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IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY.
— Jenny Holzer
but now, ambered under
this streetlight, he pulls me in
for a kiss again and I decide,
briefly, to let the world kill
itself however it chooses: yes,
I hear the sirens and I am their
scream but tonight, I will moan
a future into my man’s mouth.
— Saeed Jones, from “Alive at the End of the World”
//
[Day 48 post-outbreak. This is Mark Lee speaking. It’s currently nine thirty seven pm, Pacific Standard Time, and it’s been precisely 48 days, three hours and four minutes since the world began to end. I am currently leaving my home for the first time since the shattering hit. For context in posterity and in case no one told you, the shattering is a phenomena caused by the fallout of the destruction of asteroid 1566 Icarus, which was supposed to hit planet Earth on the 15th of June, 2016 after a huge gravitational shift that led it to change its course… Or something. I’m no astrophysics, dude, but here’s what I’ve seen: the shattering is a disease that causes periodic paralysis of the limbs. In a about a week, this will turn into full rigidity of the extremities, and it may take one or two days to spread to the entire human body. In its final stage, the patient’s body resembles… Stone. [Long pause]. Listen, I’m no doctor either, okay? I don’t know what happens after it comes to that, and I don’t think I want to. Yesterday, though, it was my older brother, and he was the last one here. Everyone else is gone, but the shattering has not gotten me yet, so I’m leaving. At the time this message was recorded, I had turned seventeen on August 2, 2016. So happy birthday to me. This is Mark Lee once again, over and out.]
//
“What— what are you doing?”
Jeno raises both eyebrows at him as he takes off Mark’s old headphones, smiling brightly once he finds him standing by the door, partially hidden by the darkness in the corridor. It’s the middle of the night, the bed was half empty when he woke up with a startle, and Mark has a lingering feeling he’ll never outgrow his oldest, deepest fears — but when Jeno extends a hand to him, inviting him to step into the comforting light of their study, he takes a deep he didn’t know he was holding, thinking that one day he finally might.
“Found your diary,” is what Jeno reveals, smug as he carefully taps the cassette player with the tip of his finger. “I didn’t mean to snoop in, but I couldn’t sleep, so I was hoping your voice would lull me back to it.”
“Baby,” Mark whispers, equal parts embarrassed and fond, running his fingers through Jeno’s slightly greasy hair delicately. “Those things are ancient. If you wanted to hear my voice, you could’ve just woken me up to talk with you.”
The way Jeno blatantly ignores him is telling — he has waged war against Mark’s small sacrifices, as if his own devotion does not mean small sacrifices as well. Always the one to cradle him at night and never the last to wake up so that Mark gets five more minutes of sleep, always the one to venture in cooking despite them both being terrible at it because last week Mark burnt himself in the stove again, always patching up his clothes and gently tilting his head back for airdrops Mark is prone to forgetting about.
What is love, then, if not letting yourself be taken care of; what is love if not finding your lover sitting on the floor, cradling an old cassette tape player to his chest, listening to your voice as if you are not merely a room away. Mark’s love, for one, will drag him out of bed in search of Jeno’s every time.
“It’s so cute,” Jeno wraps an arm around Mark’s leg, preventing him from doing anything but to stand there for a moment, hand buried in his hair. He rests the side of his head against Mark’s thigh. “I love listening to it, I thought we had lost all of this when we moved. You sounded so cute back then.”
“There’s hardly anything cute about all that, though. It was… Sad, I guess,” Mark gently nudges him to sit down by his side, taking a peek at the old Nike bag where he stored the tapes for years and years. Most of them have to be damaged, that’s for sure — but some look alright. “I was alone for such a good chunk of this. I felt so lonely. All I had was the recorder.”
“Still, though. You could’ve just not done it, but you did. And I love the way you spoke back then.”
“Huh. Is it any different from how I speak now?”
Jeno fumbles with the tape player for a moment, opening it to reveal Mark’s very own first tape — the sight of it has him blushing unexpectedly. He had been seventeen then, nearly ten years before. Everything about him was different then.
“In a sense, not at all,” Jeno carefully takes the tape out and curls up to his side, leaning in to press a kiss to the underside of Mark’s jaw. “You’ve always been a nerd. But what I mean is you sounded like you were certain that someone would come around and find all this, that they would make sense of it, even if it was only one person. There’s beauty in it. It’s like you were an archivist.”
“An archivist,” Mark echoes, leaning into his touch helplessly — he presses a few sleepy kisses to Jeno’s cheek, rubbing his stubble against Jeno’s smooth skin. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I did think of myself like one… Pretentious little… Mhmm.”
Jeno giggles. “Are you tired?”
“Very much so,” he muffles a yawn against Jeno’s clothed shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, though. I can sleep in your lap, wake me up when you want to go to bed.”
It is no more than an invitation as it is a statement, and Jeno does not protest it as Mark lies down and rests his head on his thigh, nor as he turns to nuzzle his hoodie with the tip of his nose. The lights are not so bright that they hurt his eyes, but Jeno still shields him from them, the scent of his hoodie gently brushing Mark's nose familiar and comforting.
Jeno puts another tape on, and then caresses Mark’s hair until he falls asleep.
//
[Day 54 of the outbreak. This is Mark Lee. It’s ten fifty pm, Pacific Standard Time, and the weather is shit outside so I apologize for the noise. It’s been a week since I left home, and since our car was stolen at the beginning of everything I took the liberty to steal one too, and I covered enough ground to say that I am completely and utterly alone except for the utility robots who are still around. It must be a pretty lonely thing, right? To have been created to serve humanity, but to have no one around to serve. And I’m also thinking that it would be awfully funny if I was the sole motherfucker to survive this, but I suppose it’s too early to say that, right? Well, I hope so. At least the bots have me, and I have them. This is Mark, over and out.]
//
As Mark puts the truck in reverse, right arm behind his seat familiarly, Jeno asks: “You know what I miss? H Mart.”
“H Mart still exists,” Mark replies, matter-of-factly, and Jeno rolls his eyes in a way that reminds him of long gone teenagehood. Here is what was left after the end of the world: Mark’s feelings for him, a driver’s license that will never expire, and pretty much all supermarket chains out there. “Like, we drove past one around a mile ago, didn’t you see? It won’t be going anywhere, babe.”
Jeno sighs exasperatedly. “Well, yes, but also no.”
“A penny for you to expand on that thought.”
“I miss H Mart, but not the place,” Jeno’s fingers ghost over the broken radio, play pretend as if they’ve just gotten back from a grocery run. Not exactly true, not really a lie either — he keeps his knees tucked to his chest as to avoid the crossbow on the car floor. “I miss standing in front of a huge kimchi display and thinking of my grandmother, if you know what I mean.”
He does, but not in the sense Jeno expects him to. When Mark walks inside an abandoned supermarket, all that he’s thinking about is finding supplies that will last them a few weeks — most of the good stuff has either gone bad or been taken, and he is as enthusiastic about canned food as he was at the beginning. Hunting is good if you know how to — and they’ve learned a bit about it over time —, but the house needs tending too and sometimes you can find real treasure in abandoned markets. But Mark quite likes the way Jeno looks when he’s a shadowy figure in front of the illuminated empty displays. When they met, Jeno had that sort of melancholy in his eyes that used to be reserved for sad movie endings and goodbyes at emptying train stations only, in the sense that he is much more lively right now.
Perhaps they both are. But the difference between them is that Jeno keeps a picture of his mother in a locket around his neck and close to his heart, and he points out every four leaf clover he finds, and one of his most prized possessions is an old journal filled with fruit stickers that somebody left behind in a park, from when their world was not so lonely. He is, for all that is worth, the undoing of all nervous knots in Mark’s spine; for that reason he reaches out to gently rub his thumb against Jeno’s cheek before saying:
“As for myself, I miss McDonald’s. You have no idea of the things I’d do for an Egg McMuffin right now.”
“An Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s?” Jeno turns his face to the side and presses a small kiss to Mark’s palm, cheek squished against it. “Seriously? Not even a BigMac or something? An Egg McMuffin? I did not sign up for this when I entered this relationship, Mark. These things have to be discussed beforehand.”
Mark flicks him on the nose, and Jeno’s face scrunches up adorably as he leans back. They drive home in mostly silence, with the occasional “A dog, look!” slipping out of Jeno’s lips here and there, and then Mark kisses him on the front porch until Jeno starts whining about the weight of the groceries in his bag, demanding even more kisses for compensation.
//
[Day 72 post-outbreak. It’s Mark again. It’s eight thirty pm, Pacific Standard Time. I found new batteries for the recorder, but pardon me for being MIA. Still haven’t met a soul, though I passed by the same store from a few days ago and noticed some things had been taken, so it means someone or some people passed by. Maybe we will run into each other one of these days. Anyways, the streets in the city look like trash but the roads are empty and it’s easier to move around by car. I suppose people either have not left home and succumbed to the shattering, or have survived and gone far away from here. There’s little to no food available in the city, but I used a bot to look up some warehouses on the interstate and I’m planning on going to the nearest one in a couple days. It’s a bit funny that technology still works, right? Congrats solar power or some shit. Sorry for the foul language, I haven't gotten much sleep. Mark Lee, over and out.]
//
Jeno is good with the bots. It is as infuriating as it is endearing, to think that Jeno was born knowing how to do everything perfectly on the first try. He has fixed a record player and gifted it to Mark, has built him a new shelf for his books because the old one started falling apart, has placed solar receptors on the roof and managed not to fall from it and break his foot like Mark himself had done a few years back, when he didn’t have anyone to nurse him back to health.
But Jeno is good with the bots. By which Mark means he has grown used to watching him tinker with the old things, to gently brush the dust off utility bots in the street and say good morning to them as they slowly resume their duties. He treats the two they have back at home by name. He knows his way through every wired connection, knows which buttons to push and which systems to access, and says excuse me every time he picks up his screw driver before he begins. He is gentle with every living being and even more so with the things that do not live, fascinated by how far humanity had gone only to vanish and leave them behind.
Something about it makes Mark’s hand sweat. “Would you have kids?” He asks one day, as Jeno tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, tongue between his lips in concentration.
It catches him by surprise, because of course it would. Jeno looks up at him with widened eyes. “Kids?”
“Yeah, I mean—” Mark clears his throat. He doesn’t blink because he would be able to see it in the back of his eyelids, plaguing his thoughts with ever so unachievable things. A farmhouse and a tree with a swing, more than just their two pairs of shoes at the entrance. “If— if the world hadn’t ended. Do you think you would have kids?”
Jeno scratches at his cheek, smearing oil on it. It takes all of Mark willpower not to reach out in that instant, but he also feels rooted on his spot in the armchair.
“I don’t know,” Jeno replies. “I don’t know if I’d be a good father. I didn’t exactly have the best example to follow.”
“I would,” Mark admits, mostly to himself. “Have kids. I would. I always wanted to.”
At that, though, Jeno smiles, leaning his cheek on a dirty hand. God. Does he know what he does to Mark? Does he have any idea at all? Probably not. “Yeah?” He nods. “With me?”
Mark nods again.
“Think we would’ve found each other?”
“Think you woul’dve found me anywhere,” a pause. “You have dirt on your cheek, by the way. Messy baby.”
A little flustered, Jeno reaches for a piece of cloth, rubbing it thoroughly on his cheek. Looking at him makes Mark’s chest tighten so much that he runs out of air, throwing his head back to breathe in deep. A farmhouse and a tree with a swing, four pairs of shoes at the entrance. A child asleep on Jeno’s stomach with the TV still on, another tangled in Mark’s legs as he made dinner. Small, chubby hands. The sound of laughter echoing through the house.
He must’ve fallen asleep because Jeno wakes him up with a kiss on the forehead and another to his lips, calling him to bed. In Mark’s dreams the world never ends, but he still doesn’t need anything but this.
//
[Day 123 post-outbreak. Mark Lee here. Five two am, Pacific Standard Time. I know it’s late, I know my voice sounds like shit, I have the flu and I can’t sleep. It’s… Been four months since the outbreak. Have not talked to anybody but a robot since I left home, which is… Sad, I guess. Is there really nobody out there? I hope there is, man, although thinking about that makes me a little nervous. I guess you never know what someone might be up to now that the world has ended, right? If they’re willing to help you or just… Hurt you. Do I sound paranoid? I found an abandoned bookshop recently and found myself some Sci-Fi books to pass the time. I guess they’re rubbing off on me. Mark, over and out.]
//
“You’re impossible to deal with sometimes, did you know that?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mark shuts the car door behind himself. “Was I supposed to stop and give those strangers some gas? Should I have done that before or after they stole our provisions and bashed your head open with a bat? Because you know I get queasy with blood and I wouldn’t be in the right mindset, so maybe I shoul’dve just let them kill us both and take the car solely for the inconvenience of having to deal with me.”
Jeno presses both hands to his face, sighing loudly as he kicks his shoes off at the entrance. “Not everybody out there is looking forward to kill us, Mark. I know you have virtually no hope in humanity, but I would love it if you trusted me a little bit sometimes.”
“I trust you all the time, I just don’t trust fucking side road weirdos.”
This time, Jeno throws his hands up in surrender, his face stormy as he starts to undress. His hands tremble, much like Mark’s, and that is why Mark reaches out to hold them for a moment before he takes the task upon himself, undoing each of the clasps of his winter coat. They’re past the age of the cold shoulder treatment and are incapable of taking five steps inside the house while mad at each other; Jaemin, one of their closest friends, often says being married is much more of a state of mind.
“I’m sorry,” Mark mutters, so low it might’ve come out as a grunt, but he knows Jeno is fluent in his gibberish — Mark leans in and presses his nose to Jeno’s cold cheek, sighing when Jeno’s coat falls to his feet and he snakes his arms around his neck. “I’m so fucking terrified of anything happening to you. I can’t lose you. It’d kill me.”
“You worry too much,” Jeno kisses the corner of his mouth. “You can’t lose me. We’ve come too far.”
Which doesn’t mean anything in Mark’s books, but he’ll leave the discussion at that. Jeno is and have always been far more optimistic than him. The world has ended, Mark, he had said long ago. It doesn’t mean your life also has to. It is true that Mark needed to be taught that, but it is also true that old habits die hard; he is still afraid of the things he’d do if Jeno was taken from him. By sickness, by old age, by someone ill-intended.
That Mark can’t lose him because they’ve come too far is exactly the reason why he double checks all locks and never falls asleep first, too vivid memories of Jeno’s terrified face when Mark made the mistake of leaving him for the first and last time in his life. Jeno managed to find him twice in a bleak, destroyed world, but that doesn’t mean Mark would like it to have a third time. He would like Jeno to stay right here, stay like this, stay forever.
//
[Day 202 post-outbreak. This is Mark Lee speaking, and if I am not terribly mistaken, it’s been 2017 for three days already. I’m not sure about my timezone anymore because I hit the road for, like, ages. I just… I feel very alone. I stocked up some food and other stuff and just drove as far as gas would let me, now I just finished salvaging some more from a few abandoned cars nearby. I had planned to keep going until… I don’t know. Something. A sign, maybe. And I think I found one, okay? I actually saw a couple moving cars on the driveway a few hours ago, but they were below me and heading in a completely different direction, and man, that just… I guess I’m not crazy after all. Like this is not divine punishment for whatever, there’s people out there and they’re alive and they’re going places. I hope they get where they want to go safely. I hope that they have people who love them with them. I hope they’ll be fine. [Pause] I hope I’ll be fine, too. Mark, over and out.]
//
The rain makes Jeno’s hair stick to his face, and he looks like the paintings Mark used to see in school trips to the museum. Tragic, he thinks. Lonely, too, like all those people must’ve felt being trapped inside artwork for centuries, long after they were dead. It almost makes him regret leaving him behind.
“You’ll be fine here,” Mark promises him, genuinely — because he knows that he can trust Taeyong with him, that the other guys are good, and that they will take care of Jeno like they took care of him first. Because he knows that Jeno is lovely and is going to make so many friends here, more than Mark ever did because he just doesn’t know how to. “It’s going to be fun and good for you, and you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”
“I’ll worry about you, though,” is what Jeno replies, because of course he does. He doesn’t sugarcoat things like Mark does. “You— you’ll be all alone. What if you get lonely?”
“I’ve always been lonely.”
“Not when it was just me and you. We were alone but we were never lonely. You told me that.”
“Jeno—”
“Take me with you,” he grabs at the bars of the gate, fingers trembling with the cold. He’s so stupid. Why won’t he go back inside where it’s warm and safe and good and generally not what Mark has turned into? He cannot tell whether the wetness on Jeno’s face are tears or just the fucking rain, and tries not to dwell much into the thought. “I don’t get it, why won’t you just take me with you? We’ve come so far.”
Because I can’t worry about you all the time, I can never do anything else when I’m thinking about you, Mark wants to reply, even though it would break Jeno’s heart even more than he’s breaking now. He knows that his departure does not come without pain — he knows that he’s doing exactly what has been done to Jeno in the past, back when they first met and Jeno clinged to him every time he was about to leave on a supply run, terrified that Mark was going to leave him behind even if he promised not to every time —, but it’s fine. He’s breaking Jeno’s heart now but Jeno will get over it. They’ve only known each other for, what, a few months? It’s not that much. The end of the world has been going on for way longer.
That’s the thing about it, isn’t it? Jeno does not hold onto the past like Mark does, like Mark will.
“Go back inside before you get sick,” Mark tells him, gently squeezing the horse’s belly with his ankles so it starts moving. “Don’t let Hyuck tease you too much, help the others, and listen to everything Doyoung says even if you don’t like it. Be good, Jeno. Be good because you are good.”
Jeno rattles the gates, white knuckled, as if somehow he could tear it down with sheer force of will alone. “Stop trying to make me hate you,” he says through gritted teeth, trying not to cry, and Mark turns the horse around so he doesn’t have to look at him. “It won’t work, Mark! I’m going to find you whether you like it or not, and I’m going to fucking kick your ass for leaving me here the day after my birthday because who the fuck does that? You are my friend. You will never stop being my friend even if you’re a dick. I’m going to find you, and then you’ll—” he inhales a sharp breath, and Mark urges the horse to go faster because he stays any longer, he’ll end up going back on his own words. The poor thing is startled by the thunder, and even more so by the way Jeno yells: “—AND YOU’LL NEVER—WANT—TO LEAVE ME—AGAIN!”
Poor thing. Mark realizes he will never have a chance to tell Jeno that he never wanted to leave him in the first place, he’d rather leave himself. Alas, that’s not possible, is it?
//
[Day 413 post-outbreak. This is Mark Lee speaking. It’s midnight exactly, Central Standard Time. It is my eighteenth birthday. Do you think that now that there are so many little people left in this world, my birthday wishes are guaranteed? I hope they are. Over and out.]
//
“I miss having seaweed soup for my birthday,” Mark reveals, leaning his shoulder against Jeno’s as the latter slurped something that they managed to cook — turns out that neither he nor Jeno were good cooks. They managed to make edible things, at least. “Like, my grandfather would make it for me, and it was so good. Did you have it for your birthday too, birthday boy?”
Jeno hums, cleaning his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, always. My mom would make it, but we’d also have cake. I didn’t like it that much, but she did. My sister always said I was a suckup for not telling her that I didn’t really like cake just because I wanted to eat with her.”
“That’s really cute, though.”
Blushing, Jeno scrapes the last of the stew from the can. It’s April 23, it’s been 1042 days since the world ended and they’re here. It is spring and far too cold for them to wander outside like Jeno wanted to, so they stayed inside the room they share and told each other stories from their childhoods.
Mark thought he would cry if he said those things out loud for the first time in years, but ended up not doing it — Jeno did, though. His eyes are still rimmed with tears still. He looks so much like a boy that it’s hard to believe he’s turning nineteen. His hand reaches inside the collar of his shirt and he pulls out a necklace, leaning further into Mark’s side to show it off.
“This my mom,” Jeno says softly, opening the locket with this thumbnail. Mark watches as he gently brushes the digit over the smallest black and white picture of a young woman in traditional attire; she has Jeno’s eyes and the mole to go with them too. “She was my age whent his was taken. I miss her every day.”
Mark wants to tell him things. That he thinks Jeno’s mom was beautiful and he is too, that Mark also misses his family every day, that he would do about anything to taste his grandfather’s seaweed soup again, but no words come out. He, who had always been so good with them, choked up with the weight of a grief that will surely last a lifetime for him — instead, then, he smiles, rubbing the side of his head against Jeno’s before he gets up.
He ignores all of Jeno’s questions until he’s sat by his side again, holding onto the tin can he tucked inside his backpack when he left his childhood home. It takes about all of Mark’s courage to open it, and to hold it out for Jeno to pick up the first photograph.
Good thing you only need to be brave once.
//
[Day 645 post-outbreak. Mark Lee again. Eleven twenty seven pm, Central Standard Time, yadda yadda yadda. I ran into people yesterday. Like… People, you know? A group of five, maybe six or more people, and I… Admittedly, I ran away as soon as they saw me. I knew they were not going to hurt me, but I don’t know, I guess I’ve become even more socially awkward than I already was before the world came to this. What the fuck do you say to someone when you haven’t talked to anyone in nearly two years? Over and out.]
//
There’s a proud smile on Taeyong’s face as he leans against the doorstep, various curious eyes watching Mark from the front porch as he tugs at Jeno’s hand so they can take one step closer.
“Everybody, there’s someone I want you to meet,” he says, clearing his throat. He’s well aware that Jeno is looming behind him, gripping at his arm like he’s afraid Mark will simply disappear — he’s had a first day, too. He remembers how intimidating it can be, but at least Jeno has him now. “This is Jeno. I met him while I was away and we became good friends, and I brought him here because I missed you guys, and I thought that you could be friends with him too. He’s a bit shy, so don’t—”
“Does he know how to play poker?” Donghyuck yells with his hands curled around his mouth, and Mark looks up, irritated, to where he’s sitting on the windowsil of his room. “What? He looks like he could smoke your ass, Mark. I’m looking for someone worth my attention and skill.”
“Oh, my God, Donghyuck, shut the fuck up,” Jaemin groans, getting up to extend a hand towards them. “I’m Jaemin, and I’m deeply sorry for my boyfriend. I really like your hair.”
Behind him, Jeno touches the side where Mark had braided long strands pretty much like he did to himself when he had longish hair. Mark did it because Jeno wanted to look presentable to meet his other friends, wanted to look like someone they’d be friends with. Unbeknownst to him, these are currently the friendlist people on planet Earth, and they have no choice but to love him unconditionally. That’s just how they are.
“Thank you,” he replies quietly. “I like yours.”
Jaemin smiles proudly, throwing her long hair over her shoulder before she’s bumped into by an overeager Chenle. “And I’m Chenle! Did you know I taught Mark how to play poker? Do you play? We gamble a lot around here, but that’s fine if you don’t want to join— ah, that one back there is Jisung, and then there’s Yangyang, and—”
Ah, the mess. Mark is not even surprised — he stays rooted to Jeno’s side the entire time, but lets everybody come take a look at him. From Jisung’s curious eyes to Renjun’s careful yet interested stare, the way Doyoung rushes them inside the kitchen to have lunch and how Johnny asks about Jeno’s favorite music genres so he’ll find something to his tastes in his collection of CD’s.
Jeno is timid, but it doesn’t last for long. He warms up to Jaemin almost immediately, complimenting her nail polish and telling her about the ones his sister would lend him sometimes; later on, she takes him on a small tour around the main house while Taeyong finds both Jeno and him new clothes, which Mark grumpily accepts, entirely too aware of the state of himself.
He… Did not expect to come back here. At least not so soon. Mark loves his friends, he really does, he just thinks his brain is no longer wired to being around people anymore — the shattering took too much from him. He simply works better alone.
But Jeno deserves better than to wander around an abandoned planet with him, than to follow Mark on his endless quest of finding somewhere in the world he does not feel out of place. He deserves more than tight bunkers and shitty canned food. He deserves a normal life, and he can have a normal life here — somewhere he’ll get to sleep in a bed, eat properly, learn how to drive and to sew and tend to wounds. Where he’ll get to live, not only survive, and to interact with other people; to have art classes with Ten, to play cards with Donghyuck, to let Jaemin do fun stuff to his hair, to help Johnny fix the cars, to listen to Doyoung’s lectures, to watch the movies he’s missed so much. This community will be good for him.
“For you both,” Taeyong tells him, cupping Mark’s face with a hand for a brief moment before he eventually flinches. Taeyong, shocked, gasps. “Mark—”
“Sorry,” he lets out a whole body cringe, shaking his hands in an attempt to let it all out. “I’m not— I’m not used to this anymore. I missed you. Missed all of you so much. I’m just… I wasn’t ready to come back. I had to, though. For him. But I’m not sure if I’ll stay for long.”
Taeyong watches him with sorry eyes for a couple seconds, and then gently holds out the spare clothes to him. “You and Jeno can share the room across from Doyoung’s in the blue house. Let Johnny know if you need the car to go anywhere, and take anything you want from the pantry at any time, but please don’t feed the dog because she’s getting too fat. The lights go out at—”
“Ten, I know,” Mark nods, letting the warmth of newly dried clothes seep into his palms. He can’t help but bow his head towards Taeyong a little, only so that his tear rimmed eyes won’t be visible. “Thank you, thank you, you’re an angel, thank you.”
//
[Day 766 post-outbreak. Mark Lee here. Three thirty am, Central Standard Time. I kind of sneaked out of my room and am just sitting here, looking at the stars. Did you know you can see the stars so much better when humans aren’t around to pollute the skies? Yeah. I like that. And you know what I said five hours ago about Johnny being a pain in my ass? That one thing about my fight with Taeyong? Well, he’s not really, no. They’re both good. In fact, they might as well be the best people I know. And I know that they’re looking out for me, and that I should be grateful that all of them took me in, and I know that I’m difficult to be around because I flinch every time I think someone’s going to touch me, and I hate being helped because it makes me feel incompetent, and I can’t sleep if I hear someone breathing too loud. I suck. I know all that. I just… I spent so much time out there, all alone. Sometimes it’s hard to remember I’m not on my own anymore, and it’s such a fucked up feeling. I feel like none of them understand that because they’ve been together since forever, and I just… Have not. I didn’t have anyone for a really long time. So yeah. Sorry I turned this into a diary, by the way. I hope whoever’s in the future does not mind. Over and out.]
//
Once, way before Mark met any of them, he had found an abandoned sea life sanctuary.
He had never walked inside it, partially because this sort of liminal space terrified him — places like this should be crowded with people, and not completely empty — and because he had been violently against Sea World and similar parks as a kid. It took weeks of snooping around the entrance to make sure that it really was a sanctuary so he would feel more at ease walking past it on his way home to bunker of the month, and even longer for him to consider stepping inside.
Still, Mark was a little bit of a coward. He didn’t know what kind of thing he’d find inside — if there were no humans around to feed them, how would these animals even survive? Sure, feeding bots existed, and most places still had energy generators to last for a few more years, but what about the food itself? He thought about sad little penguins waiting for fish that would never come, and then turned his back every time.
Then Jeno came along.
“This is so exciting,” he had whispered, even though they were the only ones around. He had his hands around a polar bear plushie that was undoubtedly full of dust and would pick up his allergies in no time, but no matter how much Mark warned him about it, he still insisted on picking everything up inside the abandoned gift shop. There was a cleaning bot nearby that insisted on wiping the dust off the only empty shelf around, a few plushies having been knocked off by none other than the bot’s small arms. “I’ve never been to an aquarium, not even before the world ended.”
Mark had gone to Sea World once. He begged his father not to take them because did you know what they do to those poor whales, but his brother was taking his girlfriend on a trip for the first time and everything had been paid already and everyone was so happy, and Mark was hysterical through the entire flight there, his eyelids dotted with red spots from how hard he cried.
The thought humbles him. Mark was… A difficult kid. He figures he couldn’t help having grown into a difficult adult.
“I don’t actually know if we’re going to find anything alive,” he admitted. God, Mark hated being a party pooper, but sometimes he could not stand not saying the obvious. “Like, this is most probably a cemetery, Jeno. Isn’t it a bit depressing? I can take you literally anywhere else, you know, the car’s ours for the day.”
Jeno had waved it off, unfazed. It looked like it was so easy being him. He put down the polar bear and headed to the deep sea entrance, and Mark rushed to tuck the damn plushie inside his own bag before following him.
I’d come here every week if I could, Jeno had told him on the way home. He had a smile on his face that Mark would forever recognize as the smile of discovery, like they were the only people in the world who knew what was inside that sanctuary. Well, I’d take you here every week, Mark responded, reaching out with a hand to steal some of the berries that Doyoung had packed for Jeno for their little trip. Jeno nodded as he adds: And then we’d make it our thing, and it’d be ours forever and ever and ever, dude.
//
[Day 819 post-outbreak. It’s Mark again. I don’t know what time is it because I forgot my fucking clock when I left but I would guess it’s around midnight, yeah. I guess you can forget what I said in yesterday’s log because I talked to Taeyong for hours after that and I just… I have decided to leave. Perhaps not forever, but for some time, just to clear my mind, like he said some people. [Pause]. It’s so hard for me to be around people. It’s always been like this but I guess it’s just… Worse. I lost everyone I love to the shattering. I don’t know if that shit is still around but the thought of seeing it again terrifies me, and I thought I saw Jisung’s finger spasming the other day and I just lost it, I guess. Threw up and everything. I had to go. And now I’m pissed because I made that choice and I took the car and now I wish I had a real person to talk to. But now it’s just me and this stupid car and my stupid thoughts. And you, obviously, whoever you turn out to be. I guess you’re the only thing that’s always been there, so thanks for that. [Long pause]. Aw man, I sound like such a loser right now. Time to sleep. Over and out.]
//
The most remarkable thing about the end of the world is just how much the world can withstand a lack of the humans that made it a world — the fact that a sanctuary like this could still exist without proper maintenance, with emergency lights on, with small bots chippering around cleaning tanks that were barely see through due to overgrown algae, is astounding.
Sure, sure, most of the fish are gone already, especially those who were in smaller tanks near the entrance. In some parts of it, it smells so much like a rotting fish market that Mark can not bear to enter center rooms, having to take the longer route to get where he wants to. It’s disgusting and depressing, and he’s a fool for insisting on coming here and making his way through this mess because it reminds him of…
Anyways. The open ocean exhibition, right?
It has to be some sort of miracle, the fact that it exists — that it still exists. Mark presses his hands to the glass, his nose nearly touching it, watching mesmerized as small fish swim from size to size, as octopuses prey on crabs the size of Mark’s fists. The first time Mark was here, there were two sharks, but he figures that one might’ve passed away; the other swims past him lazily, completely oblivious as to the state of the world outside this tank. Sometimes Mark wishes he could be like this.
There, in the middle of it, the sole reason for this wonder. A skeleton perhaps twice Mark’s size, not much compared to the ones that surely are still alive in the oceans, even more unaware to what’s happened to the rest of the world, but just enough. It’s a whale fall, Jeno had explained years ago, his shoulder pressed to Mark’s, when whales die and their carcasses hit the bottom of the ocean, it can keep an entire ecosystem alive for years. These guys don’t need to be fed by humans, they’re perfectly sustained by what she has given them, by each other too… They’ve created a small universe just for themselves here. Our world ended, but theirs did not. How cool is that?
Sighing, Mark rests his forehead against the glass, breathing in deep.
“Well, aren’t you predictable?”
Started, he yelps, almost tripping on his feet as he turns around. Mark’s heart beats loudly inside his chest as he watches Jeno lean back on a bench — his hair is shorter and dyed blonde, though the roots are showing already, and he has a backpack hanging from his shoulder that Mark thinks once belonged to Donghyuck. The sight of him is dizzying, and makes him wonder if he’s finally gone mad. Mark has dreamed of seeing him everywhere; in abandoned supermarkets and empty trailer parks, in the street in front of every old art supply store, cocooned in Mark’s sheets because he hates sleeping alone.
But lighting does not strike twice. That much Mark knows — he had given up.
“I—” Mark breathes out. “Who drove you here?”
“I did,” Jeno replies. “I do, literally every week, waiting for you to show up. It gets awful lonely here. What took you so long?”
What took you so long?, he asks. As if Mark had just gone out to get groceries and got stuck in traffic. Mark approaches him with wobbly knees, letting himself fall to the bench beside Jeno, arms thrown around him. “What—” Jeno repeats, burying his face on the crook of Mark’s neck. “—took you so long, seriously?”
I don’t know, Mark wants to reply. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. He holds onto Jeno so tightly that it might hurt, wishing to ask him who taught him how to drive, who dyed his hair, how did he manage to become even prettier in the year they’ve been apart, when did he stop being a boy and become the man holding him back from shattering into a million pieces.
But no words come out. Jeno holds onto his face gently and brushes his thumbs over Mark’s cheeks, muttering something that sounds like you and now, and that's all that Mark gets for a warning before he is being kissed, and kissed, and kissed.
//
[Day 914 post-outbreak. It’s Mark. It’s, like, two in the morning and I woke up to piss and there’s some prick sleeping outside the fucking door to my hideout and I don’t know what the fuck am I supposed to do because they are clearly going to freeze to death if they stay there. I’m… I’m not some heartless motherfucker, right? Like… I should not leave them there. That’s not how my mother raised me, for God’s sake, and let it be known that whatever happens to me five minutes from now is due to the fact that I am not made of stone, and I don’t ever wanna be, okay? Fuck. Over and out.]
//
“Would you quit staring at me, please? I’m not a caged animal, nor a psychopath ready to jump you.”
Mark averts his gaze to the fireplace, scraping the bottom of his bowl with a spoon more as an excuse to do something with his hands than to eat whatever’s left of the grub he managed to make — he’s never been a great cook. The fact that the world ended and left him with even less options to mask his pitiful knowledge does not help it. He figured that scrawny kid would want some, though, when he woke up after passing out outside. Mark had managed to gather very little information from him during the couple hours it took for him to wake up — he knows that his name is Jeno because it’s what was written on the name tag of his backpack, which Mark managed to set free from his shoulders after a bit of effort in moving him around, that he carries more art supplies in it than actual provisions, and that he has the meanest right hook Mark has ever had the displeasure of being introduced to.
“I already told you I’m sorry for snooping in,” he responds, genuinely, feeling out his tender nose with the tips of his fingers. “I had to make sure you didn’t have a gun on you before I let you in. It’s a matter of safety.”
“Do you think people go around shooting others? This is not The Walking Dead.”
“I have not been around many people since the outbreak,” Mark mumbles, awkwardly, thinking about the weeks worth of effort that it took Johnny to even get a word out of him when they met. “You’re, like, the first person I see in months. Pardon me for my trust issues, dude.”
Jeno lets out an outraged humph as he chews his food, and Mark supposes he can’t really blame him. He’d be really startled, too, if he woke up in a stranger’s hideout after collapsing in the cold — to be fair, Jeno has to admit that his situation is better than simply dying from hypothermia. But Mark’s nose hurts and he’d rather not subject himself to another punch, even if Jeno looked panicked when he realized what he had done.
So he silently extends his bowl towards Jeno, who is not a caged animal but sort of eats like one, and swallows back a laugh as the latter immediately wolfs down his food too.
//
[Day 920 post-outbreak. This is Mark. It's nearly three pm right now and Jeno and I just had lunch. He’s… Not that bad, I guess. He mostly draws all day and never talks, which is good, but when he talks, I don’t mind. It really is not that bad. I have to go now, though, because I have a feeling he’s snooping in on my stuff. Mark Lee, over and out.]
//
“I was not snooping in,” Jeno murmurs, and Mark gently moves the headphones away so he can press a kiss to his temple. “You were paranoid.”
“That I was,” Mark laughs. “I was really weird, though. I still am, kinda. I’m sorry.”
Jeno shakes his head negatively, putting down the cassette player. They’re supposed to head to Jaemin’s because she’ll be cooking and there’ll be booze and card games and Mark sometimes still feels as if he’s about to throw up every time he thinks of seeing his friends, but he’s getting better at it. And yet, Jeno’s arm curls around his waist and he pulls Mark closer to himself, burying his face in the crook of his neck.
“I love weird,” he mutters, pressing a kiss to his skin. Mark lets out an awkward laugh, bringing a hand to Jeno’s hair. “I always did. I loved you from the start.”
“What, when you fucking punched me?”
Jeno ignores him, sneaking his hands under Mark’s shirt, and Mark doesn’t really have it in himself to stop him, letting Jeno push him against the mattress and climb on top of him. He throws his arms around Jeno’s neck, rubbing a thumb over a scar on his cheek from when he decided to mess around with a wood cutter. “Is a kiss with a fist really better than none?” He asks, thinking of a song that Jeno hums sometimes. Jeno laughs, pearly white teeth, leaning in to kiss him.
They’re going to be so late. It’s fine, though. They have all the time in the world.
//
[Day 925 post-outbreak. This is Mark. It’s, um, around four in the afternoon. The weather has been shit recently and we are snowed in, so, yeah, I guess it’s a white Christmas after all. I went on a supply run before it got too bad, though, so we’re having a delicious meal of canned beans. I know I haven’t known him for long. but I got Jeno a new sketchbook because his looks like it’s going to fall apart any moment, and I thought he was going to punch me, but he loved it. He said he’ll draw me something. It’s been, like… It’s been a long time since anyone’s given me a gift. It’s nice, isn’t it? Merry Christmas. Over and out.]
//
“You know,” Jeno tells him one morning. “You’re a bit of a loser.”
“Says the guy who’s been left behind by his group,” Mark bites back, to which Jeno frowns, clearly having rubbed salt on a wound he didn’t expect to. And Mark, well, he did not mean to be rude, but sometimes things just seem less bad in his head. He sighs. “Sorry.”
Jeno shakes his head, clicking his tongue. He twirls his pencil around his fingers — Mark recalls he used to be able to do that. The thought makes him frown, and he averts his gaze in case Jeno thinks he’s staring. “I was not left behind, you know,” Jeno explains quietly. “I mean, I was, but… We had a code for that. I got lost and they moved on.
“And how does that not make you a loser too?”
Tipping his head back on the couch, Jeno glares at him — this hideout is a tiny thing, essentially a tiny empty apartment in an abandoned small town that Mark found a couple weeks after leaving Taeyong’s settlement. Mark picked up the couch from another apartment, trying to ignore the ruins of the people who lived there for God knows how long, as well as a modest dining table and some chairs. He put effort in the decoration because Jeno wouldn’t stop whining about it, and Mark was surprised to come home one day from a supply run and find him putting together a small bookshelf on his own — it is true that Mark’s collection of books was getting a tad too big, but he didn’t really expect Jeno to do that. There’s also a fireplace and a working fridge, although no stove, but Jeno also fixed an old cooktop that they found together.
Mark is reluctant to say that they work well together. He doesn’t want to be any more attached to Jeno than he needs to.
“I never said I wasn’t one,” is what Jeno replies, and Mark has to make some effort to remind himself of what they’ve been talking about in the first place, buried too deep inside his own thoughts. At least Jeno looks like he’s grown used to it. “I’m just saying loser recognizes loser and you’re looking quite familiar.”
“Is this your way of making friends?” Mark blurts out, helplessly.
Jeno stays silent for a bit before he nods timidly.
“Okay,” Mark goes back to his book. “We’re friends, then.”
“Okay,” Jeno echoes, and they leave it at that.
//
“Day 2604 post-outbreak,” dutifully announces the voice by Mark’s ear, his brain balancing on the delicate thread between conscious and unconscious as his body is dragged down the bed. “This is Jeno Lee speaking. It’s currently around eight thirty five-ish in the morning—”
“Eight thirty?” Mark mumbles, pressing his eyes close with force in one futile attempt to keep sleeping. He tries to hold onto the sheets clumsily, too sleepy, hands coming to rest over his offender’s and then blindly slide their way up his arms, delicately thumbing at the scars over them, mapping out the path to his shoulders. “Mhmm, God. You’re trying to kill me.”
“—and it’s been two hours since I started trying to bake a birthday cake and failed miserably,” Jeno continues, unfazed. He licks at Mark’s palm when the latter tries to push him away, and nudges his way between Mark’s legs, plopping the weight of his body on top of him. “So there’s no cake. I’m no baker, but I can make you a sandwich if you’d like. Happy birthday?”
Mark blinks slowly, trying to make out the features of Jeno’s face in the dimmed room — at least this time he did not draw the curtains obnoxiously to wake him like he’s been doing since, what, day 915, when he decided he’d never leave Mark alone? He throws his arms around Jeno’s shoulders to squeeze him into a hug, nevermind the way his chin digs into his collarbone, fingers squeezing Mark’s waist in an aborted attempt at a tickle. They’re messy, as they’ve been from the start, but that is alright.
“That a question?” He mutters sleepily, rubbing his chin on the top of Jeno’s head. “Are you not sure what day it is? I’m offended.”
“I’m not the archivist, you are. But I have a gut feeling it’s August 2, 2023.”
“Mhmm,” Mark rolls them over easily, Jeno’s body always pliant under him, his bright smile noticeable even in the dark. “Yeah, yeah, I always trust your gut feeling.” Mark yawns, leaning in on an elbow near his head. “And I think I’ll accept the offer for a sandwich, but I’d like a kiss first. You’re sweet enough.”
“Ugh, cheesy. Who taught you to talk like that?”
You, Mark wants to say, but Jeno kisses him before he has a chance to. Day 2604 post-outbreak, eight thirty five-ish in the morning, and the man under him is not stone — he is warm skin, strong arms, calloused hands, soft lips. He is a living, breathing thing, though battered, scarred and bruised as Mark himself is. Living nonetheless. His nonetheless, too. “Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday,” Jeno repeats, this time more confidently than before, sighing softly when Mark’s lips press to his own. Human through and through. “We’re no longer the same age now. Boo, you slut, pursuing a younger man…”
“Shhh, silly baby,” Mark kisses him again. “Let me enjoy this before you kill me with your hazardous food.”
It’s a joke, of course. Jeno is no worse cook than Mark is. They’re alike in most things, and when they’re not, they make do; lover recognizes lover and Jeno has been looking familiar for around five years or so. Mark buries his fingers in his hair and kisses him silly, with tongue, with gusto, until Jeno is putty in his hands and his face is flushed pink and flustered, smiling shyly against his mouth and wrapping his perfect legs around Mark’s waist. Mark kisses him the only way he’s ever known, and like no one’s ever taught him to.
Like the world has already ended and there’s no use crying about it anymore. Like the only truth he’s known since he was nineteen: that he and Jeno are the blessed things left behind at the end of the world, and that there’s nowhere else for them to go but keep going, and going, and going, and going.