Archive of Our Own

“Mark,” Chenle says, tinny through the mask’s headset. “I’ve got something for you, but it kind of makes no sense.”

“Does it make more sense than the guy last week that could turn into a swarm of butterflies?”

“Strong contender. Police are saying there’s a shark roaming the streets.”

“A… shark? Are you sure?”

“It’s over in Velvet Heights. Swing by and see for yourself.”

He takes off from the vantage point he’s at, watching the mutant expo bustle about in the centre of the city from the most concealed rooftop he could find. There had been rumours of anti-mutant groups attending and disrupting the expo, and he’d hate to see anything escalate into violence. Thankfully, it’s been all quiet so far, and he deems it safe to leave for half an hour and find the runaway shark.

“Are you really sure they said shark?”

“Have I told you wrong before?”

He webs from building to building in big swings, arcing close enough to the street he can hear the gasps of those he passes. “No, not unless you count the time you led me in circles trying to find the flooded building by Pearl Docks, only to realise you’d tapped into a boat radioing to land about a flood on board. They had it completely under control. They were actually more pissed when I landed on their roof.”

“Technically, I’m not calling that one a mistake. They were in need! Not my fault they were bigoted towards you for trying to help them.”

He takes a wide turn around a main street, and spots the Velvet Heights disruption down the road. People are leering out of windows with phones, trying to get a good look at whatever’s happening on the ground. As Mark swings closer, he spots people backed up against buildings, watching on with more confusion and mild alarm than anything. That’s good—people in real panic can lead to more unnecessary harm.

“Huh. Chenle, you were right.”

“See! I told you! Is it really a shark?”

He comes down to land several feet away from the shark that’s running around Velvet Heights.

Well, it looks more like a person wearing a shark costume, or a comically large shark body that’s sprouted tough, grey, human-shaped arms and legs. But it’s far too realistic to actually be that, with huge teeth snapping agitatedly and unnervingly. It’s zig-zagging up the road like it would if it were swimming, eyes on each side of its face bulging as it looks at the passers-by that film it with baffled fascination.

“Hey, man. You okay?”

The shark comes to a halt, turning its body to look at Mark, who gives him a little wave.

“You lost? Need help?” He takes a look around at the people here—no one looks hurt, nothing damaged. The shark hasn’t done anything but be a little intimidating and unusual.

The shark snaps its teeth once, and he tries not to startle. It’s not like he should expect a shark to be able to talk.

“Uh… okay. Hey, does anyone know where this guy came from?”

Mark turns in a circle, but the observers just continue filming. He sighs.

“Okay. Hey buddy, how about this—turn your tail to me if I’m wrong, snap those shiny teeth of yours again if I’m right. You’re a mutant, right?”

Teeth snap. Win! “Okay, great! And were you headed to the mutant expo just on the other side of town? Did you get lost, maybe?”

Another snap. Great—he can work with this. Someone at the expo is bound to know who this is, or have a similar enough mutant ability that they can help this person control their transformation.

“Great! I was just there, so I can swing you over if that’s easier. You okay with that?”

Before he can get a response, police sirens tune in, cars turning the corner and roaring up the road behind the shark, sirens wailing. The shark leaps into action again, running past Mark, teeth snapping agitatedly. It won’t get anywhere fast, running zig-zag like that.

Mark doesn’t have any jurisdiction here, and the cops are more likely to try and arrest both him and the shark-mutant than try to help. But he knows what sort of treatment mutants get for daring show their abilities in public. An arrest won’t help the lost mutant at all.

“Mark,” Chenle says urgently. “You know last time, with the butterfly guy, when he seemed to disappear into smoke?”

“Yes?” he says, webbing up to the side of a nearby building to get a vantage point of the situation. “Is this important? I’m trying to—”

“Very,” Chenle cuts in. “That frequency disruption I picked up before—it’s back. Do you see anything strange?”

Someone shouts, and a crowd of people begin to exclaim. Mark whips his head back around to spot the shark again, and sure enough, there’s a purple plume of smoke billowing into the street, seemingly from nowhere.

This is now the third time Mark has seen this smoke—both previous times had involved a mutant struggling to control their power. Both previous times, the mutant disappeared without a trace.

“Hey!” he shouts, swooping down to the ground, in the midst of the smoke. “Sharky, buddy—where are you?”

He fights through the smoke with his bare hands, but gets nowhere. Police are shouting from behind him, as if that will make the smoke stop. He comes out the other side of the cloud, and spots people backing away from it, tripping over each other to get out of its path.

“Shark!” he shouts again, webbing up to the alley where the smoke is retreating. He drops down, smoke clearing out as quickly as it came.

No shark remains.

“The signature has disappeared,” Chenle reports.

“So has the shark,” he says, kicking a trashcan beside him. He climbs up the wall as police round the alley, jumping away from their guns and their shouting, and running over the rooftops back in the direction of the mutant expo. “Chenle, they’ve gone.”

“Again? Like the last one?”

“Just the same.”

They’re both silent over the line as he swings, leaps, and runs back towards the expo.

He slows on arrival, not wanting to draw attention to himself as he comes nearer the building. Not that it would be strange for Spider-Man to attend the mutant expo—many people have theorised he is one himself. He’s the city’s most famous, in fact.

No disruption here.

Before the butterfly guy, there was the girl who was walking around hiccupping little balls of fire. She didn’t do much damage with it, but it’s hard to get close and help a walking fire hazard. When the purple smoke had appeared then, he thought it might be another mutant helping her out—the mutant code of looking after each other isn’t lost on him. It’s something he lives by, in fact.

Now he’s not so optimistic. It’s been three weeks since that girl disappeared, and Chenle has been keeping up with news of her disappearance. No leads since—same for butterfly guy. When mutants go missing, cops don’t look so hard.

The circumstances of their disappearance is the strangest thing—the smoke, and going missing in broad daylight. Two could be a coincidence, but three is undeniably a pattern. It’s starting to make him feel queasy.

They stay quiet on the line for a while, as he checks around the expo, settles back into his nook, and asks for any updates online from the anti-mutant group. Nothing.

“Did you get any other readings, Chenle? Anything that can help us find the shark mutant?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Thunder claps loudly from another part of the city, making the hair on his neck stand on end. They hadn’t been forecast rain today. “I don’t like this.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Chenle says, but he’s unusually subdued. “We always do. Videos of the shark mutant are starting to hit social—I’ll scan them for anything suspicious.”

He takes a look up at the rapidly darkening sky overhead. “I’ll head back soon to help. You should take a break, Lele, we’ve been at this all evening.”

“I’m staying with you every step of the way,” Chenle says, in that stubborn yet casual way he’s so good at. “I’ll let you know if anything else comes up. Are you planning on staying out and watching the mutant expo all night?”

“Nah. Prof. Kim set an assignment I haven’t finished. If protesters were planning to disrupt the convention, they’d be here by now.”

He hears an amused smile in Chenle’s voice when he speaks. “I know you’re just sulky, right? That your number one fan didn’t turn up today?”

“No,” he says, though he already knows what Chenle is talking about, and can’t keep the truth out of his voice.

“You are!” Chenle croons. “You’re missing the pretty boy with the camera!”

“No, that’s not true!” he says, putting more effort into the denial now. “It’s not safe for him to follow me around, I can’t endorse that!”

“I know you’re impressed by the photos he takes. You told me that before. And I know you like having your own personal fansite.”

“I’m not interested in what people say about me on Twitter.”

“Sure. People who aren’t Twitter user LovelyCitySpider?”

“Shut up, Man,” he says, but there’s no heart in it. Chenle laughs. He regrets ever confiding in Chenle that he thinks his fansite—Lovely, as he’s nicknamed him in his head—is incredibly good looking.

The storm really starts coming down after that, though it’s heavier over by campus, where the thunder rolls through his open line with Chenle before it reaches him in real time. He sits and watches the expo bustle on, chats with Chenle occasionally, and considers dipping down to get himself a sandwich.

After thirty minutes or so, Donghyuck texts that he’s on his way back to the dorm with news, so Mark calls it a night and starts to swing back through the city. Between the dark sky and the pummelling rain, he’s relying mostly on instinct and muscle memory to find his way home.

He stops just before reaching the dorms because his spider sense commands it. For a long moment, perched on a random street light and squinting into the rain, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be seeing.

Then he spots it—there’s a guy at the crossroads, making his way across with his head down. With no coat on, he’s drenched to the bone, clutching a satchel to his side.

The road is empty but for a car that’s speeding ahead, making no sign of stopping for the red light. Mark springs into action, hooking a web on the next streetlight along, and swooping down to hoist the guy into his grip. The impact of body against body in the rain is hard, and he calls out “Sorry!”, even as he swings them out of the way of the honking, racing car.

They come to land on the street, Mark with his arms firmly around the guy, making sure he’s steady on his feet before he looks up. The car zooms on, leaving them alone in the street.

“Bet you’re glad I swung by,” he says, before he makes out the face of the guy in the rain.

It’s none other than Lovely, the handsome fansite he’d been missing just thirty minutes ago.

“You!” Lovely says, mouth round in surprise.

Mark shares the surprise with him. For all Lovely has a talent of catching Mark at the scene of the crime (vigilantism?), he’s never had to save Lovely from something before. He’s pretty good at staying out of trouble, keeping his distance to take his photographs of Mark in action.

Mark’s never seen him this close before. He really is good looking, even drenched through with rain, hair plastered to his face, clothes soaked.

“Yup, it’s me,” he says, before realising he’s still holding Lovely in his arms, one wrapped around his back, the other under his legs. He clears his throat, and puts Lovely down carefully, sure he has his balance before letting go. “You okay?”

Lovely seems to recover somewhat, clutching his bag to his side and breaking out into a surprised smile. It’s wide, with many teeth, but Mark can’t find it in himself to be anything but endeared. “You saved my life?”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Don’t make a habit of getting into trouble, okay?”

Lovely laughs, a little high and startled. “Thanks, Spidey. I’ll do my best. It’s been a weird day.”

“Oh yeah? You should be getting home, then. Do you need a lift?”

Lovely points to the dorm buildings behind them. “I’m only going across the road, otherwise I would take you up on that offer.”

“You’re a student here?” Mark tries to temper down his surprise. Lovely goes to the same university as him, and he’s never seen him around? “What do you study?”

“Chemistry.”

“No kidding!” Me too, is what he wants to say, but good sense tells him he shouldn’t reveal that much about himself to a stranger while in the suit. His biggest fan, no less. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you get home before you catch a cold,” he says, saluting and backing away. He’ll hide out somewhere until Lovely makes it into the dorm. “Hey—you take good pictures, by the way.”

The way Lovely smiles simultaneously makes him want to incinerate himself and burst into confetti. Why did he say that? But also, why hasn’t he said that earlier? Lovely is smiling like he’s never been complimented in his life.

“I know,” he says, cheeky, and Mark can’t help but laugh. “I’m glad you like them. They’re for you, after all.”

“For me? Not for the people of the lovely city?”

“It’s not the city that’s lovely. It’s you.”

Mark’s brain short circuits. “Funny. That’s what I’ve been calling you.” He shoots a web up to the rooftop, ready to escape while his tongue can still form words. “See you around, Lovely.”

He pulls his weight up and away on the web, landing and hiding up on the roof rather than swinging in the opposite direction. Hopefully Lovely can’t tell from here—he peeks over after thirty seconds or so to see Lovely running through the rain towards the dorm building.

“What was that?” Chenle asks through the headset, and Mark startles.

“You were listening to that? Dude!”

“It’s my duty to listen to what’s going on with you! Of course I heard all that! You’re such a gross flirt, by the way. That was him, right? LovelyCitySpider?”

“Yeah, that was him,” he says, watching Lovely enter the Kangta building. He’s only two buildings away from his and Chenle’s room—small world. “Dude, he’s crazy good looking. Why the hell is he spending his time taking pictures of me?”

Chenle tsks. “Don’t fish for compliments. Donghyuck has talked about your ass in the Spider-suit enough. Speaking of, are you coming back, or what? You’re going to want to hear what Donghyuck has to say.”

He waits another ten seconds, considers the coast clear, then swings across the street to crawl into his dorm room window.

Donghyuck is lying on his bed there, eating chips noisily as Mark slides the window shut behind him and pulls his mask off.

“You look like a soaked dog,” he says.

“So do you,” he says, ruffling Donghyuck’s hair with a wet gloved hand as he passes, which makes Donghyuck buck his head and wriggle away with a little scream. He looks like he’s only just towelled off from his own walk through the storm. “Chenle said you had news?”

Chenle spins around in his desk chair as Mark beelines for his sweatpants, stripping off the soaked suit as he goes. “It might be nothing. But it seems sus to me.”

“It was just kinda weird,” Donghyuck says, going back to his chips. “Like this random ass storm. Where did that come from?”

“Don’t ask me.” He pulls on a fresh t-shirt, and picks up a half-damp towel from the floor, presumably just used by Donghyuck. He begins to towel off his hair vigorously. “What happened?”

“It was some kind of spill,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Not a big deal. Do you guys have any ramen in?”

“A spill? Like a chemical spill?”

“A gas leak! That’s what I mean. We had to evacuate the lab because this, like, purple gas infected the room.”

“Purple?” Mark drops the towel, standing to attention. “Was it like, a billowing smoke, rather than a pressured gas?”

“Uh, yeah. How did you know?”

He and Chenle look at each other. “Remember when we talked about the missing mutant from last week? And the girl before that, who was hiccupping fire?”

“Yeah? What about them?” Oh, God, purple smoke. Am I going to disappear too?

Mark blinks. Donghyuck looked as though he said that last part without his mouth moving. “No, no, you’re here now, you should be fine. Plus, you’re not a mutant. But when they disappeared, it was in a purple, billowing smoke. It’s been doing something to people.”

“Shit,” Donghyuck says, sitting back. We were all caught in it.

“I wonder if the labs has any footage of it,” Chenle says, turning to his computer. “It would be good to compare the two.”

“The footage will be analogue if they do, Chenle, you won’t be able to get it online. Who else was caught in it, Hyuck? Other students? Wasn’t anyone supervising you?”

“Uh, no, Kibum was supervising but he’d stepped out for like, two minutes. It was just me and three other student lab technicians caught up in it. Did I say that out loud?”

“Are you friends with them?”

“Yeah, I know them.” Wish I knew Renjun better, though.

“Renjun was there?” Chenle says turning back around. “You usually lead with his name in any given context.”

Donghyuck frowns at him, lowering his bag of chips, slowing chewing. “Okay, this is getting weird.”

“Yeah, it is,” Mark says, looking from Donghyuck to Chenle. “Are you guys messing with me?”

“Are you messing with me?” Donghyuck says, eyeing the two of them up.

“I’m not messing with anyone,” Chenle responds, and the three are left staring at each other as the storm rages on outside.

“Weirdos.” Donghyuck goes back to crunching on his chips.

Mark shakes his head. “I really need to do this assignment. Hyuck, you have to keep an eye on yourself the next few days. Let me know if anything is off—come and see us every day, alright? There’s something weird going on, and we need to make sure you’re not affected.”

Donghyuck rolls off the bed to lie on the floor. “It’s not like I don’t see you every day already. I can’t believe you’re going to do homework—Chenle told me you flirted with LovelyCitySpider. Can we unpack that? It’s kind of narcissistic of you, you know? You flirted with the biggest Spider-Man fan you could find!”

“It wasn’t deliberate! He was about to get run over!”

“And you decided it was the time to turn on your charm?”

Mark splutters. “He started it!”

Donghyuck smirks. “Sure.”

“He did not,” Chenle grins, and Mark grabs the chair he’s in, pulling it away and out from under him.

“I’m doing my work now!” he announces loudly, and Chenle laughs, more than pleased with himself.

“I need ramen anyway.”

“Finally! So do I!”

The room is left in relative quiet when the two head out to the dorm kitchen, and Mark takes a moment to relax his muscles, unpacking his textbooks methodically.

Outside, rain continues to batter the window. Mark takes one long look out at the grey buildings of NCIT, and sits down to finish his essay on molecular genetics.

-

The storm over Neo City makes the news the next day for being a freak of nature, but classes aren’t cancelled. His professor sends around a passive-aggressive email about wearing a coat and taking the two-minute trek across campus, and Mark does just that.

He’s set to meet Donghyuck in the library for their long gap between classes, because Donghyuck can’t focus on assignments in his dorm room and Mark is determined to see him pass the year. Donghyuck is something of a whiz when it comes to tech—he’d built Mark’s Spider-suit in about two days. Mark wouldn’t have a clue how to fix it if it came down to it, so he needs Donghyuck around.

Plus, there’s the fact that Donghyuck is his best friend. He’s never going to leave him behind.

The library is a good walk away from the Chem block, or a good run if you’re one of the people without coats in the rain. Mark doesn’t mind the elements, and is the only person taking it as a stroll. It’s probably why he’s the only person who sees the boy slip and fall down the flight of stairs between two buildings.

“Hey!” he calls, taking the steps quickly to catch up with him. The boy’s satchel has split open in the fall, and his textbooks litter the staircase. Mark picks up each one deftly, coming to crouch beside the guy as he picks himself up. “You okay? That looked nasty.”

The guy turns around, and Mark has to stop himself from making a physical reaction. It’s none other than Lovely, hands scraped, hair damp under a soaked hoodie. He doesn’t look at Mark this time, instead taking the textbooks from his hands, trying to work them back into the broken satchel. “Shit, yeah—I’m okay, thank you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—I’m usually not this clumsy.”

“I—I should hope not,” he says, catching himself before mentioning the car yesterday. “Let’s get inside.”

He takes a file that had been dropped, and offers Lovely his hand, helping him stand. Lovely looks at him properly for the first time, giving him that pretty, wide smile, albeit a little more defeated than it was yesterday. Thankfully, he’s alright enough to stand and run the rest of the way over to the library.

“Thanks,” Lovely says, holding his hands out for the file Mark is holding. Mark isn’t convinced he can take it and still hold together his satchel. “The weather out there has been killing me.”

“Let’s get you over to a heater,” he says, leading Lovely around to the corner of the library where he and Donghyuck usually sit, underneath the heater.

Logically—sensibly—he shouldn’t spend any more time with Lovely than he has to. He’s spoken to very few people while in the Spidey-suit and out of it, and Lovely has experienced both in less than 24 hours. It wouldn’t do for Lovely to connect dots now, even if he is too distracted by his tumble to look at Mark twice.

But he’s a person in need—and it’s Mark’s job to help people like that.

“How are your hands?” He places Lovely’s file on the table, and puts his own wet rucksack on the floor, beckoning Lovely over to the heater.

“Would’ve been worse on dry concrete,” he says, showing Mark his palms. It’s mostly dirt and water and some scraped skin. Mark goes to his rucksack for a packet of tissues, pulling one out to wipe his hands down.

“It could’ve been much worse. You took quite a fall.”

“I know, I’ll be more careful. I’m really okay—thank you for all your help though.”

When Mark looks up, Lovely is looking at him properly, pretty smile and all. “It’s no problem. Anyone would’ve done the same.”

“I don’t think they would’ve.”

He wipes the last of the dirt away, and looks Lovely in the eye. He’s looking at Mark almost piercingly, now, gaze unblinking like he’s a cat.

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Uh,” he starts.

“Jaemin?” Donghyuck’s voice cuts in, and they both turn to see him arriving at the study table. “You know Mark?”

“This is Mark?” Jaemin says, like he perhaps does know Mark, somehow.

“You know…” Mark says, pointing at Jaemin but looking at Donghyuck, and slows. “Wait. What?”

“Jaemin has lab placement with me,” Donghyuck says, looking at Mark strangely. “He was one of the people there last night, actually.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to tell anyone about that?” Jaemin says, eyebrow raised, more amused than accusing.

Donghyuck shrugs. “It’s Mark. I told you, he did a placement in the NCIT labs last year. He knows what they’re like.”

“Right,” Mark says, head spinning. Donghyuck doesn’t seem to know that Jaemin is Lovely, and Mark knows a thing or two about keeping secret identities a secret. He won’t reveal anything, but it does feel as though his world is shrinking every day. Of all people, Jaemin—Lovely—was also caught in the purple gas last night, along with his best friend. “Hey—you guys are both feeling okay today, right? No weird side effects?”

Neither Jaemin nor Donghyuck speak immediately, eyeing each other up like they’re waiting for the other to talk first.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Jaemin says, looking at Donghyuck.

Mark urges them both to come in closer, huddling around the table. “Tell us,” he urges. “Is something wrong?”

“Something is,” Jaemin says cryptically. “I’ve just been—wrong since that spill yesterday. I don’t know what it is—I’ve tripped, and dropped bowls and mugs, I’ve missed my alarm, I was nearly run over, I spilled food on my notes, my shower stopped working, my window broke, this storm came out of nowhere—”

“So you’ve had an unlucky streak? But nothing supernatural?” Donghyuck says. Doesn’t seem so bad to me.

“All of this started happening right after the purple smoke,” Jaemin deadpans. “It’s not a coincidence. I’m an organised person, this kind of stuff doesn’t just happen to me. Something’s wrong—I don’t know how to explain it.”

“I believe you, I just don’t know what that means. I haven’t had that at all.”

Foreboding grows in Mark’s gut. He doesn’t like the sound of this. “You’ve had side effects too?”

“No,” Donghyuck says, pouting and looking around. “Just one. This is going to sound weird, but I think other people can hear my thoughts.”

“That’s just called having a big mouth,” Jaemin says.

Not true.

Mark blinks. “You did it again.”

“Again?”

“You did that last night—spoke without moving your mouth. I thought it was a trick of the light from the storm.”

“Yeah, no. People have been hearing stuff I haven’t said all day.” It’s getting really annoying. And it’s making me avoid Renjun.

“You’ve been avoiding Renjun? He’s going to kill you,” Jaemin says, grinning cattishly.

Donghyuck groans. “I can’t die like that!” It would be kind of sexy, though.

“Dude.”

“What? I can’t help it! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

Jaemin wiggles his eyebrows. “It’s not like we need to be able to read your mind to know about your huge crush on Renjun.”

“It’s different when I can’t use humour to mask the enormity of my feelings.”

“Dude,” Mark says again, running a hand through his hair. “You’re telling me a gas leak gave you reverse telepathy, and your biggest concern is that Renjun will find out your crush on him isn’t a joke?”

“Obviously. What else do I have to worry about?”

“If that’s the case, you really do talk too much,” Jaemin says, amused.

“Hyuck,” Mark says urgently. “Can you gather up the other students who were in the lab at the time of the leak? If you’re all experiencing side effects, we need to know. This could be serious.”

“Uh, no can do. Renjun is one of them, remember?”

“You’re going to have to face the music eventually,” Jaemin says. “Do you want to avoid him forever?”

“Do you want to die?” Because I will kill you.

“Hyuck,” Mark says pointedly. “Renjun could be experiencing side-effects too. They could be serious—Jaemin has hurt himself with his. You need to bring him to us so we can help him.”

Jaemin is looking at him curiously. “What makes you say that? Can you help us more than the lab techs? Maybe we should go to Kibum. He said he was going to look into what that gas was.”

“He won’t be able to help,” Mark says. He and Donghyuck share a look.

We should probably tell him.

“Tell me what?”

He knows NCIT is up to no good too.

Mark makes a pointed face at Donghyuck. He’s getting dangerously close to a big secret, here—he’s not sure how much control Donghyuck has over this thought-projecting he’s doing.

“I sure do,” Jaemin says, looking between them, eyebrows raised.

“I… experienced some stuff during my time at the labs last year. Stuff that made me concerned,” Mark says, giving Donghyuck a look to keep quiet. “Donghyuck chose the placement there this year to keep an eye on things for me. I thought I might be able to help if something bad went down.”

“What makes you so special?” Jaemin asks, though not with judgement. His voice is light and playful, anticipating the answer.

“Mark is top of his class in everything,” Donghyuck says. The superpowers help.

Jaemin’s eyes widen, and Donghyuck stands from his chair immediately. “Going for a coffee!” Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

This is the worst. Mark’s secret identity isn’t going to last another day. “Superpowers are an exaggeration. I experienced—erm—something like you guys. It made me kinda, uh, strong? Yeah.”

“And you’ve never told the school? They can’t do something like that to you without your consent!”

He hums awkwardly. Hard to report without exposing his second life—and he knows the project with the spiders was trashed shortly after he was bitten. He’s just been keeping an eye out for anything with worse consequences since.

“I, uh—you know how the lab is experimenting on the mutant gene?”

Jaemin leans in closer. This isn’t something either of them should really know, and certainly not talk about. But it’s not hard to pick up once you start working there. “Yes?”

“I think the experiment worked. It artificially activated my mutant gene after puberty. I was afraid going to someone and admitting that…”

“Would make them do it more,” Jaemin finishes.

Mark nods. “The consequences are too unpredictable. There’s a reason mutant genes are only naturally activated during puberty—we all have the gene, but only some people’s bodies are able to handle its effects. I’ve been lucky with mine, but I’m not convinced having the ability to activate the mutant gene would be in the best hands in NCIT.”

Jaemin nods slowly. He brings his hands together under his chin, contemplating that. “I’ve always had a bad feeling about the lab. Other than Kibum, everyone there acts like there’s something top secret going on. Why? It’s a college lab. They’re supposedly working on the amazing advancements of science. It’s always felt off. I should’ve left when my gut feeling told me to.”

Mark shakes his head. “I know they pick kids on scholarships for the lab placements. It’s hard to say no. Just—hey, give me your details, okay? I’ll check in on you, and we’ll figure out what’s wrong with you together. You might have to help me round up the other kids caught in the accident too, if Donghyuck is too afraid to face Renjun.”

Jaemin’s smile widens again, from something quietly worried into something genuine. “It would be my pleasure. Donghyuck is going to go haywire around him.”

“Doesn’t he already?” Mark says, moving a flick of Jaemin’s wet hair back into his bangs. “I think we’re going to make a great team.”

Jaemin watches him with that same smile in place, a light dancing in his eyes. Mark can’t look at him face-on for too long, but Jaemin continues to look and smile, even when Mark averts his gaze to his textbook.

“Me too, Mark Lee. I look forward to it.”

-

He can’t help but text Jaemin as soon as he’s home, after catching Chenle up on their conversation. Jaemin responds quickly, using plenty of emojis, and says he’s already arranging for the other two boys caught in the gas leak to meet them. He seems as invested in understanding what’s happened to them as Mark is, which is useful to have on their side.

Jaemin also updates Mark on every strange thing that happens to him, and Mark has to admit—while all the things are ordinary, it is incredibly unlikely so many unlucky things could happen to one person in the space of twenty-four hours. He reports tripping up the stairs, having his package stolen, forgetting his keys, whacking his head on an open cupboard door, finding expired food in his fridge he’d been planning to have for dinner, having a nightmare, finding a hole in his jeans, breaking a pen and spilling ink on his notebook, getting to class late and hitting his professor in the face with the door, failing an assignment, running out of his hayfever medication and sniffling all day, and finally, having his phone die on him.

“I obviously couldn’t tell you the last one, because my phone was dead,” Jaemin says, peering over Mark’s shoulder as he adds that last one to his Jaemin Tracking List. He’s trying to spot the common theme between all these instances by writing them down, which so far isn’t really helping, but at least it feels like he’s doing something. “But this stuff never happens to me. I’m always prepared for the day ahead.”

They’re sat together on Mark’s bed, of all places, waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. “See, I don’t think this can be a result of the gas itself, because otherwise you all would have the same symptoms. The fact that you and Donghyuck have had such different experiences makes me worried the gas has affected your mutant gene, like what happened to me. But we have to figure out what the other two have been experiencing before we jump to that conclusion.”

Jaemin is watching him closely when he looks up. He seems to do that a lot. “I had a thought about that. You know how they were saying on the news that the storm moved last night?”

“Sure.” The storm still hasn’t shown any sign of letting up, and the bizarreness of it is the talk of social media. “It moved into town then back out towards campus again, but no one knows why.”

“You know what Renjun told me when I texted him about meeting us today?” Jaemin says, eyebrows raised. “He told me he’d gone into town to get groceries. That was last night, the same time the storm moved.”

Mark cocks his head. An interesting theory—Mark immediately makes the link Jaemin is making, remembering that the storm first started around the time of the gas leak, according to the timings the other two had reported.

Little Renjun, causing a big storm like this? It’s possible.

Before he can respond, the door slams open and Donghyuck storms into his dorm room, closely followed by a smirking Chenle.

“Jaemin,” Donghyuck says, taking him by the arms and shaking him. “You brought him here, didn’t you?”

“Renjun is coming up the stairs,” Chenle explains, dropping down into his desk chair with a grin. “Jeno is with him.”

“My life is going to be over!” Donghyuck cries, sinking down to his knees. Traitors. “How could you do this to me? In my own home?”

“You don’t even live here,” Mark says. “Not that you should leave, because we’re gonna figure out what’s wrong with you all. I think Jaemin might be onto something big about Renjun.”

“What about me?” Renjun’s soft voice says from the door, followed by a boy Mark hasn’t met before. This must be the elusive Jeno, who looks nervous and hesitant in the doorway. “Why are we all squeezing into this tiny dorm room?”

Pretty. Mark glances at Donghyuck, who seems to be staring furiously at a spot in the wall, trying to clear his mind of any thoughts. He’s so pretty. It’s not working very well.

“Can’t have someone overhearing us,” Mark says apologetically, gesturing for them to sit on Chenle’s bed. “This is about the gas leak you guys were caught in at the labs.”

“We should stop calling it that, by the way,” Chenle says, sitting back in his chair. “It’s obviously caused by a person, not an actual leak. It’s the same as all the other smoke we’ve seen.”

“We technically don’t know that yet, Chenle.”

“You’re Mark?” Jeno says, uncertain.

“That’s me,” he says, giving him a nod. “Donghyuck has told you I was there last year?”

“Did something like this happen to you?” Renjun asks with a frown. “What other gas are you talking about?”

“It kinda did, yeah.” He avoids the gas question, not wanting to alarm them by talking about disappearing mutants. “That’s why I’m trying to keep an eye on you guys. Have either of you experienced anything… weird, since the leak? Any strange side effects?”

Like spilling all your deepest, darkest secrets involuntarily?

Renjun and Jeno both look at Donghyuck, then at each other. So they can hear Donghyuck too, then, who stoutly does not look back at them.

“I’ve been feeling anxious about it,” Renjun says quietly. “But nothing stranger than that. I don’t trust that lab at all—they haven’t even checked in with us since the leak. They don’t know what it was, or what it could do to us, but they don’t seem to care. Has something happened to you guys?”

Mark looks at Jaemin. He seems to be thinking the same thing—if Renjun has been feeling down since the leak, and he’s influencing the weather involuntarily, he could very well be the link between the gas leak and the freak storm.

“I don’t think so,” Jeno says uncertainly. “Just the same as you. It freaked me out.”

“Good to see we all have great faith in NCIT,” Donghyuck says derisively.

“What were you saying about me?” Renjun frowns, looking between Mark and Jaemin.

Please don’t say he can read minds. I’m double fucked.

They all look down at Donghyuck. “How are you doing that?” Jeno says, blinking.

“Donghyuck has been experiencing reverse telepathy,” Mark says, sitting forward to watch for Renjun and Jeno’s reactions. “And Jaemin has been experiencing constant bad luck, ever since the gas leak.”

Not much of a superpower.

“Technically, if you have reverse telepathy, Jaemin has reverse good luck,” Chenle says. “Constant good luck would be a pretty cool power. Reading people’s minds is just kind of creepy.”

Mark snaps his fingers. “Chenle, you’re right! What if this gas—what if it’s inversely activated your mutant genes? That could explain why Renjun and Jeno aren’t experiencing any side effects, but Donghyuck and Jaemin have! Because if your mutant gene was like—I don’t know, being able to understand dogs, the inverse of that is dogs are able to understand you. But that’s not going to be obvious to you, right? Not unless we can figure out how to set it right.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Jaemin says, though it’s quiet, fond, like he’s enjoying Mark’s rambling. “I still think I’m onto something.”

“Right—Renjun, have you felt like you’ve been, ah—caught in the eye of the storm, so to speak?”

All heads turn to Renjun. He’s been causing it? Why am I finding that hot?

All heads then turn to Donghyuck, who stares resolutely at the floor, cheeks going pink. “Who said that?”

“You think I’ve been causing the storm?”

“There are mutants who are able to influence the atmosphere,” Chenle says. “It could be true. Right now the atmosphere around here is pretty out of control.”

“And it’s following you around,” Jaemin continues. “The only time the storm has moved was when you left campus.”

Renjun purses his lips, looking unsure.

“We can test that theory,” Jeno says. “You just need to travel out of the city and back in again, and we can monitor if the storm follows your path. Head out to the Pearl Docks, or something.”

“I don’t want to go all the way out of the city on my own,” Renjun says, mouth turned down.

“I’ll take you,” Donghyuck says. Wherever you want to go.

They all turn to face him again. Donghyuck mimes keeling over and dying.

“Okay,” Renjun says, tone almost nervous. “I would like to know if it’s true. If you’ll really come.”

Donghyuck sits straight back up. “Of course I will!” Is this real life? Did he just ask ME to come?

It’s Renjun’s turn to go pink.

I’m not going to make it five minutes.

“How are we going to monitor where it goes?” Jeno says, clearing his throat. “You need to pick a route—something fast, like the train. If the storm goes there and back with you, we’ll know.”

“I’m kind of hoping you guys are wrong.” Renjun says, shifting his weight on the bed. “I wouldn’t know how to stop a storm.”

“You might not be able to,” Mark says. “Donghyuck and Jaemin haven’t shown any sign of control yet, either. But it’s good to know, right? It’s a step in the right direction to fixing this. Jeno, you should keep track of anything strange around you, too. We stick together on this, okay? Chenle and I will work on what we can do to help you guys—”

“There’s not going to be much you can do for us,” Donghyuck says, somewhat depressingly certain. “There’s a reason mutant gene experimentation is so controversial, and so hard to do. It’s not something we can whip up in a lab.”

“There’s always an answer,” he says, gently determined. “We’ll get there when we get there. In the meantime, I think Jaemin needs hope of an answer.”

“I really, really do,” Jaemin says. At some point, he’d started leaning into Mark, head resting on his shoulder. His body heat presses against Mark’s side, and Mark tries to stop himself from smiling.

Lovely really is lovely.

“We’ll find something. You should try and stick with a friend as much as you can, okay? In case you hurt yourself again.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jaemin says, cutely. Mark vaguely registers Jeno and Renjun discussing something between themselves, turning away from Mark and Jaemin’s strangely intimate conversation. “For now, can I hang out with you guys?”

“As long as you want,” Mark says, patting his leg. Jaemin beams at him.

“Are you like this with everyone?” Chenle says, and they both look up to see him smiling slyly at Jaemin.

“Just smart and sexy people who are trying to help me and my friends,” Jaemin says without missing a beat, and Chenle laughs. Mark feels his cheeks heat, even if he very much likes that answer.

-

Donghyuck and Renjun head out to the docks together that weekend, Donghyuck keeping their new group chat updated as to their movements. Chenle and Mark report they are ‘keeping an eye’ on the storm, which means Chenle is watching on a weather radar, and Mark has pulled the suit on and climbed to the highest building he can find, getting soaked to the bone by the rain.

It’s worth it when he gets to see the storm clouds move over the city at a stunning speed, rolling black clouds breaking into the clear sky around it, travelling like they’re animated. They’re more unreal than they are real, and this more or less confirms it to Mark.

Renjun is creating the storm, voluntarily or not. Three out of four victims of the gas leak have been affected, and he’s fairly certain it’s only a matter of time until they figure out Jeno’s symptoms, too.

Eventually, the storm moves completely away from Neo City, around the time Donghyuck and Renjun arrive in the next city over. They’re going bowling to make the most of the trip, apparently—Mark thinks it’s a thinly veiled excuse for them to get a date out of this, but he’s not going to call them out on it.

He takes the opportunity to swing around and keep an eye out for danger while the city is no longer under the constant pummel of rain. People are out in the streets, lifting their arms up like they can’t believe the sight of sunshine again. Mark hopes they enjoy it while it lasts—Renjun will be back soon, and with him, the dark clouds and thunder.

It begs the question—what can be done about this?

Donghyuck wasn’t wrong. Experimentation on the mutant gene is in its infancy. His plan was to work with Chenle to inspect the lab, and see if they can figure out what the gas leak was. That will hopefully lead them to a source, which will lead them to a cause, which will lead them to answers on how to reverse it, or change it.

But a small dose of doubt in the back of his mind tells him he’ll never be able to help them. What if they’re stuck like this? He’s never figured out a way to stop his own powers—not that he really wanted to. If there’s no answer he can find, then Renjun will never see the sun again. Donghyuck will never know true privacy.

But Jaemin—his power may well kill him, someday soon. They’d met last night to study together, giggling over pictures of cats and theorising together the cause of the gas. Mark had seen bruises on his elbows from his tumbles over the last few days, and the state of his belongings from dropping or losing them. His phone is smashed up. It wouldn’t take much for that to be his skull, at any given moment.

There has to be an answer. He hasn’t yet met someone he couldn’t save.

He’s out for most of the day—funnily enough, the weekend is the busiest period for crime. Good weather also means more crime, so the rats come out of their holes the moment the storm lifts. He spends the afternoon stopping small robberies, escorting women away from strange men, and stopping odd fights in dim city corners.

The storm moves back in that evening, along with Renjun and Donghyuck. That’s when he spots Jaemin—or Lovely, he should say, since he has his huge DSLR out, lens pointing at Mark perched up on the cinema rooftop.

He usually doesn’t acknowledge Jaemin, not wanting to encourage people following him around to dangerous situations. But since he now knows it’s Jaemin, he indulges in it for once, and throws up a peace sign in his direction.

He can see Jaemin’s smile grow from here, surprised and delighted by the turn of events. When he’s taken his shots, he lowers the camera, and waves in Mark’s direction.

As much as he’s worried about Jaemin’s newfound horrible luck, he’s kind of glad it hasn’t made him too afraid to do things like go out, and continue with his hobbies. Maybe he was too worried, after all—maybe Jaemin can compensate for his bad luck by being more careful, and still live his life as usual.

He looks away for a minute, checking the streets around them. He’d just helped an elderly woman make it across a huge road, and had perched up here to keep an eye on her progress down the street. By the time he’s satisfied she’s doing okay, and has looked back to where Jaemin was, he’s vanished.

That sets off alarm bells in his head. Lovely is never the first to disappear from a scene before Spider-Man—Mark has the advantage of being faster, and usually needing to move away quickly.

“Chenle,” he says down the line, webbing across the street and swooping down to where Jaemin was stood. “How close is the storm?”

“Five minutes out from you,” he responds. “What’s going down? You stopped talking to me.”

“I just spotted—um, Jaemin was just here,” he says, moving down the street. Just ten paces down he finds an alley—and three people struggling in it. “Hey!”

He jumps up to the wall as one of the men turn around. There are two of them—one is kicking Jaemin in the side, who is curled up on the floor, arms up over his head. The other is clutching Jaemin’s DSLR and rooting through his satchel.

Mark sticks up the thief’s hands and kicks him to the wall so he sticks there, where he struggles and shouts and curses him out. The second man had stopped kicking as soon as Mark had shouted, making an escape down the alley.

He doesn’t make it far. Mark webs the back of his head and pulls him backwards, so his back hits the ground, then webs his hands and feet to the floor. Webs over his mouth for good measure.

“You’re going to pick on some kid in the street instead of making your own way in the world, huh?” He grabs the camera from the man’s hands, untangling it from the web. “You want to hurt people? I’m not standing for it. Get yourself a life that doesn’t rely on taking from those smaller than you.”

He makes his way over to Jaemin, who is raising his head from his arms, watching with wide eyes as Mark picks up his satchel and brings his belongings to his side. The camera lens is smashed up, he realises, heart sinking.

“You okay?” he asks, voice gentle. Jaemin doesn’t know it’s Mark behind the mask, and can’t be sure he’s safe yet.

Jaemin’s face is half covered in blood—his nose looks busted. He’s holding his arm gingerly, but nothing looks broken from where Mark’s standing. Maybe he needs to ask his brother for help—Taeyong would know what do to.

“I’m okay,” he says, pushing himself to sit up as he looks despondently down at the camera in Mark’s hands. “My camera…”

He takes it carefully from Mark’s hands, and Mark raises his gloved fingers to wipe some of the blood from Jaemin’s face.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve been quicker.”

“Not your fault,” Jaemin says, sounding stuffed up, looking up into Mark’s masked face. “I’m glad you found me.”

Movement in his peripheral catches his eye, and he stands. One of Jaemin’s assailants has a knife, and he’s trying to cut his way out of the webs he’s confined in.

Mark’s blood runs cold. Jaemin could’ve been stabbed.

He webs him again so that the knife tumbles from his grip, and is tempted to go over and give him a kick himself. “Can I call an ambulance for you? And the police? These guys aren’t going to get their dues unless they’re reported.”

Jaemin looks glumly at his ripped satchel, being held together by hasty patch work. “Do you think I’ll get anything back for the camera?”

“I don’t know,” Mark says softly. “But you deserve it.”

Jaemin, against all the odds, smiles at him, blood on his teeth. “You’re really nice, you know? For someone who sees the worst of humanity every day.”

“People like you are the reason I do this,” Mark says, offering out a hand to help Jaemin up. “I’ll call an ambulance, you call the cops?”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” Jaemin says, waving him away. “It’s just a busted nose—I’m not hurt anywhere else. I’ll call the cops, though.”

“Then let me call a friend for you. I can’t leave you like this.”

In the end, Jaemin calls the cops, and gives Mark Donghyuck’s number. The storm hits right as he does so, so Mark ushers Jaemin into a nearby café, and takes up a spot on the roof to keep an eye on the guys in the alley. He doesn’t feel bad about leaving them in the storm, but he can’t let them actually get hurt, unfortunately.

Mark calls Donghyuck and updates him, and he and Renjun change course to come and pick Jaemin up on their way back to campus. Then he calls his brother's nurse boyfriend Doyoung, who thankfully picks up, and tells him that if Jaemin isn’t reporting pain anywhere else, there’s not much to do for his nose but set it.

When he tells Jaemin this, Jaemin surprises him by telling him he’s already done so, in the café mirror.

“That’s…” Mark starts, startled.

“Practical,” Jaemin finishes for him. “I don’t have time to see a doctor, I have assignments to do.” He does sound less bunged up now than before, and his nose looks straighter—Mark trusts him not do something to hurt himself more.

“If you’re so busy, why were you out taking photos of me?” Mark asks, a little teasing, mostly curious.

Jaemin’s smile spreads slowly. “Can’t let the city go without pictures of its Lovely Spider, can I?”

“Don’t come out when it’s dangerous, okay?”

“Why do you think I waited for the storm to leave? Can’t predict a mugger in an alley, can I?”

His smile fades as he says that—Mark can almost see it dawning on him for the first time that this is another bad luck symptom. It’s his most serious so far—Mark is concerned they might be getting worse as time goes on.

“I’ll have to be around to save you from them, then,” Mark says, and is rewarded by Jaemin’s eyes unclouding, tension in his shoulders loosening.

“You’d better,” Jaemin says. “No take backs.”

“Donghyuck is two minutes away,” Chenle says in Mark’s ear. “He’s seen a police car go by. You should scram.”

“No take backs,” Mark promises. “Hey, I gotta get out of here before the cops arrive. Don’t move until your friends come, okay?”

“I’ll be good,” Jaemin says, and Mark flushes warm for a moment, backing out of the café before he can think too hard about that.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he says, pushing open the door.

“You can hold me to anything you like,” Jaemin says as he leaves, and Mark has to hold back a laugh, looking back at Jaemin over his shoulder, who is grinning wide, and winks.

It’s good to see that something horrible like this hasn’t dampened his spirit. Mark will do whatever it takes to keep that smile on his face.

-

Their plan to test Renjun’s power has one small shortcoming they hadn’t foreseen. While it confirms to them that Renjun is creating the storm, it also confirms to the rest of the country that the storm is in fact being caused by a mutant—one that lives on the NCIT campus. News stories and online conspiracies change from theories about aliens, mutant gangs, global warming, and curses from Gods, and doubles down on trying to identify an NCIT student that might want to create a week-long thunderstorm.

The problem with that isn’t just the pressure on Renjun’s shoulders to keep his little secret under wraps. The problem comes with the mutant hunters that swarm down on campus in response to the news.

The law states that a mutant negatively affecting society for more than 24 hours needs to go into government-mandated camp counselling for ‘help’ controlling their ability. Mutants have been known to disappear into these camps and never be seen again, and the ones that do reappear rarely come out the same. Since cops tend to stay as uninvolved as possible on mutant affairs, it results in a divide. You get mutant hunters, who will work to identify a mutant and report them for public disturbance, and the mutants and mutant sympathisers who work to conceal and protect other mutants struggling with their abilities. Mark can’t count the number of times he’s broken up violence between the two sides around Neo City, and he knows it’s a problem country-wide.

While it’s technically illegal to take the law into your own hands, nothing is to stop the people set on capturing mutants who are ‘disturbing’ society. Not until they get violent, which is much, much too late for any targeted mutant. Hence why Mark does the same—with the intention of stopping the violence before it starts.

The five of them who know about Renjun won’t tell—he’s certain about his friends and Jaemin, and he trusts Jeno well enough to have sense about this. But it doesn’t make it any less unnerving to see groups of strangers, much older than the average uni student, wandering about campus with handheld weather stations to hunt down the offending mutant.

The plan had been to meet in the astrology tower and work on controlling everyone’s abilities—starting with Renjun, who’s attracting the most attention—but they’d agreed last minute that gathering together would look too suspicious. Hence Renjun and Donghyuck had split off on their own, Chenle had gone to find Jeno (who hadn’t turned up at their meeting spot), and Mark is left with Jaemin, the two of them wandering through the indoor garden in the middle of the biology building. It’s set up with a few small study tables, but the raucous noise of the rain hammering on the domed glass roof and windows has driven students clear of the room.

Mark likes it—it means he and Jaemin have the area to themselves, and he can keep an eye on the rest of campus from the high windows. If it looks like something bad is going down, he has the suit in his bag, ready to go.

“Who told you?” Jaemin asks him, setting his bag down on a free table as Mark runs his hands through some leaves. He loves this room.

“Who told me what?” he asks, looking out the wide windows at the campus path. It’s dark in here, with no artificial light and the black storm clouds overhead every way they look. Still, he can see Jaemin’s eyes clearly when he turns, the way he watches Mark carefully.

“That I was mugged,” he says, quietly. “You knew as soon as you saw me today. But I haven’t told anyone.”

Mark hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d just seen Jaemin for the first time since he’d saved him—scrapes along his arms, nose tender and bruised—and brought him into a hug, and told him he was sorry. Sorry he didn’t come quickly enough, sorry he didn’t pay enough attention. He’d spent the night half convinced he should call Jaemin and check in on him. The mugging had shaken him more than he’d like to admit.

“Donghyuck,” he says, swiftly. It makes sense—he and Donghyuck are infamously thick as thieves, and he’d been the one to bring Jaemin back to campus, after all. “I’m sorry, if you didn’t want me to know…”

“It’s not that,” Jaemin says, looking down and away. “It’s nothing. I was just wondering.”

“You sure?”

“Sure,” he says, going into his bag and rummaging around for something. “Do you mind if I take some photos of you?”

He pulls out a disposable camera, and Mark’s mind stutters. “Uh—of me? Aren’t we here to work on your power together?”

Jaemin raises his eyebrows. “Are we? And how were you planning to do that?”

“Well—” he starts, shifting from one foot to another. “Uh…”

Jaemin shakes his head fondly. “You can’t turn off bad luck, Hyung. I’m not like you, or Renjun. It’s not a power you can stop and start.”

“But all mutant abilities can be suppressed to an extent. If someone’s emotions are running high, they’re more prone to their ability flaring, right? So why don’t we just…”

“Hang out?” Jaemin suggests. “I take pictures of you and try not to let emotions run too high?”

Mark’s mouth begins to curl against his will. “Really? That’s what you want to do?”

“It is. I like taking pictures—I like it even better when someone agrees to be my muse.” He hides his smile behind the camera, but Mark can hear it in his voice. “Smile!”

Mark poses loosely against the window, and Jaemin’s camera clicks softly.

It is strangely relaxing, the two of them wandering around the indoor garden and taking photographs together, the room half-lit, the sound of rain against all the windows. They find a mural in the corner that has mirrors hung up within it, and Jaemin takes some photos of the two of them together in the glass, coming up behind him and resting his chin on Mark’s shoulder.

Mark doesn’t forget to watch out for him, but nothing bad happens—he doesn’t even trip over a plant pot in the dark. His camera remains intact until they run out of film, and then they take some more with Jaemin’s phone camera.

That’s how they end up sitting at one of the study tables together, Mark looking over Jaemin’s shoulder as he swipes through the photos.

“You photograph well,” Jaemin murmurs, eyes on the screen.

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Mark responds, and Jaemin looks up to grin at him, teeth white in the dark. Mark can’t help but grin back.

“No? Just the handsome ones.”

There’s a shout in the distance that stops him from responding—far enough away that Mark only picks it up thanks to his enhanced hearing. It sounds like general anger at the storm—someone had slipped, maybe. Not a confrontation. Still, it sets his teeth on edge, and his smile fades.

He doesn’t like all this. Jaemin being so close to people with bad intentions—and probably weapons—with his current streak of bad luck.

“Jaemin,” he begins. “I know this might not be ideal right now, but… I think you should come and stay with me for a while.”

Jaemin looks back at him, nonplussed. “Stay with you?”

“Until we figure out how to control your power properly, and until the campus isn’t being attacked by Renjun’s storm and all the mutant hunters… I don’t want to let you out of my sight. Not after what happened yesterday.”

Jaemin’s eyes flick around Mark’s face before meeting his eyes. “You think you can keep me safe?”

He nods, confident. “I told you, didn’t I? I’m kinda strong. I’ll defend you, if it comes down to it. Plus, Chenle and I are the only ones who know what sort of trouble the four of you are in. Who else can you trust to look out for you right now?”

Jaemin leans in a little, and Mark wavers, not sure what he’s doing. He licks his lips, glances down at Mark’s nose—or mouth?—then moves away again, looking back at his camera. “You’re not worried I’ll bring my bad luck on you?”

“No,” Mark says, certain. “I’d like to take some away from you, in fact. Let you live without worrying something bad will happen to you again. Don’t want you to live in fear, you know?”

Jaemin looks back up. This time, Mark is sure he’s looking at his mouth. “You’re a good guy, Mark Lee.”

“I do my best,” he says quietly, leaning in as if they’re sharing a secret.

Lights dance in Jaemin’s eyes. He leans in a little closer—here, in the dark garden away from the rest of the world, he could do anything he liked. Mark would welcome it. He’s wondering, in fact, what Jaemin’s smile might taste like.

He doesn’t get to find out. Instead, the storm stops, as abruptly as turning off a tap.

The black clouds recede at rapid speed, the room lighting up with sunlight like a switch has been flipped. They both stop, looking around them, and Mark stands up from his seat, suddenly filled with fear.

“Renjun,” he says. Jaemin sees the panic on his face, and his expression drops with the same fear.

What has caused such a sudden change in Renjun?

They both run from the indoor garden, Mark flicking open his phone and trying to call Donghyuck on the way. No answer. Chenle has thankfully pinged him with Donghyuck’s live location—always thinking two steps ahead—and Mark leads Jaemin towards it, in the arts building. This is where Donghyuck and Renjun first met, he knows, in a school production—it makes sense they’d come here to practice together. At least there don’t seem to be any angry mobs in here, or any sign of a fight.

They run through empty hallways, Jaemin following without question, even if he can’t quite keep up with Mark’s speed and agility around corners. He follows the location pulsing on his screen until he rounds the corner into a practice studio.

He throws open the door, and the bang of it against the wall makes Renjun and Donghyuck jump and pull apart. He’d seen enough, though. Renjun had Donghyuck pressed against a table by the wall, and Donghyuck had one hand on Renjun’s side, the other curling around the back of his head. The two had been kissing.

Apparently, they’d been kissing all this time, because as soon as they separate—Renjun looking at Mark a little sheepishly, Donghyuck looking dazed—he can hear the patter of rain begin against the windows. Not quite the storm it was before, but instant rain switched on again, nonetheless.

You’ve got some kinda timing, Mark Lee.

Jaemin arrives after him, out of breath as he looks around the doorway. It’s obvious what the other two have been doing, Renjun’s hair standing up at the back, Donghyuck’s mouth pink and swollen.

“You’re kidding,” he says, looking at Mark.

You’re telling me.

“I can’t believe that’s what did it,” he says, looking back at Donghyuck and Renjun, who glance at each other then look away.

His phone begins to buzz in his pocket. He steps back from the door, pointing at Donghyuck and Renjun. “We’re talking about this! Don’t move!”

Chenle is calling. “Dude, I need to meet you.”

“It’s okay, I know what stopped the storm. It’s kind of a weird development, though.”

“Renjun’s okay?”

“More than okay.”

“Good, because I wasn’t calling about that. It’s about Jeno. Can you come and meet me at Chen’s café?”

He glances at Jaemin, who looks at him with a lopsided smile and a nod.

“Sure. We’ll be right there.” He pockets his phone and waves through the practice room door for Renjun and Donghyuck to follow them. Then he reaches out for Jaemin’s hand, and begins to pull him back through the corridors. “Sorry about that. I promise sticking with me won’t always be this much running.”

“S’okay,” Jaemin says, squeezing his hand as he follows him back to the main doors. “You can make it up to me.”

“I will,” Mark promises, shooting a look over his shoulder. They step back out into the rain and run across campus together, hand in hand.

-

They make it to Chen’s with wet hair and damp clothes. Renjun and Donghyuck arrive thirty seconds later, significantly more soaked as the rain rapidly worsens.

“It makes sense,” Jaemin says as they watch Renjun and Donghyuck squeeze in the front door of the café. Mark has just clocked Chenle sitting in the corner, sat in a booth with someone opposite him, their hoodie up over their head. “What you said about mutant ability being linked to emotions. If Renjun has been distressed since the accident in the lab, it results in the ongoing thunderstorm. Then a short burst of serotonin…”

“Do you have to talk about us like we’re one of your lab experiments?” Donghyuck says as he closes the door behind Renjun, wringing out his shirt.

“I’m just saying!” Jaemin says. “That would make sense why the storm cleared up!”

“You’re right,” Mark says, one eye on Chenle, whose mouth is turned down and brows furrowed as he talks to whoever is opposite him. From his build, it doesn’t look like Jeno—this person is wiry and tall. “I don’t think the change in his mood stopped his power, though. It just meant he was able to create sunshine with it instead of rain—it came on way too fast to be natural. But let’s get to that later, okay? Chenle said he had something urgent.”

It better be urgent, Donghyuck’s telepathic voice mutters, and Mark is suddenly very glad that only his inner voice is projecting, and not his fantasies or memories. Things could get awkward fast.

They scoot around the chairs in the café until the four of them can slide into the booth with Chenle. When they round the table, Mark realises it’s Jisung sat opposite Chenle. He’s just a freshman, but as Chenle’s long-term best friend, it’s impossible to know Chenle without knowing Jisung, and vice versa.

“Jisung, hey,” he says, peering at him. Something’s off—Jisung is sick, he thinks, nose red, cheeks flushed, eyes wet. “You okay, man? What are you doing here?”

“It’s about Jeno,” Chenle says, looking at Mark. He looks worried. “Jeno is Jisung’s roommate. And boyfriend.”

Mark’s eyebrows shoot up. He remembers Chenle moping about a month or so ago, complaining that Jisung had a new boyfriend he was spending all his time with, right before the purple smoke problem started taking up their attention. He didn’t realise the new boyfriend was Jeno, though.

“I think he’s made me sick,” Jisung says, and his low voice sounds even lower than usual, scratchy and raw.

“You look terrible, Sungie,” Jaemin says, reaching out to brush some hair out of his eyes. Jaemin knows Jisung too? Mark’s world once again shrinks. “You should go back to bed.”

“That’s the problem. I feel a lot better than I did a few hours ago, believe it or not. I’ve been feeling sick all week, and I just realised why last night. When Jeno is around, I start to feel…worse…” He cringes like it’s hard to say. “And when he leaves, I start to feel better again.”

“I think it’s an inverse healing power,” Chenle says. “Making people close to him sick. He doesn’t really hang around anyone but Jisung. Not for long periods, anyway.”

“That makes sense,” Donghyuck says. “It’s harder to spot than our powers, too.”

“And harder to manage,” Mark says, sitting back in his chair, mind whirring. “Where is he now?”

“Back in the dorm. I told him my theory this morning, and now he won’t leave our room. He told me to go, but… I don’t know where. I don’t have anywhere to go. So I called Chenle.”

“You did the right thing,” Chenle tells him firmly. “Jeno can’t help it, but that doesn’t mean you can make yourself sick by staying around him.”

Jisung places his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands. “I feel so bad, though. He was only in the lab in the first place because of me, and now this has happened?”

“Why’s that?” Jaemin asks, before Mark gets the chance to. “I always wondered why Jeno and Donghyuck were doing placement lab work. You two are tech students, aren’t you?”

“I was there because Mark asked me to keep an eye on it,” Donghyuck says. “Because of what he…experienced last year.” With the spider.

Mark shoots Donghyuck a look, who’s telepathic voice starts muttering indistinctly. He hopes the others won’t think twice about that.

“Jeno was there for a similar reason. I…” Jisung leans in, hands around his mouth, and speaks in a low voice. “I had a late blooming mutant ability come on a few years ago, and I’ve really been struggling with controlling it. It gets so overwhelming. Jeno knew they were studying mutant gene engineering at the NCIT labs, and wanted to know if he could learn anything to help me.”

“I told you we could figure out a fix together,” Chenle says to him in a low voice.

“But nothing’s been working, Chenle. Jeno wanted to help too, but we had already tried so many things. He took the placement as a long shot.”

“It’s not your fault he decided to do that.”

“What can you do, Jisung?” Renjun asks, voice barely there. Donghyuck is glancing around the café, eyes peeled for mutant hunters.

“I can hear signals,” Jisung says, looking at the table. “And kind of… sense them. See them? It’s hard to explain. All sorts of things—phone signals, radio signals, Bluetooth and microwaves and sound waves and even—I think they’re like, pheromones?—I don’t know. It’s hard for me to go out, sit in big groups of people… it all gets dulled when I’m sick, which is the only reason I can manage being here.”

Mark turns to Chenle, stunned. “Have you been helping Jisung all this time you’ve been helping me? How did you do that?”

Chenle just shrugs. “I’m good at keeping secrets. I’m trustworthy. Apparently, helping people like you guys is what I do.” He sits back in his chair. “I think we have to keep Jisung in our room for a while, Hyung, while Jeno shuts up in his dorm room. They need to be separate, and Jisung needs to be somewhere secure.”

“Yes,” he agrees, looking back at Jaemin, who is waiting expectantly. “I’m going to keep an eye on Jaemin, too—who do you share your dorm room with, Jaemin?”

“No one. Roommate dropped out.”

“Okay, perfect. I’ll come and stay with you for a while, and Jisung can take my bed. We all carry on trying to help each other with our powers, okay? Jeno’s situation isn’t ideal, but we can keep him in the loop, and pursue this as much as possible. Next week, we go into the lab, and we find out what we can. There has to be something worth finding in there.”

“Sure,” Chenle agrees. “I think we should’ve done that on day one, to be honest.”

“The quicker we can get the storm to stop, the better,” Renjun breathes, so soft Mark can barely pick it up. His eyes are on the café window, where a group of mutant hunters with umbrellas are passing by outside.

“We can get to the bottom of this,” Mark says, looking each of them around the table. He comes to Jaemin last, who he realises hasn’t had a bout of bad luck in over an hour. “We can fix it together, I know it.”

Jaemin smiles at him, so pretty and so close Mark feels a little warm in the cheeks for a moment. “I believe you,” he says, voice soft like he means it.

“Good,” Mark replies, clutching Jaemin’s hand over the table.

Only if you can stop gazing at each other long enough to find the lab, Donghyuck thinks, and Renjun hits his arm while Jaemin simply laughs.

-

The short break in the storm doesn’t do anything to deter the mutant hunters. In fact, their numbers seem to double on campus the next morning. Chenle reports that it’s because one of them is convinced they spotted the mutant responsible in the act of spotting the storm, and that it’s just a matter of finding them again to detain them.

It has Mark on edge as soon as he and Jaemin leave the Kangta building, trying to sweep his eyes across every inch of campus as they jog through torrential rain, determined to protect whoever the mutant hunters believe is responsible. He sees Jaemin to his class, then finds a corner to don the suit in, prowling rooftops in the rain to track the paths the groups roam.

The ones carrying visible weapons, at the very least, are being escorted off campus. But the university hadn’t brought in extra security to deal with the numbers, and there’s only so much day-to-day campus security can do in the storm.

The groups aren’t content to meander about the campus for long. There must be something organised, in some dark corner of the internet. When the clock strikes ten, all the mobs move at once, ringleaders storming the doors of campus buildings, men wielding glass bottles and throwing bricks at windows. Many now have their face covered, which is bad news—it means they have an agenda, and they know it’s one they could get arrested for.

He skips and jumps across rooftops, watching as they struggle with the doors without a pass to get in with. The mutant hunters have concentrated their efforts to three areas—the chemistry building, the biology department, and the physics hall. Clearly, they think the mysterious student they’re looking for is a science student.

Campus security come running for the group at the physics hall. Smart—it’s the most central building on campus, with many connecting buildings. The most vulnerable, if attacked. Security begin to detain the group professionally—better than he’d trust cops to.

That just leaves the group struggling and shouting at the biology department, and the group that have just managed to wrench open the door to the chemistry building. He can deal with those.

“Hey, fellas!” Mark says jumping down from windowsill to flagpole to the stone steps outside the biology building. “If you forgot your passes, you can’t come in. Sorry, thems the rules.”

“Spider-Fuck!” the man closest to him shouts. Ah, his favourite internet nickname.

“Sorry, man, I don’t know who that is.” He grabs the closet guy by the shoulder, spinning him around and webbing his hands together, pressing him against the wall to immobilise him. He webs his ankles together for good measure.

The problem is, there’s about ten of them at this door. Two have them have already made a break for it inside the building, and another two start hurtling bottles at him.

“Ow! Dude, not cool!” He bats away another two bottles as they come, knocking them out of the air to shatter on the ground. He leaps up onto the building wall to rapid-fire web hands and feet together, until the mob outside look like a bizarre friendship circle, linked up to where the first guy sits awkwardly against the wall.

“Time out for you! And you! No more hunting innocent kids because you feel threatened by a bit of rain!”

He hops down from the wall and catches the door as it bangs about in the storm, half broken in from the force used on it. He skips into a run down the hallway, looking out for where the rogue two had got to.

“I’m online,” Chenle says in his ear. “Mostly because there are guys here, in my lecture hall.”

“What room?” he asks urgently.

“Main hall—HEY!”

The sounds of something cracking comes through his ear, as Chenle’s voice disappears. Mark runs towards the back of the building—when he breaks through the lobby doors, he can hear the shouting and screams from further in the classroom.

“STAND DOWN,” he shouts as he skids into the room, to a collective gasp of students. Thankfully, the men hadn’t got far, only holding glass bottles and stalking up the stairs in the lecture hall, as the professor anxiously holds the security phone.

They’re definitely looking for a specific student.

Chenle is standing at the end of his row, looking pissed, his phone on the floor. Mark webs up both guys and yanks them backwards—they come flying down the staircase towards him, and Mark webs them securely to the floor.

“Is anybody hurt?” he asks. He needs to get back out to the group at the chemistry building.

A general shaking of heads and quiet mutterings greets him. He turns back to the professor, pointing at the struggling bodies on the ground.

“Have the cops come and pick them up, okay? That should hold them until someone arrives. I gotta go!”

He runs back out of the hall, down the corridor and out the building. The storm has picked up more than ever, winds whipping him almost off his feet, lightning cracking overhead.

The group at the chemistry building have successfully broken in, no sight of anyone at the door.

“I’m back,” Chenle’s voice says. “Phone’s still working, thankfully, but I’m not going to be much help unless I can get hold of a PC.”

“Don’t leave now, Chenle, the weather might kill you if the mutant hunters don’t. I’m pursuing the mob in the chemistry building.”

“I’m coming after you. It’s not far, and our friends are in that building—I dropped Jisung there this morning to speak to a professor.”

“Shit,” he curses. He’s right, in that case—Renjun, Jaemin, and Jisung will all be in the building. Maybe the mutant hunters—somehow—have the right person, or someone overheard them talking yesterday. If they did, all three could be in danger.

He’d counted eleven people at this building previously, assuming none from the physics building altercation had joined them. The lobby is clear, and he can hear a confrontation taking place further down the hall.

It’s three men scouring the first lecture hall of petrified students, the same way the other two had been. A few webs sort them out, only one glass bottle thrown and successfully dodged.  Eight to go.

“Do you know how many rooms in this building are being used right now, Chenle?” he asks, running down the hall again. In one of the small seminar rooms, a man is holding the seminar leader by the arm, shaking her and shouting. Mark crashes through the door and leaps on him from behind, pushing his weight so the man careens away from the woman, slamming into the whiteboard and to the floor.

“Don’t fucking handle people like that,” he says webbing him multiple times so he’s fastened securely to the floor, then webs his mouth shut too. “Call the cops straight away, and when the building is safe, clear out of here, okay?” he says softly to the woman and her students. “I’m really sorry I can’t stay.”

“Go,” the woman says, understanding, and Mark scrams.

A quick glance around the rooms so far has told him that Renjun, Jisung and Jaemin aren’t in either. He webs up to the ceiling and propels himself up a flight of stairs in one leap.

“Upstairs, the main lecture hall and two seminar rooms are occupied,” Chenle reports. “Jisung is in a seminar room at the end of the corridor. Jaemin and Renjun are in the lecture hall.”

Mark barges in through the lecture hall doors. Three of the remaining seven men are in here, and two of them are manhandling a student Mark doesn’t recognise, restraining him on his knees. One of them men is shouting at him—something about stopping the storm—and the boy is leaning away as much as he can, quaking in their hold.

“You’ve got three seconds to surrender,” Mark says, hands up in their direction. “Or I’m not going to go easy on you.”

“Don’t move,” the man not holding the boy says. He producers what looks to be a Taser, pointing it in Mark’s direction. “We won’t hesitate to hurt criminals, mutant.”

“Give it a break, man,” he says, and jumps up to latch onto the wall when the Taser is released in his direction, missing him by far. He jumps back down to knock the gun from his hands, and uses the momentum to knock the man over while he’s at it, giving him some good old web restraint treatment.

The other two men are trickier. He doesn’t want to risk hurting the boy they’re holding onto by engaging in violent contact, but he can’t let them hurt him further.

“We’re taking him,” the man tells him, stance defensive. One quick glance around the room tells Mark every student is watching with bated breath, some of them hiding under tables or behind chairs. But Renjun and Jaemin are in here, standing tall, watching the altercation go down. Jaemin’s hand is on Renjun’s arm, as if to stop him from turning himself in to save the mis-targeted student. “You can’t stop us. We’re within our rights.”

“Actually, you lost your rights when you started smashing up the university building and terrorising people to get here.”

“We’re not gonna hurt anyone who ain’t hurting us,” the second man says, gripping the shaking boy hard. “We’ll deal with him, and stop the storm.”

“Nuh-uh, I don’t think so. Unless you’ve got evidence this boy has hurt people, you’re the ones in the wrong. Now you can come quietly, and I won’t have to hurt you. But I don’t have much patience left for you people.”

One of them men spits in Mark’s direction, and moves to haul the boy to his feet.

A flash comes from the rows of cowering students, and that throws the men off for just a split second. Mark, plenty familiar with the flash of Jaemin’s camera, doesn’t stutter for a moment, and takes the opportunity to rip the boy’s arm free, punching the bigger man squarely in the face. When he hits the floor, Mark webs him there, and turns on the second guy.

“Hyunjae!” Renjun’s voice calls, and he makes as if to move down again. Thankfully, Jaemin blocks his path, camera still in hand, new lens aimed at the offending man.

Hyunjae struggles in the man’s grip. He now has a thick arm around his neck, squeezing at his throat.

“Don’t come closer!” he calls to Mark, clearly afraid.

Mark webs him in the face, making him breathe in a clump of web and choke, releasing Hyunjae. Mark catches him when he falls forward, and goes ahead and webs the man thoroughly to the wall.

“Hey, try and slow your breathing,” he tells Hyunjae, who is hyperventilating. Renjun comes to his side quickly, taking Hyunjae’s shoulders and encouraging him to follow his breathing. “I’m sorry, but you guys can’t leave yet. I gotta take care of the last of them.”

“It’s okay,” Renjun says, pulling Hyunjae into a hug. “I’ll take care of him. Go save us.”

Mark does just that, making sure Hyunjae is safely in Renjun’s care before running out the door and sliding down the hall.

He pauses, listening. There’s one seminar room at the end of the hall to the left, and one the opposite way, to his right. By the sounds of things, the remaining four men are split evenly between them.

“Chenle,” he says. “Which room is Jisung in?”

“Left of the staircase,” Chenle says, at the same time someone behind him says,

“Look!”

Mark turns. First, he registers it’s Jaemin that shouted, camera in his hands.

Second, he sees the purple smoke billowing out at the end of the hallway.

“Get out of here!” he shouts to Jaemin, who is stood there taking pictures of the smoke. He legs it down the hallway towards the smoke until he reaches the seminar room, swinging inside.

All occupants of the room are frightened and panicked at the sight of the smoke, including the two mutant hunters. One is wielding a baton and swiping at the smoke as if that will dissipate it. The other seems to be fighting it with his bare hands.

There are only four students in here, but seemingly no seminar leader. A quick scan over them finds none are hurt—but also, none are Jisung.

“Out! Everyone out!” he calls, grabbing the occupants and leading them towards the door with haste. The mask and his enhanced vision gives him the advantage of leading them through the smoke better than they can see with their naked eyes. He leaves the men until last—shoves them up against the classroom windows, webbed in place.

The smoke is already starting to clear. No Jisung remains.

“Was it you?” he asks, ripping the baton from the man’s hand and throwing it to the floor behind him. “Did you cause that smoke?”

“Hell no! I’d stop that!”

He suspected as much. He runs back out into the hall, getting the attention of the other four students who are fleeing the scene. “Hey, hey, you guys, wait in the lecture hall—there are still other hunters in the building.”

Jaemin isn’t in the hallway anymore, and Mark dips back into the lecture hall to see if he’d returned to safety.

“Hey—” he approaches one of the girls who had been in the seminar room—“Was a Park Jisung in there with you guys?”

“Yes,” she says, breathless. “Yes, he was. Where is he?”

Mark’s heart plunges. He backs out of the lecture hall after one last scan around—no Jisung, no Jaemin—and runs down the hall towards the final seminar room, the final two men.

“Mark,” Chenle says in his ear.

“Chenle,” he says in return, interrupting him as he throws open the classroom door. Just three students in here, one seminar leader.

“They’ve gone,” the leader tells him.

“I can’t find Jisung,” he says, feeling breathless himself. “He’s gone. The purple smoke—”

Chenle sucks in a sharp breath. “Mark—Mark, they’ve got Jaemin. Two of the mutant hunters—HEY! LET HIM GO!”

“Shit,” he curses, loud, and runs over to the nearest window to swing it open. He squints through the rain, and can just see—the remaining two men hold a struggling body between them, rounding the side of the building.

He leaps down, swinging around to see them shove Jaemin, hard, into the back of a van, slamming the door after him.

“STOP!” he shouts, jumping down to the ground. Before he can raise a hand to web anything, there’s a strong blow to his back.

He turns to find a masked mutant hunter with a thick metal pole in hand. It’s not hard to disarm him, in time for campus security to catch up and tackle the guy—must be a stray from the physics hall. But by the time he turns around again, the van has disappeared.

“Shit,” he says, latching up onto the nearest building and propelling himself high. It’s hard to see anything through this damn rain. “Shit! Chenle, I need to you track Jaemin’s phone for me, now.”

“On it,” Chenle says, and Mark jumps from rooftop to rooftop, coming to where the campus meets the main road. He can’t see the van anywhere, and his heart is racing at the thought that they could be taking Jaemin anywhere. They could do anything—torture him, kill him, dump his body in the river.

Mark had vowed to protect him. He can’t let them lay a hand on Jaemin, not more than they already have.

Jaemin is good. Too good. If Mark has ever failed, it will be if he fails to protect Jaemin from harm, here and now.

“Headed south,” Chenle says, and Mark leaps down in that direction, blindly swinging between buildings until he’s swinging alongside a main road, eyes peeled for the van.

“What road, Chenle?”

“Keep going—they’re turning left ahead of you.”

“There’s no left turning—” He spots it then. The van is turning into a small road between buildings.

He can’t make it that far across the road with webs. He swings onto the roof of a moving lorry, running along the rooftop and jumping across to a car on the road opposite, landing as lightly as he can without losing his footing. From there, he leaps up over another two lanes of traffic, running across the rooftops of cars deftly. They’re out at the edge of the storm here, and the rain drizzles down instead of pours.

The moving traffic has taken him slightly too far past the turning, but he makes up the difference in one swing, able to take the corner and land latched to a building wall. The van has parked in the shadow of a building, and one of the doors at the back stands open.

Mark lands on his feet outside of it, and gets a proper view of the inside. Jaemin is there, on his knees, as one man holds him around the neck with a strong hand. He throws Jaemin against the van floor, and unhooks a baton from his belt.

Mark can’t hear what he’s saying—whether from the sound of rain or the rush of blood in his own ears, he doesn’t know. But he moves without thinking. He shoots a web towards the baton, alerting the three to his presence as he pulls it away from his hand.

“Don’t—” He yanks the guy closer to him out of the van, pulling him clean off his feet with one hand on his arm. “Fucking—” The one who was holding the baton whirls on him, all anger and brutality, and Mark slams him against the wall of the van, rocking the whole thing. “Touch him.”

He webs the guy down, hard, before ensuring the one on the ground outside can’t get away either. They deserve worse—much worse—but it’s not his place to dole out punishment. He can’t start now, no matter how furious he feels.

“Jaemin,” he says, turning on the boy on the floor of the van.

“Mark,” Jaemin breathes, and Mark’s breath stutters.

He’s stunned for just a moment. Then he sees Jaemin’s face—he didn’t say it to expose Mark, to prove that he knows. He said it because he’s desperate for a familiar face. This is his second time being attacked by people stronger and more deadly than him in three days, and he’s desperate to be right, because that means he’s safe.

Mark has a shoddy track record of protecting him so far. He’s the one who’s let Jaemin be attacked, both times. But if he can help Jaemin now, he’ll do just about anything.

He deserves to know he’s safe.

He webs over the eyes, mouths, and ears of the captors. Then he pulls off his mask, kneeling beside Jaemin. “Hey,” he says softly.

Jaemin breathes out a shuddering sigh of relief, bordering on a panic attack, breathing quick, eyes watery. His neck is red from where he’d been choked, and there’s blood streaking along the side of his face. He’s struggling to keep himself supported on his hands, arms shaking.

“It’s you,” he says, face scrunched up as he tries to control his panic. “Mark.”

“It’s me. You’re safe with me, okay? I promise you that. I’m seriously not letting you out of my sight again.”

Jaemin leans forward all at once, arms coming around Mark’s neck, whole bodyweight leaning into him.

“I got you, baby,” he murmurs, hugging him, encouraging him to put his legs around Mark’s body so he can lift him out of the van. “You’re safe. I’m gonna take care of you.”

He leaves the men in the alleyway. CCTV from campus will show them leaving with the van—he’ll have Chenle tip the cops off with their location.

He pulls the mask back over his face. “Hold on tight, okay? I’m gonna get you home.”

Jaemin doesn’t say anything, but curls himself around Mark tighter. Mark webs them into the air, and swings them back towards campus.

-

When Mark swings them both through Jaemin’s dorm room window, they’re soaked to the bone, the storm raging on over campus. Jaemin still clutches onto him even as Mark tries to lower him onto his bed, so he simply goes with him, the two of them entangled together and dripping all over his sheets.

He wriggles an arm free to stroke Jaemin’s hair, his other arm comfortingly patting his side, easing Jaemin’s grip until it’s enough for Mark to lean out and see his face. He pulls his mask off and meets Jaemin’s eyes, hovering there for a few moments as he waits for his breathing to slow, now that they’re in a safe place.

“Do you need to see someone?” he asks, hand moving from Jaemin’s hair to the cut at the side of his head. “You’re hurt.”

“They just threw me around,” Jaemin says, his voice raw and small from the damage he’d taken to his throat.

He curses slightly under his breath and cradles Jaemin’s face with one hand. “Are you sure? Really sure?”

“I’m sure. Just want to stay with you,” he says, leaning into the hand, even though Mark’s suit is soaked wet.

“Okay, sure. We can stay. But we should get some dry clothes on, okay? The last thing you need is to get sick.”

He sits up, taking the bottom of Jaemin’s hoodie and helping him pull it off over his head.

Only when it’s off does he realise how intimate that is. He’s sat up on his knees, on Jaemin’s bed, helping him undress.

“Ah, um—I’ll just—” He gets up even though Jaemin hadn’t said anything, just watched him with trusting eyes. “Get something for your cut.”

He dips into the bathroom, where he wriggles out of the soaked suit, leaving him standing there in damp boxers. He takes a cloth and wets it slightly, coming back out to find Jaemin pulling on a dry pair of pyjama pants, shirtless.

Wow. Jaemin is kind of ripped.

“Uh—for you,” Mark says, and doesn’t miss the way Jaemin’s eyes take the long route up his body to arrive at the cloth. “Can I borrow some clothes?”

“Of course,” Jaemin says, taking the cloth and sitting back on the edge of his bed.

He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and t-shirt as fast as he can, before going back to help Jaemin properly wipe the cut clean, gentle strokes against the side of his face. They’re left in silence as he does, Jaemin watching him and staying still.

“There,” he says quietly. “You should get some rest, Jaemin.”

Jaemin continues to look at him, eyes impossibly round. “Aren’t you afraid?”

Mark is surprised by the question. “Me? Afraid? Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”

“I’m really afraid,” Jaemin admits, in the smallest voice he’s heard from Jaemin yet. “I’ve come closer to serious harm more times in the past few days than I have in my whole life. I’m getting more and more worried that someone will come and—push me down the stairs, or—I’ll just drop dead, or—”

“It’s not gonna happen. It’s not. I am going to do everything in my power to keep you safe, Jaemin,” he says, placing a hand on Jaemin’s thigh.

Jaemin’s hand goes to meet him there, and winds up clutching onto just one of Mark’s fingers. “I’m putting you in danger too.”

“You know I can handle it,” he says, leaning in closer, voice steady and confident. “I’m not afraid.”

Jaemin blinks for a long moment. “And you’re not afraid of me?”

“You? Why would I be afraid of you?”

Jaemin pauses, looking down at their hands. “You just revealed your identity to me. Just because I asked you to—just because I was scared. I know where you live. I know your full name. I know all your friends. And I run your biggest fansite. Aren’t you worried I’ll expose you? Leak your name to the papers for cash—report you to the police for vigilantism—”

“Are you going to do that?” Mark asks, calmly.

“No!” Jaemin says immediately, horrified by the very prospect.

“Then what do I have to worry about?”

Jaemin’s eyes roam is face again, urgent. “You trust me that much?”

“Of course I do. It’s you.”

“Mark,” he says, softly. Mark repositions their hands so that he’s holding Jaemin’s properly. “You’ve known me for a week.”

“I’ve known you for longer than that, Lovely. You’re basically my sidekick.”

That pulls a smile out of Jaemin at last. He breathes a huge sigh of relief, body losing its tension as he leans into Mark, burying his face into Mark’s neck. Mark puts his free hand around him, slowly stroking his back.

“You can’t go around revealing your identity to people just like that.”

“I don’t. Only for you. I’ve never told anyone else.”

Jaemin sits back up straight again, looking at Mark in surprise. “No one?”

“Only Chenle and Donghyuck know. But they helped me set up the Spider-Man gig, so they don’t count. You’re the first person I’ve revealed it to.”

“But why?” he says, frowning, almost murmuring the words. “Why me?”

Mark shrugs. “Because I like you, Jaemin. And I wanted you to know. And I just knew that I could trust you. Plus, it seems like you already knew anyway, right?”

Jaemin is looking at him intensely. “It’s so easy to spot, Mark. Your build, and your voice, and—the way you hug—it’s impossible not to tell. I’ve suspected it since we first met, but after you saved me from the muggers…”

“Usually people don’t get close enough to Mark Lee and Spider-Man as much as you,” Mark says, a little teasing. “Like I said, you’re a special case.”

“Really?” Jaemin says. His face is open and honest and waiting. “Special how?”

“Well… you just are.” He swallows, and plucks up his courage. “I don’t know how to say it, but… I could show you?”

Mark leans in, slowly so his intentions are clear. Jaemin doesn’t move away, but smiles a little, so Mark kisses him, gently placing one hand on Jaemin’s side.

It’s only a sweet kiss to show his intentions, but the feel of Jaemin’s mouth on his makes sparks fly all the same. Jaemin is still smiling when he leans away, and all Mark can think is—they fit each other perfectly.

“That special?” Jaemin says as he pulls away, beaming, long lashes lowered as he looks at Mark’s hands shyly. His voice holds a modicum of wonder, his wound is still fresh on the side of his face, and his eyes are twinkling like he’s just won the lottery. “I think you’re pretty special too.”

“Really?” Mark says, and Jaemin nods, making a pleased little noise and biting down on his bottom lip. Mark coos, cupping Jaemin’s face with one hand and squeezing lightly, until his cheeks and smile squish up. “You’re so cute, baby.”

“Will you kiss me again?” Jaemin asks with a little whine.

Mark laughs slightly, then goes in to kiss him a little harder this time, tasting his smile. Jaemin accepts him gladly, happy to kiss slowly, half-dressed in his dorm room.

Jaemin puts a hand to Mark’s elbow to pull him in closer, and Mark laughs into his mouth, tilting his head to kiss Jaemin a little deeper.

They’re interrupted by the sound of a phone buzzing. It’s Jaemin’s, they realise, pulling apart and searching in Jaemin’s discarded clothes for the sound.

“Hello?”

A pause, and Jaemin’s eyes meet his, the smile slowly fading on his face. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry we didn’t call. Mark just brought me back to campus. Yeah. Yes, he’s here.”

He passes the phone over to Mark. Mark takes it, curious. “Hello?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Chenle asks, voice harsh. “You okay? Jaemin?”

“We’re okay. Shit, sorry Chenle, I was freaked. Jaemin is a little hurt, but it’s nothing he can’t bounce back from. Are you okay over there?”

“No,” he says, voice wobbling. “Mark—you were right. Jisung’s gone. I checked the CCTV—he vanished into the smoke just like all the others.”

Mark’s heart misses a beat, guilt and fear striking him all at once. “Chenle—shit. Chenle—”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t take him. I just need you to help me look for him now, Mark. We need to—we need to do something. We need a lead—anything.”

“We’re going to find him Chenle. Hey, I promise you that—we’re gonna find him.”

He hears Chenle take a few deep breaths on the other end of the line. “We need to get into the lab, Mark. Not today—cops are all over campus now. But soon. We need answers.”

“We’ll find them. We will. Can you round up the others and bring them to Jaemin’s room? Jeno too—he should know about what’s happened. Let’s make a plan together.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.” The line cuts out.

“What’s happened?” Jaemin asks. “What’s wrong?”

Mark sighs, running a hand through his hair. Stupid—he should’ve gone back to the chemistry building as soon as he knew Jaemin was safe.

In his heart, though, he knows there’s nothing more he could’ve done. If he can’t move faster than the purple smoke, he needs to cut it off at its source.

“Jisung is missing,” he says, mouth set in a line. “He’s vanished, and it’s up to us to get him back.”

-

The plan they come up with goes like this:

1. Break into the labs (scan in using someone’s pass)
2. Chenle and Jeno review the CCTV from the gassing incident
3. Donghyuck and Renjun find the reports filed about it
4. Jaemin and Mark look for any evidence related to the incident
5. Follow any leads and collect any evidence necessary
6. Get out undetected

It’s a somewhat vague plan. There’s no knowing if this will take them five minutes or five hours. Going the following night is the only option—they want to get in there as soon as possible, and with fewer people around late at night, they’ll have more freedom to snoop. Mark can only hope they’ll turn out with something useful.

Mark takes Chenle on his back and climbs up to the second floor to meet the other four inside, not wanting anyone to recognise them as intruders in the hallways. Though the other four haven’t been back on their placement work since the gassing incident, their passes should still give them access, only Kibum won’t be here to monitor them in the lab like usual.

The room is empty when they make it inside, though they can hear the others coming by the sound of Jaemin sneezing further up the corridor. He had, unfortunately, caught a cold from the storm after all, and was adorably red-nosed when Mark woke up this morning. He’d smiled and cooed and brought him hot chocolate, trying to convince him to sit out of the mission this evening, but Jaemin couldn’t be persuaded.

They hadn’t had the chance to talk about the kiss yet—it hadn’t felt right, with Jisung missing, and so much on the line today. But Mark cares about Jaemin a lot, and doesn’t want to see anything bad happen to him again, if he can help it.

Chenle and Jeno split off to find the security room, while the four of them remain in the lab room, Donghyuck and Renjun working through the filing cabinets as Donghyuck swears gently in everyone’s minds. A sniffly Jaemin leads Mark to the canister that had exploded that day, packed away in the corner of the room.

Mark takes it, holding it up to the light. The canister is exploded open in one side, metal sharp and distorted. It looks completely clean on the inside, but he swabs it anyway. There may be traces of the substance left in there.

“I didn’t even notice this until after the smoke had cleared,” Jaemin admits.

“I’ve never seen something like this before either,” Mark says quietly, looking back at where Renjun is focused on the file he’s reading. “When the other mutants went missing, the smoke seemed to appear from nowhere. And we still don’t know why you guys didn’t disappear like the others, but were changed.”

“The people who went missing were all mutants already, right? But none of us were. Maybe that’s the difference.”

“This report is shit,” Donghyuck announces. Some scientists they are. Psh. “Doesn’t actually report anything.”

“They didn’t try hard at all to find out the problem,” Renjun adds. “There’s no detail about what could’ve actually been in the canister. Just that it was a routine experiment under Kibum’s authorisation, but so is everything else in this room.”

Mark does his own skim of the report, but Renjun is right. It’s nothing more than a formality.

The door opens, causing them all to turn, but it’s only Chenle and Jeno. “CCTV looks like all the disappearances,” he announces, Jeno closing the door carefully behind them. “Same smoke as we’ve always seen, seems to come from nowhere.”

“Did you see this, Chenle?” Mark asks, plucking the canister from the table top and showing him. “If someone left it, or threw it?”

“No,” Chenle frowns. “The smoke didn’t come from there, though. That must be a decoy of some kind.”

“What? How can you know that?”

“Look at it. The material, the way it’s burst open—the smoke wasn’t nearly pressurised enough to have exploded from something like that. It’s all wrong.”

“You’re weirdly good at knowing stuff,” Jeno murmurs from beside him. He’s doing his best to keep a moderate distance from everyone, and has had this kicked puppy expression on his face ever since last night.

“I know. Speaking of, what’s behind that wall?”

He points at the far wall of the lab, and they all turn and look. Seems like a normal wall to Mark.

“It’s just a wall,” Donghyuck says. Please say there are secrets behind it.

“It’s obviously a fake wall,” Chenle huffs, walking over to it.

He runs his hands along the wall as if reading braille, his fingertips following some invisible lead until they reach the vent in the bottom corner. He slides it up, like he’s done it a hundred times, and feels inside the small gap there.

He must press something, because the wall groans slightly, and begins to slide apart.

“Woah,” Donghyuck says. You need your mutant gene tested.

“I’m just intuitive,” Chenle says, staring down the gap that’s appeared in the wall. It’s wide enough to fit a person through, and there seems to be a disorganised study room beyond it.

“I’ll go first, Chenle,” Mark says, putting a hand on Chenle’s arm to keep him from running into the unknown. “You don’t have to come.”

Chenle looks unimpressed. “Do you think I’m staying behind?”

“None of us are, Mark,” Donghyuck says.

Mark looks around at each of them. He has no right to tell them to stay, but they have no idea what could be beyond here. “Okay. But if we meet someone, you stay behind me, okay?”

“You’re the boss,” Jaemin says, gesturing forward. “After you.”

Mark leads them through the gap into the study, which already has the lights switched on. It’s a small room, with just a desk, chair, and dozens of files in a half-open cabinet.

Chenle, Renjun, Jaemin and Donghyuck latch onto the files immediately, while Mark and Jeno check around the room for any more false walls, and more importantly, any cameras. There don’t seem to be any, but there is a pin board with dozens upon dozens of pinned up notes, with names and information.

One of them catches his eye. It’s Donghyuck’s name—and next to him, Renjun, Jeno, and Jaemin.

“Mark,” Chenle says, coming up to him with a file in hand. “I think the smoke—every instance of the smoke—has been an experiment. Look, listen to this—subject LJN has also seen the inverse intention of a mutant ability manifest as a result of the psychological gene tampering. Where all gene samples indicated a healing ability, gene activation has manifested in the effect of sickness for those close to him.”

“NCIT is so getting sued for this,” Donghyuck says.

“Why does it say psychological gene tampering?” Jaemin says, eyes fixed on a report of his own. “It wasn’t psychological tampering, it was physical. Wasn’t it?”

“Mark,” Jeno says, kicking aside a rug that fits neatly into the corner of the room. Under it lies a hatch, like you might see to enter an attic.

I don’t like that.

“It might be nothing,” Mark says, but he doesn’t feel very convincing.

“I’ll go first if Mark is backing out,” Chenle says, and Mark gives him a look.

“No, no. I’m going to drop down, and you guys aren’t going to follow me until I call, okay? Keep looking at those files. We’re close to something, here.”

“We can’t let you go on your own,” Jaemin says, at the same time as Chenle protests,

“I can’t promise I’m going to follow those orders.”

Mark holds up placating hands. “I promise I’ll call for you as soon as I see what’s down there. Okay?”

Jeno opens up the hatch door, and the metal hinges groan. Thankfully, no terrible smell or purple smoke arises from it, so his fears of dead bodies or a deadly smoke source are slightly assured.

There’s a runged ladder leading down into the basement room, and he swings his body into the climb down, taking the steps as quietly as he can. There are lights on down below, but he can only see the stone floor of the room as he climbs further down the chute.

When it finally opens up into a wider space, he jumps down the last few rungs, landing in a crouch and assessing the room.

It must be the basement that runs under the entire labs building—it’s a wide room with a low ceiling, stone pillars running along either side of the space. It’s dimly lit, but he immediately spots the four people in the room.

There’s the girl that burped fire, who looks to be having a quiet conversation with one of the pillars. There’s also a bundle of butterflies in the vague shape of a man, loitering in the corner of the room, and a person with shark flippers instead of arms, walking in a vague zig-zagged pattern between each pillar.

Then there’s Jisung, sat against one of the far walls, staring into thin air, still and vacant.

“Mark?” Chenle calls from above. “What’s there?”

“They’re here,” he says before taking off into a run across the room. All four missing mutants are here. “Jisung!”

He skids to a stop in front of his friend, taking his face in his hands. “Jisung, hey, hey. Can you hear me? Jisung?”

Jisung blinks slowly, but doesn’t show any sign he notices Mark is there. There’s a purple cloud over his usual dark eyes, and his breathing is slow and deep, like he’s asleep.

“Jisung?” Jeno’s voice calls, running across the room after Mark. The others follow after him down the chute, Chenle close on his heels, Jaemin after him, with a sneeze that echoes around the space.

“Guys, I might need some of you back up there. We need to understand what that gas does—I think it has them under some kind of hypnosis.” Donghyuck and Renjun look at each other when he says that, which makes Mark turn to them. “What is it? You guys?”

“We were reading the report on how the smoke works,” Renjun says, tearing his eyes away from Donghyuck’s to meet Mark’s. “I just don’t want to believe it.”

“The smoke isn’t really smoke, Mark,” Donghyuck says. “Not the natural kind, anyway. It’s a mutant ability.”

“What kind of ability?”

“Some kind of—deception,” Renjun says, mouth pinched. “The report described it as ‘perception alteration, or psychological modification’. That’s why it said psychological tampering in the report Chenle saw.”

“What?” Chenle’s voice calls, and he turns around, striding back to Mark’s side. “You mean that all the smoke does is—make you believe something that isn’t true? But whose power is it, and why have they been using it to kidnap mutants?”

I don’t want to say it. Donghyuck sighs, almost apologetic. “All the reports were in Kibum’s handwriting.”

The loud bang of the hatch slamming closed rings around them. The lights in the basement room flicker for a second.

“Knew you’d get there,” Kibum’s sly voice calls, and he steps around from behind a pillar like an apparition. Which he may well be. “You’re NCIT’s brightest, after all.”

“You…” Mark is floored. Kibum was his closest mentor when he worked in the labs—he’d taught him so much. He’d always been kind to him. “You’ve been kidnapping people? Hyung—why?”

“Science, obviously,” Kibum says, like he’s disappointed by the question. “Restrictions on human experimentation has been holding back mutant gene studies for so long. You need to test on live subjects. It’s the only way.”

“No, no, no, Hyung,” Mark says, chest pounding. “You can’t just—hurt people, change them, just because you can.”

“Why not?”

“How did you know about Jisung?” Jeno pipes up from behind the group of them, standing in front of Jisung. “He’s never—he wasn’t like those other mutants you took—”

“Nuisances, you mean? No, he wasn’t. But observation is the most important part of a study, you know, recording your results.” He takes slow, deliberate steps closer to the group, heels clicking against stone, and Mark takes hold of Jaemin and Chenle’s arms on either side of him. “It’s easy to observe your subjects when you can make them believe you aren’t there. The conversation you had in the café was fascinating.”

Mark feels sick. “You’ve been spying on us all?”

“Please, Mark. I’ve been watching you the longest. You’re my most successful experiment.”

“You…”

“Yes,” Kibum says patiently, like he’s speaking to a small child. “I did it deliberately, I did it all deliberately. You’re welcome, you’re now stronger and better in every way, Spider-Man. What a nice moniker. Did you know that your powers are the very reason why you were a success? Your gene held spider-related abilities, so of course the spider bite was able to activate it. None of the others worked. You were one in a million, Mark Lee.”

“You were successful with them,” he says, gesturing to Jaemin, Donghyuck, Renjun, Jeno. “I’m not so special.”

“Not really. Their gene is inversed. Their abilities are useless hindrances. This is why I need you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Honey.”

“This has been a wild goose chase from the start,” Chenle says, voice level, as if explaining the answer to a math problem. “You deliberately signposted your power with the smoke, didn’t you?”

Why? Donghyuck thinks, which Kibum seems to find irritating, a curl to his mouth.

“For the flair. Fun game for you, wasn’t it? Brought you all together.”

“No,” Chenle says, stepping forward, Mark still firmly holding on to him. “The experiment on the four of them was just a pastime for you. What you really wanted was for Mark to pay attention to it.”

“Smart boy,” Kibum says, smile cutting as he looks at Chenle with sharp eyes. “You really should have your mutant gene tested, you know.”

Why Mark?

“Do keep up, Donghyuck, he’s my only success,” Kibum drawls. “I need to learn more about him. Observation only gets you so far. I need to run tests, I need samples, I need to understand you. I need you to stay here, with me. Willingly.”

Kibum has been advancing slowly as he speaks, a somewhat mad glint in his eye. Mark raises his hands. “You come any closer, I’m webbing you.”

Kibum stops, smiles, and tilts his head to the side almost pitifully. “There’s a reason you haven’t. You know I’m doing good work here, don’t you? Imagine if we could activate every mutant gene in the world. Imagine how much we could accomplish by unlocking all the dormant abilities inside us. Imagine a world where all mutant hunters have powers too—no more hunting, no more pain for people like you. All you need to do is work with me. I can’t disappear you, like all the others. So you need to choose me, Mark.”

He steps forwards again, and Mark webs one of his feet to the floor. “No. This isn’t right, Hyung. You can’t experiment on people like this, and you can’t know the risks of activating people’s mutant gene. I’m only showing you kindness because you’ve done a lot for me, and you’ve clearly gone off the deep end. Come with us, Kibum-hyung—turn yourself in. We can still fix this.”

Kibum tuts, disappointed, and shakes his head. “No, Mark. See, we’re here on my terms, and here’s my deal. You turn yourself over to me, and everyone else can go free. I won’t hurt your friends. Even the other mutants can go back to their little lives. But if you resist me, I will kill them.”

“No, Hyung. It’s not happening. You’re not hurting anyone here.”

Kibum sighs, and takes a long look at the ceiling. Then he looks straight at Mark, gaze piercing.

“No, Mark. But you are.”

Purple smoke engulfs them from under Kibum’s feet, thick and fast. He shoots a web, but doesn’t hear the thwick of it meeting anything substantial. This vision is completely obscured—he can’t see Jaemin or Chenle anymore, and he’d let go of both to web Kibum.

“Woah, woah, guys,” he says, hands out to try and grab someone again, but he finds nothing. He can hear Jaemin crying out in pain over to his right, and he turns, trying to feel through the all-obscuring smog to get to him. “Jaemin? Hey, are you okay?”

A muffled voice—Chenle’s?—sounds off behind him. It sounds as though someone is holding a hand over his mouth—what has Kibum done?

“Hey, Kibum-Hyung—don’t do this, we can talk—”

Someone grabs his shoulder, and he spins, taking their wrist and twisting it behind their back, pushing them to their knees.

The smoke is driving him crazy—it’s not disappearing quickly, like usual. It’s incredibly thick and dense, and he can’t see the person he’s holding, not even this close to them. It’s not someone he recognises—perhaps one of the mutants, affected by Kibum’s ability, trying to harm them.

He webs up their arms and ankles and leaves them there, moving away, desperate to find someone he can help. He can’t hear Donghyuck’s thoughts anymore, and that’s worrying him.

“Guys? Can anyone hear me? Where are you?”

Another body lunges from the smoke, going for his arms, what feels like claws digging into his skin. He pushes their hands away and out, shoving their body away from him and sending a web blindly after to keep them down.

“Mark!” Renjun’s voice calls, panicked, and he tries to follow the sound of it.

This time, he finds a body in the smoke, but again, he doesn’t recognise it. When he reaches out for them, he sees the glint of a gun in their hands.

He raises his hands to web it down—guns are never a good sign, in his opinion. Before he can, someone jumps on him from behind, weight dragging him back.

He runs back until he can crash the person behind him into one of the stone pillars and yank them from his back, throwing them to the floor and webbing them down too. Instinct takes him back to where the figure with the gun stands, their silhouette emerging from the smoke so late he finds himself close enough to punch it out of their hands.

“Mark,” Jaemin’s voice calls, somewhere close and far away all at once. It’s all distorted.

“Jaemin?” he asks, barely able to get the word out over the race of his heart, his quick breath.

He turns, and the shadow of a figure stands behind him. The shadow places a hand on either side of Mark’s head—he puts his hands up, going to tear them away—

And the shadow kisses him.

It’s hard to see anything, but he can feel it. A warm mouth against his. Instead of making him panic and rip away, this feels… familiar. Safe.

The press of teeth against his lip—he knows them. He’s felt them before.

His heartrate slows enough that he’s able to get a single thought out. Smart. That worked on Renjun.

Or is that his thought? It sounds more like Donghyuck’s.

Here’s his thought: the smoke—Kibum’s ability—makes you believe something that isn’t real. And when he closes his eyes, every other sense is telling him that Jaemin is the one kissing him.

So he holds still, and relaxes into it as best he can. He trusts his instinct, doesn’t pull the hands from his head, doesn’t back away from the kiss. Instead, he leans into it, and remembers sitting in Jaemin’s bedroom, smiling as they kissed on the bed.

He’s not going to hurt his friends—they’re going to be okay. They can fix this.

“Mark,” Chenle’s voice says, much clearer now, and closer than before. Hearing the real thing makes him realise how fake it had been before.

The lips leave his, but Jaemin’s hands maintain contact with the sides of his head. “Are you back?” he asks, low voice quiet and intimate.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he responds, eyes still screwed shut. If he opens them, and the smoke is there—if he’s still being attacked—what will he do?

Jaemin kisses over each of his closed eyelids. “You won’t. Open your eyes.”

He cracks open one eye. The room is clear, no smoke to be seen. He opens the other, taking in the look on Jaemin’s face, the hopeful worry.

“You okay?”

“I—” he looks around him. Chenle is on his knees, hands and ankles webbed. Jeno is webbed to a pillar, and Donghyuck is stuck to the floor. Renjun is on his knees, looking up at Mark, his lip bust open and bleeding. “Shit. Did I do that?”

Renjun deflates in relief. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, pulling the cut into his mouth. “I’ll recover.”

“Donghyuck?” Chenle asks, and Mark and Jaemin move together to pull him free of the web.

“I’m okay,” he groans. “I just hope you’ll never do that again. You’re kind of scary like that, dude.”

“God dammit,” Mark breathes, pulling Donghyuck into a hug. “Shit, I can’t believe I fell for that. I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Chenle says, and Mark comes over to free him too. “Listen, we need to get out of here, pronto. Chances are Kibum is either still here and deceiving us, or he’s long gone. Either way, he’s not going to be happy you didn’t hurt us the way he wanted. We need to get everyone out and get help.”

He goes over to help Jeno, who sits up as soon as he’s freed, beelining for Jisung.

“Thank you, Jaemin,” Mark says, watching as Jeno squats in front of Jisung and kisses him gently. “You were brave, to do that.”

“Not at all,” Jaemin says, coming up beside him and holding his hand. “It was the least I could do after all you’ve done for me.”

Mark looks back at him. “Kibum experimented on you with the express intention of getting to me. I owe you way more than you owe me.”

“Not true,” Jaemin said simply, leading Mark over to the girl in the corner, still calmly conversing with the pillar. “Hello,” he says, and she pauses, blinking at the pillar. “Is it alright if I hug you?”

Mark takes a look around the room. Donghyuck is approaching the shark mutant, whilst Chenle stands telling science jokes to the man made of butterflies. A surge of pride rises in his chest. His friends hadn’t hesitated to apply their knowledge to the other victims here, making sure they’re able to come with them to safety.

“You guys are too good,” he says quietly.

“Not true,” Jaemin says again, embracing the girl, who is now quietly giggling. “We don’t hold a candle to you. Come on, Spider-Man. Let’s get out of here.”

-

Later, after the police have been in, after they’d all given statements and Mark had carefully curated his story to omit details about his abilities, after the lab had been cleared out and they’d all been sent home for the night, after he and Jaemin share a bed and don’t sleep the entire night, but talk and talk and kiss and hold each other in the dark—

The seven of them meet up again. It’s off-campus, in a busy diner that will seat them all in one booth. Kibum hasn’t been captured by the police yet, and could still be anywhere. Doing anything. Making them all believe something that isn’t real.

Mark isn’t going to be able to let that thought go for a while. But that’s for another day, another time. Right now, they need some final answers.

Or, well. Chenle has told them he has some final answers. He’s the last one to arrive, sliding into the booth on Jeno’s other side. “I know how to fix you guys,” he says, instead of a greeting.

Six pairs of eyes stare at him. “You do?” Renjun asks, voice a hopeful little thing.

If anyone can do it, it will be Chenle.

“Sure do,” Chenle says, confident. “Listen. On the way out, I grabbed some stuff from the hidden study. Some files I wanted to study before they went to the police, some bottles of meds that looked suspicious—”

“That is so not legal,” Jeno says, but Jisung leans forward, enraptured.

“It was worth it,” Chenle insists, eyes bright. He holds up a little plastic bag with a few small, pink pills in it. “I’ve been researching all night. These things—they can essentially reverse the effects of Kibum’s ability. Your mutant gene has already been activated, and I don’t think that can be undone, but they’ll correct the activation so it’s not faulty anymore. Guys—this is basically a cure.”

“Chenle, you’re a genius!” Mark says. “You’re sure that’s what they’ll do?”

“One hundred percent,” he says, pulling the little bag open. “I promise you, they’re totally safe. Who wants to go first?”

“Me,” Donghyuck says, hand up. “I’m not hesitating.”

“Please,” Jaemin says, hand sliding past the smoothie he’s sharing with Mark. “I need it.”

“I’ll try anything,” Jeno agrees.

“I’m in,” Renjun says simply. Four upturned palms lay in front of Chenle.

He grins, satisfied, and hands one out to each of them around the table. Mark watches as Jaemin throws back his, chased by some smoothie.

They all look at each other for a moment once all the pills are swallowed, as if waiting for a result. But the only power immediately observable is Renjun’s, and all eyes draw to the window.

Sure enough… the rain is slowing. From a torrential downpour, it’s down to a drizzle in under thirty seconds. Then, slowly but surely, it stops completely.

For the first time in nearly ten days, Renjun can step outside and stay dry. The smile growing on his face threatens to crack open his busted lip again.

“Renjun,” Jeno says, gesturing for him to turn around. “Come here.”

He puts the pad of his thumb on Renjun’s mouth, over the cut. Where his fingertip traces, the cut smooths over and heals in one movement. The sight actually makes Mark gasp.

Jaemin fidgets beside him. “What am I—” he reaches under him, into the crack of the seat he’s sitting over, and produces a stack of dollar notes wedged in the gap. “Oh. Lucky me?”

“Donghyuck,” Chenle says, snapping his fingers. “Quick, before Renjun runs off. What am I thinking right now?”

Donghyuck turns to look at Chenle. “You’re thinking that the drugs were placebo,” he says. “Wait. What?”

“I’m a genius,” Chenle says, sitting back smugly in his seat, Cheshire smile on his face.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mark says, leaning forward. “How…?”

“It’s easy. Kibum controls people with fear. The mutants—they were all in a state of fear when they were taken. When he made you attack us, he did so after threatening you with hurting us first. And when you were all gassed, all four of you already had your doubts about NCIT, right? He affects people with negative emotions to have negative results. But we proved those results can be changed with positive emotions—serotonin, and the like.

“It’s a little different for you four—you weren’t under a long-term psychological hallucination, like the mutants in the basement. You just had your mutant gene activated under negative circumstances, which resulted in the negative effect. But if you all wholly believe you can have that changed, under positive circumstances—that is, me giving you hope, and you having trust in me, and you all being in a safe environment—then surely that effect can be reversed. Clearly I was right.”

“Then the pills…?”

“They’re just antihistamines. It’s all psychological.” He taps the side of his head, smile bright for the first time in a while. Mark had missed the sight of it.

“I could kiss you,” Renjun says, standing from his seat.

“Please don’t,” Donghyuck and Chenle say at the same time.

“I’m going to stand in the sun,” Renjun announces, and Donghyuck gets up to follow after him, the two of them near skipping through the diner.

“Jisung… I don’t know what will work for you yet. You’re different. It might just take time, and work.”

Jisung smiles and shrugs. He and Jaemin have matching colds at the moment, their cheeks cutely flushed pink. “Then we’ll work on it. You’ve done enough for us, Chenle.”

“You have,” Jeno agrees, reaching out to touch Chenle’s arm. Chenle looks back at each of them, meaningfully.

Mark looks at Jaemin, who looks over at him at the same time. “Hey, uh—we’re going to move by the window to watch Donghyuck and Renjun play in the sun, okay?”

The three of them barely pay him any attention. He swipes up their shared smoothie, and the two of them move to a small two-person table, snickering.

“They have something to work through, for sure,” Jaemin says, sitting opposite Mark and pulling a tissue out of his pocket, cutely blowing his nose.

“You know, Jeno could probably help you with that cold now,” he points out.

“Eh, maybe later. A lot just happened. Want another smoothie?” He holds up the wad of dollars in his hand.

“I’m good. Use it on yourself, Lovely.”

Jaemin smiles at him prettily, like he likes that name. Mark intends to use it more.

He orders himself another smoothie, and the two of them watch Renjun and Donghyuck laugh and smile and talk beyond the window for a little bit. It’s nice to see the two of them together in happy circumstances, for once.

“Hey,” Mark starts. “You never did tell me why you took on your second life, Lovely. I think I gotta know that if you’re gonna be my boyfriend.”

Jaemin’s eyes sparkle. “You mean my photography hobby?”

“Yup.”

His smile is so pretty as he looks down at the table, then up again. “If I tell you, does that make us official? I need to get something good out of this.”

“If that’s what you want,” Mark says, but he can’t keep the excitement from his voice.

“It is,” Jaemin says, blowing him a kiss with a wink. “To be honest, at first I just liked the way you crawled. Plus, your ass.”

Mark laughs in surprise, and Jaemin grins, victorious. “It didn’t stay like that, though. The first time I saw you, it was by chance. Luck, I suppose. You were pulling kids out of a robbery while I was across the street. I knew I should run, but you moved like you knew exactly what you were doing, and it was mesmerising. You were still new then, you see, so I didn’t recognise you. I just saw you as someone who wanted to help.

“I thought what you did was heroic. I took pictures thinking I could put them online and show off your good work to the world, just that one time. But when I went home and searched you up, all I found was… bad press. Hate speech. Of course, some people liked you, but a minority of them. Most people feared you, vilified you, were calling for your arrest. For the first time, I realised how serious the hatred of mutants is. There you were, putting your life on the line, using your abilities to help others… and people talk about you like you’re the problem.”

“That’s changing,” Mark says quietly.

“Not quickly enough,” Jaemin says. His expression, while still happy, is more serious now. “There’s a whole corner of Twitter dedicated to compiling evidence on your identity, you know. To try and report you to the police. There are groups of people, like—those mutant hunters you stopped at the school, for example. People like that, who you restrain and stop from hurting others—they go on to file reports against you. There are resources out there that specifically help people file these reports, in the hopes that one day, if they can reveal your identity, they can have you arrested on all these counts of harassment.”                                         

He scoffs, sitting back in his chair. “It drove me crazy. I was angry at them, and I wanted to do something against them. I wanted to help you. But all I had was my camera. So I decided to start collecting my own evidence.”

“How so?”

Jaemin smiles at him again, secretive. “When I take pictures of you, it’s not so much of you. It’s recording what you do, when you arrive at these scenes. How you help people. The way you restrain the people hurting others, but you never hurt them back. You never do anything that’s actually against the law—you’re good like that. So one day, if they do uncover your identity—if it’s revealed to the world, and Mark Lee is brought in on all these charges… I’ll be there. I’ll have all the evidence that you’re innocent, that all you’ve ever done is help people. I’m going to make sure they can’t pin anything on you, can’t put you away for any reason.”

“Jaemin,” he starts, speechless for a moment. “I would literally never have predicted you’d say that.”

Jaemin shrugs, pleased. “I’ve been told I’m an enigma.”

“You’ve got that damn right.”

“How about you? Shouldn’t I know why you started your second life too, boyfriend?”

Mark grins, represses a stupid little giggle. “Uh… no fun story, I’m afraid. I just wanted to help people. And I knew I could, with these powers. So I did.”

Jaemin nods, satisfied, like he’d expected nothing less. “I want to continue, you know. For as long as you’re living your second life, I’m going to continue to be Lovely. I want to help in any way I can. Now that my ability properly works, maybe I can even help you on the scene.”

“Yeah? Like my real sidekick?”

“Something like that,” Jaemin says, biting his teeth into his bottom lip mischievously. “I bet the others would want to help you, too. They all like you so much, Mark Lee.”

“Not as much as you, I hope.”

“Just differently to me. You’re impossible to hate. Maybe you should tell the world who you are after all, and you’d solve all mutantphobia by just smiling at the hunters.”

“I don’t think that works on everyone. For some reason, just you guys like me this much.”

“Then we’re the perfect fit for you,” Jaemin says, reaching out to put his hand over Mark’s on the table. “You’ll let us join you, right?”

“I’ll think about it,” Mark says, teasing again, and Jaemin hums at him, a strange little noise that makes Mark laugh.

“But you and me… you don’t have to consider that, right?”

“I’ve already done all the considering. I’m way too far gone to not wanna date you now.”

Jaemin beams. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, beckoning Jaemin closer over the little table. He leans forward on his elbows, and Mark meets him midway with a kiss. “Are you on board with that?”

“There’s nothing I want more,” Jaemin says, smile wide on his face. “You don’t know how excited this makes me.”

Mark cups the back of his head and kisses him properly, long enough to make Jaemin giggle and lean out, looking at him with stars in his eyes.

“Me too, Lovely,” Mark says. “Me too.”