Work Text:
When Donghyuck finds out he's best friends with Spiderman, it goes like this:
He's tucked in bed, three in the morning, but wide eyed because that's what college does to you. There's a knock on his window and, at first, he dismisses it as the wind, because who in the world could be knocking on a window in a 5th floor?
But then his phone vibrates with a new notification.
lee mark: window
lee mark: now
Donghyuck blinks at his screen in confusion, kicking the blankets away from his body and springing out of bed when he processes the words. He's already complaining on his way to the window.
“Mark Lee, what the fuck are you doing?” He grabs onto his curtains, yanking them open with a hard tug. “How the hell did you get–”
His voice dies in his throat when he looks out his window and is met by two gray, impossibly big, impossibly empty eyes, surrounded by what looks like red metal. His hand trembles around the knob as he clicks it open, stepping back with unsteady feet to make room for the person that’s crouching on his windowsill.
“Please. Just, please,” a muffled voice comes from behind the mask once the person jumps into his room. His movements are smooth, but Donghyuck notices a light limp in his right leg. “Don't freak out, Hyuck,” he keeps saying, hands stretched in front of him, as if he's talking to an impressionable wild animal.
Donghyuck doesn't say anything. It isn't something they teach you in college, how to react when your best friend of three years shows up at your room clad in an iron Spiderman hero suit. He can only stand by the window and stare as Spiderman presses something on the side of his neck and his mask retreats, giving away the sharp, familiar lines of Mark's face.
Words fail him and stick like glue to the roof of his mouth as he takes in this new side of Mark standing in his room. The same room where they've hung out together countless of times before, where they've lain down together, sprawled on the floor sharing junk food, watching dumb romcoms, playing computer games, sharing bed sheets and warmth and secrets. But, apparently, not the most important ones.
“Wait,” Mark tries to hold onto his wrist to stop Donghyuck from walking away from him. But he sidesteps him and crosses the room in three fast, long steps, slapping the light switch on.
It feels like he's staring at Mark for the very first time.
Donghyuck takes a tentative step towards him, and he doesn't know what must be the look on his face, but it can't be a pretty one, because Mark shrinks into himself. He's wearing a superhero suit, Donghyuck knows he's powerful, he's seen what he can do, the powers he has, always making it into the daily news with the high number of people he saves. Still, Mark wraps his arms around his own body like an extra armor and tries to make himself small because of whatever he sees in Donghyuck's eyes.
He's still trying to decide if that's good or bad when he stops to stand in front of Mark. He lifts a hand to touch at the damaged skin of his cheek, his thumb running under a fresh cut on his cheekbone that looks like it might be infected.
“I’m sorry,” Mark whispers in the space between them. They are close, so close the tips of their feet are touching. But when Mark's hand comes up to wrap his dirty, blood stained, skin peeled fingers around Donghyuck's clean, smooth, bony wrist, it feels like they are a million miles away.
That feeling settles sore under Donghyuck's ribs. He feels it, bubbling up inside of him, as he runs his eyes all over Mark's damaged suit, his eyebrows furrowing when he sees blood leaking through the cracks of broken metal.
“My aunt. She– She doesn't know,” Mark's grip gets incredibly tight around Donghyuck's wrist, smudging fresh blood over his tan skin, so dark it almost looks black. "No one else is in Queens at the moment," Donghyuck tilts his head at that, wondering if he's talking about other superheroes. It's such a bizarre thing, his best friend fighting alongside all these strong people with made up names that look like they just jumped out of a comic book for little kids. “I can't patch all this up by myself. I didn't. Didn't know where else to go.”
Mark's voice is all wrong, pitched high in a panicked edge, something Donghyuck has never heard before. At least, not directed at him.
He twists the hand he has on Mark's cheek, dances his fingers along his nape and pulls him closer. The room smells like blood and sweat and secrets, but Mark's shoulders shag under Donghyuck's touch. The tension seems to leave his body at once and he slumps against Donghyuck's chest, his cheek fever hot against the side of his neck, getting dirt and blood all over his old pajama shirt.
Donghyuck mumbles, “I've got you,” over and over again. And that's it.
---
Except, that isn't it.
Turns out to be best friends with Spiderman isn't as cool as it sounds. It comes along with even longer sleepless nights, with lips and nails anxiously bitten raw, half moons dug on thighs as a coping mechanism. And this weird, void thing in Donghyuck's chest, pitch black and cold and swallowing all his sense of self worth whenever Mark jumps out a window to put his life at risk. And Donghyuck gets left behind, fingers peeled open almost to his knuckles.
Mark never wanted to involve him in this, he makes it clear every single time he falls onto the carpet of Donghyuck's room, dripping mud and blood and sweat everywhere. And somehow, that makes it even worse.
“You don't deserve this,” he says, sitting on the floor, propped up against the side of Donghyuck's unmade bed as he scratches at the chipped red paint of his hero suit. “I'm so, so sorry for. You know, the mess,” he stops, sniffles, tries to clean snot off his nose by rubbing it against his shoulder, but it only smears across his cheek. “If he– If he was still here, things would be better, you know? I wouldn't have had to drag you into this.”
It's always he or him or weird, long silences. It's never Iron Man or Tony or Mr. Stark. Donghyuck dared to say his name out loud once, and it turned Mark stone cold for the rest of the day.
Donghyuck doesn't understand how he didn't figure it out sooner. He doesn't know if Mark is just a really good actor or if he is a bad best friend. But Mark is cracked open, has been since that night the Stark Tower came crashing down along with everything it represented. He's twisted on the inside and it shows in his face; it shows in the stress lines that Fury's unexpected calls have stamped over his forehead, and in the grey circles bad memories and too vivid nightmares have punched under his eyes.
He wants to be there for Mark, through it all. He would've loved to be there through the beginning. He tells him so, his inexperienced fingers wrapping a bandage around Mark's calf, cut open.
“You know, maybe if you had come to me earlier, you wouldn't be such a clumsy Spidey now,” he says with half a smile. The teasing tone sounds wrong in the metallic air of the room, but that's the only way he knows how to talk to Mark. “I've always been the most sportive one, could've taught you some moves.”
And he despises the way Mark doesn't laugh, doesn't even force a smirk on his face. So different from the boy that used to sit down in this same carpet floor and burst into way too excited giggles at everything Donghyuck said, only a few months ago. A whole new person, a stranger living in a world Donghyuck can't follow.
"You gotta stay safe," is all Mark says, patting Donghyuck's thigh with gloved fingers.
And Donghyuck thinks, but what about you, who keeps you safe?
---
“Can they call you at any time?” Donghyuck asks as he checks the different brands of cereal displayed on the shelves.
Mark hums, grabbing a package of Cheerios and dumping it into the shopping cart, even though they are shopping to stock Donghyuck's fridge, not his.
“Don't you have, like, a schedule or something?” Donghyuck frowns at the chocolate cereal, the one filled in with sweet milk. But he ends up reaching for it, because it's Mark's favorite, and he's been spending almost every night on the floor of Donghyuck's bedroom, anyway.
“Do you think villains respect college schedules?” Mark's front brushes against Donghyuck's shoulder as he leans closer to the shelf, grabbing two more boxes of that tooth rotting cereal.
“You won't die killed by an evil orange monster, you'll die of diabetes,” he grabs Mark by the shoulder and drags him out of the cereal aisle. He purposely ignores the way Mark winces at the touch, his brows pinched in a scowl that screams pain. “Do they pay you, at least?”
Mark laughs, then. This tiny, breathy sound that has him staring at the floor and shaking his head. It's the first genuine thing Donghyuck has heard since those first knocks on his window, but it gets abruptly swallowed by the obnoxious ringtone of Mark's phone. The Avengers theme song, because he's unoriginal and obvious like that.
Donghyuck stands there, scowling at his shoes as Mark takes the call. He taps his foot against the white tiles impatiently, feigning indifference, even though his muscles are all tensed up like a hardwired about to snap.
When Mark ends the call and turns to look at him, Donghyuck knows something is terribly wrong in a second.
“It's, um. Not Fury, just–” Mark looks down at the screen of his phone, his head tilted to the side like a confused child. “It was Renjun, you know? From my Journalism class? Tiny smartass?” Donghyuck nods tentatively, blood running cold at the way Mark's brows lower over his wide eyes, as if he's been kicked. “He wanted to talk about Lucas. They kind of, like, got together? I introduced them to each other at this one party… The one I got so drunk I puked out the window and it hit this dude right in the head? I don't know if you remember,” he's stalling, rambling, because there's something he wants to avoid but knows he can't hide it from Donghyuck. So he waits patiently, nodding at every single one of Mark's words until he's quite ready to spit it out. “His dad... Lucas' dad, not Renjun’s. Passed away? Last night. I think. I think it might've been my fault,” his voice chips at the end.
Donghyuck knows Lucas, he's met him a bunch of times, usually over beer and cold pizza and a marathon of Stark Trek in Mark's living room. He's a tall guy that eats too many marshmallows, has chocolate milk for breakfast and smiles like his blood is made of sugar. Donghyuck has never once in his life seen him with a straight face, and the mental image of Lucas with the grin wiped off his face feels like a sharp needle digging right into his own cheeks. He can't even imagine how it feels for Mark, when they've been friends since diapers.
“Don't say that,” they are still in the middle of the cereal aisle at the convenience store next to Donghyuck's apartment building, not the best place to make a scene about supernatural deaths, where everyone knows them. “You told me the building was empty.”
“Well, apparently it wasn't!” Mark snaps, swatting away the hand Donghyuck stretched towards him. It's the first time he's been yelled at by Mark. It feels like, lately, he keeps peeling off layers of Mark he didn't know, and he isn't sure he likes them all. “I'm– Shit, I'm sorry,” Mark walks closer, drops his forehead onto Donghyuck's shoulder, his entire body shagging with defeat. “It's all my fault,” he whispers, cold as ice through the fabric of Donghyuck’s shirt.
“You didn't put the fucking bomb in the building, Mark. That was the giant orange thing,” he’s trying to sound reassuring, but there’s a knot up in his throat, squeezing at his words and making his voice come out all panicked. He slides his fingers up Mark's back, presses his hand flat between his shoulder blades to push Mark's chest against his, to make sure he doesn't come crashing down. “You did everything you could,” he mumbles, trying to show comfort through his fingertips when his words are failing him.
“Not enough,” Mark mumbles, hot and incredibly bitter over Donghyuck's collarbones. “Not enough, not enough.”
That seems to be the only thing that keeps coming out of his mouth, these days. And it mirrors the way Donghyuck feels, with Mark losing pieces of his own skin day by day, and Donghyuck clueless on how to stick them together, how to glue them back into place.
---
They are on the floor of Donghyuck’s bedroom. They are always there, lately. They used to spend the days there too, before. But it feels different now.
There’s not a metallic smell to the air, this time. The room isn’t charged with the scent of sweat and burnt skin. The carpet is considerably clean, the stains of blood here and there are dark and old, too dried up to be possible to clean off.
Mark is whole. There are no scratches over his cheeks, no cuts on his calfs or forearms. His knuckles aren’t scrapped for once, they are rough and white, but clean as Donghyuck runs his thumbs in circles over them. His clothes are spotless and they smell so familiar, like the detergent his aunt has been using at least for as long as Donghyuck has known him, something citric and electric and so inherently Mark. Donghyuck wants to dip his nose in the hollow of Mark’s throat and breath him in, keep him tucked under his lungs, safe.
Mark is whole, but physically only. He’s been hiding in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck since he dragged him out of the store, his ragged breath and desperate tears damping Donghyuck’s skin as he tries to tug him closer and closer and closer. Because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Donghyuck wishes he could understand, but he hasn’t been shaped for this. This dangerous dance between life and death, like tightrope walking between everything and nothing. Mark does it every single day, he’s known death before, it seems like he can’t stop stumbling upon it.
And Donghyuck is always left behind to try to collect the pieces. So he holds onto Mark and tries to keep him together as Mark sobs his way through it, shaking and panting but still coming out whole in the end.
Jisung slips quietly into the room at some point, when the light that was coming out the window has already died and the room is almost pitch black, but Donghyuck doesn’t dare to move and shatter Mark in the process. Jisung sneaks in and places two bowls of that milk-chocolate cereal on the floor, in front of them. Donghyuck mouths a quiet thank you to his brother, for the food, for caring, for the lack of questions. And Jisung is gone as quietly as he’s come.
“I’m so sorry,” Mark’s voice sounds like gravel, thick with tears and something else. “Your family must think I’m so weird,” he peels himself off of Donghyuck’s side for the first time in hours, looking up at him with red rimmed eyes as he strokes his flushed cheeks harshly.
Donghyuck feels disgusting, his right side all damp with sweat from where they’ve been glued together, from his neck all the way down to his thigh. Still, all he wants to do is to pull Mark back against him.
He snickers, instead. “You talking as if you haven’t spent more time here than at your house since we met. My mom has basically adopted you by now.”
“Don’t say that,” Mark has his nose all scrunched up as he reaches out for a bowl of cereal. “That’d make us brothers. ‘S weird.”
Donghyuck doesn’t ask, he only stares at him with raised eyebrows while Mark gets a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, his cheeks sticking out like a squirrel when he chews.
He looks so normal like this, so boyish and fragile. But, at the same time, he looks a lot older than he should, with disheveled hair and bags under his eyes and wrinkles around his mouth. His shoulders are slumped, as if he’s carrying the weight of the entire world on his back. And the tragic thing is that, in a way, he is.
And all Donghyuck wants is to be able to share the burden. But all he can do is to offer his bowl of cereal when Mark is done with his own.
---
Donghyuck's got his jaw set, teeth gritted together so tightly, he's afraid he will chip one. But that's the only thing he can do to hide the existence of that pitch black void inside of him, growing bigger and bigger and sucking in all things nice in his oh, so normal life.
He hates it, the soft flesh of his tummy and the fragile tissue of his ribs, the tender and exposed flesh of his neck and the way something as trivial as the cold weather can crack open the palms of his hands. He hates the weakness of it all, of his body, the sense of finality hanging over his head, reminding him he can’t follow Mark without getting snapped in half.
It gets worse, when Renjun shows up at Mark's place, dragging a slumped-shouldered Lucas along with him. He throws himself into Mark's couch as if he owns it, and says:
“He's dying. You're Spiderman. You have to do something about it.”
And Donghyuck hates himself all over again for the fact that Renjun knowing Mark's secret identity is what kicks him the hardest out of everything he's said.
Mark is open mouthed, staring at this dark mirror of Lucas with glittering eyes. “I can't. I– that's not…” he stutters, his voice breaking with a desperate sound in the back of his throat. He drops his head, hanging between his shoulders so he doesn't have to look at Lucas. “That's not how my powers work, I can't stop these kind of things.”
Donghyuck takes his time to look, though. Lucas seems like a whole different person. He's hunched forward, his wide back looks incredibly slim under the black thin sweater he's wearing; the ends of his mouth are pointing downwards, white-lipped and sore-looking; he's got his hands over the coffee table, nails digging into the wood so hard, Donghyuck is scared he might end up bleeding, peeling them off the flesh of his fingers. He looks like a stranger.
Donghyuck is amazed at how this superhero life seems to suck the will to live out of everyone it touches. So much for almost endless power and people's admiration. Still, Donghyuck wishes he could taste it with a ferocity that scratches his lungs raw.
“I don't care, figure it out,” Renjun barks out. He’s looking at Mark with this edge around his eyes, as if he wouldn’t hesitate to throw hands with him even though he’s just one more normal dude like Donghyuck.
Mark stays quiet, staring at his own calloused hands as he rips open the skin of his fingers with own his nails.
“Enough,” Donghyuck says, his hand flying to cover Mark’s, to wrap his fingers around him tight enough to hurt. “How is he supposed to help if he doesn’t have the power to?”
Lucas laughs, then. But he sounds nothing like he used to. It’s something ugly that comes from somewhere dark in his chest, all his sweetness melted away under the rotted image of his dad’s body.
“You can push and push and push to become these–” he waves his trembling hands in front of him, pointing at Mark with his ruined fingers. “These powerful monsters, almost invincible. But you can’t try to find a cure to help someone else?” He doesn’t even look mad, he’s staring at Mark as if he’s just stating facts. He takes his fingers to his mouth, bites on his nails carelessly and speaks around them. “I bet you can’t get sick.”
Mark visibly shrinks into himself, his nails digging into Donghyuck’s fingers when he can’t reach his own. Donghyuck doesn’t let go.
“Actually, I. I do get sick,” he says, his voice so incredibly small.
“I’m sure genius Stark would’ve done something to help you if you were sick like this,” Lucas says it as if he isn’t really aware of the weight of his words, his eyes round and shining, his fingers still stuck into his mouth like a child.
Donghyuck winces at the pained sound that comes out of Mark’s throat, his face twisted as if he’s just been slapped.
“Dude, what the fuck,” Donghyuck snaps. He’s about to get off the couch and kick them out of the house, but the fierce grip Mark keeps around his hand stops him.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot he, you know,” Lucas looks away, takes his hands out of his mouth and focuses his eyes on his spit stained fingers. Donghyuck swears there’s blood on his lips. “But, they were on my father’s ass all his life, did you know? For the weapons he made. That’s all your heroes ever cared about. The damn weapons, the stupid power,” he closes his fingers into balls, his arms trembling a little with a kind of anger Donghyuck never thought he could feel. Lucas, whose body seemed made of all things sweet only a few days ago. “Did you know why he was there? In the building? Working to find something to cure himself, to cure me. Died working on it,” he laughs, empty. “The explosion ruined his body. Not that important, right? Since he was rotting inside already, like me. Your heroes didn’t give a damn about that, though.”
“You know, you know I would’ve helped if I knew,” Mark says, desperate like a plea. He lets go of Donghyuck’s hand to stand up and walk towards Lucas. “If I could, I’d do anything. You should’ve told me sooner, when he was alive. I could’ve–”
“He didn’t give a fuck, Mark!” Lucas yells. Mark jumps back at the ferocity in his voice. He’s got this look on his face, he’s staring at Lucas as if they guy sitting on his couch is a stranger. Donghyuck wonders if that’s the way he’s been looking at Mark lately. “None of them give a fuck.”
Lucas stands up on trembling legs and walks out of the house without looking back. He bumps his shoulder against Mark’s on his way out, but he’s so weak it barely makes a difference.
Donghyuck wants to go to Mark, hold him together before he breaks down into a million pieces like an incomplete puzzle. But Renjun gets there before he has the chance to.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles as he sets his hands on Mark’s shoulders, the tips of his fingers going white with desperation.
Mark doesn’t even flinch under the pressure, not the way he does with Donghyuck, as if he’s the only one who has the privilege to see every single bruise and scratch on his body. Donghyuck isn’t sure if he feels privileged, though.
“I didn’t know who else I should go to. I don’t know how much time he’s got left,” Renjun is speaking with a panicked tone to his words, as if Lucas has taken all his sanity out the door with him. “I shouldn’t have told him about you, but I. Fuck, Mark. What am I supposed to do?”
“I didn’t know–” Mark is looking at Renjun with wide eyes, holding onto his forearms just as tightly as Renjun is holding onto him. “I’ve known him since we were freaking children, Jun. And I had no idea… What– what even does he have?”
Renjun shakes his head fiercely. “I don’t even know. His dad worked with supernatural shit for his weapons, I think it might be linked to that… Fuck, Mark,” Renjun drops his forehead against Mark’s chest, he looks so incredibly small like this. “I know nothing about supernatural stuff,” he keeps mumbling, his voice is so weak his words are almost inaudible. “I don’t even know how much time he’s got left, don’t know how his body will react. I just know…” he sniffs, then. But when he raises his head again, his eyes are still wet. “I know it won’t be pretty. He’s so scared. His dad was half gone already. Like, his body all black and half insane.”
Donghyuck’s throat physically hurts for the effort he’s making to keep his own tears at bay. It only makes him resent his body even more, when these two guys in front of him are dealing with so much dried eyed.
“I’m sorry,” Mark whispers, finally letting go of Renjun’s arms. “I’d help if I knew how. You know it, Renjun. You have to.”
Renjun nods frantically as he takes a step backwards, swaying a little on his own feet.
“I’ll try to do some research, I try to contact some people. I…” Mark keeps rambling, random promises coming out of his mouth like prayers. But Donghyuck knows they are empty words, he’s been right beside Mark every single time he picked up the phone to contact one of his hero friends. He’s been sitting right next to him throughout every call that ended unanswered. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“I know. Shit, Mark, I know you care,” Mark seems to deflate at that, all the tension in his limbs dissipating like a puppet whose strings have just been cut. “Just. Don’t blame yourself, okay? For not knowing? He didn’t tell me until last night.”
Mark doesn’t reply, he just nods until Renjun is convinced enough to walk out the door, but Donghyuck can see right through it. When the door closes with a bang behind him, Mark keeps nodding to himself. And when his knees finally give up under his own weight, Donghyuck right next to him to try to keep him upright, he doesn’t stop nodding.
---
Sometimes, Donghyuck hates Iron Man.
It’s at times like this: when Mark falls asleep next to him, crammed in Donghyuck’s single bed because his body is way too beat up to bear the hardness of the floor. When Mark’s got his scabbed fingers wrapped tightly around his phone, which hasn’t rung in ages. When every single line of his body is so tense, even in his sleep, Donghyuck is scared he’ll get cut open if he dares to wrap an arm around his frame, just to make sure he stays there all night.
He hates him for dragging Mark into this death show without having the decency to even ask, first. He hates him for showing up and setting his eyes on Mark only, and ignoring everyone else around him. He hates him for turning everything inside out, forcing his best friend to grow too fast and too soon and to leave Donghyuck running behind, trying to keep up and tripping over his own feet. He hates him for daring to walk into their lives and mess up only Mark’s, when they were supposed to be in it together, it meaning everything.
Most of all, he hates him for leaving, for throwing the responsibility of keeping Mark together in Donghyuck’s hands without asking first, the way he did everything else. Not that he needed to ask, because Donghyuck would’ve never said no, and that’s probably what he hates most.
---
Sometimes, Donghyuck likes his normal life.
It’s at times like this: when he’s crammed into the small bathtub of his house, the tile cold against the naked skin of his butt, his legs going numb from being bent for way too long, and Mark’s hot chest pressed up against his back. When the water has gone cold an hour ago, his head is pounding with an impending hungover, and there’s goosebumps all over his arms for the way Mark keeps threading his fingers through his hair, lathering his hair as he runs his bitten nails over Donghyuck’s scalp.
“I don’t understand how your aunt doesn’t hate me,” Donghyuck says, his fingers painting random patterns on the thin layer of soap that’s floating on the cold water. “I keep stealing you away from her.”
He feels more than hears Mark’s laughter, his chest shaking against Donghyuck’s back. “You know her schedule is a mess, I’m sure she’s glad she doesn’t have to deal with our drunk asses.”
Donghyuck hums as a response, closing his eyes when Mark slides his hands down his neck, digging soaped fingers in the tense muscles of his shoulders.
He isn’t drunk anymore, he thinks he sobered up when he heard Mark laughing back in the club, with his eyes closed shut and his nose all scrunched up, the way he used to do before this whole superhero mess. But he will pretend if that is all it takes to keep Mark’s hands on his skin.
“You had fun tonight?” He asks, dropping his head against Mark’s shoulder as gentle fingers paint the tan skin of his arms white.
He feels it more than hears it, again. The low hum in the back of Mark’s throat, rumbling in his chest and against Donghyuck’s ribs.
“Got so drunk, I forgot who I am.”
Donghyuck has to laugh at that. Proudly, because that’s exactly what his intentions were when he dragged Mark to a club at one in the morning with no explanation. In disbelief, too, because even now, exhausted and way drunker than Donghyuck, Mark is still taking care of those around him.
It’s the way he rinses Donghyuck’s hair, a hand on his forehead so no soap or water can’t get into his eyes. It’s the way he helps him out of the bathtub, his damaged fingers curled tightly around Donghyuck’s wrist, his other hand pressing hard against his naked lower back. It’s the way he dries him off, patting a soft towel down Donghyuck’s sensitive body as carefully as his tired limbs allow him to. It’s the way he handles him, so gently even when he’s swaying on his feet a little, both because the alcohol still in his veins and the exhaustion that’s permanently running through his bloodstream.
Mark has the ability of making Donghyuck feel incredibly safe, even now. Now when he’s stripped down to his boxers, all exposed and tired and vulnerable, lying down on Donghyuck’s mattress, in his territory, with flushed skin and droopy eyes and no iron armor around him.
Donghyuck goes to sleep next to a Mark that smells like him, his phone turned off and forgotten somewhere in the floor of his room. He has never felt this powerful before.
---
Donghyuck wakes up next to a Mark that still smells like him, but who is sitting up in the bed with his knees up against his chest, his eyes wide open and rimmed red, his phone pressed up to his ear with shaky fingers.
“What is it?” Donghyuck is crawling to him even before he’s got the chance to blink the sleep away.
“Lucas,” Mark chokes out, throwing his phone to the foot of the bed when Donghyuck drags him towards his chest. “Renjun sounded so worried, Hyuck.”
Mark’s voice is all wrong, still rough with sleep and thick with tears he won’t allow to fall. He hides in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck and refuses to move once he’s settled. It’s a powerful thing, Donghyuck thinks, to be the home of a superhero, even in his fragile bones and thin skin.
“He said he looks so gross,” Mark mumbles against his throat, fingers twisting into Donghyuck’s shirt, the material stretching with an ugly creak. “All green and, and swollen and. Fuck, I don’t know what he took. Hyuck, I don’t know,” his rambling gets momentarily cut by his own tears, Donghyuck can feel them sliding down his neck and pooling in his collarbone. Mark’s breathing gets ragged, his nails scratching at the skin of Donghyuck’s chest through his shirt.
“Mark, I need you to breathe,” he pushes him away by the shoulders, his hands coming up to cup Mark’s cheeks when he refuses to look up. “Look at me. You’re okay.”
Mark’s eyes are shiny with tears, so watery and sad, Donghyuck feels like he’s drowning in them, and not the good kind of drowning. He strokes his thumbs over Mark’s cheeks to try to stop the tears, but failing miserably. He pushes his fingers up Mark’s face and through his hair, getting the strands away from his forehead, already damp with sweat.
When Mark speaks, he sounds even more broken than he looks. “I don’t know what to do.”
There’s the void in Donghyuck’s chest again, spinning and growing bigger and bigger, stealing all his words and options. Because, if Mark Lee can’t do anything, with his hero powers and hero suits and hero connections, how is Lee Donghyuck supposed to fix it? With his bare hands and slow feet and weak heart.
But he twists his fingers into Mark’s hair, brings their foreheads together and promises: “We’ll help him together.”
And it’s empty, a lie shaped like a promise to try to pick up his invincible best friend one more time. Because he can’t stay still and quiet when Mark is falling to pieces right in front of him, and Donghyuck is so weak, words are all he can offer.
But Mark looks back at him like he believes him.
---
“I could snap him in half if I wanted to.”
That’s the first thing Lucas says when he steps into Donghyuck’s house the next day, twisting Jisung’s right arm behind his back with such force the boy falls to his knees.
“Get the fuck away from him!”
Donghyuck is moving before he even has time to think. He tries to run towards them, he doesn’t even know what he’s gonna do once he gets his hands on Lucas, because he’s all swollen and green and so much bigger than he was the last time Donghyuck saw him. He looks like he could snap Jisung and Donghyuck in half at the same time, crumple them under his toes.
But Jisung is kneeling on the floor, his arm contorted into an unnatural position that forces him to face the ground. Donghyuck can see how much it hurts in the tense lines of his body, in the shakiness of his fingers. He can’t stay still. Lucas tightens his grip when Donghyuck walks closer to them, and Jisung starts to dry heave.
He has almost reached them when a strong arm curls around his waist. Donghyuck was walking so fast, with only one goal in mind, that he loses his breath at the impact. He wraps his hands around Mark’s arm, claws at his skin to try to get him to release him, but his grip only strengthens, stronger than Donghyuck has ever experienced.
“Let me go! He’s hurting him!” His words drip desperation everywhere as he screams into Mark’s face. He can already feel wetness on his cheeks, but he’s far too worried to care.
“Wait. Please, wait.” Mark slides his hand up Donghyuck’s torso, clutches at his shoulder to trap him up against his own body. Donghyuck can feel his breathing in his ear, the way Mark’s chest moves up and down with calm inhales and exhales, his heartbeat beating strong and steady against Donghyuck’s back. “He could hurt you, too. Let me handle it.”
He sounds so at ease, so unlike the Mark Donghyuck knows, who stutters over everything and overthinks what he should have for breakfast. But this is not Mark, Donghyuck thinks, as he allows his hands to drop to his sides. This is Spiderman, handling the situation with the composure he’s supposed to, treating Donghyuck rougher than Mark would ever dare to.
Mark steps back once Donghyuck relaxes against him, letting go of him completely to stand beside him, eyes fixed on Lucas only. Jisung is still on his knees, his face pinched into a painful scowl, but he seems to be breathing normally.
“Lucas, you don’t wanna hurt him,” Mark says, words slow and heavy with irrefutable truth.
“Of course I don’t want to,” Lucas scoffs. “But I could, Mark. That’s the point.”
He sounds so out of it, Donghyuck was too worried to realize before. He’s got eyes so wide it’s almost abnormal, shining with the wrong kind of light, red around them, red inside of them, red spreading over the green of his face and down his neck. The shaking Donghyuck thought he saw in Jisung’s fingers is actually Lucas’, he’s trembling so badly, they are both quavering with it. His veins are so swollen, Donghyuck can see how they throb in his naked arms, in the line of his neck, under the tense fabric of his thin t-shirt, too small for him now. He doesn’t look mad, he looks lost.
“I’ve never wanted this,” he says, crazy eyes fixed on Mark. His grip on Jisung’s arm softens a little, and Jisung’s hand hangs off of Lucas’ fingers like a deadweight. “I’m dangerous, Mark. You need to put an end to this.”
Lucas is grabbing at his own shirt with his free hand, right over his heart. The fabric comes undone under his fingertips, ripping apart from a single tug, lifting skin. Lucas looks down at himself with his mouth parted, as if he’s surprised at his own strength.
When he looks up at Mark again, he’s crying.
“You have to kill me,” he whispers, staring at the green skin trapped between his fingernails. “Please.”
Donghyuck isn’t even touching Mark and, still, he can feel the way he tenses up next to him. He’s shaking his head as he starts to walk towards Lucas, his hands spread in front of him in a soothing gesture, as if approaching a wild animal. And, by the way Lucas frizzles and tightens his grip on Jisung one more time, that may be exactly what he is.
“Please, please let him go,” Mark says as he stands in front of the two boys. “He’s got nothing to do with this. It’s between you and me.”
His voice is so steady, his back set into a confident line. But Donghyuck knows better, he sees the blush on the back of Mark’s neck, his skin painted red with worry. He wants to help, wants to step closer and stand next to him confidently, wants to rip Jisung out of Lucas’ hands. But his knees are shaking so bad, he knows he’d trip over his own feet if he tried to move. The only thing that’s keeping him standing straight is his own fear.
“You won’t do it, right?” Lucas sniffles, smiling through tears. “I can see it in your face, dude. It’s been too many years.”
“Let him go,” Mark places a hand on Lucas’ wrist, yanks at it a little. “Then, we’ll talk.”
Mark has his back to him, so Donghyuck can’t see what Lucas is seeing in his face. But, whatever expression Mark is pulling, it makes Lucas loosen his fingers enough to allow Jisung to pull his arm out of his grip.
Donghyuck stays still, staring as Mark helps Jisung up and pats his hair, his cheeks, his shoulders, before he nods and sends him Donghyuck’s way. Jisung walks to him rubbing at his sore arm, but he looks completely whole at first glance, dry eyed and with his chin up. Still, Donghyuck pulls him into a crushing hug as soon as he’s at hand reach, whispering worried questions against the skin of his neck.
“I’m fine. It’s fine,” Jisung mumbles, pulling away enough to look at Donghyuck in the eye, but securing an arm around him. Jisung is the one who was about to be broken in half, but Donghyuck is the one who needs support to stay standing up. “Don’t worry. He’s just scared.”
He drops his head on Jisung’s shoulder, warm and solid against his cheek, and drifts his attention back to Mark and Lucas.
Lucas is curled into himself, his forehead resting against Mark’s chest as he shakes uncontrollably. Mark looks so small in comparison, too thin and too short besides the exaggerated curves and lines of Lucas’ body. Lucas could crush him if he wanted to, Donghyuck is sure of it. He could wrap his arms around Mark’s neck and suffocate him right there.
But Mark doesn’t seem to care. He brings his hands to Lucas’ arms, slides his fingers over his skin slowly, the way he used to do with Donghyuck whenever he got too scared watching a scary movie, even if Mark himself was equally scary.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. He’s whispering, but it’s so oddly quiet in the entrance of Donghyuck’s apartment that the words sound deafening. “I don’t know how. But I can’t give up on you.”
There’s a low sound coming out of Lucas’ throat, something that sounds like a growl. He moves his hands on Mark’s shoulders, digs his fingers into his shoulder blades until Donghyuck can see red spots forming under his pads.
“There’s no other way,” Lucas says, pushing himself to a straight position. He isn’t crying anymore, his face has gone so empty, Donghyuck can’t recognize him anymore. “I only wanted to get rid of the disease, now I turned myself into a fucking monster. There’s no other way, Mark. Please.”
“We, we can use this,” Mark says. He’s still running his hands over Lucas’ arms in soothing circles, his shoulders are still set in a straight line, but Donghyuck can hear the uncertainty in his voice, the empty promises echoing into the quietness of the room. “Figure out how your powers work. We can. We will use this for something good,” he grips at Lucas’ arms tighter, shaking them a little, as if trying to make a point.
But it’s the wrong thing to say, Donghyuck sees it in Lucas’ face, twisting into an emotion that's the complete opposite of hopeful.
“There’s nothing good about this,” his voice is dripping ice, a kind of coldness that makes Donghyuck hold his breath. “You people only care about power. I hate all of you. I hate this.”
He brings a hand to his own chest, sinks his nails into the already damaged skin of his chest.
“Stop,” Mark curls his fingers around Lucas’ wrist. He’s pulling at it desperately, trying to make him let go, his calm act thrown out the window at the image of Lucas purposefully hurting himself. “Think about Renjun.”
“That’s exactly why you have to kill me!” Lucas pushes Mark away hard, and if he wasn’t who he is, if he was just a normal person like Donghyuck, he would’ve been thrown across the room by the force of it. But he’s not a normal person, so he only takes a couple steps back. “You haven’t seen him! I’m ruining him, I’m ruining everything.”
With that, Lucas is turning away from them and walking out of the apartment with firm steps. He stops with his hand on the door, fingers digging holes into the wood.
“I’ll make you do it,” he mumbles. “I don’t know how, but you will kill me.”
When he bangs the door closed, he takes it off its hinges. When Mark falls to his knees, Donghyuck feels equally torn.
---
“Do you think,” Donghyuck starts, slow, tentative in the darkness of the room, “that there’s more of whatever Lucas took?”
Mark halts the anxious bounce of his leg abruptly. He tears his gaze away from Jisung’s sleeping form to shoot Donghyuck a confused look, his head tilted to the side and his eyebrows drawn together.
It’s the first thing Donghyuck has said to him since Lucas left.
It’s late into the night, he lost track of time somewhere between forcing Jisung into a warm bath and forcing him to eat something for dinner. They are sitting in his room now, and it should be kinda creepy, Donghyuck sitting on the floor with his back resting against the door and Mark sitting on a chair next to Jisung’s bed, watching him while he sleeps. But there’s this feeling in the back of Donghyuck’s neck, like a shadow clawing at his shoulders and warning him that Lucas can come back at any time and take Jisung away from him. He is physically unable to take his eyes off of his brother for longer than five minutes.
“I’m just wondering what I could’ve done if I–” he cuts his own words, frowns at himself as he tries to word his thoughts in a way that won’t make him sound weak. But it is impossible, because that’s all he is, weak and useless. “Thinking about what I could’ve done to protect him if I had the power to.”
He keeps his eyes on Jisung’s body, on the way his chest falls and down normally under the covers, but he can feel Mark’s eyes on him. He’s staring heavily, with a thickness that Donghyuck hasn’t seen before, as if he’s trying to dissect him and get under his skin, peek inside of his brain. He wonders if he could, if he tried hard enough, with this power he now has.
“You were there for him, afterwards. That’s just as important,” Mark says, with a kind of finality that leaves Donghyuck kind of breathless, because he’s talking from experience and he will no allow room for discussion.
Donghyuck’s mind flashes back to a few hours later, when he got Jisung into the bathtub and leathered his hair softly. He thinks about when he run to the closest convenience store to get the ingredients necessary to prepare his favorite food. He looks back at the hours they spent curled together on the couch, watching Jisung’s favorite space documentaries until he got relaxed enough to try to sleep. But that’s the least he can do, for his brother, or for anyone.
“There wouldn’t have been an afterwards if he was dead,” he says, louder and sharper than Mark deserves.
He takes his hand to his mouth, nibbles on his fingernails as he sees Mark shuffling on his chair in the corner of his eye.
“You don’t need powers to be powerful,” Mark replies. He sounds so incredibly sad, bordering pity, almost condescending, even if it’s unintentional. Donghyuck feels like he’s about to throw up.
“Yeah,” he takes his hand out of his mouth, rubs his fingers against the fabric of his pajama pants as he feels bitterness curling uglily in his stomach, going up his sternum until he’s forced to spit the words out. “That means a lot coming from you, Spiderman.”
It’s the first time he’s called Mark by his hero name, and it tastes like an insult. He never gets a reply.
---
Donghyuck doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but when he wakes up, he finds Mark still sitting on the chair by Jisung’s bed. He’s got his thighs drawn to his chest, his arms around them, cheek pressed against his knee as he keeps his tired eyes focused on Jisung. Donghyuck can read him like an open book, no matter how different he seems now. He hasn’t slept all night, he can see it in the stiff line of his shoulders, in the shakiness of his fingertips, in the grey smudges under his eyes, and in the perfect wave of his dark hair.
He gets up from his position on the floor with wobbly legs, his joints creaking like old machines as he runs to the bathroom to throw up.
---
Just because Lucas is losing it, it doesn’t mean danger will sit this one out and wait for Mark to fix it.
Donghyuck learns this the next Monday. He’s walking through the hallways of his faculty on his way to lunch when someone grabs him painfully by the elbow and yanks him into an empty classroom.
He’s about to scream, too on edge after everything that’s been going on around him. But, suddenly, his back is pressed up against the closed door, a gloved hand covering his mouth to prevent him from making any noise. It takes him a few seconds to recognize the abnormally big, grey eyes that are staring back at him as Mark’s.
“Shhhh, it’s just me,” Mark whispers, even though they are alone in the classroom. His voice sounds muffled under his mask, but sharp with urgency. “I need your help.”
Mark doesn’t move immediately, he stays pressed close to Donghyuck, pinning him against the door with a hand over his mouth, staring at him as if he’s waiting for a sign. But Donghyuck feels like his brain has frozen over.
He’s never been this close to Mark in his hero suit before, this close to Spiderman. He’s acutely aware of where they are pressed together, the hardness of Mark’s suit squeezing against his chest, between his thighs, the iron fabric seeping cold into Donghyuck’s bones. The hand Mark has over his mouth isn’t rough, but it’s firm; his grip doesn’t hurt, but his fingers are digging into Donghyuck’s warm cheeks.
Donghyuck feels so weak for a moment, all his nerve endings on fire at the reality that Mark is so much more powerful than him, he feels so fragile under his fingertips. And, for the first time since he found out who Mark truly is, he doesn’t dislike the feeling. He’s awfully conscious of the way his heart is thrumming against his ribcage, he wonders if Mark’s powers allow him to hear it.
“Are you going to scream?” Mark asks. And he’s so close, Donghyuck can’t help thinking that, if it wasn’t for his stupid mask, he’d be feeling Mark’s breath against his skin.
He shakes his head lightly, as much as Mark’s hand allows him to. When Mark takes a step backwards, Donghyuck pushes him further away.
“Why would I scream, you fucking dumbass?” He scowls, trying to ignore the fact that he’s speaking faster than usual, words stomping over words. “I already know who you are. You’re so dramatic.”
“Listen, I don’t know. It’s, you know. Like, dark and stuff here,” he’s shaking his hands in front of him, gesturing around the dim classroom nervously. “Maybe I scared you. I didn’t mean to, alright. But, your heart. It, it was beating like crazy,” he stops rambling, his arms falling to his sides as he stares at Donghyuck. “It still is.”
“Well, how would you react to someone locking you up in a dark room like that?” Donghyuck huffs. He’s so thankful they didn’t turn on the light, because he can feel the heat radiating off his cheeks. He knows Mark probably doesn’t need the light to know he’s blushing, and that makes him even more flustered. “Are you gonna tell me what the fuck you want?” He scowls at Mark and crosses his arms defensively.
“Oh,” Mark shakes his head, looking around confused, as if he completely forgot he’s in the middle of an emergency. “Fury! Called me. Yeah, Fury needs me. I gotta leave. Need you to cover for me in class, alright?”
He’s already walking towards the window when Donghyuck tries to reach out for his arm and fails.
“Mark, wait.”
But Mark isn’t paying attention to him anymore. He is too busy throwing cobwebs through his hand to get the curtains and the window open, purposefully ignoring the fact that he could open it like a normal person, the dramatic asshole.
“Can you wait a second?” Donghyuck half screams. He crosses the room in three long strides, grips at Mark’s shoulder when he gets up in the windowsill. “We’re not even in the same classes, how am I supposed to cover for you? Where are you even going?”
He hates how his voice sounds, tinted with neediness, matching the almost desperate curl of his fingers as he tries to dig them into the fabric of Mark’s suit. His nails scratch the metal almost painfully.
“Just. Another dangerous big monster, you know how it goes,” Mark doesn’t even turn to look at him. He’s crouching down in the sill, looking out the window, as if calculating distances.
The thing is, Donghyuck doesn't know. He hates when Mark does this, when he talks to him about supernatural stuff as if he’s a kid that wouldn’t be able to comprehend his world. As if he’s not the one who’s always waiting for him at home, ready to pick up the pieces and patch them back into place. He hates the fact that Mark doesn’t want to drag him into this, because he’s already in too deep, and only wants to get in deeper.
But there’s no point in getting mad, because, after all, Mark is doing his best.
“Hey,” Donghyuck tightens his grip on Mark’s shoulder, shaking him a little to get his attention. “See you later?”
When Mark turns around to look at him, Donghyuck desperately wishes he didn’t have his mask on. All he gets in return is a sharp nod before Mark is turning around again, his body tensing up, getting ready to jump.
“Say it back,” Donghyuck says. All needy and weak and desperate, all the things he hates to be.
But it makes Mark turn around, and Donghyuck can’t see it, but he’s sure he’s smiling.
“See you later,” he says. It’s so soft, words almost inaudible under his mask.
And then, he’s jumping off the window. And out of Donghyuck’s grasp.
---
Jaemin reaches over the library table to press his hand against Donghyuck, squishing it against the flat surface and making him drop his pen.
“The fuck are you doing?” Donghyuck scowls up at him, yanking his hand away from his grip.
“You wouldn’t stop tapping this thing,” Jaemin says. He picks up the pen and throws it to Donghyuck’s face. “You know, some of us come here to study.”
Donghyuck doesn’t have time for this, so he just rolls his eyes at him and brings his attention back to his phone. He’s been scrolling through his messages for what feels like ages, waiting so see Mark’s name popping up in his notifications, assuring him that he’ll come over to Donghyuck’s once he’s done with whatever dangerous thing Fury asked from him this time.
He doesn’t even realize he’s started tapping his pen again until Jaemin grabs his wrist, fingers tight around his bones as he looks at Donghyuck with a crooked eyebrow.
“It’s Mark, isn’t it?” He says, with this annoying tiny smile on his lips. Donghyuck hates that he can’t even deny it. “You gonna spend the night together again?”
Donghyuck lets out a heavy breath, his hand going limp in Jaemin’s grip. “I don’t know, that’s the thing. He hasn’t replied, yet.”
“He’s probably just busy, his weak ass is never able to tell you no,” Jaemin’s tone is teasing, but he squeezes Donghyuck’s wrist reassuringly before he lets go. “You’re so lucky your parents are never home.”
It hurts a little, the way Jaemin talks about it, as if he genuinely believes his words. And he’s right, partly. Because it is nice to be able to share a bed with Mark almost every night, with no parents to complain or question anything, because they are too busy with work two countries away from them. But, sometimes, Donghyuck thinks it’d be nice to come home to the noise of his parents in the kitchen preparing a warm dinner for him, instead of the stale convenience food he heats up in the microwave to share with Jisung. Sometimes, he’d rather have the warm noise of a movie night with his family, than the silence of an empty house and Mark’s dark, red fingerprints on his windowsill.
He doesn’t say it out loud, though. He just rolls his eyes at Jaemin and hopes that will do.
“Has anything happened already?” Jaemin asks a few seconds later, his gentle smile curling into a suggestive expression that almost makes Donghyuck blush. “You’ve been sharing a bed for months.”
“Jaemin,” Donghyuck scowls, throws his pen to Jaemin’s face. But Jaemin dodges it easily. “It’s not like that. Our relationship, it’s not like that.”
“But you want it to be like that,” Jaemin states, as if it’s irrefutable truth. He isn’t mocking him anymore, he’s just staring at Donghyuck straight-faced, almost like a dare.
Donghyuck is momentarily unable to find the words to fight back. Because it’s painfully true. Because he’s thought about it so many times: lying down under the heavy heat of Mark’s body, trapped between his toned thighs, getting lost in the seam of his mouth, vulnerable and exposed and cut open in front of the oh, so powerful Spiderman. He kind of hates himself for it every single time.
“It’s not like that,” he repeats, voice strained.
He can tell Jaemin hears the lie awfully clear, but he only raises an eyebrow at him again, throwing the pen back at Donghyuck.
---
When Donghyuck goes to sleep that night, it’s with an empty feeling in his chest that mirrors the emptiness on the other side of his bed.
He’s got his phone clutched in his hand, and he keeps scrolling through social media to try to keep up with any important news. But the headlines about Spiderman fighting against this big grey monster stopped coming hours ago.
It’s so late into the night, the breeze is way too cold to fall asleep, the two blankets Donghyuck has draped over himself do nothing to stop the shivers that run through his spine. But he refuses to close the window.
Donghyuck is curled into a ball, knees to his chest and phone still between his cold fingers, when someone opens the room to his bedroom. He sits up in bed with his heart jumping in his temples, his phone falling to the ground beside his bed.
“You left the window open for me?” Mark asks, voice dripping fondness everywhere as he stares at Donghyuck.
Mark closes the door softly behind him and stands in front of it. He’s chewing on a chocolate cookie, those Donghyuck doesn’t even like anymore, but that he keeps buying because his mom used to store the cupboard with countless packages when he was a kid. He’s wearing his glasses, sliding almost to the tip of his nose. He’s clad in fresh, clean clothes, nothing that makes him look like he spent the entire day fighting against some supernatural monster. If it wasn’t for the light swelling at the base of his jaw and the purple smudge that peeks under the collar of his baby blue t-shirt, Donghyuck wouldn’t be able to tell that he’s been part of a battle a few moments ago.
There are many things he wants to say, all bundled up in the back of his throat, jumping over each other and creating this awful knot. He wants to ask Mark how he was able to sneak into his kitchen, because he’s sure he locked up every window there. He wants to ask if there are still enough chocolate cookies in the cupboard, or if he should restock tomorrow. He wants to ask why Mark wasted time going back to his own place for fresh clothes, when he knows Donghyuck is more than willing to let him borrow some of his. And, most of all, he wants to ask why Mark didn't come back straight to him; why he left him alone all day, wondering if he’d made it out uninjured, if he’d made it out alive.
The words won’t come out, though. So Donghyuck swallows on nothing, stretches his arms in front of himself, his ruined fingers bending to motion Mark to come closer.
He can’t know what Mark sees in his face, but he does know he’s still burning inside with worry, even if Mark is standing in front of him in one piece. There’s this hot need simmering in his lower stomach, making his skin tingle with the desire to pull Mark flush against him and map out his entire body with the cold palms of his hands, to make sure he’s still whole.
So that’s exactly what he does.
Mark takes off his glasses, he closes them and places them on the bedside table. When he comes even closer, the mattress giving up under his weight when he presses a knee to it, the fondness is wiped off his face. He’s got his eyebrows pinched into a concerned frown, looking down at Donghyuck with a mixture of exhaustion and guilt. And he’s still way too far away.
Donghyuck grabs onto the fabric of his t-shirt and pulls at it with needy fingers. And he’s keenly aware that he wouldn’t be able to drag Mark against his body so easily if Mark wasn’t more than willing to let him.
He drapes himself all over Mark once he has him right where he wants him, next to him, trapped between the mattress and Donghyuck’s leg and arm. He gets as close as he can, his nose brushing over the line of Mark’s neck as he breathes him in, the fruity scent of Mark’s shampoo and the homey smell of his detergent and the remnants of ashes and smoke.
It is not enough. Just having Mark next to him doesn’t erase the traces of the awful worry that’s been settled in the back of his mind all day, in the bottom of his stomach, spreading bitterness all over Donghyuck. So he slips his hand under Mark’s cotton t-shirt, maps out the lines of his body with cold fingers, and he can’t help the desperate whine that crawls up his throat when he feels the aftermath of the fight.
Donghyuck doesn’t dare to pull away to check Mark’s body properly. There’s this dread hanging over his head, threatening and dangerous, that tells him Mark could just vanish between his fingertips if he ever let go. So he keeps running his fingers over his body blindly, touching the creases and bumps and cuts as carefully as he can. And, once again, he finds himself wishing he’d have any kind of power to help, to heal.
“Hyuck,” Mark croaks out. He sounds tired and choked out all at once, his hand flying to the small of Donghyuck’s back to pull him even closer. “I’m here. I’m good.”
“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Donghyuck confesses, wet against the heat of Mark’s neck.
What he doesn’t say is: I was scared of what I’d find in the morning.
“I told you,” Mark says, turning his head to speak directly into Donghyuck’s hair. “I told you I’d see you later, didn’t I?”
It’s getting too much, the warmth of Mark’s body against him, hard and solid and present. Donghyuck runs his fingers up Mark’s chest, presses his palm right over where his heart is supposed to be. He can feel it, the thrumming of his heart, steady and fast and alive.
He can’t help the needy whimper that falls off his lips. He’s feeling hot all over, even in the cold of the night, sticky with a kind of need he’s never felt before.
“Hyuck,” Mark whispers again. His voice is hoarse with sleep, but he still tightens his grip on Donghyuck’s waist to pull him even closer against him.
There’s no way Mark can’t feel the outline of Donghyuck’s dick, pressed right against his thigh, hard and hot with desperation.
Embarrassment hits Donghyuck like a slap in the face. He feels exposed and vulnerable and borderline ridiculous, losing it like this against his sleepy best friend, who just came back beat up from a fucking battlefield. This is not the exposure and vulnerability he thought he’d feel with Mark, many times. It is cold and shameful and it makes him try to pull away. He wants to curl into himself on the other side of the bed, feeling Mark’s heat on his back to make sure he’s still there, still real, but he feels too gross to be touching him.
But Mark won’t let him pull away. He’s slipping his fingers underneath Donghyuck’s pajama shirt, so he can palm directly over the feverish skin of his lower back. He’s riding up his thigh, so he can press hard muscle right against Donghyuck’s cock, as he keeps trying to tug him closer, even though there’s no space between them anymore.
“C’mon, Donghyuck,” Mark whispers, encouragingly.
He reaches down with his other hand, curls it around Donghyuck’s thigh to hike it up, so he can help him rut against him properly.
Donghyuck is so lost in the heat of the moment, he is barely aware of what’s going on. He can only register the warmth spreading from his lower abdomen and up his chest as he starts to grind his hips down with intent. He’s never felt like this before, clammy all over with a need that feels impossible to satiate, no matter how hard he’s moving against Mark.
He’s touching Mark all over, pressing over his damaged skin to assure himself that he’s there, that he’s safe, that this isn’t some cruel dream his asleep brain is pulling him through. The tension builds up so fast, with Mark so close to him, his scent clinging to every part of Donghyuck, curling inside his mind like something intoxicating, something he could never go without.
“You need me that much, huh?” Mark says, low against Donghyuck’s hair. He sounds lost between sleep and amazement. “Gonna come like this?
He trails his chipped fingernails over the sensitive skin of Donghyuck’s lower back, then, movements decisive because he knows what he’s doing, he’s fully aware of the buttons he’s pressing, as familiar with Donghyuck’s body as he is with his own. He scratches at the heated muscle there as he presses harder to guide Donghyuck’s hips against him. Donghyuck can’t help the thrill that goes up his spine and down his thighs, can’t help the way his legs start to shake.
He has to bite down in the heated skin of Mark’s neck, partly as a protest and partly to muffle his desperate moans. And Mark laughs underneath his lips, Donghyuck can feel it against his teeth, thrumming through his chest. And, somehow, that’s what makes him topple over the edge.
Donghyuck comes embarrassingly fast, when he’s barely been touched, still fully clothed. Mark does nothing else but run his fingers up and down his back, and only that feels too much over his sensitive skin, all his nerve endings lit on fire with the mixture of worry, pleasure and relief.
His forehead drops against Mark’s neck, right over the wetness of his own spit. He’s sticky and hot with embarrassment and incredibly uncomfortable. He wants to pull away, he doesn’t know if to clean himself and sleep as far away from Mark as possible, or if to offer Mark a hand. Because he can feel him, semi-hard under Donghyuck’s thigh even though he’s already half asleep.
But Mark doesn’t let him slip away from his grip.
He tightens his grip on Donghyuck’s waist, presses a barely there kiss to his sweaty hair, and mumbles, “sleep.”
It takes Donghyuck half an hour to stop the deafening drum of his heart and fall asleep.
---
When Donghyuck wakes up, shame cuts him in half.
The room smells like sex and sweat, his pajama pants are dirty and stiff, and his skin feels scorching hot where he’s pressed against Mark, sticky in all the places they are touching.
It’s still early, the alarm clock for class hasn’t even rung yet. Mark is asleep, so he can disentangle their limbs and pull away easily. His entire body hurts when he moves, the muscles of his legs are tired and tense as if he ran a marathon the day before. So are the lines of his shoulders, tight with stress and something else he can’t name, but feels really close to fear. There’s a growing headache in the back of his skull, something that gets sharper each time he moves.
The soreness of his body only worsens when he takes a second to look at Mark. He looks different than he did last night, now that the sun is shining bright through the window, still wide open. He looks a lot more beat up than Donghyuck thought he was, with swollen cheeks and a crooked nose, purple marks over his forearms and dried up blood sticking to his ears. And there’s this awfully bright red mark on his neck, in the shape of Donghyuck’s teeth.
He hates the sight of it, what it represents. Hates the neediness and desperation that clings to the memory, dirtying it up. He hates himself too, for allowing his mind to get clouded by desire.
Donghyuck reaches out, his fingertips barely grazing the bruise on Mark’s neck before he pulls his hand away abruptly. He’s supposed to be home to Mark, he’s supposed to be somewhere safe for him, a shelter when everything gets too much. That’s the least he can do, the only way he can help, even if it seems useless and pathetic, sometimes. And, apparently, he’s incapable to do even that. He’s waiting here, in the dark, ready to bruise Mark up even further.
He kicks the blankets off his body, jumps over Mark’s sleeping form, and gets into the shower to try to wash all the shame and guilt off his skin.
It doesn’t work. When he leaves for class, his skin is tender red and Mark is still asleep in his bed.
---
Donghyuck doesn’t see Mark again until he gets out of class.
He’s walking home, his hands busy with convenience store bags full of chocolate cookies and chocolate cereal and frozen food. He turns the corner, walking into a small alley that’s usually empty, when Spiderman’s face pops up right in front of his, but upside down.
“What the fuck!” He jumps back. One of the bags falls to the floor when he takes a hand to his chest, squeezing his t-shirt between his fingers.
“Uh,” Mark says, still upside down, hanging from a spider web. He clicks something in the side of his face, and his mask retreats. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re so fucking lucky I didn’t buy any eggs,” Donghyuck says, bending down to pick up the bag. His heart is still beating as if it’s trying to break free from his chest. “What do you want? Anyone could see you, dumbass,” he’s half screaming, talking in angry whispers.
Mark tilts his head to the side, looks at him with his eyebrows low over his eyes, in a way that makes him look so incredibly sad. There’s a small twist to his mouth, a pout threatening to appear, and Donghyuck’s heart speeds up for entirely different reasons.
“Is it– Are we okay?” Mark asks, so quietly Donghyuck barely catches it.
Donghyuck can’t reply. He stays still, standing there, with his fingers going white due to the weight of his bags. He’s speechless, because for once he doesn’t know. And, when he looks at Mark, all the fondness he feels for him gets drowned in shame and guilt and something else, so intense, he isn’t brave enough to name it.
“You left without saying anything,” Mark speaks up when Donghyuck doesn’t reply. He looks kind of ridiculous, dangling there, swaying a little, his cheeks red because all the blood keeps running to his head. Donghyuck wants to place his hands over his cheeks and lean in, but he only tightens his grip on his bags. “You know, mh. Last night…”
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Donghyuck chimes in, too abrupt, too sharp.
He hates the way Mark’s eyes go softer around the edges at his words, how they shine with a glint Donghyuck can’t read. It almost looks like pity.
“You’re my best friend,” Mark tells him. And he’s being so honest, it physically hurts.
So Donghyuck replies, “I know.” Because he does know, and he isn’t selfish enough to try to ask for more in the big mess that is Mark’s life. “Go now, someone could see you.”
Mark lingers, though. He keeps looking at Donghyuck as if he’s trying to crack him open and slip under his skin. Donghyuck is unable to stop his heart from skipping a beat when Mark stretches a hand to place it on his cheek softly. He hates it, because he knows Mark can hear it, can see it in the gentle curl of his mouth.
“Mark,” he reprimands, taking a step back so Mark can’t reach his skin. “Go away. We’re okay.”
And they are far from it, Donghyuck knows Mark doesn’t need any super powers to read that in his face. But there are steps approaching from the corner of the allay, so he leaves anyway, and takes Donghyuck’s breath with him.
---
Sometimes, Donghyuck loves his normal life.
It’s at times like this: when Mark has been busier than ever, worried about saving the world and worried about saving his childhood friend and worried about saving his college year, but still finds time to sneak into Donghyuck’s house without warning the few times he isn’t a man on a mission. Donghyuck especially loves this one time Mark tiptoes into his room at four in the morning, carrying a gigantic teddy bear that he places right next to Donghyuck’s body, who’s pretending to be asleep, right before he curls into a ball and falls asleep at the feet of Donghyuck’s bed, not close enough to touch (because, even though they haven’t talked about it, he knows Donghyuck isn’t ready), but close enough for Donghyuck to feel his presence (because, even though they haven’t talked about it, he’s aware Donghyuck needs to know Mark is safe and there to be able to fall asleep).
---
Donghyuck hates this supernatural life. And he hates how much of an outsider he feels, lately.
Mark won’t tell him anything, anymore. He doesn’t show up at Donghyuck’s place anymore unless his fingers are so damaged, there is no way he’ll be able to patch himself up. He won’t talk about his missions, he won’t talk about his opponents, he won’t even bring Lucas up.
It’s been so long since the last time Donghyuck saw Lucas. It’s not like he wants to cross paths with him, since the last time he saw him he was threatening Jisung’s life. But he feels responsible, partly. Because he was the one who promised Mark they could help his childhood friend, work through this together. But, how is he supposed to help if Mark won't even talk to him?
The guilt gets heavier when he’s at college. It used to be a getaway, somewhere he could focus on the stuff he actually excels at, stuff he can handle. But Lucas stopped showing up to class a long time ago, and Renjun joins his and Jaemin’s library seasons almost every day.
It’s devastating, simply looking at Renjun. He sits there, with his books open on the table, his pen uncapped, but his eyes are always lost somewhere in the distance, as if he can’t stop searching for Lucas with his eyes even though he knows he will not show up.
Jaemin tries to cheer him up as best as he can, but he doesn’t even know what’s going on. He’s the only one of them who’s completely out of touch with this supernatural mess, and Donghyuck feels just as useless as him.
That’s why he’s surprised when someone rings his bell shortly after he gets home from college, and he looks through the peephole to find Renjun standing there. He seems even smaller than usual with Mark’s arm slumped around his shoulders, Renjun’s legs almost giving up under both of their weights as he tries to keep Mark’s body standing up.
“What happened?” Donghyuck asks when he yanks the door open.
He’s reaching out to Mark before he can stop himself, taking all his weight off of Renjun’s body and dumping it on himself. Because that’s his place, sharing the burden has always been what he’s meant to be, even if it’s not that much.
Renjun kicks the door closed behind them once they step inside. He stands there while Donghyuck carries Mark’s body to the couch, worry curling and spinning uglily in the bottom of his stomach. Mark has his eyes closed, but he grabs onto Donghyuck’s wrist once he’s lying on the couch, preventing him from walking away.
“Lucas,” Renjun offers as an explanation. His voice is hoarse and worn out, as if he’s been screaming for a long time. He’s got his arms wrapped tightly around himself, like he’s afraid he’s going to start breaking apart into a million puzzle pieces.
“What did he do now?” It’s more of an accusation than a question. Renjun shrinks into himself as if he’s been slapped.
Mark speaks before Renjun can reply.
“Are you okay?” He asks.
His voice sounds wrong, words slurred between his swollen lips. There’s a cut on his his bottom lip that’s open and still bleeding, blood dripping down his chin. But he doesn’t seem to care, he’s staring at Donghyuck with squinted eyes, urgency written all over his face and on his hands, as he tries to sit up to map Donghyuck’s chest with his fingers.
“Mark, don’t fucking move,” Donghyuck pushes him down again, keeping a hand pressed against Mark’s chest, to stop him from trying to move again. “I’m perfectly fine, unlike you.”
“He went for my aunt,” Mark mumbles. He closes his eyes again, as if keeping them open is too much of an effort. “Thought he’d come for you, too.”
Donghyuck chooses to ignore the edge of concern to Mark’s words, the way he keeps rubbing his palm over Donghyuck’s arm even with his eyes closed, just to make sure he’s there and solid. Just the way Donghyuck used to do with him whenever Mark came to him injured in the middle of the night.
“Your aunt?” He looks up at Renjun again, because keeping his eyes in this broken version of Mark is way too much. He’s seen him through so many battles, he has lost count. But he’s never looked this small before, beaten up and defenseless. “Why would he do that?”
“He threatened her,” Renjun says. He sniffles, tightening his grip around himself. “Was trying to force Mark to kill him. Mark refused. Didn’t go well.”
Renjun is shifting his own weight from one foot to the other, as if he’s dying to run out of there. Donghyuck notices the way his bloodshot eyes keep jumping around the room, but never settle on Mark.
“Hey,” Renjun’s eyes snap to him, wide and shining with tears. Donghyuck stands up from where he is crouched down next to the couch. He has the intention to walk closer to Renjun, pull him into a hug, maybe. But Mark’s grip on his wrist tightens to the point it becomes painful. So he stays put, and says, “it isn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
Renjun stays silent for a long time, his eyes focused on Donghyuck’s face. He slides his gaze down, until he’s staring at Mark’s fierce grip on Donghyuck’s arm. The look burns.
Then, he blinks and tears his eyes away. He licks his lips and says, “It’s not yours, either.”
Donghyuck wishes he could believe him.
---
“Don’t you wanna be with your aunt?” Donghyuck asks later that day.
There’s a small table in front of the couch, and Donghyuck sets down three plates of lasagna from the convenience store before he returns to his place, squeezed between Mark and Jisung. It’s already dark outside and it’s not especially cold today, but that doesn’t stop them from curling together under a fluffy blanket.
“Nah, she’s with her boyfriend. Did I tell you she’s got a boyfriend?” Mark looks at him with big, round eyes.
He seems so excited for some reason Donghyuck can’t grasp. The first reply that comes to his mind is you don’t tell me anything anymore. But he swallows it down, because he knows it wouldn’t be fair, and it isn’t the time. He shakes his head, and Mark’s lips spread into a wide smile.
“You’re so lucky you heal fast,” Donghyuck points out. He gestures to Mark’s mouth, the big cut on his bottom lip practically sealed over.
“There had to be something good to this life, you know,” he says, like an offhand comment.
Whenever Mark talks like this, guilt travels up Donghyuck’s chest with sharp claws, scratching at his desire to become just as powerful as his best friend. He’s seen Mark break down so many times, crumple under anxiety and too big expectations, body covered in bruises and scratches. Donghyuck should know better, he knows better than anyone that a life like Mark’s can tear you apart.
But it’s that same sight, Mark bruised and battered, what makes him yearn for that power. Because, if he had the opportunity to fight for those he cares about, maybe Mark wouldn’t have to show up at his house in the middle of the day with blood painted all over his skin.
Donghyuck doesn't say anything, though. He leans forward to take a bite of his already cold lasagna, and slides his eyes towards Jisung, who’s staring at him with his eyebrows lifted and a pointed look that tells Donghyuck he knows way more than he lets on.
It’s still weird, to talk about these things when Jisung is around. This dangerous and fascinating side of life used to be something between Mark and Donghyuck, that’s what he used to hold onto each time Mark jumped out a window leaving him behind, clueless and worried. But now, everyone around them seems to know just as much as Donghyuck does.
Mark’s voice breaks him off his thoughts when he starts rambling about his aunt.
“Well, you know, she’s barely home? So I only found out about this mystery guy today. He’s like, from work. I think, yeah,” he’s still looking at Donghyuck with these big eyes, as if his aunt’s daily life is the most exciting thing he’s experimented all day. Mark takes a bite of his own lasagna and keeps talking with his mouth full. “She was kinda in shock. I mean, I can’t blame her, dude. Lucas… Lucas looks… Well, you. You know how he looks,” he frowns to himself, his dopey smile vanishing as fast as it appeared. “I don’t know how she’s feeling. About, I mean, this whole thing,” he gestures to himself with his fork. “But I know she’s safe.”
Silence falls over them like a storm, coating the mood in a slumber Donghyuck doesn’t know how to light up. It was never like this with Mark, when no super heroes had broken into their easy lives. Heavy silences and hidden truths and insecurities are something so unfamiliar for Donghyuck when it comes to their relationship. He feels like he’s juggling with them with butter hands, like there’s a countdown in his head for everything to come crashing down and break them apart inevitably.
“I’m just. I’m only scared he’ll come for you, now,” Mark confesses.
He isn’t looking at Donghyuck anymore. He’s got his eyes fixed on his half empty plate, the muscles of his back stiff in sharp lines. Donghyuck wishes he knew how to soothe him. He wishes he could promise he can take care of himself. He wishes he could reach out and smooth Mark’s edges with his fingertips, but only the thought of it burns his skin.
“Okay,” Jisung chimes in. He kicks the blanket off his body and throws it on top of Donghyuck. “I’m tired of your dramatic asses,” he says as he gets up to move to the floor, in front of the TV. “I’m gonna play High School Musical and neither of you have a say in this. You better sing along or I’m kicking you out.”
And just like that, Mark breaks into a fit of giggles, and the tension snaps with him.
“You can’t kick me out of my own house, brat,” Donghyuck frowns at him, stuffing more of his lasagna into his mouth. “Who’s gonna cook for you?”
“Oh, trust me. I know how to use a microwave.”
Donghyuck flips him off, but he’s got his arms wide open when Jisung climbs back into the couch, curling his long, lanky limbs into Donghyuck’s chest.
They spend the night like that, singing along to a movie they’ve seen a million times and ignoring the dangers that wait for them (for Mark) outside the window.
Jisung falls asleep somewhere halfway the second movie. Donghyuck feels so incredibly content for once, just relaxed and cozy in their warm bubble, he doesn’t want to get up to carry him to bed and risk breaking this rare tranquility. And it’s so sad, the fact that the comfort he used to find in Mark seems more and more scarce each day that goes by.
Mark shuffles on his side of the couch until he’s sitting sideways, with his back propped up against the arm rest and his legs flopped onto the couch. He slips his cold feet under Donghyuck thigh, and Donghyuck hisses at the contact, but he doesn’t pull away.
When Mark speaks up, he keeps his eyes trained on the TV.
“Thank you for being the only normal thing in my life.”
And how is Donghyuck supposed to tell him that, most of the time, he hates normal?
---
Mark gets clingier after that. He shows up at Donghyuck’s house almost everyday, latches onto him with clammy hands and shiny eyes.
Even when they are not together, Donghyuck can feel him, sometimes. On his way to college and on his way back home, Mark’s eyes hot on the top of his head, following him like a shadow that is physically unable to detach itself from Donghyuck.
It is getting to Donghyuck, all the attention and physical contact, and not in the right way. It makes him feel like paper, self conscious of each step he takes in case he’ll step into a puddle and dissolve into nothing, in case he’ll move faster than necessary and rip himself in two.
So, it doesn’t come as a surprise when Donghyuck gets home one Friday afternoon to find Mark sitting on his kitchen counter, already munching on whatever he found around the kitchen.
“You could at least wait until I’m home, you know?” Donghyuck says, letting his bag slip from his shoulder and onto the floor.
He walks towards Mark, takes the package he’s holding between his hands with the intention to steal something, but he scrunches up his nose and returns it as soon as he realizes it’s those disgusting chocolate cookies.
“Also, you should try to eat some real food once in a while,” he reprimands. He ignores how hypocritical that sounds when he walks to the fridge to choose between their wide variety of pre-made meals he stocks there.
He’s just gotten his food into the microwave when he feels Mark’s arms around his waist, the palm of his right hand pressing gently against Donghyuck’s abdomen.
It’s crazy, the way his pulse jumps just from this. From the familiar outline of Mark’s front pushed to his back, the sound of his breath in his ear, his chipped fingertips digging softly into the tender skin of Donghyuck’s belly, through his shirt.
And, by the way Mark starts to run his thumb back and forth over his belly button, he knows he can hear Donghyuck’s heartbeat skyrocketing in his chest, he can hear the way his blood sings in his veins, feverishly hot.
“What’s up?” Donghyuck asks, his voice a little hoarse already. He turns around to face Mark, but he keeps his own arms hanging at his sides. “I’m perfectly fine, what’s gotten into you?”
As nice as the attention is, the slide between their chests as Mark presses a bit closer, Donghyuck has never been strong. He doesn’t want to slip up again, and feeling this fragile around Mark only makes him want to drop all his defenses and ask for something he knows he doesn’t deserve.
But Mark doesn’t reply. He rests his forehead on Donghyuck’s shoulder, breathing him in as he pushes one leg between Donghyuck’s.
“Mark. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Can you, like, hug me?” He’s talking so softly, Donghyuck has trouble hearing him. But, still, he can recognize the fear behind his words.
“No, unless you tell me what’s wrong.”
Mark won’t look at him, so Donghyuck brings his hands to his head to curl them around Mark’s warm ears and push back. When he looks into Mark’s round eyes, it’s all written there: the fear, the uncertainty, the need. All laid out of Donghyuck to read and memorize.
“Stop leaving me out of everything,” he whispers, fingers clenching in the back of Mark’s head.
It’s the first time he’s addressing it out loud, but he knows Mark gets it by the way his shoulders slump. He tries to hide his face in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck again, but Donghyuck won’t let him, hands squeezing tight at the base of his head.
Mark lets out a small whine in protest, but his lips fall open to speak. “Lucas. He… He wants to meet up. Tomorrow.”
He screws his eyes shut as soon as the words are out in the open, his body tensing up as if he’s scared of Donghyuck’s reaction.
“And you’re going to go,” Donghyuck states. “Alone.”
Donghyuck’s words sound like an accusation. Mark springs away from him as if his touch suddenly burns.
“Of course I’m going alone,” he’s frowning at Donghyuck, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, a replacement for his iron suit. “You think I’m gonna let other people get in danger for me?”
“Mark, it’s not your fault,” Donghyuck’s intention is to try to calm him down, but he can’t help the bitterness that seeps into his words. “Whatever he’s going through, he did it to himself. And he’s fucking dangerous. You can’t go alone.”
“Who’s gonna come with me, huh?” Mark is full on screaming now, leaning towards Donghyuck with his eyebrows drawn into an angry scowl. “You gonna come with me?”
And it’s the way he says it, the tone of his voice, overflowing with mockery, as if it’s the most ridiculous thing that’s ever crossed his mind. It hurts more than anything Donghyuck has experienced before.
He feels ripped open. He knows he can’t hide anything from Mark, not the hurt that flashes through his face, nor the way his body flinches unconsciously at the words. He’s bleeding feelings on the kitchen tiles, and Mark is standing there, watching with wide eyes and no words of comfort to offer. Because he means what he said.
“Yeah,” Donghyuck replies, with a shrug.
He sounds pathetic even to his own ears, small and fragile, exactly what he is. He blinks fast to stop himself from crying, because that’s the only thing left to make a complete fool out of himself. But what hurts most is that he means it, powerless and frail, he’d run into the battlefield right after Mark in the blink of an eye. He wants to experience the violence of a fight against his skin so badly, it is almost scary.
“Hyuck, I,” Mark takes a step closer. He stretches his arm out, trying to clutch Donghyuck’s shoulder, but Donghyuck shakes him off.
“I’d be useless there. Would only weight you down, just a burden. Blah, blah, blah.”
There’s mockery in his words, he keeps rolling his eyes to try to play the whole thing down. But Mark isn’t buying it, he’s staring at Donghyuck as if he’s successfully crawled inside of him, as if he knows exactly what’s bubbling under his skin.
“You’re never useless,” he mumbles. He reaches out again and, this time, Donghyuck lets him hold onto his fingers. “I meant it, you know? When I said you didn’t need powers to be powerful?”
Donghyuck shrugs again. He doesn’t know how to handle it, the bare honesty in Mark’s face. It doesn’t add up to the reality, so he tries to pull away one more time. But Mark moves to stand right in front of him, trapping him between his chest and the counter.
“I’m serious. I need you here when I get back,” he runs his thumb over the back of Donghyuck’s hand, oh so gently. But that’s so far from what Donghyuck wants to feel right now.
“I’m not a fucking consolation prize, Mark,” he takes his hand out of Mark’s grip, claws his fingers around his shoulders instead. He wants to scratch at his skin until it breaks under his nails, he wants to prove he can leave a scar too, if he tries hard enough. “I want to make a difference.”
“You already do,” Mark’s voice breaks a little at the end. He grips onto Donghyuck’s waist, tugs until their bodies are flush together. “Why can’t you see… Why can’t you just–”
And, then, his lips are on Donghyuck’s.
Mark kisses him like an offering, pliant and soft, with his mouth open against Donghyuck’s closed lips, ready to be conquered if Donghyuck wants to.
And Donghyuck does want to. He brings his hand to the back of Mark’s neck and pulls him in closer, harder, until he can drown his doubts and questions in the wet heat of Mark’s mouth.
Donghyuck kisses him like a battlefield. He bites into Mark’s lower lip, pulls at it with the sharpness of his teeth before he dives deep again. He sneaks his tongue into Mark’s mouth and maps it out, traces all the places he can reach to mark them as his own. He claws at his nape and keeps pulling him closer, closer, close enough to bruise, until their teeth clack together. And Mark, Mark keeps his eyes closed and moans into it, his body melting under Donghyuck’s power.
When Donghyuck pulls away to breath, Mark’s lips are bright red and already swollen. He’s looking back at Donghyuck with hooded eyes as he sweeps his tongue along his lower lip as if he’s trying to chase his taste.
“Hyuck, please,” he whispers, words cracked with a kind of need that mirrors the simmering in Donghyuck’s veins. “I need–”
He doesn’t complete the sentence, he simply presses back against Donghyuck. He’s hard already, hot against the hollow of Donghyuck’s hip. Donghyuck runs a hand down Mark’s spine until he reaches his ass. When he yanks him even closer against his body, a broken whine falls from Mark’s lips, a deep pink, embarrassed flush spreading over his cheekbones.
“Bed, now,” he demands, his eyes still boring into Donghyuck’s with a febrile glint to them.
The weight of it all washes over Donghyuck as they make their way to his bedroom, hands tugging at clothes harder than necessary, fabric stretching and tearing open under the eagerness of their fingers, yearning for the warmth of skin on skin.
It’s overwhelming to the point Donghyuck is a little lightheaded, the way Mark seems as desperate as Donghyuck himself felt that one night in the darkness of his room. There’s this permanent blush high on Mark’s cheeks, it looks like embarrassment, but it doesn’t stop him from sliding his hands over every curve of Donghyuck’s body, doesn’t stop him from pulling at Donghyuck’s arms until he falls on the bed, right on top of Mark, between his legs.
They are breathing heavily against each other, Donghyuck losing himself in the heat of Mark’s skin, travelling kisses from his now naked chest to the bone behind his ear. Mark is panting already, his hands moving frantically all over Donghyuck’s back, as if they want to touch so many places they don’t know where to start.
Mark halts his movements when Donghyuck traces the shell of his ear with the tip of his tongue. He digs his fingers between Donghyuck’s ribs, his body going all rigid just by that small touch. And then, Donghyuck is biting down harshing into his earlobe, and Mark buckles up violently against him, a low groan ripping through his throat.
Donghyuck keeps nibbling at his ear, biting and licking and sucking as he revels in the different noises Mark is making, all low and raspy as if Donghyuck is dragging them out of him against his will.
He can feel the way Mark’s thighs are already shaking when he locks his legs tight around Donghyuck’s waist. They are still in their jeans, but Mark grinds up against him so hard that Donghyuck can feel everything. He has to press his forehead against Mark’s neck, already sticky with sweat, and pant onto the skin there.
Mark doesn’t stop moving, though. He keeps kneading at the skin of Donghyuck’s back as he tries to push his hips up, to curl his legs higher, his ass pressing against Donghyuck’s groin.
“I need. Hyuck, I need–” Mark mumbles between gasps, right into Donghyuck’s ear.
“Yeah,” Donghyuck says, pulling away a little to look into Mark’s face. He brings one hand up, runs his fingers through the sweaty, black strands, then down the flushed skin of Mark’s cheeks. “Whatever you want.”
And Mark looks so beautiful like this, with his eyes blown wide and shining. He’s so pale, he flushes up so easily, his skin is cherry red for all the right reasons. He’s gazing at Donghyuck as if he’s mesmerised, his swollen lips parted in a moan that hasn’t left his mouth yet. Mark only has to say the word, and Donghyuck will give him anything he wants. He feels powerful enough to bring down the fucking moon if Mark asked him to. It’s such a foreign feeling, curling pleasantly low in his belly, mixed up with the desire and desperation and every raw thing Mark makes him feel.
“I need you,” Mark breaths out, his cheeks going even redder. “Need you inside of me.”
Donghyuck goes breathless for a second. Because he’s thought about this before, but not like this.
He’s played with the fantasy of lying under Mark, naked in every way possible, vulnerable under this power and strength Donghyuck will never be able to own. He’s imagined himself laying himself bare for Mark with open hands, allowing him to conquer and carve every single bit of his body.
But here they are, Mark flushed to the tip of his ears, staring up at Donghyuck with raw fascination, asking him to own him in ways Donghyuck never thought he’d be deserving of.
Mark giggles, then. His nose wrinkles up and his eyes close in this way that makes him look way younger and more innocent than he actually is, untouched by violence. Donghyuck feels it in his veins.
“I could hear the way your heart literally stopped beating there,” Mark says, his voice still tingling with laughter.
He brings a hand to Donghyuck’s neck, slides it down his chest with feather light fingers until he stops right over his heart. He bites down onto his lower lip, looking at Donghyuck as if he wants to get under his skin in a whole new way. And Donghyuck would give him everything open handed.
“Shut up,” he mumbles right against Mark’s lips as he leans down to kiss him again.
It’s slow for the first time, languid and drawn out. Mark kisses him the way he protects him, no restraints and with his heart poured into it. He licks deep into Donghyuck’s mouth, touches at his softest places and sucks on his tongue until he makes him feel completely seen. Donghyuck has never been kissed like this, so tender and heavy at the same time. It doesn’t make his heart race, but it causes it to beat so hard he feels it in his throat, in his temples, under the skin of his wrists.
“Gonna give you a heart attack, mhm?” Mark mumbles, words pressed to the seam of Donghyuck’s mouth.
Donghyuck pulls away and raises an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think you’re in a position to act this cocky,” he says, and punctuates his words with a sudden move of his hips.
He grinds down against Mark hard and relentless, until he’s got him red down to his belly button and with his head pushed back against the pillow. Until he’s got him writhing underneath him, eyes screwed shut and knuckles white with the way he’s twisting the shits between his fingers. Until he’s got him mumbling Donghyuck’s name and hurry up and I need you and please, please, please.
Donghyuck feels like he’s about to explode once he gets them both out of their pants and underwear. His skin won’t stop tingling, lit up with something electric that makes every single hair on his body stand up.
He slows things down for a second, takes a deep breath and takes his time to look at Mark properly.
Everything about him is beautiful: from the chapped skin of his lips, bitten raw red, to his bony hips, jutting out on either side of his toned abdomen, his hard dick leaking all over the skin there already; from the burning tip of his ears, scorching hot when Donghyuck traces a finger over them, to the way his ribs stick out whenever he takes a deep breath, flushed chest going up and down faster with each gasp he lets out.
Donghyuck runs his eyes all over Mark’s body and follows the path with his fingers. He thumbs gently at every scar he sees, he palms over every scab he finds, kisses down on every bruise to turn them redder with something tender. He wants to sweep away the remnants of violence in Mark’s skin with the wet slide of his tongue.
And Mark lies there, breath quickening as he kneads the skin of Donghyuck’s forearms, trying to pull him closer but shying away from his touch at the same time, as if he can’t get enough even if it’s too much, already.
“Can you. Jesus, Donghyuck,” he puffs out when Donghyuck dips his tongue into his belly button, his hands thumbing over Mark’s hard nipples. “Enough foreplay, I fucking need you.”
Donghyuck loves the way those words sound in Mark’s lips. The truth behind them soothes all the insecurities Donghyuck has been feeling around him. He feels the way he felt back when he didn’t know a thing about Mark’s secret life, comfortable and known and important. As if he’s rediscovering Mark through something entirely new.
He gets carried away again, sinking his teeth in Mark’s right hip bone and sucking hard. And Mark gets impatient, fingers tugging at Donghyuck’s hair, nails scratching over his scalp in a way that makes Donghyuck groan against the new purple bruise blooming over Mark’s pale skin.
“You need me that much, huh?” Donghyuck teases, smiling up at Mark when he repeats the words he told him that other night. It seems so long ago, but Donghyuck feels the same sticky need clinging to every bit of his skin.
“Shut up and get your fingers inside me already.”
By the way Donghyuck’s heart swells in his chest, he’s sure Mark’s actually going give him a heart attack today.
He reaches into the drawer of his bedside table, congratulates himself from keeping condoms and lube there, even though it’s been long since the last time he brought anyone home.
When he uncaps the bottle of lube, he does it with shaky fingers, the reality of what’s happening settling heavy in the bottom of his stomach.
Mark is sprawled right in front of him, looking up at Donghyuck with big expectant eyes, opening his legs wider for Donghyuck to settle comfortably between them. The sight of him, vulnerable and open for Donghyuck to touch and kiss as he pleases, makes Donghyuck’s dick twitch with the hotness of it all, but there’s also bitter fear curling at the bottom of his belly, mixing up with his desire in a woozy combination.
“Hey,” Mark reaches up, his hand cupping the side of Donghyuck’s cheek. He thumbs at Donghyuck’s bottom lip, pushes his finger into the heat of his mouth, and Donghyuck sucks on it as if he’s been commanded to. “It’s okay,” Mark says, his voice sandpaper rough, pupils blown wide as he stares at Donghyuck’s mouth. “I got you.”
It’s too messed up inside of Donghyuck’s head to figure out what Mark means by that and, even though time seems to have slowed in his room, there’s still danger knocking on his window. So he presses a final kiss to the pad of Mark’s finger and gets to work.
Mark writhes when Donghyuck gets the first lubed up finger inside of him. He clenches around him, swallowing him up easier and faster than Donghyuck thought he would. He’s so responsive, Donghyuck is mesmerized, he can’t help but stare at the way Mark screws his eyes shut and curls up his back just by Donghyuck putting a single finger in and out of him, the way he tries to grind his ass into the touch and whines when Donghyuck doesn’t get as deep as he wants him.
“Another, c’mon,” he breathes out. “Hurry up, Donghyuck.”
He sounds so out of it already, but still manages to sneak in a bossy tone to his words. Donghyuck has to lean down and shut him up with a kiss as he slides a second finger in, moving them in circular and scissoring motions in the heat of Mark’s body.
Mark buckles into the touch, his mouth falls open and he keeps tugging at every part of Donghyuck’s body he can’t reach, as if he doesn’t know where he wants him, but knows he wants closer, closer, closer.
It feels like a fever dream to Donghyuck, the power of making Mark come undone just by the touch of his fingers. And Mark is so unashamedly vulnerable under him, begging for more and chasing the feeling desperately.
“Hyuck,” Mark groans against the crook of Donghyuck’s neck, where he’s currently hiding. His name whispered like that runs a shiver down Donghyuck’s spine, Mark’s breath tingling the tender skin of his neck, bitten red now. “Inside me. Now.”
Donghyuck pulls away and halts, ready to complain, because this is the first time they are doing this, but he knows Mark isn’t stretched out enough. But Mark sends him this intense look as he curls his fingers around Donghyuck’s wrist, stern and serious and so heavy with desire. Donghyuck’s words die at the tip of his tongue.
“I need you,” Mark says again, for what feels like the millionth time today. But it hits Donghyuck just as sharply. “Need it like this.”
Donghyuck nods down at him frantically, pulling away for a second so he can open the condom and roll it over himself. The heat that’s pooling in the bottom of his stomach already feels too much, his dick hot and twitching in his hand as he keeps staring down at this shattered version of Mark.
He grabs the back of Mark’s thighs, pulls his legs up so he can curl them tightly high up Donghyuck’s torso. He hisses when his dick rubs up unintentionally against Mark’s ass, and Mark smiles up at him like a feline, his lips spreading lazily into a grin as he twists his fingers into Donghyuck’s hair. Donghyuck feel his heart jumping up in his throat, and he swallows on nothing, trying to push it down unsuccessfully.
When he finally pushes inside, the heat and tightness are so overwhelming, he feels tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. There’s a high whine that scratches the back of Mark’s throat, already clenching around Donghyuck even though he isn’t even halfway in.
Donghyuck stops for a second, leaning with the intention to press kisses over Mark’s shoulders to distract him. But Mark reaches around him and claws at his skin with needy fingers, digging his nails into the flesh of Donghyuck’s ass.
“More, c’mon. More,” he keeps mumbling as he pulls on Donghyuck’s body, pushing him to enter all the way in.
Donghyuck’s vision goes blurry for a second at the feeling of it, at the way he can feel Mark stretching around him. It has to hurt, he knows it has to, but Mark keeps staring at him with this blissed out expression, lopsided smile still on his lips. Donghyuck’s mind starts to spin out of control.
It’s too much, his sensitive skin dragging against Mark’s walls as he starts to move slowly. Pleasure is setting every single patch of his skin on fire, and he can see the same feeling mirrored in Mark’s face, in the way his mouth falls open, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he tries to swallow on nothing.
Donghyuck can’t help himself, he’s reaching out even before he has time to think. He slides his fingers down Mark’s neck slowly as he starts to thrust faster into him, and stares in awe at the way Mark pushes his head further back into the pillow, allowing him more access to one of the most vulnerable parts of him.
And if Donghyuck’s mind was functioning, he may have stopped himself. But his thoughts seem to have melted down under the burning power that is Mark Lee. So he presses his palm flat over Mark’s neck and curls his fingers around his throat. It’s just tight enough to feel Mark’s pulse jumping underneath his touch, to feel the way his breath catches when Donghyuck thrusts into him particularly hard, the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he tries to swallow.
Then, Donghyuck is shifting his hips just right, diving into Mark in a new angle that reaches even deeper, and he feels the gasp that crawls up Mark’s throat when he hits his prostate dead on.
Donghyuck is marveling at the kind of power he seems to have over Mark. He goes so pliant under Donghyuck’s hands, looking at him with bare eyes that tell him he’d let Donghyuck ruin him any time.
His hand slides off of Mark’s neck when Mark pulls him closer, close enough for their chests to brush together, close enough to feel the wet slide of Mark’s dick twitching against his skin, trapped between both of their stomachs.
Everything becomes a blur of heat and sweat after that, Donghyuck snapping his hips against Mark’s with no rhythm, just pure desperation as he tries to chase his climax.
Mark comes first, completely untouched, curling up into Donghyuck’s chest as their skin gets stickier with his come. Donghyuck tries to stop, to pull away in fear he will hurt him, but Mark twists his fingers in Donghyuck’s hair roughly, pulls him hard against his mouth as he pants into it.
“Wanna feel you come inside me,” he rasps.
And it’s the desire what takes Donghyuck over the edge. It’s the small high pitched noises Mark keeps making at the oversensitivity, and the way he’s biting Donghyuck’s lips raw as if he doesn’t know anything else. It’s the unashamed want written all over his flushed face. He looks completely wrecked, with his hair sticking to his forehead and red angry lines blooming down his neck, panting and exhausted. But he clutches at Donghyuck’s body as if he’ll disappear if Donghyuck dares to stop.
So he comes like that, with tension bubbling up his chest and down his thighs, shaking visibly as his orgasm hits him harder than anything he’s experienced before. He trembles through it, his hips stuttering as he pants against Mark, his open mouth pressed to his cheek as Mark keeps whispering words of encouragement Donghyuck is too gone to process.
It’s later. After they’ve spent a few moments pressed up together, dirty but too worn out and too comfortable to move. After Donghyuck’s pulled himself up and out of Mark, discarding the condom into the trash can next to his bed. After he’s gotten himself out of bed with still trembling legs to walk into the bathroom and get a wet cloth. It’s only then, when he comes back to bed, comes back to Mark, when the images of Spiderman and his best friend clash together in his head.
Mark is smiling tiredly at him when Donghyuck sits cross legged next to him, sliding the warm cloth down his chest, abdomen and thighs. He looks so soft like this, it’s the most relaxed version of him Donghyuck has seen in months.
He’s no newbie to taking care of Mark, he’s more than used to cleaning him up carefully. But it’s the first time Mark’s tender to the touch with something warm, instead of freshly rough from a fight.
This isn’t Spiderman lying before Donghyuck. This is Mark, familiar in a whole new way. This is his best friend, vulnerable and bruised in every single sense of the word, who just wants to feel something kind from the person he trusts most.
So Donghyuck gives him just that. And, when he curls into Mark’s side, fingertips brushing over the purple marks on his skin, he finds himself wishing for the first time that Mark wouldn’t heal fast, so he’d be able to trace over them with his lips the next day.
He doesn’t say it out loud, but, still, Mark mumbles, “I guess you’re gonna have to keep making new ones.”
---
Donghyuck wakes up to an empty bed.
The clock on his bedside table shines 6 AM. It’s so early in the morning, Jisung should still be asleep, but Donghyuck can hear someone moving around in the apartment.
When he gets out of his room, clad only in a thin shirt and boxers, he finds Mark already dressed in yesterday’s clothes, a hand wrapped around the doorknob, ready to step outside.
He seems to be in a rush, his clothes are all wrinkled up, his shirt buttoned all wrong. He’s got his hair sticking in different directions at the top of his head, as if he didn’t even bother to look at himself in the mirror. Donghyuck’s eyes fall to the already fading mark that’s peeking out of the collar of his shirt, light pastel pink painting his milky skin.
“Where are you going?” He asks, tilting his head to the side. He has to squint to look at Mark, because he just woke up and he hasn’t had the time to blink the sleep away.
Mark’s eyes go soft at the sight of him. He drops his hand off the doorknob slowly and walks towards Donghyuck. The pads of his fingers are incredibly warm as he cups Donghyuck’s cheeks between his hands.
Donghyuck’s mind is still numb with sleep and yesterday’s events, so he barely reacts when Mark leans in. He allows Mark to kiss him, to brush their lips together with a kind of softness they’ve never shared before, just lips sliding over lips. And it’s good, it makes Donghyuck’s fingertips tingle and his knees go weak.
But, even though he’s still drowsy, he can taste the edge of something bitter in Mark’s skin. Something that tastes like a goodbye.
“You’re going to meet Lucas,” he says as soon as they break apart.
They are still so close, his breath hits Mark’s lips as he talks. And he’s still feeling so delicate inside, the words come out way gentler than he means them to.
He has to go a little cross eyed to look at Mark properly and, when he finally catches his eyes, Mark screws them shut, wincing. But he doesn’t pull away.
“I have to.”
“Yeah, I get that," Donghyuck brings his hands up to Mark's shoulders, rubbing his thumbs over the stiff muscles there. “But you don’t have to go alone.”
Mark slips out if his grasp with a heavy sigh. He takes a step back and looks at Donghyuck with stony eyes. That's enough to completely shake Donghyuck off his sleepy daze.
“We've been over this,” Mark says, clicking his tongue.
He doesn't even wait for an answer, he turns around with the door as a goal. But Donghyuck reaches for his arm in time and yanks hard, turning him around. He's still aware of their power disbalance, he knows he wouldn't have been able to do that if Mark didn't allow him to, and that makes him feel a little hopeful.
“No, you've been over this.”
“Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?” Mark shouts, throwing his hands up in the air.
Donghyuck steps towards him, getting right in his face. He whispers, low, “don't fucking scream. My brother's asleep.”
“Then stop acting like this,” Mark bites back. “What are you even gonna do out there? You're just gonna be one more person for me to protect.”
"Just a burden, right?" Donghyuck smirks at him, crooked and ugly. "Oh, I'd swear yesterday I heard you say I was never useless!"
Mark visibly flinches at the sarcasm in his words, as if he's just been punched in the face. But Donghyuck is violently reminded of the fact that it wouldn't even hurt Mark if he actually punched him. All the power he felt yesterday slips out of him just like that, and he's painfully aware that the only way he can scar Mark is through words.
"That's not what I mean," Mark says, his shoulders slumping. "You know that's not what I mean."
"That's the thing! I know nothing!" Donghyuck is the one screaming now, Jisung long forgotten in the angry red that's flashing through his eyes. "Because you keep leaving me out of everything."
"That has nothing to do with this," Mark’s voice falls to a whisper again, his eyes dropping to the floor.
"That has everything to do with this, Mark."
Donghyuck realizes, then, that Mark hasn’t tripped over his words once since this conversation started. He’s so riled up, so focused on what is going on between them, that his thoughts come out of his lips sharp and clear. And, no matter how much his words cut into Donghyuck’s self esteem, he’s slightly proud of himself for being able to press Mark’s buttons this way. Even at a time like this, seething and screaming right into each other’s faces, Donghyuck is still reaching for a way to be special to him.
“You said,” he starts, softer. One of his hands fly towards Mark, hooks in the sleeve of his shirt. And Mark lets him. “You said I don’t need power to be powerful. Let me prove that, then. Prove that you mean it.”
He knows he’s asking for too much, he knows he’s being childish. But, after last night, he doesn’t want to go back to feeling like an old cloth, only useful when others decide to pick him up.
Mark’s eyes are sad when he replies, “you can be powerful in so many different ways.”
Donghyuck knows he’s trying to be kind, to be gentle. But he’s already so hurt inside, it sounds patronizing to his ears, bordering pity.
“Yeah? Like waiting here to patch you up and jerk you off after a fight?” The words taste on his tongue just as bitter as they sound. “I think I deserve more than that.”
He’s awfully conscious of how unfair he’s being, but he can’t stop for some reason. He can physically see the hurt that crosses over Mark’s face, the way he winces and curls into himself, yanking his sleeve out of Donghyuck’s grip with a sharp tug.
“You know what you deserve?” Mark asks, his voice rough like gravel and his eyes narrowed. Donghyuck braces himself for the hit, but it never comes. Because what he says next is: “You deserve to stay alive,” and, somehow, that hurts worse that anything mean that could’ve come out of his mouth. “So, yeah. You stay here and wait for me. And I’ll even let you jerk me off if I come back alive.”
Donghyuck doesn’t even know how to react to that. He freezes over, his entire body tensed up as he watches Mark slipping away from him.
Mark crosses the apartment without looking back at him, not even once. Donghyuck doesn’t find his voice again until Mark’s got the doorknob clutched in his fist.
“See you later, then.”
Mark slams the door shut without saying it back.
---
Donghyuck lasts half an hour locked in the apartment.
He is sitting on the couch when Jisung walks out of his room. He’s hugging one of the cushions as he keeps his eyes trained on the TV screen. Donghyuck curls into his side as soon as Jisung since next to him, silently glad for the arm he sneaks around him, strong and firm, keeping him in place.
Because the images on TV are making Donghyuck’s feet tickle, but in a bad kind of way. It’s like a million needles prickling anxiety into the soles of his feet, and Donghyuck feels one second away from bolting out the door.
The images are crooked and confusing, shot in wrong angles as the press tries to stay covered and safe from everything going around them.
Mark is this blurred stain on screen, jumping from window to window, from building to building, as if he’s made of air, as if he’s been born to meld into the sky. He’s doing his best, keeping all the police officials that have shown up trapped in his spider webs, trying to keep Lucas safe and whole but stop him at the same time.
And Lucas looks like a shadow of his old self. Like the cursed image that the mirror shows of yourself whenever you turn your back to it, as the old horror tales say.
His green face is covered in swollen veins, his clothes all ripped open and hanging off muscles like rotten skin. There’s barely anything left of his boyish look, his ears growing into dangerous tips, his teeth sharp as daggers as he snarls at Mark’s blurry form. His eyes are sunken into his sockets, his old mischievous and youthful light replaced by pitch black. There are black smudges around his lips and long nails, and down his chest in claw marks, as if he’s tore at his own skin trying to break free from his own body.
Donghyuck thinks back to afternoons spent with the two of them.
He thinks back to sunny days spent at amusement parks where Donghyuck and Lucas laughed together at Mark’s panicked self as they shared pink cotton candy. He thinks back to Lucas bursting into the college library with his wide smile twinkling under the artificial neon lights and a soccer ball tucked under his arm, determined to drag Mark and Donghyuck out of there for a quick match. He thinks back to afternoons in the darkness of his room, with the blinds shut and Lucas' loud laughter rumbling in his headphones as they fought side by side in pixel fights on computer games. He thinks back to late nights at his empty apartment, when he opened his door to an over excited Lucas with a plastic bag full of six packs in one hand and a plastic bag full of Disney VHS's in the other. He thinks back to that one time he got to hang out with both Lucas and Renjun at the same time, and the way Lucas’ cheeks flushed deep red when Renjun casually told him he looked like an oversized puppy. He thinks back to early mornings in Mark’s house, dizzy with alcohol running through his veins, mixed with the fondness that rushed through him at the sight of Mark’s sleeping body curled into Lucas’ long limbs, at how small he looked in his embrace, tangled together in the couch.
And now, he looks right to the TV screen. He stares at this Lucas, who won’t stop destroying everything he finds on his way to try to rile Mark up, who throws sharp edged things at his friend not with the intention to hurt, but with the intention to convince Mark to hurt him instead. He looks at this dimmed version of a boy that was never quite his friend, but that managed to carve a such a comfortable place in his life through Mark, and he feels like he’s losing one, anyway.
All it takes to get him to his feet is the loud noise Mark makes with Lucas tears apart the hood of a car and throws him his way, impacting against him dead on.
Jisung stands up with him, clutches at Donghyuck’s arm with sweaty fingers, and whispers “please, don’t.”
But Mark is lying on the ground, body twisted in all the wrong ways. And Lucas keeps slipping further away from reality as seconds tick by.
Donghyuck can’t stand still any longer.
---
When Donghyuck gets to the fight scene, the only way to describe the way he feels is shattered.
He ran there, because when he stepped out of his house he was to wind up to think properly. He’s panting now, with the soles of his feet sting and his clothes stick to his body with sweat, so does his hair. He feels uncomfortable inside and out, as if someone has cracked him open and put him back together in the wrong way, all his pieces crooked.
And the feeling only strengths when he opens his way over the dirty cobblestones. His shoes make squeaky noises as he steps over broken pieces of glass and plastic and other stuff he can’t recognize, officers screaming at him to step back because it’s dangerous, kid and you shouldn’t be here and you’re going to get hurt. But they make no move to stop him, because they are still paralyzed by Mark’s spider webs.
But Donghyuck doesn’t care if he gets hurt. Not after he spots Renjun there, crouching next to a battered dumpster, his face red and stained with tears and dirt as he cradles it between his own arms. He’s rocking back and forth, knees to his chest, shaking visibly as he stares at everything that’s unfolding in front of him with wide, scared eyes.
That’s the last push Donghyuck needs to swallow down the anxious knot in his throat and move close enough to be in plain sight of Lucas.
He’s still tearing down everything he finds in his way, ripping apart hoods of cars and pulling lamp posts off sidewalks and kicking at trash cans with an abnormal strength he clearly doesn’t know how to manage, yet. He’s screaming at Mark, his voice pitched so high Donghyuck can barely make out what he’s saying.
And Mark. Mark is sprawled face-down on the floor, flinching every time Lucas throws something new at him, his iron suit cracked open in more places Donghyuck can count. He isn’t looking at Donghyuck, but he twitches curls onto himself when Donghyuck walks closer to Lucas with unsteady feet, as if he can feel his presence. Of course he can.
He doesn’t say anything, though. He’s probably bearing so much pain right now, he can’t even speak. Donghyuck knows Mark heals faster than normal human beings, but by the look of the scene, Lucas hasn’t stopped throwing stuff at him since Donghyuck left the apartment.
He doesn’t even know how long has been, and the mental image of how Mark’s body may look under this broken hero suit makes his stomach wring, bile going up his sternum and burning him inside like a flame. He promises to himself he has to survive this, so he can be there to clean him up afterwards, as he should.
“Lucas,” he starts. But he’s so out of it, every single part of his body trembling, that it comes out too quiet in the deafening noise of Lucas tearing the world down around him. So he takes a deep breath, sinks his nails into the sweaty skin of his hands, and tries again. “Lucas!”
He hears him, this time. Lucas’ movements halt suddenly, his black eyes slide from Mark to Donghyuck, the big glass he’s currently gripping between his fingers chipping a little when he tightens his grip on it. Donghyuck’s eyes move to Lucas’ hand, to the pitch black blood that runs down his wrist drips onto the cobblestones as the glass digs into his hand. But it stops flowing just in seconds, healing at a pace that’s almost unbelievable, even after all the unbelievable stuff Donghyuck has seen in the past months.
“I know you don’t want to hurt me,” Donghyuck says. He’s making a ridiculous attempt at sounding sure of himself, his voice all high pitched and every word breaking with fear. Lucas doesn’t say anything, he keeps staring with these eyes that used to make Donghyuck laugh just with one look, but now have him wanting to dissolve into tears. “I know you. And you are so much better than this.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, and he realizes it even before he finishes the sentence. But the words ring so true in his veins, he can’t swallow them down.
Lucas growls at him, as if he’s suddenly gone so wild he’s forgotten how words are supposed to work. He snarls, his shard teeth bared as he throws the glass panel in Mark’s direction.
Donghyuck flinches as if it has been thrown at him. He swears he can physically feel the sharpness of it breaking through his skin as Mark moans on the floor.
He feels dizzy with how fast everything has changed. Only hours ago, he was dragging pretty noises out of Mark’s mouth through gentle touches and tender feelings, trying to wash all the violence off his skin with the sweep of his mouth. And, now, Mark is writhing on the floor because of him.
Donghyuck rubs at his cheeks when the tears start falling down, so hard he feels like he’s about to lift the skin. His legs are shaking violently with the need to run to Mark and crouch beside him, help him some way. But, now that he’s here he needs to finish what he started, first.
Lucas approaches another car and tears off its bumper. He wheels it around before he’s lifting his arm up in the air, getting momentum to throw it right at Mark.
Donghyuck is moving on instinct before he has time to think. He runs towards Lucas until they are almost chest to chest, his hands grabbing his arm with all the strength he can muster, trying to keep it suspended in the air.
And his body has gone so hard, so rigid. Lucas’ skin feels almost dry under Donghyuck’s fingertips, like a tree that’s dying out.
By the way Lucas is looking at him, Donghyuck knows all his strength means nothing to him. He knows Lucas could throw him across the street with a single swing of his arm if he wanted to. But he doesn’t, and that’s what matters.
“Hear me out, please,” he breathes. Lucas doesn’t give him an answer, but his eyes are focused on Donghyuck, a frown settling between his brows. “I know. I know you hate this,” he squeezes Lucas’ arm, tries to dig his fingers into his flesh to make a point. “But there’s so much good you could do. You could make a difference, Lucas. You have the power to.”
“I’m a monster,” Lucas says between greeted teeth. Donghyuck can make out the words so clearly, this time. He sounds bitter inside, and Donghyuck misses the times he would compare him to all things sweet with a ferocity that almost makes him double in half. “Maybe if I hurt you Mark Lee will finally get his ass up and kill me, huh?”
Lucas is smirking at him, but there’s something twisted about it. It’s not a threat what Donghyuck sees, it’s pure pain.
But he still trembles in fear when Lucas’ other hand comes to curl around his waist, claw-like fingers breaking into Donghyuck’s skin as if he’s actually made of paper.
“Hyuck,” Mark croaks out behind him.
Donghyuck refuses to look back now that he’s finally got Lucas attention on himself only, away from Mark. So he ignores the tinge of desperation in the name, and lifts his chin higher.
“Is your disease gone?” He asks. Lucas tilts his head in confusion, but he nods. “You could help others like you, then. Can’t you see that, Lucas? Maybe. Maybe your blood can help to cure others. Maybe you’ll be able to come up with vaccines to help those terminally ill. How are you gonna do that if you’re dead, huh?”
Donghyuck is reaching, he knows he is. He's majoring in Science, but what they teach him in class sadly has nothing to do with super powers. And, even though he'd be more than willing to apply his knowledge, bend everything he knows to fit in this world, and try to help him, he has no idea if anyone in the supernatural world would be willing to cooperate after this. But Lucas has his eyes locked into his, he isn’t frowning anymore, and his arm is going limp in Donghyuck’s grip. So he keeps tugging at desperate threads.
“Your dad had experiments, right? Equipment?” He feels his chest swelling up with something really close to hope when Lucas nods. “You can use that, you can work with that. You know you can. You don’t have to become one of them,” he nods towards Mark with a curt shake of his head. He feels dirty doing so, as if he’s somehow betraying him, but he can’t back down now. “You can be powerful in so many different ways, Lucas.”
There’s this glint in Lucas’ eyes, as if the sudden hope Donghyuck is feeling is mirrored in his eyes. He can see in the new light of his face that Lucas has been so trapped in his own madness and self-hatred, he hasn’t even given himself time to think of all the ways he could be useful.
“You could be so much,” he keeps pushing, his fingers softening his grip on Lucas’ arm slowly. “You could do so much for those regular heroes always neglect.” Lucas is nodding now.
Donghyuck takes a single deep breath, his mind flying back to Jisung. He can imagine him sitting on the couch, biting down into his nails until his fingers bleed with worry. Lastly, he adds: “You can do so much for those of us who can’t. Please, don’t waste it.”
He takes his hands off of Lucas, then, and takes a step backwards. A second goes by where no one moves, but then Lucas’ arm falls to his side, and the bumper falls to the sidewalk. And Donghyuck’s legs are shaking so badly with relief, all the adrenaline leaving his body at once, he almost falls to the ground.
Lucas has his face contorted into this guilty expression, his mouth pinched down in a sad curl as he looks around. His eyes are so round, getting wider as he takes in the mess surrounding him. And, even though he keeps shrinking into himself under the reality of what he’s done, somehow he looks more like the boy he used to be than ever. Donghyuck smiles at him, the way he would smile at an old friend he’s bumped into in the street after a long time.
And Lucas smiles back.
But, then, there are sirens shattering the calm around the corner.
Everything happens so fast: the panic in Lucas’ eyes, the frantic yell that comes out of Mark’s mouth, the sound of someone cocking a gun. Donghyuck is jumping in front of Lucas before he can stop himself, his name pitched high in Mark’s voice, the sharp pang of a bullet cutting through the flesh of his thigh.
Donghyuck’s breath leaves his body when he collapses to the floor. The impact of his back against the cobblestone, the remnants of glass digging into his skin, is so strong, he can’t catch his breath for a few moments that feel like a lifetime.
He’s convinced he’s going to die there, with his lungs empty and with this ferocious pain that starts in his thigh, but spreads everywhere, burning down everything inside him like a wildfire.
There’s Mark’s voice somewhere close, screaming at someone to go and just leave, I’ll find you and get the fuck out of here. And then his hands are on Donghyuck, cracking through the sharp pain that seems to have settled in his bones forever.
Mark’s hands are still gloved, and Donghyuck desperately wishes he could feel the slide of his fingers over his sensitive skin. But it’s Mark touching him nonetheless, even if there’s cloth and iron between them.
Donghyuck cracks his eyes open a tiny bit, his vision blurred with tears that won’t stop falling down his cheeks. But he can make out Mark’s figure leaning over him, his masked face staring down at him emotionless, as it always is. But Mark’s hands are frantic along his body.
He cradles Donghyuck’s head between his fingers, first. So softly, as if he’s scared he will slip through them like sand. He pushes his legs right under Donghyuck, so his skull doesn’t have to lie against the hard sidewalk. And Donghyuck feels good for a second, the pain in his body dissolving into numbness.
But, then, Mark is reaching down, pressing one of his hands down into the wound in Donghyuck’s thigh hard.
The scream that rips out of Donghyuck’s mouth leaves his throat stinging. He clutches at Mark’s arm as pain rushes over his entire body like a wave, his nails almost breaking as he scratches at the iron of the hero suit.
“Shhh,” Mark keeps mumbling. He brings his other hand up to Donghyuck’s forehead, pushing his hair away from his forehead. The iron glove is cold over Donghyuck’s feverish skin, it clears his head a tiny bit. “I got you, you’re gonna be okay.”
“The officers,” Donghyuck manages to squeeze the words out between his gritted teeth. He can’t help wincing, because even speaking hurts.
“I got them under control,” Mark assures him. He keeps running his thumb back and forth over Donghyuck’s forehead as he presses something cold to Donghyuck’s wound. Cobweb, probably. Because that’s always his first answer for everything.
“By under control you mean you sprayed webs all over them?”
Donghyuck can feel on his cheeks the way Mark’s chest rumbles with laughter. It makes him smile through the pain.
“Yeah, yeah,” he replies with a chuckle. He’s reaching for Donghyuck’s shoulders, then. Trying to push him up. “You think you can sit up? I gotta take you to a hospital.”
It takes a lot of grunting and wincing, but Donghyuck ends up being able to sit up. He looks at Mark through swollen eyes, trying to blink the tears out of his eyes.
“You did it, didn’t you?” Mark mumbles, his hands back on Donghyuck’s cheeks, his thumb drawing circles on the wet skin, smearing blood everywhere. “You saved the day, huh? Like a damn hero. Told you, fucking powerful.”
Donghyuck’s losing his breath again, but for a whole different reason. His heart keeps swelling up in his chest, taking up more space that it’s supposed to, and he’s scared he’ll end up bursting there for how much his feeling. It comes out in a new wave of tears, all the fear and anxiety and guilt he’s been swallowing down bubbling up in broken sobs.
“You’re so powerful, Hyuck. So damn powerful,” Mark keeps whispering, trying to wipe the tears off Donghyuck’s face unsuccessfully. “But, god. I was so scared,” he rests his forehead against Donghyuck’s then, cold iron against warm skin. “Don’t ever do something like that to me again, please.”
And Donghyuck thinks now you know how I feel every time you’re out here fighting. But he swallows the words, because he knows Mark already gets it.
He chokes out a weak laughter, shaking his head frantically. There is no way he’ll ever put either of them through this again, only the mental image of a worried sick Jisung hurts enough for a lifetime.
So, he intertwines his fingers in the back of Mark’s neck and whispers: “I hate your stupid mask. Cause I could kiss you right now.”
Mark doesn’t reply, but Donghyuck knows he’s smiling under the mask.
The next thing he knows, Donghyuck is up in the air, flying over Queens with his arms tight around Mark’s neck.
---
Sometimes, Donghyuck loves his supernatural life.
It’s at times like this:
When classes are finally over and he struggles to walk down the stairs, with his bag hanging off his shoulders and throwing him off balance as he tries to not trip with his crutches.
His arms feel incredibly heavy and his wrist creak like crusty machines as he turns the corner to dive into a small alley. But there is Mark, already dangling off a lamp post as he waits for him.
“Here, put these on,” he says, handing Donghyuck a pair of gloves after he’s taken the bag off his shoulders and the crutches out of his hands to carry them himself.
“What do I need these for?” He asks, lifting an eyebrow at him. He’s still standing in front of Mark, a little unsteady with all of his weight on his left leg.
“We’re gonna go fast,” Mark explains. He reaches out a hand instinctively to steady Donghyuck by his waist when he trips a little. “You know, like going on a motorbike fast, kinda? The cold, eh. It’s gonna be cold. You know how your hands get when it’s cold.”
He doesn’t have his mask on at the moment, but the blush on his cheeks is so prominent it almost matches the red of his suit. Donghyuck doesn’t say anything, though. He only smiles knowingly as he rolls the gloves over his hands.
Donghyuck loves flying like this, even though it’s uncomfortable with his crutches always getting in the way. He loves the feeling of cold wind against his cheeks, and the adrenaline rush he gets every time he looks down and sees Queens flashing underneath them. He loves it most like this, when he gets out of class late and it’s already dark, and they are flying so fast, the city lights twinkle like dragonflies. Most of all, he loves the hardness of Mark’s suit pressed up against the skin of his chest, he loves the way he can feel his own heart hitting against the iron, or the feeling of Mark’s gloved hand wrapped securely around the flesh of his thighs.
He loves all about it: from the way Mark won’t shut up during their trips, listing every single thing he’s got planned for the day and describing every single bad guy that’s waiting in line for him to fight them; to the way his hair is an absolute mess once they land, Mark running his fingers through it in an attempt to tame it, even though he knows by now that it’s impossible.
“Gotta go meet up with Fury,” Mark says, mask still on in the darkness of the alley that leads to Donghyuck’s street. “We’re still trying to figure out how to deal with Lucas, you know how it is,” Donghyuck nods, and he’d reach out for Mark if he wasn’t holding onto his crutches with both hands. “There better be chocolate cookies when I get home, though.”
“Home, huh?” Donghyuck teases him, one of his eyebrows raising in his forehead.
“Shut up, you know what I mean,” Mark says, and Donghyuck knows he’s blushing even though he’s got his mask on.
He loves his supernatural life most at times like this: when he turns his back to Mark to make his way home, but gets interrupted only a couple of steps later by a Mark that's dangling upside down, mask off and hands pressed to Donghyuck’s cheeks, dragging him into a kiss, see you later mumbled in the quiet of the alley.
---
Most of the time, Donghyuck loves his normal life.
It’s at times like this: when the kitchen of his apartment is covered in baking powder and Mark is sitting on top of the counter, legs wrapped around Donghyuck’s waist, chocolate stained fingers sliding over the skin of his cheeks and rubbing patterns that make no sense.
“You wanna come visit Lucas with me? Like, tonight?” He whispers against Donghyuck’s cheek, leaning closer to pick up some of the chocolate there with his tongue. “They don’t have a VHS at this fancy superhero place Fury took him, but they have these massive screens, you know?”
And Donghyuck doesn’t know, because he’s never been at this training facility before. All he knows about it is what Mark has told him, something along the lines of massive and fucking expensive and so neat, dude. But he nods anyway, smiling when Mark’s tongue slides over the seam of his mouth.
“Renjun will be there,” he keeps pressing words to Donghyuck’s skin. “I mean, he’s always there. We can bring Jisung with us? And play some Disney stuff? You know, like. Like old times.”
“Like old times,” Donghyuck replies, slotting his lips between Mark's to kiss him properly.
He tastes like chocolate and beer and this electric flavour so inherently Mark. Donghyuck has him memorized by now, every single corner of his mouth, every single curve of his body, every single word of his vocabulary. He feels like he knows him even better than he knows himself, inside and out.
Just like old times, but in a whole new way.