What if...? || Markhyuck

-37-

[november 2020]

[donghyuck]

We drove in silence by car, running neatly through the empty, dark streets. Minhyung was clearly nervous all day, so I didn't create situations that could expose me to the boy's anger. I didn't ask about what happened, I didn't get into his problems, because I knew perfectly well that I wouldn't get an answer anyway. This is how life with Mark looked like. I bounced off the wall, unless he had already done something so far beyond his ability to cope with it alone, that sometimes he broke off saying that something wasn't as he would have liked it to be. After all, I could count such situations on the fingers of one hand.

"Which way do you want to go?" I finally asked, when he was turning the second time not where he should be and I began to get the impression that we are moving farther away from our homes than approaching them.

"Never mind," he muttered, determined, tapping his fingers nervously on the steering wheel.

"Minhyung, this is not a way home" I told him seriously, when it became clear to me that the boy doesn't take us to the apartment. It wasn't like I didn't trust Mark or I was afraid he would do something to me. However, I knew that his impulsiveness didn't always end well and I didn't want to take part in another ill-considered idea.

"I know," he said. "Don't talk to me like a moron." I rolled eyes. That was all I could afford. I gave the man a moment to cool down and waited to ask him again if I should know something. We were passing quietly streets full of neon lights and increasingly dying streets. It was getting dark at the early hour now. Nobody felt safe here after dark.

"Can you tell me where we're going, hm?" I tried it milder.

"To the cinema," he sighed heavily, as if it cost him a lot to say it out loud.

"What?" I asked with a laugh. It was the most abstract answer he could give me right now. "For what?" I was surprised. "I mean, I know why people go to the cinema, but..."

"On a date," he interrupted me, clearing his throat nervously, then looked out the window to the side of the road, as if something worth monitoring was going on there. That brang me up short for a change.

"Why?" I asked a bit stupidly and completely unnecessarily but Minhyung and a date in one sentence, without denying it, was out of my vocabulary of life.

"You heard," he sighed heavily. "It won't go through my throat for the second time."

"Well, you are simply boiling over romanticism then."

"I know," he replied with mock pride, which was supposed to mask the fact that he was simply awkward about it. I started to laugh. In my own way, I thought his behavior was pretty cute.

"One can immediately say that you've never been on a date before," I sighed with affection. I realized that we've been together for quite a long time and if we include sex on the beach as a determinant of our beginning, it was even longer and despite that we were never on a date. Either there was no time or no desire to do so. I also had to admit that in my humble opinion, the word date didn't fit into the scope of Minhyung's life options, so I didn't require it from him. When he wanted to be charming and caring, he was. Lee showed love in his own incredibly twisted way. I had to accept this and common acts of care or interest put in a folder with incredibly heroic feats of showing interest. That's how it was and I had to live with it.

"You might be surprised" the boy suddenly frowned, although we both knew that this was the truth. Mark had no idea how does the normal dating of the teen couple or young adults we were now look like.