The vision always starts the same.

The world is black.

The air is still.

Only one thing is discernible- a feeling of unease, discontent, choking- so palpable it burns flames across the black, sets the stillness alight and buzzing. The feeling is strangely deep rooted; an itch that Luhan just can’t reach. No matter how hard he tries, the blanket of black smothers all. He is held in this suspension for what feels like eons, forced to exist in a plane of nothing without anything to absorb but the uncomfortable buzz.

And then it begins. The stagnant air gives a sigh, delicately breathing life across the wintery darkness. Luhan feels the strange shivers through his fingertips; suddenly aware of goosebumps travelling across his cool skin. He is being reawakened, coming to painfully slowly, feeling every twitch of his flesh and every pulsate of his palpitating heart. But through it all the black is invariable. Not even a flicker of shadow breaks the dark.

“Luhan,” someone says, hushed and desperate. The sound shocks him into consciousness, and he takes a gasping breath in, snapping upright. As always his hands rise to rub his eyes, but they freeze instinctively mere inches from his face. Unease morphs into something more twisted, something more awful.

There is something missing.

-

Luhan thinks Jongin is like a dance, intricately sewn and woven, detailed beyond relief, each element seemingly strange when taken apart and yet flawless eloquence when linked together. Jongin is effervescent serendipity, summery precision, velvet cure. Luhan could use a thousand beautiful words and still it would not be enough for Jongin.  He is indescribable.

Luhan has two things that make him him. The first are his eyes, which everyone always says are beautiful- the kind that only appear once in a generation, unique beyond explanation. It is his eyes that give him power and allow him to See. His eyes are what Mark him. They are the reason he has fortune, food, and a home. But the second thing is what makes him feel alive, and that would be Jongin.

Luhan has loved him since the beginning of time. Sometimes he wants to explain to Jongin how he really feels, he wants to put the overwhelming ecstasy into words when he looks into Jongin’s eyes and sees them crinkle up at the sides in a smile. He wants to tell him how one movement of his lips is enough to get him high, and how when he bites them it’s almost unbearable. He wants to tell him that he is so lucky, that he can’t imagine a life without him, that Jongin is his everything. But it’s always impossible. All he can ever manage is a hushed “Jongin.” And Jongin will always answer “Luhan,” and it is enough.

-

“I need to talk to you,” Jongin whispers into the phone. He wonders dully if Yixing can hear the flutters of panic in his voice; perhaps sense the paranoia behind the hushed words.

“I’m listening,” Yixing replies mildly, his voice unpleasantly tinny through the tiny speakers. Jongin pauses for a moment. His eyes dart stupidly across the darkened room, taking in the silence from the apartment walls.

“Not now,” he says finally, voice tight. “In person. When are you free?”

“Um…Thursday I guess,” Yixing answers after thinking for a moment, sounding slightly surprised. “What’s it about?”

Jongin clenches his jaw, and strangely enough he feels like he’s about to cry. “You’ll have to trust me,” he amends into the phone, biting his lip in an effort to keep his words steady. “Please. Yixing, it’s important.”

“Well alright,” he answers. “I trust you.”

“Thank you,” Jongin breathes out, bowing his head into his arms.

“Jongin?”

“Yes?”

Yixing hesitates, and Jongin can hear him clearing his throat. “It’s 2 in the morning. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jongin folds himself inwards, holding the phone away from himself as if it had just given him the worst news of his life. His fists have clenched, and it takes everything in him to make them relax. He glances at the wall, still silent, and then takes a slow breath. “I’m fine. Thanks, Yixing.”

He hangs up. 

-

His head feels hot.

The vision always starts the same.

“Luhan,” someone says, hushed and desperate.

Luhan wakes, slightly bewildered, to find that Jongin is holding him, a wash of concern on his face.

“Jongin,” Luhan whispers teasingly, and takes in Jongin’s breath of euphoric relief. He’s so close that they are practically one, and Luhan can feel every quake of Jongin’s body entwined with his, can feel the air move as he breathes.

“Luhan,” Jongin says back, and when he smiles it feels like the sun is shining just a bit brighter.

-

“Thank you for meeting me,” Jongin tells Yixing, absentmindedly stirring his coffee. “I know I was a bit hysterical on the phone.”

Yixing doesn’t say anything. He looks unhappy, or perhaps dissatisfied, like he knows that Jongin’s words mean nothing; they are only there as a façade to hide the horror beneath. “Why wouldn’t I meet you?” he finally answers, and takes a long sip from his cup. “It’s been a while. I’ve missed you.”

Jongin squeezes his eyes shut, feeling strangely guilty. “I’ve missed you too.” He opens them slowly, watching Yixing watching him. “I’m sorry we have to meet like this. I should-we should-” he stops to take a jittery breath, running his tongue over his teeth. He really is sorry. “We should be making small-talk, having fun, but-”

“But you wanted to see me for a reason,” Yixing cuts him off calmly. “An important reason, I can assume. Tell me.”

Jongin swallows, suddenly terrified. It’s ok, he tells himself. You’re doing the right thing. “It’s Luhan.”

Yixing’s face rises in interest. “Luhan? Are you guys still- is he ok?”

For a moment Jongin can’t answer him. He takes a sip of coffee, feeling his left fist beginning to clench. He forces it lax. “No.”

-

They were in their last year of school when Luhan decided to tell Jongin how he felt. This was an impossible task to begin with, because there are no words to describe what Luhan feels for Jongin. But it seemed like the right thing to do, and looking back Luhan thinks it was the best decision he has ever made.

Luhan’s world has always lacked permanence. As one of the Marked, he was destined to a life of competition before he was born. By the time he could walk he had already been entered into training. Growing older, all of his friends disappeared one by one, not powerful enough to warrant a place in the Academy’s rigid teachings. He became used to the fleeting friendships, learned to accept the pain that inevitably came when someone was ordered to leave. Luhan learned that the only permanence he had were his eyes. As long as he had them, nothing else mattered. 

But then there was Jongin. Five years of school passed, and he was still there. A dozen friends had disappeared, but he was still there. And then graduation day came, and he was, somehow, still there. Luhan finally understood that he wasn’t leaving any time soon.

“I love you,” Luhan had confessed to him, agitated and nervous. “You’re my best friend and I love you-I need to tell you how I feel because I don’t want you to leave when we graduate. I want to be with you forever.”

It hadn’t seemed like enough. Jongin hadn’t answered him, hadn’t even reacted. Luhan had wanted to tell him so much more, to put his love into words, but it was impossible. So he had whispered, “Jongin,” near in tears, praying, hoping, begging for it to be enough.

“Luhan,” Jongin had answered him, voice honeyed like sweet caramel, and with that it was clear that it would always be enough.

-

“What’s happened?” Yixing is concerned now, and he leans forward, somehow understanding Jongin’s subtly, understanding that this is not to be heard by others. The café is empty, but Jongin’s vaguely grateful for his precaution anyway. Or maybe it’s just Yixing’s instincts- after spending five years of training with him Jongin knows that the leaning in is what Yixing will do when he prepares himself to Heal. Like how Luhan says his head feels hot before a vision, or how Jongin clenches his fists when he wants to teleport away.

“It’ll sound crazy,” Jongin says. He is tired beyond belief.

“We’ve both seen crazy ,” Yixing says dryly. “And I’ve been working as a Healer for months now. Crazy is my normal.”

Jongin smiles helplessly. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Jongin,” Yixing says impatiently. “Do you want my help or not?”

-

The vision always starts the same.

The world is black.

The air is still.

Luhan’s had this vision for months now. Each time it ends with his hands hovering above his face, the unease morphed into something twisted and awful.

And there is always something missing.

He doesn’t tell anyone about this vision. Perhaps he should feel bad about this, because he’s always told someone, if not Jongin then someone else, about the visions. He’s done this his whole life. Visions are to be shared. That was the first thing he had learned as a Seer. Visions are to be shared. They’re about interpretation, and often the only way Luhan can make sense of them are by sharing them with others.

But he doesn’t share this one.

Maybe it’s because of how out of place it is, how it doesn’t follow the pattern his visions usually do, how it’s such an anomaly that at first he doesn’t even know if it it’s a vision or just a weird reoccurring dream. How telling Jongin would do no good because he is unable to even explain it in a way that he would understand.

Or maybe it’s just because the idea of making sense of this vision terrifies him beyond belief.

If this is his future, than he doesn’t want to know what it means.

-

Jongin drains the rest of his coffee, feeling it slide in rivulets down his throat, settling hotly in his hollow stomach. When empty, he sets the cup down firmly, and it clatters unevenly against the table, echoing in the void store. “It’s started,” he says, staring down at the ground. He grips the edge of the table dizzily, his jaw clenching in an effort to keep himself together. “I know you’re not going to believe it, but it’s the only explanation I have.”

“What’s started?” Yixing demands.

“Luhan. He’s Fading.”

-

When Luhan was first told his eventual fate, he had cried. At the time it all sounded just so awful. He was warned that the Fading would be awful, painful, the visions would consume him, he would slowly disappear and wither away into nothing, which had all sounded terrible when he had been seven years old. But now he thinks that everything they’ve said is complete bull.

The thing is, since the Fading kills you, nobody alive actually knew what it was like. And since Seers were so rare that there had only been three in the past century, there was no real conclusive recording of the process. Everyone talked about it, and everyone, Marked or not, has heard one version or another of how it happens. But in reality the only thing they know for sure about the Fading is that it’s real. Every Seer to ever exist has documented something about the visions eventually driving them to death, and Luhan knows that it’s unlikely that he’ll be any different. But he does take comfort in the fact that no one is actually sure how it happens. Maybe the Fading won’t be terrible at all; it may just be like falling asleep, very, very slowly.

-

“I don’t understand,” Yixing says, perplexed.

“I didn’t either,” Jongin answers him, feeling the hysteria begin to return. “And it doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be happening for another thirty, forty, fifty years down the road. I mean, I knew I was going to lose him early, but Yixing, he’s twenty-six!” He takes a light breath, realizing how loud he’s become. There’s a sound from the back kitchen and the two of them freeze, relaxing only after another ten seconds have passed in silence.

“How can you be sure?” Yixing finally ventures, his voice tight.

“It’s the only explanation I have,” Jongin answers him tiredly. “At first it would just be the occasional episode, you know? He’d black out for a while, and I’d assume he was having a vision, except when he woke he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Sometimes he didn’t even realize he’d passed out.”

Yixing takes this in, nodding. “And then?”

“And then it got worse,” Jongin shrugged. “Instead of every week it’d be every day. And then more than once a day. And then he became…distant.”

Yixing swallows slowly, pursing his lips. “Distant.”

-

The vision always starts the same.

The world is black.

There is something missing.

When he wakes this time, Jongin is standing above him. He looks worried. “Luhan? Babe, are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” Luhan says shortly, and picks himself off the ground where he had collapsed. “I’m good, I’m fine.”

Jongin watches him silently. Accusatory, almost. Luhan bites his lip, feeling strangely tired. He doesn’t like Jongin watching him like this, doesn’t like the heaviness that his gaze holds. He tries to push past him and reach for the door, but Jongin stops him, grabbing his pale forearms.

“I’m worried about you,” he says bluntly. “Luhan, this is the third time today. You have no excuses. You won’t tell me what’s going on. What am I supposed to think? I’m worried.”

“I told you I’m fine,” Luhan insists, agitated. “Let me go.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on!” Jongin snaps, smooth exterior suddenly gone. “Not until you explain!”

“There’s nothing to explain!” Luhan growls back. The anger rushes to his head in a sudden, delicious high. It’s like the floodgates have opened, and suddenly he’s so angry, so frustrated, and he just wants Jongin to let go. He doesn’t know where this anger is coming from, but he knows that it’s important, that’s it’s right. “You wouldn’t understand,” he hisses in Jongin’s face. “When have you ever? You don’t know what it’s like!”

“Then tell me,” Jongin says softly, and his eyes go tired, bordering on exhaustion. Luhan breaks.  Oh god, how did everything spiral down so fast?

He sags slowly into Jongin’s arms, the anger ebbing away, leaving in its place dry sobs.

“Oh Luhan,” Jongin whispers into Luhan’s hair, holding him close. “It’s ok. You’re going to be ok. Luhan.”

“Jongin,” Luhan whispers back.

-

Jongin his lips. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. It just went downhill from there.”

“And he never explained what he was seeing?” Yixing asks carefully.

Jongin shook his head. “Never. Eventually I stopped asking, because he got so angry when I did. He stopped working because he would refuse to record his visions. He stopped everything altogether. I’d be scared to leave him alone in the morning. What if I came back, and he was just…” He can’t finish the sentence.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Yixing tells him softly, and Jongin is relieved to see that he finally seems to understand the gravity of the situation.

“I kept hoping it would get better,” he answers listlessly. “I thought one day it would change. But weeks have passed, and it’s only gotten worse.”

“Tell me.”

-

The vision always starts the same.

Something is missing, something is wrong.

It doesn’t stop. It won’t stop. Luhan wants it gone. He wants to make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. He hates the black, he hates the silence, he hates the unease. He wants it to stop.

“Luhan?” someone says, hushed and desperate, and it snaps him awake, sends tingling sensations up his cold fingers. Make it stop, oh god, why won’t it just stop? He’s missing something, he knows he’s missing something, and he hates it.

“Luhan, stop!” the voice comes again, and Luhan wants to scream, because that’s what he’s trying to do, can’t the voice see that he’s trying?

The vision stops abruptly. This voice, more raw, more real, is misplaced. Luhan gasps into consciousness, suddenly aware of the hands around his shoulders. His head is throbbing. “Stop!” he shrieks instinctively, pushing backwards against the hands. There’s a shocked shout and the pressure on his back falters. Everything is flashing red, it’s too bright for Luhan and he doesn’t like it. He’s so disoriented, he doesn’t know where he is, and his head is hot, throbbing. “Make it stop!” he screams again. He doesn’t know what else to do. He lashes out, hitting, screeching, ripping. The hotness is building behind his forehead once more, and along with it is panic. Luhan lets out a desperate wail. He has to make it stop.

But he’s powerless against the visions. They engulf him, take him in their swaddling grasp, and eventually he just lets it happen, too tired to fight.

-

Yixing seems unable to speak. He sits in stunned silence, still bowed towards Jongin in a protective stance. Jongin’s fists are so tight it’s a wonder he’s even still in the café.

“You want me to Heal him,” Yixing breathes out into the quiet.

“I didn’t know who else to go to,” Jongin whispers. “He’s sick. He won’t get out of bed; he won’t eat. The word ‘fade’ sends him into a fit.”

Yixing doesn’t reply.

“I’m sorry,” Jongin pleads. “I know this is probably out of your depth.” He takes a shuddery sigh. “But I have no other options.”

“You’re asking me to stop his Fading,” Yixing says slowly, his voice hard. “You do realize you’re asking me to take away his visions. His Seeing. You’re asking me to perform the impossible.”

Jongin thinks back to Luhan, lying still and scared in his bed, trapped in a continuous cycle of torturous dreams that only he can see, and he nods deliriously. “Please.”

Yixing leans back, letting his fingers slip from his coffee cup, and places his hands against the chair arms. His fingers drum to an invisible beat. He closes his eyes as he thinks. Jongin watches him, breathless, feeling as if they’re on the edge of everything, like the coffee shop might disappear from his sight and leave him in a white abyss.

Finally, after the silence has become almost unbearable, Yixing opens his eyes. “What are you willing to do?”

Jongin breathes out. What is he willing to do?

For Luhan.

Luhan, who has always been his centre, his bedrock. Luhan, who’s lips can tell stories with one highlighted twitch and nightmares when they tighten in the dark. Luhan, who can make him feel alive with one hushed breath of his name, whispered through drunken, swollen lips late at night in his embrace, fingertips sliding across planes of hard flesh.

For Luhan?

“Anything.”

-

“Babe?”

The vision stops. Luhan wakes shivering beneath his covers, and the light is on.

“Babe? Someone’s here to see you.” It’s Jongin, silhouetted in the doorframe, a soft, nervous smile on his lips. Weirdly enough, although Luhan recognizes Jongin, he doesn’t remember why. “Can we come in?”

His voice sounds so distant, so obscure. Everything is so bright; why is the damned light on? Luhan is so tired, but he sits up anyway, addled and hazy. Jongin says something else, but it sounds so far away, as if he’s calling to him from miles in the distance. Luhan can’t focus- the light is too bright, the dull ache in his head begins to pound from it. “Turn it off,” he manages to say, but even his own voice doesn’t sound right, like it’s been distorted through water.

He hears footsteps nearing, and he tenses immediately, feeling intruded. He doesn’t want anyone near him. He just wants his head to stop throbbing so he can sleep. “I said turn it off,” he insists, feeling panic begin to mount as the footsteps advance.

There are more mumbled, skewed words, but none of them mean anything. Oh god, everything is so bright, and hot, and he just wants to sleep.

Jongin touches his shoulder, and Luhan recoils, snapping inwards like an elastic. The touch disgusts him. He vaguely remembers that touch once being comforting, but again, he doesn’t remember why.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s just so bright, he wants it gone, and so he shrinks away. There’s a moment where Luhan thinks Jongin might leave, he might understand, but he doesn’t. Instead he touches him again.

The world tilts.

His body moves ahead of him, and all Luhan’s fury is released. It’s exalting. He’s screaming, yelling, slapping at the touch, pushing back and against. In a moment he’s disappeared, drinking in the delirium that comes from the anger. He doesn’t know why he’s angry- the brightness, the touching, the visions. Perhaps all three. But it’s intoxicating, and the more anger he lets out the more he wants it to continue. He’s screeching now, swinging out blindly. He feels his fists connecting with soft flesh, feels the muscle contract beneath his knuckles, and feels dully guilty. Once more, he doesn’t know why.

“Make him stop!” Jongin yells, and someone’s hands slam down onto Luhan’s body, stronger and firmer. The sheer strength of this force sends a bloom of pain across his shoulder, and as the hands pin down his arms, he realizes that they don’t belong to Jongin; somebody else is in the room.

“Oh god, please, just make it stop,” Jongin sobs, and out of nowhere Luhan remembers that he thinks Jongin is like a dance. He opens his mouth to say something, but then the hands cover his face and everything slips into black.

-

The hallway is still. Jongin has the lights because he hates the dark, and his fists lie in clenched little balls in his lap. He can’t hear what’s happening in the room behind him, only the tick of the clock in discernible in the quiet. The hallway feels unbearably empty, and curiously enough, so does he.

He replays Yixing’s words over in his mind, and every time he tries to press pause on them they continue, only this time at a faster speed, over and over and over like a mantra.

“Do you love him?”

“Of course.”

“Then you wouldn’t ask me to do this. I’m taking away what makes him him.”

He’s wrong, isn’t he? Jongin is doing this because he loves Luhan, not in spite. Everything he’s done in the past four months has been for Luhan- keeping his deterioration a secret, recording made-up ‘visions’ to keep the pay checks coming, feeding him and catering to his every will. He will continue to do that for Luhan, he will do anything and everything that that boy asks him to, because he loves him.

This time he’s making the decision for him, but it’s the right decision. It has to be. He just wants his Luhan back. Is that too much to ask?

The door opens to his right, and Jongin straightens, the empty hallway forgotten. “It’s over?”

Yixing’s mouth is set in a grim line, and there’s a light sheen of sweat covering his face. His hands are trembling. “It’s over.”

Jongin rises to his feet, stumbling, but Yixing catches his arm. “Jongin, I just need to warn you-”

Jongin pushes him away to ignore him, and Yixing, drained from Healing, doesn’t have the strength to resist. Jongin knows he should stop and take his time, because what he is going to see will probably send him into tears. But he has to see Luhan, his Luhan.

Besides, they’re only eyes.

-

The vision always starts the same.

The world is black.

The air is still.

Only one thing is discernible- a feeling of unease, discontent, choking- so palpable it burns flames across the black, sets the stillness alight and buzzing. The feeling is strangely deep rooted; an itch that Luhan just can’t reach. No matter how hard he tries, the blanket of black smothers it all. He is held in this suspension for what feels like eons, forced to exist in a plane of nothing without anything to absorb but the uncomfortable buzz.

And then it begins. The stagnant air gives a sigh, delicately breathing life across the wintery darkness. Luhan feels the strange shivers through his fingertips; suddenly aware of goosebumps travelling across his cool skin. He is being reawakened, coming to painfully slowly, feeling every twitch of his flesh and every pulsate of his palpitating heart. But through it all the black is invariable. Not even a flicker of shadow breaks the dark.

“Luhan,” someone says, hushed and desperate. The sound shocks him into consciousness, and he takes a gasping breath in, snapping upright. As always his hands rise to rub his eyes, but they don’t.

Instead his fingers meet the rough fabric of bandages, pulled tightly over his face, blindfolding him. He probes the bandages that are blocking his vision and feels dried blood, but beneath that is empty space. He presses in, just slightly, and horror trickles across his muscles along with a dull twinge of pain. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing below the bandages. They’re gone. 

There is something missing.

This isn’t a vision. His head is clearer than it has been in years. There’s no throbbing, no headaches, no heat. It’s happening, it’s real, and his eyes are missing.

“Luhan?”

Luhan takes in a shaky breath and lowers his hands from his face. He understands now. The black is his new permanence.

“Jongin.”