best friend ꒱ markhyuck

ten

Donghyuck stood on the porch in front of the door to Mark's house, looking and feeling sheepish as he watched his best friend walk over through the window to open the door for him.

"Hyuck..." Mark said slowly, his voice cracking a little bit. He quickly cleared his throat and gave his friend a shy smile, holding the door open wider for Donghyuck to come inside. "Uh, hi. Come on in."

Donghyuck nodded curtly, stepping inside the house and quietly following Mark back to his bedroom, not daring to speak a word until both of them were behind the closed door. Donghyuck saw the little cheetah plushie (the one he had bought for Mark to accompany the teddy bear, so that they both had stuffed animals of their favorite animals that reminded them of each other) laying on the floor instead of sitting in its usual spot on top of Mark's nightstand, and he eyed it curiously for a moment before lowering himself slowly onto Mark's mattress.

"I'm sorry that my room is kind of messy, I didn't have a chance to clean it earlier," the older boy murmured, scratching the back of his neck as he sat on the end of the bed opposite of Donghyuck.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," Donghyuck dismissed him with a wave, looking up at Mark hesitantly before clearing his throat. "Hey, listen... I wanted to talk about what happened yesterday... at my house."

Mark pursed his lips and nodded slowly, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. After a beat of silence, Donghyuck realized that Mark wasn't planning on saying anything until he did, so the responsibility of carrying this conversation fell on his shoulders. He let out a frustrated little huff, blowing a strand of hair out of his face.

"Yeah... um, so... I know how it looks like, okay?" He started, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of his hoodie. Mark nodded, urging him to continue. "But I swear, like I promise it's not what you think. Like, at all. We were just messing around, really, it was nothing like... well, you know..."

Donghyuck let out a loud groan as he trailed off, burying his burning face in his hands. Mark bit back a small smile and just sat patiently, waiting for his friend to finish. "We didn't have sex, okay? And we weren't going to, we weren't even doing anything that would in any universe end with us having sex. I just wanted to clear the air about that, that you really weren't like... interrupting anything or whatever."

Mark let out a startled laugh, trying to press his hand against his mouth to muffle it, but Donghyuck still heard it loud and clear. He peeked up at Mark through his fingers, feeling annoyed. "Is this funny to you, Mark Lee? Is my humiliation a source of amusement for you?"

"No, no, it's not like that, I'm sorry..." Mark giggled, taking a moment to get ahold of himself again before he continued, "you just seem, like, super freaked out about this... and I promise it's okay, you don't have to be weird about it. Even if you and Jaemin were... you know..."

Donghyuck immediately opened his mouth to protest that they were not, in fact, but Mark cut him off with a sharp glare. Donghyuck's mouth snapped shut, and he stayed silent to let Mark finish his sentence. "Even if that was what was happening... it's not really my business, right? I mean, no matter what, it's my fault for not knocking or anything. So we're cool, really, it's all good."

Donghyuck wanted to scowl. How could Mark not understand that he wanted it to be "Mark's business"? He wanted Mark to care about whether or not he had slept with Jaemin, preferably by getting jealous because Mark wanted to be the one sleeping with Donghyuck.

That train of thought startled him slightly, because the realization that he had never thought about being intimate with Mark up until now suddenly hit him like a freight train. And now they were alone in Mark's room, and he was sitting on Mark's bed, and all of the sudden it was way too easy to picture what Mark would look like hovering over him, pinning him down and—