#a strong feeling it kinda sucks and i intend to follow this blind hunch i have until someone shuts me down with a powerful and virile argume

[jungnoir]

Hey could I get a Mark scenario where his gf doesn't get into the college she wants to get into and he tries to cheer her up :) thank you

I’m the anon that requested the mark college scenario and realized I didn’t specify nct mark. Thanks

no choir;

mark lee | “I gathered you here to hide from some vast unnameable fear, but the loneliness never left me, I always took it with me. But I can put it down in the pleasure of your company.” when everything feels a little too overwhelming, the most simple and most important comforts come from his touch. high school!au. | 1.8k words. | angst, eventual fluff.

a/n: mood music is also where the title and lyric in the desc is from!

He likes to think he knows you well.

Mark was your boyfriend as much as he was your best friend. You had always preferred to fall in love with someone who was closest to you because it meant that they knew you completely, as scary as the thought was. And, in your mind, if there was anyone to know you so terrifyingly well, it had to be Mark Lee. Because you trusted Mark, you knew Mark and he knew you.

So he knows that that too sunny and too bright early evening when his messages to you about your incoming acceptance letter go unread, something is off. You wouldn’t shut up about your top pick possibly accepting you for their upcoming freshman year for months. You were counting down to the day that you would receive the letter, when the usual annual rounds of fall acceptance letters would go out. Just as quickly as he realizes it, he’s grabbing his phone and slipping on some pair of sneakers with the laces untied and flying in the breeze as he rushes down the sidewalk to your house.

The route is familiar and well-traveled; many times before, he’d walked you down that same path with ice creams in hand during the unbearably hot summer months and cuddled you closer into his side when the wind turned prickly. The only other time he’d ever taken this path with the same urgency and rapid beating of his heart reminiscent of right now was when you’d been sick and alone at home and he’d have rather been damned than leave you miserable without company. Back then, his worry was minute. He knew you’d get better, knew it was just some silly common cold that’d pass with some rest and lemon tea and lots and lots of disgusting cough syrup. This time around though, he had a feeling he could not bat away that worry so easily.

His mind doesn’t click with his surroundings until he’s scurrying up your empty, slanted driveway and fishing the spare house key from the dirt of your mother’s beloved flower pot, the key with an “M” lightly carved into the metal because it wasn’t so much a spare key as it was Mark’s key, really. He knows he probably looks ridiculous to your loitering neighbors that water their plants and enjoy the warm weather on their lawns; the lazy day he had intended to have in bed was clear in his red plaid pajama pants and the toothpaste stained tee shirt hanging off his lanky shoulders, as was the rush apparent in his frazzled, windblown hair and feet stumbling around as to not trip over the laces he couldn’t bother to pause and tie.

When he has your front door open, he’s greeted by the silence of the home. He’s aware your family is out, but he knows you’re there just by the view of your favorite shoes tucked near the front door like usual. He takes the time to fix his gaze on himself in the mirror near the entrance, the sight of his nervous look staring back at him causing him to fidget with his wild head of hair. He lightly tosses the key back in the pot and shuts your front door.

His walk to your room is also a familiar path. He recalls a time when he could only wish to get so close to your bedroom door early on into your relationship. Now, he was standing before the closed thing, his heart in his throat for all the wrong reasons.

Mark was never good with words. You’d always been understanding about that. It didn’t make him any less upset that he could never really comfort you with inspiring reassurances when you needed them, and it didn’t make him feel any less nervous when he realized that maybe a hug and kiss wasn’t going to fix this.

With all the grace that Mark Lee can muster, he enters your room.

You’re sat at your desk, legs pulled up to your chest with your chin resting on your knees. Your laptop is open to a video montage and, the closer he gets, the clearer he reads the title “videos for a bad day”. There’s an opened letter sitting in your trash can, and he just makes out the seal of the college you applied to. He frowns deeper, “(Y/N)?”

Perhaps you hadn’t heard him throw himself in through your front door because you jump slightly in response… and don’t turn.

This was where it got tricky for him.

What he wanted to do was give you a long, TED talk-esque pep talk that would get you back up on your feet in no time. He wanted to lay out how the college probably sucked anyway and you had dodged a bullet, clearly, if they couldn’t pick a good student when they were right in front of their face. He wanted to make you laugh even, because you were one of the few people who truly found his lame jokes funny.

You continue to stare at the screen, shots of tiny puppies playing with their owners and beautiful scenery decorated your screen but you didn’t react to any of them. Reaching a hand out, Mark boldly pauses the video, and as he expected, you still don’t react. Most likely, you were far too deep in your own thoughts to comprehend what was on screen before you.

His hands fall to the arms of the chair and he begins to swivel you around until your hunched form is facing him, eyes finally showing some life when they meet his. He crouches down until he’s a little lower than eye level with you and lets his fingers dangle down to your folded arms wound tightly around your calves. The moment his fingers brush over your skin, goosebumps follow in their trail. He looks up from your skin to you, “Hey…” Mark calls softly.

You swallow audibly. You know, you know the lump in your throat is too thick for you to speak around without sounding strangled or like you’d been crying for an hour (you had been, but for once, you were nervous for him to know that). You so desperately wanted to keep up some kind of apathetic facade because he and so many others had reminded you time and time again that there was a possibility they wouldn’t take you, that you should have two or three backups just in case. You’d done it all of course, but that didn’t mean your heart still wasn’t foolishly set on your top pick. You had planned everything from how you’d decorate your dorm to what you’d say on that beautiful graduation stage four years down the line. And now… nothing.

Were you not enough?

“Hey.” You whisper, hoping that it’ll hide the strain in your voice (it doesn’t).

Mark bites his lip to suppress a sudden need to babble out a bunch of useless things he knows deep down would not soothe your hurting soul. Your future, your life, your dreams of who you’d be and what you’d become had been thrown completely out of the window the minute you’d received those daunting words (”We regret to inform you…”). Maybe it was too dramatic, maybe you were too absorbed in your own head because no, this wasn’t the end of the world, but it still hurt like a bitch.

If the stress of graduating and beginning this new, scary chapter of your life wasn’t already enough to weigh you down, this letter surely was the kicker.

Instead of speaking (because he still needs time to think of what to even possibly say), he gently prods at one of your hands with his own, fingers trying to slip into yours. You let him lock his fingers with yours together without fuss, your eyes following the movement he makes as he runs his thumb over the back of your hand. The skin burns there, a recurrent detail whenever Mark would be so gentle with his touch.

He tugs your hand to his mouth and presses a closed mouth kiss where his thumb had just been, fingers squeezing yours. He breaks eye contact with you just for this and you’re thankful, because the way your breath hitches and the way the tears gather at the edges of your eyes all at once is something you don’t want him to see right now.

Ever the frightful one, Mark is surprisingly ready when you catapult out of the chair and into his waiting arms, hands still locked together and tucked to your chest as you bury your face in his neck. He immediately holds you strong and sure with his free arm, his own eyes prickling with tears too at the soft sobs that rack your chest in waves. He listens to you cry with a heavy heart, wanting nothing more than to brush away the pain along with the tears, but only one of those things is so easily remedied.

He can only tell time by how much more orange the sun gets behind your window blinds. His arm gets stiff from the position but he still holds you steady. Your hands are warm and clammy but his grip never ceases. At some point, when your tears stop and your sobs come to a halt, he has had time to think of what he could say to comfort you.

Sweetly, he kisses your temple, “You are more than enough.”

Because Mark knows you, of course he knows you.

You hold him just a bit tighter, “…Your heart is beating really fast right now.”

Mark is flushing instantly, his hand twitching away from your loosening hold as you wipe your eyes and look up at him. You notice the trail of red along his lovely skin and watch it spread to the tips of his ears, “I-I wasn’t sure what to say to you before… I didn’t want to annoy you with something stupid and cliche.”

You hum, smiling slightly into his shirt as you retake his hand in yours. “You know… I think at first, I wanted you to say something stupid and cliche. Anything to make me feel better. But… there’s something about your touch… it kinda does the job all on its own.”

Mark looks down at you in surprise. This was surely news to him.

You’d never said a thing about the way he would touch you, only that you knew it was his love language. He had always assumed your acceptance of it was more in understanding rather than… appreciation. “It does? So, this is okay…? Just holding you is okay?”

“More than okay,” you whisper, bringing your tangled fingers to your lips to press your own kiss to his knuckles, “please… you don’t have to think about saying anything grand. Just… hold me.”

Mark takes a moment to compute this. Then, his arm brings you closer, tucking your head under his chin with a content smile. “Okay. Yeah, okay. I can do that.”