Ships Passing In The Night ｜Markhyuck (OT21 AU)

Chapter 61

If you'd asked him several months ago—back before Mark and Johnny had crash-landed at the centre of his new reality, tearing a gaping, irreparable hole into the foundations of who he had become—Donghyuck would have said that he knew exactly what auto-piloting through life felt like.

He'd known all too well how it felt to become a stranger inside his own body, drifting without an anchor in the perpetual maelstrom that had become his life. Lonely, even amidst a sea of familiar faces; adrift on a boundless ocean of his own design. Detached, save for a few frayed tethers that others had stubbornly refused to let loose, until he'd finally found his way back to them.

He'd thought then that he'd known just how deep the rabbit hole could go.

Now, as he effortlessly navigated the gleaming, polished floorboards of the large stage beneath his feet, muscles in his throat flexing expertly as he hit the final crescendo in his big Act 2 solo, Donghyuck knew that he had been woefully misinformed. This was so much worse, the stilted, increasingly faint vocalisation of his consciousness cried out, as he distantly registered that he had no idea if the words he had just sung were the correct ones or not.

It was worse, he told himself—as he silently made his way off the stage, following closely on the heels of the scene partner whose name he had forgotten, and dropped bodily into one of the high-backed, plastic lawn chairs that littered the left wing of the auditorium—because he could actually see the tethers this time around.

Huge, thick ropes of unwavering patience, affection and hope, coiled around him from all angles, as his friends rallied to support him in his time of need. Anchoring, grounding—they refused to let him drift too far this time, instead leaving him stuck in this strange sort of limbo. They weren't physical tethers, of course, although they felt real in every other sense of the word, and yet the unworthiness he felt whenever he received a reassuring hug or a placating smile from one of his brothers was still like a knife to the gut.

The very worst part, Donghyuck's inner critic offered glumly, was that everyone was being so damn patient about everything, despite the cold shoulder he'd given so many of his nearest and dearest over the past two weeks. He couldn't even recall the last time he'd smiled—now that he thought about it, it might not have been since that late-night card game in the Annex, interrupted by Yuta inadvertently reopening the festering, Mark-shaped wound inside his soul—but that hadn't seemed to matter much to anyone else.

They'd still tried.

In return, instead of actually talking to someone about his feelings, he'd just continued to go through the motions. Walking, talking, eating—but never really present.

It was as though the realisation of what he'd maybe always known, the truth that Yuta had forced from his subconscious like a sucker-punch to the gut, had done the opposite of setting him free. Instead, it had trapped Donghyuck inside his own head, forced him to compartmentalise his fear and doubt, the knowledge of what he needed to face simply too much to handle without risking falling apart.

And so, he had retreated inside of himself, crafting yet another bubble of disengagement to shield what was left of his tattered heart. He'd even cut himself off from Jaehyun, who had called Donghyuck every single day after school for the past week and a half, begging him through increasingly rambling voicemails to please open up and let him in.

From Yuta, who had to know that none of this was his fault, and yet who seemed determined to blame himself for the way that Donghyuck had lost himself a little inside his own head.

From Johnny, who had tried so hard to make time for the boy his brother had moved halfway around the world for, despite his relationship with Ten still being in its tender infancy. Had made the bus journey all the way to the Lee house—twice—only to be told that Donghyuck wasn't willing to speak to him.