fly me to the moon | mark lee

THREE.

AUTHOR'S NOTE! it's kinda painfully obvious i'm awful at naming chapters at this point. something unexpected has cropped up on my end and i'm not sure if i'll be available to write weekly chapters :(( but!! here's one for y'all to sink your teeth into before i potentially drop off the face of the earth (hopefully... i won't, but you know). happy reading!!

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let me see
what spring is like
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"AH, LOOK WHO it is."

Before she could register the new presence, he had made himself comfortable draped over Mark's shoulders, which had suddenly gone rigid. As did their classmates, whom, if they had been paying any attention beforehand, were now pointedly taking care to look elsewhere.

Heart-shaped lips pulled into a smile. But there was little mirth in it. "His Highness Lee Mark."

Eyes like pools of liquid chocolate swept her way. "And his handy dandy personal assistant." To which she would have bared her teeth and snarled, had Lee Donghyuck's posse of his nastiest, most beautiful friends not encircled them.

But with rich, unblemished skin, wavy, copper hair that curled towards his nape, and striking gaze like he held the sun, Lee Donghyuck was undoubtedly the most stunning of them all. As well as the most detestable.

Haru might have thrown all caution to the wind and kicked him, but Mark surpassed both their expectations. Adopting a look of faint disgust, he plucked Donghyuck's arm up and tossed it nearly contemptuously aside. "What do you want?"

The predatory grin widened. "To say hi, duh." A thin-fingered hand slipped into Mark's mess of black hair, and though the gesture was innocent enough - affectionate, even - the flicker of pain across his face wasn't.

Lee Hecking Donghyuck.

She snatched up her pen from the desk and flung it in the general direction of his head. Hard.

He didn't even twitch when it struck his temple and clattered to the floor. In fact, he seemed unusually composed as he released Mark's hair and stooped, agonisingly slowly, pinning the pen between thumb and forefinger. Haru was half-certain all the colour had drained from her face, in spite of herself. "I heard," and the amusement in his voice was taunting, "you like to throw things, Haru-ah."

Mark gave her a warning look.

But she wasn't about to let Lee Donghyuck get the upper hand, and Mark of all people shouldn't have wanted him to. He was the other boy's favourite chew toy. "Then you should have also heard I never miss," she said with a generous dose of sarcasm. "Get lost."

He splayed his fingers on her desk, towering over her, eyes glinting something savage and unintelligible. He was so close, his breath raised goosebumps along her skin. "Get lost, who?"

It was a known fact that he was the young lordling of the House of the Sun (Fae and their stupid titles), but it would take a whole lot of Glamour to delude her into calling him lord-anything. "Get lost, peasant."

One of his cronies stepped forward, hand raised as if to hit her.

But Donghyuck shifted, and his companion ground to an instantaneous halt. "Markie, she's better at comebacks than you are." Titters of laughter. "Where can I get one?"

Mark clenched his jaw. She curled her hand into a fist, wondering if she could punch Donghyuck right there and then and get away with it alive. But it seemed he wasn't about to let her decide - extracting himself, he lightly bumped into Mark's shoulder on the way out. One by one, his friends, each more breathtaking than the last, departed. And the spell that had crystalised over the classroom shattered with a collective breath.

"We were friends once, you know."

She thought she had misheard. "Sorry, what?"

He spun his pen skilfully with one hand, hair sticking up a little from Donghyuck's 'affectionate' ministrations. "Hyuck and I. Back in elementary school. We were best friends forever or something."

"Let me guess, you had a grand fight."

"No." His bottom lip was captured between his teeth, and he was unsmiling, the closest Mark could usually look to being furious. It was hard to imagine Donghyuck ever having been soft or nice. "His family didn't like him spending time with a human, and they separated us. I never saw him again till high school, and by then..."

He gazed out in the direction where Donghyuck had left, as if there were still a ghostly trace of his presence. "Well. He's the only person who can really piss me off."

Should she have been surprised, or disappointed, even? But of course, it was just in true Mark fashion to bottle it all up, as if he weren't already stretching at the seams with anxiety from a multitude of other things.

That was probably where she came in. They had mended each other. She sighed, softly.

"That's a gift."

With a snort, he buried his head in his elbow.

She hesitated, then patted the soft, unruly tufts of his hair down, lingering perhaps longer than necessary.

"After school," he began, muffled, "I've got something to show you, so don't go home just yet."

Knowing Mark, that could have been anything from a box of watermelon to concert tickets to a lame video, but nevertheless, she couldn't help but look forward to it a little. Just a little bit.