been you | mt+ijb ✓

08

Mark goes back to the States the summer before they're college sophomores. He's visibly excited even weeks before he leaves, and Jaebum isn't sure how to feel about it.

Korea is Mark's home now, and although it has been for over a decade, Mark still loves the thought of Los Angeles. It makes Jaebum wonder if that means he's such a bad best friend that Mark would rather be in America surrounded by strangers than in Korea with him, but the tight hug and mumbled I'll miss you at the airport are reassurance enough that that's not the case at all.

This is the first summer he's spent without Mark since they were eight, and even with the other three boys he feels awfully alone. Mark doesn't fail to talk to him constantly, though, so he doesn't complain quite as much as he wants to.

Mark gets tanner and more toned with every Skype call, although he also looks increasingly tired, and the irony of the situation lies in that Jaebum only notices how attractive his best friend is from six thousand miles away.

Jaebum isn't blind; he's always silently acknowledged that Mark is fairly good-looking, along with the rest of his friends. He's never seen Mark this way before, though, and now that he has he knows he's never going back.

It's that summer that Jaebum admits to himself that he's very, very gay, although he isn't sure if it's due to the sight of Mark through his phone screen or the way Youngjae's arms wrap around his waist after a loud day at the park with the boys. He's not stupid – he knows what the butterflies in his stomach mean, and he recognizes the fondness that dwells in his chest. He understands it all, and he's not afraid of it.

The first time he admits it aloud is in front of his bedroom mirror, and it's more of an acceptance than a confirmation.

"I'm gay," he says to his own reflection, quiet, closing his eyes as the words sink in. "I'm gay."

There's no extravagant revelation; he doesn't have a dramatic realization of any sort. It's just there, the truth, and he accepts it.

Funny how he's been so scared of it for so long.

Admitting it is hard for reasons he can't put into words, although he knows that both his family and his friends will accept him just as easily as he's accepted himself.

It's alright, though, because when he tells Mark over the phone that night, his friend smiles at him, as gentle as ever, and before he even says anything Jaebum knows that everything is going to be fine.

"I am, too," Mark admits, shameless, and Jaebum can't help but grin back. "It's okay."

It's more of an everything will be okay than an it's okay that our giving and taking all happens up the ass, and somehow, Jaebum believes him.

(When he lets the others in on it a few days later, they all burst out laughing. Youngjae chokes out a me too through his laughter, trying to explain that they're all gay, while Jinyoung and Jackson link hands and wink at him.

He tells his family eventually, and although they stop for a minute to stare at him, his father smiles and his mother pulls him into a reassuring hug.

"We already knew you were," she tells him, only half teasing. "We've seen you with Mark."

Jaebum doesn't bother to tell them that he and Mark aren't together. He figures they already know that, too.)