#obsessed with the way the whole internet banded together to defend her

[reginaphalange2403]

Like 8 different celebrity scandal/news events have happened this week, and meanwhile I’m still processing Joe Jonas’ vitriolic smear campaign against Sophie Turner. That shit ignited a flame deep inside my raging feminist soul✊🏼

[arigathanksgozaimuch]

constant.

genre: angst, fluff. character/s: mark tuan | reader. overview: because even when everything changes, including himself, mark is sure you would remain constant. word count: 2174.

You met Mark when you were in kindergarten and he was in first grade, like your older brother, Jackson. They both get dismissed at noon, and since Mark only had his mom, who worked until five, he goes straight to your house after school. He and Jackson race each other to the latter’s room and carry the big treasure chest full of Legos towards the living room. Together, they make up stories while building towers and trucks and houses made of bricks. Whenever you would try and join them, however, Jackson gives you your own Legos to play with. Sometimes, though, he incorporates you into their ongoing story; you were the dinosaur who came from the ocean to destroy the city they had created. On rare occasions, when Jackson was just plain mean, he doesn’t allow you anywhere near them. Just when you are about to cry, Mark pacifies you by creating a figure of a man made out of Legos. He pairs it with your Polly Pocket and has them drive around in one of Jackson’s Hot Wheels. Looking back, you realize how ridiculous it all seemed, but it was an effective way to keep you from crying.

As the three of you grew older, your interests changed, too. By sixth grade, the two boys have moved on from Legos and toy cars to video games. Although he was old enough to be left at home by himself, Mark still comes over to your house after school to hangout with Jackson. You’d thought by then he would have gotten over his quiet phase, like Jackson who couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut, but Mark stayed the same, quiet as ever. You, on the other hand, and like many of your girl friends, were starting to feel the onset of puberty. You avoid them as much as possible, because suddenly it felt like you were from two different dimensions — them in their video games and soccer and basketball, you in your magazines and dresses and sleepovers. It also didn’t help that one of your friends admitted to having a crush on Mark.

By the time you reach high school, your brother meets more friends, but Mark remained to be his closest. He doesn’t visit your house that often, but when he does, it isn’t just him and Jackson anymore. There’s seven of them now, and even though Jackson’s new friends are kind and fun and loud, you sometimes wish it was still just the three of you. Despite your temporary falling-out when the both of you started undergoing puberty and had numerous fights where you both swore to hate each other, you and Jackson become close once again after he asks you for girl advice. His and Mark’s obsession with video games has come to an end — they were now starting their own band together with their five other friends. Visits to your house became less frequent, because they needed somewhere to practice. They end up in Mark’s place, because only his mom allowed them to when all the other guys’ parents didn’t. Mark tells you this the day before they start taking their instruments to his place. He brought you slices of pizza he had especially reserved for you up to your room, because Jackson was overprotective and didn’t want you hanging out with them when all his friends were around.

“You can come over if you want,” he had offered, picking on a pepperoni while he sat on the floor of your bedroom. “Jaebum says it would be good to hear an outsider’s opinion.”

“Nah, I’ll pass,” you said, scrolling through your phone and eating pizza lying down. “Jackson wouldn’t allow me to be there.”

“Hey, it’s my house. I get to decide who I want to invite or not.”

And so you come over after school during Fridays, because that’s when they play the five songs they’ve chosen throughout the rest of the week. Jackson had been grumpy at first, but eventually realized he was more concerned about the band’s overall wellbeing than his own irrational worries of any one of his friends trying to flirt with you. You don’t tell him you’re already crushing on one of them. Sometimes Mark would ask you for song suggestions, so you choose acoustic ones on purpose, knowing he plays the instrument well.

A few years later, you get left behind to study in the college in your hometown. Jackson and Mark go to the same college together cities away from home. They don’t come over anymore, so you see Jackson less often, Mark even less. The seven of them continue as a band, and Jackson invites you over for the first gig they got. He’s gotten a few years older, but Mark still manages to look for you in the crowd and flash you a smile. Just when you think you’ve gotten over your little crush on him, he tells you he’s written songs for their demo album, some of them for you. So you go back home feeling a bit lightheaded from your encounter. The butterflies in your stomach return a few weeks later when Jackson sends you a copy of their demo. That is, until he tells you none of Mark’s songs made it to the final compilation. Despite this, you keep coming to their gigs — for Jackson, you tell yourself — even as the crowd seems to get thicker and wilder each time. You don’t make eye contact with Mark anymore.

The first day of your third year in college, Jackson calls to tell you they’re signing a record deal. You scream in excitement; he does, too. And you tell him you can’t wait for him to get famous so you can go on interviews as theJackson’s little sister and tell all his fans about that one time he broke one of your mom’s fine china, locked himself in the bathroom for three hours, and drank tap water to “survive”. The memory makes you miss him more, so you travel a whole two hours by bus to see him. You see the rest of the band except Mark. He’s seeing someone, Youngjae reveals, and they met during one of their gigs. Jackson then blabbers on about the tours they were supposed to go to soon — around Asia first, he says, and around Europe and the Americas when they make it bigger. If only your brother had listened closely, very closely, he would have heard the sound of your heart breaking.

So you go through the rest of the months trying to make something out of yourself until you finish college. Your parents insist you don’t leave town, however, because having a son whom they didn’t get to see very often was sad enough. Jackson calls you every time he had the chance. Unlike when you were younger when he would be ready to kill anyone who even looks at you longer than two seconds, he now encourages you to date. You’ve tried to, you tell him, but you just don’t want to commit to anyone at the moment. You don’t tell him the true reason: that you’re still waiting for the boy who doesn’t look at you like you’re the dinosaur coming out of the ocean to destroy the city of bricks, because Mark already has someone. The fantaken photos say so. You don’t even recognize the band from the pictures, even your own brother. And while life seemed to be moving forward (and quickly) for them, you couldn’t say the same for yourself. So you go to sleep thinking that the boy who has seen the world has zero chance of noticing the girl who was stuck in the same town since she was born and probably conceived.

When Jackson finally comes home from the tour that seemed to last for eternity, you hug for an entire two minutes. You almost cried when you saw him, and you might as well have when you saw Mark. His hair has been dyed a bright pink and he doesn’t say anything but you go and hug him, too. Because before he was your first love, he was also your friend, and friends don’t lie to their friends. So you tell him his hair makes him look like cotton candy. He laughs.

The welcome party organized by your parents was a success, only because all seven of the band were there and all their parents were there. And, as if it were muscle memory, you jog up the stairs to your childhood bedroom as soon as the boys piled up to chatter and hang out. There was a knock on your door a few moments later, and as you’re lying down you catch a hint of pink peeking through the slight crack of your bedroom door. With an entire box of pizza in hand, Mark enters your room and sits by the floor and it was so Mark of him to do that you almost weep. He tells you of his adventures with Jackson, including the ones he’s made by himself, and then asks you of yours. You didn’t have much to say, only because you really didn’t have much adventures to begin with.

“You didn’t invite her over?” you ask, peeling a pepperoni from your slice and popping it into your mouth. You didn’t mention her name, not because you were feeling bitter, but because you really didn’t care to know.

He was busily putting hot sauce in his. “She was a bitch.”

You snort.

“What—she was!” he defends, licking cheese off his fingers. “We broke up even before we got on the tour. I was more than glad to fly out of the country if it meant I wouldn’t be able to see her again.”

“She wasn’t that bad.”

“[Y/N],” Mark says sternly, looking you in the eye. You almost had a heart attack. “She made me sign things and then sold them off the internet. I don’t know about you, but scamming someone isn’t exactly what I call a relationship.” You laugh and he laughs, but he follows it up by asking, “What about you?”

“I was waiting for you,” you say impulsively, taking another slice of pizza from the box. You’ve thought about telling him before, when he was still the scrawny boy who sits beside you and sings at your request, and you’ve planned elaborate ways on how to confess your feelings. But now you didn’t have anything to lose.

Mark doesn’t seem surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“It’s not like I would have had a chance,” you reply, keeping your gaze on your own food. “I was just a kid.”

“We’re literally a year apart—”

“I know, but still,” you cut him off.

“—and I wouldn’t have wasted my time dating other people if I’d known,” he continues, almost rolling his eyes at you. “God, we’ve wasted years. Years.”

“Wait, what?”

“What I’m trying to say, dinosaur girl…” Mark places his pizza back on the box and scoots closer to the edge of your bed,  fishing something out of his pocket and then reaching for your hand to slip something small and plastic. “…is that I’ve loved you since I can remember, and I was just too scared to confess because I would have to ask Jackson for permission first and I haven’t had the chance to.”

You alternate glances at him and the Polly Pocket doll in your hand, the one you’ve tried looking for long ago but couldn’t seem to find anywhere, because suddenly everything seemed too surreal. You snap out of it, however, when your mom peeks through the door and calls both you and Mark for group photos. The two of you go your separate ways — Mark to his mom, and you to Jackson and your parents. A whole load of flashes and changes in position occur, because Jaebum was the bossiest when he’s the one holding the camera, and the entire time you had a smile on your face, all you could think about is the plastic doll in your fist.

Finally, the other members of the band leave one by one, until only Mark and his mom were left. Mark sits next to you on the couch and taps your arm. He holds his own plastic figure, the bulky man made out of bricks, in front of your eyes, as if waiting for you to bring out yours. You did, fishing Polly Pocket out and holding her by her synthetic blonde hair. Mark makes his figure walk the length of his thigh up to his knee and meets Polly Pocket there. His brick man kisses your doll’s face, and you felt as if Mark was the one kissing you. Jackson comes out of his room and rolls his eyes once he sees the two of you holding dolls. You laugh, because now your brother is the new dinosaur, out to destroy the story you and Mark have created.