s e o u l | k p o p - o s

124. GOT7 Mark - Lines

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He spoke about ambitions, expectations, setbacks. He spoke of expression, and you could hear the longing in his voice. It struck a chord with you, reverberated in your mind until it drowned out the near-constant hum of worry that filled your ears so often these days.

"This is for my dream," he said. "This is for my love."

Pairing: Mark x Reader

Genre: Drama, AU

Words: 10.2k

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Tap, tap, tap.

The plastic cap of your pen beat an unsteady rhythm against your notebook. The guy sitting beside you shot you a nasty look, but you barely registered it, staring intently as you were at your professor. You watched her lips move, but you couldn't hear her lecture over the sound of your pulse pounding in your ears.

There had been good days and bad days since you'd come back. Today was a bad day.

As soon as the lecture ended, you swept your blank notebook into your bag and pushed through the throng of students until you emerged into the gloomy afternoon. The cool air was just shy of biting as you let your legs carry you from the main campus, focused on little else but the churning urge to get away.

Strange, you mused, how you had been so eager to return to school only for you to want nothing more than to escape once you got there.

You knew recovery was never going to be a straight line. Your therapist had told you, your family had told you, and yet you still couldn't help but feel frustrated when anxiety coiled in your chest and clouded your thoughts. It felt like you were just moving backwards.

What you needed was a quiet place to sit and let your thoughts unravel, someplace other than your too-small apartment where the air grew far too stuffy with unspoken words and the tentative tiptoeing of your roommate who very much seemed to fear that any little thing would set you off.

Not that you'd given her reason to think otherwise, you thought wryly. Not while there were still patches of wallpaper that bore the scars of your breakdown.

You'd taken to finding other places to hide out, to provide breathing room for both you and your roommate. Often, you found yourself wandering farther away from campus, winding down side streets and shuffling past derelict shopping centers until you found some unassuming hole in the wall in which to take shelter for the afternoon.

Today, you found yourself drawn to a large wooden door, propped open just enough to allow the scent of fresh-brewed coffee and the dulcet tones of some old-timey crooner escape into the street. The sign above the door read Vinyl Cafe, a name that proved to be rather on the nose when you stepped inside.

The place was the kind of retro that benefited from the hipster movement. Long tables laden with boxes of old vinyl records were pushed against the wall along the far side of the room, and mismatched furniture provided cozy nooks for lounging and reading. It would almost be trendy if the couches weren't just a little bit too shabby, if the tarnish of the metal fixtures wasn't just a little bit too real to be an intentional decor choice. Yet the smell of coffee was even stronger and more welcoming once you were inside, so you decided that this would be as good a place as any to spend your day.

The barista was a cheerful fellow with a beanie and a septum ring, and you mentally checked off another stereotype as you gratefully accepted your pour over coffee from him and retreated to the corner of the room.

You chose a large, battered armchair that sank beneath you with the groan of old leather. A large steamer trunk served as the coffee table, and you delicately set your drink down and fished your notebook from your bag. It flipped open to the blank page you'd left off on, and you eyed it with no small amount of disdain.