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pairing :: mark x reader

summary :: a series of melodies encompassing the feeling of falling in love with your best friend

wc :: 8k

a/n :: haven't been here in a hot second, but this story ties up my little psa dont fall in love with your best friend blurbs. all of these experiences are based almost soley on my own personal experiences this one shot included and this is kind of my way of figuring out my shit. so enjoy <3 + huge thank you to my queen and absolute love @suh-insane for reading this over love you lots <3

playlist :: psa: don't fall in love with your best friend, advice from a hopeless romantic ( a compilation of songs that fits their story please listen while you read <3 )

i. seventh grade and blink-182

The world revolves around song. Through music in which people are determined by music; and relationships can be made stronger and more clear through song or melodies. The melody of one person when clashes with another can do one of two things: it can align with it, the chords of one balancing out each other through the staffs of a five-set bar filling spaces in between quarter notes or half notes as one rests and the other rises up to meet it or it can create chaos. This chaos that can be created through the clash of notes, it can be seen when the melodies don’t choose to align with each other, instead the dance around each other avoiding one another as the music swells and swells until there is no other option but for the two melodies to meet and either reach crescendo or crash.

The first time you meet Mark Lee you’re convinced he hates you. You know this from the way he gives you what could only be recalled to be as the “stink eye” in seventh grade which has your mind leading to all the possibilities as to why the boy might hate you. Where one melody and the next are crashing into each other in anything but harmony, one reaching as the other darts away.

It had never been something in particular that had made you believe the song that defined you and Mark weren’t meant for each other. When you had first seen him, you had just assumed he hated everyone in your small seventh grade class except the loud overly energetic boy named Lee Donghyuck who you had somehow called your best friend.

But your internal rivalry with Mark, a clash of harmonies between one another, had started in the lunch room of your school. You vaguely recall the day you met him, brown hair fitted onto his hair in a bowl shape that you had just glared at. The hair was cut at odds ends making what your twelve year old self thought to be a bowl cut look more like a bowl with jagged glass pieces sticking out in uneven cuts. Donghyuck, leg bouncing up and down as his fingers tapped in and out of the rhythm that poured through the old cable headphones that you had managed to sneak into the lunchroom, had informed you of the new kid that was coming in. The boy, being the social butterfly, had managed to get the new kid’s schedule - and though he had lost it the moment the new boy had given it to him - Hyuck swore that he had managed to retain enough information to tell you about him. At the end all you had managed to get out of your best friend who had now rushed to the new boy, half of a headphone still on his ear so that your tiny ipod had been ripped from your hand and was now on the lunchroom floor Blink-182 playing from the now unplugged headphone jack, was that his name was Mark Lee and had just moved in from Canada.

The news of a new kid had elated you at first. Like the bridge to a song, where the melodies are being changed, a new instrument has been introduced altering the path of the constant song structure. Your young mind reeling at all the different possibilities of you being able to share your interest and getting someone new that wasn’t donghyuck attached to the books that you liked to read or even better into the very indie pop music you had just recently found. Though you would never stray from the occasional blink-182 that made both you and donghyuck feel older and cooler than the other seventh graders around you. It’s that exact music that has your lunch proctors coming over to your small lunch table, where donghyuck had dragged a mark towards, your ipod in their hands as they scorned you for listening to music that was too “mature” for your young age. Your reaction had been to stick out your tongue at the back of the proctor who you decided that fateful day as they took away your orange ipod, the faint buzz of music still heard, that mark didn’t like you. He didn’t like you because when you had asked him for help to get your iPod back because Donghyuck had disappeared and you had figured because the boy came from canada that he was supposed to help you - looking back at it in retrospect you understand that the stereotype your american history class had drilled into your young mind was not correct.

Mark did in fact not help you. He did the complete opposite and called your music taste awful before he walked over to the lunch proctor which you had just realized had been your old english teacher who already didn’t like you - no matter how much you tried to be enthusiastic in their class, and showed your love for reading - to tell them that you had stuck out your tongue at them.

It doesn’t occur to you that mark had in fact not snitched on you as you believed but instead had asked the teacher for your ipod back and had only gotten a shake of the head that you had deciphered as disappointment towards yourself instead of the teacher informing young mark to tell you to come pick it up after school. But at the time Mark had been too shy, and overly conscious of himself to tell you that himself so he said nothing and walked away from your table in an attempt to find Donghyuck the only boy he found himself energized to be around.

It is from the moment that you see the boy with shaggy brown hair, eyes wide in amusement at everything, hands fidgeting with a guitar pick after he walks away that you have convinced yourself he hates you. This is not something you have to prove, it is something you deduced because for the rest of the year all you ever got from the boy were rude words and the stink eye. A list that though only consists of two items - three if you count how the boy would at times tease you and complain to donghyuck in your presence about the fact that you had been moved up to his english class - that the boy everyone adored detested you. A clash of songs, of melodies between one another. The push and pull between two forces that are syncopated with each other, not matching but not against one another.

ii. two years and a crush

You think that hate might have been a strong word to describe how Mark felt about you. Dislike or maybe he felt too awkward around you. The song of hate is one too strong to pinpoint on any set person with no valuable excuse. It is the border between hate and care that is often blurred between two people that have yet to know each other or often already do. The beauty of music, the fluidity of it that is said to have strict rules to follow in order for chords to harmonize with one another can be changed and modified through the course of time. Change that a year or two can prolong, where donghyuck guarantees you that Mark does indeed not hate you but thinks the opposite that you hate him.

It is the shock, sprawled all over your face when your best friend informs of you this news that has you take a step back. Mind reeling at the possibilities that could have made the boy you wished to be friends with from afar - only for his awkward but adorable demeanor and knowledge in the language of music that had you slightly grown fond off - that had you set on walking up to the brown haired boy black sharpie in hand as you scrawled a message on his ninth grade yearbook.

The book feels heavy in your hands, the turn of pages not balanced evenly as you picked it up from one of the many grey speckled lunch tables in your school's lunchroom. Mark’s signature - a bold star on the center of the page - marking it as his. In the time between seventh and ninth grade the number of markings on his pages have expanded. Each corner filled with some note or another about having a good summer, the most common being “hags” a term very much detested on your part. Though some would thank him for his help in English class or talk about the way his laugh would always be heard echoing down the halls of the school making anyone who heard it smile even for just a second. You are stuck on what to write in the boy’s yearbook, where “hags” was most definitely out of the way but how else to express that you in fact did not hate the boy before you, but felt something else entirely.

Your fine line pen - you had switched out the marker ( though a mark and marker joke had been tempted to be made on your side ) for a pen to donghyuck who had insisted the writing utensil he used had to match his loud personality - had just begun to write the initial entry to the yearbook when a cough sounded from behind you. Pen smearing to the side at the abrupt noise that had broken you from your thoughts as you turned your head around, to find Mark cheeks slightly pink and a confused look on his face as he looked down to the book in your hands and then back to you. The question written on his face, what were you doing with his yearbook?

The brown haired boy had sworn he had left it on one of the many desks littered around though that wasn’t too say much when all the tables had at one point clumped together in the center of the room and mark had been dragged from one person to another - because after two years in a music program it seems people begin to want to talk to you - to sign books. What he hadn’t expected was to find you, crouched in the corner next to the pile of yearbooks, eyebrows drawn in concentration as you stared down at his yearbook.

Mark knows that you are not a person of hate. He knows this because Donghyuck talks enough about you that if Mark was to be given a trivia on who your favorite band was and what subject you hated the most he would have aced it ( you would never be able to choose just one band and obviously music but not because you didn’t like the class but because of its teacher ). It is evident from when you speak to Donghyuck, a smile grazing your features even when you scold hyuck for not getting enough sleep that you care deeply for others. He knows this yet he thinks that there is something wrong with him for when you look at him he only ever sees confusion written in your features.

The same confusion that you look at him with now, but this time what seems to be the ghost of a nervous smile grazes your lips as your eyes dart from him to the book on your hands before you are scrambling up yearbook flopping slightly to the side and before mark can greet you, you’re off towards another pile of yearbooks and people with only a “oh...um...hi! I'm gonna go.”

When he picks up his yearbook, only the beginnings of a scribble before the pen smudged read “I don’t hate you” which has mark now copying your face of confusion at the rest of the words that have smaread and he can’t seem to make out but wishes he could because the small little smiley face you’ve drawn at the top has butterflies tumbling around in his stomach.

It is people who do not have music, people who do not have a song that we should fear. This is something to be believed in because with no song whether audible or not people become less of self and more of one. Dips and staccatos in one’s song that create variety are what then allow us to match with other harmonies and rhythms between each other. So when a boy presented you with the opportunity to learn how these dips worked, how they would bounce from one end to another trailing behind a note or holding it for a note longer harmonies between these two people become more insync with each other.

- -

By the time that the end of tenth grade rolls sound you know for a fact that Mark doesn’t hate you, because if he did you don’t think the poor boy would have helped you in music class. Mark Lee most definitely doesn’t hate you or he wouldn’t have helped you write a whole song for a class that everyone - except the musical prodigy himself - hated.

It is said that music in syncopation will at one point catch up to each other in order to create a beautiful rhythm. When one beat is off the next, it will become the foundation to that song, as one beat chases the other and they dance around each other never quite crashing into each other but grazing one another to fill in each other’s missing beat.

The idea of what syncopation is has been drilled into your brain for the fifth time this week in music class. One of those many music theories that you understand in exactly what they are but when put into practice you’re left looking into space with a hopeless look. Which left Mark looking at you a mix of emotions coursing through him as you bit your lip in worry as the teacher went on about what the end of the trimester’s project would be.

The assignment was simple, in theory of course. Simple if your music teacher had bothered to teach you how to play the keyboard that lay on top of your desk, the computer plugged into the weird conversion device that you had yet to understand its function, with the holy Sibelius software open. Its purple background and paper-like overlay with a single music staff only managed to meddle with what you knew of music. It wasn’t that you were a complete music disaster. You knew how to play the guitar - or at least the intro to Blink-182’s I Miss You - and had begun to learn the bass because your favorite member of a band you followed played the bass. Basic understanding of music theory was also stored in your brain, you knew how notes worked, just not how to place them. You understood what each note was, just not how they fit well together, just like you knew what chords were just not how to play them on the piano. So when given the task to compose a full original song in the span of a month, it wasn’t looking great.

Not great until Mark, sitting next to you, saw how your eyebrows had drawn in together as you tried clicking away at the screen only to get half notes instead of whole notes. The boy wanted nothing more than to remain by his chair, as he happily played the piano keys. Their loud thunk thunk a soothing melody to him as the melody in his head was played out in front of him. When the music teacher, purple tie with too many dots for anyone to count, had announced the assignment he had been beyond excited, that is until the teacher had also announced they would be sharing their songs by the end of the month.

Mark loved music. He loved the melodies and rhythms that would play in his head, as he hummed along to whatever jazz or new radio station he had found earlier that day played through his headset. Music was a translation for the way his heart felt or brain was thinking, when he got too awkward or shy to the people around him. The lyrics that he was constantly jotting down on his beat up notebook were words and thoughts that would flit back and forth through his head, different ideas or butterflies that would create a turmoil in his stomach. Mark however did not like performing in front of people, the blame was on the way his heart would alter its constant path when there was someone in front of him to listen to his music or see his notebook. It was too personal the scribbles on the notebook that had gone with him through one move and then another a whirlwind of houses and unknown people through each new city.

He had tried once to perform in front of people, the audience consisted of his mother and father and the church group he had been going to in their small living room back in toronto. When he looked back at it, the performance shouldn’t have gone awry, it should have been one happy moment in his life that had helped him express himself and be more out there. Except when he got on the small DIY stage his parents had prepared for him for the annual church talent show, guitar ready in his arms and he started to strum the first couple of chords to the song he had just written all he could see was the world laid before him as they saw him raw without any protection. Nothing to grab onto except all his secrets - though a song about how much he liked chicken was truly not that deep - that he had run out of the stage, and into the city street notebook in hand.

It’s been too long since he’s tried again to perform in front of anyone, but he tries to convince himself that if he could help you write a song then you would be able to help him with his anxiety about his own work. He most definitely tries to convince himself that he doesn’t want to help you because he knows you think he hates you and wants to prove otherwise. Mark definitely doesn’t want to help you, because he thinks you’re cute. He definitely doesn’t want to help you because he heard you laugh once - when he had lunch by your table - and heard you laugh so hard that tears had started to spring in your eyes as you smacked donghyuck in the arm and he wished he had been the one to make you laugh. By the time Mark has convinced himself of all this, class is almost over and he’s only able to mumble a “do you need any help?” to you, as you stare at him blankly, confusion drawn across your features.

“Are you talking to me?” you ask, head turning from side to side as you look at other classmates around you, even renjun a fellow friend of donghyuck shrugs before walking out the door.

“Yep” is the only thing Mark can manage saying, as he aggressively nods towards your computer screen, only slightly catching the smile that blooms across your face.

“I’d love that. I seriously have no idea what any of these buttons do” you sigh, waving dramatically towards the keyboard that sits on your desk, the computer screen blinking as the random notes you have placed create a jumbled picture.

Mark can feel his anxiety ease away when he gets near the keyboard. The way the keys work makes perfect sense to him bringing comfort, but the bubble you two have created as you start talking about the piece you’re trying to make. A piece you had first suggested that should be about your love for pizza which Mark had laughed at - a sound you had found to be equally adorable and contagious - but the look your teacher gave you made you rethink that. Though singing about how good cheese and pizza dough was would always be a dream of yours.

It is through music that your friendship blooms. Where a syncopated song has managed to catch up to each other even if it’s only for a small time, in order to greet each other.

When you two begin to hang out more often, at times at his place or maybe yours. At first the idea is to help each other on the song, Mark tells you about his fear, or more so the panic he gets when people listen to his work live. It’s strange to think that someone that talented had anything to fear really, he always looked so at ease whenever he was playing music that it had never fathomed that it might scare him to show it to the rest of the world.

Music you and Mark have both determined is the universal language. Music allows you both to express yourselves when the world seems to only grab at your words and throw them in the other direction so that no one else can see or hear.

iii. scribbles on the yearbook

The black marker is stark against the red page of your yearbook, as you flip through the pages. The room’s ac flipping the pages, landing on where Mark had signed your yearbook. A small note that has you slightly smiling at the boy’s visible awkwardness on the pages. Most of the signatures insignificant with the typical “hags” that you have seen over the years, you almost yelled at donghyuck who had written hags on your yearbook as a joke. Mark has it scribbled on the margins of the paper, surrounded by different colors of scribbles from the rest of your classmates until his comes along, reading “this is mark, and i approve of this message” only for it to be followed by another message right next to it “this is mark - and oh wait i already wrote something! I hope we make that pizza song one day :)”

It’s the small detail to the pizza song that has you staring at the message, a small smile on your face as donghyuck barges into the room you're in - that though technically his room has you yelling at him for walking in without any warning.

“Who has you smiling like an idiot?” the brown haired boy jokes, the rainbow highlights he just recently added into his hair catching in the light.

“No one” you force your voice to become an octave lower, trying to wipe the smile from your face with no actual success because donghyuck has taken your yearbook from his bed and is laughing. You start to speak, trying to explain to your friend that it was just that you two had finally started talking to each other and maybe he didn’t hate you.

“No way you like Jaemin?” He exclaims already picking up his phone and because you know he has Jaemin on speed dial you lunge across the room into him.

“What?! No!!” Though you’re both on the floor donghyuck is still grinning like an idiot, the brightness in his phone almost blinding you.

“Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!” The phone has been forgotten, and he’s clinging onto you as you try to sit up heck grabbing you by the arm, “come on, I’m your best friend you gotta tell me these things”

“I don’t like anyone dude” your words are accentuated as you unwrap hyucks hands from your arm before standing up, leaving a pouting donghyuck on the bedroom floor.

“Then who the fuck has you smiley?” You almost gasp at the curse word that leaves Donghyuck’s lips, he’d been saying them more often, and you stare at him trying to convey through it that it was none of his business. It is only because the doorbell rings that Donghyuck gets up, giving you a glare before he heads out to the door, yelling at his brother that it’s his turn to get the door.

You’re more than happy for the distraction, picking up the yearbook from the ground, the pages now slightly crumpled from the movement. The music that plays through your iPod has you bopping along, a dance move or two escaping your body at irregular intervals when the chorus hits or you attempt to lip-sync to the melodies of the cab.

The music has you too distracted to hear Mark as he walks into Donghyuck’s house, his laugh echoing around the house at something that Donghyuck said, clapping along until they enter the room you’re in.

Mark is happy that you don’t see him. He’s happy that you aren’t aware how concentrated you look as you look down at the yearbook finger tracing images or words he can’t see. words seem to fail him when he looks at you, smile present on your face and though the music you're listening to is strange to his ears he makes a slight effort to see what appeals to it - he doesn’t get very far but he tries. It’s a different expression from what he’s used to. Your music is heavier, the lyrics tend to be sadder than the music he listens to, John Mayer being a classic and the reason he picked up a guitar years ago, but he doesn’t mind it when he sees the way your face brightens up at it.

“Earth to Mark!” a snap in front of him shakes him from his thoughts as Donghyuck looks at him, a puzzled look on his face that is quickly replaced by a knowing grin. As if he knew something that had recently become very obvious to him and only him, a secret he would keep close to his chest until he decided the card was to be dealt. But then you’re looking up, yearbook discarded on the bed as you rush over to him and donghyuck asking him how practice was, and if he was staying over for japchae - a classic at the lee’s house that mark could never truly turn down - donghyuks grin only widening before mark had a chance to say anything about it.

iv. a catapult of zooms

The five words you’ve written down for your English paper on The Catcher in the Rye stares at you from the blinding white screen. Cursor blinking in and out to let you know that your computer is ready to type next, a constant reminder that you have only made it a sentence in for a paper due tomorrow. You type out another sentence hoping this one fits before deleting it, a cycle of movements you have been doing for the last thirty minutes you notice when you glance up at the time 11:30 pm.

An incomprehensible noise between a sigh and a scream comes out of your mouth before you look back at the book to your side, the annotations on the side of the pages mocking you with their information on the loss of innocence and youth. Looking back at your screen you switch tabs the current music playing through your headphones distracting you more than actually helping you as you sing along to most of the songs giving a small dance routine when you feel like it all to not write the damn paper in front of you.

It takes a small second for your eyes to adjust, the white screen of the google docs pages in stark contrast to the black grey of the spotify app as it shows you all the different playlist you have accumulated over the years. You can see on the top right corner what donghyuck and you had been listening to for the better part of the afternoon at his place when you’d both claimed having a dance party would have helped your inspiration for the english paper - spoiler alert if very much had not. Right below it you see mark’s profile the username “besquaremusic” making you slightly laugh, before seeing that he’d stopped listening to music twenty minutes ago but it’s the music that the boy was listening to that has your heart rate pick up a beat and your mouth split into a smile. Right under his username the song Free Love by Honne plays, from the playlist PIZZA SONG <3 a playlist you’d made for him a couple months ago during one of your hang out sessions.

You can’t seem to shake the smile of your face as you go over to your account, scrolling until you find your study playlist hope it never fades out and click play. The melody of i believe in you starting to play only to be immediately disrupted by the blaring sound of a call coming in. The Justin Bieber song playing too loudly on your headphones indicating mark’s call before you press the answer icon smile never leaves your face because though you had a paper to get too Mark did too and suffering together was better than suffering alone.

“Yo!” is Mark’s introduction, a smile present on both of your lips as he grabs his guitar playing random chords.

“Ayo! What’s up?” you ask, eyes only leaving your facetime call for a second in order to write the theme to your essay because you had finally found the quotes you’d been looking for in your overly annotated book.

“Wanted to show you a new song i learned and if you could tell me if it sounds too similar to the original or not” the proposal makes you perk up from the sentence you were writing, giving you full attention to mark who had begun to strum the intro chords to John Mayer’s Dancing in a Burning Room.

The moment Mark starts to sing you are lost. Just like you become lost in the music that plays through your earbuds most of the day, Mark's voice is able to capture you and lose you.

It is when the right melody finds itself paired up with a harmony that matches it. When that moment feels so right that the music can be seen when you close your eyes and you can imagine the world that the piece creates if only for the four minutes and two seconds that the song lasts.

There is a world that is solely music. A world where the only thing that exists are the chords and riffs as they are paired together with melodies and lyrics in order to ground one to that world.

You feel transported anytime you hear Mark play music. Taken to a place that is only yours, with Mark and his guitar - glasses usually on the tip of his nose as he strums the strings - and you as you nod your head along to the music listening to every note that Mark plays or sings. It is not often that you join in but when you are too giddy you mouth along the lyrics with him.

The last note of the song plays and you are already clapping, the slapping of skin against each other causing a yell from your younger brother to stop making so much noise. Your clapping stops but you are now whispering, yelling to mark, telling him how much you loved the cover, marks ears reddening at the compliments as they always do.

“There has yet to be a time i have no been impressed by your musical talent, i’m pretty sure haechan would agree”

“Haechan would only agree if you told him that he has the voice of angel”

You can’t help but laugh, though contradicting him slightly in which “but you better feature haechan in your first original, and i say your number one fan can’t help but agree”

Mark only laughs, hands clapping almost hitting his guitar before telling you he wants to show you some new music he’s found through “tiny desk” which has got to be the only youtube channel you think Mark knows if you don’t count Justin Birber’s or Bruno Mars’ music accounts.

The soft music plays in the background as you two talk about the week you’ve had, the world always seems to stop when you talk to each other. Zoom backgrounds change in order for the mood of the conversation. Where you had begun to discuss if Mark were to ever write an original song what it would be on and as a joke had given himself the bright yellow genius background.

The random lyrics to Honne’s Free Love in the background as mark presented them to you laughing after every sentence.

You’d stopped paying attention to the music, or the paper that was halfway done time marking almost one am, sole focus on the boy with brown hair and doe eyes in the pixelated screen of your beat up school laptop. It had been weeks since you two had called, and yet the moment the ring ring of the facetime call had been answered it was as if the world had just skipped over the last weeks that you hadn’t spoek as much. The world just waited to click play until you two would find yourselves with each other, laughing at dumb jokes or commentary at mark’s music as you helped each other with the english homework. Though homework mostly consisted of you writing and every couple of minutes reminding a distracted mark - who was riffing with his guitar, scales played up and down one chord to the next - to start his homework.

The last sentence to your paper finally ends as you click the period button on your keyboard. You are sure that the grade isn’t going to be the best, but you put it through grammarly so at least your periods and commas are placed in the correct places before you submit the document. When you look up at your screen the time reads 3AM and Mark is jotting down something you can’t read in his notebook. The doodles on the cover make you smile, from when you had gifted him the watermelon themed notebook for his birthday before entering senior year. His old one had been beaten down and you would often see him look for empty spaces every corner crammed with writing.

The question had popped up once, what was in the notebook he carried around everywhere but Mark had only turned red before changing the topic of conversation. He had told you once - though you are sure it was unconsciously - that his form of escape was writing and music. It took little for you to assume that he wrote his own songs in that notebook, that you wished you could hear. Attached by the USB he carried everywhere, a gift you’d gotten him for a birthday when you’d found out about his love for music. Maybe you’d thought that if he could have a place to store it he would be able to record it and share it with the rest of the world.

“What are you thinking about?” The soft voice interrupts your thoughts as your eyes focus on the screen. The light bouncing off his eyes, green hoodie making him look overwhelmingly soft. The pixelated mark on your screen, a smile on his face as he begins to strum his guitar again while looking down at the notebook has your stomach swarming. And all of a sudden you can’t think of anything else except how it would feel to hold Mark’s hand and kiss him just to make him giddy. The second the thought crosses your head you are avoiding it at all costs, shaking your head aggressively.

“Just how adorable you look and that i’m gonna have to hear that song you’re writing one day” you say the first part too quickly before you can stop yourself, and mark shrinks into himself and you can feel blood rush to your face.

“I-” there is stuttering on his side as he tries to compose himself, one hand covering his face as the other tries to hide the pages of his notebook.

“No song...um...i’m not writing anything,” Mark whispers, and your glad for you headphones that allow you to hear him say that so that you could let him know that it didn’t have to be now or even in a while but that you hoped one day you’d be able to listen to his music.

Mark knows his ears are red. Just like he knows that you can most definitely not read his journal that he cherished, because then you would find out how he felt about you. It was one thing he thought for you to hear him sing covers, his escape from the world and that he had slowly become more used to other people hearing him perform, but something completely different for the person the words written on the paper for to hear them.

Haechan had heard some of it, the lyrics had yet to be refined from a jumble of messy thoughts that streamed out of his consciousness anytime you would smile at him or remind him of something he liked and would bring it up. Haechan’s only feedback apart from that he had to be part of the vocal takes and a couple of jokes at mark’s inability to talk to you about his feelings was that he actually thought it was sweet.

It was the notes, one after the other that they could both hear in Mark's small apartment room that seemed to create a love sick melody. Haechan almost thinks it’s laughable if he didn’t feel bad that two love sick idiots weren’t able to confess to each other. A series of missed opportunities, where stolen glances were never seen by each other, and excuses to be closer were pushed off as acts of the friendship that had been blooming throughout years. The notes never quite reached the other and yet when they looked at each other and the notes were in sync the whole world knew of their song.

v. one song in a room full of notes

The room smells of cheap liquor and even cheaper perfume to try and mask the scent of the weed that had been smoked outside. It comes as a shock, the hiding and sneaking of alcohol that was most likely bought off from your school’s dealer Tony, a bottle of Japanese whiskey that Mark claims is not easy to come by. No one in the room has the heart to tell him that that’s the exact liquor that Tony sells to absolutely everyone, well Haechan does but you're able to stop him from saying anything when you tell him there’s a brownie buffet bar.

Maybe it’s because you’ve all just graduated, the room’s atmosphere is celebratory, everyone's had at least a couple of drinks, or the fact that in three weeks the chances you’ll all see each other again or so slim that if you do something today any repercussions might not last. It’s these thoughts that don’t stop your mind from wandering over to Mark who's sitting next you.

You’re a couple of drinks in, every point in your body that is touching mark arm to arm is alive. The music isn’t loud but the voices from your friends create a melody of their own as they tell stories of the past years. You wonder if maybe that’s why it feels like you and him are in your own bubble, chairs touching arms close together, fingertips only a breath from holding onto each other.

Maybe it’s the way you feel light and the world seems to end if you don’t let the boy next to you know how everytime you are near hear him your heart is in your throat, and you feel warm all over butterflies flapping their wings all around your body. Migrating from stomach to your heart to a constant beat of love. It’s seconds like these when your eyes meet and you can appreciate the way his hair curls at the back of his hair, and his eyes distant when watching the crowd in front of him turn to yours focusing. Lips tugging slightly upwards and he smells of the perfume used to cover the smell of alcohol that lingers in his breath only slightly when he speaks to you. Voice so low that you are leaning in slightly so that you share breath as you hear him ask you the single question that sends your heart into a paradiddle on on off on on off, faster and faster.

“Who do you think I wrote A Ring For No One for?” The question has you pulling back eyes searching across the room as your heart beats faster. You can feel the rush of blood in your ears, a dizzying effect, the single thought repeating over and over in your mind maybe it’s me. But you look around not realizing that Mark has kept his eyes on you and only you hoping you get the hint.

You want to ask if it’s you. Want to know if there was some way that he might have felt the same way you had since that day in your free period when the world had crumbled around you and he had been there, your favorite song playing through his precious headphones the same easy smile on his lips. When he’d offered you the headphone so that you would each be listening and you were able to calm down because though the world seemed to be spinning out of control, Mark had been there to keep you grounded.

Instead you say the name of a friend who’s standing a couple of feet in front of you as she talks to someone else. Mark’s eyes slightly shift to your friend before he says “no”. For every no you get you can feel your heart beat louder, hands get clammy as the possibility that the only person you haven’t said is you.

You’re close to giving up, as you look at Mark he eyes looking everywhere but you and he wishes you had just said your name from the first second because now he was doubting you ever felt the same. No longer did he have the liquid courage that had prompted him to ask you the question in the first place. All he had left was a bundle of nerves that made his hands hot and clammy, fingers tapping on his leg over and over again, and zero confidence. He’d promised himself that today was the day he’d tell you, but when you were done listing the names of everyone, as if you couldn’t possibly be the one he’d been in love with, your eyes were full of light.

The room felt too small, too warm.

You could feel the shortness of your breath, the way air wouldn’t fully reach your lungs catching at your lips. No sense of stillness, just pure chaos raging on in your mind, your body as your hands - always cold now blazing - until the boy in front of you opened his mouth.

In three short words, constituent of less than a couple seconds before the world turns cold. His mouth forms a name, it slips from his lips, voice slightly pitched as he talks about the girl from theater he met only a couple months ago.

You wish you’d taken a hit of the joint. Wish you’d had a bit more of the sweet liquid that would burn down the back of your throat, maybe burning away the sickly feeling you felt. Replace it with liquor and fake sweetness from the overly sugary cocktails instead of the acid building up in the back of your throat.

One word, a name. Not yours on his lips that you’d tried one too many times to not think about. Eyes dazed, bright with the alcohol that still burned in his system when he looked at you that if you’d had more liquid you could have fooled yourself to believe that the admiration in his eyes was meant for you not the girl behind you who was fixated on what her friend was saying.

The world revolves around notes, you’d believed that if you were patient enough those notes would arrange themselves for you. Black and white keys playing a melody that only you and him would understand, crescendoing into confessions under cold nights, hands held together.

Not every song is a hit, because not all notes work together, cohesively to create a melody for your ears. This time the notes reach crescendo, as the burn at the back of your eyes threaten to yell, scream burst at their sockets. These notes don’t align, they don’t reach their conclusion, they rip your heart out with quick breaths, warm hands that wrap around yours in the middle of the night as you drag the other part of the melody across the city at night.

vi. one too many times to say goodbye

The breath in front of you curls around the night, wrapping itself around the sole lamppost that hasn’t flickered out in the street. A boy with brown hair stands in front of you, usb in hand the yellow neon post it wrapped around the stick and you can make out a couple of the letters.

The ring in your finger spins around and around your finger. Breath soft, almost not visible except for the way that it makes you squint your eyes slightly to catch onto the face of the boy you loved, love in front of you.

Two notes. Two opposing melodies on a cycle of crescendos and diminuendos never reach each other, only just half a beat, a quarter of a beat away from each other. Catching up, slowing down until the world moved by, continued to create new beats and rhythms around you for years until moment.

You can hear the constant click click as the boy in front of you opens and closes the stick in his hand, eyes looking everywhere except at you, the melody he keeps missing, the one note he can’t seem to figure out and doesn’t think he ever will.

It's almost as if for the first time since you two have met, the world is able to syncopate itself to your own rhythms, an eight note of a pause as you both take a shivering breath and breathe the cold air of the New York night catching up to you both.

A hand reaches out, always so warm against yours, the metal of the hard drive cold against your palm, and he mumbles words you’ve heard before. You’ve heard the word before, coming from haechans lips almost everyday since you graduated, the word from partners you’ve had each saying the word with different connotations. But this time you hear the word fall from his lips, as if he’s holding on to it.

A musician through and through, trying to convey a history of feelings and memories with just the melody that he says your name. But you whisper his name too, as paper crumbles slightly in your hand, eyes flickering slightly to the post it note, and you can mostly make out the words before his hand covers yours with a small shake of his head, a small smile grazing his features. Not now, it tells you, later it urges you.

The issue with later is that it is never specific, later was what you’d told yourself over and over when he broke your heart. Later was when you reminded yourself to not cry out against the world when you’d realized you’d fallen in love with your best friend but your world would never align. Later is what remains, when later becomes years down the line and you play back the usb. The engravings on the side bring a flash of memories, two kids in love sprawled on rocks as they talked about the way their hearts would only feel alive when next to each other. Later quickly becomes now, and the almost faded note on the post it note mark gave you years ago, the pizza song I never gave you but wished to show you only visible if you stretch your imagination and trace the dents on the faded sticky note, the tiny journal drawing you’d seen him carry around endless times a brown spot of the page.

Your notes, chords on chords, melodies on beats and rhythms creating layers to the soundtrack of your life, are played out by the usb drive as the rhythms that finally sync up with your own play in the background. One song, one melody you become but not in time, never at the correct time. Because music never has one right time, it has halves, and fourths, it has eights and sixteenths but never wholes. Wholes that you learn to create with time, creating your own melody a syncopation to your own beat and heart.

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