Chapter Text
Donghyuck goes to bed Twenty and wakes up on the other side of What Could Have Been. He stretches up, twisting his back. He’s not as agile as he used to be, Mark’s mattress has only deflated more over the years. He has made it until the morning; he has no real reasons to still be afraid.
Squinting at the daylight leaking through the shutters he tries his best to burn the moment into his memory. The way Mark’s bedsheets smell. The night is cold on his collarbones, the warmth heavy on his legs from the duvet they share.
He flattens his face into the pillow as he hears Mark laughing at him.
“Stop giggling when I’m vulnerable.”
Mark ruffles his hair. “You look so human.”
“As opposed to reptilian.”
He laughs, “No! No-”
“If I ever joined the illuminati you’d be the first to know.”
Mark shakes his head. “That’s a sure fire way to make sure I die in ‘ mysterious circumstances’.”
“I’d send you so many goat tongues as a symbol of my love.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
He rolls over, looking at Mark properly and he’s weirded out when he realizes he’s smiling. He can feel his own eyes lifted, his cheeks hurting. Why was he such an angry teenager? He used to be so happy.
He is happy. Right now anyway.
It feels so strange to be smiling first thing in the morning.
He purses his lips and moves to sit up, unsure of what to do with himself. Do what he always does. “Is it okay if I shower? I feel nasty.”
Mark nods. The bathroom is of course, where it has always been.
The living room is alight with warmth. There’s a sense of family that’s so strong Donghyuck wishes he could suffocate in it. If he could bottle this joy for every coming lonely night, every shitty press run, everytime the tabloids spit out something despicable, he’d be a stronger person. He’s the kind of person prone to spillages. Accidents, blurting frustration and proclamations of emotional intensity that leave nasty stains, frying his connections to everyone, leaking over into every aspect of his art until he feels drained. He thinks that he lost his vessel the day he lost Mark. A place he could crawl inside of, that kept him from getting hurt.
Claw my jaw apart to stop me from biting on the inside of my cheek, but don’t cut your hand on my teeth. Ask me to stay and I’ll never ask anything of you ever again. I can’t leave here.
Kiss me.
Mark had told him, “ You look so human.”
How scared he is, and for what reason?
He’s once again a fourteen year old choking back a confession of love, terrified of reality, haunted by what Mark would say. So consumed by love, so repulsed by it at the same time
He has become so untouchable, it feels weird to be in a body again, to paint his face in the colours of mundanity. Without styling, without correction he allows Mark to look upon him.
He feels like an old scar picked and pulled apart right now. He’s unsure if this is good or bad. Maybe it’s both at the same time.
“Merry Christmas,” is what Mark says now to him, curled up on the armchair. He looks like a kid. He looks terribly handsome. Donghyuck thinks about the weary man he hadn’t recognised at the diner, with cautious eyes and the air of an animal that’s wise to the throes of people. Mark always had this animalistic, world weary look about him.
There is expansion in Donghyuck’s stomach, butterflies in his brain.
He perches lightly on the couch next to Mark, who turns around to fully face him.
“I got you something.”
“Oh that’s so like you.”
Mark frowns. “Whaddya mean?”
“I didn’t prepare anything for you. I’m sorry.”
Mark pulls out a present. “It’s nothing special. Don't get your hopes up.”
“I doubt that.”
He studies Mark then, the shape of his nose makes Donghyuck feel consumed with this animalistic urge. To smother him, to take him up in his arms and keep him close forever. He wishes he could scoop Mark up in his arms, vanish to the garden of eden.
He breathes out, doing his best to calm down, and focuses on the fairy lights on the fireplace.
“You did a shit job on the wrapping paper.”
Mark’s peals of laughter chime, the bells sound Christmas day.
He turns it over, before piercing through with his nails.
It’s a notebook. Full .
He flips through.
“What is this?”
“Nothing really.”
He stops on a page titled, ‘Angerless.’
There’s drawings from the diner, doodles of Jisung in an astronaut's helmet, a bottle of Mustard acting as a rocket.
“It’s uhh..” He hears Mark shuffle and he knows without looking that he must be going red.
It’s everything Mark has written since Donghyuck left. Poems, songs, short stories. Everything that used to be their language.
“I keep hearing your voice, even though we don’t talk. On the TV, on the radio, I have all your CDs. I guess it’s only fair you hear mine.”
He feels his mouth tugs and he rubs the space between his eyebrows. Eyes are tired, their clock is ticking. He closes them and thinks about what he’s holding. It feels like religion.
“Thank you,” he says eventually, “That’s really beautiful.”
As they eat breakfast (Donghyuck’s burnt eggs), Chenle and Jisung appear in the doorway.
They all exchange presents and Donghyuck tries his very best not to feel like an intruder, a criminal happening upon their family day. They’re part of a cult Donghyuck founded and ran from, they’re connected by memories Donghyuck only hears now, between laughter and stories that don’t fully make sense. There are pieces missing. The more he knows the worse he feels.
He has missed so much of Mark and Jisungs lives.
He tries his best not to feel too sorrowful about it.
Shut up, shut up. Shut up, He thinks.
Chenle fusses and coos over Mark, toying with his hair. He smiles so fondly at Mark, he does his best to make Donghyuck feel welcome.
Jisung’s love is so quiet, operating now on a frequency Donghyuck isn’t tuned into anymore.
As Mark and Chenle laugh at a Christmas special episode he catches Jisung eyeing him. Catching him in the act of observation. He feels his face go hot. His eyebrows are knitted in thought, as though he doesn’t know what to make of Donghyuck. He’s Mark’s only remaining family, Donghyuck supposes bitterly that he has right.
He stops alone in the hallway, flipping through Mark’s notebook at a picture of them from when they were still young, when they still had the time to dream, back when they didn’t have to try to keep the lights on.
Donghyuck is smiley, so smiley that present Donghyuck can feel the energy leaking through the photo frame. He barely knows who the person in the picture is and he feels like an idiot now, dumbfounded by the same very face that he used to wake up in and wear every single day. He had a shitty box bleach job then, all orange and patchy. It was his first taste of change.
Mark, next to him is smiling too, his hair is so much longer in the photo, he’s got a hoodie pulled around him.
Their faces are crushed together.
The people in the picture don’t know that it all goes sideways in the end.
“I never saw that before.” Chenle’s beside him.
“We look pretty different.”
Chenle shakes his head, “I can’t believe you actually know Jisungie and Mark. That’s fucking insane.”
“Mark’s a pretty mysterious guy when he wants to be.”
“I feel like all my knowledge of him is founded on nothing now.”
Donghyuck frowns, “Did he seriously never mention me?”
Chenle shakes his head.
“Was there ever…” he trails off, embarrassed by the question, annoyed by how he wants to know.
“No, there hasn’t been anyone.” Chenle tilts his head, “What were you guys?”
“It was love, I guess.”
He’s so embarrassed by Chenle’s silence. It hums in the air, like a tattoo needle, like a voicemail gone to static. He coughs, “I uh.. I’m gonna go find Mark.”
Chenle grabs his arm. Donghyuck is surprised by the concentration in his face.
“What happens next?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know… I mean; what can we actually do?”
Chenle’s still frowning, he whispers, “Today is the happiest I’ve seen Mark in all the time I’ve known him.”
He feels his resolve shudder, he jerks irritatedly, “Don’t say that.”
“I don’t wanna insert myself in things, and I know I don’t know the full story… but you gotta hang around for a bit.”
Now Donghyuck feels like the world’s biggest sinkhole, asshole, idiotloserstupidfuckingpieceofshit.
“Why don’t either of you trust yourselves?”
Donghyuck shrugs, as Mark interrupts them, calling everyone back into the kitchen. Food’s ready.
This is the domestic bliss DOnghyuck has cried for.
Please don’t ever become a stranger again. You shouldn’t ever have been a stranger to me. Why the fuck did I come home?
Come with me.
Come with me.
Come with me.
After dinner, while talking Donghyuck sheepishly aks if the playground is still there.
“It is. Do you wanna go before it gets dark?”
“That would be lovely, yeah.”
Passing every house on a street Donghyuck swore he’d never see again, they don’t say anything. What is there to say? Too much. He looks at the streetlights they used to lean against, the drain he chucked all his butts down when he went out for a forbidden smoke, the curb he sprained his ankle on when he tried to do an ollie on mark’s board.
Everything is too much.
“When are you going back?”
“My flight is booked for this evening,” he admits.
“So soon?”
“I was prepared for the worst. I thought I’d get scared off and not even try., or that maybe you’d see me and tell me to fuck off, which is so much worse.”
“If you ever came home and didn’t come to see me I don't know what I’d do. I’d have to fly out to L.A and kill you with my bare hands.”
He smirks, “If I’d known that was all it took-”
Mark shoves him lightly. “Shut the fuck up.”
He laughs, they’re near the park now.
Mark pauses. “Will everything go back to how it was?”
He shakes his head, hesitating for a long time.
Mark stops walking, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He bites his lip, shaking his head.
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. I keep trying to make sense of how I feel.”
“It can't be that complicated.”
“It’s certainly not simple.”
“Okay,” says Mark, dragging out the Oh .
‘Oh-kay!’ just like that, Donghyuck thinks. it'll all be ok .
“I think,” he coughs, “I mean, I don’t want things to go back to how they were. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, I feel that too.”
“I uh… I don’t know if this will make sense, but I saw you before I spoke to you. I was looking at you through the window from out on the street.”
“What were you thinking?” He doesn’t say it unkindly, he asks a question because he’s curious, he asks because he’s Mark. He’s so Mark that it hurts. Inquisitive, interested, always curious about what life looks like through the eyes of another.
“You looked like a stranger in those moments. Like, I didn’t know you and I never would.”
“Ships passing.”
He nods, “Exactly.”
He exhales, and his breath makes curls of white in the air. It’s so cold out here, he had forgotten what a real winter feels like.
“And uh… that frightened me a bit, because everytime I thought about what it would be like to meet you again, I mean I imagined you’d be angry, or start crying, or confessing your love or something daft. Not
He feels the dangerous thought, ‘ What if I had stayed? What if I stay?’
What if I stayed?
What if I stayed?
What if I stayed?
They sit on the swings, Mark kicks his legs, God he’s so cute, Donghyuck thinks.
Fuck it. “Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if I stayed?”
“All the time?”
“Tell me.”
Mark shrugs, popping a chocolate into his mouth, scrunching his nose up.
“You at the diner, picking up plates, charming tips out of the old folks. I thought about you taking care of Jisung when he still needed to be taken care of, helping him with homework, talking to him about crushes. Back when I still had my old car, I thought about how it’d feel to have you next to me, what you’d have to say about anything and everything. I thought about you when Mom was dying and what you would’ve said to her, or me, or how you would’ve made everything so much easier.”
“And?”
You would’ve hated it.”
“You think so?”
“I think,” Mark clears his throat, “that you would’ve ended up hating me. Do you think about what life would’ve been like for us in LA? In music?”
“Everyone would adore you.”
He thinks about Mark on bleached sidewalks, standing on a rooftop at a party looking out at the city of stars and smog, Mark all made up in Makeup and fancy suits, smiling on the red carpet, receiving an award.
“Yeah, it crossed my mind.”
“Do you think it ever would have worked?”
“No.”
“We made good choices. This is the best outcome.”
Donghyuck turns sharply, “Don’t say that. In the best outcome we have each other.”
“I don’t think the outcome has happened yet.”
He has never felt more naked and human, but he has nothing to lose.
“Do you think that we’d ever be able to make it work again?”
“Us? Like romantically?”
“I’d take you in any capacity, but I guess so.”
“I think we weren’t good for each other.”
“We’re different people now.”
“I guess we are.”
Donghyuck traces the cold metal of the swing. “Mark,” he begins, tiredly, “I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone else.”
“That’s a strong sentiment.”
“It’s one of my only certainties.”
He stares at the white sky, bleak with winter and clouds, the liminal space between Chrostmas and the rest of his life. “I’m so sick of wanting you.”
He feels his chest burn, it feels so terrible to be honest.
Mark laughs, but it’s wet, he looks over to see him blinking back tears. He averts his gaze when Mark sniffs. “I know I said it was weird to see you looking human, but I really meant it, not in a ‘I see you all the time on the TV way, ’ but I always see you everywhere as you were. Eighteen and angry, I hear you in my head, making jokes I’d never say out loud, cheering me on, arguing with me, asking me to get you coffee in the morning.” He coughs, “I was haunted .”
Donghyuck feels himself curl inward and he reaches across to take Mark’s hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” He watches Mark lift his head up at the darkening sky, as the grey slips beyond the hour, sand falling through the holes in both of their hearts. Life is a tilting hourglass and he aches at the thought of being sucked away, having to wait to see Mark again.
“I’m going on tour when the album comes out.”
“Really?”
He ignores the sarcasm, “Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“The states, then Europe.”
“When?”
“April. That gives you four months to think about it.”
“I can’t just leave Jisung.”
“He has his own life, he’ll be okay.”
“How would that work?”
“It’ll work if we try.”
“I don’t want this to get messy.”
“There's no such thing as a clean cut with us. There was always going to be fallout. Why not try?”
“Yeah,” Mark sighs, “Okay. I’ll think about it. Fuck it.”
“You promise? You’ll consider it?”
Mark purses his lips and Donghyuck hates that look on his face. He tells him this.
“I hate it when you do that?”
“Do what?”
He swings, leans over and plants his head on Mark’s shoulder, their fingers still locked together. “When are you finally going to allow yourself to dream?”
“It feels weird to be optimistic.”
“There’s always the New Year. Make it a resolution.”
“What are your resolutions?”
“You.”
Mark giggles, it makes Donghyuck feel lightheaded. He’d do anything to wake up to that sound. “So romantic,” Mark says gently.
When he kisses Mark gently goodbye he feels his eyes start to sing. “I love you.”
“I love you too. So much.” He feels Mark wrap his arms around him, and he’s unafraid to hold him too, not scared to slip his forehead into the crook of Mark’s neck. Where it feels like home, even if only for a little while. He holds Mark as long as he can, for it has been and will be so long until he knows this kind of comfort.
“Goodbye.” Says Mark eventually
Not caring if he sounds desperate, Donghyuck quickly rushes to correct him, “For now.”
“For now,” Mark agrees.
They step back and Donghyuck stares at his feet, willing time to stop until he feels Mark’s finger lift his chin. His eyes are soft, his eyes are simple and full of kindness and wonder.
“We’re still young, you know that right? If it’s meant to be it’ll be.”
“I think I’ll lose my mind if it isn’t.”
He smiles and slowly steps back to the taxi. He doesn’t look back, and he hears Mark close the door behind him. From the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of a snowdrop peeking through the tufts and wafts of frost. It’s far too early for flowers, but there it is, stubborn and proud, having taken its root and sprouted determinedly.
The car door closes, the engine whirrs.
Back to their lives.
Back to normality.
Things are changing, Donghyuck can feel it in every bone in his body.
It must be a by-product of getting older.
When his plane takes off, he stares out the window seat, watching every hill and car and house become smaller and smaller, further away. He tears himself from the fields of splotchy pale, snow crowning the tips of trees as their roads diverge.
For now , he reminds himself.
But slowly but surely, as he flies away, he sees the ice start to melt.