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Mark is gifted with the power of clairvoyance.
Since he was young enough to remember his dreams, he’s been seeing the futures of strangers, whose stories he cannot comprehend. It is a wonderful and terrible gift. Mark sees both life and death, illness and fortune, the light and dark.
It’s a rather useless talent, Mark realizes as he grows, when you don’t know the people whose fortunes come to you.
Mark learns to hide his ability from prying eyes, passing off the dreams as nightmares when he wakes up sweaty and short of breath with the other trainees in the room staring at him.
It becomes exponentially more difficult to explain when he’s about to debut and the hyungs begin to care so much about him, wondering amongst themselves what they can do to help Mark sleep restfully. They come up with herbal medicines (from Taeyong and Doyoung), sleeping pills (from Johnny,) and even Jaehyun offering to sing him to sleep, but Mark knows that nothing can keep the visions at bay.
Everyone who rooms with him learns to drown it out when Mark insists they leave it alone. It takes time, but they get used to it.
The only exception, somehow, is Donghyuck.
When Mark shared a room with Donghyuck, the younger boy never bothered getting up to calm him down in the first place. He’d simply calmly stared at Mark from across the room, and whenever Mark had awoken fitfully, he’d kept staring through the dark until Mark calmed himself and went back to sleep.
In an odd way, that makes Mark more grateful. He’s not overbearing or asking Mark questions he can’t answer without revealing himself, and Mark appreciates it.
-
Mark dreams of a wedding.
These kinds of fortunes leave him dizzy with happiness that isn’t his, with an unnamable feeling swelling in his chest. He sees a grand venue, full of flowers and art pieces. Like all fortunes, nothing is completely clear here. The faces of the people are slightly blurred, and only distort even further if he were to try and focus on them. These things work the best when he lets them flow freely.
In the dream, Mark walks forward into the murky vision, and he finds himself at the end of the aisle. He reaches down, picks up a rose petal from where it adorns the aisle, and rubs it between his fingers. It’s miraculous how real it feels between his fingertips.
Mark lets the petal drop and keeps walking.
At the altar, there is a man in a suit. Mark takes him in slowly, knowing by the time he gets to the face, all he’ll be able to discern is a distorted puddle of color. The man has beautiful hands, he notes with some surprise. Long fingered and slender, tan skin pulled over delicate knuckles. There’s something familiar about those hands, but Mark can’t seem to remember what.
Already, the image of the man is growing unclear. Mark is overtaken with the sudden urge to see his face, to understand who this familiar stranger is. His eyes fly up, but the man is undistinguishable, his face muddled, too complicated for Mark’s brain to understand. Only one thing shines through. A bright white smile that Mark knows he’s seen, but can’t put a name to.
The man says something, and Mark’s fading too fast to hear, but he’d seen the same shape on so many mouths, he understands it at once.
Minhyung.
Mark startles awake, drenched in sweat and panting, his heart hammering behind his ribs.
His mind’s still chaotic, the images from his vision being flung around like shrapnel; he sees it over and over. The alter, the man’s hands, the smile, and then his name. Again and again, until he thinks his head is going to split in two.
Mark rubs the heel of his palm into his temple, clears his dry throat, and blinks the images out of his eye. The man had been so familiar. It’s right on the edge of his mind, just too far for him to name, and it frustrates him to no end.
He’s unsettled beyond anything after the dream. He’s never had anyone call his name in a fortune before. He’d always been a passerby, invisible to everyone. It leaves a perplexing uncomfortable feeling in his chest.
Eventually, Mark decides to get up and drink some water, hoping to calm his nerves and put thoughts of the vision out of his head.
The dorm is thankfully dark and silent, in sharp juxtaposition with the calamity spinning in Mark’s head. He hadn’t checked the clock on the table on his way out of the room, but the microwave tells him its half past two in the morning when he creeps by it.
He grabs a bottle of water from the fridge, presses the cold plastic to his forehead and lets out a deep exhale.
This is how he’s dealt with it since childhood. The first couple times, his mom had sat with him. As the years went by and the dreams continued, Mark had learned to cope on his own, sitting in the dark on the kitchen floor by himself until the pounding in his head receded, leaving only afterimages of faces and locations he’d never seen before.
The kitchen tile is cool on his thighs where his shorts are riding up, the fridge humming against his back as he leans against it. He drinks the water slowly, letting it seep down his throat and bring the chill throughout his body.
Mark revels in the silence until he hears the click of a door opening. He blinks a couple times, trying to see through the darkness, but his eyes aren’t adjusted well enough yet. He hears bare feet sliding along the floor, and then there’s someone standing right next to him.
A foot catches on his side and Mark instinctively reaches up, trying to catch whoever it is as they fall. The person crumples into him with a gasp, and Mark gets the breath knocked out of him, a sharp elbow jabbing into his ribs.
Mark’s arm gets bent back at a painful angle, and he tries not to cry out when the person on top of him shifts back. “Fuck,” a familiar voice says, “hyung, is that you?”
Mark sits up with some difficulty. “Which hyung?” he jokes weakly.
A second later, a phone flashlight comes on, and Donghyuck is squinting at him with sleep-bleary eyes. “The dumbest one, apparently.” He says dryly.
Donghyuck sits back on his heels, still blinking sleepily. “Why are you sitting on the floor in the middle of the night? I’d expect this from someone weird, like Taeyong hyung maybe, but not you.”
Donghyuck grins, and Mark’s heart lurches in his chest.
He knows that smile like the back of his hand. He’d recognize it anywhere.
It’s indisputably the smile from the dream.
The tanned, slender hands. The slight build. The lips curling around his name. Of course, it had been Donghyuck.
“Hey? Mark?” Donghyuck waves his hand in front of Mark’s face playfully. “Are you okay? First, I find you sitting here by yourself and now you’re zoning out. What’s wrong?”
Donghyuck’s still smiling at him, but it dims when he sees the expression on Mark’s face. “Hyung,” he says, voice softening, “You’re kind of scaring me.”
Mark’s been keeping this secret for so long, he wonders how long it can fester inside him without his mind bursting at the seams. He shakes his head and says, “It’s nothing. I just had a strange dream.”
Donghyuck settles with his back to the fridge as well. “Do you want to talk about it?”
What Mark really wants to do is turn tail and run back to the room he shares with Doyoung, but instead, he glances up out of the corner of his eye. Donghyuck’s staring at him, unblinking, and it’s as unnerving as ever.
Mark doesn’t know what it is about Donghyuck that makes him feel so exposed- or maybe he does, but he can’t come to terms with it- but he shrinks under the other’s gaze.
But Donghyuck has a way of knowing Mark better than Mark knows himself, so he reaches down and links their fingers together. “What’s the point of having a best friend if you can’t tell me anything?” He asks, voice uncharacteristically soft.
“Best friend? Don’t let the other kids hear you saying that. They might accuse you of favoritism.” Mark’s thumb curls around Donghyuck’s, following down the bumpy ridge of his knuckles and back.
Donghyuck’s mouth curves into a smile. “You know you’re my favorite,” he says simply.
Mark knows very well. He’s known it since the beginning, when they’d stuck to each other like glue. They’re opposites in every way, but they fit together like they were made for it.
“It’s…hard to explain,” Mark settles on eventually. Hard is an understatement.
Maybe it’s the atmosphere, or the fact that he can’t see Donghyuck’s face clearly, but in the cover of night, Mark feels a little bolder. He says, “If you had a secret, something that you could never tell anyone, would it be better to let it rot you from the inside out, or to tell and face the consequences?”
Donghyuck tightens the grip he has on Mark’s hand, his fingers warm against Mark’s. “You can trust me,” he whispers. Mark does.
The only person he’s ever told was his mother, who had made him swear never to tell another soul. Undoubtedly, though, the man in the dream had been Donghyuck. Even if the smile hadn’t given it away, Mark would know those tanned slender hands anywhere. He knows Donghyuck from head to toe.
He takes a deep breath.
“I can see fortunes.”
Once the words are out, Mark realizes how foolish he sounds. Already, Donghyuck’s lips are curling into a smile. Mark doesn’t reciprocate it.
Mid-laugh, Donghyuck catches Mark’s solemn expression and slowly, the grin fades off his mouth. It must be apparent from the seriousness on his face that he’s not joking.
“What do you mean?” Donghyuck asks, confusion evident in his drawn-together brows.
Mark feels a migraine coming on, the beginnings of an aching sensation creeping up on his temples. He shakes his head, half of him still ready to bolt, nervousness clawing its way up his chest to his throat. “Exactly what I said!” He snaps, and immediately regrets it when Donghyuck’s expression turns wounded.
“Hyuck,” he mumbles, “I just, I’ve never talked about this before and I need you to listen and understand, for once.”
Donghyuck may have the sharpest tongue around and be prone to being an egoist, but as he searches Mark’s eyes, looking for- Mark doesn’t know what he’s looking for with such an intense gaze, but he must find it, because he dutifully closes his mouth and nods.
“I’ve been like this since I was born. Those nightmares I would have,” Mark pauses, waits until Donghyuck’s face changes, recognition passing over his features. Mark had been well known as a trainee for waking up at all times of the night, covered in sweat and gasping for air. “They weren’t really nightmares. Sometimes I see things, or people, and I just… I just kind of know that it’s going to happen.”
Donghyuck’s expression grows more and more complicated with Mark’s every word. “You’re not kidding,” he whispers finally. “This isn’t a joke.”
“Do you think I’d joke about something like this?”
Donghyuck’s palm is uncomfortably warm where it rests on Mark’s thigh. He’s almost painfully aware of everywhere they’re pressed together, the tiny fridge forcing their bodies to overlap in places in order to support them.
For a minute, Donghyuck stays quiet. Then, he shifts, hand automatically balancing on Mark’s thigh for support. The heat of his palm bleeds through Mark’s thin shorts, and it takes all his restraint to keep still under the touch.
Spinning to face him more fully, Donghyuck asks, “Why are you telling me this now? All of a sudden? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Mark’s voice breaks over the words. “I’ve never told anyone except my parents. I didn’t know how, or what to say.”
“So why me?” Donghyuck pushes, his face is set with determination, and Mark knows he can’t lie his way out of it.
“I’ve never seen anyone I know.”
The world seems to be holding its breath. Mark’s heart feels like its going to break free of his chest with how hard its beating.
Donghyuck just keeps staring with those half-lidded, curious eyes, his lips parting in understanding. “Me,” he says at last, and the word cuts through the air like a knife, sharp with realization. “It’s me.”
Mark says nothing. He doesn’t have to, though, because Donghyuck is already gripping his wrist tightly, asking in his soft voice, “What did you see?”
Mark squeezes his eyes shut, wishes hard that Donghyuck had never stumbled over him in this situation in the first place. He dares to glance up, and Donghyuck’s face is so close, he could count his individual eyelashes.
He imagines losing Donghyuck. The familiarity, the proximity that comes with it. They’ve grown up together for so long, grown into each other, roots intertwined tightly. He doesn’t want to be severed.
Mark shakes his head, fear lurching up his throat, closing off his voice. “I can’t tell you. I just can’t.”
He sees the disappointment in Donghyuck’s eyes, the second he closes himself off.
Mark says, “I’m sorry.”
Mark says, “I shouldn’t have told you any of this.”
Mark says, “I’m going back to bed.”
Donghyuck says nothing.
Mark climbs up off the floor, his lanky limbs tight from the way he’d been curled into Donghyuck’s side, and he pads back across the floor, fingers clenched around the water bottle he’d snagged from the fridge.
He doesn’t look back to see if Donghyuck follows.
-
Donghyuck is different, yet the same.
He's always been a dreamer too, born from the same thread as Mark. Only, where Mark has rotting insides and the weight of the future on his shoulders, Donghyuck has a ringing, bell-like laugh and a smile like the sun, freedom shining from his very core.
Mark sleeps restlessly, his head full of watery dreams and the barest of sensations. He wakes with a pounding in his head and the fading impression of a glittering white smile, chest aching behind his ribs.
Across the room, Doyoung is sitting on his own bed, idly thumbing through a book Jaehyun had lent him the day before. When Mark startles awake, Doyoung looks up, concern drawing his brows together. “Bad dreams?” He asks, as if those two words will encompass the tangled thorny mess in Mark’s stomach.
“Fever,” Mark whispers, and presses his fingers to his temple to quell the throbbing.
Doyoung rushes over and pushes a broad warm hand to Mark’s forehead, then after a second, bends down to join their foreheads together.
Doyoung moves away, and Mark wants to smooth out the crease in his brow, to tell him not to worry.
“It doesn’t feel like a fever...” Doyoung muses.
“Not that kind of fever.” Mark wants to say. Instead, he closes his eyes and presses his palms to them, harder and harder until it aches.
Thankfully, Doyoung doesn’t push it any further. He presses his lips together thinly and shakes his head once, worry still lining eyes. “Let me know if you feel any worse, okay?”
Mark nods, curling back up in the sheets.
He dozes for as long as he’s allowed after that, consciousness lingering somewhere between dream and sleep until Jaehyun calls him to eat lunch. He has dance practice along with the other Dream kids this afternoon, and he knows that there’s no avoiding the others now.
He drags himself out of bed reluctantly, stumbling into the kitchen behind Jaehyun.
It’s mostly proclivity that makes him seek out Donghyuck amongst the rush of members in the kitchen. He’s sitting at the table next to Taeyong, and even when Mark walks in, he doesn’t turn around to look.
It would be a lie to say it doesn’t hurt when Donghyuck continues bothering Taeyong instead of turning to Mark with the typical smile. This rigidity doesn’t suit them.
They’ve grown dissonant within the span of a night, and Mark has no idea how to fix it.
-
Dance practice is brutal enough as it is; without Donghyuck’s joking words and easygoing nature, Mark finds no reprieve from the harsh words of the instructor, and he feels himself tipping closer and closer to his breaking point.
To say things are tense would be an understatement.
The first break they get, Mark lets the practice room door slam shut behind him. He feels the stares of the kids on his back, but he passes by the water filter and the bathrooms, making a beeline for the rickety old service elevator towards the back of the building.
The elevators at the front of the building only go up to the eighth floor, but this one is hidden out of place, down a hallway full of storage closets. It takes him up to the little landing next to the stairs that lead to the roof. The landing is dusty and tiny; the roof is only supposed to be accessible to the building service people, but Mark knows its unlocked most days.
The roof is empty. It’s rarely used, save for staff members who sometimes sneak away here to have a smoke, and Mark when he needs to clear his head.
Thankfully, it’s breezy outside, the wind blissfully cool against his sweat-slick skin.
The city around him is chaotic, a throbbing, pulsing, never resting monster that drains him of energy sometimes. It’s a far cry from the quiet, snowy Vancouver suburb he’d grown up in.
The railing is mercifully cold under his hands, and he hops up onto the ledge, folds his body over the railing, and watches the tiny cars and civilians of the city go about their day.
Then, behind him, the door creaks open. Mark straightens, watches the door swing on its hinges to reveal Donghyuck, his hair plastered to his head with sweat, eyes wide and uncertain.
He steps forward onto the roof, and Mark feels his heartrate pick up automatically.
Donghyuck ducks his head almost bashfully, says in a voice so quiet that Mark has to strain to hear, “Renjun told me you just disappeared.”
Mark curls his fingers around the railing, leans over it as far as his height will allow. Stretched over the boundary like this, the top half of his body hangs in the air, hundreds of feet in the air over the busy street. Donghyuck says something else, then, but it gets lost over the roar of the wind in his ears.
This is all inherently wrong. He and Donghyuck have never been this incongruous before, have never had to be so wary of each other.
Mark retreats backwards from the ledge, and the mild panic in Donghyuck’s eyes settles.
“I just needed to clear my thoughts.” Mark says in what he hopes is a breezy voice.
“Mark.” Donghyuck says with force, “hyung. We need to talk about what happened.”
The headache is beginning to return, the beginnings of a painful throbbing edging up his temple. Mark clenches his fist, and unclenches.
He crosses his arms in front of his chest as if to shield himself from the other boy. “There’s nothing to talk about.” He tries, but Donghyuck is already shaking his head and stepping forward into Mark’s space, into a proximity only gained by extreme familiarity. He exhales, and Mark inhales. They’re two parts of a single existence, each filling the other’s flaws. Mark wishes it was as easy as if they were automatons.
“Hyuck...” Mark whispered, his voice weakening under Donghyuck’s piercing eyes.
“Why won’t you let yourself be happy?” Donghyuck muses, and Mark feels the words on his lips. I don’t deserve it.
And then, in a voice softened with self doubt, “why won’t you let me be happy?”
Mark presses his lips together until it hurts.
“Is it what you saw? Was it bad? Is something bad going to happen to me?” Donghyuck steps even closer, and Mark takes a step back automatically. “If it was something bad, I’d rather you told me instead of keeping it in and being like this.”
Mark forces himself to shake his head. “It wasn’t something bad.” He says finally, “Nothing is going to happen to you. I wouldn’t let it.”
“Then what? Why do you always draw back from me like this?”
There are many things that run through Mark’s mind. Because I’m a coward. Because I know you don’t feel the same. Because I’ve loved you since we were kids.
Mark whispers, “It scared me.”
Donghyuck’s expression twists. “And now you’re scaring me,” he says, “I’m supposed to be the selfish one, you know.”
Donghyuck has never been the selfish one. Sure, he acts arrogant and narcissistic, but Mark’s seen him quiet and soft, carefully helping Chenle with his Korean homework, stocking their pantry with Jeno’s favorite chips, a million little gestures that Mark is sure only he notices for what they are.
It’s not that Mark is afraid of Donghyuck knowing. Of course, he’ll get married someday. That’s not a big deal. What scares Mark is his own role in all of this. How had Donghyuck felt him there? How had he known to call his name out?
“What if I tell you,” Mark swallows hard, “And something bad happens because of it?”
“That’s a risk you’re going to have to take.” Donghyuck says, the set of his jaw stubborn. “And you should know me better than that. What’s a tiny prophetic vision going to do against the unpredictable, unconquerable Lee Donghyuck?”
Mark smiles, but it’s humorless and feels weak even to himself.
“I was at a wedding,” he finally admits. Donghyuck nods encouragingly. “And I think… you were the one getting married.”
Donghyuck’s eyebrows furrow. “My wedding?” He asks eventually. “Who was I getting married to? How old was I?”
Mark carefully picks the second question to answer. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at your face.”
“Then how’d you know it was me?”
“I’d always know it was you.” Mark feels his cheeks heat up as he says the words, but he barrels on hastily. “You were standing at the altar, and then you looked up and you saw me. Not a version of me in the vision, but me. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
Thoughtfully, Donghyuck rubs his thumb across his lower lip. Mark wants to take the swell of it between his teeth, to suck it between his own.
He blinks, and the urge passes.
“Maybe it’s because you told me about your ability.” Donghyuck is saying when Mark drags himself back to reality. “Maybe it’s because you told me, so I remembered and looked for you.”
Mark bites his lip. “You weren’t just looking in my direction. You actually saw me. Normally, no one can see me.”
Donghyuck’s eyes soften, and he says quietly, “Maybe it means something. Maybe I’m just special.”
“Maybe you didn’t know it was me,” Mark lies, “Maybe you thought you were talking to someone else.”
Minhyung. Of course he hadn’t been talking to someone else.
Abruptly, Donghyuck steps forward, takes Mark’s hand, and that expression is back in his eyes. The one that makes Mark want to simultaneously look away and stare forever. His stomach’s in knots, palms sweaty (god, he hopes Donghyuck can’t feel how sweaty his palms are).
“I’d always know it was you.” Donghyuck repeats, eyes lidded and heavy, filled to the brim with something Mark doesn’t have a name for.
“Please,” Mark whispers, and Donghyuck takes his other hand as well, holding him in place so he can’t escape this time.
“You didn’t want to tell me because you were scared it wouldn’t come true.” Donghyuck guesses. “You said I was at the altar. You weren’t in the audience, were you?”
He studies Mark’s face and finds the answer in his eyes.
“You know,” he says, a teasing edge to his words, and it helps calm Mark’s racing heart. He’s used to this joking, excitable Donghyuck. “I think I can see the future too.”
Mark’s breath hitches. He licks his dry lips nervously, draws up all his courage and asks, “What do you see?”
Donghyuck answers him with a kiss.
Mark’s dreamt of this before. Not a vision, but an actual dream. He’s thought of Donghyuck’s mouth, swollen with kisses, of tracing the full curve of his lower lip with his tongue, of just how Donghyuck’s soft mouth would feel against his own.
This is not a dream. This is crystal clear, the taste of sweat on his upper lip, his mouth chapped, inexperienced and overly cautious. This is a real kiss, and Mark feels like he’s waking up from a long dream, reality hitting him hard, heart thundering in his chest, breath exiting his lungs in one short exhale.
Donghyuck pulls back first, an uncharacteristic amount of diffidence written on his face, from the way he pulls his lower lip into his mouth to the way his eyes drop away from Mark’s face.
“Do you understand?” he says, voice hitching over the words, “I could recognize you in your dreams and in your visions and anywhere else.”
Mark wraps his arms around him, and realizes this is solid. This is real.
He understands.