The Mark 

That mark...that little dark dot - dark against the pallor, the heady pallor of his skin. His lips part unconsciously and lightly tremble at the sight. He struggles to avert his gaze, focus on anything and everything but the skin with its impossible pallor, so incitingly interrupted by that solitary spot of dark flesh. Beauty marks, they're called in English. Baekhyun repeats the words entrancedly in his mind, Beauty mark...beauty mark...beauty...

The youngest of his eight members, his eight "brothers", is standing before him, his broad back facing Baekhyun. This boy, this maknae, Oh Sehun, when did his shoulders grow so wide? When did his gaze grow so forceful? Like a tomcat. No, not a cat...a panther, reflects Baekhyun as he marvels at the younger's transformation and his own deepening awareness of the same. 

He ought to be listening to the stage-manager as he briefs the group in preparation for their concert later that evening, but his eyes, his mind won't stray from Sehun's exposed neck and the small beauty mark located a few inches below his right ear. He wants to touch it. His mind is constantly consumed by this thought - to touch it...with his fingers...his lips...his tongue. He realises that this is an aberrant desire: because both are male, because Sehun is his junior and "brother", because Baekhyun is happily coupled with a woman to whom he is the dongsaeng, a woman whom he loves and is in turn loved by, a woman for whom he fought bitterly, a woman with whom he is blissful and this should be enough, more than enough. And yet, the sight of that neck, of that mark, of those eyes sends shivers through the length of Baekhyun's body. When he sees Sehun, his body throbs, no, not merely his body, but his heart. 

Sehun turns his head but only slightly to the right, revealing his finely cut profile. His plump lips curl up, as if his hyung's thoughts were just as audible to him as the stage-manager's speech, though infinitely more amusing than the latter's. Baekhyun's chest tightens at the gesture. That smirk, Sehun's famous smirk of slyness, could be the Devil's own. Baekhyun is powerless before it, as the younger man well knows. 

"Hyung," Sehun calls vaguely, looking at no one in particular. He could be addressing any one of his eight older brothers, but Baekhyun senses that he is the hyung being singled out by their maknae at this time. He doesn't answer. He never does straightway. Where would be the fun in that when he knows how Sehun enjoys their little tease-the-tease games? 

"Hyung...Hyun-hyung," he adds the elder's name this time, purposely impolite. The others wouldn't like it, but Sehun is sure Baekhyun's indulgence towards him knows few bounds. The elder replies with an outwardly casual "Mm..." Sehun's smile widens by half a centimetre. When the most infamously garrulous of his eight brothers can muster no more than a mild Mm, well...that's a bit of trouble. "Hyung, my shoulder's been killing me since yesterday's practice. It's bad. Can you rub it a little for me...please?" 

Baekhyun's breath catches, his mouth turns momentarily dry. "Which one?" he asks raspingly. "Your right?"

"My left," replies the younger, struggling to keep from laughing aloud. His hyung has been growing increasingly impatient of late. Not too long ago, Byun Baekhyun would have been a deal more cautious in his stride. Well, impetuousness has its own charms, reflects Sehun, his wide grin at last receding to his trademark smirk. "But you could do both, if it's more convenient." 

He waits impatiently for Baekhyun's sharp retort that would always come within seconds of Sehun's setting the bait. Five seconds pass, then ten, then twenty, but no riposte from his quick-witted hyung is heard. Just as he is about to turn and face Baekhyun, a warm tapering finger grazes his right shoulder, tremblingly tracing his clavicle, then creeps uncertainly up his neck and softly settles on the mark. Sehun shudders. He wants to tell the elder that that isn't the spot, but he knows that this would be a lie. That mark has been the target of Baekhyun's rapt stares for quite some time now.

Sehun has always been certain of his heterouality, so certain in fact that he doesn't mind the looks of timid fascination or even outright lust directed at him from the odd man from time to time. Let them look...so long as they don't touch. Why then is his skin prickling at the sensation of another man's on his own - and his hyung's at that? Is it shock? Revulsion? No, it's nothing of the sort. They've touched each other countless times before, and in places far less conventional than necks and shoulders too, but he never felt a thing from it. And yet, at this instant, at this seemingly innocent contact, his skin is in prickles and his pulse in too great a rush.

Baekhyun's left hand finds Sehun's corresponding shoulder and starts working it rhythmically, striving to relieve a pain that was never truly there. His left side is being handled quite vigorously, yet Sehun's mind in its entirety is focused on his right, on that slim finger nervously fluttering about the mark. If only he could turn and see the look in Baekhyun's eyes. If he closes his own he can almost envision it - those whimsical puppy eyes, the eyes of his big brother he knows and loves - but the expression therein he cannot fathom, not at this moment, not at this touch.

Abruptly Baekhyun's hands leave him, and Sehun's mark that is still tingling with the memory of the elder's overly gentle fingers catches fire as Baekhyun's warm fleshy lips engulf it. Sehun's body petrifies. He feels Baekhyun's hot gasp on his flesh as the elder realises the outrageousness of what he has done. In the clear light of day, in front of the watchful eyes of their members and staff and the tirelessly filming cameras of the few fans fortunate enough to be attending the general rehearsal. This is bad. He must do something; give a suitably comical reaction that would instantly instil in the onlookers' subconscious the belief that this neck-kiss was nothing more than playful teasing between brothers. Quickly. He should do it quickly now. Why can't he move then? Why can't he tear his mind from the mark tingling with the lingering sensation of Baekhyun's mouth?

He starts to call out to the elder, "Hyung -"

"Sehun-ah," Baekhyun interposes unexpectedly, then, likewise unexpectedly, sticks out his tongue and promptly bursts into laughter too loud to be natural.  

Sehun's hand flies to his neck and the still-throbbing mark, rubbing it exaggeratedly in mock disgust.  "Hyung, wae ire?!" he cries reproachfully, then seemingly reluctantly succumbs to the elder's teasing and joins him in laughter.

They keep this charade up a few moments, during which Sehun's gaze never leaves Baekhyun's face, his heart growing heavier with each of the elder's forced guffaws. He's smiling, right? He's smiling...

But then, why does it feel as though his hyung is about to cry?