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Donghyuck had a dream that came true when he was seven years old.
In it, he tripped and broke his wrist on the playground of his elementary school during recess. It happened in real life exactly the way he dreamt it, from the socks he was wearing down to the color of the soccer ball he’d been chasing when he fell.
In the waiting room in the hospital, the exact same room he’d seen the night before, he asked his mom if dreams could come true. She said, “Of course, baby. You can do anything you dream of.”
It wasn’t until several years later that Donghyuck realized she hadn’t understood exactly what he'd meant.
-
Donghyuck rolled out of bed, groaning as he reached to shut off his alarm. A new comeback meant more music, more content, more interaction with the fans, but it also meant waking up at ass o’clock in the morning after three hours of sleep to be shipped off to god knows where to film whatever variety/music show/performance gig the company deemed worthy of their time.
Recently, it was always comeback season.
“Alright, Haechan-ah?” Johnny asked when he emerged from his bedroom to see the rest of the dorm already up and at ‘em. This was a question he often got asked in morning, usually because he looked like death any time before 10 AM, and 5:45 was, unfortunately, well before that. Donghyuck gave him a groggy thumbs up before making his way to the bathroom.
The good thing about comeback season, Donghyuck mused as he watched himself brush his teeth in the mirror, was that sleeping less than 4 or so hours single-handedly stopped his dreams almost entirely. The bad thing about it was, when he did manage to grab close to seven hours of sleep, he’d have several dreams in one night, as if his useless, prophetic brain was trying to make up for lost time. Last night had been blissfully dream-free, but the night before he’d suffered through four different versions of watching himself trip and fall during filming, likely to occur sometime next week, if he had to guess, and one watered-down dream version of what looked like a 127 concert. It must be pretty far away, based on both the dismal clarity of the dream and the current state of the pandemic, but there was something odd about it that he couldn’t quite place…
He spit his toothpaste out into the sink, splashed some water on his face, and made his way back to his room to throw on an outfit. If he remembered correctly, today’s schedule was all filming for Dream even though they were well into preparations for the 127 comeback, which was why the rest of the dorm was already up, preparing for their own schedules.
“Good morning, Haechan-ah!” Taeyong greeted him cheerily when Donghyuck returned to the kitchen to scavenge some breakfast. “Are you and Mark with us today or with Dream?”
“Dream,” Donghyuck said, successfully grabbing a protein bar out of the pantry, “but there’s another schedule in the evening—filming something—is that with you guys?”
Taeyong put an elbow on the counter and rested his face in his hand. “I don’t think so? I just have recording this afternoon.”
A hand ruffled Donghyuck’s hair, and he swatted at it, turning around to see Johnny laughing at him.
“Have fun with the babies today,” Johnny said, grinning.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a wave of his hand, already making his way out the door. He didn’t bother saying goodbye to them when he left, he would see them later, probably, for some schedule or another.
When he got out of the elevator, he spotted Mark already waiting at the vans, dark hair hidden under an orange beanie. Mark startled at the sound of the door and gave Donghyuck what was surely a classic, unguarded, Mark smile underneath his mask. Donghyuck, tired as he was, smiled back, and the two of them crawled into the car silently. They never bothered speaking during mornings like this because Mark had learned a long time ago that it only took around two minutes for Donghyuck to fall back asleep no matter what conversation was going on around him, the quiet hum of the engine overpowering any resistance he might have to stay awake. He sat in the back of the van next to Mark and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he was already in the dressing room, Mark lost somewhere in crowd. Before he could turn around, the stylists handed him his outfit for the day. It was the exact outfit that he’d seen himself tripping in two nights ago, a bright purple bellboy outfit.
Right, they were shooting the Dream season’s greetings content today, and he was going to take spill large enough that they would have to stop the filming of whatever content they were shooting to give Chenle time to stop laugh-crying. He could only hope that they would have mercy on him and edit it out of the behind-the-scenes footage.
Mina, his favorite makeup artist, gave him a big smile from under her mask as he plopped down in her chair. He tried to return it with as much geniality as she gave him.
“Any predictions for today, Haechan-ah?” she asked while she began washing his face. Donghyuck almost laughed.
One day, years ago, he accidentally expressed his frustration to her over how much time they were going to spend arguing over one of the scenes in the Cherry Bomb music video. Of course, they hadn’t actually done any filming yet when he complained about it to her, so she was understandably very confused about the whole conversation. When the producers later spent 45 minutes loudly debating when and where the motor bikes and ATVs should drive across the set, he made eye contact with her and rolled his eyes. She was stunned. Ever since then, she always asked him his predictions for the day. Most of the time, he just joked around; after all, he didn’t have dreams every night, but today…
“Hmm,” he made a show of pretending to think about it, “during filming, someone will trip and fall. It won’t cause any lasting damage, but it will be very funny.”
“It’s so creepy how he does that,” Jisung whispered loudly to Chenle in the chair next to him while Mina gasped dramatically.
Chenle rolled his eyes. “He’s just pretending that he’s psychic to freak you out, you idiot. Now he’s going to trip someone on purpose because you brought it up! Don’t engage with Haechan’s nonsense; that’s, like, rule number one of being in NCT.”
“His predictions always come true, though! Haven’t you noticed?”
Donghyuck just laughed, wriggling his fingers at Jisung. “Ooh, it’s true! I’m a witch!”
“Stay still, Haechan-ah,” Mina said, giggling behind her mask. Donghyuck winked at Jisung before turning his face back towards her.
Two hours later, during the filming for what they were calling Hotel Dream, Donghyuck tripped over a piece of prop luggage that had eluded getting put away properly and face planted. Chenle laughed so hard that he fell to the ground.
As it turned out, knowing that it was going to happen did little to dissuade the embarrassment. He rolled over and lied on his back to stare up at the ceiling while Chenle’s laughter collapsed into crying in the background.
With the sound of Chenle’s choked-out sobs as a soundtrack, Mark ran over, nearly tripping himself on his way towards him.
“Donghyuck-ah!” he cried, “are you okay?”
Mark was cradling his face in his hands, searching it for signs of injury. It was times like this when Donghyuck thought—well, never mind. No matter how his dreams went, real life always went like this:
“I’m fine, Hyung,” he said, rubbing at his wrist where he’d caught himself on the way down. Mark’s face visibly relaxed. He looked like he was about to say something, but then he caught himself, glancing up at the room around them. He stood up from where he’d been hovering over him.
“Good, um, that’s good,” he said sheepishly. “Don’t get hurt, okay?” He stood there for a moment before the staff directed them all back to start filming the scene over again.
When they were finally done with the filming and the photoshoots sans any more disaster, they all piled back into the vans to travel to the second schedule of the day: filming live performance videos of Life Is Still Going On and ANL. Donghyuck settled in the back against the window for his second car nap of the day.
“How did you know?” Jisung whispered to him when the van pulled out of the garage, its other occupants engrossed in their own conversations.
“I saw it in a dream, Jisung-ah,” he replied as he drifted off. “I saw it in a dream.”
-
Here's how Donghyuck had come to understand his, for lack of a better word, visions: there were many infinite possibilities for what could conceivably happen in the future, and there were also an infinite number of small things, choices, or happenings that could alter its course. Some things were so inconsequential that so much as wearing a different pair of pants would completely change the course of an entire day, one small difference snowballing a whole new sequence of events. Some things, however, the universe was so set on that no amount of clothes-changing, place-avoiding, or willful decisions would ever be enough to change them.
Take, for example, the night before he was told that they thought he was too young for The 7th Sense concept and wouldn’t be debuting after he spent two weeks recording and learning the choreography. He did every trick he could think of to change the outcome of his dreams: entirely different outfit, showered at a different time, made eggs for breakfast instead of eating whatever he could find in the cabinets. He even invented something to do so he would be slightly late to rehearsal, all to no avail. Too young, too young, too young, they told him.
Mark wasn’t too young, less than a year older than him. Somedays, those ten months might as well have been a decade.
The 7th Sense notwithstanding, Donghyuck had surmised, through thousands of dreams, that very few things were set in stone. After all, it wasn’t just his actions that affected the future, but everyone else’s as well. He’d had infinitely more dreams that didn’t come true than those that did.
Yet, even after more than ten years, sometimes his dreams still managed to surprise him.
Doyoung was singing. He was on a stage, and the stage collapsed underneath him. Donghyuck was on the same stage. He ran towards him, but suddenly, the stage collapsed underneath him, too, and he was falling, falling, falling.
Donghyuck sat straight upright in bed, gasping, drenched in sweat.
It was a nightmare. Donghyuck had had countless dreams that were varying levels of disturbing, but he hadn’t had an honest-to-god nightmare since he was a kid. He didn’t know what to make of it.
He glanced over at Johnny, sound asleep in his bed. The clock on his bedside table read 3:28 AM. The drying sweat coating his body made him shiver, and he tucked himself back under the covers. He could ponder the dream in in the morning, he figured, and dozed off back to sleep.
His alarm went off at 6:30 AM. There was something he thought he was supposed to remember, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was.
-
The concept for the 127 comeback was what Donghyuck would describe as a sexy cowboy sort of look. While it looked great on members like Yuta and Johnny, there were sometimes when Donghyuck could do nothing but accept whatever the stylists gave him with a smile and a nod and hope that it didn’t turn out too ridiculous on the other side of the camera. They were on day two of three of music video filming for the title track, interspersed with photoshoots, of course, and they put Donghyuck in a shirt that had a collar that went all the way across his chest, but otherwise it was fairly inoffensive, at least.
After this music video was done, they were going to go straight into filming track videos. The day after that was all finished, he and Mark had a Dream schedule, and the day after that, they were going on vacation with 127 to film content for YouTube.
Donghyuck hadn’t had a dream in two weeks.
Honestly, he had no complaints. His dreams had starting taking a bizarre turn ever since 127 began working on the Sticker comeback. The last one had involved half of the members getting into a car accident during promotions, and it was disturbingly graphic.
And, there was this bit in it where he and Mark—
Well.
It was all very unsettling, and as far as he was concerned, the less sleep he got, the better. He’d never been more grateful for back-to-back comeback preparations.
“Haechan-ah, you’re up!” one of the managers called out, markedly ending his brooding. He popped up from his spot on the floor and jogged towards the set.
They handed him a giant, light-up whip.
Donghyuck had already seen that they were gonna win trophies for Sticker. They were going to win a lot of trophies for Sticker. Knowing that only served to make him more and more confused about literally everything about it, but he wasn’t going to question it. If the flute song with the neo-cowboy music video sold a million albums, then so be it. This was why, at the end of the day, he trusted SM to make the decisions.
Donghyuck climbed up a ladder to sit on top of the set as directed and coiled the whip in his hands.
They filmed the scene a couple times, Jungwoo holding up a balloon in the shape of a heart, then the camera panning over to Donghyuck, brandishing his whip. It was quite the extensive set up for only a few seconds of footage, but it was far from the most ridiculous thing he’d done on film. Plus, like he said, he was done questioning SM's decisions. They clearly knew something he didn’t.
Then, abruptly, a light exploded on set.
A shower of sparks rained down over the production team and Jungwoo down on the ground. Donghyuck, positioned as he was on top of a neon sign of a cowboy riding a horse, could only watch in horror as glass fell from the sky. Jungwoo screeched, rushing off the set with several members of the staff, and the commotion rose and fell as everyone collected themselves, checking that no one was hurt.
Then, another one exploded.
Donghyuck ducked, feeling the heat of the sparks on the back of his neck. This was it. He was going to die. He was going to die dressed up as a sparkly cowboy holding a light-up whip on set for the music video of the worst song ever made, and he wouldn’t even get to hold any of the trophies that it was going to win.
“Donghyuck!”
“Someone get Haechan!”
People were running every which way, fully descended into chaos. In the mayhem, someone produced a ladder, and Donghyuck scrambled down it as fast as he could without toppling it over.
Mark caught him in a hug at the bottom.
Donghyuck let himself be tucked into Mark’s chest, inhaling the scent of the laundry detergent that SM used for all their performance outfits and something distinctly Mark underneath. It was such a familiar combination that the tension in his shoulders started to ease unconsciously.
“Are you okay?” Mark asked. His voice shook.
“I—yeah, I’m okay.”
Mark unwrapped his arms from around him and brought Donghyuck’s hands up to his face for inspection, rubbing at a small cut where a shard of glass must have nicked him. He hadn’t even noticed it. Mark’s eyes were big, something pleading in them, when he looked back up at Donghyuck’s face.
“What did I tell you about getting hurt?”
“Haechan-ah!” a voice called out, interrupting Donghyuck contemplating how he could possibly respond to that. He had a quip inside him about how the lights exploding could hardly be his fault, but he couldn’t quite muster the gall to get it out.
Johnny ran up to them and pulled Donghyuck into what he was realizing was only the beginning of the large number of hugs he was going to endure today. When Johnny released him, his face was crumpled in concern.
“Hey,” Johnny whispered, “you’re alright.”
Donghyuck only just noticed that he was shaking. He tried to steady his hands. “Is Jungwoo okay?” he asked, looking around.
“Jungwoo’s fine. He’s sitting down in the dressing room.”
“Okay,” Donghyuck said, his heart rate finally starting to slow down. “Okay.”
“Come on, let’s go sit down.”
-
Jungwoo was shaken up, but unharmed. Donghyuck, with the tiny scratch on his hand, had fared worse than he did. There had been a couple superficial cuts and burns amongst the staff and crew, but miraculously, no serious injuries, and they resumed filming the next day.
Donghyuck couldn’t help but feel some sort of helpless betrayal. What was the point of being cursed with such vague ability to see the future if he couldn’t predict things like this? He’d had so many dreams about varying levels of catastrophe recently, but none about the disaster that had actually happened.
Did that mean something?
“What are you thinking about?” Mark asked from where he’d been hovering next to him all day.
Mark had been clingy ever since he’d been officially put back in Dream, which was weird, considering that he got clingy only after they started spending literally all their time together and not before, but in the past 24 hours since the Sticker Explosion, it got to be so excessive that Donghyuck was actually starting to get mildly annoyed, which was quite the feat. Donghyuck can only guess how long it’ll last: for all they claim to be best friends, for all Donghyuck is more or less clairvoyant, he sure has a hell of a time trying to read Mark most days.
Donghyuck sighed, leaning his head onto Mark’s shoulder. He was immediately received with open arms. That was the good thing about being in a set explosion, at least: no one rebuked his cuddles.
“Just, I don’t know, still processing it. I’m glad Jungwoo’s okay.”
Mark paused before he responded, letting the two of them breathe in tandem for a moment. “I’m glad Jungwoo’s okay, too, but you know, I’m also glad that you’re okay.”
There was something odd about the tone of Mark’s voice. Donghyuck looked up at him, confused.
“I mean, yeah? What’s your point?”
Mark frowned. “You’re concerningly unconcerned about yourself. You were on set, too. You’re allowed to be, like, affected by it.”
Now that, he hadn’t been expecting. It’s true, he probably wasn’t as worried about himself as maybe he should have been, but that was going to be something impossible to explain: in all his dreams over the past few weeks about sheer disaster, in all the disturbing imagery he’d been subject to, watching his closest friends have terrible fates befall them, Donghyuck was never the one that got hurt. Not that that really meant anything; none of those dreams had come to fruition, anyway, and just because he didn’t dream something, didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen, but still, he couldn’t help it. After seeing member after member succumb to horrifying disasters night after night over the last month, Jungwoo being unharmed was the greatest relief he could possibly imagine.
He wasn’t worried about himself. How could he be?
Donghyuck looked up at Mark, trying to untangle his thoughts into something more comprehensible than, “I never dream that I get hurt.” He couldn’t quite come up with the words, but something in Mark’s expression softened anyway, even though he hadn’t said anything.
Just for a second, he thought that Mark might—
Mark stood up suddenly at the sound of the door to the dressing room flying open. Donghyuck didn’t turn around to see who it was.
“I just want you to look out for yourself. I get worried,” Mark said, awkwardly standing in front of him.
Donghyuck tried to smile, but it probably came out more like a grimace.
“I know, Mark. I know.”
-
The night after Donghyuck met Mark for the first time, he dreamt about him. In his dream, Mark stood outside of his classroom after school ended, waiting for him to get let out so they could walk together to the subway. They talked about which flavors of bingsu they liked the best, and they missed their stop.
The next day, after school ended, Mark was waiting outside of Donghyuck’s classroom exactly as he had been in the dream, though he was wearing different socks. On the way to the subway, they talked about video games instead of bingsu until they got onto the topic of Justin Bieber, which then took up the whole rest of the subway ride to the company, both of them pressed together, listening to My World on Mark’s iPod though shared headphones. Donghyuck was watching for their stop, hypervigilant, but Mark started helping him with the English pronunciation for the lyrics to One Less Lonely Girl, and they missed it anyway.
Donghyuck has had hundreds of dreams about Mark over the years, but that was the only one that ever came true.
-
The rearrangement of the Sticker filming schedule ate into the schedule for everything else, but with the cancellation of the planned track video for Focus (much to Doyoung’s chagrin), the rest of the comeback schedule was pretty much unharmed. Soon, they were on their way to the mountains in the outskirts of Seoul for two days and one night to film some ever-beloved idol vacation content. It was actually a bit of a relief; even though they were filming the entire time, it was kind of like a real vacation, if on a real vacation he had to commit to the bit 24/7.
The only time Donghyuck wasn’t committed to the bit was when dishes were involved. Fuck if he was going to wash dishes for nine men when there was a chance that he could not. Not even being funny on camera was worth that.
When they were waiting for Taeyong and Yuta to come downstairs to film the series of games they were about to play to determine who would sleep where, Mark sat down next to him on the bottom step, knocking their knees together.
“Do you think I’ll have to sleep in the sleeping bag?” He asked idly, playing with the hem of Donghyuck’s shorts.
“Mark, you know I don’t know the answer to that question.” Donghyuck sighed, nudging him a little with his elbow.
“I don’t know, sometimes you know the weirdest things.”
Donghyuck turned around to give him a look. “That’s because I’m smart, Makgeolli,” he said flatly.
Mark rolled his eyes. Donghyuck stuck his tongue out at him. Mark opened his mouth to say something, but the staff called out for them to get ready to resume filming as Taeyong and Yuta descended the stairs, cutting him off.
“We’ll need an MC for the game,” one of their managers said, and that was Donghyuck’s cue.
When they were filming stuff with Dream, Donghyuck usually pushed himself into the MC role because it annoyed the members. With 127, he did it because it annoyed the members, because no one else ever volunteered, and also, because he was the funniest. No one else in 127 ever committed to being funny except sometimes Johnny. They committed to being stupid all time, which was mostly funny, but it wasn’t quite the same.
At least Mark always laughed no matter what. That in and of itself made filming any NCT content automatically better.
“I’ll do it!” he said in his cutest aegyo voice, jumping off the edge of the stair he’d been sitting on. Mark giggled at him, and the satisfaction of making him laugh was enough to sustain him through the rest of the night.
-
Donghyuck woke up. In his dream, he crawled into the bed Mark was sharing with Jaehyun in the early hours of the morning. Jaehyun was dead asleep, but Mark was wide awake, reaching for Donghyuck before he even made it to the edge of the bed. The three of them barely fit, but Mark pulled Donghyuck close to him, like they’d done so many times in tiny dorm beds over the years. After half an hour or so, Jaehyun woke up and left, tousling Donghyuck’s hair on his way out. Much later, when they finally pulled themselves out of bed, they met the rest of the members in the kitchen, who told them that Jaehyun was missing. The rest of the dream was spent searching for Jaehyun in every crevice of the house, the sound of the members calling out his name ringing throughout the hallways. They never found him.
In real life, Donghyuck opened the door to the room that Mark and Jaehyun were sharing at 9 AM. Mark was half-asleep, and Jaehyun was awake, solid as ever beneath the tips of Donghyuck’s fingers. Jaehyun made a confused noise at the press of Donghyuck’s hand to the center of his chest, but Donghyuck only smiled at him, hoping that the pull of the skin around his eyes didn’t look too strained. Mark, rolled up in the aptly neon comforter adorning his and Jaehyun’s bed, made a soft noise in his sleep.
Donghyuck, tired as he was, said goodbye to Jaehyun and went back to bed.
-
Sticker won even more music shows than Donghyuck had seen them win, which was a bit shocking, because he saw them win quite a lot. They were still winning. It was kind of amazing.
But, the machine rolling as it was wont to do, Sticker had only been out for two weeks when they had to start rehearsing for the repackage. Favorite also had a weird whistle motif, so he guessed that was the theme tying them together, but it was infinitely more listenable than Sticker. He liked it a lot, actually. Small blessings. Those small blessings added up when you had to listen to a song over and over and over again during dance practice.
Speaking of dance practice, Donghyuck, in his newly dyed gray hair, splayed out on the practice floor and tried not to fall asleep. They’d had an Mnet performance for Sticker in the morning and a choreography rehearsal for Favorite in the afternoon. The music video was scheduled to be filmed next week. At this point, he hadn’t slept more than a couple hours in so long that he was starting to get loopy. He could feel the patience of some of the other members waning, but sometimes it felt like he was outside his body watching himself act more and more ridiculous as the last dregs of his sanity started to unfurl.
The last dream he’d had…
“Haechan-ah.”
He startled out of sleep so aggressively that he shot up into a seat, and the bucket hat he’d been wearing flung itself off his head and across the room. “Wha—I’m awake!”
Taeyong, standing above him, gave him a vaguely concerned look. “You okay, Haechanie?”
That was a very good question. Altogether, he’d probably had maybe twenty hours total of sleep in the last week, but he was still alive! That had to count for something. “I’m fine, Hyung.”
Taeyong frowned, but didn’t press it. He gave his head a comforting pat and left Donghyuck sitting on the floor and left to talk to the choreographer. Donghyuck flopped back down and stared at the ceiling. If his eyes were open, he wouldn’t fall asleep. Probably.
The bucket hat he’d been wearing a moment ago dangled in front of his eyes, and Mark plopped down beside him, fitting it on his own head instead of giving it back. Donghyuck made a rather sad attempt at retrieving it, reaching his arm up, but he could only manage to grab the edge of Mark’s shoulder from where he was sitting. He gave up immediately, letting his arm fall back to the ground.
“Do you think Favorite will be as popular as Sticker?” Mark asked after a moment, taking off the hat to shake out his blue-green hair before putting it back on.
Donghyuck snorted, not even bothering to hide that he knew for a fact it wouldn’t. “No, which is insane because Sticker sounds like the inside of my head when I’m screaming, and Favorite is, like, actually a good song.”
Hilariously, Mark looked scandalized. “Wait, you don’t like Sticker?”
“You do?” Donghyuck asked, incredulous, lifting his head up to fix Mark with a look. “It’s terrible!”
“I like it a lot! It’s fun.” He pouted, his bottom lip poking out pathetically. “It’s, like, so unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.”
“I mean, that’s certainly true.”
“Okay,” the voice of the choreographer rose over the sound of the members milling about, “two more run-throughs and we’ll call it a night.”
That was all Donghyuck needed to feel awake. He hopped to his feet, snatching his hat from Mark on the way up. He might have misjudged his momentum a bit, because he only barely stopped himself from full-body colliding with him. Mark screeched as Donghyuck lunged at him, and the chase around the practice room that followed was delightful, even though Mark caught him in what had to be record time.
Giggling with Mark’s arms around his waist, he almost missed Doyoung scream.
“Taeyong!” Doyoung cried out, and Donghyuck turned around just in time to see Taeyong dive, tackling their choreographer to the ground as the ceiling right above the both of them shuddered and came down.
Donghyuck sprinted towards them.
The dust from the splintered drywall caked the entire back of the practice room in a patchy white film. Taeyong was covered in it, but, miraculously, he seemed to have avoided getting hit by any of the larger pieces of the ceiling. Donghyuck dropped to his knees next to him, and a cloud of dust puffed up into the air around him.
“What happened?” he asked, moving the biggest bits of the ceiling that fell out of the way.
“The camera,” Taeyong coughed, wiping dust off of his face, “we were adjusting it, and it just…came down.”
By then, the rest of the members had come over and crouched around Taeyong, too, helping him and the choreographer up. Patting himself down, Taeyong stood up and shrugged off everyone’s attention.
“I can’t believe the new building tried to kill me,” he said wryly, and the members laughed with him, helping him brush off the dust covering every inch of his body. “I guess we’re done with rehearsal for tonight."
The hole in the ceiling was in exactly the spot where the mounted camera that the company used to film their practices used to be. Presumably, that camera was currently somewhere underneath the rubble on the ground. Donghyuck looked up through the hole in the drywall to see various crisscrossing wires and pipes. The skeleton of the building looked back at him.
Another chunk of drywall fell at his feet, and Donghyuck jumped out of the way, nearly tumbling to the ground in the process.
Mark grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the debris.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “It’s dangerous! Let’s get out of here, come on.”
Donghyuck let Mark pull him out of the practice room, glancing back at the dust floating from the ceiling, and he just—
He just couldn’t remember if he’d dreamt this or not.
-
Donghyuck had a new strategy: he was going to sleep as much as possible. He’d had enough of whatever was happening in his dreams and in real life. He was going to dream every dream, watch every possible permutation of every day until he knew exactly when something bad was going to happen, and then, he was going to stop it.
At least that was what he would be doing, if he could fucking sleep.
All the weeks on end spent resisting every hour of sleep that he could, all the time spent forcing himself to stay awake in vans, green rooms, and the dinner table were coming back to torment him. His eyes wouldn’t stay shut, and he stared unblinkingly at the ceiling. Listening to Johnny snoring softly in the bed next to him, he thought that he must have done something to deserve this. He didn’t call his mom often enough, maybe, or he spent too much time messing around during practice.
He was so goddamn tired.
Insomnia 101 says to get out of bed if you can’t sleep and try again later, so Donghyuck finally admitted defeat. He rolled out of bed, taking the top sheet with him to wrap around himself like a cape, and left his room.
The door to his bedroom closed behind him, and someone in the kitchen jumped. It was Mark, which didn’t make sense, because Mark didn’t live here. Or did he? Maybe Donghyuck was the one in the wrong place. He let his eyes drift around the kitchen and the living room to see if it looked familiar.
“Do you live here?”
Mark gave him an odd look. “Do you mean here, or, like, here-here?”
Donghyuck blinked. Maybe he was asleep after all.
“You okay?” Mark asked, taking a step towards him. “You’ve been kind of out of it lately.”
If you’d asked him yesterday if he was hiding how immensely tired he was all the time well, he would have said yes. Tonight, blinking into the darkness of his apartment at 2 AM, he could admit that it was probably obvious to most people around him that his current grasp on reality was tenuous at best.
“I don’t know if I’m dreaming or if I’m awake.”
A hand fell on his shoulder, and Donghyuck followed it up Mark’s arm to his face. He looked vaguely alarmed, even in the dim light of the moon coming through the window. Why was Mark here so late?
“Dude, have you been sleeping, like, at all?”
Now that question he knew the answer to. “No.”
Mark used the hand on his shoulder to gently guide him towards the couch in the living room. He pushed Donghyuck down onto it, and Donghyuck, for all the hours he'd just spent lying in his bed wide awake, felt his eyes get heavy. He listed to side, head colliding with Mark’s shoulder.
Donghyuck woke up.
In his dream, Mark carried him back to his bed and crawled into it with him. When Donghyuck stirred, he quieted him with a kiss to the temple and told him to go back to sleep. He woke up in his own room wrapped in the space between Mark’s arms.
In real life, Donghyuck blinked awake on the couch in the living room to the sound of someone knocking around in the kitchen. He was alone.
Doyoung poked his head around the corner and did a little double take when he saw Donghyuck rubbing his eyes on the couch.
“Why are you out here?” he asked.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. That seemed to be a good enough answer for Doyoung, because he disappeared back into the kitchen without a word, leaving Donghyuck alone to contemplate just how much of a mess he’d gotten himself into.
-
Sometimes, Donghyuck forgot that he and Mark weren’t actually together.
He dreamed about him. He dreamed about him so often that the sheer number of times he’d seen Mark in his dreams probably outnumbered his dreams about everyone else combined ten-to-one.
He felt crazy sometimes, getting mad at Mark for things he couldn’t possibly have predicted that he’d done wrong: for not sitting next to him when he was supposed to sit next to him, for not getting up to go to the bathroom at exactly the right time.
For not holding his hand when Donghyuck really, really wanted him too.
Mark always apologized, even if he obviously had no idea what he’d done wrong. Donghyuck loved that about him. He loved a lot about him, but the longer he went on, the more insane he felt. His dreams had always been glimpses into possible futures, but the more and more dreams he had about Mark, the more Mark defied every single one of him, and the more he doubted that there was any possible future where Mark loved him back.
He wondered if he would still be in love with Mark if he didn’t dream about him the way he did. He used to think, absolutely not, but now, well, it was hard to be sure.
-
They had apparently given Favorite a vampire theme. This is something that they clearly must have announced at some point, considering that none of the other members seemed to be particularly surprised about it when they rolled up on the first day of filming for the music video. Donghyuck must have been a lot more out of it than he thought to have missed that whole bit, because he really felt like he would have remembered if someone told him that Yuta was going to be taking a bath in fake blood to get that vampire aesthetic just right.
Donghyuck kind of felt like Favorite (Vampire) was a good enough song to stand on its own without the (Vampire), but he also wouldn’t have green lit sticker, which was currently on track to be their most popular song ever, so he clearly wasn’t the one to ask.
(Also, he didn’t realize until halfway through the first day of filming, when Taeyong mentioned it offhandedly, that the comeback coincided with Halloween, so that made everything make a lot more sense.)
Oh, sleeping was amazing, as it turned out. Now that he’d given himself permission to sleep, it was like a switch had been flipped. Suddenly, he was absolutely wired, hyped up beyond belief when his brain got rest or whatever it was that it needed. If he’d annoyed the members in his loopy, sleep-deprived state, he was surely annoying them even more in his hyper, wide-awake state, but they didn’t seem to mind. He happily played with them on set, running around and laughing with them the whole first day. It was the most fun he’d had in ages.
On the second day of filming, he had his solo shot, which consisted of him attempting to gracefully fall off a cliff. Despite the huge cushion that was waiting to catch him, the feeling of falling was so startling, that he didn’t get a take where he felt particularly graceful. The crash from the adrenaline he got pretending to fall over and over again coincided perfectly with the filming of the next scene, where they were all lying on the ground, pretending to be asleep
He did fall asleep.
The director called the end of the scene, and Donghyuck woke up.
In his dream, they were at a concert, their concert. They were singing Dreams Come True. It must have been the encore, because they were all in tshirts. Well, they were all in tshirts except for Johnny, who wasn’t wearing a shirt at all. He was making his way over to Johnny to poke at his abs when the stage rumbled beneath him. There was a loud snap, and one of the stage elevators fell though on one side, exactly in the spot where Johnny was standing. He ran towards him, but he was too far away, and the static of Johnny’s microphone colliding with the floor reverberated throughout the entire stadium.
He opened his eyes to find that all the members had already left the set except for Mark, who was still sitting in the spot beside him, waiting for him to get up.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Mark laughed as if he told a particularly clever joke. “How was your nap?”
Donghyuck rubbed at his eyes. “Lovely.” He smiled at Mark, but even as he took Mark’s hand to stand up and let himself be led off the set, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the dream gave him. There was just something about it that was vaguely familiar in a way, like maybe he’d had a dream just like it before.
-
Donghyuck had the same dream a thousand different ways. One night it was Yuta, who fell off the edge of the stage and disappeared underneath the ocean of the crowd. Another, it was Doyoung underneath a loose spotlight, or Taeyong, getting his shirt caught in one of the moving set pieces.
One night it was Mark, and—
Specifics aside, it was clear to Donghyuck that something was going to happen during their as-yet-unannounced concert in Seoul, and whatever it was, it was going to be bad. He had to do something. Exactly what it was that he was going to do, he had no idea, but he was going to fake it until he made it.
Since Donghyuck had been spending so much time (read: maybe six hours a night) sleeping these days and the comeback schedules for Favorite (Vampire) were in full swing, he had a lot less free time to contemplate what his dreams might actually mean. And, as soon as this comeback was over, preparations for the full NCT album were slated, and that was dropping a week before the concert, so even though the concert hadn’t even been announced yet, he was already running out of time.
Sitting in the studio while Mark recorded his lines for Universe (Let’s Play Ball), a song that was ridiculous but oddly satisfying in a way he couldn’t quite describe, Donghyuck considered his options. He wasn’t actually scheduled to record until later, but he was going to get dinner with Mark after he was done and then come back for his slot. Mark had been the one to ask him to get dinner, but it was actually the perfect cover. Tonight, if he had the nerve, he was going to tell Mark about his dreams.
He'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. Something bad was going to happen. If whatever freak accident that was going to happen was going to be truly random, if he really couldn’t figure out what was going to happen to who at what time, it’s not like telling Mark would be of much help. But, if he could narrow it down to a member, at least, then having someone else looking out for them might make all the difference.
“You ready?” Mark asked him, tugging his beanie down over his ears to cover his blue-green hair.
Probably not, Donghyuck thought. “As I’ll ever be,” he said, standing up from grey couch in the corner of the studio. “The usual place?”
The usual place was technically not very usual. Since the move to the new building, they had to scope out a whole new set of usual places. It was a fun little challenge, checking out all the noodle shops and barbeque places in a new little nook of Seoul, but he did miss a few of the restaurants they’d left behind. The new usual place was a modern-looking and rather popular joint, unlike the hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop feel that their old usual had, but there weren’t a lot of places like that around the new building anyway.
Donghyuck followed Mark out of the building and to their new usual as he meandered the long way there through the park and let him chatter about their never-ending comebacks. Instead of listening, Donghyuck watched the purple-orange colors of the sunset dance across Mark’s face. When they got there, Mark opened the door for him and he waved down one of the waiters. The company had only been in its new location for a few months, but the nearby restaurants had caught on quickly, and they were promptly ushered to a table near the back, as out of sight as possible.
Donghyuck took a second to look over the menu even though he was obviously going to order samgyeopsal like he always did. He glanced over the top of the menu at Mark.
Mark was still talking, having moved on from the topic of their eternal schedules to when the last time he saw Bella was and wasn’t it a long time? Now that they’re in a comeback with Xiaojun, did he think that they could go over and hang out with her more often?
Donghyuck took a deep breath and cut to the chase.
“Mark, do you trust me?”’
“Of course,” he said without hesitation, completely unsurprised at being interrupted, which probably said more about their friendship than Donghyuck would have liked.
“It’s going to sound crazy.”
A smirk found its way onto Mark’s lips. “A lot of the things you say do.”
At that moment, their waiter came around. Donghyuck ordered samgyeopsal and an extra side of kimchi without looking at the menu. Whatever it was that Mark ordered went in one ear and out the other as he took one last second to prepare himself.
Truthfully, more than just the probability of upcoming disaster, the possibility of Mark reacting negatively terrified him. He’d been holding it all in for so long that the thought of actually telling someone made him dizzy. It was crazy, right? He hadn't even worked out for himself how it all worked, but Mark was giving him that stupid, encouraging smile, and Donghyuck took a deep breath and let his walls tumble down.
“You know how I sometimes know what’s going to happen before it happens? Like that time…” he wracked is brain for an example. “Like when I knew I was going to trip and fall on the set of the season’s greetings shoot? Or that time I knew Jeno was going to forget his Dream ring?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s because I—I, uh—I see things in my dreams.”
Mark paused. “Like, the future?”
“Not exactly.” Donghyuck tried to gauge Mark’s reaction. It was hard to read, but he wasn’t wearing an expression of complete and utter disbelief, so he powered through. “I see things that could happen. They don’t always come true, but sometimes they do. It’s like predictions of the future. Sometimes, I can even change what’s going to happen by doing something differently. Wearing different pants or something like that.”
Mark took a second to process that before he nodded. “Okay.”
“I—okay? You believe me?”
“Donghyuck, if you’re telling me, with 100% honesty, that you can see the future in your dreams, then I believe you with 100% honesty.” His face fell into a smile. “You’ve predicted enough things with scary accuracy over the years anyway.”
Donghyuck had never actually told anyone about his dreams, not even his own mother. Mark believing him was relief like he’d never known. How could Mark actually believe him?
“Okay,” he said, and he couldn’t stop the beam from overtaking his face. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Mark smiled blindingly right back at him. “This is just—wow. You know, I always thought that you knew too much, somehow. Remember when you knew what kind of soap Doyoung was going to buy at the store? That always freaked me out. Or when you knew that Johnny was going to order extra chicken that one time? Wait, is there a reason you’re telling me now?”
Ah, right, the reason. Donghyuck’s smile faded as fast as it appeared. “My dreams lately, they’ve been…kind of disturbing.”
“Tell me about them?” Mark asked, putting his hand on top of his in the center of the table, and he looked so sincere that Donghyuck just—
He started from the beginning, from the accident on the Sticker set to his disturbing dreams to the self-imposed sleep deprivation: the car accidents, the plane crashes, the explosions, and every kind of natural disaster all running through his head all the time. He told him about the concert, still unannounced, happening in December. He talked through all his dreams about every member, cataloguing all the ways that that they all got hurt.
“I know something is going to happen,” he said, looking directly into Marks wide, stunned eyes, “and I’m almost positive it’s going to happen during one of the concerts in Seoul. It’s just what’s going to happen to who that I haven’t figured out.”
He talked until his phone started ringing. It was Jeno, calling him to tell him he was about to be late to recording.
“Fuck,” he said, half to Mark, half to Jeno. “If Jaemin’s there, tell him he can go first. I’ll be there in a second.” He hung up and scrambled to gather his things. “Can you pay? Fuck, I’m going to be so late.”
Halfway through standing in a hurry, Mark grabbed his hand. “Donghyuck,” he said, “thank you for trusting me with this. We’re going to figure it out, okay? Nothing bad is going to happen to anyone.”
As much as Donghyuck knew that wasn’t necessarily true, as much as he knew that Mark’s promises meant relatively little if Donghyuck’s dreams didn’t start clearing up in the next few weeks, something settled in his gut, like it really was going to be okay.
“Right. Right, okay. Thank you, Mark.”
-
Makgeolli
Wait so that time you told me not to wear those green shorts was that because something bad was going to happen if I did???
Donghyuckie
dont think about it too hard mark youll hurt yourself
-
Telling Mark must have been the secret key, because now all his dreams suddenly had a theme: Doyoung.
“Mark! I had another one!”
Between the recording, rehearsals, etc. for Dreaming, Earthquake, Beautiful, and Universe (Let’s Play Ball), Donghyuck certainly had a lot of time to spend scheming with Mark. The more members in a song, the more time they had to conspire on the sidelines. Today, filming for the Beautiful music video, there were as many members as possible filtering about through the set. Mark had been on set for hours already probably, but Donghyuck had the pleasure of just arriving at noon and finding his better half getting his makeup touched up in the dressing room.
Mark turned around in his chair to give Donghyuck a big, disarming smile.
“Doyoung again?”
“Mark-ssi,” Mina said, “please sit still.”
“Sorry, Mina-ssi” Mark and Donghyuck chorused in union. She just rolled her eyes at them, gesturing for Donghyuck to sit down in the chair next to Mark.
“Yeah, they’ve all been Doyoung,” Donghyuck said, sitting down and making himself comfortable. “All the ones that aren’t—well, all the ones that aren’t aren’t.”
“What are the other ones about?"
Donghyuck grimaced. You, he thought. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“What are you talking about, Haechan-ssi?” Mina said with a knowing, mischievous look. Donghyuck returned one right back at her in full force.
“Just my predictions about Doyoung-hyung,” he said, eyes sparkling.
“What about me?” Doyoung shouted from the side of the set. Donghyuck jumped. He hadn’t even thought to check if anyone was there to overhear them talking, laser-focused on Mark.
“Nothing, Hyung!”
“Stop listening to him about his predictions!” Chenle chimed in, stepping into the dressing room having just changed into his outfit for the day. “You’re all just fueling his delusions! Especially you, Noona!” He pointed a finger directly at Mina, who gasped in faux-offense.
“Haechan-ssi’s predictions always come true, though!” Mina said, fully distracted from Mark’s makeup. “He’s psychic.”
This declaration caused quite a stir in the dressing room for those who overheard it.
“No, he’s not! He’s playing you!” Chenle cried at the same time Jisung said, “He is!” and Doyoung said, “It really is uncanny, sometimes, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, all eyes turned towards him, a mixture of appraising and amused, and, well, there was surely nothing that Donghyuck loved more than being the center of attention.
“I am psychic,” he said, “and Chenle’s going to drop his fried rice all over his outfit later, so someone better make sure the team gets him a backup.”
“Lee Haechan!” Chenle screamed, but it was too late: the other members in the room already descended upon him, laughing, and Donghyuck took the opportunity to send Chenle a gleeful look of victory.
“Is he really going to drop his lunch?” Mark asked while several members held Chenle back from lunging at him.
Donghyuck shrugged, tapping his temple. “Who knows, but now I’m in his head.”
Later, when Mark watched Chenle eye his lunch suspiciously, Donghyuck leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “In his head.” Mark giggled, and there was just something in his expression that Donghyuck couldn’t quite decipher underneath the usual fondness that settled there. It was quiet, small, but it seemed different somehow, looser.
Donghyuck looked away. Some things weren't worth reading into.
-
Okay, so there was one other time that Donghyuck had a dream about Mark that came true. On Donghyuck’s 20thbirthday, Mark, flushed and giggling, pulled Donghyuck into his room with the promise of more alcohol and mischief. Then, exactly as he’d dreamed it nearly a week prior, in the middle of laughing at a compilation of tiktoks on youtube, Donghyuck leaned in and kissed him.
In the morning, Donghyuck woke up alone in his own bed, and he didn’t see Mark again until two days later. He’s dreamt that they finally talked about it at least a dozen times.
They’ve never talked about it.
-
Finally, after knowing for months before it was even announced to the members, through the worst of the pandemic and wondering if a concert would ever be possible again, they were at the stage rehearsal for The Link. Walking through the underneath of the stage, Donghyuck took it all in. The concert was going to be amazing. The staging, the solos, the Love on the Floor choreography, the fans were going to lose their minds.
When they were practicing said choreography, Donghyuck wriggled a little on the elevated stage as the ends folded down to create the angled floor, and Mark, blond since the Universe (Let’s Play Ball) promotions, winked at him. Donghyuck raised an eyebrow and turned away from him in a dramatic huff. He loved having fun with the members during rehearsals, but the day before the concert, it was all focus all the time. They could have fun on stage tomorrow with the fans, tonight, everything had to be perfect.
Okay, so he messed around with them a little, sue him. If he didn’t try to get a rise out of Doyoung at least once a day, he might die.
As nervous as he was for whatever was likely to happen, he couldn’t help but be selfishly excited. The fact that they were even allowed to have a concert with the current state of the pandemic was quite literally unbelievable, and he could feel the electricity thrumming through all of the members. Donghyuck held his umbrella over Yuta during the Love Song rehearsal and let the adrenaline run through them.
Across the stage, the other half of the members got into their positions on their platform, and Donghyuck made eye contact with Doyoung. Donghyuck waved at him. Doyoung waved back. The music started playing, and the railing that Doyoung was leaning against gave away.
“Doyoung!”
Donghyuck sprinted towards him, flying down the stairs, but it was pointless. With the staging as it was, Donghyuck on one platform and Doyoung on the other, there was no way he could possibly reach him in time.
The other members on Doyoung's side lunged toward him, but Doyoung managed to just catch the edge of the railing where it hadn’t fallen through, teetering over the edge of the platform, and keep himself upright before staggering backwards. Donghyuck, halfway across the stage, nearly collapsed with relief when a quiet, “I’m fine!” rang out through the stadium in Doyoung’s shaken voice.
Donghyuck took the stairs three at a time and shoved his way through several members to kneel next to Doyoung.
“Are you okay?” He panted. “Really?”
“Yeah, Haechanie, I’m fine.”
“Everyone off the stage!” Someone yelled, and Donghyuck, completely out of his body, let someone lead him off the platform.
He was so, so relieved Doyoung was okay. For all his dreams where Doyoung was fine, he’d had dozens more where he wasn’t. Something happened, but he was okay.
Backstage, the members and staff were flittering about Doyoung, talking over each other about who had built the stage and who was in charge of them and who was in charge of them and it all swirled around Donghyuck’s head like cotton.
Doyoung was safe.
But—
But this wasn’t the concert. This was the stage rehearsal. All of his dreams had taken place at the concert, seats filled with fans, bass booming in his ears. Not one dream had taken place the day before.
Doyoung was safe, but something bad was still going to happen tomorrow, he felt that deep in his bones, and now he doubted that he even knew who it was going to happen to, much less what or when.
If it wasn’t Doyoung, then who was it going to be?
-
“Are you okay?”
Mark dropped into the seat next to Donghyuck backstage, blond hair puffing up with the movement. He had that adorable, concerned look on his face, and it was almost enough to distract him from the anxiety broiling inside of him.
Almost.
Yesterday, the rest of the rehearsal passed in a blur after the stage was determined to be safe. The reason for the fault in the railing was discovered fairly quickly, and they all got back up to continue rehearsing, though the mood was distinctly heavier than it had been before.
Doyoung was shaken up, but ultimately unharmed, and by the end of rehearsal, he’d loosened up, the excitement of the concert outweighing the trauma.
Donghyuck, though, had gone through the rest of yesterday like he was watching someone else sing and dance inside his body. It was like something inside him snapped, and the weight of trying to figure out what might happen during the concert collided with the adrenaline spike of nearly seeing Doyoung fall to his death and exploded, flinging his consciousness out of his body and into space. It took hours for him to come down. When he got home afterwards, he immediately flopped into bed.
He fell asleep instantly, and his sleep was wholly, entirely, completely dreamless.
Was he okay? He was okay physically. He was, despite himself, excited for the concert. He was also deeply, deeply nervous.
Above all: “I just don’t know what’s going to happen tonight.”
Mark looked at him like he could see right through him, directly into the heart of everything that he was made of. He looked at him like he knew exactly how he was feeling and why, like he saw him for who he was and still liked him, after everything. He looked at him like—
He looked at him like he loved him.
“Well,” he said, fond as ever, reaching over to brush a stray hair out of his face, “that’s how the rest of us usually go about life anyway, so I think you’ll be okay.”
And as exasperating of a response as that was, it was still somehow the right answer. Donghyuck let out a huff of laughter, leaning his head onto Mark’s shoulder.
“I suppose that’s true. I’m just a regular plebian like the rest of you today.”
Mark playfully shoved at him, lightly enough that he didn’t actually dislodge Donghyuck from his position against him.
“Sorry you have to stoop to our level.”
“You should be.”
They stayed like that, pressed against each other, for a moment before Rino called them to gather round for a pep talk, and before he knew it, he was onstage, performing in front of fans for the first time in what felt like forever. The moment he stepped on the stage, everything else melted away, the adrenaline rush of doing his favorite thing in the world overpowering any worry he had about anything.
Though, there was something ever so unsettling about a concert where the crowd was silent.
It wasn’t until the encore, the very last song that he realized one thing a second too late: he never had any dreams about getting hurt himself, but there was someone else that never starred in his rotating cast of injured members.
Donghyuck saw it happen in slow motion.
A fan threw something, a doll of some kind, maybe, and it flew directly towards Mark. Mark, looking the other direction, turned on the ball of his foot at the last second, and caught it right in the face. On any other day, he might have laughed, but the sequence of events played out such that Mark stumbled backwards, tripping over something else that a fan had thrown onstage, and fell.
Donghyuck ran, probably. He couldn’t remember the finer details, but in an instant, he was grabbing Mark, pulling against the inertia of his body hurtling him over the edge of the stage. The momentum shifted, and Mark tumbled down in the opposite direction, directly towards Donghyuck, propelling them both to the ground.
Lying on the stage with Mark half on top of him, wind completely knocked out of him, Donghyuck wheezed out a laugh. There was quite the commotion happening above them, what with the members yelling their names over the (illegal) screaming of the fans, the thrum of Promise You still pumping through the speakers, but he could barely register it. He felt delirious with relief.
It was Mark all along. Of course it was. It was always Mark.
“Donghyuck, you’re limping,” Mark whispered worriedly when they finally got up off the ground and waved to the fans for the final time.
Oh, so he was. Now that Mark had mentioned it, his ankle did kind of hurt. What did it matter though, when Mark was okay?
“You’re okay, though?” he asked Mark instead of replying. “Ow,” he added, stupidly, as he took another step.
“I’m fine. You’re the one who—I thought I told you not to get hurt,” Mark said, exasperated.
He did tell him that. He'd told him that a few times. “I’ve never been one for following directions, I suppose. Ow, fuck, can you get me a chair?”
-
Donghyuck, ankle taped up curtesy of the EMS team working their concert, crawled into bed with Mark that night because, frankly, he deserved it after the last few months. Mark, uncharacteristically, or perhaps characteristically, who could say at this point, welcomed him with open arms, letting Donghyuck worm his way onto his chest. Donghyuck let out a contented sigh.
“How’s your ankle?” Mark asked, running a hand up and down Donghyuck’s side. Donghyuck hummed in approval.
“Lot better,” he yawned. “Just needed to rest it a bit. ’S good as new by now, probably.”
“Be careful tomorrow, okay?”
“Careful’s my middle name.”
“Sure it is,” Mark laughed and the sound of it lulled Donghyuck into a doze. Mark was always like this, wasn’t he? So…awake.
“You never sleep, but you’re always sleeping whenever I need you to be awake.”
Mark paused and replied, confused, “Dude, what are you talking about?”
“In my dreams, you’re awake,” Donghyuck said, half asleep, “and you love me back, but then you’re asleep when I wake up. Happens all the time.”
Mark might have said something else, but Donghyuck had already fallen asleep.
In his dream, Donghyuck woke up with Mark next to him. Mark was awake already, and he was looking right at him. “I do love you back,” Mark said, softly, as if he’d been waiting for Donghyuck to wake up just so he could say it. And then Mark kissed him, slowly, as the morning light crawled across his room, and they stayed in bed until someone banged on the door, yelling at them for being late for call time for day two.
Donghyuck woke up, and his dream came true.