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“...Sorry, what?”
Maybe he heard Johnny wrong.
Mark physically shakes his head to clear it like people do in movies. It always seems to do something for them, magically jolt them out of whatever haze they’re swimming in and bring them back down from the clouds, but Hollywood’s long been full of dirty liars because the continuous back-and-forth jolt just serves to make him nauseous for a few miserable seconds.
The room spins around him. And, worse, Johnny’s last words still ring in his ears when Mark’s internal compass rights itself again.
“You heard me,” Johnny says.
Yeah, he sure did. Mark tries to contain his answering laugh so he doesn’t sound like the Joker had ill-fated offspring with a hyena. He slouches back against the counter, affecting level-headedness.
“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t listening.”
Johnny’s leaning his own back against the island in the middle of his kitchen, arms crossed as he stares Mark down. His t-shirt strains under the tight stance he’s adopted in the wake of Mark’s confusion, giving Mark a nice little gun show. The weight of his attention is intense, always has been. Mark preferred how he was standing thirty seconds ago, busy chopping fruit with his back to Mark and pecs sadly out of sight, and not staring at Mark like he’s just supposed to believe that Johnny, what—
“I like you,” Johnny repeats. “That’s what I said. You listening this time?”
That.
So casual. Grocery lists, navigation instructions, choreography directions, and romantic confessions are not meant to be read aloud in the same tone. This is something that Johnny should at least have the emotional intelligence to understand. The guy posts SZA lyrics on his private IG story and did theatre in high school, like, he should know.
Mark doesn’t think he can be blamed for floundering a bit in the face of Johnny’s blunt revelation. “Like, as in… like,” he says. “Like, like?”
Johnny cocks his head. He’s twirling the knife in his hands and Mark tries to ignore how it makes his dick twitch. “How many different interpretations do you think there are?”
“Probably a lot,” Mark mutters. “But I guess I get the point.” Impressive that his words are coming out in real, albeit short sentences. Johnny has feelings for him. He could scream his returned emotion back and it would sound more like incomprehensible alien wailing than anything resembling human language. He runs a hand through his hair just to give himself something to do and watches Johnny track the motion. “Well,” he decides. “Obviously I like you too.”
The subtle tension in Johnny’s shoulders deflates like a balloon. He turns back around and scrapes the strawberries he was cutting into a little tupperware container. When the lid snaps into place, he tucks it in the fridge and bodies the door shut behind him, going back to dump the cutting board and knife in the sink. “Right,” he says, laughing. “Good. I was hoping. Obviously, he says.”
“So you’re serious-serious?” Mark checks. He rests an elbow on the counter behind him, watching Johnny scrub the cutting board down. “You’re not kidding around? Cause this is going on a bit long to be one of your stupid jokes.”
Johnny cuts him a look over his shoulder as he dries his hands off with a dish towel, eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Mark.”
“Right, right,” Mark rushes to say. That was dumb. “I know that, I just—it’s kinda sudden? And out of nowhere? And I had no idea you thought of me like that? And it doesn’t make much sense?” His voice lilts up at the end of each sentence and turns them into questions.
All he had been thinking about before Johnny dropped the bomb was how nice it was to have the day off and how hard this nap he was about to take was gonna hit, and how good Johnny’s shoulders looked in his tight white t-shirt as he flexed holding the knife, and how Mark was sweltering in his sweater but it gave him the allusion of hiding so he kept it on despite the thermostat in Johnny’s apartment probably reading well over twenty-three degrees—and then, nothing.
Johnny’s voice. Johnny’s words. I like you. Mark repeating them back. I like you too. Obviously. Aw, hell.
“Like, why now?” Mark finishes.
His entire worldview is in the process of shifting, thank you very much. He came over to Johnny’s to steal some day-old kimchi out of his fridge and curl up in in his giant bed, sleep the afternoon away where no one else could bother him, and probably wake up to Johnny stroking his hair and telling him it’s time for dinner. There was no warning that his most secret of desires was about to come true, and without much of a thought spared for finesse to boot.
“Is it stupid of me to say I had a dream about this?” Johnny’s laugh is a touch self-deprecating. “Like, seriously. I dreamt about us, together, and it really meant something to me. I wanted to tell you.”
“Oh,” Mark breathes. Astrology stuff, right, he’s had to learn to be good at this. It helps with the fans and Yuta and Renjun. And Jeno, as much as the man likes to pretend otherwise. “That’s not stupid, hyung. Tell me about it.”
“It was after the group disbanded, or maybe during the upcoming hiatus,” Johnny says. He’s looking at Mark, but he’s also looking right through him. He sounds wistful. “We had an apartment in Jeju or Carolina or somewhere with a really nice beach, I don’t know. The details aren’t clear. I just remember waking up next to you and seeing your face and smelling the sea breeze and not having anywhere we needed to be and thinking, wow. I’m happy.” He stops talking and takes Mark’s breath with him. “I woke up before I could tell you, so I thought I’d tell you now. Here. I don’t know. It’s dumb, like I said.”
That answers one of his questions. “That sounds really nice, hyung. Thank you for telling me,” Mark says, honest. But the fact remains that he can’t comprehend it. “But… me, really? Not even trying to be insecure or anything, for real! Just… me?”
“Of course it’s you, Mark,” Johnny laughs, in that almost-mocking way of his. He appears more sure of himself now that he knows Mark reciprocates his feelings. “Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know,” Mark says. “Gigi.”
“That was two years ago.”
Mark knows that. Mark also knows how to hold grudges and that had been a particularly nasty one, though he was sure Johnny was unaware of the reason why. “And Jaehyun?” That, too.
“Jaehyun’s been emotionally unavailable since Tzuyu. You know that.” Johnny is still smiling but it’s starting to become strained, dwindling thinner by the second. “Do you want me to say it in English?” Mark doesn’t remember when they slipped into Korean. Conversations with them range from sentence to sentence variation to whole paragraphs slipping by in one language unnoticed. “Of course it’s you, Mark. No one else.”
His name sounds harsher in English. There’s something off-putting about the hollow quality it has, the unpleasant twist of Johnny’s lip corners when he finishes speaking. Mark’s usually so good at making him laugh that he never has to see the downward tint to his mouth.
“What about Jaemin?” Mark asks, a last ditch attempt.
There’s that laugh. Thank God. Johnny tinkles with it, leaning back against the counter in his glee, and all the air seems to sweep back into the room at once. Mark didn’t even realise it had left.
“If anything, I should be worried about Jaemin with you,” Johnny giggles, childlike in his amusement.
It hits Mark, then, really fucking hits him.
Johnny keeps acknowledging whatever this is. He doesn’t back down every time Mark presses him for more, reaffirms his feelings for Mark upon cue. He’s adamant that it’s not a joke, and God help him, Mark believes it. This level of psychological warfare is so twisted that not even Donghyuck would employ it… most likely.
No, the honesty in Johnny’s voice is clear in each word, and it terrifies the fuck out of him.
Johnny likes him back. The minutes keep ticking by.
“So you really…” Mark waves a hand to encompass the space between them, all the things both said and unspoken.
The last nail clicks in Mark’s coffin when Johnny sighs. “Yes, Mark. I really.”
“Oh.”
Neither of them move, or say anything else.
Johnny crosses his arms, but the patient look in his eye belies the frustrated twist to his mouth. He’s got a red stain beneath the collar of his shirt and his hair is a bird’s nest of tangles. He’s all Mark wants. Mark kicks a foot up against the cabinet and tries to make sense of the mess in his head enough to decide on his next course of action.
“You know, I get so amazed and impressed when you’re up on stage accepting all those awards.” Johnny breaks the silence out of nowhere. He isn’t making any sense, but Mark doesn’t have time to do more than furrow his brow before Johnny straightens up and keeps talking. “But I also feel left behind sometimes, if that makes sense?” His gaze grates on Mark’s skins like it always does, even more so with strange, newfound intensity. “You were once this bumbling kid, so unsure of yourself but so eager to be there, always trailing after me. It was cute. You had this raw excitement that you never really find in the industry anymore.”
Mark opens his mouth to say something, anything, but his throat just clicks like he swallowed a handful of extra pointy nails.
“And now you’re a superstar,” Johnny says. He takes a step closer to Mark, and then another one. “Mark Lee.” They’re still speaking in English—the soft quality to his name must be a trick of Mark’s brain. “But I take one look at you right now and I still see that unsure, scared kid. Why are you scared? It’s just me.”
“Because it’s you,” Mark says. It bursts out of him, desperate. Johnny stops short at his words, but resumes his path towards Mark after a second. “Johnny, it’s you, you have to know—I mean, you have to know.”
Johnny doesn’t catch his meaning. “One of the things I love about you is how open your mind is, but it’s like that only applies to things other than yourself. You can’t have control over everything in your life, dude. You have to let go sometimes and take a chance. Take a risk.”
One of the things I love about you. Mark can’t get a deep enough breath in, can’t quite dispel the ache in his chest, can’t quite ignore the rest of his words even if that makes his mind sing. Johnny won’t stop knocking him out with his unfiltered thoughts, unexpected and sweet and everything Mark has craved to hear for so long that he doesn’t even consciously remember when it started.
He startles when he realises Johnny is right in front of him, having crossed the rest of the distance while he was stuck in his head. Mark shrinks back against the counter. He can feel Johnny’s phantom touch like a backhanded slap.
“You like me too,” Johnny accuses.
“I do,” Mark says. Heart in his throat.
“Then why, Mark?” Johnny looms above him. “Why can’t you let this be easy?”
Why, why, why. Mark has a million reasons why. He pushes forward and kisses Johnny before he can get started on the first one.
Johnny crumples in on him like Mark took his knees out. He curls into Mark’s body and slips one hand under his chin to keep their mouths together, threading the other through Mark’s beltloop on his jeans and tugging him flush. The counter jabs into Mark’s back unpleasantly, but he can’t be fucked to focus on that right now. Johnny’s thigh dips between his every couple of seconds when Johnny angles his head for each slide, and his tongue brushes Mark’s bottom lip until he opens up and lets him in, and then they’re really kissing.
Johnny tastes like decaffeinated coffee and buttercream frosting, such a disgusting, stark contrast between the two that it should have Mark shuddering in disgust, pushing Johnny away to go brush his teeth before they canoodle.
Mark sucks harder at his tongue.
The buttercream must have been from a cupcake, something sweet for a quick snack around midday, in celebration of having the day off from work. There’s nothing Mark used to love more than cheating on his diet with Johnny. They’d sneak out of the old dorms to go get pizza or jjachigye or dakbal, or fish and chips from some dinky little tourist trap, or birria tacos when this specific family from Mexico would set up shop at the market downtown. Mark wasted many a lazy Saturday by the river with Johnny stuffing his face with carbs, or listening to Donghyuck and Chenle yap on a blanket spread out on the grass, texting Johnny a picture of his meal and relishing in the 👍👍 Looking good, champ he received in response.
The sweet ache of Johnny’s flavour in his mouth throws him back in those memories now. He’s almost wild where he scrabbles at Johnny’s lower back, arms tucked around his waist to keep him close.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” Mark wordvomits as soon as Johnny lets him up for a breath.
Johnny’s laugh shakes his bones when he presses it to Mark’s face, wet mouth making a mess of his cheeks as he drags his face across Mark’s. He retreats far back enough to cradle Mark’s face in his hands and stare inquisitively down at him, still close enough to feel his breath on the spit on Mark’s cheek. “Is this you giving in? Making it easy?”
Instinct flares in sunspots along Mark’s shoulders, telling him to fight back. Johnny likes to hunt him for sport—if Mark doesn’t keep up some sort of resistance, he’ll be eaten alive. But Johnny’s lips and tongue are so gentle on his skin, his hands are so warm on Mark’s face and hips, his words are so compelling in Mark’s ear, that he just can’t bring himself to.
Mark doesn’t know if he deserves something so good in his life, but he’s sure as hell not about to let it slip through his fingers. He made up his mind about that. If Johnny wants him, in whatever form or shape that may be, then he’ll provide. At least until the ground gives way underneath his feet and everything collapses beneath him in pieces, he’ll give himself to Johnny.
“Yeah,” Mark says, and tilts his head back, stretches his neck for Johnny to see his mouth fall open, lips parted, ready for the taking. “Yeah, hyung. I’m yours.”
Again, the edge of the countertop is hell on his back, but it’s worth it for how Johnny’s eyes go all big and round and he bites out, “Shit,” before leaning in.
He’s kissing Mark a second later. This time, Mark melts into it and tries to turn his brain off, switching to autopilot as he bites Johnny’s tongue and shivers under his hands. Johnny’s grip drops to his waist, tightening once as the only warning before Johnny bends his knees and lifts Mark up onto the counter behind him.
Mark shrieks in surprise, but Johnny squeezes back in where he was before. Both of Mark’s knees around his sides, hands smoothing up Mark’s neck, dipping in to slide their lips together. Johnny eats Mark noises out of his mouth as he kisses him and pets over his skin. It’s so much better like this Mark could cry, with his legs wrapped around Johnny’s back and Johnny’s hands running marathons up and down his sides.
They’re moving fast, but it feels so freaking right. If Johnny feels the same about him, if he feels even a fraction of the amount of obsession Mark has for him—well, they’ve wasted enough time already.
It’s a miracle that Johnny seems to feel the same. “Mind if I take your shirt off?” He checks between kisses, so sweet.
Mark mutters his vague assent, something like you first, and almost gives himself a concussion bonking his head against the microwave, scrambling to get a good view as Johnny starts to tug it off. He listened to Mark’s words despite Mark not even knowing what he was saying. Is it possible to have a kink for someone being considerate? ‘Cause Mark’s got that, he’s pretty sure.
“You’re so tense,” Johnny whispers against Mark’s mouth. He crowded back into Mark’s space the minute he was topless, running hands over Mark’s large sweater. His fingers, when they disappear under fabric and brush against Mark’s quivering abdomen, are electric. “If you changed your mind—”
“I didn’t,” Mark hurries to say. “Um, I really didn’t, promise. I just—”
“Just what?”
Johnny pulls Mark’s sweater over his torso and past his mop of hair, leaving him blinking owlishly at Johnny through the strands when he’s shirtless. It’s like Johnny was simply waiting for Mark’s assured consent in order to undress him as fast as possible.
He keeps taking Mark at his word, trusting him to know his own limits and make proper decisions for himself. Treating Mark like an adult, an equal. Not like how the Johnny of a couple years prior would have treated him. This Johnny has matured, finally, both in age and in how he carries himself. They’re all getting older. Johnny comes at Mark like he knows what he wants. Mark certainly does.
“Just didn’t expect you to be like this,” Mark finishes.
“Like how?”
“So…” Mark searches for a comparable adjective. “Appreciative of me.”
Johnny’s staring at his unimpressive, wiry chest, probably judging the muscle he’s worked so hard to curate in the gym. He promised he’d try to reveal more of himself when he got older, but his body is still nothing compared to Johnny or Jeno or Jaehyun or Jaemin. Maybe he should change his name to begin with J and start there.
Except the Johnny in front of him still isn’t the one in Mark’s head from the past ten years, it’s the real life one. The one who seems wise for his years that keeps surprising Mark again and again. This Johnny whispers, “Why not? You’re beautiful,” as he runs his hands over Mark’s stomach, and Mark knows that whatever he thought he was prepared for, it wasn’t this.
“Stop, man,” Mark laughs, uneasy.
“Why?”
“Stop asking why!”
Johnny hums, and he drops his head on Mark’s shoulder, body slumping over. Even with Mark sitting on the counter like this, Johnny is still taller than him. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Mark can’t see his face. He’d bet his left testicle that Johnny is grinning against his shoulder.
He sighs. He didn’t come to Johnny’s apartment with the intention of Johnny discovering his deepest, darkest secret and then trying to pick apart his psyche. Mark doesn’t get many days off anymore—he’s tired, he wants to go back to making out with Johnny, he kind of wants to get off, and, mostly, he just wants a damn nap. That’s why he came over here.
“Are we gonna fuck, or what, because you’re being very confusing about everything right now.”
Johnny freezes up and draws back to give Mark an incredulous look. His cheeks are tinted the slightest bit pink, gotcha. Mark said the words all grumpily with this exact intention, but the way his eyes drop to Mark’s mouth as his own falls open, tongue swiping his upper lip, is gratifying.
“Mark Lee,” Johnny murmurs. “You never fail to surprise me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes, Mark, Jesus,” Johnny says. He shakes Mark like a misbehaving dog, and cuffs him under the chin when he releases him and stands up straight. “There’s your answer. Happy?”
“Oh.” Mark sits up straighter, no longer leaning against the cabinet. He doesn’t miss the way Johnny’s gaze falls to his nipples on display. “Okay.”
Johnny has a confusing little smile on his lips as he backs away and leads Mark off the counter, bullying him through the kitchen and into his room.
Johnny’s bedroom is honestly a fair size for being part of a three-room unit in downtown Seoul, shared with Taeyong and Jaehyun when they’re not off visiting family on off days like today. Two cedar dressers line one wall with a California King taking up the rest of the space. There’s a desk with a PC shoved into the corner and some other scattered items, but Mark’s been here enough times that he ignores the mess in favour of letting Johnny gather him in his arms as soon as the door shuts behind them.
“You’re so infuriating,” Johnny says into Mark’s ear, swooping down to give him a kiss on the nose. Quick, teasing, infuriating like he’s accusing Mark of being.
He backs away from Johnny’s searching touch, escaping across the room to his giant bed.
Mark flops down onto Johnny’s Lyocell fiber sheets and spreads his hands out. They’re compatible sleepers, Mark’s happy to report. They both prefer to have the softest vegan silk sheets and a cooling gel topper underneath, sleek pillowcases to rest their faces on at night. Mark slept on threadbare cotton sheets that he’d owned for years before Johnny forcefully changed his sleeping style.
Johnny had plopped down on Mark’s bed in the dorms back when he shared with their manager, and wiped his hand that had just touched the sheets down Mark’s arms in mock disgust. “Dude,” Johnny groaned, and whipped out his phone to show Mark a TikTok. “You need to get a different type of fabric than cotton for your sheets. Don’t you know about dust mites?” And that had been that.
Napping in Johnny-scented sheets with his space projector and two separate air cleaners chugging in the corner—a humidifier and a purifier, he wasn’t messing around—was an all-day event. Mark had been very excited on the drive over. He’s even more excited now knowing he’ll be getting something he’s wanted from Johnny for years but is still not convinced is actually happening.
. Mark flattens his palms and spreads his legs out too for good measure. He tilts his head back, watching as Johnny makes a beeline for him. His thighs shut around Johnny’s the second Johnny comes within range, ensnared in Mark’s orbit.
Johnny’s hands cup his chin and he bends down for another kiss, soul-searching. Mark’s starting to suspect how much Johnny must like this position. He keeps finding himself under Johnny and leaning up like this, with strong palms holding his jaw in place and Johnny’s tongue exploring his mouth.
“Can you fuck me?” Mark asks quietly when Johnny allows him to catch his breath.
His suspicions are furthered when Johnny’s hips stutter into his frame, hunched over so when his hard dick bumps into Mark’s, Mark can feel every centimeter. Johnny likes the idea of that.
“Every time I think I’m prepared for what you might say to me, I’m wrong.”
“‘s that a yes?” Mark asks.
Johnny laughs, quiet. “Yes, Mark. Always yes.”
Mark shuffles up the bed, shimmying on his back away from Johnny’s groping hands and mouth. Johnny’s hands settle on his waistband instead, unbuttoning his jeans and sliding his belt off to drop on the floor as he stares at Mark.
“Toss me your lube,” Mark says when it doesn’t look like Johnny’s about to spring into action.
“Right to it, then?” Johnny wiggles an eyebrow. Just one, which is annoying. Both would’ve been cute. He swears softly. “Shit, ah. It’s in the dresser. Give me a second.”
Mark smiles. Alright, maybe one wiggling eyebrow can be cute when Johnny looks so embarrassed by the words he’s saying. “Not getting much action, I see,” he teases.
“Shut up,” Johnny grumbles. “My last ex was a woman, there wasn’t much of a need for it.”
He crawls off the bed and sets across the room, back muscles rippling with his stride. His jeans sag low on his hipbones without his belt, but Mark is only half-focusing on how sexy he is.
Johnny’s parting sentence pangs the wrong way in Mark’s head. Obviously Johnny has had exes. That’s part of the whole problem—Mark is so not his type, just going based off the people Johnny’s dated and been in love with. Mark knows he’s been with others. He’s been right by Johnny’s side the entire time, and Johnny’s been by his side as he went on various dates, throughout his entire four and seven month relationship failures with Yunjin and Donghyuck respectively.
Mark makes a noncommittal noise. “Of course you wouldn’t need it then. I’m sure you had no problem getting her wet, making her squirt.”
Johnny’s head snaps toward him in a heartbeat, but Mark’s already pushing his pants down his hips, turning onto his knees towards the end to kick them down the bed. He leans down onto his chest and—there’s no other word for it—presents himself for Johnny, legs open wide and ass on display through his boxer briefs.
“Mark,” Johnny groans, and it sounds punched out of him. It’s not even ten seconds before Mark feels a bottle drop onto the bed behind him and hands on his ass, petting over his underwear, a big body settling against his. “I swear,” Johnny says. Hushed. “Your ass is so freaking big, it almost makes me want to ignore you trying to manipulate me.”
The arousal whirring around in Mark’s stomach kicks up a proper tornado, and he arches his back against Johnny hovering above him. Johnny kneewalks further over him and blankets Mark’s body. He must have removed his jeans when Mark couldn’t see him but not his underwear, and Mark feels Johnny’s hard cock slide between his cheeks, stopped by two flimsy layers of fabric.
Johnny takes his time dragging his nose down Mark’s nape and the line of his bare shoulders, and Mark has to rut his hips back a few times to get Johnny moving. Instead of Johnny tearing his underwear down and shoving two lubed-up fingers in right away, Mark’s disoriented when Johnny just nudges his sides until he flops onto his back.
“I wanna do it like this,” Johnny says. He shoves a soft pillow under Mark’s hips, tapping the side until Mark shuffles the way he wants him to. “I want to see your face when you feel me for the first time.”
It’s hard to cling to the facade Mark is so desperately grasping at, faced with all the honesty Johnny is throwing his way, the earnestness. “Alright,” he says. He’d give Johnny a whole hell of a lot. “Whatever you want.”
Johnny exhales and leans down to catch his mouth. Mark keeps his neck extended so Johnny can lick up any errant wetness left from slobbering all over him, tongue dipping in and out of Mark’s lips like he wants to tattoo himself there.
As soon as his mouth is his own again, Mark slides his boxer briefs down his hips and watches Johnny do the same, breath catching in his throat when he gets an eyeful of Johnny’s cock for the first time. He always knew Johnny was big. That’s just, like, common knowledge. But to know it from quick glimpses changing in green rooms and showering next to each other and the way Johnny carries himself, his general fucking demeanour, and then to know it from being spread out under him and prepared to take it, are two very different things.
Jesus, Mark thinks. He’s going to break me.
“You don’t know what I want,” Johnny says.
“I think I can take a wild guess,” Mark says.
Johnny laughs. Then he sighs, and levels his face with Mark’s collarbone. Mark pets his hair, kind of confused. “Every time,” he says, quiet.
Mark doesn’t have time to question the statement before Johnny spreads his cheeks and starts to work a finger inside, wiggling past his rim. He shakes out the tension in his shoulders and tries to settle into it. Johnny presses in a second, nudging Mark’s thighs further apart until he gets frustrated and simply picks up one of Mark’s legs and places it over his shoulder, like Mark’s body was a minor inconvenience for him to fix at will.
Johnny’s fingers quiver inside him and Mark’s hips roll down to meet them, turned on beyond belief. This is the hottest thing to ever happen to him. The hottest thing to happen ever, maybe, in all of history.
The number one hard and fast rule Mark established for himself early in his career is that he wouldn’t fantasise about his members. Brought about after thinking one too many times about shutting Donghyuck up in some way other than just yelling at him, or wrestling him into submission. Idol life is safer this way. No matter how much Yuta grabs him and throws him around or Chenle digs teasing fingers into his sides to tickle him, or Jaemin rubs his neck one too many times in public to pass off as normal, or Donghyuck’s entire existence—Mark keeps a line in the sand between him and everybody else.
Skinship stops when Mark crawls into his bed at night and jerks off to Dev Patel or Michael B. Jordan or whoever, as long as the object of his fantasies isn’t a coworker. The rule shifted when he was actually with Donghyuck, for as brief a time that had been, but overall Mark has kept his toe mostly in line.
Johnny’s been the exception since day one. No one else in the world has caused him to ignore his own rules like Johnny.
In the back of his head, he always imagined Johnny to be a dominating, commanding lover. Looking down on his partner with an untouchable smirk on his pretty lips, right there but still so out of reach, on another plane of existence.
Mark doesn’t particularly know why his brain decided to latch onto that perception of a man who likes to play Hello Kitty dress up with Yuta and whose blush didn’t leave his face for six hours after the first time Mark picked him up princess-style at practise, but it is what it is. And while there is an element of Mark’s ill-conceived fantasy at play—the assured way he manhandles Mark’s legs around, the proprietary fingers he thrusts into Mark’s hole, four of them now, thumb teasing Mark’s rim until he’s moaning—it’s not overbearing enough that it suffocates Mark, or makes him reconsider. Johnny’s hands on his body could never be anything but kind.
Mark’s reminded of the careful way Johnny asked why can’t you let this be easy, and understands now. He can.
Johnny doesn’t fight him when he draws him up to meet Mark’s mouth. He pulls his lube-wet hand out of Mark’s ass and wraps it around Mark’s neck instead. His other hand keeps him propped up above Mark, shoved into the mattress by his shoulder. One of his legs kicks Mark’s up so he can wedge himself in between. The bottle of lube lies against Johnny’s hand. Mark leans into the wet grip on his neck and relaxes into the bed, lets Johnny settle down and smear the lube all around his chest, frot their dicks together. They’re already messy. Mark thinks it makes this feel more real.
“Johnny,” he says.
Johnny doesn’t shake his head to clear it like Mark had earlier, but he does blink a few more times than would be considered normal and comes out of it looking like he just got off the battlefield, not like a guy who’s about to stick their dick in someone else.
“Johnny,” Mark says again. Johnny stops digging his thumb in Mark’s sternum and pushes himself up on the bed enough to look into Mark’s eyes, ignoring how his dick slides against Mark’s in the most enticing brush possible. “Do you want to get a condom?”
Johnny’s slowly drying hand slides down his chest, considering as he passes by Mark’s nipple. Mark holds his breath—but Johnny seems to come to a decision and sits back on his heels, shifting up and off of Mark to do it. Taking all that beautiful body heat and closeness and proximity away. What the hell? Mark almost whimpers from the loss. He expected Johnny to hem and haw for a second before taking Mark raw, not to actually be a gentleman and consider his question.
“I mean,” Johnny starts, then clears his throat, oblivious to Mark’s turmoil. He reaches for the abandoned bottle and squirts some on his hand. “That’s a very ambiguous way to ask that question.”
He supposes that’s what he gets for breaking his own no fantasy rule. Fantasy Johnny would be balls-deep in him right now, teeth set in Mark’s nape as he growled dirty nothings into Mark’s ear and his knot caught on Mark’s rim—okay, some of the fantasies had gotten a little wild, but Mark refuses to half-ass anything in his life, even if it’s something asinine like breaking the rules—but real Johnny cares about his feelings. Real Johnny wants to ensure his comfort.
Mark ignores both how mushy that makes his heart and how his dick gives a rather obvious twitch against his stomach. He could throttle Johnny. He could cook Johnny a shitty meal and handfeed it to him while sitting in Johnny’s lap. Mostly, he just wants to get fucked.
“That was the point,” Mark whines.
“You’re so annoying,” Johnny says, and he sounds fond. He strokes his cock with lube like he wants to put on a show. “If you mean do I want to get a condom, the answer’s no. If you mean am I willing to get a condom, the answer’s yes. You just have to tell me.”
“I could throttle you,” Mark says pleasantly. Honesty is key, is what Johnny’s telling him.
Johnny just grins like that’s what he wanted to hear and finally, finally crawls back over Mark. “As you wish,” Johnny says, and he’s stretching Mark’s thigh back against his stomach and guiding his dick inside Mark’s hole raw before Mark can do much more than open his mouth.
Mark’s jaw stays slacks for a good thirty seconds, hangs unhinged as Johnny feeds him his cock, and his tongue would be peeking out the side if he had a shred less control.
Johnny doesn’t pause once until his balls are flush with Mark’s taint. "You okay?" he pants, hunched in a semi-circle over Mark's frame.
It takes more effort than Mark can remember exerting on anything else in recent memory, but he latches onto Johnny's biceps and tries to adjust. "Fine," he says after an unclear amount of time, spent digging his nails into Johnny's skin until it fluttered and tensed under his hands. He almost whines at how weak it comes out. "You can—Jesus, you can move."
Johnny breathes a sigh of relief and obeys, small rocking motions gradually giving way to firmer thrusts. The push has Mark gasping under him, filled to the brim. He loses the ability to conceptualise the sheer amount of pleasure Johnny is wreaking on his body. It's easier to coast alongside the constant, insistent stimulation and just let Johnny work.
Mark tries to remember what breathing was like before there was a literal battering ram nudging his intestines around, but it’s like trying to recall a dream after you’ve woken up. All he knows now are the tiny, sucking breaths he can eke in and out, the sensation of Johnny carving out a space for himself in his body.
“It’s kinda crazy how good you feel,” Johnny says out of nowhere, so non-sequitur that it hurts, and Mark laughs which makes him laugh in turn, until they’re both shaking together more than Johnny is fucking him.
Mark winds his arms around his neck and back and pulls him down, closer. Johnny goes willingly. He slides one hand to Mark’s thigh to keep him open around him, wedges the other beneath Mark’s nape to tug at his hair and kiss his forehead.
“I know,” Mark whispers back. He wiggles his eyebrows at Johnny and watches him do it right back. Yeah, it’s cute.
They keep a steady rhythm like that. Mark’s lived this obsession for long enough to know Johnny’s gym routine by heart, long hours spent slogging away with their trainer, and he finally gets to reap the rewards. Johnny’s thrusts don’t falter as the minutes take their time wrecking Mark’s body, silently agreeing again that the pleasure Johnny’s giving him is insane.
Johnny’s cock feels so big inside of him it’s almost daunting, every time he pulls out and Mark feels that gut-wrenching emptiness right before Johnny slams back home.
“Don’t stop,” Mark pants. He’s not delirious, but it’s a close thing. He fights through the immense arousal to try and stop being such a freaking rag doll. Johnny deserves a bed partner of equal caliber. He clings to Johnny and starts fucking his hips up and down against his thrusts. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop, don’t—”
“Why would I stop?”
Mark puffs out an undignified breath. Johnny’s nailing his prostate every time, now that he’s pushing back against him. “Well, at least stop laughing at me.”
Johnny laughs again and proves Mark’s point right there. “How can I?” He sits back on his haunches, almost pulling completely out of Mark to do it before he yanks him forward, pressing one of Mark’s thighs down on his stomach again. The stretch must give Johnny the pressure that he likes. Mark’s hands fly up to grab at the pillow as his leg knocks against his dick, messing against the pool of precum leaking out there. He can’t push back against Johnny’s thrusts anymore. “You’re just so cute. It’s funny.”
Cute. Mark wrinkles his nose, even as Johnny keeps rolling his hips, nailing his prostate. “Don’t call me cute, make me cum. I can’t do anything like this.”
“Cute,” Johnny says again, grinning wide. He palms his hands down Mark’s legs and reinforces his grip before shoving Mark against the bed, swooping back in close to hit him deep. It half-dislodges the pillow under his hips. “And so demanding. I like you so much, Markie.”
Mark feels warm from the tips of his fingers down to his feet, toes curling in the bedsheets next to Johnny’s hairy legs, intertwined as Johnny fucks him into the mattress. He throws his arms around Johnny’s neck and arches into him, nose smushing against his forehead. The pillow underneath his hips slips away and falls off the bed but Mark doesn’t feel a noticeable difference. They’re plastered body to body now anyway, there’s no need to worry about the perfect angle, only about getting wrapped up in each other.
“Like you too, hyung,” Mark gasps. Johnny doesn’t have as much leverage this close, hands busy with Mark’s legs and elbows barely keeping him up enough to grind down. It’s perfect. Mark bites Johnny’s temple, just because he can. “Hyung. Johnny-hyung.”
Johnny moans, deep and drawn out.
“Johnny-hyung,” Mark repeats, a bit more insistent. “Hyung, it’s so—hyung.”
“Yeah, Mark, I know, you—” Johnny says. “Shit. You feel so fucking good like this.”
Mark squeezes his eyes shut. Everything feels more visceral with one of his senses robbed from him. He focuses on the sweaty skin-on-skin drag of his cock against Johnny’s unfairly ripped abdomen, Johnny’s hot breath as he licks Mark’s ear, slimy, the steady uh uh uh grunts Johnny’s letting out, maybe quiet enough that he thinks Mark can’t hear. Mark hears just fine.
His orgasm is almost an afterthought.
Distantly, Mark feels his cock spurting between their stomachs and pleasure turns his vision hot and blurry, but Johnny keeps going. Johnny keeps fucking him in slow grinds, endless stream of grunts unbroken by Mark reaching his edge, so it’s kind of inconsequential in the end.
Mark coming doesn’t matter unless Johnny does too, and he tightens his arms behind Johnny’s head, clenches around Johnny’s cock. Listens to Johnny’s grunts eventually stutter as he collapses into Mark’s body and fills him up. Mark imagines he can feel the physical sensation of Johnny coming inside of him, marking him as his.
The buzzing in his head doesn’t quiet with each minute that passes by. Johnny's alive and breathing into Mark’s neck, but he hasn’t moved since pumping Mark full of his cum, so Mark hasn’t either. He starts to think he’s hearing the combination of their racing heartbeats somehow. Like when Johnny whispered his affection into Mark’s ear and wrote his claim into Mark’s body, kissed a brand into his skin, he left Mark with a permanent part of himself that he won’t ever be able to chase away.
And then Johnny groans and rolls off of Mark, pulling out as he goes. It feels like he takes half of Mark’s guts with him. Mark can already sense Johnny’s cum spilling out of him onto the sheets, and knows Johnny’s gonna have a hell of a lot of laundry to do when they’re done.
He sits up and extends his biceps behind his neck, twisting his back this way and that way. All the blood rushes back to Mark’s head. The buzzing is gone. Oh.
A bit embarrassed, Mark clears his throat. Johnny only rolled far enough away to stretch out on his back, and he curls into Mark’s thigh when he hears Mark cough. He smiles against Mark’s leg, eyes closed. His face is like, four centimeters from Mark’s softening, sticky cock. The close proximity might put a hold on that softening part, though.
“Are you freaking out yet?”
Mark blinks. “What?”
“I saaaaid.” Johnny peeks one lazy eye up at Mark. He looks—satisfied. “Are you gonna freak out?”
“No.”
“No?” Johnny smiles. He shuffles on his back, still keeping his face smushed to Mark’s thigh. Mark’s heart thrums doubletime in his veins looking down at him. “Not even a little bit?”
“Not a chance,” Mark says. Maybe he should be. But Johnny’s looking at him in a way that can only be described as fond, as content, as loving, so. He’s not that scared. Johnny likes to wind him up and watch him fall, but always where he can catch him.
Johnny makes the appropriate impressed noises. “Not thinking about running out on me, either?”
Mark scoffs. He places a tentative hand in Johnny’s hair, fingers curling in and rubbing when Johnny melts into it, preening under Mark’s strokes. “Don’t tell me you kick your one night stands out before they can spend the night. That’s bad hookup etiquette, bro."
“Mark,” Johnny says. He sounds scandalised. “I’ll have you know I’ve got very good hookup etiquette. I’ve never gotten any complaints.”
“Mhm,” Mark says. “Five stars on Grindr, I’m sure.”
Johnny smiles. “I make a mean omelette in the morning. American guys love that.”
Mark smiles back. “What about Canadian guys?” He’s just so… happy.
If Johnny hadn’t made the first move, he would’ve been content to live in the shadow of his feelings for the rest of time. Whatever yearning he had for Johnny would never be more important than the fate of the group, if he wasn’t sure it was reciprocated. It’s different now. Now, Mark’s armed with the knowledge that Johnny likes him back. He doesn’t know how deep that affection runs, but again, he’s not scared. It’s obviously enough for Johnny to take a risk on and approach Mark first, so that’s enough for him.
“You’ll have to tell me tomorrow.” Johnny twists his head to the side, bumping Mark’s fingers, and presses a kiss to Mark’s thigh. Mark loves him. “But right now, you have two options.”
“Oh, word?” Mark perks up.
“One, we can go hop in the shower and I’ll clean you up before dinner, dirty boy. I can take you to the noodle place down the road once we’re done. As a date,” he clarifies. "We can discuss terms there."
Mark almost moans imagining slurping down pork noodles as Johnny asks him to be his boyfriend, then coming home to suck Johnny’s brains out through his dick after. Win-win scenario. “That sounds pretty sweet,” he says. “What’s my second choice?”
“Or,” Johnny says, smirking. “Two, I can clean you up with my tongue and eat my cum out of you until you're shaking, and we can take a nap and call for delivery later.”
“Two,” Mark says. Immediate. “Definitely two.”
Johnny laughs loudly, all high-pitched. “You didn’t even think about it!”
“I don’t care,” Mark says. He tightens his fingers in Johnny’s hair and shakes him, then lets go. “I choose option two. We can define our relationship later, I already know you like me."
Johnny’s smirk could eat Mark alive as he slides back between his thighs, but he doesn’t particularly care. That’s what he wants right now. Johnny’s tongue darts out to lick his lips as he throws Mark’s leg over his shoulder and looks up through his eyelashes, killer gaze locked on his target.
“Anything for you, baby,” Johnny says, and sets about making good on his word.