10. Jinyoung: Heaven on Earth

He dreamed of light and shadow.

Both were surrounding him—he was somehow inside of them, swaddled into them like a child in their blanket. There was nothing else he could see through either the shadow or the light but the smallest patch of sky over him, distant and untouchable. Part of him wanted to reach out to that sky because he knew he'd left something behind in the world he was slowly fading from, something precious he might never be able to get back if he didn't take it with him now. Another part of him knew he couldn't go back. He was dying on the inside, just like he'd died the first time, and the place the light and shadow were pulling him to was his only way out, his only hope of a second chance.

But would that second chance even matter if he was heading toward it alone?

A face peered over the edge of his vision, blocking his view of the sky. It was at once frightening and familiar. The face's lips were blackened and rotting away, and the corruption was slowly traveling upwards. But the eyes... the eyes were as gentle as they always were. Brown, soft, and full of love, love for him, love that defied all time and space, love he was sure would never leave him no matter where he went.

A hand reached out to him and the light and the shadow, clawing forward to follow after.

Ah, what a pleasant end for me, if your dear hands be the last I see, closing shut my faithful eyes to rest.

He wasn't afraid anymore, he realized as he closed his eyes. The light and the shadow were more than welcome to take him to another place. He would see that face again. There was nothing in Heaven or Hell he was more sure of than that.

Jinyoung's eyes flew open at the sensation of several blades of grass tickling his nose. Or more like inside his nose, where Jackson had charmingly shoved them in an attempt to wake him up.

Jinyoung wasn't someone who needed to yawn and reorient himself after napping to get his energy back. He instantly shot up and grabbed Jackson into a chokehold, knocking him and his offensive grass to the ground. “Go to hell, Jackson Wang!” he snapped. Jinyoung had that same dream about once or twice a week, but he hated having it interrupted.

“Been there, done that,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes and snaking out of Jinyoung's grip. “I get sent there every time BamBam makes us come to one of these boring soccer games to watch Yugyeom. I mean, it must be boring if even you slept through it.”

“What do you mean 'even me'?” Jinyoung said defensively. “Are you calling me boring?”

Jackson gave him an innocent look. “Of coooourse not, Jinyoung!”

“The game was not boring,” BamBam said, smacking Jackson's head. “Yugyeom's team scored three whole points.”

“Yeah, and I've been to basketball games where they score 120 points, big whoop.” Jackson straightened up as a very grass stained Yugyeom approached their blanket, which they'd spread out a little ways back from the sidelines. “Hey, great game out there!”

“He just said the game was boring,” BamBam reported dutifully to his best friend. “And Jinyoung fell asleep after the first goal.”

“Then I guess only you and I are going out for shakes right now,” Yugyeom said, looping his arms over BamBam's shoulders. “My treat. Jackson and Jinyoung can just starve.”

“It's not my fault that my dreams are better to me than you are,” Jinyoung grumbled.

“You looked like you were having a really good one, too,” Jackson added. “You had this really dopey grin on your face the whole time.”

“Really? Because I was dreaming of a pool of shadow and light and this guy with his lips rotting off his face.” Jinyoung smiled triumphantly as Jackson finally drew back, looking too cowed to . Jackson was a notorious scaredy-cat who didn't like talking about spooky stuff, much less dreaming about it.

“That's weird,” Yugyeom said. “I dream about a pool of shadow and light sometimes, too.”

Jinyoung lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. It's a really weird dream. In it, I'm leading this group of people through a golden field of grass. We go through all of these open-air courtyards to reach a room in the center of a really fancy palace. There are these two women on the ground. One is short haired and lying on her stomach, not moving. The other is long haired and... well, one of her arms is rotted off. Both of them have wings, huge white wings on their backs. Anyways, on the ground is this really ominous pool of shadow. I'm concerned to go near it, but then I remember that there was this person I really cared about who was trusting me to bring people to that pool, so I call them all forward. All of the people following me start going through the shadow and light starts breaking through and...that's all I remember.”

“God, can you guys stop?” Jackson whined. “That is so creepy, okay?”

“Angels with body parts rotting off?” BamBam asked, his eyes widening. He was also a scaredy-cat, but liked talking about horror in theory. “Were they dead? Do you think they were about to turn into zombies?”

Yugyeom shook his head. “I don't know how to explain it, but it's like they were completely empty. Like they were worse than dead.”

“Guys, stooooooop it,” Jackson yelled, reaching over to thrash Yugyeom. “I don't know what's worse, you guys having these messed up dreams, or Jinyoung actually enjoying it.”

“The face in my dream is nothing to be afraid of,” Jinyoung muttered. “He was looking down on me kindly.”

“Someone with rotting lips was looking down on you kindly? Okay, Jinyoung. This just proves it. You need to find love properly instead of pining over weird ghouls in your dreams.”

“Don't even try to set me up again, Jackson, I swear to god. I'm not in the mood for it.”

“Why not, though? You seem like such a romantic, but whenever you're in front of an actual human being who likes you, you're completely cold.”

“Says the equally single guy,” BamBam quipped, poking Jackson's cheek.

“I wouldn't be single if somebody gave me the time of day,” Jackson replied, making a kissy face at BamBam.

Yugyeom between them. “Not today, Satan.”

Jinyoung smiled wryly at the three of them. He was pretty sure he was as open to idea of love as anyone else was. But at the same time, it wasn't something he could enter into easily. He had an ideal in his mind of a great, all encompassing love like the one he felt in his dream, and he was certain that it was only possible with a single person in the entire world. He didn't think he could settle for anything less than that. Sure, there were any number of beautiful and magnificent people in the world, but no one he'd met had been his person, the one person who completed his soul.

“Come on,” Jackson said, pulling Jinyoung to his feet. “Let's get those shakes.”

“I told you, you weren't invited-” Yugyeom paused, staring down at Jinyoung's wrist, which had been exposed when his sweater had gone down his arm when Jackson had pulled him up. “Wow, that's an interesting birthmark. I've never seen it before since you're allergic to showing your arms.”

“Har har,” Jinyoung said. He looked down at the mark that he been present on his skin since the day he was born. Everyone had always called it a birthmark, but he was pretty sure he'd never heard of anyone having one like his before. Rather, it was like the imprint of a bracelet around his wrist—when you looked closely at it, you could see the individual links of metal pressed into his skin. Of course, that made even less sense than it being a birthmark considering he hadn't been born wearing a bracelet, and there was no plausible in utero experience that could explain that particular pattern. Still, it was a point of curiosity to Jinyoung. He rarely let strangers see it since he couldn't even explain it himself.

“I've got a mole on my lower back,” Jackson said, realizing BamBam and Yugyeom were paying more attention to Jinyoung than to him.

“Literally no one cares,” Yugyeom said. “Come on.”

The four of them left the soccer field area and went into the larger park where there were more sporting events going on in different sections. A baseball game looked like it had just finished wrapping up at the diamond, but there was still an ongoing face-off at the basketball court. Jinyoung prayed Yugyeom didn't get it into his head to stop and watch. He'd had a new hobby every single year they'd been in high school, and now they were in their Junior year, Yugyeom was crazy obsessed with sports. Soccer was his personal favorite, but he was always at the park trying to join impromptu matches of everything from tennis to jogku.

Instead, Yugyeom pulled them into the crowd of baseball players exiting the diamond to see if he could find anyone he knew. Jinyoung lingered on the fringes impatiently. Having that dream always filled him with a sense of restlessness that turned him off from wanting to make small talk with Yugyeom's friends—he was waiting for something, clearly, but when would he ever find it?

“Youngjae, how many times have I told you to be careful when you're running the bases?” a voice came from behind Jinyoung. “This is probably the hundredth time I've had to disinfect your knees from scrapes. I'm surprised they actually exist at this point.”

“I can't help tripping!” came a louder voice.

“Someone who trips every time he runs shouldn't be playing baseball!”

“But it's fun!” the other voice protested. “You're just overprotective. Daddy Jaebum!”

“Cut it out with that!”

“My loyal watch puppy! Woof woof!”

“Why do I have to listen to this?” another, flatter voice wondered.

Jinyoung turned his head to look for the source of the silly conversation. A group of three guys were sitting on a nearby bench. The one on the left, a handsome looking guy with piercings running up his ears, was spraying Neosporin on the scraped up knees of the person in the middle, a cute looking guy in a rolled up baseball uniform. The guy on the right was bent down, tying the baseball player's shoes. Jinyoung couldn't see his face, but he had a head of bleached blonde hair.

“Okay, okay, guys,” the baseball player said. “I'm healed! Stop worrying about me. I coolly scored the winning run and don't need the other guys to see you both fussing over me.”

“How can someone like you have pride?” the guys with piercings asked, pinching the baseball player's cheek. “You've only been relying on me since you were five. Stop trying to act cool.”

“Only because you started stalking me out of nowhere, acting like some personal body guard I never hired. No one asked you to!”

“Youngjae, we all know you don't technically need Jaebum, but we also all know you'd cry in two seconds if he went anywhere,” the blonde recited, now tying the baseball player's—Youngjae's—other shoe. Apparently, they'd had this discussion often.

“Feel free to also stop tying my shoe, Mark.”

“Just preventing future tripping incidents.”

“Forget that. Let's go find some celebration churros.” Youngjae leapt to his feet, almost kneeing the blonde—Mark—in the face as he did. “Onwards, minions!”

The piercing guy—Jaebum—also got to his feet. “My treat, okay?”

“Naturally, Jaebum-Sugar-Daddy!”

“Cut it out!”

It was at that moment that Mark stood up.

Jinyoung didn't realize it at first. He took in his face as a whole rather than focusing in on each individual part. He had a small and pretty face, one that inevitably attracted attention. Jinyoung couldn't help staring at it, and after he'd admired the curve of Mark's lips and the slight flush of his cheeks, he finally looked up to focus on Mark's eyes.

He froze.

He knew those eyes.

Jinyoung couldn't explain the moment. How could he put words to the single instant when everything in the universe clicked into place and the vast and confusing world he'd been wandering thus far alone in his soul suddenly filled with clarity and purpose? These were eyes that he knew, eyes that had haunted him for years now, eyes that had looked at him with love in dreams, love he had longed for and thirsted after with such strength that he was certain his soul had felt it before to a greater extent than he'd felt it in those very same dreams. He wasn't sure who this person they belonged to was or who he had been to Jinyoung wherever he'd first experienced that love, but he was certain to the very depths of his soul that his wait was over, that he had found his person, that his life as a whole and complete person was just now beginning.

Mark was staring back at him, brown eyes wide, mouth slack. Did he realize it too? Did he feel whatever Jinyoung was feeling? Had he been waiting for him just as long, just as devotedly?

Without even realizing it, the two of them had begun stumbling towards each other. The park and the noise from all the baseball players receded around them.

“H-hey,” Mark said softly. “It's you.”

“Yes,” Jinyoung said, holding his eyes. “It's me.”

“So, do you have a name?”

“Everyone has a name.”

“Yeah, and it's much easier to call them by that name than to keep saying Hey, man of my dreams.” He grinned. “You can call me Mark, for example.”

“After that one, why don't I just call you 'Smooth'?” Jinyoung grinned back. “It's Jinyoung. But I wouldn't necessarily mind being known as the man of your dreams, as long as you're willing to share the title.”

“For some reason, I don't think I'd mind at all.” He reached out and took Jinyoung's hand. “I finally found you.”

“Do you know why you were looking?”

“No. But I found you. I found you.” Moisture collected in Mark's eyes, and Jinyoung felt it collecting in his own. His heart, which suddenly felt older and more knowledgeable than it had before, weighed heavily in his chest.

“And now what...?” Jinyoung asked breathlessly.

“Everything,” Mark said, squeezing his hand. “Come on. Let's go.”

A/N: Thanks to everyone who supported this story, and most of all thanks to Yadame to requesting! As I said at the beginning, this was my first time doing this kind of story, and I had a lot of fun ^^

I should be making a writing comeback in late December with a new story, so until then, feel free to send me an Ask if you want to chat about Markjin and GOT7 :D Thanks again!