Ships Passing In The Night ｜Markhyuck (OT21 AU)

Chapter 28

Over the week and a half that followed the incident between Renjun and Jaemin, played out in the hallway outside the social event-turned-disaster, Donghyuck found himself in the unenviable position of having to split his time between his two closest friends. He existed in a constant state of mild panic that he was neglecting one in favour of the other, or that he was spending too much time with one when the other needed him, but they had made this mess and he was doing his best. If the pair refused to be in the same room as each other, aside from when it was mandated by their class schedules, that wasn't his fault.

To his credit, Renjun had attempted to smooth things over with Jaemin the very next day in homeroom, turning up on Thursday morning with another of his carefully crafted speeches--complete with multiple cue cards--this one outlining the reasons why Jaemin should forgive him. Donghyuck had initially even been hopeful, for a few minutes at least, that it would work, when Jaemin sat in silence and listened to the entire thing without interruption. Then the younger boy had stood up, walked to the front of the room, and asked the teacher if he could switch seats with Donghyuck for the rest of the semester.

The look of utter devastation on Renjun's face in that moment would have been enough to bring anyone to their knees, Donghyuck thought, but then he so often saw that same look on Jaemin's face too, whenever Renjun wasn't looking--which was a tough feat, because all Renjun seemed to do these days was watch Jaemin, whenever he was within eyeshot.

With no obvious solution to the problem presenting itself, Donghyuck had resolved to spend equal time with each of the boys, in so much as his schedule and school work allowed, and to try to help each of them to see reason individually. It was a solid plan, one that Donghyuck had spent several sleepless nights devising, except that it didn't yet seem to be showing any signs of actually working.

"Why don't you try talking to him again?" he asked Renjun one Monday afternoon, as the two of them sat on a table at the back of the school's art studio. They were, ostensibly, waiting for instructions from the senior girl in charge of their small group of volunteers, but she was deep in conversation with one of the fine art teachers at the front of the room, leaving the rest of the group free to talk amongst themselves.

"I've already told you, Hyuck," Renjun said with a heavy sigh, "I'm not the one who wants space here. I tried apologising to Jaemin already, but he refused to listen. If he doesn't want to talk, I'm not going to force him."

"But you miss him." It wasn't a question. It didn't need to be. The loss and sadness in Renjun's eyes had been hard to miss over the last few days, as they ate lunch together and tried to ignore the empty seat across from Renjun that Donghyuck had pointedly refused to sit in. He'd seen that same pain echoed in Jaemin's eyes, when they'd been taken to a two-seater table in their favourite cafe the following Saturday afternoon, instead of the four-seater that they normally claimed for whenever Renjun would inevitably join them.

Both of his friends were miserable, and the worst part was that only two out of the three of them knew why. Jaemin hadn't been able to hide his heartbreak from Donghyuck, when the older boy had followed him into the downstairs men's bathroom immediately after the incident, only to find his friend crying in a stall and looking like the bottom had truly fallen out of his world. Between sobs, he'd confirmed what Donghyuck already knew--that he loved an oblivious boy who would never love him back, a boy who couldn't see the truth even when it was right in front of him--and then promptly made Donghyuck promise never to speak of any of this to Renjun on pain of death.

Donghyuck could understand that part, at least. He'd also spent years secretly pining over someone who had never so much as guessed at the truth, just like both of these boys had. It wasn't his place to expose Jaemin's feelings like that, especially when it was clear that Renjun's affections were firmly elsewhere, but that didn't mean that Donghyuck's heart didn't bleed for Jaemin whenever Renjun insisted that it was the younger boy who was pushing him away. It would be so easy just to lay all the cards out on the table--he was sure that Renjun would be kind about it too, even if he didn't reciprocate--but it wasn't Donghyuck's place to do that. Instead, he just had to be the best friend he could to both of them, in the earnest hope that things would work themselves out in time.