Black and Blue | Markmin

𝙵𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚢-𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎.

"Nana! Can I have some glueeee pleaseeee?" a sweet voice whined and Jaemin turned around, placing his hands on his hips as his daycare apron shifted slightly.

"You sure can JiJi," Jaemin smiled, reaching up to brush his hair back before remembering that the young girl had come in with extra butterfly clips. This has led to the young girl pinning Jaemin's pink hair back. So far there were three in his hair: a blue one, a green one, and a purple one.

Rummaging out a glue stick from his apron, he handed it to the young girl and watched as she fluttered back to the play table that had arts and crafts supplies spread out all over it.

Their super duper secret project for Mark.

Smiling, Jaemin looked at the clock and wondered if he should go help the girl finish. It was five, meaning that Mark would be there in an hour to visit JiJi for thirty minutes before she got picked up at six-thirty — the time later because the parents couldn't come earlier.

It had been awkward, and Jaemin usually left Chenle or Jungwoo to deal with interacting with Mark's parents when they came to drop JiJi off in the mornings. But, on the occasional day that Jaemin was working by himself, he had to politely greet them - as much as he wanted to scowl from the dirty looks they gave him - and wish them a happy day as JiJi came skipping into his arms. Not once had they asked about Mark.

But Jaemin decided not to mention the parents to Mark, and usually shoved the boy in the back room when his parents came to pick his little sister up, not wanting to cause any conflict. Jaemin would deal with the parents, he just wanted Mark to worry and care about his sister.

"Nana!"

"Yes Ji?" Jaemin smiled, portraying the perfect mask of being a happy adult despite his frantic inner thoughts. JiJi tugged at his apron.

"Come look!" She giggled happily and Jaemin followed her over to the crafts station to see how their 'super duper top secret' mission for Mark was going. He smiled; it was beautiful.

Sitting on the table was a deep blue piece of stock paper, macaroni glued to it (with a glue gun that Jaemin handled very carefully aka got a couple of burns on his hand) in the shape of a big person and a smaller person, replicating Mark and JiJi. Glued all around the paper were various stars and placed stickers and little written pieces of love.

"Wow JiJi, that's really really pretty!" Jaemin cooed, feeling himself get excited from how much Mark was going to love this, especially because he missed his sister so much.

"It's not finished though!" JiJi protested, frowning at Jaemin as if he should have known that. Jaemin's eyebrows went up in question. It wasn't done?

"What's missing?" Jaemin crouched down and JiJi sighed, getting more pieces of macaroni from the bag. She held them out to Jaemin as if that would answer his question. "More macaroni?"

"Nana," the girl sighed exasperatedly and placed them on the blue piece of paper, right next to Mark, "You're not there! We gotta add you because you make Markie happy just like Markie makes JiJi happy."

Jaemin felt like he was going to cry.

"O-oh," Jaemin responded lamely, putting his hand over his eyes in an attempt to stop himself from getting too emotional. "Do you want me to get the glue gun then?" The girl nodded in response and Jaemin quickly got up, speed walking to the break room and catching sight of Chenle reading some of the other kids a storybook.

He had to work fast, he had less than 30 minutes because he knew Mark usually arrives early to see his sister. And so he did, but he did the job well. By the time the clock hit 5:45 Jaemin was finished under the scrutinizing direction of the small child who had him rearrange and put the macaroni Jaemin back together again.