THE HAVEN

FOUR

>Mark's room was so full of warmth and care and it felt like the rest of the world was locked out for a little longer.<

FOUR

Donghyuk stared at his reflection in the small, dirty mirror over the bathroom sink. His dark brown hair was getting a little too long behind the ears and his fringe already made it difficult to see through it.
He stroked it back and looked into his tired eyes, dark circles under them that had become a part of him over the years, his skin that the winter had painted in a pale color, a little uneven here and there where his acne acted up.

Donghyuk sighed and let his hair fall back over his eyes.

Jaemin had suggested bringing him his dinner to the room in the evening, but Donghyuk forced himself to sit with the others in the living room.
It was hard enough for them to take care of Mark and even though they told Donghyuk his wound wasn't as bad as it looked, he couldn't get rid of the feeling that things hadn't worked out as smoothly as they pretended.
Jaemin said it was just a minor infection and that he had to stitch the wound anew.

It had been barely half an hour after Jaemin and Renjun had arrived back at the haven that night, when Donghyuk had heard Mark's muffled screams and whines through the door. All the way up to his room.
He doubted they had a way to numb his pain in any way and his tortured voice went right into Donghyuk's bones, making it impossible to even just close his eyes.
The next day he didn't see Mark at all. Or the days after that.

And Donghyuk could tell that the boys had to improvise a little without him.
They put a halt in their nightly rides, too; just for a few days.

Jeno spent the most time in Mark's room. He was his oldest and maybe his best friend. Chenle was in there a lot, too, the guilt written all over his face, making him look tired and tortured, making him seem years older, and Donghyuk nearly didn't recognize him anymore.

Renjun had packed his stuff like planned and was visiting Lucas in the south, even though he wanted to blow the whole thing off at first. But the other boys insisted it was okay.
"He's the most independent, our Renjunie," Jeno said after he'd left in the same old jalopy they'd driven to rescue Mark and Chenle that night.

Donghyuk barely left his room all Thursday and only texted Johnny, sparing him the details of what was happening in the haven.
He spent his day scribbling in his notebook and he was glad when he could do the dishes after lunch.

His creativity was back from its vacation and brought lots of ideas and emotions with it that Donghyuk tried to deal with like he always did.
Writing rhymes and imagining the rhythms that fit them in his head.
He'd filled pages and pages with the ink of his ball-pen in the past days and most of them were abstract and chaotic, and 80% of them talked about injured alphas and cut open thighs and stitches and muffled screams that Donghyuk still felt in his bones as if they'd settled there.

The other 20% were filled with shame and fear and a desperation that he couldn't pinpoint and a big ugly, all overwhelming missing.
Missing someone, something, everything, and having no idea what exactly it was. It wasn't only his mother he missed these days.

He missed himself more than anything. Couldn't stop thinking about the fact that he'd forgotten who he was the moment she'd left years ago. That his heartbeat didn't even feel like his own most of the time and how terrifying it was to have this strange, foreign organ inside of him that he tried so hard to keep alive and that hurt with every damn pump it did.