They’re in New-York-Fuckin’-City and all Mark can think about is all the ways he’s fucked up. He had come to this conclusion, all on his own, months ago. Months ago! And, in typical Mark fashion, it was taking forever for the execution.
He must break up with Johnny. https://twitter.com/haechansheaven/status/1245087220215746560

He’s thinking about it in Times Square, he thinks about it in Central Park, he thinks of it sitting across from Johnny at a fancy dinner table in a restaurant he can’t remember the name of. It’s an all-consuming sort of conclusion because, you see, Johnny deserves better.

Johnny deserves better than Mark—full of insecurities that could cut down even the boldest of men. He really does. All Mark does, he has concluded, is weigh Johnny down. Pull him into the valleys that Mark occupies, wasting his potential. And Johnny has a lot of potential.

That’s why, standing in Incheon International Airport, jetlagged to hell, Mark decides to bite the bullet and do it. And in retrospect, it’s not a great time. Or place. Really, just the entire execution of the breakup is fucking atrocious.
Mark comes to this conclusion later.

To Johnny’s credit, it’s fucking April first, and he laughs. Before he looks at Mark and it hits him that Mark is breaking up with him in front of the luggage carousel at nine in the fucking morning. And then that laugh is different. It’s bitter and full of disbelief and, yeah.

Mark gets it. There’s ten years between their first date and now, and this is how Mark decides to do it? A flimsy, “I’m breaking up with you,” in a sea full of strangers? People looking on with pity at a man getting his heart broken in public? Ten years for this.

Johnny’s laugh is bitter and it’s broken, and he can’t look at Mark. They still live together. They fucking cohabitate in a small apartment in Busan, where Johnny takes photos and Mark teaches English and God—God, Mark really fucked up.
He really, really fucked up.

The taxi ride is quiet. The train ride is quiet. Walking into their apartment is quiet. Everything is so quiet, and it’s fucking bizarre, because around Johnny, Mark can’t think of a time when things were silent. Even during fights—when reconciling, everything—it was loud.

This Johnny is different, though Mark comes to the conclusion that he shouldn’t know this Johnny. Wishes he didn’t have to because Mark is still absolutely head-over-heels in love with Johnny Seo. There’s not a moment where he isn’t. That’s why he’s letting go in the first place.

Johnny, Mark believes, really does deserve better. Looks around their flimsy little apartment they only relocated to because Mark found a different job in a different city.
“It’s fine,” Johnny had said, packing up his things. “Where you go, I go. Right? As always.”

As always sits with a bitter taste on Mark’s tongue. It’s true, though, because it’s always been Johnny uprooting himself for Mark and never the other way around. Mark has been selfish and cruel and torn Johnny away from everything he knew to chase a dream that isn’t tangible.

Johnny disappears for a moment before reappearing, brow furrowing as he paces back and forth. Mark hasn’t even dragged his suitcase to the bedroom yet. It rolls back and forth between his hands as he refuses to look at Johnny. How could he look at Johnny?

“You’re joking, right?” Johnny asks, finally settling against their kitchen counter. Their apartment is small, and he stares at Mark from across the table where they eat. And work. And sometimes sleep. “Like, hah hah, April Fool’s—“
“I’m not joking, Johnny. I’m breaking up—“

“Why?” interjects Johnny, frown deepening.
“Because you deserve better.”
“Oh, this cliché, huh?” Johnny bites out. “How about the cliché where I remind you that relationships are a one-way street and we’re supposed to talk about all of this? Remember that, too?”

“Breakups aren’t usually a mutual thing,” argues Mark. It’s weak though. Everything about Mark is weak. “They aren’t supposed to be, even if the heartbreak is.”
“Right.” Pushing away from the counter, Johnny shakes his head. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t—“

“Take me seriously, please?” Standing, Mark wrings his hands together. “I spent months—you, I mean of course you know how I am—thinking about how you really do deserve better, Johnny. I dragged you to Busan, away from Seoul. I dragged you to Seoul from Chicago. I—“

“It wasn’t dragging me anywhere because I wanted to follow you,” Johnny says. His eyes are wide as he throws his hands in the air. “You didn’t force my hand with anything, Mark. You never have! Stop making up these fucked up scenarios in your head. I want to be here, with you.”

“You’re only thinking that way because this,” Mark gestures between them, still avoiding Johnny’s gaze, “is all you know. If you knew the world differently, you’d agree with me. Which is why I’m putting my foot down and ending this.”

Johnny laughs, loud and bitter and angry, before laying his hands on the kitchen table. “This? You’re boiling ten years of a relationship down to one fucking tiny word? This? Is that how you feel about us, Mark? Really?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why—“

“It’s because I feel like this that I know I don’t deserve it. So, I’m breaking up with you. So you’ll find someone who gives equally, and I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that I’m not pulling you away from things anymore.”
Simple.

It’s so fucking simple, and Mark never thought that it wouldn’t hurt both of them. Broken hearts on both sides are just a part of break ups. This is Mark’s first one, but he likes to think he knows enough to realize that they’re both supposed to be hurting.

Johnny is quiet. He is quiet as he walks away, quiet as he closes the bedroom door. Even his crying is quiet. Quieter than Mark’s, who digs his fingers into his thighs and prays that he made the right—the best—decision for them. Mark, that night, sleeps on the couch.

Not because he’s drunk, though waking up after a long cry feels somewhat close to waking up hungover. There’s a blanket thrown over his shoulders, though the bedroom door is still closed. If he stills himself, he can hear Johnny’s voice, quiet, on the phone. So far away.

It’s fine. This is what he wanted, anyways. He wanted distance. Separation. Mark decided to forge a crack into the relationship between him and the man he’s irreversibly in love with. It’s fine. It’s what he wanted.
He can’t fall back asleep.

Jaemin’s fingers tangle in Mark’s hair and then pulls as the two wrestle on the couch. Chenle screams bloody murder asJeno eats and watches. This is normal, Mark reminds himself. This is how it usually is. Except, Mark isn’t usually their target.
He thinks he might go bald.

There’s a mad dash to save the dish ware that sits precariously on the coffee table. It’s not enough though, and Mark listens to them crash to the ground and shatter. Shoving Jaemin off him, Mark swears.
“What the fuck.”
“Yeah, what the fuck,” mutters Donghyuck from the doorway.

It takes everything—absolutely fucking everything—in Mark to avoid Johnny’s gaze as they straighten themselves out.
“I drive all you assholes out here to Busan and this is what you do?” asks Donghyuck. “Break their shit? Really?”
“It’s Jaemin’s fault, obviously.”

Navigating a life where you cohabitate with your ex is fucking weird. Mark isn’t sure he can get used to it. He’s permanently glued to the couch at this point, leaving Johnny to tip-toe through the apartment. Jaemin tells him it’s his fault, and Chenle says that they should talk.

Mark doesn’t know how to talk about it though. They did talk—though he doesn’t think any communication really happened—and it got them nowhere. Mark is content to finish it like this: Leaving the house before Johnny wakes up and coming back before Johnny gets home.

He’s told their friends, but the call to his parents still remains incomplete. A task he isn’t able to think about for more than a minute because, to no one’s surprise, Mark’s parents love Johnny. Adore Johnny. Their eyes had lit up when they all first met.

They thought he was the one for Mark. And, sure, Mark did too. Mark was so sure that he was going to get married to Johnny, they’d settle down, buy a house, own a few pets, overrun their house with plants, and adopt a kid. Or ten if Johnny had any say.
Johnny was Mark’s future.

That future is a little shattered now, crambling into pieces from the center outwards. Eventually it’ll become unstable that the whole thing will collapse. Mark wonders if he still thinks that such a future can exist because he still lives with Johnny.

Because Johnny is stumbling over, “Good night, I love you”s still, trying to recover as he closes the door behind him, praying that Mark is already asleep. (He never is. They both know Mark’s shitty sleep habits.)

Because Johnny still leaves him breakfast, though the notes he used to leave are now crumpled up and tossed in the trash. They’re trying hard to break habits that they spent ten years building. It only takes twenty-seven days to make a habit. It takes forever to break one.

Or, that’s what psychologists say, anyways. Mark has broken his habits steadily, if not for anything other that his ridiculous stubbornness. Jaemin is five seconds away from ending him, Chenle doesn’t want to protect him from Jaemin anymore, and Jeno has always been passive.

“It’s your choice,” Jeno had said, “and I can’t change your mind. You’ll do what you do whether I like it or not. You’re annoying like that.”
Mark calls it independence and self-assurance, but Jeno isn’t wrong. Once Mark has made his decision, he can’t justify going back on it.

Donghyuck is tougher to crack—this weird in-between for the both of them. Their friendship had just been repaired, and Mark thinks that he’s probably gone and fucked it up again. He’s sure of it, actually, because, per Donghyuck’s, “Johnny made you into a functioning human.”

Which, Mark surmises, is where the whole entire issue started. Johnny made him. He made Johnny. They’re sort of intertwined and no longer individuals. Mark never wanted to take anything from Johnny, and surely not his individuality. That’s why he loves—loved—Johnny.

One of the reasons, anyways, because Mark can count a thousand and one reasons that made him fall in love with Johnny and a thousand and one more things he learned over the next ten years. Maybe a million and one. Mark isn’t sure. He just knows that he loves Johnny.
Loved. Loves.

In the back of his mind, Jaemin is screaming at him—“If you’re together for that long, of course you’re gonna rely on one another for things! Jesus Christ get your head out of your ass, Mark Lee!”—but Mark is ignoring him in favor of opening his laptop.
A new apartment.

That seems like a solution. Probably. Or just another hole for Mark to dig himself in. He’s not really sure he cares at this point. The only thing on his mind at the moment is getting away—reminding himself that he can’t love Johnny anymore. That he needs to let Johnny go.

Part of him will miss this tiny apartment that was definitely too small for the both of them.
In his browser, he opens Airbnb. It can buffer the time between then and now. A place to give them space to exist in different ways. To figure things out again.

This is the right thing, Mark tells himself. This is the best thing.
Even if everyone is telling him it’s not.

Mark moves out on a Monday. It’s just another knife in the back of the least favorite day of the week. He leaves behind a lot, though, in his haste to move. Clothes and dishware and knick-knacks bought throughout the years. Mark is hesitant to take extra time to gather them all.

He gets a call from Donghyuck on Tuesday asking for permission—to tell Johnny where he’s living now, pull Mark’s other things together and b—He doesn’t get a chance to finish the second question because Johnny starts speaking before he can. There’s a, “No! No, no, don’t...”

And nothing else. Mark’s okay with that. They’re trinkets with good memories that he doesn’t deserve. It only makes sense that they would stay there.
Jaemin and Chenle visit him on a Thursday to make sure Mark is okay, and he thinks he might be—the Airbnb is fine. He’s fine.

Probably.
Everything is so high up in the air, Mark can’t actually tell anymore if he’s rising or falling. Everything is in slow motion and Mark is sure that eventually he’ll hit the ground. Or a plane. He doesn’t know, doesn’t care. It’s all an inevitability.

Just like it was inevitable that Johnny was going to fall out of love with him. Mark was simply streamlining the process for him. He took necessary shortcuts to reach the fated end. Donghyuck tells him that he’s an idiot. Mark thinks that he might be. But that’s fine, too.

“No, Mark Lee, you’re a big fucking idiot,” Donghyuck says, waving his arms around. Someone at the PC behind them tells Donghyuck to leave if he’s gonna shout and he tells them to fuck off before turning back to Mark. “Like, a colossal fucking moron. I cannot believe you.”

“You’ve told me this more times than I can count.” Mark leans back as the match ends. He’s last, as always. “You and everyone’s fucking mother. How many times are you guys gonna make me explain myself? I did the best thing for Johnny and I. Why do I need to explain it again?”

“Because it wasn’t the best thing for you two, you fucking dipshit!” Jabbing Mark in the shoulder, he shakes his head. “For someone who graduated top of their class and was first in everything, you’re pretty fucking brainless, Mark.”

Swiveling in the chair, Mark presses his lips together as he stares Donghyuck down. He knows he doesn’t look as threatening as he wants to. It’s nearly impossible for him to intimidate Donghyuck, anyways. He’s tried.
“Really?” he asks. “Is that so?”

“I know you better than anyone else, Mark. Maybe even yourself. I know you better than Johnny knows you because I know,” Donghyuck waves his hands around Mark’s head, “how you got to be like this. And it’s unfair and fucked up and you need to get over that misplaced trauma.”

“It’s not trauma—“
“I really thought you were over the whole, ‘I don’t deserve love,’ thing when you met Johnny,” Donghyuck steamrolls ahead, “because he’s fucking in love with you Mark. He’s looked at you the same way since the moment he saw you. Do you understand?”

Scoffing, Mark shakes his head. “Understand what? That it’s temporary?”
“He is still—present tense, fucker—in love with you, Mark!” shouts Donghyuck, standing up. “You broke his fucking heart and he still thinks that this is temporary. He hasn’t told his parents, dumbass.”

Mark sits there in silence as the manager asks them to leave. And they do, Mark logging out of the game in silence. He thinks that maybe just moving out isn’t enough. That maybe he should start looking for new jobs, too. Far away.
Very far away.

“You are my best friend,” Donghyuck says, voice a little softer. “You’ve been my best friend for nearly my entire life, Mark. Through you attending school in Canada, to you moving back... I watched you learn to ride a fucking bike. I’m angry because you were happy.

“I’m angry because you could still be happy. And you just threw it away because a person convinced you that nothing you ever wanted would work in your favor.”
“It’s not just that,” Mark argues, shaking his head. “It’s that I’m not good enough for him. I’m not. That’s fine.”

Donghyuck looks nearly ready to pull Mark’s hair out and then his own. Mark knows he might. “You’re just—ugh. You know? Do you know what I mean? I love you, Mark. I really do. But if you’re going to be this fucking stubborn, I’d rather we not talk about this.”

“That’s also fine,” Mark says. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he asks, “So. Are you up for helping me find a new job?”
“I’m not. But I’m going to do it because you’re my best friend, and I don’t know how to fight this.” Reaching out, Donghyuck unlocks his phone. “ESL?”

And seeing Donghyuck in Busan not in their—Johnny’s, now—secondhand loveseat is weird. Beyond weird. That’s the Donghyuck-in-Busan scene that Mark is used to. His brain short-circuits for a minute before he opens his laptop.
Donghyuck isn’t on his side.
Even if there’s not sides.

Besides, Mark hasn’t told his parents, either. It’s been a month and he hasn’t told them anything. Sends them old, provate photos of him and Johnny that look recent enough in an attempt to stifle their questions about how they’re doing, where Johnny is when they call.

Daegu sounds nice, Mark thinks to himself, looking over to Donghyuck who dozes off on the couch. His head lolls to the side every so often and eventually he gives in. Mark, quiet, rests a blanket over him before heading to bed himself.
He can think of it another day.

Money always wins, Mark thinks bitterly. Always. Not that Chenle minds. He’s happy to call Busan his home for the next year, working remote and driving back into the city for meetings once in a blue moon. It’s like a vacation for him. And, in return, Mark receives moral support.

Kind of.
It’s a bit generous to call Chenle’s advice supportive—if Donghyuck is honest and cuts deep with ferocity, Chenle does it with a pleasant smile on his face. Mark argues that it’s worse. He’d much prefer the way that Donghyuck frowns and slaps him with the truth.

And Mark could move very, very far away. There are options in other countries, but his parents are in Korean and he’s hesitant to leave them the older he gets. It’s one thing to be a train ride away. It’s another to be a fourteen hour plane ride. He’s okay staying in Busan.

Chenle is a good roommate. He’s spread out, things everywhere, but Mark figures that it’s not the worst characteristic Chenle could have. They could be a worse match in retrospect. Mark remembers the one time that he and Donghyuck tried to room together.

“So,” Chenle says, waving his spoon around, “when are you two, like, gonna talk? You’re giving Donghyuck gray hairs, you know. Like, I think you might make his hairline recede, too. And that would be a shame because I think Hyuck looks better with hair. He’d be okay bald.”

Mark furrows his brow in confusion before shaking his head. There’s no intention to talk to Johnny. And Donghyuck doesn’t have to exist in the middle with as much stress as he does. It’s his choice, Mark figures. There aren’t sides, and everything will probably blow over.

And, okay, Mark never was the best at making predictions. If anything, he tends to be wrong almost every single time. It’s a bad track record that Mark, for some reason, thinks can only get better. And then it gets worse. Much worse. The fact he’s still allowed to make decisions?

A crime, Jaemin says. An absolute fucking travesty. He’s sprawled on the floor, staring at the ceiling as Mark sits there in silence. Which Chenle eventually gets fed up with. Mark knows this by the pistachios that are suddenly flung at the back of his head.

“Hey, Mr. Brainless,” Chenle calls from the couch. “I asked you a question and it wasn’t rhetorical!”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” mutters Mark. Because there isn’t. Everything is said and done. He has made his decision—laid down his best and now he will lay in it.

“He’s hopeless, Chenle.” Jaemin rolls onto his stomach to push himself up. “He really thinks that Johnny deserves better than him. There’s no use arguing with him.”
“He’s wrong,” gripes Chenle, “so, of course I’m gonna argue with him. Mark’s being a dipshit.”

“I can’t believe you’re talking shit about me in my own home,” Mark mutters, arms crossed.
Chenle sits up and flings another pistachio at his head. “Temporary home. Temp-or-ary. You’re moving back in with Johnny once you stop being a motherfucking idiot!”

Mark doesn’t say anything. Instead, he presses his lips together and turns to walk into the kitchen. Because, he’s the thing. Mark would do anything, he thinks, to relive one day with Johnny. He would do anything to remember what it was like to be loved and not anxious.

To be loved and not psycho-analyze every single fucking thing that happens. And, to Donghyuck’s credit, Mark thought he was over it all, too. He really did. Everyone around him thought Johnny was the one. Mark thought so, too. Somewhere, though, his mind took a left turn.

Strayed from the beaten path and reminded Mark that he does nothing but drag people down. That he’s inherently selfish and forgets about the people around him. In his haste to right a wrong, he’s done nothing but drag other people into his mess. It wasn’t his intention.

There are footsteps at the doorway and Mark speaks before he looks. For once. “Listen, Chenle, I—“
“I’m definitely not Chenle. I actually have taste, Mark. I never would’ve dyed my hair that disgusting green,” teases Jaemin, pressing his hip against the counter.

“That stint where you only dyed your bangs says otherwise,” Mark shoots back. “Exactly.”
“Fuck you. I came in here to be supportive.”
“I don’t need supportive. I just need people to drop it,” Mark says, waving his hands around. “Like, immediately. Right now. For forever.”

“Well,” Jaemin sighs, “I won’t do that. And I won’t pull out more of your hair. Promise.”
Reaching up, Mark tugs at his own locks, shaking his head. He kind of deserved it, he supposes. Lack of foresight. “It’s fine. Hair grows back. Right? Like, it’ll come back.”

“We’re bugging you because we know you,” Jaemin says, hand gentle on the back of Mark’s neck, “and we know the kind of path your mind has taken to lead you to this. And that it was the wrong one. But you can’t help it. Right? And We can’t do anything about that. Not now, anyways.

“But Johnny loves you, Mark. He hasn’t stopped loving you, and you haven’t stopped loving him, so we’re just trying to get you back up on your feet so you can figure things out. And, in retrospect, we’re not doing it well. We’re doing it in our own ways. We just... care.”

“In your own ways,” mutters Mark, placing the mug in the sink.
He blinks and wonders why the world is becoming so blurry, Jaemin’s arms wrapping around him. For the first time, since it’s all began, Mark lets himself cry in front of someone else. It’s cathartic. Sort of.

It doesn’t clean up the mess in his heart or anything, though it relieves some of the pressure building up. He can breathe a little easier, think a little clearer. Come to conclusions.
“I miss him,” Mark whispers around a sob. “I really miss him so fucking much.”

Mark thinking calling it mourning is fucking stupid, but Jeno tells him to let go and recognize that he’s lost something important. Someone important. Even if Mark never actually lost him, and Johnny is sitting across from him at a fucking restaurant surrounded by their friends.

Beside him, Jeno elbows him, and Donghyuck clears his throat before flagging down the waiter to order another round of beers. Mark doesn’t need to drink more—he’s never liked alcohol, and he knows he’s out of character when Johnny’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

Beer has never had a nice taste to Mark. Johnny had always laughed at him—wrinkles gathering at the edges of his eyes and smile wide as Mark would try a sip of his beer before pushing it away in disgust. Mark still doesn’t like it, but it’s cheap and Donghyuck is paying for him.

That night, sprawled across his bed, Mark thinks about how tired Johnny looked—the dark circles under his eyes and the way his smile never felt as full as it used to. He thinks about how there still isn’t closure. There’s no communication. Just a whole lot of empty space.

Johnny deserves better. They both do, Mark thinks, and ending things on such a shitty note feels wrong. Is wrong. Mark’s intentions were never to hurt Johnny, even if it was an inevitability. Even if they were both destined to hurt one another eventually.

So he calls Johnny. On a Monday. And, in retrospect, he thinks that maybe he should stop this whole thing of stirring the pot on the worst day of the week. He’s hesitant to ruin Fridays. Or Saturdays. Or Sundays. And for a moment Mark wonders if Johnny will mind.

It’s one ring. One ring before Johnny picks up the call. He’s breathless and Mark can hear the shower running in the background. It’s silent between them. Mark isn’t sure what to say—how to start this conversation.
I’m sorry? How are you? Hello?

They all feel reckless and insensitive and Mark’s been enough of those things to last him a lifetime.
In the far recesses of his mind, a voice tells him to ask to start again. To try things all over again and to work back to what they had. Mark doesn’t think he deserves that.

“Mark?” Johnny’s voice is embroiled in disbelief and he understands why. He started this. “Hello?”
“Hi,” he starts, hesitant. “Hi, Johnny.”
“I—wait, I—“
There’s the sound of footsteps and the water stopping before Johnny is back. “Hi. Hi, sorry, I—sorry. Hi.”

They’re both speechless, and it makes Mark feel a little better. There’s fifteen minutes before he needs to leave for work. Fifteen. He can talk on the bus, but he always feels like a fucking nuisance when he does that. Johnny knows his commute. Knows that time is limited.

“What—are you okay? Is everything okay? Do you need something?” Johnny asks, voice fast. “Your stuff is all still here if you need help moving back in, I—“
“Are you free? Tonight?” Mark bites the inside of his cheek. Why. Why the fuck did he say that! Fucking imbecile.

There’s a choking sound as Johnny wheezes. “Yeah, I—I can ask Jae if I can borrow his car—“
“Not. Not for that,” Mark whispers. “I just... let’s just grab dinner. Or, I don’t know. Let’s just have dinner, Johnny. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” says Johnny, sincere. “Of course.”

Mark doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s doing as he hums. “Okay, I—I need to go. Work, yeah? But I’ll message you after. I... It’ll be late. Is that okay?”
“It’s always okay,” Johnny murmurs softly. “If you want I can make the reservation. At our favorite place.”

“Sure,” Mark says. “Uh, make it for—“
“Eight thirty. I know.” Johnny’s voice holds a fondness that can’t be contained. It never was to begin with. Never. “And you’ll be late, so I should actually make it for nine, but I never learn my lesson. So eight thirty it is.”

Swallowing Mark nods into his empty apartment, Chenle still asleep behind his closed bedroom door.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’ll see you then.”
“See you, Mark.” Pause. “I love you.”

He chokes back a sob, unable to say anything. There’s nothing Mark could say to make anything hurt less. He has a job to work and things to do but all he can think about is how much he misses this. Them.
“And I know that you love me, too,” Johnny adds before ending the call.

There’s several beats before Chenle’s door opens and he stands there, quiet. His arms are held open and Mark allows himself five minutes to cry and wonder where the fuck he went wrong. How to fix things. What to fix.
Everything is confusing, yet the world around him doesn’t stop.

When he walks into his classroom, he’s a different Mark—one who only knows the world that is in his immediate vicinity and nothing more. Here, he can pretend that everything is fine.
The clock on the wall ticks. These walls won’t hold the floods back forever.

The restaurant is something of a second home. It’s the first restaurant they ate at when they moved into their apartment. It’s the restaurant they ate at looking for the apartment. It’s a restaurant filled with bits and pieces of Mark’s heart and memories. Nothing has changed.

They’ve changed, Mark thinks. And it’s funny because Johnny still talks about reservations when Mark knows you can’t make them here. He’s simply sweet-talked the auntie who owns it to always keeping a table open for them. It used to be every other Friday.
Monday is weird.

It’s a deviation from their schedule and the auntie corrals them towards their usual table with gusto, crowing about how she hasn’t seen them in forever—that she was starting to fear they had moved away without telling her. Mark swallows his guilt in apologies.

“You know how life is,” Johnny says, easy. “It gets away from you, without you realizing.”
“Regardless,” she replies, “I’m glad to see you both again! I’ll have them start your usual. Do you want your usual beer for while you wait?”
“I’m okay.” He glances at Mark. “For now.”

Clapping her hands together, she smiles. “Of course, of course,” she says before bustling off. Mark can still hear her in the back, speaking excitedly about how they’ve finally returned. “It’s been a while,” shouts the auntie to her son in the kitchen. “I’m so happy.”

There are a million things that Mark wants to say. He wants to work through them methodically, but he thinks that he should learn to prioritize. Johnny looks sunken in on himself—familiar and yet still the man Mark fell in love with. Continues to fall in love with. Every day.

He tangles his fingers, untangles them, presses his palms to his thighs and then relaxes his shoulders. Mark doesn’t know how to start. Not that there is a start anymore. There was. And then he made an end. That’s why they’re here, sitting in silence.

Mark tries to will himself back into a whole—or as whole as he can get—though it’s futile, really. The way Johnny looks at him is cautious and gentle and afraid and Mark hates it. He’s the cause and he knows it, though it doesn’t make him hate it any less.

“It has been a while,” Johnny begins, hesitantly. “I haven’t been here since... Well, we’re here now, so that’s what matters. Right?”
Mark swallows, nodding. There’s no direction to any of this. An unfamiliar rift exists between them. “Right. That’s what matters.”

Johnny, in one stride, crosses it. His words are simple and cut down to the truth that Mark is trying desperately to bury. “I miss you.”
“I don’t deserve it,” Mark mutters, eyes low. “Not at all.”
“Why not?” Johnny asks. “Why wouldn’t I miss you? Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because—“

“Because I deserve better?” Johnny’s tone is flat as he says it, Mark’s heart curling in on itself in response. “I can’t get better than you, Mark. You’re sort of it for me. Like, there’s no one else. There’s not going to be anyone else. Do you get that? Or am I the only one?”

“Only one?” Lifting his head up, Mark furrows his brow. “What do you mean?”
“Am I the only one who took these last ten years seriously?” He prods at Mark with his gaze, lips pulled down in a frown. “I know this isn’t the place to have this conversation, but it’s been hard to—“

“It’s been hard to reach me. I know,” whispers Mark. “I know.”
“So? Am I?”
“Of course not!” Mark leans forward, shaking his head. “God, no, I—no. Not at all. I... These last ten years with you... God, they mean everything to me, Johnny. They really fucking do. I promise.”

“Just because,” Johnny gestures between them, “you feel one way doesn’t mean it’s true, Mark. You didn’t—why didn’t you talk to me about any of this? Why didn’t we have a conversation rather than having to spend the past month and a half pretending we’re strangers?”

Mark’s scared. That’s why. He’s fucking petrified of the future. That the past ten years will, at one point, mean nothing to Johnny. To him. To either of them. That everything will fall to pieces in front of his very eyes and Mark will be left with nothing but a broken heart.

And, in retrospect, isn’t that what he has now? Isn’t it what they both have? Over ten years there was no loss of love, just change, and Mark doesn’t know how to distinguish the two on his own. He doesn’t know how to ask for help. That’s where the real problem is, he guesses.

He doesn’t know to communicate. Ten fucking years in a relationship and Mark still can’t fucking communicate. He’s a walking disaster. Johnny does deserve better. Fucking hell does Johnny deserve better than what Mark has to offer him.
Sitting there, Mark’s chest feels tight.

“What,” Mark croaks, “am I supposed to say? That I’m afraid you’re going to realize you could’ve done better? That this is all I have? Johnny, tell me, because I don’t know what the right way to approach this sort of shit is.”
“Just like that.” Johnny’s voice is even.

“It’s not—“
“I know it’s not that easy,” Johnny says, quiet. He looks deep in thought before he nods, expression distant. “Let’s... eat. Okay? Let’s eat and talk about this after.“
Mark, in his seat, can do nothing but accept Johnny’s offer. It feels like an ultimatum.

Like he’s been presented the opportunity to stand up and walk away, if ending the relationship was what Mark really wanted. It wasn’t, though. Mark’s mind was plagued by uncertainty and anxiety and now there’s a canyon full of misunderstanding between him and the man he loves.

They eat in silence, they pay in silence, they walk in silence. At the pier they’re faceless, nameless strangers to the crowd of people that surround them. Anonymity they aren’t allowed in their own personal spaces. It’s refreshing and loosens the binds around Mark’s mind

Mark isn’t sure how to start—or continue—the conversation. He’s content enough to walk by Johnny’s side and listen to the world exist around him. Around them. Because they’re beside one another, again, after time apart. And, while short, it surely felt like forever.

When you spend ten years with a person, time physically apart becomes some extension of the norm. It isn’t what Mark means by distance. There’s an emotional reprieve—a wedge—that he drove between them. In a month and a half, Mark thinks that Johnny has become stranger in a dream.

“You aren’t easy to love, Mark.” Johnny’s tone is cool and even, his voice cutting over the sound of the people around them. Mark swallows back the bile that rises up in his throat. “You aren’t easy to love, but I love you in spite of that. Loved. Love. Will love.”

Mark closes his eyes and lets the pieces fall where they may.

“Fresh start,” Mark says. Chenle raises an eyebrow. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Chenle shoots back, waving his hand in Mark’s direction. “There’s no fresh start after ten years. But, okay, lover boy.”
“I say you meet up with him.”

Turning towards Donghyuck, Mark shakes his head. “I did meet up with Johnny—“
“Not Johnny, Mark,” Donghyuck says, pushing himself off the couch. “You need to meet up with Dejun and get whatever the fuck goes up on in your head settled before you go wasting ten years again.”

Nodding slowly, Mark slouches backwards. Dejun. There’s a lot of fuzziness and a lot of clarity associated with that name, and some sort of fucked up, made up trauma that’s festered in Mark’s head for a decade now, even when he thought it was gone.

Which, Mark truly did think it was gone. He’s still not completely sure what dug it up and planted it in better soil and cared for it until it bloomed into roses with thorns too sharp, but something did, and Mark is living with those consequences.

Donghyuck had a front row seat to all the bullshit that happened and the year afterwards where Mark boiled in his insecurities that were probably made up to begin with. They were young and dumb and vicious, and Mark thinks that they weren’t ready. Maybe now they can talk.

“I don’t even know where he is,” Mark mutters, shaking his head. “I haven’t spoken to any of them since senior week.”
Jaemin’s mouth opens and closes before Jeno cuts in. “Chenle knows. His friend, Renjun—he’s friends with Yukhei. Who’s friends with Dejun. He knows.”

“Ah.” Mark nods his head slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay?” asks Jaemin, aghast. “Is it that easy?”
“I fucked up once,” Mark says, standing, “and I’m not going to get another fucking chance. I’m doing shit right this time, and if that means speaking with Dejun, then so be it.”

There’s a shake of his head as Chenle sighs. “I have no idea what demon possessed you to have you pull a complete one-eighty in the span of two weeks, but I’m liking it.”
“The things love makes you do,” mutters Donghyuck. “Disgusting.”
“You and Jaehyun are literally engaged.”

“Yes,” Donghyuck claps his hands together, “and I need Johnny and Mark to figure their shit out as soon as possible so we can send out the wedding party packages. We cannot have a weird air between our best men. That would be fucking weird. I will not tolerate it.”

“Are we ever gonna get to know how you two figured it out?” Jaemin asks, flopping over Chenle, cackling when Chenle pushes him off in response to the wet kiss he leaves on his cheek. “Shut up.”
“I don’t know.” He heaves a sigh. Mark doesn’t want to jinx anything. He’s afraid.

So much of what has transpired has seeped beyond the walls that he and Johnny had built around them and smothered those that consider themselves close. Mark wants to keep what should be between only them there for as long as possible.

“Don’t share if you don’t want to,” Jeno interjects, shoving Jaemin’s head away from him as he becomes the next target of his affection. He’s shrugging as he stands up, stretching out his arms. “Figure out what you gotta figure out and let us know when you’re ready.”

Holding out his hand, Chenle smiles. “Phone. Hand it over. I’ll put Dejun’s number in, but I’ll also set up the meeting for you. Sound like a deal?”
Mark is hesitant, but hands over his phone anyways, scowling as Jaemin inputs the code to unlock his phone. “Okay.”

“How does tomorrow at seven sound?”
“Su—what?”
Grinning, Chenle nods. “Great!”

How does one begin a conversation with someone who broke their heart? Mark isn’t sure. He could ask Johnny, if he really wanted to, but he’s already asked him for so much. Mark doesn’t think he can justify asking for more. Which is how he ends up in Seoul on a Sunday.

And it’s not that Johnny doesn’t know. Johnny, in fact, supports this. Pushes Mark towards some sort of resolution, even if it isn’t the easiest, or the quickest. It’s the most thorough, Johnny had told him. And I’m here for you, he had added. Not as an afterthought. Affirmation.

So Mark is in Seoul, on a Sunday, Johnny eating convenience store food with Donghyuck and Jaemin and Jeno while he stands in front of a fancy restaurant and debates the consequences of doing an about-face and high tailing it out of there. It’s 7:01, after all. Dejun is late.

When he does, Dejun is standing there. He looks different, though Mark argues, in his head, that he must look different, too. There’s been over ten years between then and now. They’re different people, though Mark isn’t sure that he’s changed all that much.

Dejun’s voice is still gentle and his smile is still the smallest bit mischievous, and Mark can pick out the parts that he fell for when he was eighteen and reckless. He can pick out the parts that forced them apart when he was twenty and listless.
Things change. Others do not.

“How much did Chenle pay you to come out here?” Dejun asks, tilting his head to the side.
“Nothing,” says Mark, shaking his head. “I just... Closing loose ends. That’s all.”
Dejun raises an eyebrow before throwing his head back to laugh. “Cryptic as ever, I see.”

“I’m trying to make things work with Johnny,” Mark says firmly, “but there are still things I need to tidy up before I can move on.”
“It’s been years.”
“I know it has. You think I don’t know that?” His voice has raised and others look on, prompting Mark to hunch over in shame.

“You always were,” Dejun waves a hand, “kinda stuck in your head. I knew that and took advantage of that. So, on that front, it’s my fault. I knew it was gonna fuck you up in the head, and, back then, I think I wanted it to.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“I know it is.”

Mark, when he was younger, believed that his first love would be his only love. When he met Dejun, he thought that he was right. And in that fantasy, everything fell apart, all at once.
Donghyuck has been there for all of it—almost. Almost. He was there for the aftermath.

In the span of two years, Mark watched a lot of things fall apart. Friendships—both his own and others, family, relationships. The one constant in his life was Dejun, and he thinks that he capitalized on that. Took advantage of it. Didn’t realize until it was too late.

If Mark was in another place in life—if he was the Mark of today—he thinks that Dejun’s words wouldn’t have settled so deeply in his brain and taken root. He was fragile and impressionable, and in retrospect, Mark doesn’t think it should affect him. It does, though.

People are fucked up and things are fucked up, and Mark wonders if it was him who kept it so close to him. Mark wonders if he was the one who fostered the thoughts, cared for them, and let them bloom. Perhaps he likes suffering. He isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. (It does.)

“I regret what I said,” Dejun says softly, cutting through Mark’s thoughts. “If I was a better man, I would have said something to you sooner. But I’m not. So I didn’t. And I’m sorry that it’s taken so long for you to get closure. Like I said. If I was a better man.”

Mark also thinks that he could’ve reached out for help—that he could’ve learned to let things go and let himself heal. It was a mind game of sorts. Mark had convinced himself that he was fine. And Johnny’s presence was healing. He just... couldn’t make the final push.

[please read! i wrote this really hastily, but i hope this is clear... i’ll be back in another hour ~ sorry for the breaks...! i have meetings all day today ~]

“You told me that everything was my fault,” Mark whispers. “I believed you. And I still believe you.”
Dejun, across the table, tangles his fingers together as he asks for more time to decide what they want to order. “I was a vindictive asshole in college. I wanted you to hurt.”

“I did.”
“I shouldn’t have said it,” he shakes his head, “You’re sugar-coating it. I wasn’t that nice, Mark.”
Scrunching his nose, he’s nodding as he scours the menu, unsure of what to say. A simple, “I know,” doesn’t suffice, but he offers it anyways. Doesn’t know why.

By the time he had realized how deeply Dejun’s words had rooted themselves in his mind, Mark had moved towards another stage in his life. He had convinced himself that they were buried deep enough that they would never resurface. Stricken, that wasn’t the case.

It’s fucked up, really, the way that Mark hadn’t realized what a large load he had carried behind him as time went on. As collateral, it hurt the others around him. He moved recklessly, convinced it didn’t exist. Mark should’ve known better. He does know better. Now.

“I don’t know what kind of closure I can offer you,” Dejun says, frowning. “I was in the wrong and I like to think I’m a better person now. It doesn’t mean that I can fix whatever you’ve got going on up in your head, though. I could try, but I think it would hurt more than help.”

“I don’t want you to fix it,” whispers Mark. “I just want to know where I went wrong. So I won’t do it again.”
“You didn’t... you didn’t do anything wrong, Mark. I was the stupid one. But, I’m not sure how to convince you of that.” Dejun closes his menu and Mark does the same.

The order the same thing—this feels like déjà vu—and Mark wrings his hands as he thinks about it.
Because, the thing is that it’s hard to erase firmly held beliefs. Mark has spend a better part of his life thinking that he is the issue. That he will be the issue.

“I think,” Dejun says, “you need to trust Johnny.” Mark scoffs. As if he hasn’t tried that before. “No. Really. Mark, you need to trust him. He’s more honest than I was... Than I Am. He would tell you if there was something wrong. You can’t hide things from him.”

“Hypocrite.”
“I know I’m being hypocritical,” bites back Dejun. “I know. But this is why we didn’t work. We bottle shit up and let them explode. Johnny isn’t like that. He needs openness.”
“How much has Chenle told you?”
“Enough.” His voice is barely audible. “Just enough.”

To Mark, enough sounds like everything. Enough sounds like Dejun knows the extent to which he fucked up. Hands curling into fists under the table, he tries his hardest not to bow his head. He knows—Mark knows that he keeps shit locked up in his mind until they’re too strong.

Johnny had begged Mark to let him in—to know what goes on in his mind. And Mark is getting better at what he should’ve been doing for the last ten years. Coaxing his mind open and letting Johnny know what goes on. Everything is still jagged and broken, but they’re getting there.

“Enough,” Mark echoes.
Dejun is frustrated. He can read as much from the way his mouth is pressed into a thin line and his eyebrows bunch up on his face. Neither of them, Mark thinks, are good at this communication thing. This openness thing. It’s why they broke apart.

“I hurt you,” Dejun says carefully, “but you’re the one who planted my words and let them grow.”
“I know.” Mark picks at the edge of his napkin, smiling as the waiter places his food down in front of him. The wisps of a thank you trail after the waiter who pays him no mind.

“Not that it justifies what I said or did,” Dejun says slowly. Carefully. He’s skirting around the edges of years of a failed relationship and the fragments he didn’t know he left behind. “Especially what I did. I think I should’ve apologize sooner. At least for that.”

There’s a bitter laugh, and the food Mark makes him sick. “Yeah?” he asks, hands bunched up in his lap. “You think? Everything worked out, but I think that’s what fucked me up the most. That someone who I thought deserved me hurt me. I thought I only deserved people like that.”

Ten years, Mark thinks, is a long time to let something fester and grow. Where the switch finally flipped is unclear. All he knows is that it happened. And it’s over. And he’ll learn from it. Is learning from it. Mark is grateful for patience and love and kindness.

And degrees of those things that he isn’t sure he deserves anymore. Johnny could have walked away. Had every right to. Mark is relearning what it means to love Johnny. Properly this time. Openly. Without hesitation. And relearning what it means to accept love.

To love, to be loved, are two different things, though not independent of one another. Mark, for years, believed in separating them from one another. Now, he realizes, they coexist. They build off of one another. Mark learns to love from being love. Learn to be loved from loving.

There’s no such thing as erasing pain. It will continue to exist, even if just as a distant memory. Mark acknowledges that. Now, at least. He looks at Dejun and realizes that he’s always had to power to take a deep breath and keep walking. Pluck the weeds. Make a garden.

There’s no point in thinking about what he could’ve done better, he supposes. It’s better, he thinks, to embrace the pain and his mistakes. To learn from them. Remember that it’s okay to hurt, and let the pain continue to exist. Remember that there are those that will help.

“I hope you know now,” Dejun says, “that you deserve more.”
Mark waves down a wait as he nods. “I’m getting there.”

“Good morning.”
Mark opens his eyes to look at Johnny. The morning is quiet and Mark resists the urge to curl further into the blankets and sleep away the day. They can’t, though. There are things to do, like finishing the lesson plans for the next unit and cleaning the bathroom.

“Morning,” Mark groans, face buried in his pillow. “What time is it?”
“Uh,” pause, “seven in the morning.”
“Johnny, it’s a Saturday. Why are you up already?” He opens an eye to peer at Johnny who smiles sheepishly. “... You’re plotting something. What’re you planning?”

“We’re making brunch, aren’t we? Before our appointment,” Johnny says, hand gentle against Mark’s neck.
There’s a buffer period as Mark digests what Johnny has to say before nodding. Their appointment. “We are. But brunch. Not breakfast.”
“Close enough, right?”

Johnny stands and Mark contemplates. As usual. It’s hard not to be stuck in your head when you’re in your thirties and that’s all you know how to do. He’s only coaxed from bed by the sound of Johnny moving around in the kitchen, a reminder that their day has begun.
Their day.

There’s a dual ownership now, and Mark is navigating that. It was that way for years, and then suddenly not. They’re settling back into it, but it’s still something uneven. Once smooth, now weathered and worn. Mark polishes it, bit by bit, embracing things again. Slowly.

Their steps to some sense of normalcy are gentle and tentative, and yet steady and closing gaps that once existed. Counseling and therapy, together and apart, have helped to begin to close the open wounds that have rested in their minds. It’s all poetic sounding.

Mark doesn’t want it to sound so pretty. The reality is that these wounds will never fully close. There’s nothing beautiful or romantic or delicate of the pain that they’ve gone through. They are going through. It’s a reality. Everyone is stuck in some sort of shit.

Everyone figures it out different.
Johnny, in the kitchen, hums along to his favorite song, and Mark is reminded that shit sucks, shit will suck, shit has sucked, but it’s getting better. And it’ll be worse again, eventually. And then get better. It’s a cycle.

Around them, the world continues to move regardless of whether they’re ready to move with it. It’s one thing to acknowledge that, though, and another thing to walk along side it. Mark is still struggling to recover where he fell flat. Maybe he’ll never catch back up.
It happens.

He’s still trying to accept things that fell apart over a decade ago. Mark’s mind is so desperate to cling to things that it shouldn’t. He thinks that everyone’s mind must work that way. He’s not really sure, though. There is separation between Mark’s reality and that of others.

Though, there’s a difference between everyone’s reality and that of the world, so Mark figures that he isn’t special in that regard.
“What are you making?” Mark asks, wrapping his arms around Johnny.
“French toast,” answers Johnny, “and eggs. And pancakes. And bacon.”

“That,” he pinches Johnny’s side, “is so much fucking food. It’s just us. If you make that much, let’s bring some to Chenle and Jaemin before we go to our appointment? I can’t eat all that.”
“You’ve gotten too skinny, though.” Johnny turns, gently knocking their heads together.

“Force-feeding me every food we own will not help that.”
“It’s also almost about to expire.”
Mark presses his lips together, inhaling deeply through his nose. “... Johnny. This is why we make grocery lists and determine how much we’re actually going to need.”

“You always made the list,” whines Johnny, flipping the french toast.
“Yes, because you don’t make lists,” Mark starts the coffee, “and you buy everything that says buy one, get one free.”
“It’s a sale.”
“It’s a capitalist trap!” Mark says, waving the measuring spoon in the air.

Johnny shrugs, plating food. “I accept my fate.”
Mark catches himself rolling his eyes, fond smile on his face. They have changed. Things have changed. Everything has changed, but Johnny’s truthfulness to his character has always shown through. Mark loves it. Loves him.

“Donghyuck says both you and I should be expecting packages in the mail sometime this week,” Mark says, pressing his hip against the counter. “He said, and I quote, ‘Who the fuck knows why this shit is taking so long to ship! But you better RSVP immediately, asshole.’”

“Sounds like him,” mutters Johnny, laughing under his breath. “Anyways, both of us have verbally committed to being in the wedding parties already. I don’t know why he’s so stressed about it.”
“He wants Instagram verification and validation,” Mark explains, breathing deeply.

And, for what it’s worth, Mark thinks that Donghyuck deserves it, having planned the wedding almost entirely on his own. Others have lended a hand here or there though, for the most part, it’s been him and no one else. Jaehyun had complained about feeling useless.

Donghyuck has always been like that, though. Independent and strong willed and confident. On the outside. They all have their vices—their strengths and weaknesses—and Donghyuck is no exception. He’s simply too prideful to allow himself to fall to them. Mark could only imagine.

“Well, we’ll give it to him, I guess,” Johnny mutters, placing plates of french toast on the table. “I want him to plan our wedding, so.”
Mark’s head whips to the side so fast he sees fucking stars. It’s so like Johnny to toss that around so casually, so soon after rebuilding.

Though, Mark supposes, Johnny did tell him that they would get married one day, two years into their relationship. It’s just so... Johnny.
“Yeah, well,” Mark sets the table, empty plates and cutlery looking lonely, “you can handle all of that.”
“Don’t worry! I will.”

“Put the coffee back.”
“But we—“
“Johnny. Put the coffee back.” Mark stares, form, until Johnny’s shoulders are drooping and the coffee is back on the shelf. He can envision the six bags back in their apartment, all in various states of consumption. They don’t need more.

In fact, Mark has been tossing the idea around in his head of them going on a caffeine cleanse for several days. He thinks better of it, however, watching Johnny consume four cups of coffee before their day even begins. It will have to be a slow process. A weaning.

Mark watches as Johnny piles cans of Spam and ramyeon into their cart. He should be horrified—he knows this from the way Johnny stares at him with wide eyes and a mischievous grin—but all he can feel is resignation as he continues to push the cart forward.

Things have settled into a new sort of normal. They learn to walk towards and beside one another, rather than around, and they learn to talk, instead of staring at the back of their head and hoping that they can hear their thoughts. It’s a process. Counseling and therapy helps.

There are remnants of who they were, and hints of who they will be, and it’s all something that Mark, so used to being unchanging, is learning to accept. It’s hard, though. Sort of like wading into the ocean, waves just tall enough to hit you in the chest. Sometimes he falters.

Sometimes, Mark’s ass hits the ocean floor and the tide keeps him under, and it’s a struggle to get his head back above water. Johnny helps him, but Mark knows he needs to learn how to stand back on his own two feet. How to grab a hold of his own fucked up demons and toss them.

Toss them far off into the distance, because they will never actually go away. And Mark is learning to become comfortable with that idea. It’s a process. Everything, in life, is a process, though. Mark is learning and Johnny is learning. About one another and themselves.

This is something they should’ve done forever and a day ago. But Mark loves this man—thinks he will love this man until the day he dies—and so he figures that now is better than never. They’ve come too far, he thinks, to let this fall apart. They’ll work for it. For a new normal.

Even if a new normal means Johnny filling their cart with—
“We do not,” Mark says, slowly, “need ten bags of chips.”
“... You’re right,” Johnny places three back on the shelves, “We only need seven.”
Blinking, Mark pushes the cart forward. Johnny’s victory dance is embarrassing.

A lot of things about Johnny is embarrassing, but Mark loves him for it, not in exception of it. Johnny pushes Mark outside of his comfort zone—holds his hand, firmly, and guides them to a sort of existence that Mark wouldn’t think of otherwise. He is Mark’s guide.

Much in the same way that Mark is Johnny’s impulse control. Though it’s all an ever-changing feedback loop, though. They feed each other’s best habits, and sometimes even their worst. It’s not like Mark couldn’t have stopped Johnny from dancing on top of their car that one time.

He should have, though. Having the police called on you at seven at night is not exactly the best impression on your new neighbors. It’s hard to reign in Johnny’s excitement and happiness, though. Sometimes it just tumbles out before Mark can catch it. Catch him.

Johnny is open, and Mark is starting to become more open, and the world continues to spin around them, refusing to wait for them to figure their shit out. So they try their best to function as they stumble around a room that’s a touch too small, trying to find a way out.

[NOTE]
i will be completing this in a word doc! :] including all interludes, i am at a cool 12.6k, which requires a HUGE amount of editing! :O but, i hope to give johnmark the ending they deserve and all of you a fic that is not NEARLY as messy as this thread. ♡