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“Wake up,”
Mark’s eyes slide open slowly, almost as if they’re being held down by anchors that weigh tons, their lids still swollen and crusted with sleep.
The world is still blurry even when the darkness turns into light, still far too bright for tired eyes. He lets out a guttural noise, and wrenches them closed to the point where he can only see in slits, feels something rough but somehow still silky beneath his sensitive fingertips. It’s then that he breathes in deeply, feels the rush of warm air in his lungs and the aroma of earth, and finally urges himself to open his eyes once more.
The sky above is blue, astoundingly so; there’s not a single cloud in the sky or even a wisp of one to block out its grandeur. Mark watches as the silhouette of a singular bird arches across the endless sea of cerulean, flapping its wings as it flies towards an unfamiliar destination. The sun isn’t too far from the center of the sky, its unfiltered rays boring down on his body. His fingers twitch against his resting place once more, and now, as he feels the tickle against the rest of his skin, he registers his cushion as grass.
“Took you long enough,” Comes that voice again, rumbling in the stillness of the air around them, somehow full of roots that tie Mark’s form into the grass, into the earth below, into the core of the world. The world comes into focus as Mark turns his head to his right, as part of his soul seeks out the owner of that voice that drips velvet.
He lays as Mark does, except he’s on his side opposed to Mark’s position on his back; in doing so, he faces Mark, stares at him with eyes so beautifully complex and so deeply brown, looking just as tired as Mark feels. His hair, a rich black, is messy and sticks out every which way, stretches down to a strong browline and continues to cascade to the grass the man’s head rests on. Mark’s eyes continue to trail about his face, taking in every inch of his bronze skin, his full lips, a powerful jaw, until they begin to trace down to the slope of his neck.
Mark is speaking before he even knows he has words to say. “I missed you.”
The man opposite him chuckles, and it’s a beautiful sound. Mark thinks that he wants to hold onto it for the rest of his days. “I missed you, too.” He shifts, and the drops of sunshine seem to move with him, almost as if they were a barrier around his skin. He reaches a gentle hand across the grass that separates them, grabs Mark’s hand with practiced ease. Not a single part of Mark wants to pull away, and he’s uncertain that even if he did want to, if he would be able to.
I love you, Mark wants to say, for some unknown reason. What’s your name?
They sit like that for a while, in a silence that is light and pure. Occasionally, the wind rustles the grass and the other plants around them, but there they sit, basking in the bright sun.
Suddenly, the man’s thumb rubs over the junction between Mark’s wrist and thumb, gentle, almost a ghost of a touch.
“Will I see you again tomorrow?” He asks.
Mark giggles, squeezes the man’s hand. “Don’t you always?”
“Then it’s bye for today, huh?”
No, he thinks. All I want is to hear you say my name, and all I want is to know yours.
“Yeah,” Mark whispers, watches the way the sun glitters against his skin. “Bye for today.”
In his dreams, Mark is always somebody else.
Be it an incomprehensible twist of his day-to-day life, or a seemingly carefully scripted story in which he and his friends act out the strangest scenarios from the deepest corners of his brain that he could only have picked up from television shows and late-night reads, Mark is never the same Mark he is in wakefulness.
He lauds his mind for its dreamscape-creating capabilities; one moment, he could be a carbon copy of the English student that he already is, but in the next, he could equally well be a sailor in the middle of an endless sea of gray and bright cerulean, or a wizard in a towering hat.
The Mark in his dreams shares the same face as the Mark of reality, the same voice, albeit muffled; he walks the same way Mark does, blinks his eyes just as easily, lets smiles pull at his lips without thought. But, at the same time, they differ. Dream Mark is an escape, a secret passage to the world of irreality that exists behind the true Mark’s qualms, his day-to-day conflicts, and the turmoil that defines the college student existence.
That, he supposes, is what makes a dream a dream; its detachment to everyday reality, and just the same, the ability to remove oneself from them in an instant.
But, as Mark has found, there’s a catch even in his dreams.
Recurrence. Traditionally a sign of some sort of bad omen, especially when it involved frequent horror. But Mark wasn’t dreaming of death, of raining hellfire, of anything that could be deemed negative.
In his dreams, Mark sees a man.
He first appeared on a calm night several months ago, when the summer breeze had quieted once the sun fell, and the full moon sat high in the sky unobstructed by cloud cover or the fog that so characterized the June days in his hometown.
It had been a normal day, not a single thing out of the ordinary; he’d gone out with mother to buy groceries, played a couple rounds on Apex with Jeno, and shortly after that, he’d laid back in his bed to have a solo Star Wars marathon, starting with the prequels. It was as plain as plain could get, probably just as mundane as the day that came before.
His eyes slid shut a couple of hours later when he’d gotten halfway through to The Empire Strikes Back, television remote still grasped in his palm, neck bent at an awkward angle and his room lit only by the screen and by the moonlight creeping through the cracks in his blinds.
That was the first time he’d fallen through to what felt like another world, another plane of existence, instead of a dream.
Mark had awoken to a quiet field, a cloudless sky, and a man so beautiful that he’s sure there has to be a statue of him in one of the world’s many museums.
In that world, they speak to each other. On some days, Mark would complain about long days working at the cafe around the corner, and on others, the man across from him would lay his own grievances. There are no cloudy days in that place, but some are most certainly heavier than others; days when Mark barely had the energy to lift his head, days where his counterpart’s sunny haze are a bit dampened.
They know so much about each other’s lives, nuances and complications, winding tales of childhood and absurd stories of puberty, yet they know so little.
Mark doesn’t know the man’s name, nor can he ask.
There were many days where he started to question, started to wonder, but just as quickly as that line of inquiry rises to the forefront of his mind, it begins to slip away from his grasp until the words are nowhere to be found. All that he can do is grasp the other man’s hand like the lifeline it was starting to become.
“You, like, can only dream about the faces you’ve seen, right?”
Donghyuck looks up with a mouth full of Cheerios, an inquisitive eyebrow raised.
“What?” Mark translates from the garbled noise that escapes Donghyuck’s lips, a drop of milk dribbling messily down his chin from the movement. His next spoonful is suspended a few inches above the bowl.
It's eleven on a Saturday morning, but the sun is hidden behind a wall of clouds so thick that it still feels like it's six. Mark had turned on all the lamps when he left his room in an effort to lift the mood from the doom and gloom, but the bad weather had already managed to permeate the ambience of the apartment. Chenle is probably still knocked out behind curtains that keep his room dark even on the brightest days, and Jaemin is likely much the same way in his own bed.
By some miracle of god, however, Donghyuck had shuffled out of his room two minutes after Mark, groggy and desperately hungry. The fog that had settled over the city clearly took up residence in Donghyuck as well.
It's eleven on a Saturday morning after the suffocating first week of classes, of syllabi and near-silent lecture halls and regret as he skimmed his eyes over the expected coursework, and Mark is asking Donghyuck questions when it's astounding that either of them are even awake.
When Mark repeats himself, Donghyuck just snorts and finally swallows down his bite of soggy cereal.
“Psych got you fucked up that fast?” He teases with no real bite, scooping up more out of his bowl. It looks like oatmeal at this point, but Donghyuck doesn't seem to mind. “I heard from Jaehyun that the professor’s a menace.”
Mark grunts. That's an understatement. His psych professor has far too much energy at nine-thirty in the morning for a man that looks like he's a step away from his deathbed. Don’t come in late to my class, he’d barked, sending a good number of them into flinches. Minutes later, when they’d reviewed the syllabus, Mark took note of the clause that proclaimed that not even a death in the family would excuse missing work.
“He sucks, but not as bad as the Critical Thinking prof from last semester. It’s a miracle I’m a junior.” Mark sighs, and eyes the piece of toast he’d prepared for himself about ten minutes ago. If Donghyuck’s soggy cereal looked unappetizing, so did the dry hunk of burnt bread that sat in front of him. He sighs. “Yeah.”
Donghyuck’s spoon clacks against his teeth as he takes in more Cheerios. “Are you alright?” He mutters, and Mark can almost feel his sharp gaze raking across his cheeks he knows are still swollen from his heavy sleep.
Mark scratches at his nape, searches for a way that he could possibly explain his predicament to one of his best friends. As it turns out, no amount of thought could possibly put I’m falling in love with my imagination into words for anybody. “Yeah, man. Just tired as hell.”
Donghyuck doesn’t look like he believes him, but shovels more cereal into his mouth anyway.
Mark considers his life to be quite mundane.
He’s twenty-one, has two loving parents and has had the same group of friends since elementary school. He’s got as many aspirations as every other person does; when he was six, he’d decided that he wanted to be a writer. Twelve years down the line, Mark ticked the little box on his college application that told his future school that he was to major in English Composition.
And he doesn't consider himself to be lonely by any means. Like he said, he's had the same friends since he was barely out of diapers. Friends with whom he’s gotten into various degrees of trouble with, who he’s had Friday night movie viewings and sleepovers with. They know everything about each other, remember braces and thick-framed glasses, drunken tears and confessions.
As far as he's concerned, there's no gaping hole in his life, no space for a mystery man to fill. But repetition is usually a sign of importance, that something needs to be paid attention to. Mark can’t say that he wants to.
He tries to bring the topic up again the next day, a quiet Sunday that mimics the day that had come before.
Chenle is Mark's junior by two years and, by his very own self-proclamation, Mark’s favorite roommate.
He’s notoriously talkative, notoriously nosy. Chenle could weasel out every single secret Mark has ever retained without more than a few ambiguous questions and a smirk that says he already knows the details, anyway. He has his tricks to get what he wants to know out of somebody- tricks that their friends definitely should have learned by now- but just like an unknowing insect, Mark has fluttered into the intricate webs of Chenle’s curiosity more times than he can count.
Likewise, Chenle carries their secrets, too. He remembers the things that a drunken Donghyuck had sobbed over years prior after a harsh breakup, that which he can’t recall himself, and Mark is certain that Chenle knows who Renjun’s crush in high school had been, even though Mark has tried for years to get the other to tell him. He knows Jeno’s computer password, and probably the combination to the lockbox in Jaemin’s room. Now that Mark thinks about it, there’s few things in their friend group that Chenle isn’t aware of.
That's how, Mark supposes, he winds up splayed across Chenle’s bed with his face pressed deep into the memory foam, a long groan escaping his person.
“What's up?” Chenle, sat cross-legged on his gaming chair set a couple feet away from his television and console, doesn’t even look in Mark's direction. His soft dyed-brown locks curl over his forehead and stop right at his eyebrows, messy and undone, and his eyes are still swollen with sleep. He'd undoubtedly rolled directly out of bed to play whatever nightmare is currently exploding on his screen.
For a moment, Mark considers spilling his guts to Chenle, considers telling him about the recurring dreams racking his mind. He’d most definitely keep it to himself until there came a time that it would benefit him, unlike either Donghyuck or Jaemin, who would gossip about it with each other within hours, minutes even.
However, in some sort of defensive measure, Mark speaks the first words that cross his mind.
“I’m thinking about dropping psych,” He decides to say. It's not entirely without truth, though completely irrelevant, and doesn’t scrape the surface of his true turmoil. The class is a nightmare already, and he’s got the professor’s mean little face etched into his memory. It’s not a required class for him to take, either, just an elective space he’d neglected to fill in his earlier years.
Chenle glances over to Mark’s direction, eyes lidded with skepticism. He doesn’t say anything, just hums, and continues to mash the buttons on the white controller in his hands without even looking at the screen.
“What’s that mean?” Mark pushes himself up, his pelvis now mashed into the softness. He feels his back pop with the motion.
“Nothin’,” Chenle’s face betrays his thoughts, and he quickly recants. “Nevermind. You’re lying about something.”
He thinks of coffee brown eyes with so much depth to them that not even the stars could rival them, of ebony locks so soft that they appeared to be painted on with broad strokes, of a smile so magnificent that even in his sleep, Mark can feel his heart speed up.
“I’m not,” He pouts with a childish whine, and Chenle purses his lips in response. He’s not lying, he’s simply-
“You’re leaving something out of it,” Chenle squints, and when Mark catches a glance of the screen out of his periphery, he sees that the younger had finally paused it. “You wouldn’t’ve come in here all loud and pouty if you were gonna tell me about your psych class.”
Mark turns his chin up, suddenly feeling defensive, even though Chenle had just read his whole facade like a picture book. “What, I can’t ask my friend for his opinion before I make a big decision?”
“You never ask for my opinion,” Chenle drawls, twirling himself around in his chair, controller dangling precariously from his fingers. Mark hopes he doesn’t drop it.
Chenle’s not wrong, either. Mark isn’t the type to ask for other’s opinions before he does something; second-guessing himself is usually more detrimental than anything else, and he prefers to go with his gut feeling. But this is different, a bit unprecedented, a bit childish. How would he look telling his friends that the reason he’s been so out of sorts for the last couple of weeks is because of a dude he sees in his sleep?
“What if I’m trying to make a change in my life?” Mark loosens his arms and lets his torso and face fall back into the cushion with an oof.
“Well, you can start with getting out so I can finish this mission,” Chenle’s taking a loud sip out of a can he seemingly conjured from the void.
Mark sticks his tongue out, even though he knows that Chenle can’t see it, and moves to pull himself out of the bed. Once he swings his legs over the edge, toes brushing the hardwood, Chenle speaks up again.
“I’ll get it out of you eventually,” He says, just as there’s another explosion on the now-unpaused screen. Mark sighs, and drifts out of the room once more, his thoughts still weighing on his soul just as heavily as before.
That night, Mark doesn't dream of anything at all; a world of shadows greets him beneath his sheets, and he finds himself wondering if somewhere, somehow, that grand field lies empty waiting for two bodies to inhabit it.
The skies open up on Monday morning after two days of delay, drenching the city beneath endless sheets of rain.
Mark’s umbrella has a delightfully bent rib-- one that he’d tried to remedy on several occasions, with varying levels of success-- but without fail, the metal bar always buckled once more, and Mark couldn’t be bothered to buy a new one. So he walks to class with a steady drip of water trickling onto his backpack and the hood of his sweatshirt, head hung in acceptance.
He steps into an already-bustling lecture hall with at least a thirty students milling about, some engaging in conversations with their friends and others-- the ones Mark is sure to be joining shortly-- lay their heads in their arms on the tiny desks that come standard with each chair. He tiptoes down the stairs until he reaches the seventh row from the front, counts down the row until he reaches the middle, and tosses his backpack onto the hard floor with a huff.
Mark tries not to think about psychology as he rests his cheek on his palm and lets his eyes slide shut even in the bright overhead lighting, and when he does, the chatter seems to come to a halt.
It’d be great if he could just stay like this, not worrying about his professor from hell that would shortly be entering the hall to teach them about whatever the fuck was scheduled for that week, dead asleep in the middle of several other students. He feels himself start to drift off, then, just as easily as when he has his face sunken deep into his favorite pillow.
Just then, however, through the madness of the room that he’s already blocked out, he hears footsteps, the creak of one of the chairs folding down, and the plop of a backpack against the ground.
After three years, Mark has learned that college students are creatures of habit. Though there’s nobody requiring them to, they tend to sit in the same spots in the same classes out of some semblance of familiarity. When Mark had sat in the seventh row just the previous week, nobody else had decided to make the same decision, which he was fine with. But now, someone’s decided to change their tune.
As long as he gets to sleep until the professor arrives, Mark finds that he really doesn’t care all too much. The individual sitting near him hasn’t made another sound, not even a shuffle, and it almost puts a smile on his face.
The moment doesn’t last very long, however. Within seconds, the exhaustion that had wracked Mark’s body as he’d drifted into the classroom leaves him, instead replaced with a sense of curiosity.
Mark opens his eyes.
At first, it’s blurry; that’s to be expected, given the fact that he’d been laying there for at least five minutes with his eyes shut. He squints as he lets more light in, lets out a light groan, and lifts his head.
He was right; there is another person sitting there, though for the moment all he can see is a silhouette, muted shades of browns and grays against the stark white background that is the classroom. Mark blinks once, twice, tries to clear the sleep from his eyes that had somehow taken root so quickly, but it’s to no avail until he reaches up and rubs at them with the backs of his hands.
“Oh, my bad. I didn’t mean to wake you,”
It comes in a voice that’s far too familiar, one that shouldn’t be familiar. It’s low and all-encompassing of so many things at once, like it carries the stories of the world and all of its people, the seas and the skies and the winds, a bit raspy, like it’s used frequently and loudly.
Mark opens his eyes once more, finally clear, and looks up.
The chair is comically small compared to the size of the man sat in it, his long legs bent uncomfortably between the row in front of them and the desk he’d already pulled out. Mark trails his eyes up higher, over a gray hoodie with red etchings, past dangling necklaces, until he reaches a face that he’s memorized under a warm sun.
He doesn’t look the same, though. The hair twisting over his forehead isn’t the same deep ebony that Mark has become accustomed to, instead a richly dyed red, a bit cropped at the sides of his head and pulled back in the front. Sat on his nose are a pair of rounded golden frames, thin at both the rims and the arms.
“Shit,” Mark mutters under his breath. There’s really nothing else that he can think to say. He thought he was quiet with it, but watches as the man next to him raises an eyebrow. Fuck.
Does he recognize Mark, too? How weird would that be? How’s that even possible? Could he even-
The man’s eyes widen, and he raises one of his hands with his pointer finger extended, shaking it inquisitively. “You’re Mark Lee, aren’t you?”
Mark freezes up at that. How does he know my name?
The man jumps, lowers his finger just a little bit, and frowns. “My bad!” He says for the second time in the last couple of minutes since Mark’s epiphany. “You’re, like, Ten’s favorite person.”
Hearing Ten’s name in the mix almost starts a ringing in Mark’s ears. He’s three years Mark’s senior and the ex-president of the dance club that Mark had joined when he was still a shrimpy freshman. He’s got a lot of spunk in his small form, a delightful mix of chaos and orderliness. His smile could be displayed in toothpaste advertisements, and his personality could charm even the most cold-hearted. In addition to that, Ten knows everybody.
(“It’s important to know everyone so that I can always have someone to talk to wherever I am,” Ten had said, once. “Nothing worse than being somewhere and sitting in silence.”)
That apparently extends to a man that, at this point, Mark had convinced himself was a piece of his imagination.
Realizing he hasn’t said a thing since his very clever-sounding shit, Mark opens his mouth, lets it close again. “Uh- yeah. I know Ten. And… yeah, I’m Mark Lee.” Dumbass. Dumbass.
That puts an even bigger smile on the mystery man’s face, and the still-extended finger folds back into his fist as he pumps it into the air a short distance.
“Sweet,” Says the man, just as Mark opens his mouth once more, a plethora of questions seated at the tip of his tongue. Before he could ask the one that rises to the peak, it gets answered.
“I’m Yukhei,” The words come easily like Mark hasn’t waited months to hear those two words, like he hadn’t begged and begged whatever force brought him into that dream world to let him ask. Yukhei, he repeats, over and over. Yukhei. Somehow, hearing that name doesn’t quiet but a singular part of the storm that still rages, full of confusion and frustrations.
“I missed the first week ‘cause my schedule got fucked up. I originally had Professor… uh… yeah, I can’t remember her name. She was nice, though.”
He’s still talking, Mark realizes. Yukhei is still talking in that extraordinary voice of his, as chipper and bright as ever. Mark lets the word process for a moment, scrambles for a response. He’s still sitting awkwardly in the position he’d sat up in, and moves to straighten his back.
“You won’t be getting the same treatment here, I’m afraid,” Mark miraculously responds with a coherent sentence, and watches on in dismay as Yukhei deflates.
“Fuck,” Yukhei rubs a hand over his face, pulling at his skin. “So he’s really as bad as the stories say.”
His professor is so bad that there are stories. Now, Mark is starting to regret not being a social butterfly like Ten is. He could’ve avoided this class all together.
But then, another part of him says, you wouldn’t have Yukhei sitting in front of you like this.
There’s truth to that. Mark has one thing to thank his demon professor for.
Mark hums in affirmation, doesn’t trust himself to be able to speak words again.
“I’m kinda worried about falling behind, actually.” Yukhei lets out a heavy sigh. “I missed the first lecture.”
Mark knows he has a big mouth. It’s gotten him into trouble countless times with the way it often starts motoring off without any forethought. He considers this one of those instances.
“I usually spend Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons in the library, you know, to get all my thoughts and stuff together,” Mark starts quickly, stumbling over his words just a little bit, though it sounds like more of a question than anything else. “You could… tag along tomorrow? We could go over the stuff from the syllabus and then the stuff from the first actual lecture. I mean, no pressure though! Only if you want to.”
He sounds desperate, doesn’t he? God, he does.
Yukhei doesn’t seem to feel the same, though. Mark’s words pop an imaginary lightbulb over his head, and he sits up further in his seat, perplexed.
“You’d do that?” He says, and Mark’s neck takes it’s very own reins and nods.
“Sweet,” Yukhei’s grin spreads once more. “Gimme your phone so I can put my number in?”
His number? God. What the hell is Mark getting himself into?
“For sure,” Is what he replies with instead.
As Yukhei is handing back Mark’s phone, his hand nearly dwarfing the device, the professor chooses that exact moment to sweep into the hall on his far-too-energetic old man feet, letting any questions for Yukhei on the tip of his tongue die out just as quickly.
When he looks back at Yukhei after glancing over at the professor’s grand entrance, the man is looking at him too, still cheesing.
Text me, he mouths.
Mark swallows.
Nothing is out of the ordinary that night when Mark finds himself back in that field, his skin against the grass and soil, his hand grasped in the other man’s.
Though he knows his name now, he doesn’t say it. It feels like a place where names don’t need to be said, where they’re meant to escape from the binds that their names may carry in waking. There, Mark feels free, like he doesn’t need to be, like he’s allowed to just sit and bask in the sun without worries.
For once, they don’t really say anything, and Mark doesn’t find that strange.
Yukhei’s already there when Mark arrives in one of the library’s study rooms, tucked into the back of the building far from walkways and other noise, but he’s not alone.
Yukhei’s silhouette is easily recognizable, not only from his months of dreams but because of the way he towers over everybody and everything. From the direction that Mark approaches from, their backs face the glass. The figure sitting next to him is close, and their heads are bowed together as they seem to be watching something on Yukhei’s phone.
Mark pushes the glass door open with a gentle hello, and the two jump.
“Oh, hi!” Says the stranger, his grin so friendly that Mark can’t help but return it as he moves to make his way to the other side of the long table in the center of the room that protrudes from one of the walls.
His hair is dyed just as Yukhei’s is, but instead a light pink that covers his ears with its length. He’s got big eyes that glint with curiosity, and the smile he still wears conveys the same emotion. He seems cozy in a black sweatsuit, and he and Yukhei had clearly been sitting in the room for a while, what with the way they appear to have settled in.
“I was just leaving,” With those words, pink-hair starts to gather up his things-- splayed across the table seemingly without order-- in his arms.
Mark takes one risky glance across the table, eyes hesitant when Mark isn't even aware of them being so.
Yukhei’s got a hand wrapped around the newcomer’s thigh, far too high up to be considered the platonic, friendly grip that Yukhei had squeezed onto Mark's shoulder within hours of knowing each other. No, that's a nonchalant sort of physical possessiveness that comes from ages of familiarity, an inadvertent arm around a shoulder, a casual stance in someone else’s personal bubble. The man in Yukhei’s grasp doesn’t seem to notice or, if he does, doesn’t seem to care; for some reason, in the pit of his stomach, Mark feels a pang that is sickeningly reminiscent of hunger.
At Mark’s look, Yukhei doesn’t attempt to filter the pure and unadulterated giddiness from his face, breaking out in an even bigger smile than before.
“Oh! The two of you haven't met,” Yukhei swivels his head back and forth between Mark and Kunhang like they couldn’t see each other. “Kunhang, this is my classmate, Mark.”
Awkwardly, Mark raises the hand currently not clutching his books to his chest in a stunted sort of wave. Kunhang doesn't seem to mind, however, a generous grin teasing at his lips as Yukhei launches off once more.
“And Mark, this is my boyfriend, Kunhang.”
It's words that he expected, but the expectation does nothing to lessen the blow that he feels right in the deepest part of his chest. The jab strikes him below his ribs, in the most vulnerable parts of his body, where it’s soft and open and unprepared. The hope that Yukhei had dreamt the same way Mark had surges out of him all at once, a broken dam, river rapids after a devastating storm. In that moment, Mark feels empty.
But he remembers, just as quickly, that he’s still standing in the middle of the study room, books to his pectoral, and still hasn’t returned the greeting.
With a toothy smile that he feels lacks what it usually does, Mark dips his head modestly and lets the tips of his fingers brush the exposed pages of the books in his arms. “Nice to meet you,” His voice cracks a bit at the end, warming his cheeks.
“Good to finally have a face with the name,” Kunhang’s speaking again, his voice admittedly nice to hear. “Ten talks about you all the time.”
“How do you guys know him?” Mark finds himself asking, loosening his backpack’s grip from his shoulder and sliding into one of the wooden chairs that surround the table, though undoubtedly still tense. He has to ask, though; he can’t make any presumptions about where Ten’s been and who he’s been with.
“Oh!” Kunhang perks up at a chance to talk about his friend, and with a twinge of bitterness, Mark acknowledges how cute it is that his and Yukhei’s mannerisms mimic each other. “Dance club. He still comes in to teach sometimes, you know.”
It’s the most obvious answer, and for some reason, it calms Mark, but raises another question just the same. Why could Yukhei recognize him, but not Kunhang? Quietly, another spark of hope takes flight within Mark.
“I’m gonna head out,” Kunhang says with another friendly grin, reaching a hand across the table towards Mark. “It was nice to meet you!” He chirps. Mark takes his hand in his own, squeezes it softly as he shakes it. It’s impossible to harbor any sort of negative feelings towards the other, no matter how much the darksided part of him yearns to.
When Kunhang finally shuffles out, Mark utters the first words that come to mind. “He’s really nice.”
It’s not for him, but Mark feels his heart swell when he sees the dizzy smirk stretch Yukhei’s lips.
Mark opens his notebook, a smattering of highlighter and colored pen that he now has to decipher for Yukhei’s sake. They go over the first week of content that Yukhei missed in their psychology class, and Mark tries not to think of all the things he’s said to a man in another world.
Mark should have known that dreams are just that: dreams. They aren’t real. He’s been over it a dozen times, drilled it into his head: dreams are separate from reality, because reality so often becomes suffocating to the point that an escape is a necessity.
In spite of that, Mark implores the universe or whatever force brought him to Yukhei in his dreams to explain why, just why, it would allow him to become attached to a man that he isn’t allowed to have when he finally comes across him in waking.
That night, Mark wills himself to not be selfish and appear in that field. For once, it listens, and he dreams of nothing but emptiness. It’s more painful than he expected.
Mark shows up to his once-a-month “boys’ night out” that Friday feeling like he’d been dragged through the wringer.
They’d started the tradition all the way back in high school; after a long month, they reasoned, they deserved a night to themselves where they didn’t need to think, or feel guilty, or work. Back in their grade school days, the gathering place had been a small cafe in the center of town that served overpriced coffee for the students around its location, but now, they meet in one of their campus’s many bars.
It’s always a bit dark in there, meant to convey a sense of mystery and, simultaneously, comfort; the light comes in a soft orange glow, and the corners are swaddled by shadows.
He hopes to leave his worries out in the cold air surrounding the building.
Jaemin, who’d been ever the recluse since the start of the semester, is already at the table with the others when Mark pushes open the glass doors with a whoosh, tucked into the back where the light doesn’t reach as far. He’s the last to arrive, and notes that Chenle already seems to be through half a pint glass.
“Mark Lee!” Calls Donghyuck as Mark plops himself down in one of the chairs closer to the wall, a scheming smile already taking over his face. Closer inspection quickly tells Mark that-- even though it’s dark, and even though it's only been about twenty minutes since they were set to meet-- Donghyuck’s cheeks are already gleaming red, and there’s a lilt to his words.
“Glad to see the party got started without me,” Mark huffs, taking a fry from where there’s a plate of them in the center of the table. Renjun scoffs.
“Glad to see you’re alive,” Renjun smacks Mark’s hand away from the plate when he goes in for seconds. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since before school started back up. Wanna explain what’s up with that?”
Jisung hums from where he sits between Renjun and Jeno, glass of something red raised to his lips. “If someone told me that you’d died, I would’ve believed them.”
“I think that’s a bit dramatic,” Mark retorts, finally going in for another fry underneath Renjun’s now fiery gaze. “If I’d died or gone missing, don’t you think one of them-” Mark gestures with a sweeping arm towards Jaemin, Chenle, and Donghyuck. “-would have said something?”
“No,” Jaemin says far too joyfully, and Mark shoots him a glare.
Mark had thought that he was being the slightest bit inconspicuous. It’s not like he hasn’t kept secrets from his friends before Dream Yukhei, and there’ll undoubtedly be secrets that he’ll keep from them afterwards.
“It’s nothing,” Mark winds up the go-to excuse he’d been giving for months, even before his situation had gotten a bit more dire. “Just-”
“School,” Jeno drones, just as Chenle says “psychology,” in an offensive mockery of Mark’s voice.
He frowns.
“Why’s this about me, actually?” Mark jabs a finger in Jaemin’s direction, and the boy in question raises an eyebrow. “I swear to god I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
With a swig from his glass, Renjun replies in monotone. “He’s pre-med. And he’s Jaemin.”
Jaemin doesn’t even look offended at the latter accusation, instead shrugging his shoulders.
“But you-” Renjun doesn’t seem to be finished. Whatever’s sloshing around in that cup of his emboldens him even further. “I swear to god, you feel the need to be everywhere at once. You couldn’t pay the Mark Lee of the old days to go a week without sending a terrible YouTube video to the group chat at three in the morning.”
“So,” Mark snaps his head back towards Jaemin, who’s leaning on the table with his elbows, his chin resting on folded hands, and a Cheshire grin spreading his cheeks. “I think you should spill. Is it a boy? A girl? Living a secret life of crime?”
Donghyuck mimics Jaemin’s posture, leaning in as close as he can get, while Jisung tries to appear aloof and uninterested, munching on a fry of his own. Chenle rests a now-empty glass onto the table with a quiet clack.
Until now, the mystery man in Mark’s dreamscape had felt like his very own secret, something that he had exclusively for himself that didn’t fill him with dread like so many things in his life did. That had all come crashing down when Mark put a real-life face and a real-life name to the man he’d convinced himself was a figment of his imagination, one that basked in the sunlight like it was the only place he knew.
“If I tell you,” Mark starts, already constructing his story. “You gotta pay for my food.”
“Deal,” Donghyuck says, far too quickly for an unemployed business major with a stickler for ordering takeout.
“Fine,” He says with an inhale. He watches on with a sick sort of glee as the others lean into the table, even Jisung, all their eyes glinting with interest.
“There’s a guy,”
It’s not the whole truth, and it’s not a lie, either; enough to settle Mark’s conscience on keeping a secret like this from his friends, but not enough for them to know everything. He’s content with that, with keeping his true strife to himself for just a little while longer.
Donghyuck’s cheer of victory is so loud that it draws attention to their table from a couple rows down, and Mark pretends that he doesn’t see Jeno reach into his pocket for a cash note that he slides to Jaemin beside him.
“But-” Jeno’s fingers freeze. “He has a boyfriend.”
Mark almost feels bad for a second, making the frustrations that have made his life a living hell for the past couple of days into what is more or less a joke. The others must feel the mild irritation that he lets bleed into his words, because they all draw back just as quickly as they’d drifted in. He could laugh at the way even Chenle’s mouth is agape in slight shock.
“Woah,” Jaemin’s the first to speak back up, leant back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “Is our Markie a homewrecker?”
“What?” Of all the things Mark had expected to hear, that hadn’t been one of them. He refused to even consider the prospect of pursuing a man in a relationship, even with his special circumstances. Kunhang’s smile flashes behind his eyelids when he blinks. “No, I’m not fucking a guy with a boyfriend.”
No, you’re just dreaming about holding his hand every single night and you have been, for months. Is there therapy for that kind of thing? How do you even explain that?
Jaemin pouts at that. “Oh, man. That would’ve been a little exciting.”
Donghyuck, however, looks betrayed. “If you’re not fuckin’ him, where’s the man?”
He thinks that he’ll need a bit more to keep him going. Mark’s eyes trail back down to the plate of fries in the center of the table, hoping to grab a handful, but it’s empty. Jisung.
“The man is in my psychology class,” Mark mutters.
“Tough luck,” Renjun says, while Jisung at least has the decency and consideration to look apologetic.
Jeno makes a hissing noise meant to convey his pity, and Donghyuck tries to shield his laugh behind his pint glass, though he fails to acknowledge that there’s only a few sips left in it, leaving him very visible.
“Well, fuck.” Jaemin taps a finger on the wood of the table below. “I’ll pay for your drinks tonight, my friend.”
Alcohol doesn’t prevent Mark from selfishly allowing himself to drift back into that grassy pasture that same night.
“Crazy how it doesn’t rain here,”
The blue sky rests calmly above them just as it always does. It’s the first time either of them have spoken in what feels like ages, and it's enough to get Mark to tilt his head to the side out of the sun.
“Maybe it would...” Mark hums. “Ruin the sanctity of the place.”
“I'm not a big fan of the rain,” Yukhei shivers, and Mark holds back a giggle at just how seriously he seems to be taking it. It’s painful for him to even be sitting here, knowing that he has to wake up and go about his day knowing he’s still dreaming of a taken man.
“Why not?” It's a genuine question, even though it would surely start to creep into their short amount of time together. Mark doesn't mind, and he's sure that Yukhei really won't, either.
“Dunno. Always been that way for me.” Yukhei drums his fingers on the grass. “I think it's because it kinda disrupts everything. When it rains, you have to bring an umbrella with you, gotta step over puddles and deal with the inevitable wet socks in your sneakers because you forgot to put on boots. Same script every time.”
Mark feels like an outsider as he watches Yukhei smile blissfully, lost deep within his own thoughts. “And sunny days- especially the ones where there're no clouds in the sky? Man, those are the best. I feel like I can get anything done, you know? Maybe… maybe that’s why.”
Mark finds it interesting that somebody like Yukhei- who breathes joy and high energy and positivity and sunlight in every waking moment, with every motion and gesture- finds solace in sunny days.
That’s how thinking of you makes me feel, still. Mark thinks. I’m pretty selfish, huh?
He doesn’t grab Yukhei’s hand that night.
“Do you ever have a dream that comes true?”
He’s back in Chenle’s room, face to mattress, legs dangling almost painfully off the edge of the bed. The only difference is that this time, Chenle lays with him, facing the ceiling.
Chenle sits up without even the slightest bit of urgency, his head lolling lazily with the motion. He quietly hums.
“Yeah. Once I had a dream that Jisung and I were eating pizza and then that one Phineas and Ferb episode was on-- you know, the one about the shoelaces?” Mark doesn’t remember, but Chenle continues. “Well. Two days after that, the exact same thing happened. Pizza, couch, Phineas and Ferb. Same episode, and Jisung and I were wearing the same clothes.”
Mark nods slowly. “Like-”
“Like deja vu, right? But can it really be deja vu if it wasn't real the first time?” Chenle lifts his pointer finger to his chin much like an animated character, and Mark can almost envision a thought bubble conjured above his head.
“But it feels real.”
Chenle shrugs. “Maybe it is. Who's to say that dreams are like, fake?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like… they’re dreams. I don't think that we can say that they're real or fake just ‘cause they're in our sleep. I feel like they are what they are.”
“Yeah, but…” Mark trails off. “Do you think it’s possible to have the same dream as somebody else, at the exact same time?”
With a deep huff of his own, Chenle plops back down to the pillows beside Mark, reaches a hand over, and pets a soothing hand through Mark’s hair. “You’ve got a lot of weird questions.”
Mark thinks that he just wants to have his thoughts affirmed. When he voices that, Chenle hums.
“I get that,” Chenle pulls his hand back and lets Mark roll over the slightest bit so he now faces the younger. “But sometimes, I think stuff just doesn’t make sense, and that it shouldn’t have to.”
Somehow, those simple words do considerably well in soothing him. He falls asleep just like that, head mashed into Chenle’s mattress uncomfortably, and he wakes the next morning the exact same way.
Yukhei misses their next psych class. Mark signs his name on the attendance sheet.
But, in spite of everything, Yukhei shows up to Mark’s scheduled library study session, eyes drooping, shoulders hunched.
“Hey,” Comes his less-than-enthusiastic greeting. Even though they’ve only spoken face-to-face like this a couple times, Mark knows that something is amiss.
“Hey, Yukhei.” Mark replies with an upturn in his voice when he says his name. As Mark is pushing the notebooks he’d laid over the table back so that his classmate could sit down, Yukhei returns a tight-lipped smile and tosses his backpack down.
“I hope I don’t seem like a slacker,” Yukhei brushes nonexistent dust from his sweatpants as he sits, clearly searching for something to do with his hands. “I had a rough morning.”
Mark hadn’t for one second thought of Yukhei as a slacker. He was proactive in keeping up with the work he’d missed, and in the classes since then, had paid exceptional attention even to their lecturer’s monotone voices as he rushed through wordy powerpoints. He’s just now beginning to dip into the complexities of the real Yukhei, not quite to the stage of making assumptions.
“We all have those days, man. Don’t worry about it.” Before Yukhei can start to say anything else, Mark is pushing his notebook across the table, open to the explosion of colors that are his psychology notes. “You can take pictures, if you want. The stuff wasn’t too bad, I don’t think.”
Yukhei inhales deeply, exhales just the same, and looks back up at Mark. He really does look tired, a light gray under his eyelids, a small downturn to lips that Mark has already let himself become accustomed to seeing lifted at every moment. It feels wrong, and Mark knows that whatever toils Yukhei is much more severe than a missed alarm or guilt from missing a basic-level psychology lecture.
For a moment, Yukhei looks as though he’s going to spill, his mouth opening slightly before closing it just as quickly, but the moment ends just that fast, and all he whispers is a quiet thank you.
They sit in silence as Yukhei takes out his own notebook and pen to copy down a basic outline of Mark’s admittedly complex notes. A few minutes pass just like that, the scratch of pen over paper. Mark finds himself drifting off, his eyes trailing over the seams in the walls and ceilings, tracing the cracks patched with paint. He doesn’t register when Yukhei glances back up, taking another deep inhale.
“I need a bit of a distraction,” Yukhei suddenly blurts, and Mark flinches, his eyes snapping right back down to Yukhei’s position. He looks the slightest bit apologetic for shocking him. “I mean- I mean, god, sorry, I’ll just-”
Now he’s stuttering. Does Yukhei do that? He doesn’t seem like the person to get caught up in his words like this, to be unsure of himself. It makes Mark uncomfortable, and part of him itches to remedy it.
“No worries,” Mark starts. Yukhei loses some of the tension in his shoulders. “How about you tag along with me to Jeno’s this weekend?”
After Mark’s disastrous confession at the bar the week prior, Jeno had offered to alleviate not just Mark’s stress, but all of theirs, at his apartment the following weekend. They planned to have their second Marvel marathon of the school year, complete with several boxes of popcorn and probably an unhealthy amount of soju and beer.
Mark doesn’t really think his words through when he says them, though. Hurray for the fact that he’s able to provide Yukhei with a distraction, but then there’s also the huge obstacle in plain sight- he’s the man he confessed to his friends about having mild feelings for, the man that’s plagued him for months, the man that has a boyfriend.
Dammit, Mark, why can’t you keep your big fucking mouth closed for two seconds and think for once?
Mark absolutely can’t take the proposal back, though. At the suggestion, Yukhei visibly perks up, his eyes regaining that normal joyous glow.
Yukhei lays his pen down, clearly interested, but part of him still seems hesitant. Mark doesn’t blame him; he’s really not the type to spontaneously show up to parties on Friday nights hosted by his acquaintance's friends that he also doesn’t know very well, and doesn’t expect Yukhei to be, either.
“You’re sure they won’t mind?” Yukhei inquires.
If Mark is certain of anything, it’s that his friends won’t mind. Donghyuck’s been itching to meet the source of Mark’s turmoil, the one he’s been, according to Donghyuck and his stellar observational skills, daydreaming about for weeks on end. He and his other friends may not know as much about Yukhei, but all of them make adequate first impressions, albeit with some knocks on Mark’s part. He just prays that, if Yukhei agrees, that none of his companions will mention anything Mark has let slip. Jaemin is notoriously chatty when he gets a couple cups of drink in him, and Renjun never fares much better, either.
“I’m sure,” Mark says to assuage Yukhei’s worries, and watches as that last bit of discomfort tightening his brow softens. “You’ll be a welcome addition, believe me.”
“Alright,” As he’s shuffling to shove his notebook back into his bag, Yukhei glances back up to where Mark starts to do the same. “Text me the time and address?”
Of course, Mark has to text him the time and address. How the hell else is he gonna get there? They’ve never texted.
Mark jumps when he realizes he’s probably waited too long to answer, and fires back a relaxed “For sure,” when relaxed is the opposite of anything that’s occurring in his skull.
Flashing that charming smile, Yukhei swings his backpack over his shoulder and holds it there in a firm grip as he stands. “Great. See you then?”
If he doesn’t suffocate himself with his pillow tonight. “For sure,” Mark repeats, the words coming out as an awkward squabble. There’s no way his face isn’t bright red at this point, but if Yukhei notices, he doesn’t acknowledge it behind that eyebrow quirk that’s so typical of him already. Mark’s heart feels like it’s swimming to a place below his stomach.
“Don’t forget to turn in the reading quiz tonight,” Yukhei backs up and throws one of his large hands up as a farewell. Mark lifts one of his, too, but the movement is shrimpy and stunted, his palm level with his chest.
I won’t.
Mark can’t open his eyes that night.
There’s no unfiltered sunlight to nearly blind him, no silhouette of a distant bird, no rustling winds or crunchy grass beneath his skin.
It’s dark, and for a second, Mark thinks that he still might be in his bedroom, tucked beneath his comforter and the book he'd been reading inches from his hand, but that line of thinking quickly proves to be fruitless. As he finally wrenches his eyes open, their lids heavy, he sees nothing but white.
Clouds.
They roll and tumble over each other like children on a playground, twisting in a miasma of grey and off-white. Some look as if they're ready to spew the most horrific of storms, and others simply drift on by.
Mark blinks his eyes, slowly, and reaches out with a hand to his right. He finds nothing there, not even as he turns his head to face that direction. For as far as he can see, he’s surrounded by yellowed grass, as lifeless and empty as anything could get, spare the small patch that his body rests on.
The vibrant green is still dull when there's no sun to shine down on it. As Mark clutches at a stretch of the dead land, his fingertips sinking into the soil, he feels a small droplet on his cheek.
The clouds open with a vengeance. That night, that day, Mark finds himself bathed by the sky’s sorrow, his hand painfully empty.
Mark’s sitting on the couch when the doorbell rings, and against his better judgement, he lets Chenle stumble off to answer it, trailing behind with a certain level of nonchalance that he thinks he’s subconsciously putting on. It can only be one person, seeing as all the others are crowded into various corners of the apartment; Donghyuck and Jaemin are chattering away animatedly in the kitchen about something Mark is sure he doesn’t want to know about, and Jeno and Jisung are probably still in Jeno’s bedroom searching for the movie discs that Jeno swears he has. Renjun is… somewhere.
“Yukhei, the man of the hour!” Chenle slurs in lieu of a greeting, throwing his hands up gleefully and with far too much familiarity. Mark feels himself freeze up a little bit; leave it to Chenle to blow his cover within milliseconds. He feels kinda stupid for expecting his friends to hold out for more than a minute.
“Am I?” Yukhei tilts his head, and Mark watches as Chenle’s eyes widen comically, mouth twitching as he struggles to find an excuse. Mark wills him to think of one a bit more quickly.
“Oh, you know.” Chenle bends his wrist back and forth to wave Yukhei off, scrunching his lips. “Mark was like, telling us about how cool you are and stuff. You, his psychology classmate.”
“He called me cool?” Yukhei asks, glancing over Chenle’s shoulders to meet Mark’s eyes grimace.
“Absolutely!” Chenle chirps, grabbing at Yukhei’s arm to drag him into the apartment, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him. “Come in, come in.”
Once he leads Yukhei through the entryway, Chenle drifts back off to where Jaemin and Donghyuck are in the kitchen, most likely seeking out another bottle of soju after he’d already cleared one all by himself. That’s gonna be a nightmare later, Mark already knows.
Mark’s first thought is to let Yukhei get comfortable. He’s in a new place surrounded by new people that he’s never met before, and the last thing that Mark wants is for him to feel like an outsider.
“You can get comfortable on the couch,” Mark points with his words back towards the empty sofa. “I can grab you a drink, a snack, anything-”
“Actually,” Yukhei cuts Mark off, and Mark shuts his mouth with a snap. “Can I talk to you?”
That’s absolutely not what he expected to hear at all. The spiel he’d prepared in order to get Yukhei comfortable sizzles down, and curiosity rises to take its place. What could they have to talk about, besides psychology?
“Uh,” Mark says, dumbly. “Sure.”
They wind up on the balcony.
Mark has the sense to grab his jacket before they head out, and Yukhei had never taken his off, so there they stand, an awkward sort of energy buzzing in the freezing cold air between them. Yukhei clearly doesn’t know what to say, and Mark doesn’t know what he wants to say, what he could possibly say.
“I got something kinda weird to tell you,” Yukhei wrings his hands together as he says this, visibly nervous; his cheeks and nose are red already, though Mark isn't sure if the temperature can be blamed for it. The air around them is biting at Mark’s skin, too, the chill only intensified by the wind this high up, and he catches himself subconsciously scooting closer to Yukhei.
He doesn't have the slightest clue what Yukhei could possibly want to talk about, especially in this weather. Part of him is desperate to hear it, but another more sensible part wills him to go back where it's warm and cozy and drinks are still being poured, away from being alone with Yukhei when he knows that he shouldn't be.
“Shoot,” Mark’s had his fair share of weird over the past couple of months, and he's more than willing to get a taste of somebody else’s.
Yukhei sighs, and Mark watches the puff of air around his mouth curl off into the darkness of the night. Yukhei's eyes are focused on it, too, like he's trying to look everywhere that's not Mark. “I really don't even know how to start.”
Mark isn't used to Yukhei being like this. He’s adapted to the ball of delight that speaks his first thought without preamble, and seeing him hesitate to tell Mark something after weeks of what he felt like was bonding settles like something cold and hard at the bottom of Mark’s stomach.
He immediately thinks of the worst. What if he’d done something wrong during one of their… two study sessions? Is it something that he’s said, something he’s done? Did he give Yukhei the wrong answers for the online workbook? Did-
Mark swallows that fear down, feels it rest heavily in his chest, and says the first thing that he can think of that isn't panic. “Respectfully, Yukhei, it's cold as hell.”
Yukhei flinches, like he'd been caught up in his own thought once more, before he's scrambling to apologize.
“I know, I know! Shit,” Suddenly, Yukhei reaches down to the pockets of his puffer jacket, digs around for a couple of seconds, and pulls out a small plastic pouch that gets dwarfed by the size of his palm. Before Mark can even register what it is, Yukhei's shoving it into Mark’s hand. He looks down, his confusion only deepening, and inspects the plastic to determine that it’s-
“A hot pack,” Mark mumbles. “Yukhei, why’d you give me a hot pack?”
“It's cold.” Yukhei says, simply, before both of his hands are enveloping the one that Mark is holding it in. “You're supposed to squeeze it.” He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, like Mark is a bit oblivious for not knowing.
“I- I know. I know you squeeze a hot pack, but Yukhei-” Without even realizing it, Mark starts to clutch the pack tighter at Yukhei’s command, at the touch of his freezing cold fingers. “Can you tell me what the hell’s wrong?”
At his words, Yukhei’s hands start to slip from Mark’s, his fingertips ghosting over the skin on the backs of Mark’s knuckles, slowly and with a degree of uncertainty. When they’re finally a millimeter away from losing contact, Yukhei freezes. Mark opens his mouth, ready to call out the other’s name once more, but before he can even get a word out, Yukhei is sliding his fingers back over Mark’s. His hand is still firmly clasping the heat pack Yukhei had just bestowed upon him, palm facing upwards, but Yukhei’s touch ushers him to open it back up.
The cold air swallows up the temporary warmth Mark had felt when he unclenches, rushing back in like a pack of dogs on a pile of meat, but he still feels the stroke of Yukhei’s fingers against his now accessible palm. Without another word, Yukhei inches closer to Mark and laces their fingers together, the hot pack squeezed between their grips.
The touch is electric. Mark should pull away, knows he should pull away, sees images of Kunhang burned into his memory, but he doesn't. Yukhei doesn’t, either.
“This feels familiar, doesn’t it?”
Yukhei’s voice once again breaks through the stillness of the night, breath billowing between them. His words rattle Mark’s heart in his chest, shake him to his core, but he doesn't let it show beyond a twitch.
“What?” He whispers, though there's no reason for him to. It's just the two of them out there on the balcony, even though it feels like they're alone in the middle of a void. “Familiar. What do you-”
“Familiar, like it's something we always do.” Yukhei’s grip tightens on his, and he feels the hot pack dig a bit deeper. Mark knows the red on his face can't be blamed on the cold, not any longer.
“Yukhei-”
“The crazy thing I was gonna tell you,” Though Mark struggles under the intensity of his gaze, he raises his eyes from where their hands are joined to meet Yukhei’s, where they smolder with so many different emotions simultaneously; confusion, passion, sprinkles of sadness. Mark blinks, slowly, telling himself that he needs to do so before he gets lost there forever.
Mark’s mouth is slightly agape. He hadn't realized before, but his body is forcing him to take in more of the biting air that surrounds them, swallowing his lungs in a blast of icicles. It's harder for him to breathe, hard to catch his breath, but he's not sure any longer if it's just because of the temperature.
“Yeah?” Comes his voice in a weak whisper, a gasping wheeze.
Mark, for that one second, allows himself to hope.
“You've been in my dreams,” Yukhei declares with a slight quiver in his voice, and Mark lets out a breath he didn't know that he’d been holding in, feels his heart somersault right back into his chest with a vengeance. “For a long time, before we even met.”
Mark isn't sure what to say to that, isn't sure how to articulate that he’d been experiencing the same thing, that Yukhei had just spoken words that Mark had forced himself to swallow down again and again and again until they reached a place so deep in his conscience that they refused to emerge, even for him. He sees their field through flashes of sunlight and peeks of a blue sky, a stark contrast to the sea of black gloom that surrounds the world above them. He sees Yukhei, in his golden glow, hair messy, his hand clasped firmly in Mark’s as it is right now.
For once, he doesn’t overthink it. He opens his mouth, and the words that fall out reflect his most private thoughts.
“Me too,” Mark says in a hushed tone, and watches Yukhei’s eyes widen much like his must have. “God.”
Yukhei’s face scrunches up a little bit, wrinkling his nose, before it softens once more.
“Me and Kunhang, we…” Yukhei shakes his head, his hair bobbing with the motion. “Kinda weird to tell your boyfriend that the reason you’d been drifting apart for so long was because of a recurring dream of your friend’s other friend that you only know secondhand.”
Despite everything, Mark catches himself chuckling. He’d been in the same position with his roommates, and all of his attempts had been fruitless.
“So I didn’t. He wound up breaking up with me.”
Mark hates that he feels a rush of relief at those words. He’s unsure if it comes from a place of him not having feelings for a taken man or the possibility of him now having a chance.
“I’m sorry,” Mark opts to say, but Yukhei cackles a bit under his breath.
“Don’t be. We’ve been best friends for years, and thought that dating could be the next step. It wasn’t, and that’s okay. Not gonna let two months ruin ten years.”
Two months. That’s-
“I hate to admit that it was a distraction,” Yukhei pushes on, his fingers tightening around Mark’s again.
Mark has a feeling he knows the answer, but he asks anyway. He glances up at Yukhei, lets his gaze trail over cheeks that are still bitten crimson, to eyes that meet his when he reaches them.
“From?”
Yukhei’s eyes follow the same path as Mark’s, except his trace downward instead of upward; Mark can feel them rest on his lips, lets his eyes fall down to where he sees Yukhei’s plush mouth.
“I've wanted to say this for so long, man.” Yukhei doesn’t know what his words do to Mark’s heart. “Can I kiss you?”
For once, Mark isn’t mad at his mouth for moving more quickly than his brain. The yeah barely passes his lips before he pushes himself upward on his toes to reach Yukhei’s height, and Yukhei leans forward to close the small space between them.
It’s gentle, but it’s everything that Mark wanted out of it; as they slot their lips together, Yukhei reaches a hand up to rest on the back of Mark’s head, to feel the hair at the nape of his neck. Mark’s own hand reaches up to grasp at Yukhei’s bicep as he pulls away for air, not even a second later delving back in to once again make contact.
He can’t feel the chill against his skin anymore, can’t even remember that they’re standing in the freezing cold; memories of a brillant sun warm his skin, warm his heart, and warm his soul as he feels it clash with another.
Mark doesn’t dream of anything that night. With his face pressed comfortably into Yukhei’s neck, and their fingers still laced together, Mark thinks that he won’t need to dream of anything else for a long, long time.