informal separation and move out and move on with their lives, except you can’t really disentangle yourself from the person you spent more than 15 years with and they share all the same friends and nothing about it is easy. but they do it and they move on.

except after a while donghyuck starts looking lighter and happier whenever they get together and the smiles come to his face easier and he doesn’t even bristle all that much when he looks at mark anymore which mark would be happy about, bc he always wants dh to be happy, except

donghyuck’s stopped wearing his ring, and he shows up with a hickey badly concealed to movie night once and no one says anything about bc they’re all keenly aware of the mark sized elephant in the room but they all know what’s left unsaid. that donghyuck’s moving on and it’s only

mark left here, marinating in the past and wondering how everything had gone so wrong. the only spot of light in his life is the terrible hope that this won’t last. he of all people knows that donghyuck is an acquired taste and it’s not so easy to swallow around the Whole of him

and it might be awful to think so, it might be awful to hope that his ex—no, his /husband/—will throw aside his new fling and return to being as miserable as mark himself is, but mark thinks about it anyway. wonders, quietly, to himself, places a bet only with himself for how

long it’ll last. he doesn’t think it’ll be very long. except then he meets donghyuck’s boyfriend. /boyfriend/ donghyuck introduces him as, straight backed and looking over mark’s head as he says the word. and all of them shoot mark a fleeting glance before greeting this newcomer

this intruder, this person who has no right to stand there, arm loosely thrown around donghyuck’s shoulders, when the tan line from his fourth finger still hasn’t faded, bright eyed and cheerful, a toothy grin levelled at all of them as he introduces himself.

still, mark doesn’t think it’ll last very long. it can’t possibly. and then he gets to know jaemin.