The World Stopped Moving {MarkRen} | complete

vingt-et-un

Hey everyone!! I hope this week is treating you with kindness! Warnings for mentions of hospitals and death (although no one dies!) in this chapter... buckle your seatbelts :<

𓆩♡𓆪

He doesn't know how it happens, but it does.

Mark is quiet on the bus back home. Instead of holding Renjun's hand or squeezing his thigh, he twists his fingers together so hard his knuckles turn white, face contorted like he's failing to fight off terrible thoughts. Or like he's trying not to cry. Renjun doesn't push him. He tries to point out the pretty clouds, even if Mark's gaze doesn't quite reach the sky. He doesn't stop trying.

Mark struggles up the stairs, and by the time they're through the front door of the elder's apartment, he can't breathe.

Crying, shouting, rushed phone calls, sirens, too many voices, paper white walls, blinding white lights.

The sirens. Renjun can still hear them now. Their echo screeches through his head on loop, and he can't shut them up, no matter how hard he begs and pleads. He clamps his hands over his ears and draws his knees to his chest, the jerky movements making the plastic chair creak in protest under his quivering frame. Everything is loud; nothing is quiet, and it's torture.

Footsteps pound through the corridor in a constant stampede that punches his gut. As machines beep and nurses bustle around, a headache splits his temples. A pair of arms tries to embrace him, but he jolts away and gasps for breath, vision too blurred and head too muddled to work out who it is or hear what they have to say.

"I'm here. I'll be sat just across the room," Chenle says anyway, backing off to give the elder some space.

Renjun shrivels under his friend's stare.

He should have seen it coming but somehow, he was blind to it. The signs flicker through his mind, a pulsing, throbbing display of strobe lights and booming speakers that are impossible to ignore, to escape, and he shakes his head as though that could dispel the guilt. It scatters his thoughts instead.

The guilt consumes him. Mark collapsed, and he didn't know what to do.

The plastic chair creaks again. His lower back twinges and the cramp spreads into his legs before exploding into numbness that hurts so bad, but Renjun can't bring himself to care. Not when his heart hurts a million times more and his cheeks ache from all the tears. Chenle passes him a tissue, then returns to his seat and stares at his phone. Renjun lets his head hit the wall. He closes his eyes to block out the flickering industrial lights and posters about the warning signs of cancer. Restless, he shifts around, pulls his knees into his chest again, drops them to the floor, taps his feet and bounces his legs, all while his fingers play with the zipper and rip the tissue into shreds that Chenle has to gather, a gentle murmur of a scolding leaving his lips once he's put them in the bin and handed Renjun another.

Mark's easy smiles. His addictive laugh. His dimples. The fluffiness of his hair after a hot shower, then the way it sticks up in the morning after a long night's sleep curled around his soulmate.

Renjun pictures it all. He wants to smile at the memories, but they only tug more tears from his exhausted eyes, until his sobs dry out and not even Chenle's tender humming can soothe them.

"Are you hungry?" Chenle asks. The elder's stomach rumbles and nausea weakens him. He shakes his head. Chenle gets up to buy a double Mars bar from the vending machine in the corridor outside, and Renjun nibbles on the chocolate, swallowing the pieces down with equal desperation and despisal. "It's nearly nine, by the way."