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There are a number of things you shouldn’t tell someone with a crush.
If you say, “That’s never going to work out,” You’ll make them insecure in themselves.
If you say, “Really? You like them ?” You’ll make them insecure about what they like.
If you say, “You and your crush are fated soulmates, destined by the powers that be to fall in love and be together forever,” You’ll endow them with delusions strong enough to make the sun explode.
… Donghyuck missed the memo on that last one.
“Earth to Chenle?” Spoke said boy, waving his hand in front of Chenle’s face.
Chenle’s eyes shot from Donghyuck’s hand, to his face, to his scrying mirror which suddenly looked a lot more threatening than it did before his impromptu fortune-telling session started.
The word soulmates swung around in Chenle’s head like an axe tied to a ceiling fan, destined to destroy any thought in its way.
“There’s no way…” Chenle murmured, more to himself than to Donghyuck, but the older boy sighed anyway.
Donghyuck looked off in the distance with faux melancholy, holding a hand to his forehead and leaning back dramatically.
“Ah… the curse of a fortune-teller… To be sought out for your vision, but be met with skepticism when you share it.”
Chenle scoffed at him, giving him a once-over in disbelief.
“You’d be easier to believe if you didn’t say… that .”
Donghyuck quirked an eyebrow, falling out of his ‘soap opera widow’ pose to send a knowing look Chenle’s way.
“Say what?” He asked, “That you and Mark are soul-”
“Don’t say it again!” Chenle screeched, reaching to cover Donghyuck’s mouth.
Donghyuck rolled his eyes, licking Chenle’s hand to get him to let go.
“Gross.” Chenle mumbled, wiping his hand on Donghyuck’s shirt.
“What’s gross is your lack of faith in my divination.”
Chenle sighed, turning away from Donghyuck and beginning to put out the several candles Donghyuck had positioned around him. Once they were all sufficiently squandered, he turned to the now-pouty fortune-teller.
Despite Chenle’s adamance that Donghyuck was pulling his leg, he did feel sorry looking at the boy across from him.
He reached over to lightly punch Donghyuck on the arm.
“Stop pouting like that… You’re making my heart hurt like an ASPCA commercial.”
Donghyuck deepened his pout, crossing his arms and swaying back and forth like a petulant child.
Chenle couldn’t help but laugh at his dramatics.
“Come on, let’s go eat or something. I’ll treat you since I wounded your ego.”
At that, Donghyuck’s eyes lit up, and he immediately jumped to his feet.
“Oh Chenle, you always were my favorite dongsaeng.” He said, leaning on Chenle’s shoulder and fluttering his eyelashes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Chenle said, rolling his eyes, “I’m sure.”
Sleep was not very easy for Chenle to find that night.
He’d always been the type to procrastinate on sleeping, scrolling on his phone or playing games until way past his recommended bedtime. But tonight was unlike other nights.
His mental appetite for social media and mobile games was nonexistent, his mind unable to latch onto anything except the word ‘SOULMATES’ in bold 72 point Arial font, and made-up imagery of him and Mark holding each other.
He tossed and turned, and tossed and turned, and then tossed and turned a little bit more, before laying on his back and glaring at the ceiling.
“Stupid Donghyuck,” he mumbled into the empty air, “getting my hopes up.”
He shook his head violently, willing the thoughts to go away.
‘Stupid Donghyuck,’ he thought again, as he saw the sun begin to peek above the horizon.
Chenle found Mark on the couch when he emerged from the shower the next day, computer settled on his lap while he leaned in close and squinted at the screen.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Chenle asked, plopping down next to him.
Mark startled for a moment, jumping slightly at Chenle’s sudden arrival.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Chenle said with a laugh.
Mark briefly caught his breath, hitting Chenle’s shoulder once he did.
“You walk like a cat, I swear. I had no idea you were even in the room.”
Chenle smiled at that, scooching closer to Mark so he could peek at his screen.
On Mark’s screen was a Google page, with a search bar that read, ‘vying mirror’
Chenle raised an eyebrow, turning to face Mark.
“Do you mean scrying mirror?” He asked, to which Mark’s face instantly lit up in recognition.
“Yes! That’s it!” He exclaimed, fixing his error in the search bar.
Chenle looked between Mark and the screen again quizzically.
“Are you looking them up because you want one…?” He asked, before pointing towards Donghyuck’s door, “Because Hyuck has one I’m sure he’d let you use, if you wanted.”
Mark shook his head, face once again very close to his computer screen, squinting at search results.
“No no, I’m looking them up because I used one with Donghyuck and I want to know more about the fortune I got.”
“You…” Chenle felt like he was struggling to breathe, “You had a scrying session with him, too?”
Mark hummed, entirely unaware of Chenle’s inner turmoil.
“Yeah, about like… a couple months ago? Like a week after he got his crying mirror.”
“ Scrying mirror,” Chenle corrected again, though his mind was elsewhere, “He didn’t tell me he’d had a session with anyone else before me.”
Mark shrugged.
“That doesn’t surprise me, honestly. He seems serious about this stuff. He’s probably trying to keep up that fortune-tell er , fortune-tell ee confidentiality. Like HIPAA for psychics.”
Chenle mentally cursed at himself for being so endeared by how stupid that sounded.
Though, Mark made a point. Donghyuck presents himself as too goofy to function, but when it comes down to things he’s passionate about, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more dedicated.
“Right.” Chenle mumbled, eyes fixating on the floor.
The ever-present ceiling fan axe swinging around in Chenle’s head must have made its presence apparent on his face, because Mark’s expression shifted from indifferent to concerned in the blink of an eye.
“Was your session with Hyuck… bad?” He asked cautiously, not wanting to tread on soft soil.
His tone was gentle, coaxing Chenle’s gaze to rise from the floor to his face.
His eyes were so warm, void of judgment, not conveying any expectation for Chenle to answer him, just an ear to lend in case he wished to.
“Not bad,” Chenle found himself saying, if for no other reason than to make sure Mark would stop worrying, “what he told me was just… unexpected?”
Mark nodded his head, humming at Chenle’s response.
“Same with me, honestly. I mean like, I didn’t think it would be anything much when I first walked in there, but I walked out kinda shaken. It was like he read my mind just by hearing what I saw.”
“What did you see?” Chenle asked, curiosity piqued.
The tips of Mark’s ears flushed a deep red instantly, a hand raising to cover them instinctively.
Anxious about making him uncomfortable, Chenle added, "No pressure to share, of course. I'm just curious. But if it's too sensitive-"
Mark shook his head.
"No, don't worry," he said, cutting Chenle off, "I'm uh… okay with telling you."
Chenle nodded at him to go on.
“Well, when I was first looking at it, it looked like a blob.” He explained, making a vague shape with his hands, “But then Donghyuck was like, ‘explain the shape to me’ , and at that point I stared a little harder at it, and thought it kinda looked like a fist giving a thumbs up, but like, with two thumbs?”
Chenle’s face paled at mach speeds, puzzle pieces slotting into place as he pictured the shape in his head. With each piece that came together, he felt his heartbeat become faster.
Mark kept speaking.
“And he looked at me like I had two heads, before passing me a piece of paper to doodle on. When I handed it back over to him, I felt like a total idiot, because he looked at me and was like… ‘dude, this is a human heart.’ and then I looked in the scribing mirror again and realized he was totally right.”
This time, Chenle didn’t even register Mark’s blatant inability to remember the proper name for a scrying mirror, too busy trying to figure out- for the first time in his life- how to not fall out of a chair.
“Was it,” Chenle said, voice hopeful, “like… reddish?”
Mark stuck his lower lip out in thought, before shaking his head.
“No. It was blue. Donghyuck said it meant that um…” his ears burned flaming red again, “blue means like… peace, and hope. He told me to have faith in whoever I’m…” He hesitated, eyes flicking between Chenle and the floor in the most conspicuous manner possible, “in love with, because he probably feels the same way.”
They sat in silence for a minute, each of them speechless for different reasons.
Chenle, because 100% of his brain power was being used juggling coming to grips with the fact that Donghyuck might not have been spewing nonsense at his scrying session, and Mark looking at him with those damn starry eyes when he said the word love.
Mark, because he couldn’t be less subtle if he was neon green and eight feet tall, and he had just put his feelings for Chenle out on the metaphorical table.
Mark coped with this fact by closing his laptop and putting it on the actual table in front of him. It didn’t take a genius to know that a heart meant love- the article on his screen about scrying mirror symbols was only a nerve-wracking reminder.
Chenle watched Mark as he did this. Noticed the subtle shake to his hands; the tense wrinkles between his eyebrows.
At that moment, his one wish was to make that all go away. To make Mark feel better.
He’d put his inner workings on display, and Chenle figured it was high time he did, too.
“I saw one too.” He said, to which Mark jumped again, not unlike how he did when Chenle had sat down.
“What?” Mark asked, incredulous.
“I saw a heart. And at first I didn’t realize it was one, because I thought it was like… A fucked up carrot… but like you said, after Donghyuck made me draw it out, I realized it was a heart. Mine just wasn’t blue, it was red.”
Mark was the one struggling to breathe now.
“What does red mean?” He asked, eyes not moving from Chenle’s.
“Donghyuck said it was indicative of passion; that the love that the heart symbolizes is really intense, and unlikely to go away.”
Chenle looked down at his hands, which had been settled in his lap and fidgeting for the past few minutes.
“He also said,” He inhaled deeply, hoping to get more oxygen to his brain, “something about us being soulmates.”
An audible gasp left Mark at that moment, brain short-circuiting and then powering back up like a fridge after a hurricane.
“Your heart was about me?” He asked in disbelief, “Like, really? Are you sure?”
Chenle looked at him, still nervous even though he’d already gotten through the hard part.
“Very sure.” He said with a nod, “Honestly, there’s nobody else I’ve ever felt this way about before.”
He tacked that last part on a bit shyly, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate. Though, when Mark’s eyes maintained that same round softness they always had, he wondered why he even worried in the first place.
Mark scooched closer to Chenle, his hands gently wrapping around Chenle’s, which still twitched in his lap.
“Me neither,” He mumbled, smiling as Chenle flipped his hands so his palms would meet Mark’s own.
Chenle whined at the sudden intimacy, despite having initiated it, and leaned forward until he was nuzzled into the crook of Mark’s shoulder. Ducking for cover.
Mark chuckled at him, tucking his chin into Chenle’s neck as well. Chenle all but shivered at the contact.
“Embarrassed?” Mark teased, all prior nervousness replaced with smug joy.
Chenle could only nod, untrusting of his ability to form words. The motion pleasantly tickled Mark’s neck.
“Embarrassed that you like me, or that Donghyuck was right?”
Chenle mumbled “Both,” into Mark’s shirt, which elicited another laugh from the older boy.
Mark leaned back, forcing Chenle’s face out of hiding.
It was beet-red, a color Mark could swear he’d never seen on Chenle before. He couldn’t help the thought that it was the most adorable sight he’d ever seen.
Unable to help himself, he leaned forward and pecked Chenle’s lips, relishing in the tiny gasp that left the other boy.
Immediately, he was met with a half-hearted jab to the ribs.
“You have to warn me first!”
When Donghyuck emerged from his room after a too-long gaming session, he found Mark and Chenle snuggled together on the couch, a cozy mess of blankets and soft snores.
Whipping out his phone, he opened his group chat with Jeno, Jaemin, and Jisung.
Donghyuck:
[1 photo attached]
I ! WAS ! RIGHT !