#~If you are a mutual pls pretend i have sent this back to your inbox. i promise i love you.~

[paula-in-dreamland]

autumn check-in ♡ so many of us are going through a hard time right now and i want to spread some love and kindness!! i wish you all the warm, healing energies and hope that you are doing well over there!! take care 💞💞

THANK YOU FRIEND!!! <3

[ewankoseyo]

my person || mark imagine

A/N: This request has been sitting in my inbox for about two weeks, so apologies to the anon who sent this and I hope you enjoy this one! Prequel/sequel to the “your song” drabble I did, so check it out if you haven’t yet! Also the reasoning behind “Build Me Up Buttercup” being “your song” may also be loosely based off of real life (if you really want the story behind that, lmk lol)

“I’m so in love with your Mark “your song” story, could you do a continuation? Like, the reader goes on a drive with him and then they start talking about their relationship and what happened within the months of not talking to each other? And pls make it fluffy I love fluffy Mark. If not, it’s totally fine! Thank you!!”

“You staying up tonight?”

That text is how it always starts. Before you know it, you’re pulling up in Mark’s car to the nearby mart to buy snacks and energy drinks for another all-nighter.

“You know, if you started sooner, you wouldn’t have to cram a whole semester’s worth of material into one night,” Mark teased as he held the door open for you.

“Hey, it’s not might fault I got the professor from hell who expects us to live, breath, and eat o-chem,” you jabbed back. “You’re the one who decided to study for his final at the last minute.”

“Because I had no choice. I had two other projects due this week and I had to handle logistics for the club’s fundraising event,” Mark gave you an unamused look. “You can walk home if you want.”

“Touché, Mr. I’m-in-a-competitive-major-AND-the-backbone-of-this-club,” you resigned, giving him a light shove. Whenever you’d make fun of him, Mark had to have the last word by reminding you that you were always mooching off of him for rides. “Stop messing around and get some snacks. I have a paper to submit before 11:59.”

“You’re lucky I don’t charge you for gas.” He stuck his tongue out at you before walking off to the nearest aisle of unhealthy goods.

Mark already had some chips, a couple packs of ramen, and three cans of coffee in his basket when he heard a familiar tune play in the overhead speakers. Right on cue, he heard rushed footsteps coming from behind him.

“It’s like they know we’re here!” You tossed some snacks into his basket before dancing in place to the song.

“This song is haunting us,” he joked, bopping his head along as he scanned the shelves for more food. You sidled up next to Mark and held out your hand.

“Dance with me.”

He rolled your eyes and gently shoved you away. “You’re wasting time! I thought you had a paper due?”

“You’re no fun,” you frowned before continuing to sing. “Why do you build me up, buttercup baby...”

“No, I’m just more responsible,” he bantered. “Is this everything?” You nodded, taking the basket from him as you sang along.

It seemed like many students had the same idea of staying up late to study, as there was a bit of a line at the only checkout stand open. Ever since coursework in your respective majors had picked up in the middle of the semester, this became a regular occurrence for you and your best friend. You would text Mark asking if he was planning to stay up late to get work done. After picking you up to grab snacks with him, Mark would take you back to his studio for a busy night. You had stayed over at his place so many times, you kept extra toiletries and clothes there. Tonight was no different.

Mark softly sang along to the tune as he walked over to join the queue, following your animated form.

“I need you, more than anyone darling, you know that I have from the start...”

Mark, deciding to play along just once, pretended to hold up a microphone to your lips and looked at you expectantly for you to sing. You shot him a grin as you happily obliged.

“So build me up, buttercup, don’t break my heart...”

You giggled at the silliness of the situation as you finished your part, averting your attention to the line shortening in front of you. As you quietly waited for your turn, you couldn’t help but feel a pair of eyes on you. You glanced back at Mark, who stared back down at you shamelessly, a small smile playing on his lips. 

“What?” You asked, narrowing your eyes at him suspiciously. Mark was usually one to shy away from any kind of attention, but at that moment, it was as if he was subtly begging you for it.

“Nothing,” he shook his head, his smile casually turning into a smirk. “I was just thinking about something.”

“About what?”

“About how I’d be nothing without you,” Mark replied simply before glancing in front of you. “Oh, there’s space now.” Disregarding your stunned expression, he moved in front of you and began loading out contents from your basket onto the conveyor belt. 

“Wha...” You silently stood there dumbfounded as Mark paid for the snacks. He took the bags from the cashier and was about to start leaving when he noticed you weren’t following him. 

“Hurry up, fool,” he playfully scolded, smirking at your frozen form. “Didn’t you say you had a paper due before midnight?” You shook yourself out of your thoughts and gave him another shove in response, not quite trusting your voice at that moment. You rushed out of the store before him, giving yourself some time for the winter air to bring your inflamed cheeks back to normal body temperature. 

“Nothing without you?” What on earth was he talking about?

Mark never brought those words up again the rest of that night. They plagued you, distracting you from your word document and forcing your attention back to the boy splayed out on his bed and reading in front of you. He’d look up and respond to your gaze with a smile, teasingly pointing to your laptop as if silently scolding you to keep working, before returning to his textbook. 

He never brought those words up ever again.

——

You found him leaning against the front of his car with his hands in his pockets, staring off into the distance. With the way his hair was done up and his outfit was a far cry from his usual hoodies and soccer pants, you wondered where he could have come from at this hour. 

“Mark?” The boy immediately shot up from his relaxed position when he heard his name, hurriedly straightening himself out before looking at you. As you walked closer to him and got a better look at Mark’s face, you found his expression unreadable. 

He couldn’t read yours either.

“H-hi.”

“Hi.” You both stood there a few feet apart, silently staring at one another and waiting for the other to say something. Awkwardly clearing his throat, Mark took the initiative. 

“Oh, uh, you should get in, it’s kind of cold,” he rushed over to the passenger side and opened the door for you. You nodded a silent thanks before getting into the car. The two of you remained quiet as Mark slid into the driver’s seat, the ignition starting up being the only sound permeating the air. He hummed softly as he drove through the neighborhood. You stared at the buildings passing by, shooting furtive glances at the boy next to you. 

“How have you been?” You asked hesitantly. It had almost come out as a whisper.

“Okay,” Mark replied, his tone as undecipherable as his expression. He kept his attention on the road before him. “How are you? Did you finish your research paper?”

“Yeah, got it done under an hour. Like I said I would.” 

“I see.” Resume silence. Mark made a left turn out of the neighborhood. As he drove along the waterfront, you knew exactly where he was going. Night drives with Mark usually took you to a mountain overlooking the city. Whenever school and your impending futures became too much to bear, you two would end up there to clear your heads.  

“Saw that y—” 

“Haven’t—” 

“No, you,” you both said simultaneously. You laughed awkwardly. Perhaps you made a mistake in replying to his text?

You shook your head. “I was just going to say that it’s been awhile since I ventured out of the city, is all. What were you going to say?” 

Mark glanced over at you. “Oh, I was going to say...I saw, uh, that you were listening to some music.” He mentally slapped himself for making this situation weirder than it already was. “You were listening to the song.” 

 “You were listening to it too...” you mentioned quietly, staring out the window. “Is that why...?”

“Yes,” Mark nodded solemnly. “It came up in the playlist, and I, um, I guess I just thought of you.”

“Oh.” After pulling into the familiar destination, Mark parked the car and switched the engine off. It was now completely silent as you both gazed out the window at the city lights below. Could he hear how rapidly your heart was beating in your chest? 

Because Mark was pretty sure you could hear his. 

“I was thinking about you too.”

Mark unbuckled his seat belt and turned in his seat to look at you properly. “You were?”

You nodded, shifting yourself to face him. As your eyes scanned over him, you almost wanted to cry. Mark was real. He wasn’t just a a tagged guest feature in a mutual friend’s Instagram post or a memory that Snapchat used to remind you of how happy you were a year ago. Your old best friend, your person, was sitting right in front of you, giving you the softest look—just as he used to do.

But for some reason, it felt like he was lightyears away. 

“Was that the first time you’ve thought of me? Ever since—”

“Why did you leave me?” Mark cuts you off suddenly. 

“I’m sorry?” Did you hear that correctly?

His hands fumbled around in his lap. “You think I didn’t notice how you blocked me on every social media platform? I’m surprised you didn’t block my number. I only knew you didn’t delete your accounts because I once saw Jackson tagging you in a picture he was posting.” He shook his head and sighed at the thought. “You disappeared, I only heard about you when a friend mentioned you. So...why’d you basically delete me from your life?”

You looked at him in disbelief. “I deleted you from my life?” Mark nearly jumped from the sudden volume increase in your voice. It was sharp as a knife, cutting through him with every word. “You think I wanted to ignore you?”

“W-why else wou—”

“Do you know how much it hurt me to see you happy with all of our friends and still be doing well after we stopped talking?” Tears welled up in your eyes and you began to feel yourself choking up on your words, but you continued. You didn’t realize until then how much the hurt had been eating away inside of you for so long. Once you were started, you couldn’t stop. “I was dying on the inside every single day because I couldn’t talk to you, but you seemed perfectly fine with everything. It was as if...you weren’t affected at all.” You quickly wiped the tears away with your sleeve. “So that’s why I blocked you. It hurt too much to see you doing fine when I was already hurting.”

Mark stared back at you cluelessly. “I’m sorry, but I’m a bit confused,” he scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Why couldn’t you talk to me in the first place? I mean, it was like one day we were the best of friends and then the next, you became a ghost.”

You stared at him in bewilderment. Did he really not understand where you were coming from? Had you been experiencing this whole situation differently than him?

"Do you even realize how this all started?” He slowly shook his head and you sighed before continuing. “Everything was going fine until I felt like you were starting to act weird with me.”

Realization began to dawn on him. “I wasn’t being weird, but you were just—”

“Just listen to me, you’re doing it again!” You cried out, pointing at him accusingly. “Suddenly, I felt like things were different between us. You didn’t approach me like you would and whenever I’d try to talk to you, you’d give me short answers and brush me off. I would ask if you wanted to grab food and you’d say you had work to do, but then I would see you eating with another friend. When I’d text asking you if you were mad at me or if we were okay, you would just say you weren’t mad and that there was nothing going on. 

So I took your word for it and thought things were fine. I tried to approach and talk to you whenever I’d see you, but I noticed you were still kind of standoffish with me. I couldn’t exactly ask you about it in person because you were always surrounded by everyone.”

“You texted asking to meet with me,” Mark recalled aloud, nodding slowly.

“Yeah, and I told you in person how I felt. I told you that I noticed things were different. I told you that I felt too intimidated to reach out and talk to you first in person because I was afraid of you brushing me off in front of everyone. I even apologized if I did anything to hurt you and begged to for us to talk it out. And then do you remember what you said back?” You asked bitterly, continuing before he could try to answer. “You told me that you didn’t understand where this was all coming from. You were so certain that you weren’t acting any different and that you didn’t have a problem with me. You said that this was just my problem, not yours. That you were just living your life, and that if I was going to keep making a big deal out of something that shouldn’t be, you were going to leave because you didn’t need to put up with anymore of my BS.” 

Mark stared at his lap and shook his head regretfully. “Yes, I remember.” 

“I was really trying to talk to you in a way that didn’t made it sound like I was blaming you, because you had voiced to me before how you hated feeling attacked. I stressed to you that this was all how I felt,” you explained shakily. “Then all you had to say was that it was just my problem. Do you have any idea how awful that was for me? You made me feel guilty for feeling. You made me feel like my emotions were invalid. You made me feel like I was going crazy.”

“I-I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

You rolled your eyes amid the tears at the lame apology. “I couldn’t pretend everything was fine and talk to you normally after that without feeling afraid of your response, and you obviously weren’t going to approach me first, so that’s how we stopped talking.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly at your realization. “It sounds like you had a lot of time to think about this.”

“Yeah, well, thinking is all you can do when you don’t have anyone to talk to about this,” you sighed dejectedly, sniffling a bit. “Everyone worships you, Mark—how smart you are, how talented you are, how quietly snarky you are. You never ask for attention, but they’re more than happy to give it to you. You’ve got them all in the palm of your hand without even trying. If I were to explain to anyone else how I felt, they would think I was crazy too.”

Silence filled the air once again, besides your attempt to suppress your hiccups, as you both let your words simmer. You had been over all of this before, only this time it seemed like Mark was actually listening to you rather than passing off your words as nonsense. Whatever happened next, the ball was in Mark’s court. 

"I freaked out,” Mark finally admitted.

“What?”

“Did you ever hear what everyone was saying? About us?” He looked almost embarrassed as he asked. 

You had an idea of what he was getting at but decided to press on. “What were they saying..?”

Mark sighed, anxiously running a hand through his neat hair. “How...they thought I liked you. Like liked you. How they thought we were already together. How they all apparently shipped us together. Freshmen from the club who I barely talked to kept coming up to me asking when we were going to be a thing. One even told me that they all secretly called us mom and dad.”

“Oh.” You stared out at the city lights wistfully, suddenly feeling small under Mark’s gaze. You had heard it all before. Even when you two would just be sitting next to each other, people would shoot you a knowing look without Mark noticing. You had secretly enjoyed all the talk, believing that if everyone else saw the chemistry between you guys, maybe Mark soon would too. You should have known better, Mark was talking about these rumors as if they were a bad thing to believe. “But you never cared what people said about you, truth or rumor. Why were you so stressed over that rumor?” 

“Because it wasn’t a rumor,” he replied effortlessly. Just like you, once started, Mark couldn’t be stopped. Without a word, he gently took one of your hands from your lap and laced your fingers through his. You had forced Mark to hold your hand before—“That guy just can’t take the hint that I’m not into him. Mark, hold my hand and pretend we’re together!”—but he had never initiated. Actually, he rarely initiated skinship with you, but you were also the only one he let cling onto him like a leech. “You know me, I’m not one to talk about my feelings. If everyone else catches onto them, it becomes a whole ordeal.” His other hand came up to your face and he gently caressed the tears away with his thumb. You made no move to shy away from his touch. “I’m supposed to be the guy who just focuses on doing well in his major and on leading our club. Whoever I liked, if there was anyone I liked, would just be a mystery for everyone to gossip about behind my back and I was fine with that.”

“Mark, why couldn’t you just tell me how you felt?” You asked, disappointment laced in your voice. “We’re best friends, we tell each other everything.”

“Exactly, you’re my best friend.” Mark drew his hands away from you and looked back down at them in his lap shamefully. You instantly missed his hand holding yours. “I thought I was really good at hiding my feelings. If everyone else was able to see them, that probably meant that you did too. And I,” He sighed, sparing you a glance. “I was afraid of what would happen if you did, so I tried not to be so obvious.”

“So that’s why you became distant with me?”

He nodded. “I figured that if I was, no one would suspect a thing. You wouldn’t suspect a thing. How was I going to risk our friendship by you knowing how I really felt?”

“Well you pretty much destroyed our friendship when you stopped talking to me, so you really had nothing to lose,” you pointed out almost bitterly.

“I deserve that,” he replied sadly, pursing his lips as he looked at you. “And more. You think I’ve been doing okay all this time? The truth is that I’ve been a mess. I didn’t know what was going on with you. If I didn’t see you in Jackson’s photo or Bambam’s story, you could have been dead for all I knew. I couldn’t ask anyone about you without them being suspicious of how I felt or asking me why we weren’t together as much as before, so I kept quiet.” 

“But I saw you hanging out with everyone else, you seemed so happy,” you shook your head in disbelief, widening your eyes at that boy before you. “And you were always so busy with your classes and the club, I really thought that I was getting in your way.”

Mark gave you a sad smile, his eyes softening as he gazed into yours. “When have you ever listened to me when I was being distant and stubborn? When I was being me? You were always the persistent in our friendship.”

“With the way you were acting strange and not approaching me, I thought you needed space from me.”

“No, I realized I was being stupid. I needed my person. I needed you,” he said softly. “I’ve been nothing without you.”

“Mark...” He gently cupped your face as he noticed your tears beginning to resurface. He kissed your forehead before placing his against yours. 

“I’m so sorry for hurting you,” Mark whispered, his voice heavy with regret. “You didn’t deserve to suffer just because I was being immature and didn’t know how to handle my feelings. I didn’t reach out to you tonight expecting anything from you, I just had to see you again if even for only a second.”

“Did you suffer without me?” 

“Every single day.”

“Then we’re even,” you replied softly before pressing your lips against his. You clung onto his blazer to pull him closer to you, subconsciously afraid he would vanish into thin air if you weren’t holding onto him for dear life. He cradled your neck with one hand and caressed your cheek with the other, gently taking your bottom lip between his lips.

Your lips were soft and sweet. You tasted like vanilla and sunshine amid pockets of pain and sadness and regret. You tasted like home.

Mark tasted like he'd been longing to go home.

Pulling away for air, you gazed into each others’ eyes, tears of happiness respectfully making their appearance as you both laughed at one another. Gently, albeit clumsily, Mark picked you up over the middle console and placed you on his lap, earning a giggle from you. You buried yourself in his chest and inhaled the scent you had missed for too long as Mark held you tight.

“Don’t leave me ever again.”

“Then don’t send me way ever again,” you shot back, looking up at him and grinning. 

He kissed your forehead once again before placing his chin on top your head and holding you tighter. As you updated him on what you’ve been up to in the last couple of months, Mark silently promised himself to not let you go, because he was truly nothing without you.

——