Work Text:
A groan escaped Mark’s chapped lips as his eyes fluttered open. He felt as if he had an awful hangover, those that make you sluggish and weak. His limbs felt as though they were noodles and his mouth was as dry as a desert. Not to mention his gums. He felt as if someone was tugging from his teeth, stabbing his gums with the sharpest knives on earth and burning them, all at the same time. He stared at the ceiling for a second, in hopes his pain would cease if he didn't pay attention to it. Noticing his strategy had no result, Mark decided to sit up and get a glass of water. He immediately laid back. The room was spinning. His head was throbbing. He could feel his quickening pulse all over his body, on his temples, on his shaking hands. His heart was beating so loudly he could hear it. His chest felt tight as if his torso was being stretched by some malevolent force, his muscles twitching. He whimpered as he tried to sit up once again.
As he did, his eyes were drawn to the wall standing before him, embellished by a deep, crimson red. Mark wondered, who in their right mind would paint an entire wall in crimson red, but who was he to judge, anyway. Upon the realization that he wasn’t in his own apartment, Mark inspected the room he was in with squinched eyes. To his left, a gilded window showed the flickering city lights, painting a picture-perfect landscape. To his right, a door stood so majestically, Mark couldn’t help but feel he didn’t fit in. He was way too ordinary, way too broke to be in such a room. It seemed to have its own personal pieces of the sun: from the ceiling hung an extravagant giant multi-tiered chandelier, lighting up the intricate room with immense warmth. The wall behind him was a work of art on its own. An enormous library made of the finest pieces of sandalwood covered the entire wall. Each book seemed to be so detailed they outshined the entire room. Mark then realised he had been laying on an enormous jet black victorian divan, the only piece of actual furniture in the room.
Just as Mark was standing up, or at least trying to, a tall man entered the room. His face was so dazzling he looked as though God had personally descended from heaven and worked on him for ages, perfecting his plush lips and feline eyes. He carried himself with grace, his chin pointing slightly up in such a way that it seemed he was balancing a heavy pile of books on his head, his steps so confident and rhythmic he seemed to be dancing. So when the man spoke to him, Mark bowed so low he was sure his body made a perfect 90-degree angle, which made him dizzy again. Action that earned a soft chuckle from the beautiful man, a sound as entrancing and dainty as the man who emitted it. When Mark stood up straight again the man stretched his arm towards him, and Mark didn’t know if it was better to kiss it or shake it. He opted for the last one, as he figured it was less creepy. Mark shook it twice, fingers apart from each other, his left arm supporting his right forearm.
“You must be wondering where you are.” The man spoke in a soft, charming and comforting voice, which made Mark’s head hurt a little bit more. He bit his lip, trying not to groan in front of the pretty man. Instead, he nodded, softly, careful not to make himself dizzy again. “And I assume, you must be wondering why you’re in so much pain.”
Once again, Mark nodded, wincing.
The man looked at him apologetically and whispered something Mark couldn’t quite catch before ordering in a louder yet still kind tone “You should take a seat.”
As soon as Mark sat down, a soft looking man with worry painting his too-beautiful-to-be-true features came in carrying a black bag in his left hand and a thick covered brown book with yellowish pages. On his button nose, a pair of spectacles was balanced, his honey hair fell on his face ever so gracefully. Right behind him, a smaller man, more beautiful than every man in the room walked with catlike grace. His eyes, big and leonine scanned the sitting man curiously and Mark could have sworn he saw his nose perk up as he smelled the room. For a moment, Mark wondered if he was ever going to see an average looking person in the room.
The smaller man kneeled in front of Mark and kindly motioned him to open his mouth. Mark assumed that he was some kind of private doctor, here to inspect him and perhaps give him an explanation on why the hell his body hurt so badly. That assumption that flew away with the light breeze coming from the now open window when the catlike man made his pain disappear with a single touch on his mandible. Mark sighed, relieved. The man smiled at him briefly, stood up and bowed slightly before leaving the room. The honey-haired man with the black bag walked towards him. From the bag, he pulled a jar with a white ointment and an old book. Was it some kind of notebook in which he had remedies written down? It kind of looked like the old books in the movies, where witches kept their spells. Mark tried not to laugh at his thoughts. The man placed the old book next to Mark. Carefully, as though it was a thousand years old, and to Mark, it sure seemed like it. The man whispered something in a language Mark didn’t understand —although it sounded like Latin, which seemed ridiculous as no one, except for maybe the Pope, spoke Latin these days— and the book opened, showing a page covered in antique calligraphy. He smiled as he looked at Mark.
“Try to remember what happened last night.” the man suggested in a soft warm voice while he opened up the jar. Mark closed his eyes and obeyed. Images of the night before flooded his mind while the soft voice of the man with the book lulled him into a deep thoughtful state.
It had been a dark, long night, and Mark had sighed as soon as he’d seen the familiar building getting closer and closer. He had had a long shift and wanted nothing else but to lie in his soft bed and sleep for a month or two.
Maybe if he hadn’t been so distracted he would have noticed the truck behind him moving faster, and maybe he could have avoided it if he had moved closer to the sidewalk. But his mind had not been working properly for hours now and he had been too tired to remember his own name. So when the loud and enormous truck had hit him, he had been surprised.
Surprise that had lasted less than a second, because soon enough he had been filled with fear and shock as his motorbike, and his body, had fled across the road. And then, everything had turned pitch black.
Mark opened his eyes once again when he felt a sticky, sour-tasting substance on his gums. He must have made a face because the men in the room chuckled softly in such harmony Mark thought they had rehearsed it. A few seconds later, the sticky cream had been absorbed by his gums, but the aftertaste lingered and he was about to ask for a cup of water to clean the sour taste off when a white mug was placed on his lower lip. Mark took a sip and gasped as he felt the characteristic metallic taste of blood reach his tongue. Both men were looking at him expectantly just as if they were waiting for him to finish so they could go back to they oh-so-busy lives, so even though his mind was sending red flags like crazy, he finished the contents of the cup.
“Have I finally gone mental or did I just drink a whole mug of blood?” The beautiful men stared at him in such a way that he immediately felt stupid and decided to shut up. He wondered if the blood thing was some kind of alternative medicine and attempted to recollect what he had been taught at university about it, but nothing about using blood rang a bell. What’s more, he knew that drinking blood could actually cause damage to a regular human body, so why on earth did they give him a cup full of blood? Why did he drink it? Why were they so calm and collected while giving him blood? And most importantly, why did it make him feel better?
Mark couldn’t believe his stupidity. Twenty years of kinda-healthy lifestyle choices, and now he was going to overdose on iron.
Right at that moment, he put two and two together. Everything was so unusual, Mark wanted to slap himself for not grasping it earlier when the answers were right under his nose. He had never felt so much pain in his gums —not even when he had those atrocious braces in high school— and he knew it wasn’t possible for pain that intense to fade away so quickly. He was also certain there was no way he could have survived an impact so strong, and even if he did, he would be stuck on a hospital bed, with many broken bones and a long ride of rehabilitation ahead. Yet he was as healthy as he could be.
Furthermore, Mark knew it was impossible for a person to look that good. He had never seen three model-like men in the same room, with apparently no makeup on, so he ruled the existence of such species, impossible. And then, there was the whole blood drinking issue.
Mark knew there were many dangers to ingesting your own blood, not to mention someone else’s so he couldn’t think of a single reason why a bunch of really attractive dudes would give him a whole cup of it. Plus, he didn’t even know if the blood had been tested. What if they gave him blood full of antigens that would put his immune system in overload and he’d get a fever so high he’d get delirious and die? The possibilities were endless.
So there was only one semi-possible explanation left: he was a vampire.
⛧
Mark expected a great future for himself. He always carried himself with pride, chin tilted upwards. He had every reason to think highly of himself: he had been a perfect student, on top of every class, he was known by everyone as the perfect guy, perfect son, perfect student, perfect in every way. That is, of course, before he moved abroad for college. Moving meant running away from his parents’ expectations, it meant freedom to do the things he liked, to date the people he liked.
When Mark came out of the closet —when he was pushed out of the closet by someone he used to consider a friend— his parents’ attitude changed completely. Long gone were the loving hugs and the sticky notes with happy faces and motivational quotes on the neatly packed lunch boxes. Of course, they didn’t kick him out. No, that would mean that their friends would find out, and the Lee family’s reputation would be damaged. So Mark was pushed back into the closet. His parents didn’t address the topic, they avoided it, and Mark, like the plague. That’s how Mark, at age 18, became his parents’ biggest disappointment.
Despite how bad he was treated at home, how much his parents ignored his efforts to repair their relationship, Mark never stopped believing in himself. He was still the best one in their year, and he was still proud of himself. He got into his dream university, far away from home, he worked at a small café where he saved some money so he could move, and he even graduated with honours. He knew his parents wouldn’t let him leave the country without money, because money mattered to them.
Mark’s parents believed everything could be fixed with money or at least hidden. That’s why, even though their son’s sexuality brought shame into their household, they bought him a house near his university of choice. They bragged to their friends about “Markie’s perfect grades” and how “Markie is going to the world’s top university”, just as they would before. And when the day finally came, Mark’s parents drove him to the airport and left him there with bags to carry and a flight to catch.
He wasn’t mad at his parents, he understood they did their best they could. Even if they didn’t talk to him in the same way, they still loved him, of that he was certain. He saw it in his mum’s tight smile as they drove him off and her teary eyes whenever she thought he couldn’t see her. He had heard them, fighting in his dad’s office late in the morning, when he was supposed to be asleep. He had heard his mum’s pleas and prayers and he had seen his dad’s red nose and puffy eyes the morning after a fight. Mark knew he was loved, but he knew that the longer he stayed with them the longer they would hurt. So he took a plane and never looked back.
University life wasn’t the easiest, especially not for a med student whose only income came from savings and a four-hour job as a delivery guy. He didn't have much, yet he was glad he had the capacity —and the means— to live by with his very own cash. His folks had given him a little outfitted loft close to his college and a new laptop to take takes notes, the rest was all Mark's.
He couldn’t say the change had been easy. He had a very comfortable lifestyle at his parents’, with expensive cars and luxury clothes and golfing once a month. And now he had to resign himself to walking everywhere— he wouldn’t use his motorbike unless it was strictly necessary, gas was expensive—, wearing clothes from the convenience store, and treating himself to a home-cooked meal once a month. Mark absolutely despised it. He wanted nothing more but to use his credit card—which his parents had given him before he left— and buy himself real food. In any case, that would mean his folks would realize how terrible he was doing, and Mark was too proud for that.
So he worked his ass off in a small restaurant as a delivery boy and he studied at night when his shift was over. It wasn’t the healthiest lifestyle, Mark knew his mum would be scandalized if she found out her “Markie” was sleeping three hours per day max and eating frozen food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Be that as it may, it was everything he could manage, Mark knew that if he wanted to graduate anytime soon, he would need to make a few penances.
Everything in life was an opportunity to be great, or at least that was how Mark saw life because his life had been great all along. But, even when his life sucked, he saw it as an irreplaceable life lesson. It’s not that he enjoyed having a shitty life, he despised it, but he knew that someday, things would get better. So Mark stayed proud and hopeful even when he wanted to quit.
So when Mark was turned, he only saw the positive side of it. When the tall, angel-like man explained what it meant to be a vampire, he just nodded, smiled at him and asked when he could go back to class. Which caused the man to look at him and take a deep breath —probably in an attempt to keep himself from cursing at Mark, because “who cares about college, you’re a potential threat to humankind, Mark”— and give him a pained smile before telling him he wouldn’t be allowed to go back in another two months.
The tall man —someone had called him Youngho once, but Mark didn’t want to risk it and embarrass himself by calling him the wrong name— was incredibly patient. Or then again he had been amazingly tolerant at first, however after Mark demanding to return to school as soon as possible, the man had sighed deeply and stared at Mark with exasperated eyes.
So Mark had quit pushing on the school subject. He tried to keep his worries about his career to himself, and after the realisation that he literally had all eternity to study, said worries decreased considerably. However, the subject stayed at the back of his head. Even if he had all eternity to graduate, he had already paid for this year’s tuition and also, how on earth was he going to explain the fact that he had missed half a semester to his parents? Mark found himself in a spiral of doubt and worry, and the only thing that he could do about was ignored. So he tried his best not to think about college.
Once he stopped asking about it, he learned a lot about the tall man. His name was indeed Youngho, but he had been called Johnny, and many other names that were just too difficult for Mark to even pronounce. Johnny’s patience was once again tested when Mark asked him too many times in a day, how tall he was. So, once again, Mark stopped pushing on the subject. Obviously, there were numerous points that exasperated Johnny and Mark just appeared to be on a mission to discover them all.
He did learn, however, that Johnny wasn’t the vampire who bit him. He had been bitten by someone named Haechan, who happened to be out of town for the weekend, which didn’t sound ominous by any means. Johnny assured him that this Haechan dude would be back by dawn on Monday, to which Mark had answered “I’m thrilled” in the most lifeless tone he could utter.
Turns out, Haechan was in fact, back by dawn on Monday. Mark was in the library, a book resting on his lap, curled up in an armchair, covered in blankets and sipping from a blood-filled thermos when he heard the front door open up. He glanced at the library door nervously for a few minutes, but no one came in. Relieved, Mark dived back into the book he was reading and assumed he’d meet the vampire by lunch. Which didn’t actually happen, because a few seconds later a boy opened the library door and stared at him?
Mark went deeper into the armchair as the unknown boy stepped into the room and cleared his throat. He cautiously scanned the boy. He had curly soft-looking brown hair and a matching tanned skin with many moles splattered on it. Weren’t vampires supposed to be pale as snow? Mark wouldn’t know, he only had been a vampire for two days.
Mark pursed his lips and said nothing, as he waited for the boy to speak.
“Ah, you must be Mark. Lookin’ good.”
He had a nice voice, whimsical even, like bells.
“Oh, well, um. Thank you.”
“I meant you’re looking better than the last time I saw you. Even for a vampire, you looked disgusting, surrounded by blood and all.”
Suddenly his voice wasn’t so nice anymore.
Mark mumbled something that sounded like a grunt, causing the annoying vampire to crack up as if he had told him the funniest joke.
Jerk.
Whatever.
After what seemed like ten minutes of laughter, the boy smiled and bowed at Mark.
“Lee Donghyuck, 3000,” he said, pride painting his voice. Mark stared at him, waiting for an explanation, but the Donghyuck dude just nodded at him. Despite how annoyed he was, he put on his good-kid-smile and bowed.
“Mark Lee”
Donghyuck smiled in amusement and added:
“You’re supposed to say how old you are after your name”
Mark blinked once, twice.
“Huh?” he cleared his throat. “Right. Mark Lee, 20.”
“Your human years don’t count anymore. No one really cares about the human age as it isn’t entirely accurate.” The boy informed with a condescending tone as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Mark was an idiot for not knowing. “You’re one.”
“Mark Lee, 1” he rolled his eyes and sighed, then he went back to his reading.
This Donghyuck, Haechan, whatever, dude was going to be a pain in Mark’s ass.
⛧
Life as a vampire wasn’t as great as Mark thought it would be. It was less fighting and action and more sitting on your ass and doing absolutely nothing. Mark, being a “baby vamp” —he didn’t call himself that, but Johnny would often remind him of his vampiric age—, had to drink a lot more blood than the elder vamps. He was often found in the library, laying on the comfortable sofa, sipping blood from a thermos. He had asked Johnny for a metal straw because his fangs had punctured through the plastic ones, and it was stupid of him to contribute to pollution given the fact that he was going to live forever.
The first weeks were hell for Mark. He was filled with energy and sharp pain on his gums. Johnny had told him that he was teething, and the first day, Mark had scoffed at the mere thought that a 20-year-old was teething. He couldn’t be teething. Yet his gums were incredibly swollen and he always felt the need to put stuff in his mouth to relieve the pain. Mark felt like a toddler. He was glad his whole body was so strong and his skin was now basically made out of steel, as that gave him the possibility of nibbling on his hands and fingers all he wanted ㅡhe had discovered that one night after spending ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling at the corners of his mouth so he could get a better look at his fangs. He had accidentally stabbed his fingers with his growing fangs and he had expected blood, pain or anything that told his body to move his hand away from there. Yet that never happened. Needless to say, Mark had gotten really intrigued at the fact that he couldn’t puncture his fingers. Which only resulted in Mark constantly biting on his fingers to see if he could make himself hurt. ㅡ He had gotten really excited when his baby-fangs, as Johnny playfully called them, grew out.
He felt giddy, filled with enthusiasm. Everything was so new to him: suddenly he had all these cool abilities and all of this free time. He didn’t know what to do with all the time he had on his hands. Mark was so used to the idea that life is short and time is never enough and the fact that suddenly, he had all eternity was overwhelming, to say the least.
Sometimes he would follow the soft man with honey-coloured hair and a button nose around. Kun —that was the name he had said distractedly on a Wednesday when Mark had dared to ask— turned out to be a wizard who, to Mark’s surprise, didn’t actually know how old he was, and had a heart made of gold. Kun could be found most commonly in the library, or at the greenhouse. And if it was especially rainy outside, Kun would climb on the roof and play with the water drops. Mark would carry an umbrella for both of them despite Kun’s constant reassurance that they wouldn’t get wet anyway.
Whenever Kun practised his magic —that is, whenever Kun grabbed his big old brownish book—, Mark would give him privacy and wander around the gigantic mansion. That’s precisely how he got to know Ten. The cat-like dark-haired man would walk down the mansion halls singing along to songs in a language Mark couldn’t understand and lighting flames off his fingers. There were times in which Ten and Mark would just run into each other in the halls, greet each other and continue doing whatever they were doing originally. Some other times, though, Ten and Mark would sit down in the living room’s carpet, Ten would light up the fireplace and his whole body would light up as well, a hypnotizing orange aura would surround him. Sometimes Mark would reach towards it and wonder at its warmth and Ten would giggle and stop him “it tickles”, he had explained the third time Mark had tried to touch it.
On a Sunday morning, two weeks after he had been turned, Mark had been reading at the library in the first floor, drinking lukewarm blood from a porcelain mug, when he’d heard shouting coming from the lounge, followed by a door being slammed. He hadn’t asked any questions when a fuming Donghyuck had walked into the library and had picked with shaking hands a book that looked a few hundred years old, at least.
An hour later when Donghyuck had calmed down, Mark had mentioned how nice the weather was outside in an attempt to relieve the tense atmosphere, and Donghyuck had raised his eyes from the old book and smiled at him. That day they talked until midnight, their quiet voices filled the air and flooded the room with comfort and giggles.
The following day, Mark and Donghyuck just sat on the comfortable armchair in the library, silently reading. After a few weeks, it had become a habit of them. They’d meet at dawn at the library door and read together. They’d read anything, even books they had already read in previous occasions. Sometimes they’d complain out loud, they’d go about how dumb a character was or the recurrence of certain themes in authors.
At first, they’d sit far away from each other —or at least, Mark would sit as far as he could from the eccentric vampire. Seriously, did he have to dress up as they did in the 1800s?—, but with time, they had started sitting closer to each other. It was May, a month after Mark was bitten when Mark had plopped into the armchair next to Donghyuck, with his laptop in hand. The eldest hadn’t said anything but Mark had noticed a small, almost victorious smile.
One morning, Mark woke up to a sky blue thermos on his bedside table and a post-it note on it. When he opened the thermos’ lid he was met with the delicious scent of fresh, warm blood. He grabbed the yellow post-it and read it.
“I noticed you were getting paler, that means you need to feed (dumbass). Here’s fresh O positive. I’ll meet you in the library”
Mark couldn’t help his smile. He knew he had been unfairly mean to Donghyuck, he had been quick to judge the older man. Mark just wasn’t a fan of being corrected. And, he had to admit, once he had gotten to know Donghyuck a little better, he wasn’t as annoying as he had been that first day.
In fact, he was adorable and really kind to him. On his first week as a vampire, Mark had accidentally spilt blood on an original edition of The Divine Comedy, and while Donghyuck had joked that Johnny would behead him, he had immediately called Kun. The wizard had shown up, brownish book in hand and had read out loud a quote from his old book, and the bloody stain had vanished. Mark had been more than thankful to Donghyuck.
So with the sky-blue thermos in his left hand, Mark walked downstairs, where he was met with a glowing Donghyuck.
“Do you wanna go for a walk today?” The older man offered with his eyebrows raised. He pointed at the entrance room.
Mark bit his lower lip and hesitated before he spoke.
“Johnny said I couldn’t go back to school for two months, why would he let me go for a walk?”
“Because where we’re going there are no humans” Donghyuck winked.
So Mark sighed and put his shoes on, then followed Donghyuck outside.
Outside, Mark was met with miles and miles of trees. Just a forest. It was then when he realised he had never bothered to even try and figure out where the fuck he was. He’d never asked where the house was located. For Hell’s sake, he didn’t even know if they were still in town. All things considered, it was evident that they weren't.
The forest was the prettiest thing he’d seen at any point. Moss and lichen-covered the trees and early morning fog painted the air with shades of dim. Mark had never seen anything so beautiful. He followed Donghyuck quickly, trying hard to stay close as there was no clear path to follow. Mark heard water running, and before he knew it they were in front of a cliff. To his left, a river went across the forest. In front of him, that river died and gave place to mesmerising waterfalls.
Donghyuck grinned at him as they plunked down close to the cliff's edge.
Mark smiled back.
For some time, they just sat there, peacefully staring at the waterfalls.
Donghyuck placed his head on Mark’s shoulder.
Mark didn’t move it away.
⛧
Mark didn’t hold grudges. Not for long, anyway. He always thought it was useless, to be so hung up on an argument, to be so bitter. No, he liked to live his life freely, no grudges, no-hard-feelings.
He was quick to move on whenever he had an argument with someone, never wanting to damage a friendship out of a dumb discussion. That remained true until one evening when he heard something he shouldn’t have.
The coven’s house had been quiet all week, due to Kun and Ten being out of town doing something Johnny said was too intimate for him to tell. Mark was microwaving an O+ bag while whistling along to a tune he didn't recall where he'd heard, when a voice that could only belong to Donghyuck, hollered “Well, I’m sorry I love my soulmate so much that I acted against his will.”
Mark placed the contents of the bag into his preferred mug and sat on the kitchen table, making a decent attempt not to tune in to the heated discussion. Needless to say, he failed.
“Listen, Hyuck, I don’t blame you, I really don’t” that was Johnny “But you have to understand that he chose repeatedly not to, denied it even when he was in so much pain he couldn’t breathe, even when he saw you cry because of it. He did not want this, Hyuckie, and you ought to have respected that.”
There was a pause and Mark heard dismal sobs.
“I know that he didn’t want this” Donghyuck bawled “I was just so sick of losing him. I’ve seen him die so many times, I’ve seen him in horrifying agony and I’ve heard him deny my help. Yet this time he couldn’t deny it and I know that it's wrong of me to have taken advantage of his situation and turned him but I was just so tired of watching the life leave his eyes.”
Mark stood up, mug close by, and strolled through the dusty foyer that prompted the living room. He remained there, where he was sure he couldn't be seen and held his breath so as to not be heard either.
“What did you expect me to do, John? Ask him if he wanted me to turn him? Tell him that I’m his three-thousand-year-old soulmate who has seen him reincarnate too many times to be counted and that I can take away his pain if he’d just let me bite him?” Donghyuck continued, raising his voice “He was bleeding out, he had been hit by a fucking truck.”
The mug snuck past Mark’s hands, breaking into thousands of pieces and spilling its contents on the perfectly clean white walls and carpeted floor. Mark felt his legs turn into noodles and his eyes itch with an urging need to cry. But he proved unable. So he stood there, in the midst of grisly chaos, mouth agape and hands shaking.
Quickly after, Johnny and Donghyuck were standing in front of Mark whose lip was violently quivering. Donghyuck looked at Mark apologetically, knowing he knew it was him. Johnny wasn’t even looking at Mark. Rather, his eyes were fixed on Donghyuck, and he looked the scariest he'd at any point looked: face turning paperwhite, long pointy nails turning out and long teeth looking out of his plush lips threateningly.
Mark, who had yet to see a vampire get angry, took a step back slowly, not wanting to disturb the already pissed off vampire. He felt his senses sharpening, eyes scanning the room, fangs and claws coming out as well. Donghyuck noticed Mark’s defensive position, looked at Johnny and immediately hissed, his body copying Johnny’s.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Donghyuck” Johnny spat through his teeth. Yet he remained in the same position.
“Yeah, well tell that to your body”
Donghyuck backed off, eyes shining with fear and anger.
“You’re an idiot, did you know that?” Johnny walked out, his claws retracting as disappeared further into the house. And so, Donghyuck and Mark were left alone, with a bloody floor and an emotional mess.
Donghyuck was the first to calm down, claws and fangs retracting as soon as Johnny left. Mark, on the other hand, remained tense. He quietly picked up the pieces of the broken mug and threw them away. His eyes never met Donghyuck’s, he kept his head low and managed to calm himself down by the time they had finished cleaning up.
Once they were done, Mark turned around, ignoring Donghyuck’s effort to talk, and left the house.
⛧
It was dark outside. The wind hit Mark’s face violently as he sat by the cliff Donghyuck had shown him. He’d been sitting there for a few hours, thinking.
There weren't a ton of things that annoyed Mark. He was, generally speaking, quite a decent guy. He used to smile politely at his parents whenever they’d make a comment regarding his sexuality and ignore old ladies who’d shout racist remarks at him in the bus. He didn’t like confrontation— he hated the knot on his stomach whenever he fought with someone and how sweaty his palms would get when it was time to apologise—, so if something, someone pissed him off, Mark would isolate himself.
He wasn’t proud of it. He knew it was better to just talk things over, reach an agreement and move on. But that meant he’d have to talk and sometimes, talking was too painful for him. It was painful when he had to sit down in front of his parents and explain that yes, he was gay. It was painful when he had to talk with the principal of his high school because some teachers were treating him unfairly due to his recent coming out. Talking was painful sometimes, so he didn’t.
Mark wasn’t used to be mad, nor isolating himself. He, as a rule, maintained a strategic distance from circumstances that would end up in him locking himself up and not uttering a single word. So when he left the house, he was surprised with himself. Hell, he was mad at himself.
Not as a result of what he had realized, but since of how crappy this year had been up until this point. He felt like there was nothing in the world he could possibly do to fix his situation. He was missing class which would probably result in him having to retake the first year, he was living with people he didn’t know, and if that wasn’t crazy enough, those people weren’t supposed to exist in the first place.
It was all too much. Too many failures and too much information and too much talking needing to be done. It was all too much too fast and suddenly Mark found himself crying.
The crying didn’t stop, no matter how much Mark wanted it to stop. Instead, it got worse. It got so much worse he felt like he was being choked. His chest was closing up, squeezing his lungs and crushing his heart. It was too cold, he couldn’t stop shaking and shivering. His chest hurt so bad he was sure he was having a heart attack. He was going to die and he would be isolated in a stupid forest in a moronic town.
He was going to die and no one would give a fuck about it. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die.
He felt the world turning around him, spinning endlessly, so quick he felt it was going to throw him away. Was it supposed to go this fast? He was so dizzy he couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe, either, not that he needed to. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t feel his body.
He was so close to the edge he felt like he was going to fall.
He was falling.
Mid-flight, everything turned black.
⛧
His eyes shuttered open as a pair of warm hands shook him gently, pulling him from Morpheus’s arms. Mark looked at the owner of said hands, Ten, whose eyes were filled with worry darkening his eyes. Behind him stood an equally worried Kun, lips pressed in a thin line and eyebrows furrowed.
“What are you doing so near the edge?” inquired Ten. Somehow, Mark felt as though he was being scolded. Maybe because he was.
“I-” he paused “uh” he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly “I must have fallen asleep.”
Neither Ten nor Kun seemed very pleased with Mark’s attempt to answer them.
“I came here to get some air, clear my mind and…” He didn’t finish his sentence, the inquiring pair knew what had happened to him, Mark was sure of it.
“You found out about the soulmate thing, huh?” It didn’t sound like Kun was asking him a question, yet Mark nodded, avoiding their eyes. “It can be hard to wrap your mind around it the first time, but then you get the hang of it” Kun looked at him with a little more fondness “you always have.”
“You have met me before, haven’t you?”
He got silence as an answer. That was all he needed.
“How many times have we done this? Who was I?” He had so many questions eternity seemed too little time for him to get the answers.
“The first time we met you Hyuckie had just been turned” Kun began “just to give you an idea, Christ wasn’t even born yet”
“We don’t remember every life you had” Ten explained “It was extremely painful for everyone, having to watch you die so many times. Sometimes we would pray to whoever’s out there for you to stop coming back. At the time, we didn’t know it was possible” his voice broke, and he had to take a minute to get himself together ”But you always insisted on returning to Hyuck, said it was the beauty of soulmates, that you’d always go back to each other. And we can’t perform that kind of magic on someone without their consent, we refuse to, so we respected your decision. No matter how much it hurt us, no matter how hard Hyuck cried and begged us to just put your soul to rest, we didn’t.
“At first we thought you wouldn’t find each other, you know? We thought that the possibility of you two being actual soulmates, and you coming back to him every single time was just too improbable, too far fetched. So we didn’t give it much thought the first, second, third time you came back to him, passed it off as a coincidence. The world population wasn’t even that large back then” he chuckled “But you just kept coming back.”
He took a pause, turning around. Mark watched as Kun rubbed his back lovingly. Something told him this wasn’t entirely about him. Kun must have noticed that the smaller man wasn’t fit for finishing the story because he continued:
“Did you know that Hyuck tried to avoid meeting you? He moved around the world as much as he could. But you were his soulmate, you were destined to be together, so even when he moved to what know is Siberia, you still found him. You always made your way back to him. It was bloody ridiculous! How on earth were you able to find him in the middle of absolutely nowhere? All there was around him was ice and inhabited land! So he just stopped trying to hide from you, and he just enjoyed the little time he was permitted with you, cried your death, move on from it and so on.
“The first times it happened, it didn’t affect us as much. Sure, we cared about you, but it wasn’t as painful for us to watch you die as it was to see the aftermath of your death. Donghyuck wouldn’t leave his room for days, and when he finally did, he’d go missing and come back months later acting as if nothing happened, as if you didn’t exist at all. And then he’d spend the following ten to fifteen years until he’d meet you again hunting, or serving in whichever war was happening at the moment. Then he’d meet you and he’d go back to his usual self for as long as you lived. That happened so many times we lost count.
“But then, our Doie figured out a way to stop reincarnation. Which wasn’t bad, we were glad we had a way, in case you’d ever agree to. But he tried it on himself.” Kun stopped as a tear rolled down his cheek. Ten wiped it away.
“Doyoung was our soulmate.” Ten took over “He was an incredibly talented wizard, he was kind and sincere and he cared very deeply about you. After your fortieth death, Donghyuk was beyond devastated. He got to a point in which he wouldn’t eat, said he wished death would take him, so he could be with you. That didn’t work, it just resulted in him getting weaker and weaker until one day he passed out and Johnny force-fed him.
“Doie was a very empathic person. He suffered along with Hyuckie every single time. So he couldn’t stand the sight of Donghyuck so sad he’d stopped looking after himself. He worked for ages trying to formulate a spell that would allow a soul to be put to rest after the vessel was killed. He tried and tried until he got it right. But he wanted to make sure it worked well, and he had the stupid idea of trying it on himself.
“We forgot about it. He lived happily, until around your seventieth life. The three of us had gone to Europe, as Doyoung and Kun needed to get a plant called Black Elder. But someone must have told on us, because the moment we got to the market where we were supposed to buy the damn plant, a bunch of men asked us who we were and tried to violently take us with them. If it weren’t for Doyoung, who quickly cast a spell that sent us a few meters away, where we were able to hide, we would have died as well.
“That evening, they hanged him at the public square for heresy. I still remember how his eyes pierced through ours as he died. We waited until the square had cleared out to take his body with us, carried it all the way home where we gave him a proper burial. You were there when we took his body to the mausoleum.” His face turned bright red, and he started raising his voice “I remember very vividly how you held Donghyuck close to you. I remember because that night I hated you. You kept choosing to die even if you didn’t know if you would come back the following time, and Doyoungie had sacrificed himself just in case you decided to put your bullshit behind and took into consideration how much your soulmate suffered every time you died!”
Ten was yelling and Mark was too close to the cliff’s edge. Mark didn’t even have time to be surprised because the second he instinctively took a step back, putting some distance between him and a very angry Ten, he was falling.
He was actually falling this time.
He heard an “Oh my God, Kun, he’s falling, do something” and he wanted to laugh. He was going to, but then he wasn’t falling anymore. He looked up and saw Kun looking over the edge, hands raised.
And in the blink of an eye, he was standing next to the couple again.
⛧
Once they got back to the coven’s house, Mark went into the kitchen, where he warmed his favourite blood, O+ and poured it into his baby blue thermos. Then he went straight into the library, closing the door loudly. He intended to make it crystal clear to everyone that he wished not to be disturbed. In the library, he finally felt like he could breathe.
He was about to sit on his favourite couch— a Chesterfield armchair, in blood-ish red leather, that was so comfortable Mark would sometimes nap in it— when he noticed an old book laying there, waiting for him. It was clear that the book had been bought many many years ago, yet it was in perfect condition, so Mark assumed Kun had enchanted it. He wasn’t the kind to stick his nose into other people’s business, not even if the book was there, at the library for him to read whenever he wanted. He knew the book was special to Donghyuck as it seemed to be the very same one that had helped him calm down that day, months ago.
And then he noticed a piece of paper underneath it that stated: “Yes, you can read it.” He recognised Donghyuck neat penmanship as it resembled the one on the note left by him the day they went to the forest together for the first time. So he picked the book up and plunked down, placing the antiquity on his lap carefully.
Inside, there were tons of diary entries written in neat yet somehow sloppy cursive. The first entries did not have a date, but as time advanced, dates started appearing at the left top corner. The journal recounted stories in which Mark was constantly present, not always as Mark, but sometimes as “my soulmate”. At the end of every entry, signed “Lee Donghyuck”.
Mark didn’t read every single one of them, he proved unable. Every time the word soulmate showed up, he went into a spiral of self-hating and self-blaming thoughts about his previously taken decisions.
If he knew how much pain he caused Donghyuck every time he died, why didn’t he ask him to turn him? What scared him so much about being a vampire that he was willing to put his soulmate into excruciating pain for? If he didn’t want to be turned so badly, why didn’t he accept Doyoung’s offer, and made his soul mortal?
And that led him to a lot of other questions: how come he had a soulmate? How did that even work? How was it possible for them to find each other every time Mark reincarnated?
He had so many questions, not even letting his mind meander somewhere else by reading helped him. Still, he stayed in the library all night, reading entries about his past lives. He had been a doctor in most of them, or at least some kind of healer. In all of them, Donghyuck described him as awkward although very good with people. He had died many deaths, and in contrast to what Ten had told him earlier, Donghyuck had apparently written about every single one of them, and according to him, he had lived 95 lives.
Ninety-five times Donghyuck had cried his death.
Ninety-five times he had left his soulmate alone.
Mark couldn’t fathom why he would leave his soulmate alone to mourn his loss, to deal with the pain all by himself. He kept reading, frantically looking for an answer, something that told him that he wasn’t an asshole. He kept unravelling the little pieces of memories he found in the book until he came up with an envelope. It had been paperwhite at some point, he assumed. However it was presently a depleted beige, and it had a coffee stain at the left corner. Mark opened the old looking envelope inquisitively, taking out the numerous bits of paper it carried.
Letters to Donghyuck, poems, diplomas, and pictures were now in Mark’s marble-like hands. The first letter had been sent on the sixth of June, in the year 1902. Mark wrote to him with such intensity and adoration, anyone who ever read that letter would know immediately that they were soulmates. Mark told himself the intensity was all due to the very last line, wherein perfect cursive was written “Happy birthday Hyuckie”.
He wasn’t a cold guy, he was really caring, always made sure to tell his friends how much he appreciated them. Yet never had Mark seen himself talking to someone so tenderly. It seemed that all he wanted was for Donghyuck to be safe, healthy and happy. It seemed like he really cared about him.
But if he cared about Donghyuck so much, if he wanted to save him from suffering, why did he let himself leave him alone, every single time?
Something did not add up.
Mark couldn’t think. Not when he was able to hear Donghyuck’s muffled sobs coming from the kitchen. He couldn’t think with his hands shaking and his lip trembling. He needed to get out. He needed to leave that house, get some fresh air, clear his mind. Maybe even visit the city. It had been months since he was bitten, he was sure he would be just fine if he went to the city.
He grabbed his untouched, blood-filled thermos as well as the envelope along with the bits of paper it used to carry, and then left the house. Mark walked carefully, almost hesitantly. He wandered around the forest for a while, before he found a rock by the river. He sat there and took a deep breath, feeling the freshness of the air. At that moment, Mark finally felt like he could breathe.
He went through the letters he’d written. He seemed to have written hundreds of letters, in all of them he told Donghyuck how much he meant to him and how sorry he was. There was always a desperate tone to it as if Mark had been barely holding on when he wrote them. It took him a minute to realise that those letters had been written on his death bed.
Mark sighed as he finished reading the last letter he had written to Donghyuck. He wished he had taken upon his soulmate’s offer and saved him some pain and suffering. He didn’t spare a look at the diplomas, he didn’t think it was important for him to go through them. The pictures, on the other hand...Some of them were old, extremely old, so old Mark was afraid they’d turn into dust if he touched them for too long. Every picture showed Donghyuck and Mark smiling at the camera, arms wrapped around each other.
It seemed that whenever they were together, they were happy and in love. It seemed like Mark had loved him very deeply, and so had Donghyuck.
But Mark couldn’t remember that. There were plenty of things he didn’t know or understand about their relationships.
He knew his love for Donghyuck had been beautiful and strong and heart-warming, he knew his past lives had been happy ones.
However, they weren’t his current.
Mark had lived twenty years without his soulmate, and the circumstance of their meeting wasn’t ideal whatsoever. He had lived twenty years by himself. He had fought for himself and for what he stood for. He had lived his truth. He had done so many things before Donghyuck.
Yet there were so many more things life after meeting Donghyuck had given him. It had given him a place to call home, nice people who he looked up to and who respected him and his boundaries. It had given him eternal life.
There were so many things Mark could do with his time, with his life. So much good he could do. So many people he could help.
He was sure that life was going to give him so much.
He had so much to give.
Mark didn’t know Donghyuck deeply. He knew he liked history books over science fiction. He knew that Donghyuck’s favourite type of blood was O+ just like his. He knew he got moody at night because he just loved the sun. But Mark didn’t know what it was like to hold his hand or to run his fingers through the other man’s hair. He didn’t know what his deepest secrets were or how he tied his shoelaces.
Yet he was willing to get to know him. Even if he didn’t love him yet. He was willing to get to love him.
Not because he knew Donghyuck would be absolutely devastated if Mark voluntarily left him. Not because he didn’t want to go back to his crap of an apartment with his crappy life and his crappy acquaintances. Not because at the coven’s house there was a ginormous library he could make use of all he wanted. Not because he was grateful to Donghyuck for saving his life.
He was willing to get to know him because he was sure his life was only going to get happier, after meeting him.