On Fridays, nobody ever visits the library past ten o’clock in the evening.

It was the unwritten rule of every college student on campus—the library was meant for stressed out students who pull all-nighters in hopes of getting an acceptable GPA by the end of the semester. Majority of the student population spend their weekdays cramming all necessary workload the night before the deadline instead of doing it two weeks earlier, so that by the time the weekend hits, the students could continue their unholy ritual of ignoring more assignments and spending Friday night getting completely intoxicated.

Jackson, proud to say, was a bona fide believer in this practice.

He usually spent most of his Friday nights camped out in Jinyoung’s room and watching reruns of 21 Jumpstreet on HBO, then persuading Bambam to go to the nearest mini-mart with him at two o’clock in the morning just to buy another six-pack of beer. The younger would rebuff, saying that it was too late to take a stroll outside the campus past midnight, but Jackson would persist and say that nothing beats prolonged stress more than pints of beer and endless packs of Skittles. This would go on for the rest of the semester, with Jackson crashing each of his friends’ dormitories simply because he chooses to spend Friday nights away from his own—and Yugyeom was the first to notice it.

“Hyung, why is it that you always spend your Fridays at our place?” the younger said one day, moments after Jackson had barged into their dorm room and crashed onto their weathered-down couch.

Jackson makes a small, two-finger salute when he sees Bambam appear by the doorway of his bedroom, giving Jackson a distressed look. Jackson waves a careless hand at both of them once he finds their television remote, and then shifts to a comfortable position before replying. “What are you talking about? I don’t always spend Fridays at your place. Sometimes I crash Jaebum and Youngjae’s too,” he says, shifting between TV channels. “Most of the time I’m in Jinyoung’s, though. The kid’s ing blessed to have a room to himself. I like to remind him that I exist, and that he isn’t so blessed. You got any beer?”

Groaning, Yugyeom walks over to their tiny kitchen and rummages the fridge for any cans that they haven’tgiven to him yet. He finds one at the very back, and without bothering to check the expiration date, he chucks it to Jackson who catches it promptly.

Bambam then plops down beside him. “But what about Mark hyung, though?”

Jackson blinks twice. “Who?”

And that was the end of the conversation.

The cycle went on for three months, with Jackson constantly appearing before the doorsteps of each one of his friends every Friday night. On days that he’s feeling indebted to their generosity, he sometimes comes over with his own pack of beer and a load of junk food, but he still ends up finishing more than half of it. Nobody really minded. Over the course of those three months, many of them have realized the motive behind Jackson’s crash tendencies.

And Jinyoung was the only person to finally have enough of it.

“Okay, cut the crap, you . This is the ninth time you’ve stayed over at my room and although I love you as a friend, I’m pretty sick of seeing your face every damn Saturday morning. It makes me feel weird.” Jinyoung chokes out on a certain night, moments after he opened his door to reveal an overfamiliar face.

The other, holding a pack of beer and a bowl of popcorn, simply snickers. “Of course I make you feel weird, man. You’re ing gay.”

Jinyoung makes an exaggerated gasp and slams the door in his face. He waits three seconds to make sure that Jackson is reflecting over his actions before opening it again. “Take that back.”

“No.”

“I ing hate you,” Jinyoung says through gritted teeth as he opens the door wide enough for Jackson to slither through. Jackson only grins in return.

They both settle down on the couch, Jinyoung taking up all the space with his legs and Jackson sitting by the foot of the armrest. He’s aimlessly flipping through channels on the television, stuffing his mouth with popcorn, when Jinyoung suddenly thumps the back of his head with a rolled up magazine.

Jackson jolts, surprised. “Ouch, dude. The was that for?”

“Why don’t you ever spend Friday nights at your own place?”

He stares back, stunned. “I… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Jinyoung hits him thrice more, albeit with much more force for a really skinny guy, and Jackson finally gives in. “—ouch, dammit! Okay, okay, what do you want me to tell you?”

With a smug smile of victory, Jinyoung grabs the remote from him and turns off the television. The obtrusive silence was supposed to send out a signal that Jinyoung meant business, and he was not going to tolerate any more of Jackson’s ridiculous game of hanky-panky. When Jackson looks at him, dumbfounded, Jinyoung seizes the opportunity to grill him to the bone. “Okay, let me rephrase the question,” he starts.

After a few moments of mental deliberation, Jinyoung finally drops the bomb. “Tell me, Jackson, how long do you plan on avoiding your own roommate every damn weekend?”

Jackson blinks twice, his usual reaction to questions that catch him off guard. Jinyoung smirks. He fully knows that he got him good.

Silence engulfs them for quite a while, squeezing the anticipation out of Jinyoung’s lungs. He notices that Jackson’s about to move his upper lip and Jinyoung waits in expectancy, but then Jackson thinks otherwise and merely slumps back down with a shrug. “…I don’t know.”

Jinyoung deflates. “That’s not an answer, asshat.”

“I really don’t know, okay? I can’t ing stand the guy. He’s been my roommate for what, three months now? And—I don’t know—I just never seemed to like him. I don’t like him. Spending a whole weekend with him just might kill me.” Jackson asserts, flailing his arms around and making other strange hand gestures to emphasize his point.

Throwing his hands in the air, Jinyoung is completely convinced that Jackson is a certified idiot. “So you’retelling me that you spent every Friday night for the past three months in all our rooms because you don’t likeyour own ing roommate? Is that the reason?”

“That’s exactly the reason, yes.”

“But why do you even hate him? I don’t get it. Mark’s a great guy. I have a couple of classes with him and he always lends me his notes whenever I miss a couple of things the professor says. And he isn’t bad looking, either. He’s actually pretty damn hot. I’d rather have him crash my place every Friday rather than you—”

“Ouch,” Jackson says, looking extremely offended. He places a hand over his chest and mutters, “That took a great toll on my dignity, man. Thank you very ing much.”

“—and like, I’m not trying to offend you or whatever, but he seems pretty cool to me. I don’t get you at all, Jackson. Give me one proper reason why you hate the guy so much.”

Jackson scoffs. “Tch, just one reason? I could give you a million.”

“Oh? A million?”

“Yes, a million.”

“Then do it.” Jinyoung quips, a dangerously malicious-looking glint appearing in his eyes. Jackson stares at him for a couple of beats with scrunched up eyebrows, stunned. “I—what?”

Jinyoung looks pleased with himself once he utters the next few words. “Give me a list of reasons why you hate Mark, as many as you can think of. And when I deem your reasons perfectly logical, I’ll let you stay at my room any time you want. No list, no more crashing at any of our places. Deal?”

By the time all the words fly out of Jinyoung’s mouth, Jackson looks totally stupefied. It takes him six whole seconds of careful contemplation before he confidently mutters, “Deal.”

“Good,” Jinyoung says, satisfied. “Now pass me the ing popcorn.”

At eleven twenty-four in the evening on a Friday night, you’d expect Jackson to be anywhere else except where he is now.

It takes every bit of his unparalleled strength to resist crashing at any of his friends’ rooms that night. Jinyoung specifically told him that he needed the list by tomorrow, and Jackson is screwed as for cramming it tonight. Still, he made a deal that he promised to keep, because if he didn’t, he’d end up homeless. Figuratively, of course. He likes to pretend his room his infested with bugs every weekend as an excuse to stay in other people’s dorms, even though all his friends know the real reason why. But on this particular evening, Jackson is probably the only human being on campus that is spending his Friday night inside the library. And he hates it.

It goes against everything Jackson believed in. Everything. Nonetheless, it was go big or go home—and Jackson is absolutely sure that he does not want to ‘go home’—or anywhere near his own dorm room, for that matter.

Armed with nothing but a piece of paper, a pen, and sheer determination, Jackson settles down on a desk and starts getting down to work. “Alright, let’s see,” he muses to himself. He cracks his knuckles and begins to scrawl on the paper in big, bold letters: Thirty Reasons Why I Hate Mark Tuan.

He underlines the title for emphasis. “Good, good, that’s a definite start.”

Jackson doesn’t know why he chose the number thirty, but he is damn sure that if he went any higher than that, he’d end up repeating the same reasons until it reaches the millionth number. And Jinyoung won’t take that . He wants perfectly logical reasons—not redundant, paraphrased versions of ‘I hate his guts’ or ‘I hate him because I just do’. But the thing is, Jackson was not a logical person. He can maintain a 3.0 average, hell yeah, but only because he’s got textbook paragraphs imprinted in his mind. That doesn’t necessarily mean that anything he thinks of actually makes any ing sense.

Still, sensible or not, Jackson had a list to write. Taking a deep breath, he racked his brain for all the frustrations and vexations that had filled him up for weeks, channeling them onto the paper in front of him.

“Okay,” he drawled. “Let’s do this .”




 

Thirty Reasons Why I Hate Mark Tuan
By Jackson Wang

Number 30: I hate his hair.

I hate his hair with passion—and don’t even fight me on this—his hair . I mean, have you ever really looked at it for a ten long hard seconds and thought, what the , why is his hair ing red? And like, it’s not even the nice shade of red. Of course, it can’t just be primary colored red—it has to be burgundy under the sun or ing crimson under fluorescent lighting and sometimes I even pick up a shade of vermilion—like, the hell? I didn’t even know there were different shades of red. And here I am, using the word vermilion like I actually know what it looks like. This is ed up.

Number 29: I hate the way he smells.

He always smells like sandalwood and vanilla with a hint of something musky and—and it’s just absolutely infuriating. There, infuriating. That’s the word. Why can’t he function like a normal guy and smell like sweat and manly labor? What’s worse is that since he’s from California, he sometimes smells like the sun or the seashore and it drives me to the ing wall. Whenever I walk into the bathroom right after he finishes using it, I have to open all the windows because it smells like the goddamn beach, and I have to hold in my breath until I finish taking a piss. Insensitive .

Number 28: I hate his teeth.

The punk probably didn’t even get ­braces and yet he looks like he’d had a full mouth of perfect teeth since the day he was born. Do you realize how unfair that is to people who have ugly, crooked teeth? To people who don’t have teeth at all? Look at Bambam, for Christ’s sake. The poor kid had to suffer four years with a mouth full of metal, and here we have Mark ing Tuan flaunting his pearly whites like it’s nobody’s business. I hope he chokes on a toothbrush.

Number 27: I hate how his skin is ing flawless.

It’s so smooth and unblemished—like he never had a pimple a single day in his life. It pisses me off so much. Like, last week he fell asleep on the couch (which makes him dumb as hell, if you ask me) and I swear, his skin was practically glowing. Not that I was staring or anything—hell no—but the kid’s as pale as milk. No color in his face whatsoever. I started to wonder why his cheeks weren’t red (like mine, because I eat my ing carrots), and then I realized that all the red probably went straight to his hair. Either that, or he’s a cold-blooded cannibal.

Number 26: I hate his eyes.

Unlike most girls on campus, I don’t fawn over his eyes like all those crappy cliché movies in the early 2000s. His eyes are way too big for my liking—too childlike, too naïve. I mean, where’s the ing tiger, man? People tell me that I’ve got a strong gaze, which is true, I think. I got a post-it stuck to my desk last year from some girl, claiming that I looked at her once and made her pee. But whenever Mark looks at girls, they all suddenly want to form a cult and bring him a bunch of puppies and blankets every Wednesday. It’s stupid. Mark is stupid.

Number 25: I hate how he never talks, like, at all.

I’m not exaggerating it—he literally only says an average of 3-6 sentences per day. The first time I met him, being introduced as his new roommate at the dorm, I took the initiative to be a kind and well-mannered human by saying, “What’s up? I’m Jackson Wang, Hong Kong native. Majoring in procrastination and stress-eating. Nice to meet you.”

I even went out on a limb and extended my hand for a handshake, you know, because I’m polite and my mother didn’t raise me in the jungle. Yet, Mark only shakes it for 0.6 seconds before replying with “Oh, hi. Mark Tuan. California.” as if he might start to malfunction if he said anything more than five words. I mean, it’s not like I want him to talk to me—please. The kid is an antisocial freak. I’d rather not associate myself with the likes of him.

Number 24: I hate how he can do that backflippy tricking .

Before he came along, I used to think all that flippy was cool. Now it’s like he’s purposely shoving it in my face that he can defy the law of gravity for two seconds, without hands. And I hate that he gets so much recognition for it, too—God, it’s not that hard to do a backflip. Anyone can do it. Even dogs can do it, I’ve seen one. It’s really no big deal! One day, I’m going to master the art of flip tricking, and Mark better watch his back because I’m totally going beat his at his own game.

Number 23: I hate his nose.

His nose looks like it was sculpted out of marble. I ing hate it.

Number 22: I hate how he can speak English, too.

Seriously—it’s been three months since he moved here and he’s already stolen my spotlight as the most fluent English speaker on campus. I mean, just because he came from California and is considered an ‘American’, doesn’t mean he can just show off his fancy genuine English skills like he’s some ing 7thgrade English teacher. Heads up, you’re studying in Korea with a bunch of Koreans who don’t know the difference between the letter L and the letter R. You could at least be modest about it. God. I now consider it a blessing that I am multilingual, just so I can curse about him in Cantonese behind his back—or I could do it to his face, which I always do, anyways.

Number 21: I hate the way he dresses.

People say we have the same style, but I disagree. What an insult. So what if we have a few pieces of the same clothing? That doesn’t mean he can pull it off as well as I can. There is a clear cut line between my grade A hip-hop fashion sense and his washed-out prep boy getups. He wears beanies, I wear snapbacks. He wears cardigans, I wear jackets. He wears sneakers, I wear—sneakers. , I wear sneakers too. Whatever. Everyone wears sneakers.

Number 20: I hate how he’s older than me.

Which means I can’t ruthlessly shove him around like I do with Bambam and Yugyeom. How annoying. It’s not even that big of an —we’re only six months and twenty-four days apart. Not that I counted or anything. If I did, then that’d mean that I actually care, which I don’t.

Number 19: I hate how he isn’t athletic.

I mean, look at me, for God’s sake. I don’t mean to brag—just kidding, I do—but I was a three-time national gold-medalist for the Hong Kong fencing team, and I even participated in the Youth Olympics when I was only sixteen. Man, if that doesn’t spell out athleticism then I don’t know what does. Meanwhile we have Mark, who’s as sporty as a pile of twigs. He’s too soft, too fragile—like I could snap him in half if I tried. The punk needs to toughen up. I don’t want to have to bandage his sorry when he makes a wrong landing and breaks his face. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if he broke his face—I really don’t—I just don’t want blood all over our couch. Really.

Number 18: I hate how I’m already running out of things to say and it’s only the eighteenth number.

Damn it, I should have a billion more reasons to write. . Maybe I just have a mind block. Yeah, a mind block. I’ve been too immersed into my hatred that it’s already damaging my brain. This is obviously Mark’s fault, of course. It always is.

Number 17: I hate how he’s so calm all the ing time.

Last week, I opened our fridge and discovered that we didn’t have any milk. And because I am a milk enthusiast, it was obvious that I had to raise the dilemma to my roommate who seemed as if he couldn’t give two s about it. “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll go get some later.” he said. But he doesn’t understand—you can’t have cereals without milk. That’s a travesty. Don’t even tell me that I’m exaggerating, because I’m not. Running out of milk is just as important as an apocalyptic disaster, and Mark fails to realize this, which means he simply does not care. If a meteor crash-landed into our kitchen, he’d most likely shrug it off and call a plumber. I don’t—I don’t trust people like him.

Number 16: I hate how we have the same taste in music.

I’m almost a hundred percent sure he steals my iPod and syncs my rap playlists into his phone when I’m not around. We just can’t have the same music taste—that’s unacceptable. He’s probably only faking it. Usually, meeting someone who has a similar music taste as you would be considered attractive, hell, I consider it attractive, but Mark? …Okay, maybe it’s a little attractive, but I still hate him—I doubt he even knows who ASAP Rocky is, much less name three of his songs, even if he has them on his iPod.

Number 15: I hate how hard he tries to be cute.

He’s not cute. He really isn’t. He’s a twenty-one year old guy, which completely overrules the fact that he always looks so ing adorable ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s pathetic. Also, you didn’t hear that from me, you got that? You heard it from just another girl in his puppy-loving cult, not from me. Never from me.

Number 14: I hate how he can cook.

He watches Food Network, for Christ’s sake. Whenever he does the groceries, he always comes back carrying three bags filled with spices and herbs and other unnecessary food that we don’t even need. There are even occurrences wherein I wake up to the smell of ing pancakes, sometimes burnt, and then I get up and see Mark in his lame Flash superhero apron (which isn’t even tied properly) carrying two plates of it in the kitchen. And it  that I can’t even say his cooking tastes like —because it doesn’t. I really wish it did. But I don’t know, I guess it’s sort of nice to live with someone who can cook, even if I hate living with him in general. I can’t even make ing cup noodles without burning myself. Goddamn.

Number 13: I hate how he bites his lip whenever he’s nervous.

I’ve developed a keen sense of identifying Mark’s body language, and I’ve noticed that whenever he feels edgy or high-strung, he has a specific tendency of biting his lower lip. I hate it when he does that. Not that I pay attention to whatever he does to his lips or anything—snort—I don’t.

Number 12: I hate how he’s slowly stealing my friends.

Like , okay? I don’t even know where I’m supposed to start with this. For some sick, twisted reason, the universe deems Mark worthy of befriending the people I’ve known for years. Yugyeom met him in Calculus and thought he was pretty cool, Jaebum was assigned to do a research topic proposal with him last semester, Youngjae bumped into him in the supermarket and found out that we were roommates, Jinyoung just recently confessed that he’d rather have Mark spend Fridays at his place rather than me; and I will hold that against him until the day I die.

Also, Bambam has English Literature with him and basically thinks that Mark is Jesus reborn. He’s been tailing him around like a puppy for months, occasionally asking Mark to tutor him for exams because he is one of the many other people who think Mark is an English-speaking god. Kindly redirect yourself to Reason #22 for some background information on this matter.

And I don’t know, it pisses me off pretty ing much that he’s managed to wiggle himself into the hearts of my y friends using nothing but his masculine wiles and good looks. I mean, I’m his roommate, for ’s sake, and the fact that he’s prioritizing my own friends more than me is actually offending me a lot. I actually feel replaced—and I have a really strong feeling that this paragraph didn’t go in the direction it was supposed to go. .

Number 11: I hate how he always texts me even if he knows I won’t reply.

He usually sends me stuff like ‘dude i think our tv is broken again’ or ‘good luck with ur test today man’ even though I never reply back. The only reason why I don’t do it is because I’m an by nature, but he knows that. I’ve told this to him countless times. Still, he does it anyway, so the fact that he continues to waste his texts on someone as big of a jerk as I am is completely beyond me.

Number 10: I hate how deep his voice is.

You take one look at him and think his voice would probably sound like a prepubescent boy, but then he opens his mouth and you find out that he sounds eight octaves lower than that. It’s so ing ni—misleading, if you ask me. His voice is literally an oceanic abyss and sometimes I question whether I want to drown in it or not.

Number 9: I hate how ridiculously good he looks in my favorite color.

Mental note: Never buy him anything black or else I might just kill myself.

Number 8: I hate how he’s too kind for his own good.

He’s always so damn compassionate about everything—I bet he can’t even take a dump without thinking about all the unsheltered animals in the world and the economical condition of global warming. He’s the kind of guy you’d see on the street, passing by a homeless man and then backtracking his steps to give the man two dollars and a leftover hotdog. He’s also the kind of guy every bully would love to copy homework from, and Mark would allow it because he’s just that nice. No one—and I mean no one­—thinks about and sympathizes with that many people.

Hell, I’m the perfect example of a narcissistic , and up to this day it still hasn’t done me any wrong. But Mark, on the other hand, is a freak who allows everyone else to step all over him and it pisses me off that he’s just so damn selfless. Would it kill him to think of himself once in a while? Jesus.

Number 7: I hate how rare his laughs are.

Yeah, he’s quiet—but his laughs are a whole new breed of an endangered species. It because I’vebeen laughing for ninety-nine percent of my life and yet I sound like a castrated ostrich. He’s been gifted with a ­nice laugh, and yet he never uses it. I think I can even count the number of times he’s ever let one out with my two hands. His laughs aren’t even the explosive kind; they’re soft and airy and short. It’s the kind of laugh that you want to record and play over and over because there’s a chance that you may never get to hear it again for the next ten centuries—not that I want to hear it, though, I just think it sounds nice.

Number 6: I hate how he knows so much about me.

I don’t even remember telling him when my birthday was, but he sent me a birthday text on the weekend that I spent back home in Hong Kong with my family. And I ing replied to him, goddammit. It would be borderline rude if I didn’t, right? So yeah, I said thank you and all that while pretending that I didn’t care how he managed to find out. Maybe Bambam told him. Or maybe I did tell him, maybe, on a night that I may have been drunk out of my wits; but that doesn’t really explain how the he managed to remember it or why he even cared to remember in the first place.

But that isn’t all—he knows that I love to fence; that I have more passion for fencing than I do with my own education. He knows that I rap and beatbox in the shower. He knows that I ing love the dim sum that they sell in the small restaurant two blocks from here; he knows that I’ve secretly wanted to become a musical producer since I was six; he knows that I at Biology and that I sometimes wake up to eat in the middle of the night because it distracts me from being homesick. For someone I hate, he knows an awful ing lot about me—and I hate that maybe the only plausible reason why he does is because I’m an idiot who rambles on and on to anyone who’s willing to listen.

And Mark is always willing to listen, so that makes him even more.

It’s totally unfair—he knows all this about me and I don’t know anything about him. The most I could think of is that he’s from California, he’s a year older than me, and he’s got ing red hair. I don’t know what his favorite color is or how many siblings he has and I hate that he’s so big of a social pariah that he can’t be bothered to actually tell me anything. If he hadn’t made the effort to text me a ‘happy birthday’ while I was overseas, then I wouldn’t have made the effort to dig some dirt to find out when his ing birthday was. It’s actually a month from now. To make things fair, I’m only going to greet him just to show that I’m not the cynical bastard he makes me seem to be—but you know, only sometimes. I’m still a cynical bastard at heart, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be willing to listen, too.

Number 5: I hate how hardworking he is.

My hand hurts. Jesus, these paragraphs are starting to get pretty ing long.

Anyways, another thing that irks me about the guy is that he’s too damn diligent. I only care about school when I’m required to, but not enough that I’d actually do my homework two weeks before it’s due. Hell no. I’ve been procrastinating my way through high school and I will continue to do so until I get a degree, because that’s the way I like to do it. Mark, though, has a polar opposite viewpoint—he’s the kind of student you’d see on those college brochures, holding a stack of books and smiling into the sunlight as if studying in a university ten hundred miles from home was the best decision he’s ever made.

He stays up until three o’clock in the morning to finish projects, he doesn’t skip class, he actually does his homework in advance and—here’s the punchline—he’s one of the selected few people who actually spends few of their Friday nights studying in the library. He stresses himself out so much that it stresses me out, which is ing stupid because I couldn’t care less about the idiot, but then my conscience punches me in the face and tells me that I actually do.

Number 4: I hate how he still waits for me to get home before going to sleep.

I might have made that sound more sentimental than it should have, but it’s 11:56pm at the moment and me if there isn’t a more sentimental hour than now. Just to clear things up: we aren’t some emotionally invested couple who’ve just broken up and get nostalgic about ‘what ifs’ and romantic memoirs like in all those crappy chickflicks, okay?

No, we’re roommates. Someone needs to lock up the place before going to bed, and Mark volunteered to do it (which kinda on his part, since I always get home at the crack of midnight). And we only have one key. So on nights when I’m wasted on beer and skittles, you could only imagine how it feels to drag yourself into the dorm and see Mark snoozing on the couch with a pair of keys dangling around his fingers—and yet he still has the balls to ask me why he woke up in such a place the next morning and why he’s covered in his favorite Captain America blanket. It’s happened a few times, I’m used to it, but the kid is far too dense to care about himself—so I have to do it for him. Ridiculous, really. I think I need to apply for a new roommate, specifically one who doesn’t fall asleep on lockup duty and doesn’t have a strange obsession for comicbook superheroes.

(Or I could also buy another spare key—but that’s too much of a hassle.)

Number 3: I hate his smile.

I hate his smile. Jesus, I hate his smile. It’s so wide and unbelievably warm, like he could walk through a patch of dead daisies and make them instantly spring into full bloom. It’s totally frustrating because when he smiles it’s as if all the features I hate about him suddenly come to life—his eyes start to get squinty in a disgustingly endearing way, his perfect rows of teeth reveal themselves to the world, his inhuman hair gets twice as red and his marble ing nose is just there, like it doesn’t even do anything but it still looks ing flawless. There are ing rainbows knitted into that smile, I swear. It’s so full of butterflies and puppies and sunshi—. His smile is full of , like he is, and I hate how my dark and pitch black soul could never manage to deserve it.

Number 2: I hate how he never notices how much I hate him.

His skull is as thick as a concrete wall. I could literally have ‘I hate Mark Tuan’ painted all over my shirt and he still wouldn’t have a ing clue. I mean, is it not obvious how much I loathe the guy? I’ve just stated twenty-eight reasons why he and I’ll be damned if he hasn’t noticed at least one of them. He’s a flat out idiot, I’m telling you. Sure, he’s attractive and all that aforementioned , but he’s still an idiot. Goddamn.

Number 1: I hate that I just realized those aren’t even sensible reasons to hate him at all.

Seriously— my life.

Maybe it’s because I’m stuck in a library at midnight—which puts Mark to blame, obviously—that I just registered this fact. Who am I trying to kid? I hate the guy, I do, and we’ve already established that. I just don’t understand why the only time I have to expound on my hatred happens to be the same inopportune time that my reasons for hating him don’t make any ing sense.

I’m probably jinxed or something. I’m a piece of that takes advantage of all my friends’ rooms and refrigerators, and the gods are punishing me for it. If I give this paper to Jinyoung, he’s going to laugh at my face and never let me into his dorm again—which basically means that I’ve made a deal with a devil. My human rights will be stripped off my body and I will lose my privilege of crashing at any of my friends’ rooms; and it’s that redheaded, sympathetic, deep-voiced ’ entire fault.

It’s his fault that I’m stuck in this god-forsaken library on a Friday night, it’s his fault that I’m writing this stupid list, it’s his fault that I was forced to think about his entire existence for the past half an hour, it’s his fault that I’m still thinking about him as I am writing this, it’s his fault for making me absolutely hate his guts and it’s his fault for making me think that I hated him more than I actually do.

I hate him for reasons, but these thirty reasons aren’t the right ones. I mean, I hate that I’ve been his roommate for three months now and I still doubt whether we’re friends or not. I hate that I’ve always been the ballsy, outgoing type whenever I meet new people, but I somehow shrink to the size of a peanut whenever I pass by Mark in the hallways on the way to my next class. I hate that I can never manage to ditch him every Friday without feeling a little guilty, and then when I come back the Monday after, he thinks it’s completely okay. I hate that he’s never physically done to me at all, and yet I give him anyways. Do I hate him? Maybe. Possibly. Questioning my hatred for him is like questioning my uality—confusing as , and hoping that I wasn’t already wrong.

(I can’t even say that I’m 100% straight as a stick right now—I’m that messed up.)

No matter how many times I say I hate him or how bad I treat him, he never minds. He’s too damn thoughtful and always smells so damn good. He pulls off red hair better than most gingers on the planet, he sleeps like a baby every night, and he needs to wear a ‘Warning: Fragile’ sign at the back of his shirt because he looks too meek and too breakable all the time. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a great listener. He works harder than anyone I know and cares a great deal for people who couldn’t give a crap about him. He’s managed to squeeze himself into the cracks of my tiny, rotten soul—hell, I only leave space in there for fencing and dim sum—and always manages to see the un-douchey side of me when there’s really nothing worth seeing.

He waits for me to come home to a place that I would never even consider as a home, but the fact that I get to wake up to the smell of burnt pancakes and the familiarity of a quiet-voiced ‘good morning’ makes it all a little more bearable.

And I don’t know, maybe there’ll be days when I’ll want to watch 21 Jumpstreet with him on the couch or other days when I’ll want to falcon punch him in the nose. Hopefully there will be days of both. But Mark is a good guy in the long run, and I’d hate to have to deny that fact. Whether I hate him or not, he probably wouldn’t care—and I spent an hour making a list of all the reasons why I despise him when truthfully, I probably wouldn’t be the jackass I was without him.

You’d think I’m piss drunk with all the I’m saying. Ha, when I reread this tomorrow, I’ll most likely think the same thing. But it, you know?

In conclusion, Mark Tuan is an idiot—and I’ll be damned if I say I didn’t like him for it.


 

When Jackson is finished, it’s twenty-three minutes past twelve o’clock. He can feel his sweat trickling down his temples and hears nothing but his evenly paced breaths echoing throughout the empty library room. To say he was exhausted would be the understatement of the century.

With one final flick of his wrist, the pen is sent flying across the table and leaves a visible ink splotch on his already messy paper. Jackson stares at it for a while, flipping it over and over again, and finds it amusing that his almost decent handwriting progressively started getting cluttered and indistinguishable as it went further down. At one point, he was desperately losing space, so the last three paragraphs ended up looking squished together at the bottom of the page with really tiny letters in each word. His paper was a complete mess.

But screw it; it wasn’t like he was going to actually give this piece of to Jinyoung, anyways. Over his dead body.

Jackson skims over the content once more and cringes by the time he rereads his last few sentences. Horrifying. “God, when did I turn into such a sap?” he mutters.

He contemplates whether he should write a more coherent list another time or just concede defeat, both of which would burden him to no end. It’s not like Mark was ever going to know about this whole thing, anyways, because he was going to burn this list before it could see the light of dawn. The real question was whether he could sacrifice Fridays at his friends’ rooms or go insane in his own.

Jackson thinks hard for a moment, biting his lip and glancing at the clock on the wall. It was midnight—no surprise there. Seconds later, he hears a faint grumble coming from his stomach and he grimaces. Damn, I’m hungry as hell, he thinks to himself, remembering that the last thing he ate was a pack of peanuts and a diet soda. That was five hours ago.

Deciding that he needed to get something to eat or he might just die; he gets up from his chair and stretches for a solid minute, feeling his muscles crack in relief after being hunched over a paper for so long. Jackson hated being in a stationary position for more than thirty minutes. He doesn’t know how he managed to survive high school, with majority of his school life being stuck to a chair.

Before he could finish stretching his back, he senses his cellphone vibrate in the pocket of his jeans. Jackson digs into his pocket and fishes out his phone, seeing a notification spread across the home screen.

1 New Message from Mark Tuan.

He scowls when he reads the name. “ing great, speak of the devil,” he mumbles. He hastily unlocks his phone to read the text.
 

To: Jackson
From: Mark
2014-05-17 12:31 AM

hey dude wru?? ur friend jinyoung texted me to say that u were gonna spend a few hours in the library for some project and that u weren’t going to crash at his place tonight. should i still stay up for u or? ?

Jackson goes still when he finishes reading it and takes a deep breath. “ Jinyoung. I will kill that kid.”

Just as he’s about to ignore the text like he usually does, his phone vibrates once more and another message appears on the screen. Jackson raises his eyebrow when he sees that it’s from Mark again, but proceeds to read it anyway.

To: Jackson
From: Mark
2014-05-17 12:32 AM

maybe i should. oh and just in case i might fall asleep on the couch again, i left the keys on the coffee table and there’s leftover pizza in the microwave if ur hungry. i hope u like hawaiian haha

Jackson does like Hawaiian.

And for the first time since his birthday, he feels the urge to key in a response just for the heck of it. He’s already written some pretty weird stuff tonight, anyways. It’s probably safe to say that he simply doesn’t care anymore.

To: Mark
From: Jackson
2014-05-17 12:33 AM

i do like hawaiian but i don’t like u

He sends the message with an amused grin playing on his lips. Even though Jackson has come to level with his feelings, he will always enjoy screwing with Mark (screwing, not screwing) until the end of time. It’s the new unwritten rule of Jackson’s mind. As long as he’s sure that he doesn’t hate Mark and Mark doesn’t hate him, he will continue to make the other aware of just how much his red hair and how the rest of him even more. It’s easier that way. It isn’t logical, but then again, since when was Jackson ever logical? Never.

Without a hitch, Jackson grabs his messy list and makes his way to the front door of the library. He stops for just a moment when his phone vibrates yet again, signaling another reply from Mark. He leans by the doorframe next to a trashcan and opens it.

To: Jackson
From: Mark
2014-05-17 12:34 AM

huh

Jackson isn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but he still snickers quietly at the confused boy who was most likely sitting on the couch at home and trying to understand Jackson’s strange reply. He could just imagine it in his head, and the thought of it makes him feel a little bit lighter. “What a .” he muses, smiling to himself.

After shoving his phone down his pocket, he reaches out his hand to open the front door. But then he stops and glances down at the list that’s tightly gripped in his other hand, and realizes that there’s probably no use for the stupid thing anymore. He’s going to lose the bet in the end, so why bother? Fridays at home couldn’t be that bad. Jackson doesn’t know because he’s never tried it. And maybe it’s about time that he does.

Without a second thought, he crumples up the list in his fist, dunks it into the trashcan next to him, and makes his way out the door. After all, there was a Hawaiian pizza just waiting for him—and maybe someone else was, too.

It’s been two and a half months since Jackson got the boot from Jinyoung’s dormitory room.

Although it would appease the good-natured side of his heart to say that he missed the guy, Jinyoung’s instincts told him that revoking Jackson’s almost-permanent residency in his place was a good thing. They’ve been best friends for years; a little space would probably be healthy for their friendship, right? And besides, there were other things that Jackson had to settle for himself. Things that included wooing a certain redheaded roommate of his. Fleeing away from every passing opportunity wasn’t going to get him anywhere, so Jinyoung took the pleasure of giving him the tiny push that he needed. It took a while, yes, but it was damn worth it—he swears that he hasn’t seen Jackson this content since he found out he made it onto the competing list for the Junior Olympics, and that was a long time ago.

Jinyoung was happy for him, he really was. Just like that, everything seemed to fall perfectly into place for his best friend, and he was glad that he played a major role in it.

Although Jackson can’t crash at his place anymore, there are still occasions when Jinyoung decides that they should all get together like old times, drink a bit, do other weird with his friends. Sometimes they watch a movie or go to parties, or just hang around in Jinyoung’s room playing COD until three in the morning. It was all fun and teenage carelessness. Tonight was a prime example of their hangouts, the weekend after finals ended, and it was of utter importance that they all had to celebrate. Due to lack of money and motivation, they decided to have the hangout venue in Jinyoung’s dorm yet again, much to his dismay.

There were only two things off about it, though: 1) Jinyoung had forgotten to restock his food supply, meaning that they didn’t have any beer to run on throughout the night; and 2) Jackson was nowhere to be found.

“Where the hell is he?” Jaebum grumbled, laying on the couch on his back and tossing a small rubber ball towards the ceiling. Yugyeom was slumped just a foot away from him, sorting through Jinyoung’s stack of videogames, while Bambam and Youngjae set off to buy food in the mini-mart down the block. Boredom was overflowing throughout the room and started soaking up Jinyoung’s jeans, figuratively. “No idea. He isn’t answering my calls, either.”

Jaebum sits upright and scratches his head. “Ah, what a punk. Do you think he’s getting busy with Mark—”

“Don’t even start, you . There’s a child in here.” Jinyoung reprimands, throwing a shoe at him to which Jaebum barely dodges.

“You keep treating him like he’s twelve. He just turned eighteen, man, give him a break,” Jaebum mildly laughs, taking off one of his sneakers and preparing to throw it at the other as well.

Somehow their little squabble turned into an all-out shoe throwing battle, which Yugyeom barely took any notice of. The boy, who had just turned legal not too long ago, was holding a FIFA disc in one hand and an NBA 2K14 disc in the other, contemplating which game to play for the night ahead. “Hm, I could totally beat Bambam in FIFA but I’ve got a score to settle with Jaebum-hyung in NBA,” Yugyeom ponders aloud, furrowing his eyebrows in frustration.

Suddenly, an imaginary light bulb pops over his head, and the next moment he’s holding his phone in his hand and dialing the number of someone he knows would be able to help him. He hums as he waits for the other to pick up, and a few beeps later; he hears his hyung’s low voice.

“Gyeom?”

“Ah, Jackson-hyung,” he chimed. Right when he’s about to ask his golden question, he falters for a moment; thinking that there was supposed to be something more important to ask him about. But he can’t quite remember what it was, so he goes for it anyway. “Hyung, important question: FIFA or NBA 2K14?”

A thoughtful silence ensues. Jackson was always one to take even the smallest matters very seriously, which indefinitely contributed to his tendency of over-exaggerating everything. It was beneficial sometimes, but any other time was just Jackson being stupid. “…Depends. Have you beaten Jaebum’s Pacers team yet?”

“No.”

“NBA then, definitely,” Jackson concludes. “You gotta smack down his ego a little bit. Just a little. So that I can deliver the finishing blow and kick his with the Spurs.”

Yugyeom nods absentmindedly, taking into consideration the elder’s advice. This was another one of Jackson’s plots to reel in his friends and conspire against Jaebum. His hyungs, Yugyeom realized, had a very strange relationship—a relationship composed of being absolute heads to each other, but in the most amiable way possible. He wondered if he ever wanted to have a relationship like that someday. It would probably fun, constantly thinking of ways to ruin someone’s day and laugh about it after. Except Yugyeom was terrible at lying, or thinking of pranks, or openly insulting someone he considers as a friend, so maybe he doesn’t really fit into that type of mold.

“Hey, Gyeom, you still there?”

Yugyeom snaps back from his daze. “O-oh, yeah, still here,” he stutters, momentarily forgetting the purpose of the call. “NBA it is, then. Thanks for the help!”

“No problem, just don’t tell Jaebum anything, okay?”

“Yeah, I won’t. Bye, hyung—”

Just before Yugyeom’s about to finish his goodbyes and end the call, he suddenly comes to realize that he has found himself in a standstill—meaning there weren’t any more shoes being thrown across the room, which Yugyeom had barely been aware of in the first place, until a shoe hits him directly on the face.

Time stops for just a fragment of a second, and Yugyeom hears endless peals of laughter erupting from his older friends. A few muffled attempts of ‘sorry’s and stomach-clutching hysterics later, Jaebum’s the first to eventually form a coherent sentence—almost. “A-ah, sorry, Yugyeom,” he says, his lips still tittering in amusement. “We didn’t mean to, um, hit you. In the face. Sorry about that.”

Yugyeom didn’t know whether to be confused or angry; because he clearly had no idea what was going on, or why his hyungs decided to start an all-out shoe throwing war to begin with. Discreetly glancing at his surroundings, he sees that Jinyoung’s room had been turned into a makeshift barricade of sorts—scattered chairs lying around, the coffee table turned over on its side, blankets and towels draped across the corners of the room, and shoes, so many shoes, strewn all over the floor. He decided on the former.

“Uh, it’s okay, I guess,” he starts, his voiced laced with obvious bafflement. “I have no idea what was going on, but I was just thinking of what we could play tonight. I couldn’t decide so I called Jackson-hyung to help me, I was actually just talking to him—”

“Wait, you were talking to Jackson?” Jinyoung gasps.

Yugyeom halts, confused at Jinyoung’s astonishment. Hasn’t he ever talked to Jackson before? “…Yeah, I was. And he said that we should play—”

But the poor kid never gets to finish his sentence, because Jinyoung suddenly leaps from behind his coffee table barricade to grab the phone in Yugyeom’s hands. He loses grip of it and it shuffles in his arms for a moment before he clasps it firmly and slams it next to his ear. “Jackson?”

To his surprise, the other hasn’t actually hung up yet, because he responds. “Jinyoung?”

“What the , you traitorous ,” Jinyoung nearly yells, seething with anger. “Where the hell are you? I thought we told you it was Guys’ Night Out tonight!”

A nervous silence follows, and every second Jackson fails to say anything adds up to the number of times Jinyoung is going to punch him the next time he sees him. “Yeah, um, about that…” he trails off, and Jinyoung could practically envision his friend tugging on the neckline of his shirt, a habit he always does when he’s tense.

On the other end of the campus, a twenty-one year old Jackson is lying upside down on his couch, phone on the ear and watching reruns of Awkward, a show he doesn’t even remotely care about. Not like he’s paying any attention, anyways. There were more important matters on his hands, like how to break it to his best friend that he wasn’t going to their usual ‘Guys’ Night Out’ tonight without Jinyoung wanting to break his neck. “I, um, can’t make it?”

Jackson has to pull his phone away from his ear when he hears the venomous string of curses and other foul words flowing out of the speakers. He waits for his friend to cool off a bit before gathering the guts to reply.

“Listen—I promise I’ll make it up to you next time, okay? I’ll buy you guys food, or treat you out, or take you to a club or whatever,” he says, hoping it sounded sincere enough. It probably didn’t.

“What could you possibly be doing that’s more important than Guys’ Night Out?”

“You know you’re the only one who calls it that, right?”

“Answer the damn question, Jackson Wang, or I swear I’ll kill you.”

“Okay, fine,” Jackson relented. “It’s just—I have—it’s movie night.”

And Jinyoung doesn’t talk immediately after that, as if he’s trying to make sense of the absurdity that Jackson had sputtered out. “Movie night?” he then says with a disbelieving tone. “You’re ditching us for movie night? What the heck is even supposed to mean?”

With a sigh, Jackson rubs the back of his head. He hated having to explain things, especially things he didn’t want to talk about. But Jackson didn’t have a choice. Realizing that he was getting dizzy because of his upturned position, he sits upright and leans back on the couch, wiping the sweat off his brow.

“It’s self-explanatory, really,” he begins. “It’s… movie night. If you have Guys’ Night Out with all of us, then I have movie night. I watch movies. In the dorm. With, you know, Mark.”

“…Oh,” Jinyoung says, a little startled. “Oh—oh , man. That’s—that’s really ing cute.”

Jackson is unsure whether he’s messing with him or not. “Are you being a sarcastic or…?”

“No, no, I’m being totally genuine. It’s highly unlikely of you, though. Are you sure you guys aren’t just screwing arou—”

“Oh god, for ’s sake, Park Jinyoung, no.” Jackson groans, running his hand through his hair in exasperation. “I can’t believe you would think that low of me. I am hurt.”

His sadistic friend just laughs it off in a way that makes Jackson presume that he isn’t in the hazard zone anymore. He nearly sighs in relief. “Sorry, not really, but you owe us,” Jinyoung adds. “Ditching your friends is a serious offense. You should be ashamed.”

Jackson’s about to make another snarky reply when he hears the familiar jingle of metal keys and his door screeching open, which gives him a pretty obvious signal that he had to end this conversation as quickly as possible. “Yes, I am so very ashamed, but because you’ve offended my morals, I am no longer under your debt. My apologies. Have fun playing NBA!” Jackson says impulsively with just a hint of gall.

“Wha—wait a minute—” Jinyoung says, startled, but Jackson barely catches all of it before he hits the red button and tosses his phone onto the empty space next to him, just in time for the door to swing open.

Mark is standing there, wiggling the key out of the keyhole and holding a bunch of different plastic bags in his arms. He looks up and smiles. “Hey, I got the stuff,” he says, gently kicking the door closed behind him. Jackson immediately moves over to make room on the couch as Mark approaches. “Oh, cool. What did you get?” Jackson asks.

“I bought a few DVDs down the block for a really good price. Tried looking for 22 Jumpstreet but they said it wasn’t available on Blu-ray yet.” Mark replies, placing some of the plastic bags on the counter top.

Jackson makes a sound of disappointment, but waves it off after. He decides that he would much rather watch it in the cinema than at home—their TV , anyways. “That’s okay, we can watch it next Saturday. Did you get any food?”

“Lots,” Mark answers, and Jackson beams at the sound of it. “I bought your favorite takeout dimsum at Cho’s, and some other junk down at the mini-mart.”

He gestures at the plastic bags filled with chips and candy sitting by Jackson’s feet, and then opens the bags at the counter to reveal small boxes of Chinese takeout. Jackson’s eyes widen. “God damn, you’re the ing best,” he cheers, swooping by the counter in lightning speed to grab a box and a pair of chopsticks. Mark slightly chuckles at this before getting a box for himself and collapsing on the couch.

Jackson’s already tearing his way into his late dinner when Mark suddenly remembers something. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you. I saw Youngjae and Bambam at the mini-mart a while ago,” he comments thoughtfully. Jackson stops and blinks.

“What did they say?” he says through a mouthful of food, and gulps.

“They said they were looking for you, and I told them you were back at the dorm. They looked mildly surprised, and then they said ‘Oh, just tell him to come next time.’” Mark said, knitting his eyebrows together in confusion. He looks at Jackson curiously. “Did you ditch your friends—?”

“I didn’t ditch them, I just—didn’t tell them I wasn’t going to hang out with them tonight.”

“So you ditched them.”

“You make me sound so mean,” Jackson pouts, which made him look absolutely ridiculous since his cheeks were bloated with fried rice in them. Mark almost sniggers at his funny-looking face and tries not to reach out and pinch his cheeks. He’d probably get punched at the side for that.

“If you had something scheduled with them, you could’ve told me, you know?” Mark adds, reaching down to grab a can of beer in one of the plastic bags. “We could always watch movies tomorrow night instead.”

He tosses the can to Jackson who, amidst ravaging his food, managed to catch it with ease. “I know, but tomorrow’s a Saturday,” Jackson says, opening the can. “Not a Friday, and movie nights are always on Fridays. It wouldn’t be the same.”

Even though Mark knows that Jackson’s trying to prove another senseless point, he can’t help but fondly remember how things used to be—Jackson sleeping over at Jinyoung’s dorm every weekend, Jackson taunting him here and there, Jackson being a prick to him every day but always unconsciously caring just a bit about his quiet roommate. Fridays then were nowhere near to how Fridays were now.

“You’re really sentimental over this whole Friday night movie thing, aren’t you?” Mark observes, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “You never used to care whether it was a Wednesday or a Monday, as long as you were sure you woke up in a different dorm every Saturday morning.”

Jackson stops chewing his food and looks thoughtful for a second. “Yeah, but then I started dating you, so now everything’s just—not how it used to be.”

Mark gives him a huge grin that Jackson desperately tries to ignore, but he always did at trying to not to notice anything that Mark does. He gives in eventually. “Don’t grin at me like that. Even if I ditched my friends, I’m stuck here now, so let’s just watch the damn movie and get it over with.”

Jackson gets up to discard the empty carton of Chinese takeout while Mark goes through the pile of newly bought DVDs exceptionally quick. By the time Jackson returns to the couch, Mark’s already happily popping a CD into the player, and Jackson is only left to wonder just what movie his boyfriend decided to make them watch.

In his mind, he secretly hopes that it isn’t a superhero movie.

He flops back onto the couch as Mark hands him the bag of junk food. He reaches into it and pulls out a pack of Skittles, silently thanking the gods that Mark was the attentive type; and that he always remembers what Jackson’s favorite movie snack is. When Mark is done setting up the movie, he goes to sit on the couch next to him, slightly leaning on the other’s shoulder.

It takes a while for the disc to buffer, and when the index menu appears, Jackson throws his head back and groans. “Batman? Are you kidding me?”

Mark shakes his head and defends his movie choice. “It’s called The Dark Knight Rises, excuse you. It’s the last in the series, and I hear it’s really good.”

“You couldn’t have chosen any other action film? The Expendables? Fast and Furious?”

“I did buy those, but we can watch them next time. Come on, Jackson, I’m sure it isn’t going to be that bad,” Mark argues, reaching over the side table to get the movie player remote. “You picked last week’s movie, now it’s my turn.”

“But Godzilla was a kickass film, and you loved it! Plus it was new—Dark Knight Rises was released like, two years ago.” Jackson whined.

“But I haven’t watched it yet, and I know you haven’t watched it either. Please? I bought you food and movies and you still haven’t done anything.” Mark berated, opening a bag of chips.

Jackson looks over to him with an expression of utter disbelief. “Haven’t done anything? I went gay for you, you ungrateful punk,” he exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of chips and stuffing it in his face. “If that doesn’t scream commitment and , then I don’t know what does.”

As Mark begins to open his mouth to respond, Jackson cuts him off. “But fine, since you really want to watch this movie about a self-indulgent bat-person who rides a bat-mobile and probably lives in a bat-mansion and has his own bat-clothing line, then so be it,” he states. “I’m just warning you, if I fall asleep halfway through, it isn’t my fault.”

“I know,” Mark contentedly replies, plants a really quick kiss on Jackson’s cheek, and giddily presses ‘play’.

Jackson doesn’t know how he ended up with a boyfriend as idiotic as the one he has now.

Knowing that the opening scene was probably going to take ten minutes long, he grabs the nearest throw pillow and puts it on Mark’s lap, then promptly places his head on the same spot. Jackson looks up to check if Mark had anything to say about it, but his boyfriend was completely engrossed with the movie that he seems to have barely noticed it at all. He watches as the light from the screen illuminates the angles of his face and accentuates all the features that he slowly grew fond of. His red hair, the hair he so committedly hated, appeared very brown in the dark room. It was then that Jackson decided that brown hair would look perfect on Mark.

He never actually showed Mark his unforgotten list. He never really told him about it, either. He never told Jinyoung that he did, in fact, make the list they’d bet on, but it just wasn’t justifiable enough to have saved his either way. Jackson was pretty okay with it, because that damned list was what got him here, in Mark’s lap, in the first place. He’s grateful.

Now, when he says he hates Mark, it’s never fully meant. Yeah, sometimes he wants to drop kick him out of his dormitory room or feed him to alligators, but that doesn’t change the fact that he still loves his smile and relishes in his short laughs. It took Jackson a little over two months to realize that he didn’t actually write thirty reasons why he hated Mark. In fact, he did the exact opposite.

A few scenes into the movie, Mark still didn’t have an inkling that Jackson has been staring at him for the past ten minutes. He was that airheaded, and Jackson wouldn’t really have wanted it any other way. Slowly, he turns to the TV screen to pay attention to the movie his boyfriend so desperately wanted him to watch, even if he’s probably missed quite a lot already.

He doesn’t even like DC movies—he much rather preferred Marvel—but like everything else, maybe that could change.