and snot. He lets himself be a shoulder for Mark to lean against, this time slowly, cautiously, until Mark rubs his cheek against Yuta in search of a comfortable, non-bony area to rest on.
"No more fucking crying shows, hyung," Mark says, low and sleepy, and Yuta squeezes his hand and smiles.
"Promise," he says, and knocks Hunter x Hunter slightly further down the list.
---
"Have you heard from Winwin recently?" Mark asks, and Yuta knows something is up before Mark's through the sentence. He's trying way too hard to be cool about asking, looking at his phone instead of at Yuta, like he usually does when he's chattering.
Mark pushes his spoon around his cereal bowl, though he makes no move to keep eating. He always takes forever to finish and lets it get soggy.
"He messaged me the other week." Unlike Mark, Yuta is good at bullshitting. He gives no sign that he's irritated by whatever Mark is fishing for. He wishes Mark would come out and ask. Would say what he wants.
"You must miss him a lot." Mark's still faking casual, and Yuta wants to slam his hands down and call his bluff.
"Not so much," Yuta says, and Mark's head comes up. "We catch up. He's not far." Yuta pulls his legs up onto the couch and crosses them. "Same as you and Ten, I think."
Mark scoffs and goes back to his phone. "Not so much," he echoes in a mutter.
Yuta can't sit still any longer. He picks up the trash from his breakfast and brings it into the kitchen to throw away, leaving Mark in the living area. Mark follows him, but he hangs back and leans against the wall, slurping up mouthfuls of his cereal, watching Yuta half-assedly clean up.
"I was thinking of how long it's been since we all hung out."
Yuta wipes his hands on a towel and grits his teeth. Mark rarely gets like this, and when he does, it normally doesn't bother him so much; Mark trying to be underhand or passive-aggressive is almost endearing for its transparency. He should take lessons from Taeyong and Jungwoo if he wants to get any good at it. But right now, when Yuta doesn't know what Mark thinks or wants and he's carrying around the most secret thing about Yuta and poking at it, he has no patience, nor does he appreciate this song and dance where anyone could walk in.
Mark continues with, "I guess I thought that would bother you, since I thought you and Winwin were… close."
Yuta can read between the lines, and part of him wants to feel sorry for Mark, for his insecurity, for his out-of-character itch to push Yuta's buttons. The thing is, Mark could just ask. If he could ask about Yuta's preferences in the middle of lunch, he could ask about Sicheng. There's no need for all of this. "You're being a little shit right now, Mark-yah," Yuta says. "I'm not in the mood."
Yuta hears Mark's spoon clank as it falls into his bowl. "Whoa, what?"
"If you're so concerned about Sicheng, message him, hmm?"
It's not far to his room. Yuta closes the door as softly as possible and turns to see his roommate is still sound asleep on his own bed. Yuta, though he's raring to go run around outside or maybe slam his head against something repeatedly, is quiet and careful not to wake him. He picks out some clothes and gets his shower things ready, hoping Mark will take the fucking hint and won't be lurking in the common areas when Yuta emerges. Still, better safe than sorry; he kills a few minutes on his phone, leg shaking with irritation and unspent energy.
Mark messages him, because of course he does.
Mark-kun: Hyung I'm sorry I made you mad
Mark-kun: I wasn't trying to I promise
Yuta: Fine
Mark-kun: Really 😫
Mark-kun: I was curious
Yuta: Then say so
Mark-kun: OK
There's a lull, and Yuta thinks this might be the extent of it. Mark crumbling at the first sign of tension did make him feel better, in a petty sort of way, but now he's irritated all over again because he probably overreacted.
Mark-kun: Can you blame me though? You used to treat Winwin like you do me
Mark-kun: Now you see him like once a month and it's like it never happened
Mark-kun: It's not my business I know but I'm confused if it was real
Yuta rubs his forehead, thinking, a bitter taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with the food he ate earlier. This is what he suspected, and what he was afraid of when he realized Mark's nudges were leading to something. Yet again, this is his fault, but it's also his business; he wants to clamp shut over it like a steel trap and keep it private. Yuta's so fed up with himself and the decisions he makes he wants to send Mark a giant shrugging sticker and call it a day.
But Mark is important, and Mark is rightfully confused. Yuta types with fumbling fingers.
Yuta: It wasn't all fake
Yuta: It's easier to get over a crush when the person moves out
Mark-kun: Oh OK
Mark-kun: I'm sorry he left hyung
Yuta has no idea what to do with that.
Mark-kun: I'm kind of a shitty replacement haha
Yuta: You're not a replacement 😑
Mark-kun: No? Because one minute I was your annoying dongsaeng and the next you were calling me cute all the time
Mark-kun: I don't mind, I get it I think
Yuta swears and makes sure he didn't wake his sleeping roommate. He types a few replies and deletes each one halfway through. There's almost no remedy for having this awful exchange over text; the rest of the floor is up and about by now, and dragging Mark into the bathroom would be pretty weird. So he has to suffer through writing down something approximating his feelings. It will probably make things worse.
Yuta: I hate texting
Yuta: You're still my annoying dongsaeng, you just became more
Yuta: I'm not talking about this over kkt
Mark-kun: We don't have to talk about it at all don't worry
Mark-kun: Forget I said anything
Yuta: As though that's possible hhh
---
During their next schedule, Mark wanders over to Yuta and puts an arm around his waist, squeezing when Yuta cuts him a glance from the corner of his eye.
Yuta slings an arm around Mark's shoulders, despite all the reasons he told himself to back off in public. He knows it's a bad idea, but his body reacts to Mark on instinct, and plus it'll look strange on camera if he stands there like a scarecrow.
"Cute," the director laughs, and Yuta smiles wide and ignores the pounding of his heart, the way he can feel himself flushing under thick makeup.
---
"Yu~ta," Mark calls from the makeup chair, eyes closed as shadow is dusted across his lids. "Where's my drink?"
"It's here, you ungrateful brat." He plunks the coffee in front of Mark on the station, out of the way of the makeup artist's kit.
Mark hums and opens his eyes when he's given a touch to his shoulder, blinking at Yuta in the mirror. He reaches to the side and grabs Yuta's wrist. "Who said I'm not grateful?"
They've got the cameras off since Johnny split his pants and is being fussed over by staff in the corner, hanging out in his tight briefs. Yuta suspects Mark would be engaging in this level of skinship even if the cameras were on, given what's been normal for them lately. He lets Mark swing their arms, and he watches the artist brighten Mark's mouth with a conservative application of lip color. Mark's cheeks are nearly bare of contour and blush; he doesn't need it, unlike Yuta, who prefers to be sculpted every time he's got to wear makeup.
"Sit down." Mark nods to the empty chair beside him. To the left of that, Doyoung is having his hair styled, eyes closed and face blissful like a cat being stroked. Yuta resists, mostly because he's caffeinated and ready to film. Sitting next to Mark right now, when Mark's being cute and sweet and needy, is only going to drive him up a wall. "Onii-chan," Mark whines, giving Yuta deadly eyes. "Please?"
The half-drunk coffee almost slips from his fingers to the floor. His ears are ringing, or that's what it feels like. Yuta stares at Mark, and despite the fact that he knows Mark is just trying to play, he can't handle the conflicting emotions hearing Mark say that, look at him like that, unleashes in him. He can't sort through them, not with the room full of people. He can't even mention it.
Yuta's overtaxed brain reaches a boiling point. He yanks his arm away, thunks his coffee down next to Mark's, and tries to remember where in this cold studio there's a free room to go compose himself in.
Mark calls after him, but Yuta is quick, tossing an excuse about needing the bathroom on the way out, and also not in the middle of makeup.
He finds an empty meeting room a turned corner and a hallway down from craft services, and he's about to lock himself in when he sees the blurry shape of Mark approaching through the frosted glass of the window.
"Hey," Mark says, and rattles the handle Yuta's still got hold of on the other side. Of course the door doesn't lock. "Yuta, let me in, hey—"
"Not right now, Mark," Yuta says, but gives up and steps back from the door because Mark's too worried to listen to him, and truthfully, this has been a long time coming. If only Yuta didn't feel electrified with frustration. He won't, can't, be delicate when he gets like this. "Can you take a fucking hint?" he asks, exasperated, backed up against a long conference table and clutching it with his fingers.
"Dude, you ran away from me!" Mark yelps. "You've never done that before. I'm freaked out, okay?"
"What was that?" Yuta demands. "Onii-chan? Really?"
Mark frowns, forehead wrinkling. The overall effect does nothing to chip at Yuta's resolve. "I thought it was cute," he says. "I thought you'd like it."
Yuta throws his head back and laughs bitterly, too loud for the space. "Of course I like it, you idiot! That's the point."
"I don't—" Mark raises his hands and spreads them to either side of his shoulders. "I don't get what the problem is?"
"The problem is I told you I like boys, I like you, and now you're moaning onii-chan in front of thirty people. I'm fucking human, this isn't funny anymore."
"I'm not trying to be— Okay, I didn't moan—" Mark shakes his head like he's dazed. "Shit, Yuta, I'm not being funny. I mean it."
"You mean it? You mean you want to fuck with me? Or what," he snorts, "you want to tease me until I shove you against a wall like this is bad hentai?"
"Yeah," Mark says, and his voice cracks halfway through. He looks like he wants to bolt, which is how Yuta realizes he's telling the truth. "Please."
Yuta stares at him, his righteous anger deflating, leaving behind confusion and pangs of something that feel like hunger, like sparks of excitement. "Right here? You want me to kiss you— You want it here?"
Mark takes one step forward, and Yuta can see he's breathing heavy through his makeup-reddened mouth, gaze searching Yuta's face. "Please," he says again, half a vocalization, and cocks his head, licks his lips. "Oppa."
Yuta gives one desperate look to the window to make sure the hallway is clear, but he ends up shoving Mark to the farthest wall from it, hopefully in a blind spot should anyone come looking for them. When Mark's back collides with the hard surface, he makes an oof sound, but his hands go to Yuta's waist.
Mark's nearly of a height with him, but he looks so meek right now. He's so still. Yuta wants to kiss him so bad his teeth ache, but his brain is chanting a useless refrain of Mark, Mark, this is Mark, it's Mark and throwing up flags that he could really fuck this up.
Yeah, no shit he could fuck this up. Yuta doesn't dip into the member pool for partners, not counting a few lazy handjobs with Hansol that never went anywhere, and they were only trainees, not in a fixed unit. It's part of his oath: don't fuck over your members, but especially don't fuck your members.
But, a very hungry part of Yuta whispers, Mark asked to be kissed. Just kissed. Yuta has no rule about not kissing his members.
"You mean it?" Yuta stares at the unfamiliar way Mark's lips have twisted, the way his eyes have gone heavy lidded.
Mark nods, and he grips Yuta's shirt and uses it to tug him closer.
He looks so much better without all this makeup. Off stage, off the set, Mark looks healthy, handsome, occasionally golden from time spent in the sun, playing basketball with Jaehyun or running around shopping with Yuta or Johnny. All this gunk covers him up, makes him look like a doll. Yuta wants to see his moles, the tiny pimples at his hairline. He wants to see the lines on his lips, the red patches he gets from going over an area with his razor too many times.
"I'm gonna kiss this awful makeup off of you," Yuta whispers, leaning in.
Mark's mouth is open for him; he tastes the oily, sweet product as he runs his tongue over Mark's lips before delving inside. He takes a hold of Mark's half-styled hair and yanks too hard.
Mark moans into Yuta's mouth, which rumbles through him like thunder, buzzes his skin. Yuta doesn't kiss him careful or slow; he doesn't account for what he knows is Mark's inexperience in kissing boys. He's putting it all on the table, giving Mark everything he has and feverishly memorizing the glide of him, his coffee taste, the way his mouth yields, because it's not like they can do this again.
He isn't expecting Mark to suck on his lower lip, to dig his teeth in for a second when Yuta goes to pull away.
"Mark." He's impressed and wound up from the idea that Mark's bold enough to kiss him back with teeth. Yuta leans in, not done yet, not nearly full up on kissing Mark, and gives him a peck, his lips just slightly parted, and Mark puts a fist in Yuta's hair and doesn't let him move.
This is spiraling out of control faster than Yuta could have ever imagined. He's hot, actually starting to sweat, with surprise and arousal and paranoia that anyone could come in and see them. A nagging voice that sounds like Doyoung is getting louder as he kisses Mark wet, eating at his mouth, smearing his makeup like he promised, saying that this is too far, it's a risk, it's his member, it's Mark.
"We need to go back," he gasps, as Mark lets go of his hair.
"Not yet." Mark nuzzles at Yuta's ear and cheek like he's chasing his mouth as Yuta tries to pull himself together.
He's the one caging Mark in against the wall, but somewhere it turned into Mark holding him up, bracing his hip with a hand, bearing his weight.
"Someone's going to come looking." But he lets himself assess the mess he made, the redness of Mark's mouth and the mop of his hair. Mark looks so fucking good, he's almost convinced himself it won't hurt to taste him again, since all the damage has been done, when a hand slips up inside his shirt.
Yuta tenses his stomach in shock, and Mark skates over his abs, skin hot and startling. The shock doesn't go away as Mark touches more and more of him; if anything, it intensifies. His fingers are slightly calloused, and he spans Yuta's entire stomach by spreading his fingers, measuring the in and out of his breathing.
This isn't kissing. This is a mistake, and he should end it.
Mark's gaze is heavy and fixed on Yuta. Yuta, who hasn't lost at a staring contest in years, feels like he might have to look away again, hide his face in Mark's neck.
This is a mistake, and it's everything he's wanted for a while, stupid, indulgent daydreams before bed or watching TV with Mark curled up next to him, something so vast and unattainable he didn't bother to lock it up very well. He's paying the price for being sloppy right now, for making his own feelings a joke, for knowing this can't possibly end well. He's doomed to know how Mark tastes, the little grunts he makes when Yuta kisses him deep.
Mark's searching fingers connect with the piercing through his nipple. Yuta lets slip a noise, then flattens his mouth into a line so nothing else can get out.
"Hyung," Mark says, angling so he's speaking directly in Yuta's ear.
Yuta braces for more words, but he ends up halfway shouting when Mark tweaks his nipple ring viciously. He doesn't let go after, working his thumb and finger around the aching skin, pressing down like that will soothe it and not light Yuta on fire.
"Oh, you do like that," Mark says, sounding bizarrely delighted for the circumstances. "Good to know."
Mark toys with him more, two fingers curious and unhesitating, flicking and rubbing until Yuta makes a horrible noise and his dick jumps in his briefs.
Which is the moment of unbelievable reality that snaps Yuta out of this mess, this slow-motion crumbling.
"Stop," Yuta says.
Mark's too considerate to do more than freeze for a second before dropping his hand, slow, fingers knocking against Yuta's ribs on the way down. Mark lets him step away, and he looks worried, forehead creased.
Yuta shakes his head, half to clear it. "Not now. We need to clean up."
Mark looks less worried, but he does give Yuta a once-over that lets Yuta know his half-hard dick is obvious. Then he has the audacity to look Yuta in the eye while he adjusts himself, lower lip caught between his teeth. It absurdly reminds Yuta of every time Mark's in public in uncomfortable pants and how he runs off to the bathroom alone to fix it, refusing to do it in the green room like everyone else.
"Should we go separately or together, hyung?" He's still aiming lethal eyes at Yuta, still leaning against the wall like Yuta might step back and kiss him some more.
"You go first. Rinse your whole face—scrub it, so it looks like you've been crying."
Mark's coquettish pose drops some, his shoulders rounding out. "Crying? What the hell?"
"You want them to know I was licking your tonsils in here?" Yuta asks, incredulous and horny and standing in a metaphorical house of cards on the verge of collapse. "We had an argument, we cried," Yuta says through a clenched jaw, "and we worked it out. No one will ask questions, unless your lipstick is all over my face."
Mark reaches out a tentative hand, and Yuta's so useless he can't even duck away from it, can't bat it down when Mark is Mark. He rubs Yuta's chin just below his lips and comes away with the slickness of spit and makeup. "Yeah," he says, and then in English, "Dead giveaway."
Yuta fitfully wipes his own chin, his own mouth, and flaps his free hand at Mark. "Go, Mark. Quickly."
Mark nods a few times, then moves away from the wall. Yuta was up close and personal with him a few seconds ago, but the waft of Mark's shampoo almost knocks him on his ass.
Mark closes the door to the conference room on the way out, and Yuta's left in utter stillness, dead silence, the only noise his heartbeat in his ears and his own breathing. It's like Mark took all the frenzy out of the room with him.
That's a good thing, because Yuta has to get himself together, and fast.
---
Yuta has almost no sense of what happened during the rest of that filming day; he knows they got what they needed, that the members gave him some looks but no one said anything, assuming he and Mark were on the outs, and that extended to seating them as far apart from each other as possible. It was a small relief.
He eats dinner alone, takeout he skulks out of his room to pick up from the delivery person in the elevator, and hunches by his phone for hours, not sure what to do. He almost picks it up and tells Taeyong, who knows more about him than probably anyone, but Taeyong also is the worst person Yuta could tell. Well, or Johnny.
At one point, he almost messages Ten. Their KaTalk log is practically dusty, it's so long unused, but Ten's been there for Yuta's boy crisis before, and he would do it again. If Yuta could keep it a secret which member he kissed, Ten might have advice, but Ten would also be able to snap the pieces together and figure out it's Mark. He's too perceptive, too nosy.
The problem boils down to the fact that it's Mark—all of Yuta's problems boil down to the fact that it's Mark. He can't tell anyone or risk bodily injury and shattered friendships, but even more than that, he can't tell anyone Mark kissed him back. He can't violate Mark's privacy.
He expects Mark to bang on his door and or text him to ask if they can talk, but Mark is suspiciously silent. Mark does text the group chat a few times, and he seems… fine. He seems like Mark. But Yuta is a wreck half the night, wanting to apologize, wanting to quit the fucking band, wanting to push Mark up against the nearest surface and learn how the rest of him tastes.
He falls asleep at some ridiculous hour, listening to puffing snores, eyeing the door like Mark might open it and slip inside his room.
---
Whatever reprieve Yuta had the day before, whatever space Mark gave him, it's gone the next morning. Mark's out at the kitchen table with Jaehyun and Jungwoo, getting doted on by their auntie, filling up on all his favorite foods. He's got a leg up on the chair next to him, very un-Mark behavior, and Yuta quickly realizes he's being saved a spot.
His heart sinks in his chest, and he doesn't know why. Why is it bad that Mark wants to sit next to him? Why is it bad that he and Mark are friends, even now? Isn't it the best possible outcome that Mark can stand to be near him after yesterday?
As Yuta settles in, Mark leans over and flicks the end of his ponytail. Yuta doesn't react, just reaches for chopsticks and a clean bowl and busies himself piling it high. He should have stayed in his room. He should have stayed in bed. Jungwoo would have brought him food if he said he felt sick.
"Good sleep, hyung?" Mark asks.
It's a relief there's none of his usual teasing of late in it, just casual, even if Yuta can feel Mark's eyes on him, ceaseless.
"Like a baby," he says, and shovels food into his mouth to head off any further conversation.
---
Yuta showers and goes to Hangang Park to find a pickup game of literally any sport. He ends up playing tennis, and then basketball, and he eats from a food cart when Jaehyun texts him to ask if he's coming home in time for dinner.
Mark texts him only once.
Mark-kun: Are you avoiding me? Knock it off
He sends a Ryan sticker that conveys how grumpy he is. Yuta leaves him on read and buys a tea to drink on the walk to the car he'd called for.
It's not Mark's fault any of this happened, that he's like this, that he spun out because of kissing. Yuta knows Mark's probably going through it, that he could use someone he's close to to figure things out, talk to, but Yuta can't do that for him. He's crossed the line already; anything else would be unforgivable.
When Yuta comes back, sweaty and exhausted and sunburned, and shirt stained with sauce from his messy chicken skewers, all he wants is to pour himself into bed and sleep. He'll collect the pieces of himself tomorrow, solder them together, and find a way to help Mark, to be a good friend to Mark. Not this disaster who kissed him and can't handle being near him.
Except when he opens the door, Mark's lying in Yuta's bed. He's under the covers, settled like he's been there for a while, glasses on and phone charger trailing up to Yuta's headboard port. He gives Yuta a look.
"Hey," he says. Like it's normal. And sure, Mark's come to his bed a thousand times, laid next to him in cramped quarters and even fallen asleep there, but he's never done this. "Took you long enough."
"What are you doing?" Yuta asks, closing the door behind him carefully.
Mark tosses his phone onto Yuta's mattress and stretches until there's a series of audible pops. He's disturbingly calm, casual; Yuta can't see anything fake in it. "I traded with Jungwoo for the night. I told him we needed to talk."
Yuta is desperate to get out of clothes that have started to itch, to bury his woes in the shower and a sad masturbation session, but he can't leave Mark here like this. And it's not like Jungwoo will trade back with Mark until morning; he's going to stay where he is, partaking in Mark's junk food stash from his closet, in the name of them working their issues out.
Yuta has no compunction about changing in front of the members, at least normally. He's determined to get back to normal, so he rips off his shirt and grabs a packet of wet wipes from the dresser to clean up some of the dried sweat.
"You didn't need to do that," Yuta says, and ignores how Mark stares at him scrubbing his armpits.
"Yeah, uh, I was going to offer to suck your dick, but I think maybe we do need to talk."
Yuta fumbles the toss of the used wet wipe into the trash. It lands on the floor. Shirtless, sticky with wet-wipe residue, sunburnt unevenly, Yuta gapes at Mark, who draws his knees up under Yuta's covers and looks at him expectantly.
"I'm sorry if I came on too strong?" Mark says. "I thought you were into it."
"Back up to the part where you said you were gonna suck my cock," Yuta says in a near hiss. Everyone's good at tuning out sounds and conversations from other rooms, but he's not about to take chances.
"I'm not promising it'll be very good, but you know I'm a quick learner."
This is the most surreal conversation Yuta thinks he's ever had. "What?"
The casual confidence starts to slip away; Yuta sees Mark hunch, his face getting tense. "You— Okay, what's wrong? Did you not want to kiss me?" He starts throwing the covers off his legs, making to stand up, but Yuta motions for him to stay where he is.
Yuta doesn't chance sitting on the bed with him, he needs more distance than that, but he sits in a chair and scoots it closer. "I definitely wanted to kiss you," he says firmly, and fights a memory of Mark moaning and how it tingled his lips. "But that's all it was."
"You want to take it slow? I can do slow—"
"I want to stop it at kissing. That's all. You know my motto—"
"Don't fuck over your members," Mark interrupts. His jaw's looking mullish, and Yuta thinks this might turn into a fight. He can't say he expected that, but he didn't expect Mark in his bed offering up blowjobs, either. "What does that have to do with it?"
"If you'd let me finish, I'd tell you that's only half of it. The other is to not fuck my members."
The dubious look melts into something else entirely; Mark's amused, which Yuta doesn't appreciate, but he's also squirming to sit up against the headboard, probably the better to look Yuta in the eye. Yuta knows him well enough to know he's angry, that rare animal in Mark.
"That's crap," Mark says. "You flirted with me, you came out to me"—Yuta's teeth set on edge—"and made me, made me think you really wanted me, that you care about me, and now it's, Oh, I don't fuck my members, sorry!" He shakes his head and pushes his glasses up his nose. "Nope. I don't believe you."
"Believe what you want," Yuta says sourly, but adds a gruff, "I do care about you, you asshole. I do want you. But this is a bad idea. I won't do it."
Mark laughs, though there's no humor in it. He scratches his jaw, cutting his eyes to the side and shoulders shaking with more brutally unhumorous chuckling. "What, it's not as fun if I want it back?"
"What do you think is going to happen here? Do you think we'll be able to keep it a secret? Do you think it will end well?"
"Why not? Do you think we're the only two members in the company to hook up? Doyoung tells jokes about the people he's walked in on. Sex is—it's part of life."
Lee Minhyung, chronic blusher and hider of face should anything more scandalous than a hand-hold appear on screen, just said that sex is part of life. Yuta wishes he were outside this situation, looking in on the fringes, so he could laugh.
"This kind of sex?" Yuta asks, eyebrows raised. "Two men? Hyung and dongsaeng? You think everyone's going to be fine with Mark Lee getting bent over in a supply closet?"
"For one, I have my own room, practically. And it's not anyone's business who I do or don't sleep with, or how I do it."
Yuta flags under Mark's fierceness. He remembers being that bull-headed, thinking SM and all the rigors of trainee life couldn't get between him and his personal choices. It exploded on him because of course it did, and he was lucky the damage was contained between Yuta, his manager, an unlucky makeup artist, and the choreographer's assistant he was found sucking off. The lead choreographer has refused to work with NCT since, so presumably he knew too, somehow.
On paper, Mark's right. If he keeps his proclivities to himself, if he's a discreet person who gets his work done, it shouldn't matter what he does on his own time. The issue is that secrets break bands, Yuta's seen it happen, seen some groups limp along through comeback after comeback even when the trust is gone. Mark Lee is too big, too important to the group, to be trifled with.
At the end of the day, Yuta's expendable; Mark Lee is not.
Fuck, why couldn't he have caught feelings for one of the other members? Yuta wouldn't have a crisis over the idea of Johnny sucking his dick. Both of them know their place, and they'd be smart enough to end it before it went off-road. Mark, with no experience and a steady diet of Yuta putting him on a pedestal, wouldn't know the first thing about protecting himself.
"Yuta?" Mark asks, and Yuta realizes he's been sitting here feeling sorry for himself long enough for it to become painfully evident that's what he's doing. "Are you okay?"
"I'm all right," Yuta says. "I should shower. I'll take the other bed, don't worry about moving."
Mark doesn't say anything as Yuta collects his shower things, but true to form, he doesn't look away.
---
Yuta's halfway through shampooing his hair when there's a knock, and he doesn't even respond before Mark slips into the bathroom.
He should have locked the door, but from all the times he's had to get out of the shower to let someone in to piss, he's out of the habit.
Mark doesn't come very close, not that there's a ton of space in here anyway. From what Yuta can see through the foggy glass of the shower door, he leans against the sink, head bowed to his chest, and speaks very softly into the warm, steamy air.
"Do you honestly think I don't know how careful we need to be?"
Yuta sluices his hair back, rolling his neck to get behind his ears. "I don't know," he admits. "I don't know what you've gotten away with, golden boy."
Mark laughs. "Kind of a lot," he says. "At least more than most of you probably imagine."
Yuta wants to open the stall door and get a look at Mark's face, gauge how serious he is, if he's trying to put one over on him, but he already knows Mark's not lying. It's just a matter of what he considers transgressive. "Let me guess," he hums. "Johnny got you high in Chicago."
"I know he told you about that, but yes. Among other things."
"Should I keep going?" It's good that they're joking around, and he is interested in knowing the extent of Mark's attempts to rebel, but this is nothing but a break in a bigger conversation. He won't kid himself about that. "Hmm, over-the-clothes handjob?"
Mark snorts. "Yeah, when I was eighteen. Aigoo, you don't actually think I'm still a virgin, do you?"
Yuta did actually think that, but it's not like he was happy about the idea. It's fun to pinch Mark's cheek when he's a prudish weirdo, but there's a genuine worry in Yuta that Mark—and all the maknaes—are missing out on crucial milestones and experiences. And if Mark's telling the truth, if he's really had some experience, well, that doesn't explain why he's kept up his commitment to seeming utterly embarrassed by more than a dirty joke.
Then again, Mark did yank on his nipple piercing just to see what he'd do. "I didn't think about it," Yuta says.
"Okay," Mark says, sounding pleased and skeptical. "So you're not in here panicking at the idea of deflowering the golden boy?"
"I'm in here so I don't stink," Yuta says. "Your virginity is your own business." He should shut up. But Mark's so persistent, and he deserves to know as much as Yuta can explain. "It's not like you sleeping with one of the girls in secret. You know that."
"Oh, I'm aware," Mark says, low and dry, and Yuta wonders how much of him Mark can see, naked and slick, through the steamed-up glass. "I'm not asking for you to give me shit neither of us can risk. You don't need to be my—boyfriend, and like, if it didn't work out, that's fine. We'd be fine." Mark's tone shifts, getting kinder, shier. "You can't get rid of me."
It's not you they'd get rid of, he thinks, sad and proud of Mark. Yuta's heart is a tangle his brain can't unravel.
He hadn't kissed someone in so long, before the other day. He hadn't kissed someone he cares about for even longer. The idea of letting Mark into this shower, tasting the water on his skin, touching his pretty, lithe body, hurts. He wants it so much.
"Mark-yah, you know I love you, yes?"
"I know, hyung. I love you too."
Yuta nods, choked silent with emotion, and his eyes feel hot, but if he's crying, it's lost to the fall of water from the showerhead.
The stall door opens, letting in cooler air and letting out the rest of Yuta's hope that he can say no to this, to Mark Lee's fist around his heart, squeezing with every second he leans in and gets water misted onto his clothes.
"I'll go, if you really don't want me," Mark says. His voice seems so much quieter this close, somehow, barely audible above the spray. "I think you should trust me, though."
Yuta says nothing; he reaches out a wet fist and pulls Mark closer, half inside the shower.
In seconds, Mark's glasses are covered with water droplets, fogged up almost totally. He yelps and laughs when Yuta fails to block the spray and it hits Mark from over Yuta's shoulder, drenching his sleep clothes.
"Yo," Mark says, spluttering and laughing, before switching back to Korean, "if you wanted me in here, you could have just said that." He takes off his glasses and holds them carefully in his hand.
"You're the one who opened the door."
Mark kisses Yuta so softly it feels like something he could have made up; Yuta's eyes are open for it, though, and he sees every detail of Mark's face as he leans in: the pimple on his forehead, the moles on his cheek, the way he sighs before their lips connect. Yuta's too afraid to touch more than his shirt, afraid he'll do something Mark won't like or won't be ready for, afraid he'll end up paying penance for his bad choices.
Mark kisses his closed mouth, his chin, his cheek. When he pulls back, half-soaked, an apparition with bangs plastered to his forehead, eyelashes damp and clumping, he's smiling, closed-mouth and fond.
Then he steps out of the shower and closes the stall door.
Yuta's not sure what to do, what's going on, and desperation sets in fast. Mark was so close, and now he's leaving? Mark kissed him, and now he's leaving? Yuta waved goodbye to all of his closely held morals for a second taste of Mark, and now Mark isn't interested?
"Shower sex is very dangerous," he says, and Yuta can't fault his logic.
Still tense and feeling like Mark is operating on another plane of existence right now, Yuta tracks Mark's movement in the bathroom; he uses Yuta's towel to wipe off his glasses, and he wrings his shirt out over the sink next.
"I'm borrowing your pajamas," Mark continues, and turns to face Yuta again. Yuta thinks he's smiling, though his image of Mark is warped from steam to where he can't say for sure. "Don't jerk off in here, okay, I wanna do it."
Then he's gone, the bathroom door open and shut in the blink of an eye, Yuta speechless and still needing to condition his hair.
---
He's never been so nervous to open a door before in his life. The fact that it's his door is a wicked layer of irony.
As promised, Mark changed into an old, droopy muscle shirt of Yuta's and a pair of shorts, and he's sitting cross-legged on Yuta's bed near the headboard. He looks up from his phone upon Yuta's arrival, and Yuta doesn't know what he's expecting as he closes the door and leans against it, but Mark's bright, sharkish smile and the up-and-down look he gives Yuta in his boxers are not it.
"Did you jerk off?" he asks.
Yuta is starting to wonder if Mark's possessed or if SM finally invested in making android replicas of their aces. In his extremely guilty and furtive imaginings of Mark Lee in a sex-adajcent scenario, he pictured a lot of blushing, a lot of stammering, a lot of clutching Yuta's shoulders and hanging on for dear life. Not whatever this is. Yuta's skin is prickling; he thinks he might start to sweat despite how much cooler it is in here versus the muggy bathroom he just left.
"No," he says belatedly.
Mark pats the bed. When Yuta makes no move to join him, still standing braced against the door, he frowns and bats at his bangs. "Uh, if you don't want to, we can watch more anime? Or talk? I thought… Anyway, whatever you want, hyung."
"Whatever I want," Yuta echoes.
"Within reason," Mark says, and huffs like he's self-conscious, the first sign of the Mark Yuta expected in ages. "I don't think I'm ready for anal," he says, chuckling nervously, and the floor must drop out from under Yuta's feet; he feels like he's going to pass out. "From the look on your face, you aren't either, huh?"
Mark pats the bed again, and Yuta crosses over to him like a dog on a leash. How is he supposed to say no to this? How is he supposed to reject the boy who turns his heart to pulp? How is he supposed to turn off wanting it so bad?
"Hey, we should lay down," Mark says gently, when Yuta's sitting next to him. Coaxing him step by step. Yuta's not unfamiliar with the tactic.
Following Mark's lead is the only reasonable thing to do under the circumstances, though, since Yuta is still so out of his depth. He likes sex, he gets so pent up it interferes with his ability to focus sometimes, so of course he craves it and wants to have it with Mark, wants to show Mark a good time, but he's used to wanting without relief. He's not used to having.
Eventually, they wrestle their limbs and the covers until they're on their sides, face to face, sharing the very edges of Yuta's pillow. It feels like a sleepover, like any other time Mark's climbed into his bed, but then Mark strokes over his cheekbone with a careful thumb.
"Last chance to pick an anime," Mark jokes, and Yuta can't help his laugh. His lungs feel like they're being strangled by his ribcage, and his dick can't decide if it likes that edge of panic.
Mark doesn't wait to disarm him with a kiss, and all of a sudden Yuta's eyes are slamming shut and he's narrowed all awareness to Mark's hot, wet mouth. It's good. It's better than that adrenalin-amped kiss in the studio conference room; it's better than most kisses he's had. Mark traces the seam of his lips with his tongue and tangles a hand in his hair, stroking through the strands until Yuta shivers.
Then Mark slides his knee between Yuta's legs, far enough down that he's in no danger of touching Yuta's dick, but the contact might as well have been a direct grope for how Yuta arches and nuzzles closer on the pillow to deepen their kiss. He's filling out quick in his boxers.
"Like this," Mark says, in a voice Yuta's never heard before, and nudges Yuta onto his back. He fastens his mouth to Yuta's ear, tongue slipping between his piercings, and Yuta's rock hard in seconds and trapped under Mark's skinny body, gasping for air. "Shit, Yuta." He licks deeper into Yuta's ear, and it's nasty and hot and slimy, and Yuta claps a hand on Mark's bare arm, scratching him with blunt nails.
"You little freak," he tries to say accusingly, but it's ruined by his hitching breath when Mark bites his lobe. "I should have known."
Mark makes an inquisitive noise as he works down Yuta's neck, very careful with his teeth. Yuta closes his eyes preemptively; he has a pretty good idea Mark's going to exploit the weakness of his piercing again.
He's used to denying himself, working himself up to the edge over and over and backing down again, absolutely tormenting his cock until he's exhausted enough to sleep, but the thought of Mark tugging on his piercing is going to make him shoot in his boxers like he's a teenager.
He remembers they were talking and strokes the back of Mark's neck, feeling the bristly hairs there. "All those bananas you felated while making creepy eye contact," Yuta says, forcing his hips to stay still as Mark adjusts on top of him, putting more of his weight on Yuta. "Should have realized all the blushing was a lie."
"It was the bananas that made you want me, wasn't it? Don't front," Mark finishes in English, like he's too distracted to keep his words straight.
"You'd love that—fuck, Mark." Yuta's eyes pop open when Mark sucks Yuta's nipple into his mouth. He's greedy with it, he thinks, dazed, staring down as Mark laves over the barbell, then more of his pec, making his skin shine. He looks up at Yuta, then seems to get shy about it and glances away.
Or maybe he was bracing himself to be able to ask, "Can I take it out?"
"If you want to," Yuta hedges. He deliberately puts aside how Mark's dismissive snort makes him doubt if Mark has thought this through.
Mark goes for his dick like he's on a mission for it, fighting with the taut elastic of the boxers as he pushes them down until Yuta can kick them off. One second, Yuta's still adjusting to the unreal sight of Mark's teeth gently tugging his piercing, the way he'd gotten his glasses off without Yuta noticing at some point, so his cheek is squished against Yuta's chest. The next, he's reeling from Mark's rough, somewhat sweaty palm securing him in a tight hold.
"Hmm," Mark says, ducking his head to stare down Yuta's body at Yuta's long, skinny dick in his fist. "Do you have lotion?"
Yuta fumbles for his bedside drawer and pulls out one of his tubes of lube at random. When he puts it on his stomach for easy access, Mark looks at the label and raises his brow at Yuta with a bemused, "Fancy." He makes no move to pick up the lube, though. "Can I play with the skin?" Mark asks. "Does it feel good?"
Yuta's cock kicks in Mark's hold. The red tip is already peeking beyond his hood, and he feels like he could come in no time if Mark so much as squeezes him. "Don't pull it back too far," he cautions when Mark's curious fingers start tugging. "Fuck, like that." Mark pinches the skin over the tip—the little shit didn't even give him a courtesy jerk—then gently pulls it back down, exposing more of the head. Yuta's most sensitive here, and wet, but not wet enough for how indelicate Mark's being. "Lube," Yuta says, somewhat desperately.
Mark gets his palm wet and spreads it all over the shaft. His curiosity must be satisfied, because he stops playing with Yuta's foreskin and settles down to lick at his nipple again. Yuta can't stand to look at the way he can see Mark's pink tongue licking him even tighter, more achy, for longer than a few seconds. It feels so good it verges on too much; when Mark's hand starts sliding up and down his dick in an actual rhythm, Yuta's stomach goes concave with the breath he sucks in, tension making his body rigid.
Mark gives him a long, loud suck and pulls back, Yuta's reddened flesh goosebumping from the temperature change.
"Hey," Mark says, and wriggles so he's even closer, resting on Yuta's shoulder, peering upward, loosely fisting Yuta's cock. "Do you like it?"
It's a reasonable thing to double check, given that Yuta's trained himself to get off in near silence after years of sharing rooms, but his body isn't anywhere near as reticent as his voice: he's dripping precome now, and his breathing is quick and shallow.
"Yeah." Yuta cups the side of his face, Mark's earlobe fitting between two of his fingers. "Do you?"
In reply, Mark shifts his hips and rubs his cock against Yuta's thigh, riding him. "Gonna make me come like this if you're not careful," he says, and moans when Yuta pushes his shorts down and gets a hand on the substantial part of his ass he's bared, smooth and damp and muscular under Yuta's palm. He digs in with his fingers, and Mark works his hips harder. "Fuck, oh man," he says, and looks down to see his dick peeking up from the waistband, sticky against Yuta's skin.
The head of Mark's dick is too slippery to really pinch, but Yuta gives it his best attempt. Mark squawks and tries to dance his hips away, letting go of Yuta's dick and bracing a slick hand on Yuta's thigh. He yelps an, "Okay, okay, I get it, oh my God, I won't do it again." He grabs Yuta in a punishing grip, faster and harder than he'd gone before, until the sounds seem to fill the whole bedroom.
Yuta bares his teeth in a smile Mark can't see, given that he's staring down, trying to coordinate jerking Yuta off while grinding against him. He can feel every twitch and stutter of Mark's hips, the way his ass flexes when he gets into it and stops second-guessing the movement.
"Don't come yet," Yuta says, dipping low at the back of Mark's borrowed shorts to play with his balls, going out of his way to avoid Mark's asshole in case he panics. They're velvet-soft, a little fuzzy, and plump, drawing up tight since Mark's as close as Yuta assumed. Mark's spine arches when Yuta tugs on one.
"Fuck, okay," Mark groans, agonized, and slows down.
Yuta hasn't touched a dick that isn't his own in a long time, but making boys pop is his favorite thing. He'd drag it out all night if he could, getting Mark right on the edge of coming until his cock's jerking futilely into thin air, until the low moans Mark keeps stifling turn thin and high. It's a joke to think he could manage that right now; Mark's a hot poker stoking him closer and closer to flame.
Fuck, Mark's going to look so pretty when he shoots; he's getting darker, almost an angry red, the more turned on he gets. Yuta's so sticky himself Mark won't need to top up the lube.
"Get me off, Mark-yah, and you can come in my mouth," Yuta promises. He kisses the top of Mark's head when Mark groans, a spark, a flutter of excitement in him that he gets to do this, he gets to wreck Mark and milk his load onto his tongue. It's been so long that his mouth waters just thinking about it.
Mark stills his hips entirely, though Yuta's still playing with him, chancing to dig his thumb into Mark's perineum. He lolls his head against Yuta's chest and looks up with heavy eyes, flushed cheeks, mouth and chin wet.
"Make me come, that's it," Yuta urges, gentle.
Mark's technique is going to give him a repetitive strain injury someday, but it's working too well on Yuta, who bites his lip and bears the way Mark somehow finds the energy to speed up even more. He was already blurrily close; that extra bit, Mark's fierce determination reflected in the set of his mouth, gets him right on the edge.
"Gonna," he says, and struggles to keep his eyes open when it hits.
Mark hisses when Yuta starts to shoot, maybe out of surprise. One spurt arcs so high it lands on his rib, and the others pool near his navel when Mark focuses on coaxing it out of him, thumb rubbing over the tip and squeezing Yuta's bunched-up foreskin. It feels exquisite, like he hasn't come in weeks, the edge of sensitivity so good as he comes down that he doesn't want Mark to stop. Then it gets too sensitive, and Yuta bats Mark's hand out of the way, panting into his hair.
Mark drags his come-covered hand across Yuta's already messy stomach. His navel ring glints with slick.
"Oppa," Mark says, coy and breathless, studying the remnants of spunk and lube on his hand, turning it over in the light. "You came so much."
Yuta closes his eyes against fondness and exhaustion. Mark's trying to end him; Yuta bets he had that oppa ready all night, if not longer, weighing heavy on his tongue as he considered the best time to unleash it.
It worked, because Yuta's dick tried valiantly to spurt one last time, but he's well and truly spent.
Yuta, still with his eyes closed, aims to kiss Mark's forehead. Then he pats his ass. "Roll over onto your back."
Mark does in a hurry, wriggling his back against the bed to get comfortable. Yuta yanks his borrowed shorts down and off Mark's legs and uses them to half-assedly clean up his stomach. It's half-assed because he's hypnotized by Mark's dick, swollen and pretty, curving slightly to the left. Yuta traces his thumbnail up the major vein and watches Mark shudder.
Yuta rearranges in the cramped space, settles onto his stomach, aware he's about to give himself a neckache but equally aware Mark's not going to last in his mouth. Even if he's had blowjobs before—a concept Yuta is still not quite reconciled to—he's never been blown by Yuta, who likes head rough and sloppy. He sweeps a look up Mark's body; Yuta's shirt has ridden up on him and the flat of Mark's palm is on his stomach, almost protective. He memorizes the wide eyes staring down at him, the parted mouth. "What, no more oppa?" he teases, holding Mark's dick steady by the base.
Mark thunks his head back against the mattress, huffs, and babbles, "Oppa, please suck my cock, need it so bad—"
Yuta might have just come, and he may be in the midst of crossing the biggest line he's ever marked for himself, but he can't listen to that and stay sane, even if Mark is putting it on. He ducks his head and takes Mark straight to the back of his throat, hollowing his cheeks and sucking. His gag reflex makes one weak attempt to stall him out, but Yuta just breathes in through his nose and fights through it.
"Fuuuuck," Mark says, and Yuta would remind him that Jungwoo's sleeping next door, that someone could still be awake and in the common areas, but he's busy trying to make Mark come as quickly as possible.
The noises are unmistakable: Mark's near-constant moans, Yuta's slurping, and the sharp sound when he occasionally accidentally breaks the seal of his lips. Mark's precome—a taste Yuta likes because it's so nasty, so unmistakable—is coating the roof of his mouth, and he's not bothering to keep himself from drooling.
"Yuta, I'm really— I'm gonna come," Mark says, and Yuta feels a trembling hand sweep hair back from his face, a strand dampened with spit and sweat unstuck from his cheek. "Oppa," he chokes, and this time, it's as earnest as Yuta's ever heard it. Yuta groans quietly around his mouthful. "I'm gonna come, oh, please."
Yuta will have to learn how not to indulge him some other time. All he wants now is Mark to lose himself to it, to the warm, tight suction of Yuta's mouth. When Mark sits up onto his elbows all of a sudden, Yuta doesn't let himself be jarred; he sucks harder, cheeks stinging, jaw on fire, eyes blurry with moisture, and feels the first pulse hit the back of his throat. Yuta pulls back to taste it, to feel Mark spurt onto his tongue.
Mark sighs when he comes, which is a surprise after how loud he was. Mark's hand, stroking clumsily at his shoulder and neck, urges him backward when it feels like Mark might have more to give. Muscle memory reminds Yuta how to swallow, and it takes two tries; it really has been a while.
Mark's thighs tremble underneath him, his belly heaving, and Yuta gently licks the last few drops Mark spills from the slit, then kisses his hip and slinks down to rest his head on Mark's thigh.
He's not sure he wants to look up and see what he did, what he can never undo.
"Jesus, you really swallowed," Mark says, hoarse. He tugs on Yuta's hair, gripping the long ends in his fist. "Get up here, man."
Warily, Yuta sits up; Mark's found the discarded shorts and is wiping his hand off thoroughly, getting between his fingers. He looks tired, like he might fall asleep before Yuta can even turn the light off, and a small smile is pulling at the corners of his mouth, puffing up his cheeks. He peeks at Yuta, then looks away, when Yuta shoves the pillow back into place and flops onto it, trying to act like his heart isn't attempting to beat straight through his rib cage.
"Now you're shy?" Yuta tsks.
Mark launches the dirty shorts at the hamper, then worms his way under the covers at the same time as he curls up at Yuta's side. It's a familiar position; the only difference is that they're both naked—or nearly, in Mark's case. Yuta's shoulder has gone slowly numb from Mark's surprisingly heavy head on many nights, both of them on their phones, Yuta prodding Mark occasionally to remind him he has his own bed but never really minding the rare times when Mark doesn't bother going back to his own room to sleep.
"It's a lot, all right," Mark says. "But it was good, right? I did it okay?"
Yuta's heart turns over at the hint of anxiety in Mark's voice. After all that, the emergence of a side of Mark Yuta's never even contemplated existed, how confident and at ease with the idea of them Mark seemed, there's still a Mark Lee Yuta recognizes, worried he's not good enough. "Yeah, it was good."
Mark seems to take that as truth, increasing his sprawl on Yuta as a response. This much skin, Mark's bare legs glancing off Yuta's, the humid puff of his breath on Yuta's shoulder, is a lot at once to deal with. He slaps the covers for his phone until Yuta finds it lodged next to the headboard and passes it over. With some incredulity, he watches Mark yawn, squint at the screen because he's not wearing his glasses, and get comfortable like this is any other night.
Except it's not, because Yuta can see Mark's screen and he's just staring at it, not opening any app, once it's unlocked.
"That was really good, hyung," Mark says quietly. He opens his unread messages and then backs out of them again. "It was, um, kind of better than I'd even thought it could be, you know?"
Yuta strokes Mark's spine, keeping his touch firm because otherwise Mark is too ticklish. He gives half a thought to where his own phone is, but he can't concentrate on anything that isn't the weight of Mark in his arms, in his bed, like this. "Yeah," he agrees.
"And I'm sorry for, like, making you break your motto."
"No, you're not." Yuta shakes with a laugh and pinches Mark's hip.
Mark pulls back and sits up some, pinning Yuta with his worried eyes and a hand to his sternum. "No, I am, though. I know what it's like to break promises to yourself."
Yuta considers that, and the way Mark's looking at him, like Yuta might kick him out and send him to Jungwoo's bed after all.
The fight in Yuta was over the minute Mark followed him into the bathroom and called his bluff. It might have been over earlier, actually, because this started when Yuta told Mark all his flirting was for real, that it wasn't just teasing for the cameras. The door, once Yuta opened it, couldn't be closed again. Their relationship changed weeks ago, well before the kiss, and Yuta waited on tenterhooks to see how, to see if he'd damaged it, but all that happened was that Mark walked across the threshold.
It's not simple, and Yuta's aware he'll have to pry open his reluctant jaw and actually tell Mark some of his worries, but he knows they can't go back. Selfishly, buried under the guilt, he doesn't want to go back. He wants to wipe that worry away and watch Mark's face go lax and sweet with sleep.
"You didn't make me do anything," Yuta says. "It was all me."
Mark's expression is dubious, but he looks less wary. He shakes his head so his sweaty bangs aren't trying to tangle with his eyelashes. "If you say so," he says, and settles back down, face in the crook of Yuta's neck and shoulder. "I'm pretty sure it takes two people to have sex."
"Don't limit yourself," Yuta says, and considers turning off the light, but it's so far away, and Mark's comfortable where he is. "Mark, I mean it, I knew what I was doing."
"Glad one of us knows," Mark yawns, and Yuta sees him tapping away at a KKT message.
"Who can you possibly be texting right now?" Yuta asks, pretending to be annoyed but rubbing the one especially tense knot Mark always gets in his neck.
"Ten," Mark says, and then giggles. "He told me to go for it, so I'm letting him know it's a mission success."
Unfortunately, Yuta knows what it feels like to mind your own business and then have a bucket of ice water dumped over you—there's a reason pranks are banned in the dorms. The bracing shock isn't dissimilar to what he feels now. "I'm sorry, Ten said fucking what?" He unseats Mark and flips him onto his back, hovering above him as Mark blinks up at Yuta. "You told Ten?"
"Relax, hyung, I didn't name any names." Yuta's unmoving on top of him, unsatisfied with that explanation. Now that the surprise of the moment, of Yuta's sudden action, has faded, he's extremely aware of every place they're touching. "Honestly, I think he might have assumed I was talking about Johnny." When Yuta's eyes narrow, Mark grins. "Whoops?"
"Don't send that text message if you want to continue to live," Yuta threatens, and Mark laughs and tugs on his hair until he's close enough to kiss.
---
It's the last schedule of their comeback, at long last; Yuta's nearly giddy with relief but too run down at the end of this marathon of work to do anything about it. This last interview, for a Japanese channel, has two lively hosts and an interpreter, and he thinks he saw a tub of props for later, so it's going to be a long and excruciating day. The intro segment took an hour to film.
Seated at the other end of the group, Mark's shined up like a newly minted coin, no sign of how tired he is between their hectic schedule and how late his nights have been lately. An assistant uses a tool to fix a lock of his hair, making sure it's swept off his forehead at exactly the right angle. When she finishes, Mark starts typing, face intent, carefully angling the phone so no one can see without leaning in, and Yuta braces himself.
No text alert comes through, though, and the next segment is ready to go, so Yuta slips his phone back into his pocket. He's up first for the game, seated closest to the hosts, and after they waste five minutes on takes explaining the simple rules, he spins the wheel until it lands on a printed-out meme of Mark's face.
"Ahhhh, my favorite," Yuta says. "So I get to tell one secret?"
"Just one," one of the hosts says.
"Oh man," Mark says, laughing and cringing behind his hands. "Oppa, please go easy on me, okay. Remember we still have to live together after this."
Yuta smiles wider and promises to be nice with his tongue visibly pressed against his cheek. "Mark," he says, savoring every syllable, the way no one watching would know the true scope of the act, the way Johnny's patting Mark's back in preemptive consolation, "talks in his sleep."
The reaction that garners is appropriately dramatic for the cameras.
"Sometimes he sings," Yuta says, and sits back.
Mark endures some good-natured teasing from a few of the members, since anyone who's ever shared a room with Mark can attest to the conversations he has with himself while unconscious. Then the makeup artist announces Johnny's started sweating under the lights, so everything comes to a standstill again.
Yuta's phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes care to shield it from view, heartbeat thundering as he waits out Jaehyun bugging him about lunch plans, before activating the screen. His notifications show a few missed emails and one message that lights him up like a match.
Mark-kun: Do you think they have a supply closet you could bend me over in, hyung?
He's quick to shut his screen off again, lest anyone lean in and see. Yuta peers down the line of members seated next to him, and Mark is sitting back straight and face attentive, thanking the hairstylist for her hard work. He looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
When Johnny's been powdered, they're ready to resume. Before they slate, before Yuta affixes his camera face, Mark catches him staring and smiles.