prelude.

there’s fire everywhere, even places where he didn’t know could be set aflame. the smoke and dust in the air congests in his lungs and every breath he takes starts to feel more and more like his last.

he’s bleeding. there’s a piece of metal wedged deeply in his stomach. every beat of his heart takes more effort than the last and he wonders how long it will take for him to die.

with all the pollution he intakes and the amount of blood loss, he’s not surprised when his vision starts to go blurry. even so, his mind drifts off to thoughts of a boy with dark hair and a toothy smile and a voice so melodious he must have been an angel.

as he loses consciousness, he hears the faint melody of a lullaby that the boy had sung him once, when he had been thought to have been asleep.

mark tuan smiles faintly and closes his eyes.

I.

kunpimook’s way of coping is pretending. pretending that there isn’t a gap in their choreography, pretending there isn’t hollow silence when they sing live and it gets to mark’s part, pretending that mark had perhaps never existed.

he knows it’s unhealthy, suppressing everything, but it’s the only thing he knows how to do. and maybe it’s a disgrace to mark’s memory, to his family and all the fans, to himself, but it hurts a lot less pretending than remembering.

still, there are good days and bad days.

on good days, kunpimook wakes up just before breakfast, to yugyeom shaking him awake. he whines and stretches before proceeding to wash himself up. then, he goes to the kitchen table and sits in his usual spot, ignoring the empty space and how there suddenly seems to be a lot more space at a once crowded table. he pushes his food around, maybe consumes a bite or two because kunpimook can’t eat in the morning, and then they’re off to a day full of schedules. by the time he returns to the dorm, it is already late into the night and there’s barely anything to do but shower and sleep; so that’s what kunpimook does. that’s what kunpimook considers a good day now.

of course, like everything else, there are things that go wrong too. kunpimook categorizes these into bad days. these are the days when he wakes up long before the sun rises, barely a few hours since his head first hit the pillow. these are the days he lies in bed and stares at his ceiling and tries not to remember.

but the memories come. they always do.

and they hit him with a vengeful force as if punishing him for daring to think that he could keep them bottled up and buried, that he could contain something so raw and free and unbridled.

they are memories of mark. mark and kunpimook meeting each other for the first time at the company building. mark and kunpimook giggling together upstairs in the room with the heater, snuggled under a blanket in each other’s warmth until they eventually fall asleep while the rest of the world spun around them. mark treating kunpimook to his favourite food as a reward for his improvement in his english. mark disturbing kunpimook’s video game session to ask for pad thai, which kunpimook relents to make eventually but ends up ruining. mark and kunpimook celebrating their birthdays, filming music videos, going on late night hunts for food; it’s like a wheel of misfortune and a game to see which memory hurts more.

by the time kunpimook has dozed off fitfully, there are tear streaks on his cheeks which don’t even get the chance to dry off before he’s being shaken awake again, and his whole routine starts all over. kunpimook finds it funny how no one ever seemed to point out his puffy, red eyes. and if there’s a voice at the back of his head bitterly speculating that mark would have been the first to notice, well, that’s all it is – a reminder.

and kunpimook has always ignored the reminders he set on his phone anyway.

youngjae is a different story. if kunpimook is the river lethe, then youngjae is aion – the god of time. or to be more precise, the god of unbounded time, of time that flows in a cycle – a time loop.

in youngjae’s time loop, mark’s plane has not crashed. mark is still at his home in los angeles with his parents and siblings. mark has not boarded the doomed plane and never will. mark is alive and will stay alive, because the loop never reaches the moment when mark gets on the plane; it simply rewinds all the way to the start of when mark safely reaches his parents’ house.

that’s how youngjae copes; has been since he first heard the news of the plane crash and his heart had dropped all the way to his boots, and the sound of a pitiful whine from coco only served as ringing in his ears as he gazed mutely at the news reporter and the flight number mark had sent to their group chat.

that doesn’t exist now, though; not in the time loop youngjae lives in.

a message notification brings youngjae out of his trance, and he glances down at his phone which was opened to the group chat and finds that mark has sent his flight number and details.

youngjae smiles and types back, wishing him a safe flight.

II.

jaebum has always been angry – the only thing that varied as he matured was what he got angry at and the degree of the burns suffered after each explosion. jaebum was a ticking time bomb – but that had never bothered mark.

mark, with his poor, accented korean when he had first joined the company, with his bright eyes and smiles that he reserved for his friends, with his kind personality that never wavered even in the most hopeless of cases, was one of jaebum’s closest friends. the two weren’t exact carbon copies of each other but they weren’t total opposites either. somehow, they just clicked.

mark was calm where jaebum was angry, rational where jaebum was irrational, kind where jaebum was cruel. jaebum was by nature, an introvert, and didn’t really talk to others, but when he was together with mark, he found himself opening up about things he never even knew he could talk about. mark was a good listener, and though he didn’t always have some profound, world-altering advice to give, he cared. and to jaebum, who had been deprived of care ever since he was young, mark was to him what water was to a person on fire.

maybe that was why it tore him apart when he heard the news about the plane crash.

jaebum had hoped, at first, but then the words “no survivors” appeared on the screen and jaebum felt his entire world screech to a halt. then came the denial, but jaebum had always been bad at denying things, especially when facts were present; and so the anger descended like a vulture on its prey. it overtook him, overriding all his senses and logic, until all he could feel was angerangeranger.

and then he exploded.

jaebum cannot exactly recall what had happened; everything was hazy to him. and he would rather inhale poisonous gas than to further deepen the wound.

what he can remember is this: screaming and screaming and pounding his fists on the walls until his knuckles bled and not even stopping then. he remembers finally dropping to his knees at one point and sobbing without any care for his dignity. he remembers the pain that struck him every time his heart beat and the thought that mark’s heart wasn’t beating anymore echoed in his mind. most of all, he remembers mark – and perhaps that’s what angers him the most.

he’s angry that mark left without a proper goodbye, that mark left them behind, that mark left him behind to bear the aftermath of the explosion all by himself. and, most of all, he’s angry at himself for letting mark get on that plane back. he’s angry at the managers for rushing mark’s return because they had a fanmeet that day even though mark was the one whom had gone the longest without seeing his family. he’s angry, so so angry, even though he hates being angry because he loses all control over his emotions and jaebum has always despised being powerless.

the members visit him in the hospital. jaebum can’t bring himself to meet their eyes so he keeps them trained on his bandaged hands. silence ticks by in minutes and still, no one says anything. no one knows what to say.

what do you say to someone grieving?

no one knows; how would they know? they’re all grieving themselves.

III.

mark is to jackson a reprieve – a getaway from the mountains of expectations in his life.

jackson is a performer, an entertainer, and it’s his job to make everyone laugh and look at him in awe when he executes difficult choreography on stage. there’s a broken tape recorder stuck in his mind that randomly plays, reminding him how ironic it was that joking about his own insecurities on national television was what secured him – and his group members, of course, for they shared any extra income they procured from starring in guest shows – a steady income.

it’s a good thing they don’t know the difference between his true and fake smiles. or no one calls him out on it anyway. jackson isn’t sure if he should be bitter or thankful.

still, there are days when the cold creeps through to him. it seeps past the tiny cracks found in broken things and lingers in certain areas longer than others - his heart, or what’s left of it anyway, and his mind are its favourite spots. on these days, jackson wants nothing more than to curl up into a foetal ball and wrap the blankets tighter around himself, as if that may somehow warm him up and coax his heart into truly, truly beating rather than thrum rhythmically, mechanically, unfeeling.

on these days, when jackson thinks thoughts of maybe today is the day i close my eyes and never open them again, when jackson’s mind wanders to the second razor he had bought “in case i lose the first one”, when jackson catches himself reaching for the bottle of sleeping pills hidden in his underwear drawer, mark is the one to unstrap him from the explosives clinging to his body before he can detonate them.

mark was gentle, like the light drizzle of morning rain and the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. he was the one that persuaded jackson to emerge from under his covers and take a shower. he was the one that ensured jackson didn’t stay too long under the water that was several degrees hotter than comfortable. he was the one that listened to jackson, and the only one who dug deeper into the self-deprecating insults jackson wore as a protective coat. mark was the only one that cared.

and now he’s gone.

jackson can’t help but blame himself. after all, it was him that had suggested mark take a flight from toronto to his hometown and pay a short visit to his family before rejoining them at the next city they were having a fanmeet at. it was jackson that had begged their manager to let mark go, that had looked up the tickets online, that had inevitably sent mark into death’s cruel, unforgiving grip.

a tiny part of jackson knows it isn’t his fault, but it’s only a small part after all, and the majority always wins. and besides, he’s not even sure if that part is the rational part of him or the deluded part. anyway, it didn’t matter how anyone looked at it. the truth and reality remained unchanged: jackson had booked mark his ticket to the afterlife.

at night, jackson doesn’t sleep. he stares unblinkingly off into space, trying not to let the emptiness in the room consume him. the demons in his head run round and round in circles and he’s fighting a losing battle trying to silence them. he’s not entirely sure if he loses because he’s weak or if he wants to. it’s his own way of punishing himself for bringing about mark’s death, though he’s sure he could never do as much harm to himself than he did to mark.

jackson bargains with death for mark. he begs and pleads and offers up everything he has, every possession and every belonging – because surely, jackson’s life is worth so much less than mark’s. yet, death only watches him suffer in silence. death offers no empathy, no understanding and jackson screams himself hoarse asking death to take his soul in exchange for mark’s. death doesn’t answer, but instead casts one last glance over jackson before disappearing into the night. by now, even the demons have gone silent, falling into a heap, exhausted and dizzy.

it turns out mark was wrong; jackson is worthless after all – so worthless even the demons give up on him.

IV.

yugyeom goes a bit farther than jackson. it’s to be expected; after all, yugyeom has always been the most perceptive, most sensitive out of all of them – it’s why they had always chosen him as the target for the hidden cameras.

mark never really particapted in the hidden cameras. sure, he liked pranks and laughing when kunpimook failed at bottle flipping, but hidden cameras took it a step further. and mark just wasn’t the type of person to upset someone else just for the sake of comic relief. when it came to playing with the other’s emotions, mark drew a line and refused to step over it, no matter what new persuasive words their staff came up with.

yugyeom had never found it in himself to thank mark; after all, the oldest had never put a stop to the hidden cameras either, and each one was like a thorn on the rose of dreams they were living. yugyeom has always despised pain so it just didn’t make any sense to bring up an issue he would rather bury.

now, his lips are a graveyard – full of words that died before they could slip out, silenced and executed by a purse or bite of the lip. and there’s nothing he regrets more than the words he couldn’t spit out all because his bruised pride and ego wouldn’t let him.

honestly, yugyeom isn’t proud of being perceptive or sensitive. he lives in a life where his career revolves around people who crack insensitive jokes and makes jabs about his insecurities, all for the sake of the viewers. and throughout he is expected to give either an exaggerated response or none at all. if yugyeom had any less perception or sensitivity, perhaps he wouldn’t take it that seriously. at the least, he won’t spend night after sleepless night thinking about it, turning it over in his mind, dissecting it, and bringing it up even months or years after it had happened.

it would certainly hurt a lot less if yugyeom didn’t care as much as he does.

mark was the oldest of their group. he had seen, experienced a lot more than yugyeom had. out of their group, mark had been the only one whom yugyeom could open up to.

jaebum would have told him to get over it. if he persisted, yugyeom knew he might as well have been a teenager to jaebum. a teenager that was going through their emo stage. jaebum was a good leader, he kept the group going through hard times and was always a good person to go to for advice – as long as they didn’t involve minor insecurities, of course. (yugyeom can’t help but be bitter over it. he just can’t.)

he knows about jaebum’s less-than-happy childhood; though the leader never brought it up, the stiffening of his posture and the tightening of his jaw, with the slightly edgy tone to his voice when asked about his childhood was enough for yugyeom to conclude that jaebum had not been very happy even from the start. yugyeom can put two and two together and sometimes he hates himself for being able to see things from other people’s perspective, for being able to put himself in their shoes, for being able to find them excuses for hurting him.

somehow, mark had been the one to pick him up after he fell, pushed by the others. he was the one to treat and disinfect the wound. and though mark didn’t know, he was also the reason why yugyeom’s wounds healed.

it wasn’t a romantic thing. yugyeom loved mark, but he didn’t love him in the way that he wanted to hold hands with him and point out the constellations in the night sky. he didn’t want to give or receive flowers and cheesy love notes. he didn’t want to give cupid more chances to cause him emotional anguish.

love has always been the cause for his scars. love, and caring too much, has brought him nothing but hurt.

just like how now yugyeom is hurting. hurting so, so much because it has been so long since he had trusted and loved someone as much as he loved- no, loves, mark (because love doesn’t stop even after one passes on). yugyeom had batted away mark’s efforts to get him to open up at first, before eventually relenting and allowing him to pull him headfirst into the water even though yugyeom can’t swim, and trusting him to save him.

how is mark supposed to save him now, when the floodgates are opened and he’s drowning, when mark is gone?

the water level increases.

yugyeom drifts further out.

nothing more than a hand remains stretched out of the water, until eventually it disappears too.

and yugyeom never resurfaces.

V.

jinyoung loves mark. he loves the way mark’s eyes creased into a smile equally as blinding as the sun. he loves the way mark always found a way to interlace their fingers regardless of their surroundings. he loves the way mark looked at him, as if he were the sun and mark’s entire world revolved around him (it was the other way around for jinyoung).

discovering that he loved mark wasn’t the hardest thing jinyoung had to do; telling him was. for months, close to a year, jinyoung had struggled. his heart started to sprint every time mark was close to him, pounding so hard that it was a wonder mark hadn’t heard it.

his mind knew it was wrong; his parents didn’t force him to go on dates with girls but jinyoung knew that they expected him to bring back a girl one day and that they wanted grandchildren. it was wrong for jinyoung to love a boy; for jinyoung to selfishly sacrifice his parents’ dreams just so he could have his. his parents had given up so much for him, had worked so hard just so they could bring him up, had believed in him even when jjproject was deemed a failure; how could he do this to them?

but his heart had already fallen far too deep, to the point that jinyoung was sure he would have to carve it out in order to stop loving mark. every time mark smiled, it raced against jinyoung’s ribs, as if it wanted to escape from jinyoung’s chest and run right into mark’s arms. the feeling was addicting – the only drug jinyoung ever did in his life.

jinyoung knew loving mark was wrong – but he did it anyway.

it had taken him 11 months since he first realised he was in love to tell mark. he remembered pulling mark aside in between a music show and a photoshoot and telling him that he needed to talk to him. mark had looked at him with surprise, eyes shining with curiosity before one of his trademark smiles turned the corner of his lips upwards.

jinyoung had never been as nervous as when he and mark were finally alone together. he had been looking forward to this moment ever since this morning, yet now that it arrived, jinyoung found himself at a loss for what to say. jinyoung has always been good with words, but when it came to mark he found himself speechless.

sweaty palms, dry mouth, tongue tied. endless thoughts and different outcomes running through his mind. a myriad of words swirled around but he found himself unable to catch even one. suffocating silence, thick tension, musing mind.

yet all coherent thought disappeared as mark looked up at him, offering a smile that jinyoung knew he only used when he was unsure. jinyoung felt as if a garden of flowers had bloomed in his chest, the thorns etched into his heart, the vines strangling his larynx and restraining his tongue, making it so he couldn’t say anything.

it felt as if ten years had passed in the time they spent surrounded by the quiet.  yet mark didn’t say a thing to push or rush jinyoung; he seemed perfectly content with the silence, with just jinyoung as company. jinyoung felt a sudden rush of affection – and perhaps that’s what serves as the trigger.

once the first words tumbled off his lips, jinyoung found that he couldn’t stop them anymore. it was as if he had broken a dam which had previously held back an ocean of water; it was uncontrollable. he rambled on and on about his every thought since the revelation.

mark listened patiently. jinyoung prided himself on being able to read people but in that moment, he didn’t know what mark was thinking. was he disgusted by jinyoung’s feelings? or did he maybe – just, maybe – feel the same? jinyoung didn’t know what to think of mark’s unchanging expression.

finally, jinyoung found himself out of things to say and once again, they lapsed into silence. mark appeared to be in the midst of processing jinyoung’s words. then, he looked up and smiled.

a wave of relief flooded through jinyoung even as he stared at mark in astonishment, as if he couldn’t believe that mark had just said that he felt the same. jinyoung had flung himself into mark’s embrace, overwhelmed by the pure joy and elation he felt as he realised that he didn’t need to feel ashamed at his longing for physical contact.

the days after they became a couple passed in a blur. throughout it all, mark was the only thing he could remember clearly. holding hands, late night hugs, their first kisses; those were all in abundance – mark and jinyoung were both touchy people after all.

and now, all of that seems like a distant memory from a past life; surreal. jinyoung just can’t believe that mark is gone. it doesn’t feel real, as if this were all just a nightmare and that when jinyoung wakes up, he’ll be in mark’s arms. and mark will be next to him, breathing, alive.

how can mark be gone? how is it possible? how can mark possibly not wake up again? if mark is gone, who’s going to make sure jinyoung is okay? who’s going to hold him at night and kiss him awake in the morning? who’s going to hold his hand when he’s nervous for an interview? who’s going to love him?

jinyoung isn’t in denial or anger. he’s certainly not bargaining, and though depression seems the most plausible, jinyoung knows what it’s like to be depressed and it’s not how he feels now. acceptance isn’t even an option; how do you just accept the death of a loved one?

jinyoung doesn’t fit into any of the stages of grief and he’s not sure why. hadn’t he loved mark? hadn’t mark loved him? why wasn’t he grieving? if only, for once in his entire life, he could be normal; could follow society’s standard – maybe then he could move on.

god, those two words seem like a dream. move on. who is jinyoung supposed to move on to? mark is gone; how do you move on from that? jinyoung feels like he’s trapped in a neverending cycle and he’s never going to escape because he doesn’t know what to do and no one is telling him how to.

they say there are five stages of grief – but for jinyoung there’s only one and that’s losing mark.

epilogue.

years come and go. 2017, 2018, 2019 – everything feels like a blur to them. the stages and outfits and comeback concepts change and so does their roommate arrangments and their choreographies and their relationships with each other. but throughout it all, braving the relentless waves and never to be eroded, is one thing that will never change.

it’s the hole in their hearts that mark tuan left.

time is just a concept, after all. and when someone says that time heals all wounds, they’re lying because how can something imagined fill the gap in their chests when a mere reference to what they lost sends them all reeling in pain?

time doesn’t heal – it rusts.

hey readers so this is my first got7 fic that i finished on this site!!! i actually wrote this as part of a christmas fic exchange for my irl friend (which ended up becoming a new years fic exchange) but i decided to post it on here too. thank you for reading up until here and please do leave comments and constructive criticism. this isn't my best work, i admit, so i'm hoping to improve on my writing flaws from this. thank you once again!

- overdosagexo