The dining table witnessed almost everything important in Dara's life, and as he was about to have another core experience added to his litany, it bore witness to that too. A hulking shadow brought about by the light from the living room reminded him that he wasn't alone, and that someone expected an answer from him. An answer which he wasn't certain he could give without losing something.

He licked his parched lips, hands itching for his balm. His backpack was back in the living room, and walking out of the conversation now would lead to more problems. He was trapped, whether he liked it or not, and he wouldn't get the key to his cage until he blurted out what his interlocutor wanted to hear and not what was true...or necessary.

"Are you planning to bore a hole into the table?" a grating voice speared into Dara's ears. It sounded annoyed, angry, and desperate all at once. "Why can't you give me an answer?"

Dara's head snapped up, gaze resting on a man opposite him on the table. Unlike Dara, Sam stood. Had been standing, towering over Dara for the past thirty minutes or more of conversation and silence. "Why are you pressed for one?" Dara countered. "You can't just walk up here, tell me you want to throw away everything we share, and expect me to just nod my head and leave you alone. Do we mean nothing to you?"

Sam averted his eyes. "I won't trade everything we went through for shit. But this..." He gestured in the air between them. "This has stretched for too long. I need more, but you won't even think of what comes after. I'm just—I'm tired of it, honestly. I'm tired of this."

"It's because of the mark, isn't it?" Dara fired.

His throat clenched as his mind latched completely onto the idea. Of course, it had to be. Somewhere in Sam's narrow mind, he reached a conclusion that what they have wasn't ideal, that Dara's hesitance at performing legal rites to finalize their union was a signal that they weren't meant to be together. Worse, Sam got his confirmation when the mark fiasco exploded.

It happened a few months ago. The news flooded all media channels, talking about the strange marks appearing in people's bodies that seemed to match someone else's. After several research studies were conducted, the marks were understood as the "fate rune". People who got together with the others who matched their rune reported increased levels of happiness and satisfaction when it came to relationships.

When the phenomenon first appeared, Dara scoffed at the entire thing. It was a confirmation bias of some kind, and believing in their potency was no better than ascribing future events to the stars or subscribing to superstition. "The marks mean nothing," Dara said before with Sam in attendance. "It's just a bunch of nonsense. We can still choose who we will love, and not just because of whatever those marks are."

Sam used to disagree on Dara's position. "Fate has literally never stepped foot in our world as visibly as this," he argued. "It's not our place to argue with it. Or prove it wrong."

Dara should have seen it coming then. By the time the marks appeared in both of them, Sam was overjoyed and ecstatic about finding out what Dara got. That was why he didn't get to know it until Dara was ready to admit it. That they got differing symbols impressed on the left collarbone. And Dara tried his best to keep it to himself, to keep lying to Sam by assuring him they have the same mark.

When Sam proposed the idea of a union, it bothered Dara so much that he just shut down on the celebration itself. He remembered nothing of the engagement reception nor what Sam said on his proposal. But he accepted, if only to give credit to the time, thought, effort, and resources Sam put into it.

Only one thing nipped at the back of Dara's mind at that moment. What would happen if they committed to each other deeper than what they already shared and Sam found out Dara's secret? Would he feel betrayed, confused, and angry? It was a scary scenario, but the opposite was scarier. Say Dara admitted to Sam the moment he found out? Maybe Sam wouldn't immediately pack up and leave, but the knowledge would get in his head. It would gnaw on his thoughts, feeding the fact that they weren't even supposed to be together whenever Dara pissed him off. Or maybe it would be the other way around. Dara would end up attributing everything Sam believed in that he didn't and couldn't to the mark his boyfriend had.

It seemed that whatever Dara chose, he would lose. The single difference was when.

This was why the marks were nature's messed up addition. Sure, it was a good thing to easily find your most potential partner through the marks, but it didn't account for the vast variety of people's differences, preferences, and overall destiny. What if one was paired with an addict or a serial killer? Was that the same thing as saying nature doomed their life from the start? What was even the basis of the mark "choosing" a partner for them? As it was, nature took away the human ability to love freely, caging minds in this simplistic thinking. It might as well start thinking for them.

The silence in Sam's part stretched for as long as Dara scrambled his thoughts in his head. His question hung between them like a line of damp laundry. "It's because of the mark, isn't it?" Dara repeated his question as if to remind Sam he asked it in the first place.

Sam pursed his lips. "What does that have to do with anything?" He mussed his hair, the strands sailing smoothly across his slender fingers. One of the man's allures was those locks, after all. "You can't be thinking that."

"But I do," Dara said, folding his hands on the table. "Give me enough proof that not once in your life did you think we wouldn't work together if we didn't have the same mark."

Sam braced his hips. "But we have the same one, don't we?" Then, his eyebrows met in the middle as the realization and implication of Dara's words sank in his cushioned brain. "Wait. You mean..."

Dara didn't need to say it aloud. Sam got it. Let him have the taste of his medicine, dropping life-altering words as easily as saying they ran out of cheese in the fridge. Nobody liked being told in the middle of planning out of a whim their next vacation that "they should break up". No one liked to be told their marks weren't the same after requesting a breakup either.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam stalked forward but hesitated halfway, loitering and oscillating in the short width of the dining table. "I would have been okay with it. But now..."

"Except you wouldn't," Dara blurted. "You wouldn't be okay with it."

Recognition of Dara's patterns and reasoning flashed in Sam's eyes. In their years together, they understood each other enough to know how each one moved and thought. Just as Dara knew Sam would get the mark-matching bias into his head, Sam knew Dara would have tossed and turned several situations with his reactions factored in and settled on the most favorable outcome. Dara wouldn't kid anyone—having Sam and the bliss for a little longer was better than watching their relationship slowly decay with the truth and biases in mind.

Perhaps, that was the only wrong Dara had committed on the road to this dead end.

"So, that's just it, then?" Sam argued. "You threw everything we've been through before I even thought of doing it. I would have fought for it, destiny be damned. Instead, you kept it from me, and now we're here."

Dara crossed his arms. "I'm not the one who wanted to break up," he said. "You wanted to let go even without knowing about the mark. I can't be the one at fault."

"If I didn't talk to you about breaking up, would you have told me?" Sam demanded. "How long did you plan on lying to me about the mark?"

A slash of pain ripped into Dara's palm when he slammed his hand on the table. "What difference would that make?" he yelled. "You would have broken up with me all the same, wouldn't you?"

Sam's nostrils flared. "Yeah, maybe I would have, if you are going to be a child about it," he said. "I can't do this, Dara. Not anymore. Let's just...let's just call it quits. Please. I need you to move out the earliest tomorrow. For both our sakes."

He left, stalking away to his room and locking the door with a semi-loud slam, before Dara could say anything. Dara sat on the dining table, alone in the misery growing from his gut. He didn't just do that to himself, right? This...this couldn't be real. Because if it was, then nature truly screwed Dara's life up and over.

And move out tomorrow? A dry laugh choked out of Dara's throat. That wasn't enough to find a suitable apartment or even a bedspace to stay the night. Sam could be cruel, but Dara never imagined it'd get to this level.

Perhaps, the mark was right in telling him Sam wasn't the right guy for him, but that didn't mean he'd fawn over the next person who matched marks with him. God be damned, Dara would be the first one to defy what the marks implied and, by extension, fate itself.

God be damned, indeed.