Chapter Text
☁
ninety days before
it’s only wednesday, and donghyuck is exhausted.
classes are tiring, his workload not getting any lighter even though he hands in assignment after assignment, and he’s covering yet another shift tonight. he hasn’t been back home in almost three months now; not being able to get off work during fall break; and he can tell it’s getting to him slowly. he misses his parents, his mother’s home-cooked meals, his father’s gentle voice calling him downstairs. he even misses his sisters bursting into his room in the mornings, waking him from peaceful slumber.
he sighs.
“you look tired,” renjun says, slurping his smoothie, while scrolling through his instagram feed with his other hand. “are you working today?”
“yeah, at 6 pm,” he answers, ignoring the first part of the sentence. he’s not sure renjun expected an answer, anyway. “why?”
“cool,” jaemin answers instead. donghyuck doesn’t know what’s so cool about him working late when he has an 8 am class the next day, but he chooses not to comment on that either. “maybe we’ll drop by later. we still need groceries.”
renjun nods, still not looking up from his phone. donghyuck sighs again. while his friends will most likely just get their groceries, take advantage of his staff discount, and leave, he appreciates the distraction during work hours. the late shift is the most boring one, as he just sits at the counter with nothing to do. their phones have to be locked up in their lockers, and almost no one comes in after 8pm. his boss won’t even let him bring his books, so he can work on his assignments for class.
“fine,” he tells his friends. “but bring coffee.”
“you got it,” jaemin promises.
☁
they don’t bring coffee, but donghyuck feels too awkward to even mention it. he just waves hello and watches as the two roommates stroll through the entrance of the grocery store, shopping cart in front of them.
jaemin is chattering about something while renjun is focused on a piece of paper in his hands, presumably a grocery list.
donghyuck had met the two during his freshman year in university. the three of them had been partnered up for a group project in class that had required so much work, they had given up halfway through the semester. with the class dropped, they had spent their free period hanging out in the food court instead. he has other friends, sure, and he’s even friendly with some of mark’s friends who come over now and then, but renjun and jaemin have been closest to him ever since he started going to university. he kinda feels bad for being so busy with work, lately. they didn’t really have time to catch up.
“what’s cookin’, good lookin’,” jaemin greets him as soon as they pull up to the cash register. renjun rolls his eyes, but smiles anyway. they start putting the groceries on the belt, while bickering back and forth, and donghyuck starts scanning the items, before packing everything in two bags. when everything is packed, he scans his badge that’s dangling on his neck and lowers the price by 25%.
“thank you,” renjun says with a small smile as he pulls out his wallet.
“you should come down to the bakery soon,” jaemin offers as he grabs the bags from the counter. “i probably owe you like ten muffins by now.”
“sure,” donghyuck says, even though he knows he won’t. the bakery jaemin works at isn’t far, but far enough from his apartment and campus that he doesn’t really have time to make his way there just to get a free muffin. not lately, anyway. “soon.”
the two of them stand there for a few awkward seconds, before renjun breaks the silence.
“how long until your shift is over?”
donghyuck glances at the time on the screen.
“2 more hours,” he says, sighing on the inside. “maybe less if my boss is generous today.”
they both wince sympathetically, before jaemin moves the bags from one hand to another.
“well, don’t let us keep you from work,” he says.
donghyuck almost snorts, gazing around the empty store. he just nods.
“see you tomorrow?” renjun asks, probably talking about their afternoon classes.
“yep,” donghyuck confirms. “night, you two.”
they wave their goodbyes and are gone as fast as they had come in. he scolds himself for being disappointed in the first place. it’s not like the two are required to keep him company. putting his head in his hands, he starts counting the seconds until he gets to go home.
two more hours. he can do that.
☁
when he gets home, there’s a plate waiting for him on the kitchen counter.
enjoy!!!! the note says. donghyuck can’t help but smile. mark had even made the effort to draw a tiny smiley under the word, with the eyes so far apart from each other it makes the face look weird. despite being tired as hell, he puts the plate into the microwave and waits for it to heat up.
mark lee, his roommate, and the same way a constant in his life as he’d been for the past 15 years. they’re close, sometimes, except sometimes they’re not. best friends is a term they use very loosely.
in a way they are each other’s best friend; how could they not be with how they see each other every day? donghyuck, however, is sure they wouldn’t even be friends if it weren’t for the proximity they reside in. sure, they get along fine, but then again: so do a lot of strangers. doesn’t mean they should be awarded the title of “besties”.
so when their parents, neighbours and way too good friends, suggested the two of them move in together after high school, as they had both gotten accepted for the same university, they agreed. why not? mark had said. they were friends, after all. they knew each other well. it was better than rooming with a stranger, right?
mark lee is an okay roommate, if anything. he leaves dirty dishes in the sink, he forgets to flush the toilet sometimes, but he always pays his bills and sometimes, like tonight, he even leaves food out for donghyuck to eat. they don’t interact much anymore, with both of them drowning in classes and working time-consuming part time jobs. donghyuck can’t really complain. they’re busy, after all. they’re adults. and if he finds himself missing mark (teenage mark with his awkward smile and braces, not this grown up mark with responsibilities and broad shoulders), he reminds himself that he’s just a door away.
he knows it’s not the same, but it’s a comforting thought.
he finishes the food in record time and dutifully puts the dishes away afterward. he makes sure to text mark a quick thank you for the food ✌🏼before he collapses in his bed.
if he’s lucky, he’ll get 4 hours of sleep.
☁
eighty days before
mondays are his days off from work, so he usually tries to get as many assignments done as he can to ease the workload for the rest of the week. with most of the tasks yet to come, though, he can't finish as much work as he would like to.
with nothing left to do at 6 pm, he aimlessly sits on his bed. he should catch up on sleep, but if he goes to sleep now, he knows he'll be awake by midnight, and he's not keen on disrupting his already unstable sleep cycle.
he could watch a movie, but even picking one seems too much effort; and he knows mark is at work until at least 9 pm, so he can't exactly ask him to hang out, either.
he decides to call his parents.
"hello?" his mother’s voice immediately makes him feel warm inside, the exhaustion soothing out of his body and limbs going soft like melted butter. he snuggles further into his pillow.
"hi mom," he says. "how are you?"
he spends the next 15 minutes listening to her talk about her day, about his dad's adventures at work and how she redecorated the entire living room yesterday. it's easy to listen to her, and he feels an ache in his heart from how much he misses being home that he tries to ignore as much as he can.
"we went to see the play last night," his mother tells him. "the costumes weren’t the best, but the students did such a great job we could look past it."
donghyuck frowns. "what play?"
"dasom got the lead role in her school's play," she says carefully. "i'm sure we told you."
he's sure they didn't.
"no, you didn't. what? that's amazing!" he pauses for a second. theatre has always been important for his younger sister and he's sure she must have been so excited about it. pride swells in his chest, but then again-
"why didn't you tell me?"
"ahhh, don't be like that, hyuck," she scolds him. "you wouldn't have been able to come anyway."
irritated, he splutters. sure, he might have not been able to come, but it feels rude to just assume that without asking, right?
"i would have given her a call, at least. i wish you would have told me."
or at least sent pictures or videos.
"you're so busy with school, we didn't want to distract you, honey."
the sound of her voice isn't as comforting as it had been a few minutes ago, and he feels tired again.
"okay, i'll call her later or something." she hums in agreement. "i gotta go now, mom."
after they hang up, he keeps lying on his back and stares at the ceiling. it's not really a reason to get upset, but he still feels annoyed and irritated.
then, he feels childish for feeling that way. they have their own lives and he can't expect to be updated about every single change they experience, can he? it'd be selfish to do so.
he sighs and turns on his side. going to sleep doesn't sound like such a bad idea, anymore. he'll try. maybe it'll help him get rid of his bad mood.
☁
seventy-five days before
“so, jung jaehyun is having a party tonight,” is the first thing jaemin says when he arrives. “we should go!”
it’s saturday, and four in the afternoon when jaemin joins their friend group for lunch. he sits down in one of the giant armchairs in the cafe they’re currently at and throws his phone onto the table, showing them all an expectant look. renjun and chenle don’t even look up from where they’re leaned over renjun’s phone, and all jisung and jeno do is stare at him blankly.
“guys?” jaemin tries again. donghyuck suppresses a smirk from where he’s seated.
“are you even invited?” renjun deadpans.
jaemin freezes, opens his mouth once before closing it again. he frowns.
“well, no,” he stammers, and renjun snorts. “but hyuckie can ask mark for us, right?”
donghyuck chokes on his coffee.
“no way,” he says.
“oh, come ooooon,” jaemin pouts. “mark is buddies with jaehyun, right?”
“so? doesn’t mean i’m buddies with him.”
the others have stopped what they’re doing and are watching the conversation between the two.
“but mark is your friend,” chenle butts in. “if you asked him, he could ask jaehyun maybe.”
“totally!” jaemin agrees enthusiastically.
donghyuck furrows his brows.
he hasn’t seen mark since last night, and they haven’t really talked for a while, so it feels more than awkward to ask for an invitation to a party he doesn’t want to attend in the first place.
“that’s rude,” he tries to argue, but jaemin rolls his eyes and interrupts him.
“since when do you care about being rude?”
even renjun grins at that, and they all look at him, chenle’s eyebrow raised in expectance.
“well?”
donghyuck tries one last time.
“i thought we had plans?”
jeno smiles from next to him. “my couch will be open any other day for our movie night,” he promises.
donghyuck sighs. he can’t really argue against that. he hasn’t been to a party in a while, anyway, and now that he has the weekend off from work he could maybe use the free time to losen up.
“i can ask him,” he relents and pulls out his phone from his hoodie’s pocket.
are you going to jaehyun’s party tonight 👯 he texts mark.
as usual, mark’s reply comes instantly. yeah why
can my friends and i come. they want to go lmao
i’ll ask jaehyun mark replies.
and then two minutes later. he said yes
donghyuck raises his phone towards his friends. “we’re going.”
his friends cheer.
donghyuck texts mark back. thanksss
see you there 😊
☁
the party is, as all university parties are, a mess. he doesn’t recognize half the people attending, and the very few he does are too drunk to recognize him. his friends stick together for the first twenty minutes, but after that they mostly scatter around.
renjun stays by his side, mostly only because he despises parties in general, but donghyuck appreciates the company anyway. they sit on the couch and make fun of the drunk students around them for a while, before renjun goes to leave for the bathroom and doesn’t come back.
in his absence, donghyuck takes out his phone and scrolls aimlessly through his messages to not look awkward as fuck sitting there all by himself. mark’s last message i still amongst those at the top, and he stares at the dumb smiley face for a few seconds. he hasn’t seen mark yet, as the other had not been at their apartment when he went back to change. he also hasn’t seen jaehyun, either, even though this is literally his party, but he can’t blame either of them, for there are way too many people here.
another message comes in just as he’s about to put his phone away again. it’s his mother, sending yet another picture from his sister’s play. he sighs and closes the messaging app. ever since their phone call his mother has been sending him so many pictures he feels guilty for even mentioning being upset about it. he should have kept his mouth shut, because now his mother feels bad for making him feel excluded, and if she feels bad, he feels bad. he feels childish again; like a toddler throwing a tantrum because his parents aren’t paying him enough attention.
not really feeling in the mood for the funky music anymore, he leaves the living room and moves onto the terrace, thinking fresh air might do him good.
sliding the terrace door close after him, he moves to a spot with no people around, leaning against the brick wall. it’s not even eleven yet, but he already wants to go home, regretting having come in the first place. his friends certainly are capable of having fun without him.
“do you want a cigarette?” a voice says and donghyuck jumps, not expecting anyone next to him.
he turns around and comes face to face with a man, slightly older than him by a few years at most. he’s holding a pack of cigarettes in one hand, and an already lit one in the other one.
“well?” he’s still holding the pack towards him and donghyuck thinks about it for a second. he’s only smoked like twice in his life before, both times at parties, and not really seriously at that. and while he’s never really seen the appeal behind them, he finds himself grabbing one anyway. he puts the thing between his fingers and patiently waits as the guy lights it with a red zippo.
carefully, he takes a drag. he’s pretty sure he’s doing it wrong, since all he feels is smoke in his mouth and as he’s puffing the smoke back out, he’s not really feeling any different. at least he’s not coughing his lungs out, so there’s that.
the guy keeps watching him, and then he chuckles.
“you need to inhale it, like into your lungs.”
the guy takes another drag himself and then purposefully makes a big deal of pulling his chest up as he inhales smoke. “like this,” he says and releases the grey smoke back out.
donghyuck tries imitating him, and this time he can actually feel the smoke finding its way into his body. still, he’s not really enjoying it, but he’s not hating it either.
when he releases the smoke, the guy nods.
“yep,” he says, weirdly proud for someone who’s just taught someone the art of smoking.
donghyuck still hasn’t said anything, but he can feel the other’s eyes on him as they continue to lean against the wall.
“you’re mark’s roommate, right?”
donghyuck frowns. he assumed that they were strangers, but now that he’s looking at the other man again, as carefully as he can in the barely lit terrace, he can see that the other one looks indeed familiar. maybe mark had brought him over once or twice.
“yeah,” he agrees. “do you know mark?”
“sure do,” the other declares cheerfully. “my name’s yuta. me and mark sometimes play together.”
“play?” donghyuck wonders. “like video games?”
donghyuck knows for a fact that mark sucks at video games, and back in high school it would take forever to convince him to come over to play a few rounds.
“no,” yuta chuckles. it’s a dark and rusty sound, and by now he’s sure it comes from all the smoking, if the fact that he’s lighting his second cigarette in five minutes is anything to go by. “instruments. the guitar. piano. whatever.”
“oh.”
he lamely realises that he’s not sure where mark disappears to, whenever he’s not at work or class. maybe he’s out there playing in a band, for all he knows.
“mark is good at that,” he tells him.
yuta looks at him carefully. “have you heard him play?”
only like a million times, he doesn’t say. he wonders if the other one is aware of how long he has actually known mark. that they were friends before they were roommates.
“yeah,” is all donghyuck says, in the end.
“mark is upstairs, if you wanna go say hi,” yuta takes another drag, before stubbing his cigarette out on the brick wall behind them. he dusts off his pants. “i’m gonna go up there myself.”
donghyuck watches his own cigarette burn down slowly, the red rip moving down for a millimetre each second.
“no,” he mumbles. “i’ll see him later, anyway.”
he suddenly feels so out of place it makes his stomach churn. the desire to go home and bury himself into his blankets overwhelms any other feeling.
yuta shrugs and makes his way towards the terrace door.
“it was nice to meet you,” he says and disappears inside.
donghyuck stands there for another few minutes, watching his cigarette burn out, before he drops it on the ground, stubbing it out with his worn out sneakers.
he goes home.