"I really can't believe you were able to be this stupid," he said haughtily, a sick sense of amusement tinging his voice, his eyes, his stance.

Mark groaned in frustration and raked a hand through his already messed up hair. "Could you just-" he muttered, looking about a second away from kicking something.

"What?" he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Could I what, Markiepooh?" The nickname slipped off his tongue saturated with sarcasm.

"Could you just not?" Mark finished irritably, yanking his fringe once for good measure. He scanned the building in front of him for a way in. Any way in, really, he wasn't all that picky. He was mostly cold.

"Do I have to take my keys with me?" the pest next to him said mock-pensively and, boy, he really had to grit his teeth to not make his fist connect with a ridiculously clear-skinned cheek at the satirical rendition of their conversation earlier that evening.

“Oh noooo, don’t worry about it, I got it covered.”

Mark actually did kick something at that point. He was sure the waste container didn’t mind it all that much.

“Put a sock in it Jinyoung,” he hissed through a clenched jaw.

“You know what I am actually taking this way too calmly,” Jinyoung observed, muttering more to himself than actually speaking.

“Shut. The. . Up.” Mark grit out. Then he sighed, his shoulders hunching, finally deeming the whole situation hopeless enough to sink onto his in front of that container he had just kicked, leaning against it a little. He was too tired for this. His body was too achy. It was too late for this .

Jinyoung was right, he really was taking everything quite calmly, unlike he himself was. And he meant, like, way too calmly, considering the fact that it was currently probably nearing three in the morning at this point, neither of them had a phone and they were locked out of their dorm because neither one of them had a key either. So, to put it simply, they were stranded in front of their own front door. This really felt like an all-time low in his 20 years of life.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them before letting out a deep sigh.

“I’m sorry, okay, I ed up,” he admitted, resting his chin on his pulled up knees to create the ultimate self-pity fort. “I was sure I had everything and then I forgot I had put my keys in my coat but I forgot about that and at the last minute I decided that it was too hot outside to wear one either way.” And that was another big mistake he had made, he realised mournfully as he hid his hands in the sleeves of his sweater, hoping to protect them from the biting wind that had reared its ugly little head the moment that the sun had gone under.

He very much expected Jinyoung to make another biting remark, something along the lines of ‘yeah, well how is that working out for you?’ but he was met with only silence.

His roommate stayed surprisingly quiet.

Mark lifted his head a little to look over at him. “Jinyoung?” he asked, suddenly a bit worried about him. He was a bit stumped when he noticed that, instead of directing his full wrath at him, or something else that would be expected, Jinyoung was staring at the side of their building pensively.

“Jinyoung?” he tried again when he got no response. When he still had no response, he frowned slightly.

“Do you think ivy would be strong enough to carry our body weight?” he asked seriously at the third try.

Mark stared at him for a second before catching on and- “Oh no,” he said clearly, raising his arms in an X in front of his face. “Forget it, I like my life.”

“Come on, what could go wrong?” Jinyoung countered calmly. “If it won’t hold then we will know very quickly and the only thing that will get hurt is somebody’s . At worst.”

“Jinyoung,” Mark said calmly, levelling him with a gaze. “We live on the second floor.”

“We could rest on the windowsill of the first floor. It’s right below the hallway window on our floor,” he reasoned.

He let his head fall back against the container. Sanitary, wow, he numbly thought, but most of his brain was occupied with how his friend had apparently lost his marbles.

“You know what, go ahead, if you want to fall from the first floor and break your neck then be my guest, but I am not going with you,” he sighed, deciding that he was too tired for this once more. His heart really wasn’t into arguing at this time either.

“You want to go inside, right?” Jinyoung said, and when he said it like that, it almost sounded like his idea actually wasn’t that bad, and that Mark was just being a worry-wart. If his idea wasn’t to climb up to the hallway window on the second floor. Which was completely mental, thank you very much.

“How do we even know if that god forsaken window will ever open?” he argued and really, he couldn’t believe he was going along in this mess, even if it was just to let him know that this was a terrible plan.

“You know that loud guy from two doors down? He broke the lock a few days ago, it opens at the slightest gust of wind.”

Mark pulled a hand through his hair for the nth time that night. “Why are you disregarding the fact that falling from that height is a straight up death sentence?”

“Mark, I don’t ing care at this point, I don’t care how, I want to get the hell inside and get in bed.” Jinyoung growled. “So, whatever, if you want to be a wuss about it, then stay here for the rest of the night. I’ll get you in the morning.”

“Don’t expect me to call an ambulance with my dead phone,” he ed right back. “And forget it, absolutely not, I am not dying because you want to sleep in a bed so badly!”

Jinyoung turned his back to him and marched around the corner. The side of their building was completely overgrown with ivy, the only clear patches the single, small window on every floor. It wasn’t that crazy an idea to come up with, but it was crazy enough to be discarded after giving it a second thought.

“Okay, fine,” Mark yelled at his retreating back. “Be that way! I’m not following you! I’m not- I’m not breaking into my own house!”

Jinyoung turned the corner after raising his thumb over his shoulder mockingly to let him know that, yes, he had heard him loud and clear, but he also didn’t give a .

“Never, you hear me!” his for was completely out of sight now. “Never ever!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know those scenes in movies where the character screams and thrashes and swears they will never do something, then the next scene they are doing exactly what they swore upon their life to never do?

Mark had no idea how he had found himself in this situation. His mind had gone blank for a few minutes, it seemed.

“Don’t you dare looking down!” Jinyoung shouted at him from above. He was hanging out of that second floor hallway window that they had been discussing before. Apparently, Jinyoung had been right when he had said that the window wouldn’t be a problem.

That window would really not help him in his current situation, though. To be honest everything had gone surprisingly well until he had reached the first floor window and taken a small breather on the windowsill.

Then it had gone completely to . He had had the stupidity to look down and realise that-

 “Oh my God, Jinyoung, if I fall now, I will die,” he screeched with a small voice. Until he realised that, until he realised exactly that.

“Mark Tuan don’t you ing-” but really, it was already too late.

His hands clutched at the thick vines so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His entire body was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“I can’t do this Jinyoung, I can’t do this!” he muttered like a mantra. Over and over again for what seemed to him like an eternity, but was probably just a few seconds.

“Mark,” Jinyoung’s voice cut through the haze in his mind. It felt like the other was standing on the other side of a tunnel, the sound coming from miles away.

He made a strangled noise at the back of his throat. This was a terrible idea. This idea was so horrible that he couldn’t even put into words how much he hated it. Why had he gone along with this? What had possessed him to climb three metres high, holding on to some flimsy plant… something that could give away at any second. Mark didn’t kid himself, he might be a skinny guy, but these things were not designed by mother nature to hold a grown man’s body weight.

“Mark, listen to me.” Another strangled noise escaped his oesophagus. “Listen to me okay?”

He nodded his head shakily up and down, even the small movement made him feel less stable. Less stable, he snorted internally with the small part of his mind that had miraculously not shut down. As if he was feeling anything near stable to begin with.

“Okay, I’m going to talk you through this, okay, just listen to my voice,” his friend said calmly, as if it wasn’t entirely 100% his fault that Mark was in a situation where he needed his saved in the first place. “Just look in front of you. Don’t look up and don’t look down. Just listen to me and climb up. Move your right foot.”

“Are you crazy?” he whined.

“A little bit, maybe?” Well, that was certainly reassuring.

It took a lot of whining. It took a lot of pushing and pulling and an eternity, but eventually, Mark managed to climb up to the window and clutch onto the windowsill. He was almost inside, he could literally taste the safety of his hallway.

Then, of course, everything went wrong. Because what hadn’t gone wrong yet that night, really, he should have seen it coming.

It was stupid. It was really stupid. There was a small tickling feeling on the back of his right hand. A small, worried intake of breath from Jinyoung. Jinyoung whose face was practically right in front of his own.

“Mark,” Jinyoung said delicately. “Don’t look down at your hand.”

So of course he did. He did and he screamed and he promptly let go to shake off the scariest, most disgusting spider in the history of spiders that he had had to deal with in their dorm (and really, he was convinced that there must be a nest of nasty spiders somewhere in one of their walls, because he had had to deal with a lot of nasty spiders ever since he had moved in this fall).

Then he screamed some more, because he had just let go of the only thing keeping him a literal two floors above the ground. As he latched on with the fingertips of his left hand with all his might, he vaguely registered Jinyoung screaming something as well. It sounded vaguely like a name. Was it his name? Could be. Mark was not quite registering everything properly at that specific moment in time.

“For ’s sake do something!” He yelled at the top of his voice. “Pull me up Jinyoung, for ’s sake! Pull me up, pull me up, please!”

Fingers latched around his wrist tightly, pulling with all of their might. It was a small miracle, really. It was a small miracle that Jinyoung managed to grab onto him just in time. Just before he crashed down to the sad grass that he was dangling over.

“I’m never listening to you again!” Mark screamed like a little girl. “If I survive this, Jinyoung Park, then I will never listen to you again!”

He couldn’t quite recollect exactly how he was acting at that time, but Jinyoung would forever retell the story with him looking like a snotty, bawling child. He never took the effort to deny anything, because he might very well have. In that moment, at least, he very much did not give a about how he looked. He just felt very clearly that he was testing the limits of his mortality a bit too much.

“I can’t hold it.” Jinyoung cried quietly. “I’m so sorry, Mark, I’m so sorry.”

Mark did remember crying at that. Very clearly. “I hate you,” he whispered, latching onto Jinyoung’s wrist with his right hand as well. “This is all your fault.”

For one dramatic moment he was ready to give up and let his hands slip, then the next second he felt himself being yanked up by the shoulder and then a very close and very solid ground smacked him in the face. It almost felt welcome.

“What the ever loving !” a voice that definitely wasn’t Jinyoung’s broke him from his trance, making him shoot up, leaning against the wall under the window he had just been pulled through, probably by the owner of that booming voice.

Neither him nor Jinyoung uttered a word.

“No seriously, what the ?” Mark lifted his head from his chest, that was still going up and down quickly as his body caught up with the fact that he was still alive. “Who the are you? What are you doing here? If you’re burglars, then you’re the tiest ones I think I will ever encounter in this lifetime.”

The guy in front of him crossed his arms in front of his chest. He tapped his foot impatiently and all. No one could have predicted the next course of events.

Mark started laughing. He started laughing so hysterically that tears started to stream down his face and he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

It was Jinyoung who managed to relay the whole tale, as Mark was on the floor in stitches.

“Uhm,” the guy- apparently called Jackson Wang, the very guy from two doors down who had broken the window and made their whole scheme possible in the first place- said hesitantly.

“You know there are doorbells, right?” he said like it was the simplest thing in the world. “You could have just rang somebody up and asked them to come get you instead of… that.”

Mark pointed at Jinyoung accusingly. He was still giggling a bit when he said. “It’s all his fault.”

Jinyoung stared at the wall on the opposite side of the hallway for a long time. Jackson insisted on looking Mark over to see if he hadn’t sustained any actual damage from the whole fiasco. He was surprisingly fine, when his laughter slowly died down.

“I’ll lend you my phone so you can call the proprietor in the morning,” he muttered when he finally seemed satisfied with the results of his check-up, and he had concluded that Mark would be absolutely fine. (Physically at least, if not mentally.)

“You know what,” Jinyoung said calmly when Jackson had left them in the hallway on their own again to get his phone. “Say what you want but this is definitely a good one to tell the kids.”

“See if I don’t kill you over this before the time you manage to have kids,” Mark grouched.

Suffice to say, neither of them forgot their keys again after that ever again. Because they sure as hell Never. Ever. Wanted to go through that again.