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This morning, Mark’s horoscope had read: the first half of your day will prove to be self-fulfilling. However, do not let your guard down. The worst, or best, is yet to come. Somehow, Mark manages to go a whole hour without running into Donghyuck until the Universe deems that he’s had enough peace today and the worst, or best, is upon him.
Donghyuck prances into the dressing room where Mark is curled up on the couch and resting his eyes as he waits for a free makeup chair. He’s singing a Beauty and the Beast OST in what he calls a ‘soprano’ but Doyoung calls ‘screechy but irritatingly in tune.’
Mark cracks an eye open at the noise, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Donghyuck’s skirt bounces around his legs, flashing the shorts he’s wearing underneath. Skirt. No, dress. Cherry red with white polka-dots. Pigtails that slap against his blushing cheeks. And lower. A pair of pristine white sneakers and matching socks.
“Um,” Mark says, mouth gaping.
“I’m Dongsookie,” Donghyuck sing-songs. He throws himself over the arm of the sofa furthest from Mark, placing a peace sign over his eye. His treacly coal-black eyelashes skim against the Rilakkuma band-aid on his knuckle, and the way his feet kick up into the air makes the frills of his underskirt bunch up around his waist.
Mark squeaks.
Donghyuck grins, slowly, both rows of teeth, and Mark looks away. That is, only to make eye contact with Jaehyun in the mirror. Jaehyun snickers at him, and Mark would stick up his middle finger but Jaehyun is subsequently poked in the eye with an eyeshadow brush, and he figures that’s the Universe’s way of doing it for him. He turns back to Donghyuck, mildly captivated by the grubby soles of his sneakers darting in and out of view.
Then Donghyuck wriggles forward, toppling onto the couch in a heap of fabric and hair. He flicks one of his pigtails out of his face, resting an elbow on Mark’s knee, and twirls it around his finger. “Hyung, do you like it?” He leans forward when Mark doesn’t answer, or can’t answer, his words puffing over Mark’s face. His bottom lip juts out, sticky with lip gloss. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Mark, silly, dumb Mark, opens his mouth and lets his guard down.
Last week, with the help of an extensive Google search, Mark had written out a list in his lyric notebook. He titled it LEO AND GEMINI COMPATIBILITY:
playful relationship
leo is ruled by sun, gemini by mercury
(both communicate well, but approach it differently)
air helps fuel fire
leo’s sensitive ego may be bruised by gemini’s compulsive flirting
also leo can come across as smothering to a free-spirited gemini
leos can be great leaders, but are resolute
geminis are more flexible
very well-matched
we’re meant to be
“Huh,” Yuta had said, squinting over Mark’s shoulder. Mark startled, slamming the notebook shut and pressing it against his fickle heartbeat. “Isn’t Donghyuck a Gemini?”
“I like it,” Mark tells the floor, “You look nice.”
“But how do you know that if you’re not looking at me,” Donghyuck whines. At that, Mark’s gaze snaps up. He thinks Donghyuck looks awfully red. The makeup artist must’ve gone ham with blush to complete Donghyuck’s look. Or Dongsookie, he’d called himself.
“You look nice, Donghyuck,” Mark repeats, with slightly more resolve than the first time. He shifts, and sits on his palms so Donghyuck doesn’t see them trembling. He’ll never live it down. It’s not that he’s affected by Donghyuck, specifically. They could’ve put Jaemin or Ten or God forbid, Johnny, in a dress and Mark would still feel like his guts are on fire. It’s the dress.
Donghyuck seems satisfied with the compliment, because he nods, and doesn’t reply. With one last bat of his eyelashes, he stands up, smooths down his skirt, and skips away to attach himself to Taeil, who’d just entered the dressing room. Taeil sighs and turns on his heel, straight back out the door, Donghyuck hanging off his back and his sneakers dragging squeakily across the floor.
“This is it,” Mark laments, sinking into the chair next to the one Jaehyun is lounging in. Jaehyun’s shoulders are loose, his legs splayed out. Mark hopes to achieve Jaehyun’s level of mental relaxation but with this Dongsookie development and another three stages of the SM Rookies show left, he’s doomed to wake up with stiff shoulders tomorrow.
“This is puberty,” Mark continues. He moves away from the eyeliner pencil making its way towards his face (if Donghyuck was in the room, he’d start humming the Jaws theme song), and pulls down the collar of his shirt to point at a spot on his sternum. “I think I have a chest hair, hyung.”
Jaehyun laughs, peering at Mark’s chest. “Congratulations. Now treat Jihye noona with some respect.”
Jihye huffs, the corner of her mouth turning up in a begrudging smile. She presses the heel of her palm into Mark’s shoulder to keep him in place as she does his makeup. The action reminds Mark of his cousin in Canada. When he was nine, and she was twelve, she dragged him into Mark’s auntie’s bedroom, and made him wear a silky sky-blue skirt that went past his ankles and had to be tightened around his waist with an elastic hair-tie. She stuck golden stars from her sticker collection all over his scrawny, bare chest, two hearts on both of his nipples, and cut a gash of red lipstick across his mouth.
When Mark went down to the living room to debut his outfit, his mother hid her smile behind her hand, and pulled out her camera. Mark posed for the photo with his arms covering his chest, and then turned to his cousin to say, “So, do I get ice cream now?”
“So,” Jaehyun starts, “Now that you’re a man—”
“This conversation is over, hyung,” Mark cuts him off, his eyes closed.
“What?” Jaehyun says, voice saccharine, “I was just gonna ask if you’ve thought about getting a girlfriend.” He pauses, and Mark can hear his smile. “Or a boyfriend.”
“It’s not Donghyuck, it’s the dress,” Mark blurts out.
“Who said I was talking about Donghyuck?”
“It could’ve been anyone, and I’d still—it could’ve been you.”
“Oh Mark,” Jaehyun says, ruffling Mark’s coiffed hair. Jihye slaps his hand away. “A Donghyuck by any other name would smell as sweet. You like him.”
“I don’t,” Mark protests, turning to glare at Jaehyun. The Universe pokes him in the eye with an eyeshadow brush.
“I don’t,” Mark says when Doyoung walks into the kitchen to see him bent over the sink at 2AM. He’s furiously scrubbing off the message Donghyuck left on his forearm in permanent marker off air at Mickey Mouse Club: you’re a real cutie, Canada ♡. Doyoung nods, the action dripping with mockery, and holds up Mark’s soapy, limp arm. The skin has gone grey.
“I don’t,” is what Mark tells Johnny after he finds Mark’s lyric notebook, and quotes we’re a walking cliché, baby, we’re star-crossed friends for an entire week. “The only similarity I share with Romeo is that I’m about to kill myself!”
“I don’t,” he says to Taeyong after his skit with Donghyuck. Taeyong shakes his head, and smiles. There’s lip gloss on his cheek in the shape of Donghyuck’s pout.
“I don’t,” Mark hisses at Jisung, smacking a hand over his mouth when Jisung goes to tell Donghyuck that Mark thinks he looks bootylicious, but I don’t know what that means, hyung.
“What are you talking about, Yuta hyung?” Mark says, tightening his grip on his notebook. “Donghyuck’s a Scorpio.”
Mark has this daydream he sometimes thinks about in class. It’s called ‘Boyfriend Donghyuck.’ It’s been in the works for months, with several sprawling storylines (he’ll meet Donghyuck at a skate park, or they’ll be four years older and Donghyuck will be his roommate in college, or they’ll be stranded on a deserted island together). His favourite version is the one that stays true to the Lee Donghyuck he knows now. They’ll debut together, Donghyuck will get to sing, and Mark will rap, and they’ll be stars, and Mark will find the courage to kiss Donghyuck on the lips, and it’ll be happily ever after, and this fantasy was never meant to involve—
“Oppa,” Donghyuck calls out after Jisung runs away, his mouth popping on the honorific. Mark turns around, his cheeks growing hot. “Wanna get ramyun later?”
“Me?” Mark says, pointing to himself. Mercury must be in retrograde, there is no way Lee Donghyuck is talking to him.
Donghyuck sidles up to him, wrapping his palm around Mark’s bare arm and hooking his chin on Mark’s shoulder. He tilts his head. “Yeah, you, Mark oppa.” Well.
Mark goes to swipe at Donghyuck’s arm in protest, but he chickens out at the last second when his fingertips brush against the puffy sleeve of Donghyuck’s dress. Yeah, that’s still a thing. “Stop calling me that,” he grumbles, instead.
“But oppa, you said you like it,” Donghyuck insists, shaking his shoulders. His fingers skate down Mark’s arm, and he interlocks their hands. His voice, even without the put-on feminine tone, is a fairly high register; shrill when he wants to get on someone’s nerves, calm and dulcet when he’s telling Mark about his day or the nightmare he’d had last night or that Mark’s verse was kind of lyrical genius, you know, kind of.
Sometimes, Mark feels like taking Donghyuck’s voice box in his hands and breaking it.
Jaemin strolls by then, wolf-whistling. Mark looks away from Donghyuck’s mouth to scowl at him. By the time Mark turns back, Donghyuck has let go of him and is halfway down the corridor, following after Jaemin; the only evidence he’d been pressed against Mark just then the flowery perfume that clings faintly to his leather top, and the ghost feeling of fingers around his upper arm. Donghyuck walks backwards, yelling out, “Ramyun date, promise?”
“I promise,” Mark replies. Belatedly, he tacks on, “Just me and you?”
Donghyuck snickers, rounding a corner, and Mark barely hears him shout, “You wish. Everyone else is gonna be there!”
Once, Mark dozed off on his desk during Math, and was plunged into a dream where the college boyfriend Donghyuck he’d been imagining morphed into delinquent Donghyuck who shared a class with Mark and sat at at the back of the room. He had a tattoo of the Starry Night across his back, and five piercings in each ear.
In this dream, Mark is a new student and he has to introduce himself in front of the class. He is also, completely and humiliatingly, buck naked.
“Hi. I’m Mark. I’m 16 years old. I’m Canadian. I’m a Leo,” Dream-Mark recites. His palms do nothing to hide his crotch. He shifts on his feet, eyeing the door, and then the open window.
Dream-Donghyuck strolls up to the front, a dirty magazine tucked under his arm, ignoring the teacher who tells him to go back to his seat, and gives Dream-Mark a lazy smile. He opens up the magazine, placing it over Dream-Mark’s nether regions, and they shuffle out of the classroom and into the sunset together.
There are three things Mark is certain of: one, life isn’t a dream, or a daydream. Two, Donghyuck doesn’t own a single dirty magazine, but instead a bunch of cooking ones that he’d pinched off their manager, and Mark pinches off him to read through the astrology section every morning. Three, Boyfriend Donghyuck doesn’t hold a candle to the Donghyuck who ambles into the living room, dead on his feet, and flops onto the sofa next to Mark and says, “Good morning, Mark hyung, did you have a good sleep?” Donghyuck leans his head on Mark’s shoulder, half-heartedly dragging his fingernail across Gemini’s horoscope. Through a yawn, he adds, “What did you dream about?”
“Nothing special,” Mark says. His horoscope for today tells him that you will hope to achieve and receive many things today but unfortunately, these expectations will not be met. Don’t let any disappointments get you down!
Donghyuck hums. “I had an interesting dream. You were wearing a dress. And a wig. I called you noona.”
“That does sound interesting,” Mark says, after a brief coughing fit that Donghyuck pats him through.
Donghyuck leans back, his cheeks pink, and Mark wonders if he’d even washed his makeup off last night. That would be bad. He’s already got two zits on his chin and Jihye and the other makeup artists are always telling them they need to maintain their skincare routines and—quick as a flash, Donghyuck’s lips press against the corner of Mark’s mouth, and anything Mark was about to say dies in his chest. It’s replaced with a million butterflies. And then, Johnny drawling, “We’re a walking cliché, baby,” in Mark’s mind and effectively killing the moment.
Well, almost.
Donghyuck’s mouth falls open, and he slaps a hand over it, mumbling, “Uh. Sorry?”
Mark places the magazine on his lap, stretching forward to peck Donghyuck’s cheek. And again. And again, on his mouth. “Don’t apologise.” If Donghyuck kissing him was the first disappointment, then, “Today’s gonna be the best day of my life.”
Donghyuck looks perplexed, but smiles when Mark fits their hands together. He pretends to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, coy, a distraction for him to shove the magazine onto the floor. “You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?” he asks, after a moment.
Mark stares at the photoshopped crème brûlée on the cover of the magazine. Donghyuck’s knees knock against his, and he squeezes Mark’s hand.
“Nah, not really.”