Archive of Our Own

Renjun’s husband is very handsome, and he is a terrible liar. That’s just about all Renjun knows about him.

“You two look so good together,” Ten says. “It’s good to finally meet you, Mark.” He works closely with Renjun in pediatrics, so convincing him—who is Renjun kidding, he means fooling him—is essential to the plan. If all goes well he’ll be telling all their coworkers about what a nice, normal, good-looking couple they are before this event even ends. Maybe then Kunhang will stop joking about Renjun’s imaginary husband, who seems to exist only in vague anecdotes and the confines of his phone.

“Thank you,” Renjun says. Looks up at Mark and forces a smile. “Mark is just so busy, but he’s been dying to come see all of you. Right, babe?”

Wearing a tie Renjun picked out for him and a suit that looks too expensive for someone who’s supposedly only a humble writer to own, Mark looks like actual husband material. Which is good, because he is Renjun’s husband. It’s just jarring to see him like this when Renjun is used to sweatpants and rumpled hoodies, like a kid straight out of college, young and boyish. Turns out Mark cleans up nicely when he wants to. Funny, because he wore jeans to their wedding.

Mark’s response is delayed until Renjun digs his nails into his hand, hard. “Yeah, of course,” he says. The weight of his hand on Renjun's waist feels unnatural. Mark has never touched him here. Mark never touches him, in general, because he probably finds Renjun gross and repulsive. Even now his touch is feather-light. “Ten, right? Renjun’s told me so much about you.”

Renjun is impressed Mark knew his name at all. They don’t talk about work. They barely talk about anything. Just this morning Renjun had snapped at Mark—stop treating me like a child. Nearly three months into their arrangement and Renjun still doesn’t know anything about him. He’s being handled with kid gloves. He hates it.

“Really?” Ten asks. “Like what?”

“Um,” Mark sputters, all bug-eyed. “Uh, well, you know.” There it is. Terrible liar. He starts fidgeting with the ring on his left hand. Twisting the band back and forth around his ring finger, like he’s not quite used to wearing it, which he’s not.

They should have prepared more for this. Renjun wants to melt into the ground. “Sorry, he can be so forgetful sometimes. I was just telling him the other day about that insane case we had over breakfast.”

It’s not a complete lie. Or, it is, but the best lies are rooted in a little bit of truth. The last time Renjun saw Mark was in the kitchen, around the time of morning that normal couples might’ve been having breakfast together. Renjun and Mark aren’t a normal couple. Renjun and Mark have never eaten breakfast together. Renjun dropped his scalding hot mug of tea all over himself when he turned around from the sink and saw Mark standing there, startled just by his presence. The skin around his birthmark is still pinkish.

That was three days ago, and they haven’t talked since. Until they were getting in Mark’s car two hours ago, and Renjun finally thought to ask—what do you do for a living, anyways.

I write, Mark said. I’m a writer.

Ten just smiles. “Don’t worry. He’s cute,” he says, which is also what everybody else said, too. It’s good that his coworkers love Mark. It’ll make it easier for them to believe this elaborate lie. They’ll be more forgiving with slip ups.

“Sorry,” Mark murmurs when Ten walks away. He tilts his head down towards Renjun with doleful eyes. His warm breath ghosts over the side of Renjun’s cheek. It must seem so intimate to outsiders, the way Mark is leaning into him. If Renjun turned his head just so, their noses would brush.

He looks up at his husband. Mark’s hair is long, tucked behind his ears. Classic, clean-cut handsome. It’s not a bad thing to find him attractive, but Renjun sometimes wonders if this would be easier if he found him entirely repulsive.

“Did I screw up?” Mark asks, oblivious.

Renjun counts down the seconds in his head. Five, four, three, two, one. Mark’s hand falls away. Mark is so predictable it’s almost laughable. Even at their wedding, he couldn’t hold Renjun’s hand for longer than five seconds once the judge looked away. His hand had felt huge and feverishly warm in Renjun’s palm. Back then Renjun couldn’t tell if that was something he liked or hated.

“We’ll talk about it when we get home, honey,” Renjun says.

Mark swallows. Twists at his ring some more. Nods.

They do not talk about it when they get home. They never talk about anything when they’re at home.

When Renjun goes back to work the next day his coworkers can’t seem to say enough about how much they like Mark. It’s exactly what Renjun wanted. The exact outcome he was hoping for. And it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, hearing them talk about how nice Renjun’s husband seems. How kind and patient and charming he is, and how happy Renjun must be.

What a fucking joke, Renjun thinks, pulling a latex glove over his hand as he scrubs up.

“Hey,” Minjeong says, peering from behind her locker door. “Don’t forget to take your ring off, Doctor Huang.”

Renjun looks down at his left hand, where, sure enough, his wedding band glints back at him with a taunt. He used to look forward to work, if only because getting to work meant being able to take the ring off. It meant getting away from the well-meaning neighbors who called him Mr. Lee and getting away from Mark. But more and more often these days he finds himself responding to a surname that isn’t his. He even forgets he’s wearing the ring sometimes. Like it’s become a part of him.

Now that Mark has met his coworkers, there’s nowhere safe left to go for Renjun to get away from him. They’re in it for the long haul now. Whatever that entails.

💍

When Renjun was younger, his father told him often that he had a hungry heart. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, Renjun could never tell, but his father always made it seem like it was bad. To want to be loved.

He could not say strictly that his parents loved him. Sometimes it felt more like they loved the idea of him more than anything else. The idea of who he could be instead of who he was. Maybe that was what drove him to hope for love in other places, sometimes to the point of desperation. He used to dream of what his wedding would be like—nothing concrete, a faceless groom every time, a different venue. The only constant: he wanted to be married in June. The height of summer. It just felt romantic somehow.

In the end he gets his June wedding, but the venue is a courthouse, and his fiancé is a stranger. It’s funny. Sometimes, life gives you exactly what you ask for.

All Chenle told Renjun about his future husband was that he was nice, and very discreet, and apparently in need of cash, which is presumably why he agreed to marry Renjun in the first place. When Renjun meets Mark for the first time on those courthouse steps, Mark sort of just looks like a regular guy. Not particularly nice or discreet, but at least he’s there. He’s also looking at Renjun like he’s afraid he might have a chainsaw behind his back.

Renjun is wearing his nicest clothes, because he believes that first impressions matter. Mark is wearing jeans and a wrinkled button-down, but looking back on it, now that Renjun has seen Mark’s wardrobe, he kind of thinks it’s a miracle Mark wore anything that wasn’t an ill-fitting sweatshirt.

Get it together, Renjun wants to say to him. What comes out is, “Let’s do this.” No question. No room for argument. They are going to do this. This is going to happen. It’s practically medieval. Definitely illegal. Renjun doesn’t care, he needs this. It has to be here, this hospital, this city. He can’t go anywhere else, he has nowhere left to go. If he has to marry a stranger to take this job, so be it.

Mark’s expression loses a little bit of its anxious edge. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

Renjun worries the entire time that the judge will be able to tell something is not quite right about them. That the ring Mark has bought is poorly-sized, too big for Renjun’s ring finger. Whether she’ll doubt the whole thing after Mark kisses him, fleeting and barely-there, without laying a single hand on him.

She notices nothing. They pay exactly sixty-five thousand won, and then they are married. Husbands. Renjun has put his life, what little of it there is, in the hands of a man he doesn’t know.

“We can get the ring resized,” Mark says later, driving them away from the courthouse.

It only slightly soothes Renjun’s discomfort, but he likes that Mark says we, so he nods, stares out the window, imagines leaving his past in their dust, underneath the wheels of Mark’s old car.

Mark’s apartment—their apartment—is perfectly average. Small and cozy. Nowhere to hide from each other. There’s southern-facing windows, at least, which Renjun is happy about. It can’t be easy, letting a stranger into your home. But Mark points out where he’s made room for Renjun’s things—in the closet, the dresser, the pantry. Renjun only has two suitcases worth of belongings, but it’s the thought that counts.

The tour is unremarkable until they get to the bedroom. It sounds stupid to say, but it didn’t hit Renjun that being married meant, well, being married, until he’s standing next to Mark, who hesitates as he pushes the door open. The bed comes into view. It’s nicely-made. It’s also small.

“I can sleep on the couch,” Mark offers, as if sensing Renjun’s sudden discomfort.

If anybody should be sleeping on the couch, it’s Renjun. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh,” Mark says, his expression neutral and perfectly polite. “Well. I mean. Alright, if you’re sure.”

He makes an excuse about answering some work emails and leaves Renjun alone to unpack after that. Renjun carefully hangs up his clothes, stows away his trinkets and other belongings, and then he takes a shower, and tries not to have a panic attack. Through the steam rising around him, he lets out a small, hysterical laugh that sounds more like a sob.

What they’ve just done—they can’t take it back. Not anytime soon, at least. Renjun knows this won’t be forever. His life won’t always be a marriage of convenience and a husband who can barely look him in the eye. He wanted this. He asked for this. Paid for it, even. But now that he’s here, he feels sick.

When they go to bed that night, on opposite sides of the mattress, Renjun turns his head into a pillow that smells nothing like the home he knows and tries to keep the nausea at bay. Tries to stop himself from wanting more.

He’s got a hungry heart, after all. Always has.

💍

His husband is a stranger.

The realization comes to Renjun as they drive home in silence, away from his coworkers, away from the safe company of other people. His husband is a stranger right now, and if it stays that way, everything he’s worked so hard for will have all been for nothing.

So over the weekend, on Renjun’s one day off, they sit down together in the living room for the first time since they were married three months ago. The last thing Renjun wants to do is play house, but there appears to be no other option.

“That can’t happen again,” he tells Mark. They both know what he’s referring to.

For a moment Mark looks actually apologetic, properly chastised. Then his face shutters over, back into that eternally polite mask. “Okay,” he says.

So they make each other cheat sheets. Basic facts are easy to rattle off. Huang Renjun, born March 23rd, majored in clinical medicine at Peking University. “Any siblings?” he asks Mark. “I’m an only child.”

Mark nods. He bites his lip and stares down at his tiny sheet of notebook paper, folded into quarters. “One brother,” he says, looking vaguely uncomfortable for reasons that are probably related to Renjun’s general existence. “He lives in Busan. I visit sometimes. Favorite color?”

“Favorite color?”

“Just seems like the type of thing you should know about your husband, man, I dunno. Mine’s blue.”

“Yellow.” Renjun swallows and asks, “What about your family?”

“Oh,” Mark says. Something unreadable flashes across his face, his shoulders going tense. “I’m not really… on good terms with my parents. They live in Canada. You’ll probably never even see them.”

It’s a little disappointing, Renjun thinks, drawing his knees to his chest. He’s always wanted a big extended family. But having less people to explain their relationship to is a good thing.

“How about yours?”

Mark is only being fair, and asking Renjun the same question he’d been asked himself, but that doesn't stop the discomfort from flooding in. He wonders if he should lie to make things less awkward. “They’re dead.” Strangely, it's a relief to say aloud. He hasn't talked about them since the funeral. Not even to Chenle.

“Oh,” Mark says again. “That’s—wow, I’m s—”

“Don’t be.” Where else did you think I got the money to pay you off? Renjun wishes he could ask. His mother was frugal, a penny-pincher for all the right reasons. It’s how they paid for him to go to college, and then medical school. That, plus the scholarships. If she knew that Renjun was using his inheritance to bribe a stranger into marrying him for the work visa, she’d be rolling over in her grave. He can hear her reprimand in his head, clear as day. Ah-Jun, you were supposed to use that to buy a house.

The world is burning. The housing market has been in crisis for as long as he’s been alive. His parents are dead, and his husband is a paid actor. How is Renjun supposed to buy a house if he doesn’t even know where home is anymore?

He takes a shuddering breath and continues, “I asked, you answered. You asked, I answered. There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Mark still looks sorry. “Okay.”

Just once, Renjun wishes he would argue. “I’m going to bed,” he says, and takes his cheat sheet with him.

Renjun has always been a quick learner, and a good student. By the time he’s brushed his teeth he already has the paper memorized front to back. Mark Lee, born August 2nd, majored in Literature at SNU, favorite color blue. Likes samgye-tang in the winter and bibim-guksu in the summer. Plays basketball at the park down the block with his friends on Tuesdays and Fridays. One brother in Busan, two parents an entire continent away, across the ocean. Mark Lee, Renjun’s husband, the stranger who sleeps in his bed, the writer.

He’s curled up on his side to face the wall and holding the paper to his chest when the mattress dips with Mark’s added weight a short while later. Mark is doing his usual nighttime routine, mumbling a prayer underneath his breath before he slips underneath the covers. Renjun wonders if Mark knows he snores in his sleep, and that he’s prone to reaching for Renjun’s hand in the early mornings, not yet awake, and only following the human instinct to seek warmth.

That’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t fit on a cheat sheet. Maybe Mark isn’t a complete stranger, but they have a long way to go before he’ll be anything else.

💍

Chenle is a busy guy, so Renjun doesn’t take it personally that the first time he manages to check in is nearly four months after the wedding. Even now he’s multitasking, tapping away at his phone screen to answer some work email or other.

“So how’s married life treating you?” he asks at some point, looking up briefly as if to gauge Renjun’s expression. “Mark is nice, isn’t he?”

Renjun’s throat closes up. Nice is one word for it. Chenle didn’t warn Renjun he would be getting married to a nocturnal robot who only seems capable of emoting behind closed doors. They keep the paperwork in a locked drawer in Mark’s office. It’s like they’re afraid to look at it. Out of sight, out of mind isn’t really a concept that applies when the evidence of their relationship is noticeably present and glimmering silver around their fingers. Renjun’s always preferred gold jewelry, but he supposes beggars can’t be choosers.

“Tell me about you and Jeno, first,” he says.

Chenle waves him off. “Jeno is fine. I’m happy. He’s happy. Long distance is a killer, but he really likes his grad program, and he’ll be in town next weekend. He wants to see you, so you’d better stop being annoying before then. Maybe we’ll do brunch. Now stop deflecting and talk about yourself for once.”

Chenle was chronically single all throughout college, and the moment they graduated the universe just happened to dump the boyfriend of the century in his lap in the form of frighteningly fit, unassuming Lee Jeno. Renjun loves Jeno. He’s stupid sweet enough to balance out almost all of Chenle’s sourness, and cunning enough to use that to his advantage. Renjun has never seen anybody handle Chenle half as well as Jeno does. He wants to be giggling with Jeno over mimosas and overpriced french toast, not being interrogated by Chenle over báijiǔ.

Renjun frowns. “I talk about myself.”

“No you don’t,” Chenle says, finally settling his phone face down on the table. He pours a too-generous shot for Renjun and a slightly less generous shot for himself. “Not really, at least. You’re really good at talking about your own life without actually telling anybody anything about yourself.”

Renjun’s frown deepens into a pout, because he can’t deny that. “Just because your boyfriend is doing a Psych doctorate…” Doesn’t mean you get to psychoanalyze the rest of us, he wants to say, but Chenle has always been like that. He’s always seen right through Renjun even in the moments where Renjun really wished he wouldn’t. Like right now.

“Just tell me how you’re doing, gē.” It’s unfair, because Chenle knows Renjun can’t say no to him when he lapses into Mandarin, plays the dutiful dìdì card.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Renjun admits, finally. It doesn’t feel any better to say it out loud.

He’d like to say that he stepped into his brand new life with ease. But he’s never even had a roommate before, let alone one he was supposed to pretend to be in love with. Mark is less a stranger now and more of a ghost. Their schedules don’t match; Renjun’s been taking longer shifts at the hospital because work might be the only thing in his life that’s actually good right now.

Their arrangement is convenient in this way. There is nobody waiting for him at home. There is no one making him dinner, just for it to sit and go cold, untouched. There is no one for him to check in with when he crashes in the call room after a sixteen-hour shift, only to wake up after an hour and do it all again. He can just work, work, work, and there is no one hanging on, ready to resent him for it. And Mark—until last week Renjun didn’t even know what Mark did for work. He only knew that Mark worked from home, emerging from his office at odd times of the day to grab coffee or run to the gym.

My husband is a writer, Renjun says to himself, still trying to digest that information. My husband. Mark Lee, the writer.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to expand on that.”

Renjun puts the shot glass to his mouth and tips his head back to swallow it all. He gestures to the now-empty glass as Chenle rolls his eyes, like, is this answer enough for you?

“So immature.”

“Hey. I’m still your gē.”

“Then act like it!”

Renjun sticks his tongue out at Chenle, just because he can. It’s nice to be childish with someone and know they won’t think any less of you because of it. He doesn’t get that at home, and he certainly doesn’t get it at work.

“Well, do you at least like him?” Chenle asks, clearly exasperated. He’s flushed from the neck down. Almost time to finish up, then. The only person more lightweight than Chenle is Renjun himself.

What a loaded question. You have to know someone to like them, and everything Renjun knows about his husband can be contained on a folded sheet of notebook paper. He knows habits, he knows trivia. And he should be satisfied with that. No need to know anything more. But Renjun’s greedy heart wants more, because of course it does. It wants to know what kinds of books Mark writes. Why Mark writes. What terrors have him jerking awake in the middle of the night sometimes, what he tells himself to fall back asleep. The name of the song he keeps humming to himself when they pass in the hallways.

“He’s so polite,” Renjun says, another non-answer. Always so fucking polite. Renjun is starting to hate polite, he wishes Mark would be rude. He wishes Mark would spit in his face and tell him that he hates having Renjun in the house. At least that would be honest. “Unlike you.”

“Ugh, I’m sick of you,” Chenle says. Then, hypocritically, “You feel like getting another drink?”

Renjun shakes his head. “I should probably get going.”

“It’s so early,” Chenle whines. Renjun pities him briefly, if only because he knows the real reason Chenle doesn’t want to go home is because his big, beautiful penthouse apartment is down one resident and a little bit too empty these days.

“I’m old,” Renjun says. “And there’s something I want to check out.” He unlocks his phone and opens his sparse conversation history with Mark and adds to the string of messages which are all basic variations of the same phrase—be home in 30, back in 15, home in an hour. They always give each other the courtesy of a warning before re-invading each others’ space.

Mark replies within seconds, with a thumbs up and a get home safe.

So fucking polite, Renjun thinks, barely suppressing the urge to scoff. Always so fucking polite.

💍

It’s a thirty minute walk back to the apartment, which Renjun would usually avoid at all costs after fourteen straight hours of being on his feet. But the soreness in his legs is a pleasant distraction from the hornet’s nest that seems to live in his head these days. He watches a cute couple swing their intertwined hands back and forth in front of him on the sidewalk. Forces himself to look away from a public proposal in the park nearby. He hates feeling so bitter—wants to be happy for the love other people all around him seem to be finding with ease—but it’s hard not to feel that way when the one thing you want most is the one thing you can’t have.

It’s hard not to feel that way, even knowing you were the one who deprived yourself of it to begin with.

There’s a small bookstore on the corner. It’s cozy and quiet when Renjun walks in, and clearly nearing closing hours. He smiles sympathetically at the only employee in the shop and waves off his offer of help. He’s just curious. He wants to know. Needs to know, or his hungry heart will bother him all the way home.

He tries the Science Fiction section first. Then Mystery. Then Fantasy. Then, on a whim, Nonfiction, all with no luck. An idea comes to him. It’s a long shot, but Renjun walks past the shelves of books, straight to the section labeled L - Romance. Just his luck that Mark would have the most common surname in all of South Korea. He pulls a thumb along the spine of each book until he finds it—Mark Lee, in embossed leather.

He laughs. Loud and boisterous and probably startling the poor bookstore employee. But Renjun can’t help it, it’s fucking hilarious. How life has given him exactly what he asked for in all the most twisted ways. Just his luck.

Love stories. His husband writes love stories.

💍

Renjun buys the book. Obviously. Not to read, just to have. And also maybe to apologize to the bookstore employee, for having a manic episode when he was about to close up shop. It feels like it weighs a couple hundred kilograms in his purse. Maybe he’ll put it in that locked drawer they don’t open, in Mark’s office, next to their marriage certificate. He’ll never suspect a thing.

The apartment is dark when he gets back. Which is strange, because Mark rarely goes out. But it’s spotless, at least, just the way Renjun likes it. Everything in its rightful place, telling the story of a normal, happy couple if someone were to drop by. A polaroid selfie on the fridge held up by an ugly magnet Renjun bought from the airport in Jilin. Two matching mugs next to the Nespresso on the counter suggesting a couple taking their coffee together in the mornings. They have Renjun’s diploma framed on the wall, Mark’s guitar propped up in the corner next to the couch.

Mark finds him sitting there when he finally gets back a half hour later. “Oh,” he says. “You’re still awake?” He looks distinctly guilty, almost shifty, like he’s hiding something.

“It’s still early,” Renjun says, despite having just told Chenle the opposite. He looks Mark up and down. His hair is long enough now to tuck his bangs behind his ears, but today some of it’s been pushed back with gel. The white t-shirt he wears is simple and loose, tucked in at his narrow waist by a pair of light-wash jeans, torn at the knee. He looks good, maybe better than he did dressed up in that suit for Renjun’s coworkers.

He’s not sure why he asks. This is normally the point where one of them would make an excuse to leave for another room, where Mark would shut himself in his office and Renjun would putt around the living room for a while longer before commencing the ritual of his thirty minute long skincare routine in preparation for bed. But Mark is still fidgeting at the door, and here Renjun is, asking, “...So, you went out tonight?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “You know, just college friends.”

Renjun does not know. The only one of Mark’s friends he knows is Donghyuck, and Donghyuck would’ve told him if they’d gone out tonight. “Just friends?”

Mark squints at him a little. “Yeah…” he says again. Even in the half-flickering light of the entryway he manages to look handsome, all cut angles and sharpened jaw. “Just friends.”

“I see.” A stone settles in Renjun’s stomach. It doesn’t make any sense. Mark doesn’t seem all that strapped for cash, and if he’s enough of a hopeless romantic to be writing romance novels instead of doing literally anything else in the world, why would he agree to marry Renjun just for a frankly negligible amount of cash?

“You know—” he starts, right as Mark turns his back to the hall. “You can date, if you want.”

Mark is frowning when he looks over his shoulder. “I don’t want to date,” he says slowly. “Why would you think that?”

“Because we’re not…” In love. Because we’re not in love and you seem like the type of person who would only want to marry for love, and nothing less. Because you don’t even look at me on a good day. Because when you saw me for the first time you looked like you wanted to run for the hills. Because you write romance novels and you didn’t tell me you’d be home late and I spent the last thirty minutes thinking about you sucking face with a stranger.

Mark waits for him to finish, expectant. Renjun bites his lip and swallows a frustrated sigh. Picks at a loose thread on the sofa cushion to give himself something to do with his hands, which suddenly feel too awkward and too empty. “Nevermind. It’s nothing.”

“Okay,” Mark says patiently, like Renjun is very slow or very young. “Let’s say I date someone. How would we explain it if one of your coworkers were to see me out with somebody else?”

Renjun tastes metal. “I don’t know.”

“How would I explain it if one day, I wanted to bring them back to our apartment, and they saw your picture on the fridge? Or your toothbrush in the bathroom? How would I explain you to them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right. So let’s not talk about it again.” Polite dismissal is almost worse than outright rejection. Mark isn’t obliged to confide in him. Mark isn’t even obliged to be nice to him. All he has to do is put on that ring every day.

Renjun doesn’t know anything. He only knows that he doesn’t want to hold Mark back, even if he was the one who forced him into this undesirable situation to begin with. He only knows that he’s lonely. So lonely. And he doesn’t want Mark to feel the same.

He can’t ask the question: why won’t you touch me? Why won’t you even look at me? Why should it matter, if Mark touches him or looks at him or ignores his general existence or not? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. And Renjun has just had one too many drinks, and Mark is right, they should never talk about it again.

Mark is lingering, waiting for Renjun to reply. Presumably to apologize.

“Sorry,” Renjun tells him. “I don’t know what got into me. Forget I said anything.”

From the look on Mark’s face, that’s not what he wanted to hear. But it’s all Renjun has. He doesn’t know what Mark wants to hear, he wishes he did. “It’s fine,” he says wearily. He runs a hand through his pushed back hair, and the silver gleam of his wedding band catches the flickering light. “I’m not mad. Just, like—don’t—don’t say something like that again, alright?”

“Okay,” Renjun says. “Okay, I’m sorry, good night.”

Mark doesn’t say it back. There’s no polite response for once as he stalks down the hallway and closes the office door behind him. And that somehow feels a lot like progress.

💍

“Well, Mark is like, Mr. Monogamy,” Donghyuck laughs. “Of course he’d be upset that you said that to him.” He only laughs harder when Renjun pouts at him. It’s been two weeks since that unfortunate interaction, and things have only gotten more awkward, not less.

“How was I supposed to know?”

“I dunno, have you met the guy?”

Renjun grimaces. “Barely.” That makes Donghyuck giggle, too.

“Should’ve married me instead,” he says.

“I know, quit reminding me.”

The first time he met Donghyuck, he’d been so worried. Partly because he was one of four people in the entire world, including Mark and Renjun themselves, who knew their marriage was a sham. (“It was useless for me to try and keep a secret from him,” Mark had said. “I swear he’d smell it on me, like a dog or something, he’d waterboard it out of me if it came down to it.”) But mostly it was because Mark made a point to warn him—Hyuck is really friendly, but he’s also protective, so don’t be surprised if he’s a little hostile to you. Renjun went into that meeting expecting to be torn apart. Instead, Donghyuck had slapped Mark’s shoulder and berated him—Mark, your husband is hot, how could you not tell me your husband was hot—and he and Renjun got on like a house on fire.

And now they’re hanging out regularly, and drinking together on the weekends without Mark. Donghyuck is a whirlwind. He’s sunshine in a bottle. He’s Renjun’s one real connection to Mark. They’ve been best friends since they were in diapers, and they act like it, too. Even when Donghyuck is making fun of Mark or acting like he’s the general bane of his existence, there’s an ease between them that Renjun soaks up like a sponge. Comfort. At first he thought he might be jealous, but he knows now it’s less like jealousy and more like longing. Like recognizing the things he’s missing by seeing them in someone else. He sees all of it in Donghyuck.

Donghyuck would probably never have gotten himself into a situation like this one, and even if he did, he’d find a way to make the most of it. Even now, sweaty from the combination of his dance practice and the sticky summer heat, there’s a magnetism to him. At least three or four men have tried to approach him in the last hour, nearly twice that amount have sent drinks for him down the bar. At least Renjun gets to benefit from the various-colored drinks surrounding them now, even with a ring on his finger. He’s sipping on something sugary and sweet with a twirl of lemon peel that looks like the sunset and tastes like juice going down. He’s on his third. He’s having a great time.

Donghyuck twirls a straw around his own glass. “Okay, but do you really want him to date other people, though?”

“I don’t… not want him to date other people,” Renjun mumbles, to which Donghyuck gives him a pointed look. “Okay, I know it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just… no one wants to be lonely, right? But I wish he wouldn’t act so repulsed by me sometimes.”

This sends Donghyuck into a flurry of coughing so severe it draws the attention of half the bar. When Renjun is done fussing over Donghyuck and patting his back, Donghyuck squints up at him in confusion and asks, “What? Repulsed? Mark? By you?”

Here’s the thing: Renjun knows he’s attractive. He got over his low self-esteem ages ago, worked through all those image issues, came out the other side a better man. He knows that he’s a catch, and that he has a nice smile, and that there are plenty of men who would jump at the chance to be with him. But you can only take so many instances of your husband looking at you a certain way before you start to question yourself.

“Okay, repulsed is a strong word,” Renjun concedes. “I guess I’m just not his type.”

Donghyuck sits back in his chair and crosses one denim-covered leg over the other. “Wow. Well, that’s not true.“

Now it’s Renjun’s turn to be confused. “What do you mean?”

“Listen.” Donghyuck holds his breath for a bit before the question falls out of him in a rush. “Do you want to be his type?”

Renjun’s heart lurches. He’ll blame it on the three drinks when he blurts out, “Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know.” And well, does anybody want to feel undesirable? Renjun certainly doesn’t. And he never felt this way before knowing Mark. Before marrying him.

“I’m going to tell you this because you need to hear it, and you can never, ever tell Mark that I said this—” Renjun shakes his head furiously, no, I would never, and Donghyuck continues. “—But if anything, it’s the opposite. You’re completely his type.”

“…Oh.”

“Did you know he tried to ask a girl out once in high school, and he was so awkward and weird about it that she started crying?” Donghyuck shakes his head, scoffing. “He just doesn’t know how to act around you yet. Don’t take it personally. Besides, you’re gorgeous. Who cares what Mark Lee thinks, anyway?”

Well, Renjun kind of does. That’s the thing. And if Donghyuck is right, and Mark isn’t disgusted by him, then all those times he seemed withdrawn and cold were actually just him being shy and a little awkward. And that means Renjun has probably been a bit of a dick.

The next sip of his drink tastes more bitter than it did before. Renjun finishes the whole thing anyway, and reaches for another. “Yeah,” he says. “Who cares.”

I care. Sometimes I care so much it hurts, and I don’t know how to turn it off. That’s the worst part.

💍

Most days, Renjun puts so much effort into seeming put-together he can barely stand himself. He loves routine. He likes taking his time getting ready in the mornings, taking showers so hot they almost burn, styling his hair carefully, pairing perfume and scented lotion from his extensive collection, picking out jewelry and accessories to match his outfit for the day. He’s ten minutes early to every meeting. He’s the reliable friend. The interns at the hospital stop and stare when he walks by. They call him prim and proper, and even if Renjun is neither of those things, it’s the image he wants to put out into the world, so he’ll gladly accept it.

Today, Renjun is not put-together, he’s falling the fuck apart. That fourth drink was a mistake. He’s been hunched over the toilet for too long, emptying the nonexistent contents of his stomach into the bowl. That’s how Mark finds him, curled up on the bathroom floor, resting his head in the circle of his arms over the bowl. His carefully styled hair a mess, his makeup blotchy from his tears.

“Renjun…?” Mark says, his voice careful and quiet.

Renjun glances over his shoulder and immediately wishes he hadn’t. His husband is looking at him like he’s some wild thing, a half-starved animal, and he hates it. “Go away,” he mumbles. His mouth feels like sandpaper and tastes like spoiled fruit, once sweet, now rotten.

Renjun refuses to look at him again, but he can hear the slow retreat of footsteps. That’s not surprising; Renjun basically told him to fuck off. What’s surprising is that the footsteps return. Renjun’s gaze flickers up weakly in time to see Mark’s hand setting down a glass of water on the bathroom countertop.

“Are you… okay…?” Mark asks.

Obviously fucking not. “Do I look like I’m okay?” Renjun snaps. He reaches for the water anyway, and forces himself to swallow half of it in one go.

“I dunno,” Mark says nervously. “You’re the doctor.”

Renjun doesn’t want to laugh, but he does, albeit weakly. It’s the most sound his voice can muster now, with his throat sore and his mouth perennially dry despite the water he’s just downed. And then it turns out even laughing makes him nauseous, and now that his stomach has liquid in it again there’s nothing stopping him from turning his head back into the toilet and retching into it again, too. It’s not pretty. It’s not put-together. If Mark wasn’t repulsed by him before, surely he is now. Why the hell is he still even here?

“Sorry,” he whispers, voice hoarse. And now he’s crying again too, great. This is just great. “I’m fine. You can go, I’m just gonna—just give me a few minutes.”

“Why are you crying?” Mark asks.

Why isn’t Renjun crying? He doesn’t know how to compartmentalize any of it. It’s a dam: one crack and the whole lake floods the reservoir. Everything is pouring out now and he can’t do anything to stop it. He’s ashamed, he’s embarrassed, he’s drunk. So very drunk. “I’m drunk,” he tells Mark.

“Yes, I can see that.” It has to be impulse that has Mark suddenly dragging his hand into the air, reaching out, only to stop cold right before touching him. So far away. So agonizingly close. Renjun is certain his touch would carry an electric shock. He wants him to do it anyway. “I’ll leave if you want. I just don’t like seeing you unhappy. I’m sorry.”

Renjun makes a strange noise somewhere between a groan and a hiccup. “Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault. We don’t owe anything to each other, it’s not your job to make me feel better.”

He expects that to be the end of it, but Mark shakes his head, his eyes big and earnestly warm. “That’s not what I want,” he says. “The other night… I don’t want us to be like that for the rest of this… whatever it is. Like, I want us to be friends. I don’t want us to owe things to each other, I want to look out for you. I want you to look out for me. Don’t you want that too?”

Yes, more than anything.

“We share a space,” Mark continues, crouching down. “And for at least the next few years we share a marriage. So there’s nothing I can do for you, but I’m going to stay here with you until you feel better. Okay?”

Renjun is only half-listening. He wants to ask, have you ever been so lonely you felt like you could die of it? But he manages a nod. “Okay,” he sniffles, his heart hammering away in its chest. “Don’t get on the ground with me.”

“Dude, I’m totally getting on the ground with you.”

“Don’t, don’t, it’s cold.”

Mark must not be listening either. He kneels next to Renjun anyway, touches him with clumsy hands. None of the softness that Renjun craves, but somehow better. His hands are so fucking big, it’s ridiculous. He basically clamps them around Renjun’s entire arm and, oh, there's his breath on Renjun’s skin. Slowly, he pulls Renjun into his chest. “Is this okay?”

Renjun can feel the rhythm of Mark’s heart against his cheek. Rapidly fluttering, quick as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. It mirrors his own. It’s nice. “It’s okay.”

Mark smells like clean laundry, like the detergent they use to wash the bedsheets every two weeks. No hint of cologne, so when Renjun breathes in deep that must all just be Mark. Mark Lee, his husband, maybe his friend. “It’s warmer like this, right?” Mark asks, gentle as anything. He holds Renjun a little tighter. How awfully greedy Renjun must be, to wish he’d hold him tighter still.

What a weird day it’s been. What a weird fucking day.

“Yeah,” Renjun whispers. “Really warm.”

It really is warm. Renjun hadn’t noticed it until now, but he thinks maybe he hasn’t felt this warm for months. Maybe ever. The soft hair grown out near the nape of Mark’s neck tickles his skin when he turns to press his face into his throat. He tries to imagine how Mark might hold a lover, if this is how he holds a friend. He feels a little sorry knowing Mark’s future spouse is out there somewhere waiting for him, while Mark is holding Renjun.

But not sorry enough to stop. He puts his arms around Mark’s waist, and remembers feeling the tremble of his breath, and it’s the last thing he remembers for the night.

💍

He’s still warm when he wakes up the next morning, curled against Mark and clinging to his back. He gets ever-warmer when he notices he’s wearing one of Mark’s shirts, knowing he wouldn’t have been lucid enough to change his clothes himself last night.

Mark insists on driving him to work. Renjun wants to argue, but the buses are always running late these days, and a free ride is a free ride. Mark’s driving playlist is all early 2000s music, and he hums along to each song. The timbre of his voice, deep and a little husky, is soothing even to Renjun’s hungover senses.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Renjun says while they’re stuck at a particularly long traffic light. “I’m embarrassed that you had to see me like that.”

Mark glances over his shoulder. Both of his hands flex and unflex around the steering wheel. “Nah,” he says, all soft. “It was nice.”

“You thought watching me puke into our toilet and cry was nice?”

“I meant the part after. You didn’t think that was nice?”

Renjun hides his smile in the collar of his turtleneck. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

💍

Surprisingly, it does get easier after that. Mark, to his credit, is still awkward, still too polite—but he also pokes fun at Renjun for his movie choices, and calls him a brat when he tries to get out of washing the dishes after dinner, and laughs at all of his dumb jokes. They’re not close by any stretch of the word, not yet at least, but it’s a gradual, eventual sort of thing. It feels like they’ll get there someday. Mark is kind to him in a way that feels genuine, and now that they’re not spending all their time in the apartment tiptoeing around each other, it’s actually kind of… nice. Coming home from a long day of work to a home that actually feels like a home, dinner on the table and all. Takeout, because Renjun is an average-to-less-than-average cook, but Mark is particularly useless in the kitchen. It’s the thought that counts.

Mark is good at that—the whole looking out for Renjun thing. He’d said that night that he wanted to look out for Renjun, that he wanted them to look out for each other. Renjun thinks he’s doing an okay job of holding up his end of the deal, but Mark goes above and beyond. Brings him mugs of tea before Renjun even knows he needs them, massacres lemons in the morning to bring him his morning glass of ice water with that one perfect lemon slice. Obligatory get home safe texts turn into full blown conversations, punctuated by messages like when are you getting home and what should we have for dinner and saw this cat haha thought of you and danggg wait should we get a cat?

And Mark is still a shut-in. He doesn’t spend any less time cooped up in his office, but he does leave the door open. He has a couch in there, and these huge windows, and sometimes Renjun finds the time to curl up in the sunshine and watch him write. The sound of his typing is soothing, and Renjun grows accustomed to his hands, his wrists, the careful precision of his fingertips. Sometimes he wonders what it is that Mark is working on so ardently, but most creative types he’s familiar with don’t like to talk about their work until it’s properly finished. So he contents himself with watching. The first time he falls asleep on that couch he wakes to Mark hovering over him hours later, brushing his hair out of his face, asking him softly if he slept well. And Renjun likes it so much that he lets it become a habit, napping in that sun-soaked office until Mark is waking him with his gentle hands and gentler voice. Renjun-ah, if you nap any longer you won’t be able to get to sleep tonight, I know you can hear me, you brat, I see you smiling.

It’s a strange, delicate thing, this companionship of theirs. That’s what Renjun has taken to calling it lately. Is Mark a friend? Yes, but more. Not a best friend, not a partner, but a companion. Renjun learns more about Mark than can fill his quarter-sheet. He could write his own book on all of it: how Mark hates the cold but loves the rain. How he cries at the parts of movies you’re not supposed to cry at. How he calls his brother every morning and prays every night before bed, the shape of his mouth forming around the words I love you, I’ll talk to you later, amen. How he shaves religiously because he had a girlfriend in college who hated the feel of his stubble, and how he smiles when Renjun puts a palm to his chin and says he doesn’t mind it, and how he starts letting it grow out a little after that.

And like a fool, Renjun comes to like him. He wonders if it’s impossible to live in such close proximity to anyone without falling for them a little bit, or if maybe that’s just a Mark Lee exclusive thing. Like given enough time, anybody would find themselves thawing in his presence. Maybe it’s a combination of factors: Renjun is weak, and he’s always found Mark handsome, but Mark just had to go and make himself likable and endearingly weird and charming in a way no man who talks like a college frat bro should be.

The day before the immigration officer comes to interview them for the first time, they go on ten dates in the span of twelve hours. Renjun styles his hair a little differently each time. Half-up, bangs down, bangs pushed back, tucked behind his ears, braided on the side. They bring hats, different outfits, different accessories to sell the illusion. It’s almost fun. Mark’s friend Jaemin tags along to take pictures of them and doesn’t ask any questions. He does get over-invested in positioning their hands all over each other.

“Come on,” he says, impassioned, placing Mark’s hand fully on Renjun’s ass. Mark flushes and moves his hand to a more respectable position at Renjun’s hip. “I know you’re shy, but just act like you like each other. Like you’re two normal people in love.”

It becomes something of a catchphrase to them. They put the pictures Jaemin developed in frames and put them all over the apartment. On the fridge, on the walls, on the nightstand by their bed. Mark holds his hand on the couch as they wait, squeezing when Renjun gets too tense, telling him, ”It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, remember, we’re just—”

“Two normal people in love,” Renjun finishes for him as the doorbell rings. There’s no reason to be nervous. This is routine, and they’ve rehearsed their story to hell and back. He breathes a little easier. “Right.”

His husband is a terrible liar, but recently it looks like he’s stepped his game up. “Married life has just been so good to us,” he tells Mister-Kim-but-call-me-Doyoung, with surprising persuasion. “I hope one day everybody gets to experience a love like this.”

Renjun kisses the ring on Mark’s finger, and Mark does a good job of looking half-flustered, half-smitten over the whole thing. Doyoung isn’t looking at them, he’s looking a little behind them, at the photo of Mark carrying a shrieking Renjun into the water at sunset, on the beach. It was a bitch to get the sand out of their clothes in time to change for their dinner date photoshoot. But it is a nice picture. Jaemin is good at his job. They look so happy, like two normal people in love.

“I’m not as good with words as my husband is,” he says, and takes a moment to smile at Mark, like he can’t believe he gets to call him that. My husband. “But I feel lucky to have found him, and to be able to spend every day together like this. Very lucky.”

The way Mark grins back at him must be particularly convincing, because not long after that, Doyoung thanks them for their time and takes his leave. Less than a week later, they get a call confirming they’ve passed. No more interviews. Just a few more years of quietly keeping up the ruse to themselves and the people around them. Should be easy, right?

“What should we have for dinner?” Mark asks. “Like, you know, our not-going-to-jail-for-marriage-fraud celebration.”

Renjun tries to smile, but the joke lands somewhere awkwardly between them. “I want malatang,” he says.

“Aw, man, but we had malatang yesterday… And the day before that… And my stomach kinda hurts.” But Mark is already opening his phone and typing in the name of Renjun’s favorite restaurant.

Relationships are about compromise, so companionship must be the same. He tells Mark to order the least spicy option, to Mark’s visible relief. They do the dishes side-by-side, after, and bumping shoulders with Mark and flicking dish soap bubbles onto his shirt, Renjun thinks that maybe what he told Doyoung wasn’t all a lie. He does feel lucky. Almost too lucky. It won’t last. But he wants to enjoy every last second of it until he can’t anymore.

He should know better. No one is immune to attachment. No one, least of all himself.

💍

On the day of what would be their six-month anniversary, Renjun agrees to pick up Jisung’s graveyard shift as a favor to him. Mark is sure to tell him over text how upset he is about the whole thing. Abandoning me on our half year anniversary, I can’t believe u. Guess I have to cancel the surprise trip to Paris hahah.

Sorry. Half a year is too early to celebrate anyway, we can go to Paris when we hit our one year anniversary instead, Renjun jokes back.

But then it won’t be a surprise.

I’ll pretend it is, is that good enough?

Only if u make that thing again this weekend. The uhh…

Guo bao rou.

Yes. That. Make that, and I’ll forgive u.

Deal.

He doesn’t typically work overnight unless he chooses to, that’s more of a first-year doctor thing. But these shifts are always an exercise in building stamina. During the day, there’s barely any room to breathe—people bustling to and from each room, shouting down the hallways, patients coming in an endless stream. At night, everything is emptier, a little slower, but no less strenuous. Some patients require constant hands-on attention. Some patients just want somebody to talk to. Renjun takes careful notes on the condition of each person to pass on, and does his best to keep track of it all without losing his sanity in the process. There’s a reason working at this hour is unenviable even amongst the worst of the workaholics that Renjun knows.

By the time morning rolls around, and his day shift colleagues are starting to filter through the doors, Renjun is feeling less than human. He probably looks less than human, too, because Ten takes one look at him and says, “Go home.”

When Renjun shakes his head the world goes temporarily blurry, which he’s pretty sure isn’t supposed to happen. “No, I—”

“Go home,” Ten insists, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You have a husband to get back to. I’ll find someone to cover for you, so just get some rest, alright?”

Renjun tries to protest, but he’s too tired to argue. He’s so tired he can’t do anything except nod and make his way towards the locker rooms, so tired he opts to take a cab home instead of the bus like he normally would. So tired he forgets to tell Mark he’s on his way home.

Sound carries too easily in an apartment as small as theirs. Mark can hear him singing in the bathroom while he makes coffee in the mornings. Renjun likes falling asleep to the sound of Mark’s typing in the office next door. It’s something they’ve both just gotten used to. But the apartment is suspiciously quiet when he gets home for once.

“Mark?” he calls out, pulling his scarf off, then his gloves, shedding himself of his outerwear piece by piece. His wallet is on the counter and his keys are by the door, so he must be home. “Mark, are you—”

There’s a muffled noise from the end of the corridor, where the bedroom door has been left slightly ajar, and—oh. It can’t be. He holds his breath until he hears it again. And then it’s unmistakable.

He hardly recognizes the sound of Mark’s voice when it’s that desperate.

Renjun’s eyes widen. He’s suddenly alert. All the blood that’s supposed to be elsewhere in his body is in his cheeks. All thoughts of sleep have vanished. This isn’t a situation he thought he would ever find himself in. Should he wait it out? He should say something, shouldn’t he? He can’t just let Mark keep going like this, it would be wrong. He could leave and come back, but what if Mark heard the door closing behind him? And where would he even go, in the dead of winter?

There’s really only one option. He makes his way down the hallway, knocks at the door without looking inside. “Um,” he says, wincing at the sound of his own voice, the way it scrapes against the inside of his throat. “I’m home…”

Mark screams. He slams his laptop shut. “Yo, I’m—just—just give me a second, I’ll—”

Renjun buries his face in his hands, completely mortified. He can hear the sound of fabric rustling, Mark muttering under his breath—shit, shit, shit—before he’s appearing at the door. Out of breath, cheeks flushed. “Um. Um, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think you would be home this early…”

“They let me go home early,” Renjun mumbles, peeking through his fingers. “I… Wait, what are you sorry for? I should be sorry, I forgot to text you…” Mark’s hair is messy and wild and he looks like he got dressed in 5 seconds, which he basically did. He’s pulling up his sweatpants by his hips, and it’s impossible not to look.

Renjun glances down, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Wow, he thinks, and immediately wants to pass out. Fuck. Fuck, he’s so fucked. Figuratively. Figuratively, and not in any other way.

“I mean—of course I’m sorry, I—I thought—” Mark is stuttering so bad, he can’t even get through a full sentence. Maybe Renjun really should have just risked it and left without saying anything.

“It’s my fault,” Renjun says, shaking his head.

“What? How is it your fault? I’m just—I’m kinda pent up, I never should have—”

“It’s fine, Mark, it’s natural.” Renjun can’t look at Mark’s face, and he definitely can’t keep looking down, so he settles for staring somewhere off to the side. “Just… maybe we should have a code word or something for next time. I don’t know. We can do that sock on the door thing.”

Mark shakes his head. His eyes are wide and remorseful, like he’s just been caught doing something worse than masturbating in the supposed privacy of his own home. “No, no, I swear it’s never gonna happen again.”

Confusion momentarily overtakes Renjun’s embarrassment. “How is it not going to happen again?” Mark doesn’t answer that, just shrugs helplessly and stays quiet. “You’re acting like I caught you cheating on me. We’re not actually married. And even married people can watch porn.”

“I dunno, it just feels wrong,” Mark says, his voice thin and strained.

“You can’t be abstinent for three years, that’s ridiculous,” Renjun argues.

“Can we—do we really have to keep talking about this? Can we just forget it happened? Please?”

Suddenly the knowledge imparted unto him by Donghyuck, which Renjun previously pushed to the back of his mind, is front and center. You’re completely his type. Completely his type. Completely his—

“I could help you out with that,” Renjun blurts out, not thinking. The exhaustion is eroding his brain to mouth filter. Not good. He has to stop, he has to— “If you wanted.” Hopefully his face is neutral and not on fire.

Mark blinks at him, like he’s taking the time to process the words. And then he’s reeling back as if he’s been burned, his entire face going red. “Help?” he asks. He sounds like he’s panicking, which is relatable.

Renjun bites his lip, his stomach fluttering with nerves. He gestures vaguely in the direction of Mark’s… problem, which is somehow, despite the humiliation of the entire situation, not showing any signs of going down. “Yeah. You know. Help.”

“Renjun...” The expression on Mark’s face is near unreadable. “You shouldn’t say things like that so easily, alright? You can’t just offer that to anyone— “

There they are again, Renjun thinks, a touch resentful. The kid gloves. If Mark doesn’t want him, he should just say so. “I’m not just offering it to anyone, I’m offering because it’s you.” The words fall out of him in a rush, and the regret sets in just as quick. Mark’s eyes widen, his mouth falling open. “Whatever. Whatever, forget it, I’m just—”

He has about two seconds to process that his back is hitting the wall before Mark closes the distance between them. And then his husband is kissing him, and Renjun is kissing him back, and he’s being lifted onto his tiptoes as Mark crushes their bodies together. Renjun can feel the stiff heat of him, pressed into his own thigh. They keep kissing, urgent and reckless, with Mark’s tongue in his mouth and Renjun’s hands in his hair. Renjun feels like he’s on fire, needy in a way he rarely allows himself to be, his chest aching with his own desire.

Mark is ravenous. He runs his hands all over Renjun—fabric bunching, hurriedly pushed out of the way for skin on skin—holding him up with nothing but the force of his own body. And thank god for that, because Renjun isn’t sure he can trust his own legs to keep himself upright. He kind of can’t believe this is happening. He kind of can’t believe it’s taken them this long to get here. Mark is sensitive everywhere—he shudders when Renjun’s grip tightens in his hair, whines quietly when Renjun’s hand falls to the nape of his neck, drags itself down the length of his torso, gets a handful of his ass.

“Renjun,” he breathes out, once they’re forced to part for air. He puts his lips to the bare skin of Renjun’s neck, the hollow dip of his collarbone. It’s the first time Mark has ever said his name like that. It’s the first time Renjun has heard his own name in that voice, and he doesn’t want it to be the last. “You have to be sure about this, okay, we can’t—” He stops there, like he doesn’t know what exactly it is that they can’t do.

Renjun can hardly think. His lungs are caving in with the force of his want. The desperation of it all. He tilts his head back, and Mark moves in to press his mouth to every stretch of skin he can reach. He wants more, wants Mark’s mouth on his throat and at his lips and between his thighs. Everywhere. “We’re friends,” he says, putting his hands on Mark’s jaw to drag him up, look him in the eye. “We look out for each other. Right?”

Mark is looking up at him like he kind of can’t believe this is happening, either. “Right.”

“We take care of each other.”

“Uh-huh,” Mark says, one of his hands crawling up Renjun’s shirt to settle at his bare waist.

Renjun swallows. “So let me take care of you.”

And maybe it was always meant to be like this. Mark is so good at taking care of him normally, Renjun’s finally found a way to reciprocate. He’s not nurturing by nature, but this much he can do. If he’s being honest, he was a little worried Mark would be too nice and too polite in bed, the way he is outside of it. He’s more like an overeager puppy. Everything is a revelation to him. They make their way from the hallway into the bedroom clumsily, and Mark gapes at Renjun when he peels his shirt off, which is equal parts embarrassing and flattering. Renjun isn’t used to people looking at him with this much intensity, but the awkwardness fades quickly as Mark drags him close again, puts his hands wherever he can reach.

“Can I take these off?” he murmurs into the curve of Renjun’s neck, teeth scraping against the skin, pawing at his jeans.

It’s pathetic, really, how hard Renjun is already. “Please,” he says, and so Mark does, and Renjun makes sure to return the favor.

Mark is gorgeous, obviously. In the low, diffused light of the bedside lamp, Renjun sees that his husband is a study in contrast and balance: His shoulders are impossibly broad, tapering into a thin waist. His chest is firm where his stomach is soft. He’s equal parts handsome and beautiful, looking down at Renjun with his eyes half-lidded and his lips parted on a sigh. The damp patch of fabric at the front of his tented sweatpants is impossible not to notice. It should be obvious, given the situation, that Mark wouldn’t be wearing any underwear, but somehow the thought didn’t occur to Renjun before just now. All Renjun can think about is getting his mouth on him. Before that, though—

“What were you thinking about?” he asks first, beginning his slow descent. “Before I walked in.” He wants to know what Mark wants, wants to know how to make this good for him.

In the time he’s spent getting himself between Mark’s open legs, Mark’s voice has gone deeper, rough around the edges. “This,” he answers in a rasp. His chest begins to rise and fall more rapidly as Renjun teases along the elastic of his sweatpants, tugging at the drawstrings. “I thought of this, I thought of you.”

For a moment Renjun forgets to breathe. He would think Mark was lying if he didn’t look so guilty about it all. “Yeah?” he asks. Mark bites his lip and nods. His cheeks are so pink. Renjun groans into the side of his thigh, his hands already pulling at the fabric to tug it out of the way. “Fuck. That’s so hot.”

“It is?” Mark asks. God, he’s clueless. Renjun wants him so fucking bad.

He wraps his fingers around Mark’s cock in lieu of an answer, and is pleasantly surprised to find that it seems to be a perfect fit. The quiet sound Mark makes when Renjun takes him into his hand and runs his thumb across the crown sounds like it’s been punched out of him. If they were both a little less worked up Renjun would probably try to tease more, take his time kissing down his stomach, touch him like this until Mark would have no choice but to beg. For now he wastes no time, fitting his mouth over the tip of Mark’s cock, working his tongue against the slit until Mark’s thighs start quivering and one of his hands tentatively finds its way into Renjun’s hair. Renjun normally hates it when guys do that, but Mark is so gentle about it that he actually doesn’t mind. Or maybe he just likes it because it’s Mark. Sweet, gentle Mark, who keeps making these small, helpless noises above him as Renjun sinks lower, like he just can’t help it. His hips rise off the mattress, so Renjun puts both hands at his thighs, spreading him open, keeping him in place as he drags the flat of his tongue across his length.

He pulls off after a while to take a deeper breath, letting his hand replace his mouth. Mark nearly whines but stops himself just in time. Renjun’s fist pulls smoothly over the length of Mark’s cock, the mix of spit and precome easing the slide. “Good?” he asks, just a touch self-conscious. Wants to make it better than Mark’s fantasies, whatever those might be.

He just means to check in, really, but Mark puts a thumb under his lower lip and frames his face with the hand that was tugging at the sheets. “So good,” he says, his eyes dark and deep. “So good, you have no idea.”

Renjun is barely holding himself together, and he’s so hard between his thighs he’s practically aching with it even though he hasn’t even been touched yet. So he thinks he has a little bit of an idea at least. Good, he thinks, I always want you to feel good.

Renjun isn’t inexperienced, but it’s been a while, and Mark isn’t small. So it’s a little sloppy when he takes him back into his mouth, and he has to adjust his jaw carefully to fit more of his cock down his throat, feeling it stretch his lips and fill the space in between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. His mouth and chin are wet with spit. But Mark doesn’t seem to mind either way, even when Renjun has to fight against the urge to choke when the tip of Mark’s cock nudges against the back of his throat. If anything he grows noisier; when Renjun looks up the sight of Mark only spurs him on. Sweat beading at his forehead, his eyebrows all scrunched up in pleasure, his lips red and swollen.

So he recalibrates. Draws back a bit, his hand stroking what his mouth can’t reach, which makes it all more manageable. Mark’s cock rests on his tongue, hot and heavy. Then he swallows Mark down as far as he can, hollowing his cheeks, ignoring how filthy it is, and doesn’t stop until Mark’s voice has gone shaky at the edges and he’s babbling, begging, barely coherent— “Renjun-ah, please, I can’t, I—”

The hands in his hair draw tight as Renjun swallows him down, all of it, past the bitterness that lingers on his tongue. And then he pulls off Mark’s softening cock, panting, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s had boyfriends before who wouldn’t kiss him after a blowjob, and for a moment he thinks Mark might be the same. But then he’s being pulled back up, and Mark is kissing him, uncaring of the mess of his mouth.

It starts in a frenzy and, over time, tempers into something less hurried, more leisurely. Renjun’s hips are moving before he can even process it, his cock dragging against the crease of Mark’s hip, skin against skin. Mark pulls Renjun’s hips down against his thigh, encourages him to rock against it, until Renjun is just rutting against him, clutching at him, hiding his face in the curve of Mark’s shoulder, their legs tangling together in the sheets. It’s quick and fumbling—his breath comes in warm, shuddery puffs of air, dampened against Mark’s collarbones, his mouth open, panting.

Truthfully, it doesn’t take long at all before Renjun can feel himself getting close. He’s so wired, his entire body is trembling now, chest heaving. All of it feels good, better than it has any right to be—the smooth slide of his cock smearing precome into Mark’s skin, the way Mark’s arm wraps around Renjun’s waist, keeping him closer. With his free hand, Mark reaches between their bodies, wrapping his fingers around Renjun’s cock snugly, eager to help. But it’s only when he leans down to kiss Renjun again that he finally comes. The pleasure is toe-curling, spine-bending; his mind is hazy enough that he doesn’t even have the self-awareness to be embarrassed by the noises that spill from his lips.

By the time he comes down from the high of it he still hasn’t processed the events of the last thirty minutes. He’s decently sure it’ll take at least another few hours for that to sink in. He thinks he can hear the rhythm of Mark’s heart beating through his chest, puts a hand around the side of his throat to check, thumbing at his pulse point. Sure enough, it matches his own erratic heartbeat.

They’re both quiet for a long time. “I didn’t think you were even attracted to me at first,” Renjun confesses, breaking the silence. He must still not fully be in his right mind; on any other day he’d rather die than admit this much. “I thought maybe you were disgusted by me, actually.”

Mark draws back to look at him in disbelief. “What?” he asks. “Yo—what? Have you seen yourself?”

Renjun shrugs.

“Well, I am. Like. A lot.”

“Yeah, I got that now.”

“I was afraid if I touched you I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

“Oh,” Renjun says.

“Oh,” Mark agrees, hiding his face in Renjun’s neck.

“Well, no reason to stop now.”

Mark groans. “You’re killing me, I’ll never recover.” He noses at Renjun’s cheek, pulls him to his chest. “Do you think cuddling after sex also counts as taking care of each other?”

Honestly, Renjun was expecting Mark to act a lot more awkward about this whole thing. Good to know that this doesn’t have to change things. This is fine. They can stay friends. Friends who happen to be married, and also happen to be sleeping together.

They should really shower, but— “It better,” Renjun says, sighing, and makes himself comfortable in Mark’s arms. “I’m not moving for at least the next hour.”

💍

The next time Renjun sees Chenle, it takes Chenle less than five minutes to look at him and decide something must be wrong. “What the hell is up with you?” he demands.

Renjun shrugs, flips through the menu, doesn’t rise to the bait. He’s in a better mood than usual. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that Mark kept him in bed for so long this morning that he was nearly late to this lunch. “Do you want to split the quiche? I hear it’s amazing here.”

“No. You’re going to eat one bite and then force the rest on me.” Chenle’s eyes narrow. “You’re being weird. You know you can’t keep secrets from me, right?”

Actually, Renjun can very much keep a secret. He’s been keeping a secret of Jeno’s for months now, involving a ring at the bottom of his sock drawer and tickets for two back to Shanghai. But it’s easier if Chenle continues to think otherwise.

He waits until Chenle is taking a sip of his tea to say, “I’m sleeping with my husband.” And enjoys the reaction more than he should.

Chenle doesn’t quite do a spit-take, but he does start sputtering, his eyes wide as saucers. Renjun smiles placidly and hands him a napkin to cough into. “That’s great,” he says, once he recovers. The look on his face says otherwise. “I’m happy for you. Spare me the details, though.”

It is kind of great, actually. Maybe too great. Renjun hasn’t seen this much action in years, which is a little sad to admit. But in his own defense, he was working through his grief, and working through his actual residency, which basically ate up all of his time. Grief, self-loathing, studying, working, repeat. Even now it’s not like his schedule allows him a lot of time to meet other men, and even if it did, Renjun isn’t sure any of them would measure up to Mark. It’s not just about the sex, surprisingly. Or—well, it’s not not about the sex, they have plenty of it, but they’ve also just been making out. A lot. Aimlessly, outside of sex, without any other purpose.

Maybe he should find it strange, but it’s so easy, so comfortable. Sometimes Mark will just find him in the bathroom, washing his face, and he’ll help Renjun through the rest of his skincare routine. Toner, essence, moisturizer. And then he’ll push Renjun against the counter and kiss him until Renjun’s legs are weak and his mouth is properly red. Sometimes Renjun will be leaving for work, and Mark will just be sitting at the kitchen table, telling him to have a good day, and suddenly Renjun will have no choice but to kiss him goodbye. At which point Mark usually drags him into his lap, and slides his fingers under the hem of Renjun’s sweater—or rather, his own sweater that Renjun has taken to wearing on lazy days where he’s too lazy to put an outfit together just to change into scrubs immediately—and from there it’s a lost cause. Renjun is ashamed to admit he’s been late more frequently because of it, but Ten just ruffles his unkempt hair and laughs. Newlyweds, he’ll say, even though Mark and Renjun have been quote-unquote married for over half a year now, and that probably doesn’t count as new anymore. Just enjoy the honeymoon phase while it lasts, yeah?

But Chenle doesn’t need to know all that. And Renjun doesn’t know how to explain it, either, how fucking his husband is somehow the least complicated part of their entire relationship, so he doesn’t.

When he gets home, the day is just beginning to lean towards sunset. Mark is sitting in his favorite armchair, nose deep in a book. That armchair is the oldest thing in their apartment by far. Ratty and worn and threadbare. Mark insists that it’s comfier than it looks and still in perfectly good condition and that the stain is just like, ketchup or something, I don’t know, don’t worry about it.

The stain is brown. Ketchup is red. Renjun tries not to think about it. “Hi,” he says, as Mark puts his book down, and pointedly ignores his outstretched arms to step around him and sit on the couch.

Mark pouts at him, even though he knows Renjun’s no-making-out-on-the-gross-armchair rule is firm and unshakable. “Had fun at brunch?”

“Mm, yeah,” Renjun says, tilting sideways to use the armrest as a pillow. His eyes flutter shut as Mark reaches out, threads careful fingers through his hair. “Chenle says hi.”

“Love that guy,” Mark says, which is what Mark always says when Renjun mentions Chenle. It’s what he says about everyone, actually. The waiter at their favorite takeout restaurant. The fruit vendor at the farmer’s market who gives him free samples every time they pass by. The neighbor’s dog. Mark is so full of love, Renjun wonders how he didn’t see it before. How he mistook shyness for coldness. “Hey, you can’t nap, we’re seeing Hyuck later, remember?”

Renjun whines. Winters in Jilin are twice as cold as winters in Seoul, and somehow he still feels underprepared for the weather every single time he leaves the house. He’s freezing, and the couch is warm and soft and comfortable. “But I’m tired…”

Most of his friends are younger than him, so he doesn’t get to do this very often. He likes that he can be spoiled and whiny and childish and Mark will just smile down at him all fond like he is now and indulge him. “Want something to drink? Tea?”

“Tea would be nice.”

Mark pinches his cheek, and then he’s walking off to the kitchen as Renjun stifles a yawn and forces himself to sit up. No matter how much he loves spending time with his friends, he doesn’t love leaving the house more than once a day. They need to just start combining friend groups so he can start consolidating, but then again, it’d just make things more awkward when they inevitably divorce. And oh, boy, isn’t that a sobering thought. He feels much more awake now.

It’s a welcome distraction when Mark returns with a steaming mug of tea, pressing it into Renjun’s palms. “Careful, it’s hot,” he says. Mark is always a little weird, but he’s being particularly weird now, staring at Renjun with a barely-contained smile. All the eagerness of a dog waiting to be praised for playing fetch.

Renjun murmurs a thank you in return, trying to pay the strange staring no mind. When he brings the mug closer, the unmistakable citrusy scent of Earl Grey immediately floods his senses. “Wait,” he says, and takes a sip to confirm his suspicions. “Mark…”

Mark’s barely-contained smile stretches into a full blown grin. If he had a tail, he’d be wagging it right now. “I went back to that cafe from the other day and asked for the specific brand of tea leaves they bought. You like it?”

Renjun had mentioned once, in passing, after they left that cafe, that they brewed the best cup of tea he’d ever had. It was barely small talk; he didn’t think Mark was paying any attention to him. It’s such an objectively inconsequential thing, but he still can’t believe Mark did it. That he drove all the way back just to ask them what tea leaves they used, and then went out and bought the same ones. “Of course I like it,” he says, and sets the mug onto a nearby coaster.

“Then why are you—oh—what about your rule—ohhhh,” Mark says, as Renjun pulls himself into a straddle across his lap. His hands fly up to rest at Renjun’s waist. “Oh, dang, you liked it that much?”

The tea is fine. What Renjun likes is the man who bought it for him. “Yeah,” he says, dipping his head slightly to press Mark’s lips against his own.

Mark leans into it for a second, but then he’s pulling away and frowning, and Renjun can’t fathom why. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. Renjun must look as confused as he feels, because Mark quickly clarifies: “Sometimes I feel like when I do something nice for you, you feel like you have to repay me somehow.”

Oh. Renjun swallows around the lump in his throat, suddenly defeated. He’s always grateful, always been focused on returning the favors Mark has done for him. Acutely aware that he owes Mark more than he’ll ever truly be able to repay him for. He never considered it might seem transactional. But he’s capable of doing things for more than one reason. “I don’t do anything unless I really want to do it,” he says. “And I like it when you’re nice to me, is that so bad?”

“Everyone should be nice to you,” Mark says. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Everyone should be nice to you, the world should be kind to you, grass is green, water is blue. “Always.”

It should be such a simple concept, but it’s not. Mark is constantly overwhelming him with these little things that aren’t actually all that little. They add up. The sum feels greater than the whole. “Mark,” Renjun says, and puts their foreheads together. “I want to kiss you. Not because I think I owe you for doing something nice for me. Because I just want to. Okay?”

Mark is still staring at him, a little cross-eyed now that Renjun’s face is so close. He could look away, but he doesn’t, like it was never an option for him. It’s so fucking goofy, and so like him. “Okay,” he says, squeezing at Renjun’s thighs as they tighten around his hips. “But the tea’s gonna get col—”

💍

The tea does get cold, and they’re going to be late to dinner with Donghyuck, but that’s okay.

“People weren’t really that nice to me,” Renjun says as they’re picking their clothes off the living room floor. “When I was younger, I mean.” Maybe that’s why he doesn’t deal well with kindness. Doesn’t know how to react when people are good to him for the sake of being good, and nothing else.

Mark hums to show he’s paying attention. He’s a good listener. “They weren’t?”

“I was really scrawny,” Renjun recalls. He can’t tell if the sock he’s picking up right now belongs to Mark or himself. It doesn’t really matter when it’s all going in the same laundry hamper. “And very sick. It got to the point where I could barely go outside, I was spending all my time in the hospital.”

“Is that what made you want to be a doctor?” Mark asks. He’s reclaimed his boxers and the shirt that Renjun wore to brunch, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed.

Renjun laughs. “Yeah. Other kids were always mean to me, but I loved my doctors.” Mark reaches for Renjun’s hand and squeezes it. Renjun squeezes back, and then he continues, quietly, “I thought they were superheroes. They kind of were, to me. I wanted to be just like them.”

“You wouldn’t be here without them. I get it.”

“I really wouldn’t be.” Wouldn’t be here, as in, wouldn’t be a doctor. Wouldn’t have been so desperate to become a doctor at this one particular hospital that he recklessly spent all the money his parents left him to bribe a Korean national to marry him for the visa. Wouldn’t be here, sitting in Mark’s apartment, holding Mark’s hand.

For a moment Mark goes quiet. “I wish I could thank them,” he says, and then stops. “Is that stupid?”

No, it’s wonderful. “Yes,” Renjun says, his chest squeezing tight, and leans forward to kiss him again. He stops himself halfway through. Mark whines at the last-second refusal. “What made you want to be a writer?”

“I dunno.” Mark looks up at the ceiling, deep in thought. “I have a lot of stuff going on in my head, you know? And not all of it makes sense. Especially as a kid. Writing was the only way I knew how to make my thoughts make sense. I still feel that way sometimes. It helps me find meaning when I get lost in my own head.”

When he looks back at Renjun, he’s smiling, small and soft. “Besides,” he says, curling a hand around the nape of Renjun’s neck. “Some things are just too beautiful not to write about.”

💍

As a child, Renjun would devour books. His parents couldn’t get books checked out of the library fast enough for him. They didn’t know how to keep up. Looking back on it, Renjun isn’t sure when that love of reading began to fade. Probably somewhere between high school and college, he’d wager. Between the pages of scientific journals and hardcover textbooks and academic papers. He can’t remember the last time he read anything purely for enjoyment, until now. Until Mark.

Ten’s voice in his ear interrupts that train of thought. “What are you reading?” he asks.

Renjun closes the book hurriedly, but not before Ten gets a good look at the cover. “Nothing,” he says. Probably not the best idea to be doing this at work. He should’ve been using his break to catch up on some sleep, or maybe grab some food, but in his defense he’d just gotten to the good part. The unspoken thrill of wanting to keep turning the page, of needing to know what comes next. He feels ten years old again, staying up past midnight to read underneath his blankets with a flashlight to avoid being scolded by his mother.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.” Ten grins, catlike, and settles into the seat across from him. Crosses one graceful leg over the other. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go to lunch, but it looks like you’re busy. Is that Mark’s book?”

No use in hiding it now. “Yeah,” Renjun says. “He gets kind of shy about this stuff, so I’ve been trying not to read it while he’s around.” It wasn’t that he’d forgotten about the book he’d bought, it’s that he didn’t consider the importance of reading it until Mark was sitting with him on their living room floor and holding him by the back of his neck and saying, some things are just too beautiful not to write about.

“Has he ever written about you?” Ten asks.

Renjun’s immediate reaction is confusion. No, why would he. Then he remembers it’s a perfectly natural thing, to assume a man who writes romance novels has drawn inspiration from his husband, who he supposedly loves. No reason to think otherwise. He tries to play it off all coy. “I guess you’ll have to buy his book to find out,” he says, forcing a laugh.

Ten rolls his eyes and doesn’t push. “Okay, fine, maybe I will.”

So Renjun learns his lesson. He finishes the book later that week, sitting on the bus, and doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s staring down at his lap and watching blotchy gray circles appear across the last page, and the nice grandmother next to him is offering him her handkerchief. He shakes his head but thanks her.

His husband is very handsome, and he’s a terrible liar, and he’s an incredible writer. He might be a genius. Renjun shouldn’t even be crying, it was a beautiful story with a happy ending. So why, then, are the tears still flowing?

It’s funny. On paper, the protagonist is a lot like Mark—brave, kind, not a cynical bone in his body. There’s no reason Renjun should relate to him as much as he does. But something about the way Mark writes pulls an ache from his chest so familiar that Renjun can’t help the way he reacts. This book was written and published long before they came into each other's lives, and yet he still feels strangely, keenly seen. He wonders if he’s imagining it. The sense of melancholy in Mark’s work, the sense of profound loneliness—

He thinks about sitting on their bathroom floor, and the way Mark had said, I want to look out for you, I want you to look out for me. Back then Renjun had wanted to ask him, have you ever been so lonely you felt like you could die of it? The book gives him his answer. Yes, I have, you’re not alone.

Renjun realizes he hasn’t felt truly alone since Mark put his arms around him that night. That’s scary, knowing he’s come to rely so heavily on a comfort he won’t always have. It’ll be nice if he manages to get out of this unscathed. With his greedy heart intact. Maybe he shouldn’t be taking Mark’s company for granted, but bracing himself for the eventual loss instead.

💍

“Is this weird?” Renjun asks him one night. They’re in the kitchen, Mark at the stove and Renjun sitting on the counter behind him. Mark is stirring something that’s meant to be spaghetti sauce. Or maybe it’s soup? Renjun actually isn’t sure. He’s a little afraid to ask.

“Is what weird?” Mark asks, spatula in hand. His glasses are fogging up from the steam. The sauce or soup bubbles ominously as he turns up the burner. “You mean this? Nah, it’s supposed to be turning brown.”

Renjun slides off the counter to move into Mark’s space instead, peering into the contents of the pot over his shoulder. “No, I don’t think it is.”

Mark twists around to flash him a smile bright enough that Renjun nearly forgets what they’d been talking about at all. “C’mon Junnie, I got this. Have a little faith.”

It’s not about having faith. Renjun is twenty-eight. If he eats fried food two nights in a row it puts him out of commission for a whole week. His stomach already hurts just thinking about eating this… whatever it is. Also, he’s pretty sure it’s burning. He’s pretty sure Mark knows that too, from the way he starts sniffing the air and wrinkling his nose.

Like a cat, Renjun thinks. Cute.

“Let’s just order takeout,” he says, and switches off the heat.

Forty-five minutes later, in their unscorched apartment, halfway through a mouthful of pizza, Renjun remembers the original point he was trying to make. “Wait, that’s not what I meant,” he says. Mark looks up at him from across the kitchen table and makes a confused noise. “I meant us. Like, are we weird? Is what we’re doing weird?”

Selfishly he wants Mark to say no, to put a stop to the part of Renjun’s brain that keeps telling him it can’t be normal to be sleeping with the man you married for citizenship. It can’t be normal to be doing it so consistently, for this long. It can’t be normal to enjoy it as much as he does.

Mark thinks about it for maybe half a second. “Nah,” he decides, and then brings his phone up to snap a picture of Renjun. “Hey, can I post this on the gram?”

There’s too much to unpack. “Nah?” Renjun echoes. “Really, that’s it? Just nah? Also no one calls it the gram anymore. Also, no, I look terrible in that.” His hair is messy from the nap he took after work. There’s tomato sauce smeared at the corner of his mouth, and he hasn’t even swallowed all his food yet. Certifiably terrible. Gross.

“Was that not good enough of an answer?” Mark asks. “I mean, yeah, we’re weird. Everything about this is pretty weird. And also unconventional. But is that like, a bad thing?”

Renjun bites his lip but stubbornly refuses to look away. He’s a logical person by nature. Mark is the opposite. Most days Renjun admires his ability to be in tune with his own thoughts, to think with his heart instead of his head. Some days it just confuses him. “Well… I guess it isn’t, but—”

The camera shutter goes off.

“Okay, you really can’t post that one, I was in the middle of talking—”

“Don’t you think people will find it suspicious if I don’t have a single picture of my husband on my feed?”

“Pick a different picture,” Renjun says. “One where I don’t look so… gross.”

“But I like this one, it’s candid,” Mark says, pouting at him. “Besides, I think you always look nice.”

Renjun sighs, even as his cheeks begin to warm. “Do I even have a say in the matter?”

“Nope,” Mark says cheerfully, already tapping away at his phone screen. “Not at all.”

“Wait, what are you going to caption it?”

Mark glances up at him. “Secret,” he says, grinning, like Renjun doesn’t follow his account.

Even if it’s just takeout, Renjun sort of underestimated how nice it is. The simple pleasure of sharing a meal, sharing a table. Having someone to share it with consistently. He’s in a good mood. So he lets Mark polish off the rest of the pizza, and lets him upload the terrible picture. He waits until after dinner, while he’s laying in bed and Mark is showering, to actually check the post.

Credit where credit is due, Renjun doesn’t actually look half as bad in the photo as he thought he would. Sure, he’s mid-sentence, and there’s a smattering of crumbs across his lower lip, but he also just. Looks happy. His cheeks are flushed and fuller than they’ve been since the funeral, when he would forego sleep and food in favor of working, of sorting through his parents’ belongings, of making arrangements, of working some more.

He scrolls down to the caption which says, succinctly, i would put a ring on it twice if i could 💍.

They’re supposed to be taking turns washing up, but when Mark gets back to the bedroom, his hair still damp from the shower and nothing but a towel slung around his hips, all Renjun can think about is tearing that towel away from him. “Hey, shower’s all yours—whoa,” Mark says as Renjun drags him down to the mattress.

Renjun pushes him back, his hands exerting little to no pressure on Mark’s chest, but Mark falls like he’s been shoved. He barely has the time to react before Renjun is pinning him to the bed, kissing him, chest pressed against chest.

Mark smells like Renjun’s body wash and his shampoo, and he gives as good as he gets, opening his mouth for Renjun and letting their tongues curl around each other. When Renjun takes his lower lip between his teeth, Mark makes a soft, wanting sound in his throat, his warm breath ghosting over Renjun’s lips, permanently upturned.

“What’s this all about?” Mark murmurs between kisses. His damp hair is tickling Renjun’s nose. He gets a hand around the back of Renjun’s knee, stretches it across his hip.

The towel is rumpled between them and barely covering anything at all, so Renjun peels it away. “Nothing.” He doesn’t need a reason to want to touch Mark. He likes that Mark never really asks him to explain himself, that even this is rhetorical. “What, are you too tired from this morning, old man?”

“Woooow,” Mark says. His voice is so fond, Renjun wishes there was a way to bottle the memory of it. To keep as a reminder. “Wow, okay, first of all, mean. Second of all, I’m only like, a year older than you. Third of all—”

“Third of all what?” Renjun prompts him. He takes Mark into his hand, warm and velvet-soft.

Mark strokes his palm down the length of Renjun’s spine, until he’s shuddering, melting into the touch. “I’m never too tired for you,” he says.

“Prove it,” Renjun says, biting at his jawline, working his hand over Mark’s cock in smooth, leisurely strokes, because he knows it’ll rile him up. It’s been so fun to learn the big and little things that get Mark worked up. How he can’t resist bending Renjun over the nearest flat surface when he wears shorts around the house. How sometimes smiling at Mark a certain way, or even just looking at him a certain way, is enough for Renjun to get what he wants.

“Wait,” Mark says, leaning back, reaching for his own glasses. “Let me just take these off real quick.”

Renjun grabs him by the wrist. Mark blinks at him, eyes wide. “No, leave them on.”

Mark blinks again. His expression turns mischievous as the understanding settles into him. “What—oh. Ohhh. My glasses? You like them?”

“Maybe,” Renjun says. Sue him, he likes the nerd look. He kicks off his shorts and huffs. “Just get back here already.”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Mark says. He sounds like a frat boy, like the guys Renjun went to college with who drank too much cheap beer and texted him too much after 2 AM. Unfortunately it doesn’t dampen Renjun’s desire. Not by a long shot.

Mark drapes his body back over Renjun’s, and Renjun is kissing the smug grin off his face in no time. He tilts Renjun’s head back, works his way down the length of his body with teeth, with tongue. He brackets the narrow width of Renjun’s ribcage with his hands and mouths at Renjun’s chest until he can’t take it anymore. Until he’s reaching for the lube they keep in their nightstand and pressing it into Mark’s hand and saying, don’t bother, I stretched myself out while you were in the shower.

The more they do this the better it gets. Mark holds him down against his sheets and presses into him in one smooth stroke. It’s going to be annoying doing the laundry after this, but it’s a small price to pay for the way Mark fills him, to watch his eyes flutter shut and his mouth fall open on a groan. Like this, body to body, Renjun can feel everything. The way Mark’s heart beats in his chest, his warm breath fanning out over the side of Renjun’s neck, the grip he keeps on Renjun’s ass as he spreads him open, pushes into him until there’s no space left between them. Renjun scratches his nails over the broad plane of Mark’s shoulders, the way he knows he likes, and then they’re kissing again. Achingly slow; as slow as the pace Mark sets as he grinds his hips forward. They’re barely fucking, it feels like they’re just trying to get as close as they can to each other. Mark moves his hips languidly, in small circles, only drawing back when it’s absolutely necessary. Even then he’s barely withdrawn for a moment before he’s pressing back in.

Renjun looks up at the ceiling, his eyes rolling back, his heart pounding. He drags his hands down Mark’s back, digs his fingers into his waist. Mark kisses the corner of his mouth, the side of his throat, over and over again. His glasses slip down the bridge of his nose, and Renjun pushes them back up for him. “Junnie,” he says, voice strained. Then, “Baby. Can I come inside you?”

So polite. His husband is so fucking polite. Renjun is going to kill him if he even thinks about pulling out. “Do it,” he says. Doesn’t ask, doesn’t beg, demands it. Mark likes it when he’s a little bossy, he’s weird like that.

Mark pushes one of Renjun’s shoulders above his shoulder. Renjun sinks his teeth into Mark’s shoulder and, almost immediately, Mark comes inside him with a groan, collapsing on top of him. He’s still thrusting into Renjun weakly even as he does, like he doesn’t want to stop, like he would never stop, if that was a feasible option.

Renjun keeps his gaze on Mark, keeps his hands on Mark’s hips and his mouth on Mark’s skin, and he lets himself go. He moans as he spills into Mark’s hand, and Mark kisses him through it, working his hand over Renjun until he’s completely spent. Renjun feels lighter than he has in months, even with Mark’s full weight pinning him to the mattress. It’s fine, Renjun can take a little bit of lung compression if it means keeping Mark close by.

“You did so good,” Mark murmurs into his neck as he pulls out, slowly, careful not to jostle Renjun as he does. He always says that. It used to embarrass Renjun, the needless praise. Made him feel like some rookie athlete getting a pep talk from his coach, or something. But now a part of him craves it.

Renjun wants Mark to know it goes both ways, he wants Mark to know just how good he makes him feel. He opens his mouth, and Mark’s phone starts ringing from the pillow. Unknown number.

The face Mark makes is unlike any Renjun has ever seen before, downright grim. He looks very much like Renjun felt when he’d been sitting in the emergency room two years ago, and a colleague put a hand on his shoulder and said, I’m sorry, they’re gone. All Renjun can do is watch as Mark sits up in bed quietly, and hits accept on the call.

Surprisingly, it’s not a fight, or an immigration officer, or even Renjun’s own greedy heart that brings an end to their weird, peaceful coexistence. It’s Mark, picking up the phone without looking once in Renjun’s direction, and saying, “Hi, mom. Hi dad.”

💍

They haven’t fucked since that night, which unsettles Renjun more than it should. He’s never considered himself a very tactile person, but the more Mark seems to withdraw, the more Renjun wants to reach out. The more he thinks about smoothing the crease between Mark’s brows, about offering the comfort of physical touch.

It’s a new kind of torture, feeling so powerless, knowing there isn’t anything he can do to alleviate the tension that seems to permanently plague Mark these days. Even despite everything that Mark has done for him. He doesn’t know what he can say to make it better. He doesn’t know what he can do.

He doesn’t know anything, actually. On the day they’re supposed to meet Mark’s parents for dinner, he upends his half of their closet trying to choose an outfit. Nothing looks right, nothing is good enough. The more the pile of clothes on their bed continues to grow, the more his frustration mounts.

“Renjun-ah,” Mark says with a tired sigh when Renjun takes off the seventh shirt he’s tried on, only to abandon it to the heap of rejects behind him. “They all look good, just pick one.” He even looks tired when Renjun glances at him through the reflection of their mirror. He’s been sitting at the foot of the bed, adjusting the strap of his watch for the past twenty minutes, which is approximately the same amount of time it’s taken Renjun to decide he hates every piece of clothing he’s ever owned.

There’s been something charged between them since morning, and now that they’re getting closer and closer to nightfall, Renjun can feel the pressure mounting. “I just want to make a good first impression,” he says, looking at his feet, though what he really means is, I want them to like me, because they’re your parents, and I know they matter to you even if you wish they didn’t.

He wishes he could say that. He wishes Mark would tell him, don’t worry, they’re going to love you, but he knows it isn’t as simple as that.

“Hey,” Mark calls out, voice soft. “Come here.”

“For what?” Renjun asks, but he goes anyway. He’s never going to turn down a chance to be close to Mark, especially not after a week of distance.

He sits next to Mark on the bed, and Mark pulls him in around the shoulder, so that Renjun is leaning against his chest. Renjun loops an arm around his waist. For a moment they sit there quietly, holding each other, breathing in tandem. Mark takes the threadbare hem of Renjun’s tank between his fingers and says, “Why don’t you wear that sweater Donghyuck got you for Christmas? You look so nice in yellow.”

God, Renjun thinks, feeling the blush rising to his cheeks. He’s so, so easy. When did that happen? “Okay,” he says, but he makes no move to get up. Mark makes no move to let him go.

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Mark says eventually. “It’s them. You know that, don’t you? You’re amazing. My parents are… Well, they’re… Before we go, there’s something you should know about them. About me.”

He listens to Mark explain it all in the car. About distancing himself from his mother’s company after he turned eighteen, about distancing himself from his parents by extension, about threats of an arranged marriage, and an inheritance taken away from him. It sounds unreal, like something taken out of a movie, or—well—a book. At least this explains how he knows Chenle, Renjun truly just thought they just happened to meet through their common interest in sports.

Explains why he’d be so willing to take the money, too.

“They aren’t bad people,” Mark says of his parents. That might be true, but given what Renjun knows about Mark and his propensity to see the good in others, it could just as easily be false. “I think I’ve always disappointed them a little bit. I knew they were keeping tabs on me, I just didn’t know how close they were looking. Which is why I don’t trust them when they say they just want to meet you. They might say some really unpleasant stuff, to you and to me, and—you know what, maybe we shouldn’t go.”

“We can’t avoid them forever,” Renjun says.

“We could try,” Mark laughs, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

Renjun reaches over, puts a hand atop Mark’s, where he’s gone white-knuckled around the steering wheel. “We won’t,” he says, and that’s that. “We have nothing to hide.”

“Right,” Mark says, marginally less tense. “We’re just two normal people in love.”

Renjun thinks he’s been doing an alright job of taking in the information thrown at him over the course of a twenty minute drive, but he doesn’t fully process it until they’re pulling into a driveway leading to one of the largest houses he’s ever seen. Huge and modern and luxe. He feels sorely underdressed, sitting there in that yellow sweater Mark told him to wear. “You know, when you said dinner with your parents at your childhood home, I was picturing something a lot different.”

Mark grimaces. “Yeah, I know. It’s a lot. Are you ready?”

“Not really,” Renjun tells him.

“Good, me neither,” Mark says, and swallows dryly. “We’re gonna get through this together.”

The way he says it reminds Renjun of sitting in this car after the wedding and liking the way Mark had said we. We can get the ring resized. We’re gonna get through this together. It’s been nearly a year since then, and, like all things that have happened, both good and bad, they are going to get through it together.

They’ll try, at least. They have no other option.

💍

Sitting next to him at a dining table that seems to stretch several kilometers long, Mark looks younger than Renjun has ever seen him look before.

Mark’s mother is sitting at the head of the table, wearing a perfectly pressed and tailored suit, her face permanently set in a beautiful but grim expression. She hasn’t looked at Renjun more than once this entire evening, and that’s only if you’re counting the unimpressed once-over glance she gave him when he walked through the door holding a bottle of red wine. Having seen their house, Renjun understands now that his offering was probably not up to par with her standards.

He’s a little terrified of her. He also can’t decide if he wants to win her approval or maybe just be her.

“So, Minhyung,” she starts. Mark doesn’t quite physically recoil at the sound of his name leaving her lips, but it’s a close thing. “If it was a man you wanted to marry, you should have told me. We could have arranged that.”

Renjun is a little offended by the implication, even if he has no right to be. They’re barely halfway through their appetizers, and he’s already being antagonized.

“Gender wasn’t the issue,” Mark says stiffly. “Could you like, at least ask me how I’ve been?”

Her smile is not quite all there. “I know how you’ve been.” Not enough to have been aware of Renjun’s existence before last week, apparently. But seven days is a long time. It’s impossible not to wonder how much she knows now, if she knows anything about him at all. Whether she’s suspicious of how suddenly he appeared in Mark’s life, how quickly they tied the knot.

Mark’s father, mostly quiet until now, makes an attempt at smoothing things over. “I heard you’re a doctor, Renjun.”

He reminds Renjun a little bit of his own father. Loving in the wrong direction, loving the idea of who a child could be instead of the child themselves. Renjun knows that tone; most days he’s glad his job affords him a certain amount of respect by default. Based on what Mark has told him about his parents, though, it’s likely not genuine. More likely a dig at Mark’s choice of profession.

Mark reaches for his hand underneath the table and squeezes, reminding him to answer.

“Yes, I work in pediatrics,” Renjun says, tangling their fingers together. It doesn’t please him, to get that approving nod in response. Like his only value as a person is determined by his job, like Mark’s lack of value as a person is determined by the very same thing. “That’s how we met, actually. The main character in one of Mark’s books was a doctor, and he was looking for someone to consult on it for accuracy, so a mutual friend set us up. It’s a great read, actually, if—”

“Don’t you think it’s time you stopped playing around?” Mark’s mother asks, but it’s not directed at him, it’s directed at Mark. “Your father will retire soon, and we both know your brother isn’t fit to run the company himself.”

Mark bites his lip, hangs his head. “I’m not—”

“Writing was fine when it was a hobby, but you aren’t a child anymore. You need a real job, you need to grow up. How long are you going to be selfish?”

Renjun’s heard enough. “Don’t talk to him like that,” he says.

All at once, every eye in the room turns to him. It’s deadly silent. For a moment he loses his nerve. Maybe it’s not fair of him to be angry on Mark’s behalf, maybe he’s the selfish one for losing his cool, for sticking his nose where he shouldn’t. He hesitates, then decides that actually no, fuck them. He has a right to be angry. Even if Mark doesn’t want to defend himself, it doesn’t mean they both have to sit here and just take it. If Mark gets upset with him for it later, well—Renjun will cross that bridge when he comes to it. But Mark’s hand is still warm and solid in his, and it gives Renjun the courage he needs to speak up again and say, “Mark isn’t selfish. And he has a real job, even if it isn’t the one you wanted for him.”

Over the past year, Renjun has seen every side of Mark. Selfish is possibly one of the only words Renjun never thought to use to describe him. Would it be easier in the end if they both sat here and allowed Mark’s mother to berate him, and went home with their tails between their legs? Probably, but Renjun has never been one to take the easy way out. He knows how hard Mark works, how passionate he is, he’s seen it firsthand.

“What would you know about him?” Mark’s mother asks, brushing off her husband’s hand on her shoulder. “He’s my son. I made him. We gave him everything. He was made for bigger things than writing silly stories, or playing house with some lowly doctor who didn’t even have the decency to introduce himself to us before getting married.”

Maybe that’s true. But it’s Mark’s decision to make. Before Renjun can say as much, and possibly dig himself any deeper into this hole, Mark laughs. Low and soft, but a sure thing.

She rounds on him next. “Sorry, is something about this entertaining to you?”

“I mean,” Mark says. “Yeah, it’s a little funny. We haven’t spoken in years. And all you care about is the job I don’t have. You haven’t even asked whether I’m happy or not, doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Of course it matters to us,” his father says unconvincingly. “Your mother and I are just worried you aren’t… reaching your full potential.”

“We want the best for our son. It’s only natural,” she adds, turning to Renjun. “You can’t tell me that’s so difficult to understand. Don’t your parents want the same for you?”

Well, maybe. But they never said it out loud. They were never those kinds of people. And it’s too late to ask them now, no matter how much Renjun might want to. Are you proud? Is this the life you envisioned for me? Is this what you wanted for me? This hungry heart of mine—are you going to take responsibility for the part you had in creating it?

“I don’t know,” Renjun says, because he doesn’t. His whole life, he only did what his parents wanted. They had a clear path laid out for him, which he followed, step by step. Once they were gone, the path became too murky to follow any longer. He hadn’t known what to do with himself. Freedom felt ten times as disorienting as restraint. Some days, he still feels lost in the woods, but he thinks maybe that’s the point of living. The uncertainty, the tender precarity of not knowing what comes next.

His gaze shifts to find Mark. Maybe that’s the point of living. Finding someone to share that uncertainty with. Finding someone who makes the uncertainty feel exciting instead of frightening. Finding someone who will hold your hand when you’re crying on the bathroom floor, and buys your favorite tea, and is already looking back at you whenever you look over at them.

Oh, Renjun thinks, a stone dropping in his stomach. Oh, no.

”You say you want the best for me, but I’m doing what I love,” Mark says, voice firm. “I’m married to someone I love. I’m happy. How could things get any better?”

Mark’s father is staring at the spot below the table where their intertwined hands disappear. His mother laughs, scornful, and says, “Don’t be naïve.”

Mark shrugs, getting to his feet. “Suit yourself. Enjoy the rest of your trip. And visit Jinhyung, just because you never thought he was good enough to take over the business doesn’t mean he isn’t good enough to be your son.”

From the look on his parents’ faces, Renjun guesses this might be the first time Mark has ever truly talked back to them, or walked out on them at all. He’s proud enough to swallow down the nausea, to turn back as they leave without letting go of Mark’s hand and speak up one last time.

“Your son is a very good writer,” he says, remembering what Mark had said about writing, about how it was the only way he knew how to make his thoughts make sense. This feels a lot like that. He hopes Mark will forgive him for basically lifting his words, but they’re appropriate in this situation. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself to you earlier, but that’s the only thing I’m sorry for. He’s the best person I know, and I love him very much.” Then it’s his turn to pull them, past the threshold, out the door.

Mark trails behind him, stumbling over the driveway. “My book,” he says to Renjun’s back, sounding dumbstruck. “You’ve read my book.”

All of them, actually. “Of course I’ve read your book,” Renjun says. “You’re my husband.”

💍

It’s a long, silent drive back to the city. When they get back, they’re too tired to do anything more than change out of their clothes and into their pajamas, collapsing into bed and curling around each other despite the sticky summer heat. Mark’s breath is sweet and warm on his neck. Renjun’s hand finds Mark’s where it rests on his stomach, and Mark’s fingers immediately bend to tangle with his own.

“I’m sorry tonight was a mess,” he says.

Renjun frowns. “Don’t apologize, it wasn’t your fault.”

“No one’s ever stood up for me like that before,” Mark continues. “Not that I even know who could have. Maybe I should have been standing up for myself a long time ago.”

“Everyone should be nice to you,” Renjun tells him, borrowing his words once again. “Always.” He never thought the simple kindness Mark has consistently shown him would render him so fragile.

Mark, holding his hand, grips tight. “You too.”

He thinks his parents would have liked Mark, or at least approved of him. His father always had an appreciation for the arts. His mother always had an appreciation for good manners. Mark would have won them over both easily.

It’s a little easier to be honest in the dark. “I really meant it,” Renjun whispers. “I think you’re so talented. You’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. And I’m proud of you.” There are so many more things he wants to say, but the words are stuck in his throat, impossible to say out loud.

Renjun has never been in love before. He thinks he might be in love now. And he never thought it would be like this, despite chasing it so furiously, despite imagining it so many times.

Renjun is a doctor, and here is what he knows about the human body—it’s a complex machination, intimidating to understand in its entirety, made simpler when broken down into parts. Ten major systems, seventy-eight organs, two-hundred-and-six bones, several hundred peripheral nerves. And still, he’s intimidated by the breadth of what he feels. All the feelings he holds in his chest—they feel like they’re too big for his body. They’re bigger than what he can grasp in his hands or hold in his arms. It scares him just a little.

Mark is quiet for a long moment. He presses a kiss to the side of Renjun’s neck. Drops his head, follows an invisible trail from Renjun’s shoulder up to the warm, hidden place behind his ear. “Do you want to sleep?” he asks as Renjun shivers against him, meaning, is this alright?

So fucking polite, Renjun thinks, hopelessly fond. He shakes his head, his throat almost too tight to allow him to speak. “No,” he says despite his exhaustion. “I don’t want to sleep,” meaning, kiss me, please, I might die if you don’t. Which is dramatic, of course. But it feels that serious.

He feels the warm puff of air against his throat as Mark exhales shakily, the seamless press of Mark’s body molded against his back, the way he cradles Renjun to his chest as Renjun turns his head. It’s a slow, unhurried kiss, shallow then deep. Renjun can’t help the gasp that escapes him as Mark teases his lips apart, brushes their tongues together. He’s sensitive and too tender everywhere Mark touches him; the exposed nape of his neck, the line of his jaw, brushing down his arm, closing around his hip. Considering everything else they’ve done, it should be silly to be so overwhelmed by a simple kiss. Renjun wonders if Mark feels it, too.

Maybe he does, or maybe the increasing pressure against the small of his back is just Pavlovian response. He keeps waiting for Mark to do something about it, but his hips are barely moving.

“You know,” Mark murmurs, soft and sweet. “Chenle actually showed me a photo of you before we met.”

“Oh?” Renjun asks, guiding Mark’s hand between his thighs.

Mark touches his lips to the side of his cheek. “Yeah, I wanted to know your face at least before I married you.” Which, fair enough. “I was still shocked when I saw you, though, you were so much more beautiful in person.”

So Mark's terrified-chainsaw-behind-the-back expression is actually his oh-no-my-husband-is-hot expression. That tracks, actually. Renjun has the fleeting thought Mark really needs to work on the ways he expresses his attraction, except the thought of Mark wanting anybody else kind of makes him feel nauseous all over again. “I thought you were beautiful too,” he says. “I was also wondering if you owned an iron.”

Mark laughs. His hand slips beneath the waistband of Renjun’s shorts. “Be nice, not all of us can be as put together as you.”

“Mess me up a little, then,” Renjun suggests, smiling.

Mark coughs, sputtering, and it's just so cute, how easily he loses his composure, so Renjun laughs. He keeps laughing until Mark kisses him again, pushing him back into the mattress. And then there’s nothing to laugh about. Just Mark, and the scrape of his stubble against Renjun’s chin, and his cock between his thighs, and the sound he makes into Renjun’s mouth when they’re trembling, desperate for release.

“Renjun,” Mark says, his voice low and wanting. Renjun can only nod in response, afraid that if he opens his mouth, he’ll say something he can’t take back. “Renjun-ah, I—”

Renjun pulls a hand into his hair and tugs, and Mark spills across his stomach with a broken half-moan. There are no words to capture the overwhelming pleasure that fills him, but Renjun is hungry, he’s starving, he wants more, and more, and more, until he’s full to bursting with it. The beating of his heart reverberates in his ears like a drum as he follows Mark over the edge, raking his nails across his strong back.

Mark is so nice. He doesn’t even let go of Renjun after they’ve both come, not even when Renjun protests weakly that he’s just going to rinse off, even when Renjun reminds him they’re going to regret this in the morning. Renjun wishes he hadn’t gotten used to this. It’s going to hurt him when it’s gone.

💍

Renjun sits on it for a few days, because he is great at procrastinating, and because Mark is being even clingier than usual, so it’s difficult to pull himself away from that. But it consumes him. His every waking thought. He’s not sure how many more nights he can spend in Mark’s bed, in his arms, without letting it slip. I love you, I love you, I love you. Maybe he’s glad he’s never been in love before, even though he’s been hungry for it his whole life, because he doesn’t know if he could handle feeling like this all the time.

He holds out until the weekend comes back around, and tells Mark he’s picking up an extra shift at the hospital, lets him kiss him goodbye at the door without lingering. Then he takes a bus in the opposite direction, to Chenle’s apartment. Jeno is the one who answers the door. There’s a ring on his finger. “Renjunnie,” he says excitedly. “You’ll never believe what just—” He stops dead in his tracks as he takes the sight of him in.

Renjun laughs, because he knows he must look as much of a mess as he feels, but it comes out more like a sob. Jeno pulls him in without hesitation, strong arms holding him up, pulling him inside. Settles him on the couch and kneels in front of him, both hands on his knees. “Hey,” he says. Renjun shakes his head, discomfort crawling into his throat. “Hey, what happened?”

Renjun hears Chenle’s footsteps first, his voice second. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks Jeno. Jeno just makes a confused, puppyish noise, like, I don’t know, he just showed up like this?

Chenle ushers Jeno into the kitchen to make tea, which reminds Renjun of Mark, which makes him cry even harder. His fingernails dig white crescents into the center of his palm. “Gē,” he says, voice rising. He forces Renjun’s hands away from his face so he has nowhere left to hide. “Did something happen with Mark? Did he do something to you?”

“No,” Renjun says. Mark is perfect, Renjun is the one who went and fucked everything up with his feelings. “No, it’s not—Can I just stay here for the night?” He just needs one night. One night without Mark clouding his judgment, one night to feel sorry for himself and wallow in his own self-pity. He’d considered going to Donghyuck instead, but Donghyuck is too close to the situation. Chenle is marginally better. In theory.

“Only if you tell me what’s wrong,” Chenle says.

Renjun shakes his head again, furiously this time. He clenches his jaw so tight his teeth hurt. “I can’t.”

“You will.” From the kitchen, Jeno calls out—hey, be nice. “Okay, fine, yes, you can stay here. Just tell me, please, I’m worried.”

Maybe this is what his father meant for him to learn—it wasn’t a hungry heart that was bad, but the way that it led him to chase love that was the problem. Renjun rubs at his face, his breathing shaky and shallow. “I’m in love with him,” he says. The tightness in his chest feels like it could suffocate him. “I’m in love with my husband.” He wonders if anybody has ever said those words so miserably.

Chenle’s face falls. “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. That sucks.” Coming from anybody else, the words would sound sarcastic. But Renjun knows he means it sympathetically, and he’s right, anyway, it does suck.

Standing in the living room again, holding a cup of tea, Jeno seems even more confused than he did before. “What?” he asks. “Why would that suck?”

That’s a long fucking story. “How much time do you have?” Renjun asks.

“For you?” Jeno says. “All the time in the world.”

“We actually have brunch reservations tomorrow morning,” Chenle clarifies. “So, more like fourteen hours. But I’m guessing it won’t take that long.”

💍

It does not take fourteen hours, but it sort of feels like it does. With Chenle’s help, Renjun explains everything to Jeno, cries some more, and then calms down for long enough to realize he’s probably intruding on what should have been a special night for them. He tries to take his leave after that, but all Chenle says is, shut up, you’re staying, get in here.

Which Renjun guesses is how he ends up platonically sandwiched between them in bed. Sort of. It’s unclear. Chenle has three guest rooms, and his bed is big, but it’s not that big. This is weird. “This is weird,” he says out loud.

“Eung?” Jeno asks. He looks like he’s having the time of his life. Renjun knows he’s particularly touchy, but still. “Why is it weird?”

“It’s not weird,” Chenle says, his bent arm jammed underneath Renjun’s head. “Shut up. I’m afraid you’re going to choke and die on your own overthinking if we leave you by yourself for long enough, or something.”

Renjun sniffles, his throat thick and his chest tight. Chenle isn’t wrong, he would overthink himself to death if it were possible. “Aw, you care about me.”

“We both do,” Jeno reminds him. “Which is why we’re letting you hog all the blankets.”

“Don’t you guys want to be alone, though?” Renjun asks. “Congratulations, by the way. I’m really happy for you, seriously, I know it sounds like I don’t mean it, but—”

“You said that already,” Chenle says. “Like, ten times. We know you mean it, and you’re not ruining the moment or anything, we want you here. So don’t bring it up again, we’re already arguing over whose wedding party you’re going to be in.”

“Mine,” Jeno says serenely.

“No, mine,” Chenle says, less serene, more worked up. “He was my friend first.”

“He helped me pick out the ring—”

“It’s really hard to wallow in my self-pity like this,” Renjun says.

Jeno beams at him. “Well, yes, that’s the point.”

“Seriously,” Chenle says, and from his tone Renjun can tell what follows is going to be too blunt, and exactly what he needs to hear. “I feel like you should just talk to him. Is it possible you’re making a bigger deal of this than it needs to be?” Jeno reaches across Renjun to pinch Chenle’s elbow. “Ow.”

Renjun is in love with Mark. How can that not be a big deal? He still turns the question over in his head. Is it possible that Renjun is making a bigger deal of this than it needs to be? Maybe, possibly, yes. He has a history of doing that. But there’s so many layers to the situation with Mark he can hardly keep track of it all. Ultimately the answer is inconclusive.

“My point is, he deserves a say in this. It takes two to tango, or whatever. I don’t know Mark as well as you do, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be careless about this kind of stuff.”

He isn’t, that’s true. Somehow that still doesn’t make Renjun feel any better about it all. “What if he asks for a divorce,” he says, sniffling. “And I lose my visa, and then I lose my job, and then I have to move back to China.”

“He isn’t going to do that. But if he does, Jeno will beat him up.”

“I am not going to beat him up,” Jeno clarifies.

Chenle huffs. “Okay, fine, I’ll just dunk on him a bunch in basketball. Is that good enough?”

“Well, no.”

Jeno, ever helpful, offers, “You can just marry one of us. We’ll repurpose the wedding.”

That actually does make Renjun feel a little better, at least marginally. “Dibs on not marrying Chenle.”

“Hey,” Chenle protests from behind him, digging one bony finger into Renjun’s side. “You would be lucky to marry me. Anyone would.”

“They really would,” Jeno says, all dreamy, staring into Chenle’s eyes from across the bed, like their heartbroken friend isn’t laying right between them.

They’re disgusting. Renjun loves them so much. He hopes he’ll have what they have someday, too. Even if it’s not with Mark.

💍

Chenle makes it very clear to him that he can stay as long as he wants to, but Renjun thinks he’s probably intruded enough for one day. So he gives himself exactly one hour to feel bad about it. One hour to lay in Chenle’s disgustingly huge bed by himself, sheets tangled in his bare legs, sunlight streaming through the window. One hour to press the heels of his palms into his eyes until they’re dry again, one hour to take a deep breath and decide what the hell he’s going to do about all this. One hour to look at himself in the mirror and give himself the world’s most useless pep talk—you will find a way to get past this, you always do.

He’d turned his phone off overnight, perhaps unwisely, hoping Mark would assume he got swept up at work and crashed in the on-call room. Sure enough, on the train ride home, he has only a few texts. One from Jeno, and by extension Chenle, reassuring him that everything is going to be alright. Two from Mark, wishing him a goodnight, sleep well and a good morning, rise and shine. Renjun tries not to think about it too much. The implication that he could be one of Mark’s last thoughts in the evening, and one of his first thoughts in the morning. If he allows himself to hope, this will be infinitely harder.

He knows Mark will be meeting with his editor today, which should buy him a bit of time. So he starts packing once he gets home. Pulls his two dusty suitcases from the back of the hallway closet and starts to organize. When he first got here a year ago, this is all he had. Unsurprisingly, he's managed to accumulate more belongings over the past year. Even more unsurprisingly, all of it reminds him of Mark. Maybe that's a sign he should leave it all behind. Unfortunately, Renjun is a sucker, and far too sentimental for his own good.

Halfway through cleaning out his nightstand he finds a piece of paper in the back of the drawer, crumpled at the edges and clearly worn. Renjun still knows it by heart. It’s funny to think this was all he knew about Mark at one point. Mark Lee, born August 2nd, majored in Literature at SNU, favorite color blue. Likes samgye-tang in the winter and bibim-guksu in the summer. Plays basketball at the park down the block with his friends on Tuesdays and Fridays. One brother in Busan, two parents an entire continent away, across the ocean.

Mark Lee, Renjun’s husband, no longer the stranger who sleeps in his bed, the writer. Mark Lee, who is now standing in the bedroom doorway and staring at him with the strangest expression.

“You’re home,” Renjun says weakly.

“What are you doing?” Mark asks, like it isn’t obvious. What he probably means is, why are you doing this, but that’s not a question Renjun is equipped to answer.

“I’m moving out,” he says, then clarifies— “I think it would be a good idea. For me to move out. Just temporarily.” Just for a while, to get his feelings under control. Though of course they would probably come flooding back the minute he stepped foot back in the apartment, if he ever did. But what other option does he have?

Mark is quiet for a moment, his eyebrows drawn tight together. “I don’t understand,” he says. “But we’re—I thought—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head, and when he speaks up again his voice is quieter. “Did I do something to make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Renjun says, his heart beating furiously in his ears. “No, of course not.”

“What else am I supposed to think, then?” Mark asks. “Why else would you be packing your bags while I was gone? Were you just going to leave without saying anything?”

Renjun turns. He can’t face Mark right now. He keeps his back to him, the column of his spine rigid and straight, his shoulder blades pulled back. “You’re a writer,” he says. “Do you think some clichés are clichés for a reason?”

“Depends,” Mark says. Renjun is glad he can’t see the face he’s making right now. “Are you going to tell me, it’s not you, it’s me?”

“What if it really is me, though?” Renjun asks, his throat going tight. His eyes are starting to sting again. He really thought he cried it all out of him yesterday. Guess not.

Mark’s voice is closer now. “Then we’ll work through it together.”

“I don’t think we can.”

“Try me,” Mark says. He wraps his fingers around Renjun’s wrist, presses his face into the wing of Renjun’s stiffened shoulder. “Renjun-ah. Please?”

A flash of heat runs though Renjun at the contact. His stomach is in knots. He should move away, he can’t move away. He should shut up and get out of here with his heart still semi-intact. “I’m in love with you,” he says, and it’s not a relief, there’s no weight lifted from his shoulders. “Don’t you get it? That’s why I have to move out. That’s why—”

Mark tugs at his wrist, turning him. “Wait,” he says. “Wait, slow down. You—wait—what?”

“Please don’t make me say it again,” Renjun begs. It hurt badly enough the first time.

“Renjun-ah,” Mark says, almost giddy. He’s laughing, even though there’s nothing funny about this. “Renjun. You’re really never going to say it again? Not even if I feel the same way?”

Now it’s Renjun’s turn to blink up at Mark’s grinning face and say, “Wait, what?” He’s been bracing himself for impact for so long, he almost doesn’t know what to do in the absence of it.

“I’m in love with you too,” Mark says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Everyone should be nice to you, the world should be kind to you, grass is green, water is blue, I'm in love with you, I'm in love with you. “I have been for a while, I don’t know how you haven’t noticed. So don’t move out. Please.”

Renjun really is going to cry now. Not because he’s sad, but because he’s bewildered, overwhelmed. It doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense. “How could you—” How could you love someone like me, he wants to ask, kneejerk response, but stops himself halfway through.

“How could I not?” Mark asks.

Renjun shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t—oh my god,” he says, watching in horror as Mark drops to one knee. “Oh my god, Mark, what are you doing, get up, get up—”

“Is this the only way you’re going to believe me?” Mark asks, stubborn and steadfast in the strangest moments. “Cause if the answer to that is yes, then I’m not getting up. I told you, didn’t I? I’d put a ring on it a second time if I could. I’ll propose all over again if I have to. A second time.”

“You didn’t propose a first time, it wasn’t real,” Renjun chokes out. “Mark. Mark, get up, please. I believe you, I do.”

“It was real,” Mark insists. “I mean, kind of. The last year was real. It was all real to me. You felt it too, right?”

Renjun can only nod. Of course, of course.

“So are you gonna marry me or not?”

“We’re already married!”

“You know that’s not the point.”

“If I say yes, you’ll stop kneeling on the floor?”

“Depends how enthusiastic your yes is.”

Renjun pulls him up by the wrist. “Yes, yes, I love you, yes,” he says, laughing a lot and maybe also crying a little. “God, fuck, I hate feeling like a cliché.”

“Your husband is a writer, you should get used to clichés,” Mark retorts. He closes the nape of Renjun’s neck in the breadth of his palm. The metal of his ring is cool against Renjun’s heated skin. Husband, husband, husband. Mark’s been his husband for a year, and it’s just now becoming real. Realer. “Besides, you know what they say about art imitating life.”

Renjun is pretty sure that quote goes the other way around, but he holds onto that thought in favor of pressing his palm to the side of Mark’s cheek, and meeting him halfway when he leans in for the kiss. He feels lighter than he has in months, holding onto Mark with both hands, kissing him for the first time without any pretense. One of Mark’s hands is cupping the back of his head, the other one touching the side of his neck.

“I know you were only gone for one night,” Mark murmurs against his lips, between kisses. “But I really missed you. I missed you singing in the shower, and bossing me around in the kitchen, and stealing all the blankets in bed, and the little sounds you make in your sleep—”

Renjun draws back, offended. There’s a flush spreading down his body like a fever. “I don’t make noises in my sleep.”

“You do,” Mark says. “Little puppy noises. They’re adorable. I don’t know how to fall asleep without them anymore, please don’t make me learn.”

A strangled, embarrassed noise leaves Renjun’s throat. He can feel how hot his own cheeks are. He has no idea how Mark says all of this so easily. Maybe it’s a writer thing, maybe it’s just a Mark thing. I love him, he thinks, and for the first time his chest doesn’t threaten to cave in at the thought. “I won’t,” he says, and leans in to kiss his husband once more.

💍

Loving a writer is just a little strange. Mark tells Renjun he’s written a book about him. He tells him he plans on writing at least five more. Renjun never thought there was anything about him that was particularly inspiring. He’s decently sure there isn’t five books’ worth of material in him, but Mark is determined to prove otherwise, and Mark is the most talented writer he knows, so maybe Renjun is wrong about himself. Just maybe.

Aside from that, life is so normal with Mark, it’s so good. It’s just a little sweeter. His hands are always warm, always all over Renjun. Renjun always wants them there. Renjun wants so many things, he can hardly keep track of them all. He wants to kiss Mark in the rain, like they do in the movies. He wants them to actually take cooking classes together instead of just saying they’ll follow a recipe and letting the chicken or pork or whatever the fuck burn in the oven while they get distracted and make out against the counter. He wants to hold Mark’s hand through every terrible dinner they have with his parents, and take Mark to meet his own parents, buried back in his hometown. A never-ending list of all the things he was too scared to let himself imagine over the year they were still figuring each other out, turned into a checklist for the new start of their relationship.

It’s a strange concept. Before, when he thought about his future, he couldn’t picture anything clearly. It was all amorphous fog, shadowy and shapeless in the distance. Now it’s clear and sunlit. He knows Mark will be there. He’s a constant, unchanging.

But first, they take that trip to Paris they were joking about for the honeymoon they never had. They get tipsy on cheap champagne, and if the officiant thinks it’s weird that they’re renewing their vows a year after they first made them, it doesn’t matter. Neither of them speak the language. Mark puts his nose into Renjun’s cheek and whispers drunkenly about wanting to take his last name. Mark Lee is a nice name, but Mark Huang kind of has a ring to it, too.

Renjun has been looking for love in all the wrong places. Turns out he found it in his husband, who would’ve thought.

The morning after is terrible. They’ve shoved all the blankets to the floor, and in their drunken stupor turned the heater all the way up before passing out, so he’s somehow cold and sweating. Renjun’s head aches. He thinks about throwing up in the toilet, but even though he knows Mark would hold his hand through it a second time, Renjun doesn’t want to subject him to that again.

So he ignores his aching head in favor of turning to the side and admiring his husband, sleeping on his stomach, in all his naked glory. Mark is blinking awake within seconds, like he can sense Renjun is awake too, like even in his subconscious state he can’t let Renjun be lonely for too long. Even on normal work days when Renjun is awake at the crack of dawn, Mark always wakes up for long enough to kiss him goodbye.

“Morning,” Mark mumbles sleepily into his pillow. “Are you objectifying me already?”

Renjun slaps his ass half-heartedly. “Yes, always.”

“Oh, good.” Mark reaches up and curls a hand into Renjun’s hair, pulls him down so he can bury his face in the crook of his neck. “Got any plans for the day?”

“None,” Renjun replies. “Besides spending all day in bed with my husband.”

The newly-gold band around Mark’s finger gleams in the sunlight. “That can be arranged,” he says, grinning, and rolls him over into the sheets.

It’s a cold October morning, but the sun is out, high in the sky. The memory of a different day drifts into the edges of Renjun’s consciousness. The outline of a courthouse set against the bright blue of a balmy June sky, a stranger wearing a wrinkled button-down, Renjun’s nicest shirt clinging to his sticky skin. He was well and truly alone then, with no idea that after that day he would never be alone again. His hungry heart, finally sated.

They’re really in it for the long haul now. Renjun wouldn’t have it any other way.