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There are very few things that faze Mark anymore. Two years of living with Donghyuck, several more of knowing him, have desensitized Mark to most of Donghyuck’s antics. Yet, nothing can prepare him for the sight of a small dragon perched on Donghyuck’s head when he opens the apartment door.
“Sorry I forgot my keys and-” words fail Mark as he stares open mouthed at the creature clawing into Donghyuck’s forehead, quite painfully if his grimace is anything to go by. “What the fuck is that?” Mark hisses, stumbling backwards.
“Shut up and get in here,” Donghyuck snaps, grabbing Mark’s wrist and tugging him into their apartment, nails digging in painfully.
“Is- is that a dragon?” Mark asks weakly staring up at the dark purple mass standing out starkly against Donghyuck’s fire red hair.
“I can explain.” Donghyuck says quickly as if he can sense Mark’s impending panic.
“You better be able to.” Mark says sinking into the couch, gripping the fabric hard in an effort to ground himself. He’s seen any number of strange and unexplainable things in the over ten years he’s known Donghyuck. Has seen Donghyuck change Jeno’s hair to a shocking white in a snap of perfectly manicured fingers because he’d annoyed him. Had come home to find their entire apartment covered in overgrown, man-eating, venus flytraps, snapping at him every time he’d twitched a muscle. Has watched with an increasing desperation as Donghyuck adopted every sewer monster and stray cat and brought them home, turning wide desperate eyes up at Mark when he’d tried to protest. In Mark’s defense, he’d only snapped after he’d found a 7 legged creature- the closest thing approximation he could form was a deeply disturbed land octopus - perched on his pillow, dripping viscous red liquid every time it breathed, if it was even possible of doing such a thing. “I didn’t know dragons even existed.”
“Oh, they do,” Donghyuck says dismissively, waving his hand so a steaming cup of tea flies over to levitate happily by Mark’s elbow. He grasps at it gratefully. This, at least, is some form of Donghyuck’s magic that he’s used to. “But they rarely venture out of the Himalayas. I found him curled up underneath the grate outside the coffee shop.” Donghyuck puts his arm by his head and lets the dragon step tentatively onto it, wobbling dangerously as it does.
“I - the Himalayas?” Mark sputters staring at it. The dragon is a little smaller than a fully grown cat and is deep purple with shimmering scales that tint gold every time it moves. It cracks open one beady eye and stares straight at Mark before snorting a stream of smoke and curling up in Donghyuck’s lap. “Why would a fire breathing creature live on snow covered mountains.”
“In,” Donghyuck corrects absentmindedly as he coos at the thing, letting it wrap it’s tail around his forearm.
“What?” Mark asks distracted. “ In ?”
“They live in caves in the mountains, keep up Mark.” Donghyuck huffs and his irritation is what snaps Mark out of his daze, a well timed reflex to the dangerous familiarity of Donghyuck’s bullshit.
“Never mind that. What is it doing here ?” Mark asks. “We are not keeping a dragon, Hyuck!”
“It’s a he,” Donghyuck hisses, cupping his hands over where Mark supposes the dragon’s ears are. “I haven’t decided what to name him yet.”
“Name him!” Mark sputters. “We’re not naming him! We don’t have the space or money to raise a dragon.”
Donghyuck’s face falls and his hands slide over the dragon’s back gently. “I know,” he says quietly, and the tone of his voice prompts the dragon to look up at him, suddenly. “But he’s just a baby, and he was curled up in a little grate,” he blinks up at Mark imploringly and Mark can feel himself crumble under his big eyes. “I’ll do everything, I swear,” Donghyuck continues, looking down when the dragon bumps his head into his chest. “He won’t ever get in your way.” The smile that spreads over his face when the dragon snorts and stretches its nose up to bump with Donghyuck’s makes Mark melt into a useless pile of goo. You’re a weak fool Mark Lee the voice in his head hisses at him and Mark agrees, silently resigned to his fate.
“Fine,” Mark starts and Donghyuck grins blindingly up at him. “But-” he points a finger warningly at Donghyuck, “if I find him drooling on my pillow or some shit like that, it’s over.”
Donghyuck nods, a brilliant smile wide on his face and he bounds up, dragon clutched in his arms and kisses Mark’s cheek. “You’re the best,” he says and the voice in Mark’s head lets out a small whimper and falls deadly silent.
~
Mark stumbles into the cafe, mind spinning with useless numbers, half asleep and drags himself up to the counter, eyes blearily closing as he waits for Doyoung to come take his order. It’d been a shit show of a day. A shit show of a week, really. There had been that one group project in his thermodynamics class that had finally wrapped up successfully despite half the group not pulling their weight and he’d finally been able to start his physics paper that had been due today, only to remember last night that there was a mountain of math homework waiting to be finished. He’d gone to bed around six am only to crawl out two hours later and trudge to class, wishing death upon himself.
“Mark, what are you doing?” Donghyuck’s voice trickles in over the pounding of his head and Mark, for a split second believes he’s back home, on the couch blissfully asleep, before he forces his eyes open.
“Hyuck?” He asks confused. “I thought you weren’t working today.” Donghyuck had been taking a smaller number of shifts to stay at home and train the dragon - still yet to be named - into not chewing up and snorting smoke and soot onto everything they owned.
Donghyuck leans over the counter, concern etched into his face. “Yeah, I covered for Taeil. Mark, are you okay?”
Mark waves this away, or he thinks he does at least. He’s not entirely sure how many of limbs are still in working order. “I’m fine - need coffee. Assignments.”
Donghyuck lets out a huff. “Yeah you must be really delirious if you think I’m pumping any more caffeine into you. Honestly, did you even sleep?”
Mark nods, eyes slipping shut again. It’s getting difficult to hold himself up so he rests his head on the counter. There was that one hour he’d managed to catch in the library between classes today. That was a nice hour.
“Jesus fuck,” he hears Donghyuck grumble, and there’s a lot of banging and then Donghyuck’s calling to someone and then he feels himself being hauled up onto someone’s back. “Mark, you need to hold on.” Donghyuck snaps and Mark slowly lugs his arms over Donghyuck’s shoulders.
“Why?” he mumbles, laying his face in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck. Donghyuck always smells nice, like a mixture of sharp citrus and spices.
“Thanks, I guess,” Donghyuck says and Mark tries to figure out what he’s thanking him about before he abandons that thought in favour of pressing his nose into Donghyuck’s skin and breathing deeper.
“Where ‘r we goin’,” Mark slurs, the slow rhythm of Donghyuck’s gait lulling him off to sleep.
“Home,” Donghyuck says shortly. “You’re getting some rest.”
Mark frowns and tries to pull away but it feels like his head is being weighed down with cement. “Hyuckie,” he mumbles. “Assignments.”
“Those can wait.” Donghyuck says and there’s a warmth in his voice that wasn’t there before. “Go to sleep, Mark.”
It sounds like a fantastic suggestion, so Mark does just that.
He only blinks awake when Donghyuck lays him down in the bed.
“Are we home?” Mark asks blinking blearily in the low light illuminated only by the star lamp hanging on the wall that Donghyuck had found in Ikea and had refused to return.
Donghyuck makes a soft noise of assent, puttering around him quietly, closing the blinds, pulling the blanket over Mark. “Sleep,” he murmurs brushing his hand over Mark’s forehead, running his fingers through the strands. It feels nice, comforting. There’s a soft snort and Mark turns his head with much difficulty given that it feels like a thousand pounds right now and sees the dragon curled up near his neck.
“I swear to god,” Mark mumbles, curling up under the covers, moving closer to soak up some of the heat coming off the dragon. “When I wake up, I’m going to kick your ass for letting this thing on my bed.”
Donghyuck snorts as he shuts the door behind him. “Sure, Mark.” And the noise of the door closing is lost as Mark is tugged back under in the arms of blissful sleep.
Mark wakes up to a rhythmic rumbling and a heat coming from somewhere around his navel and when he forces his eyes to open, he sees the dragon, curled up on his stomach, glowing a soft orange from the inside as he snores, emitting an incredible warmth. Mark lies there for a bit, debating between literally waking a sleeping dragon and wetting the bed for the first time in over 15 years. Finally the push on his bladder becomes too strong and he cautiously sits up, trying not to jostle the dragon. Before he’s even pushed up onto his elbows the dragon snorts and blinks away, rolling one large golden eye at him lazily, yawning and stretching its chubby wings and kneading its claws into Mark’s stomach, before jumping off him and padding out of the room.
Mark groans sitting up and follows the dragon out to the bathroom. By the green glow of the numbers on the microwave it’s five am which means Mark has slept for.. 16 hours. He stares at the clock in a daze. He’s slept for 16 hours and he hasn’t finished any of his work for today. Mark groans, scrubs his hands over his face and hunts for his backpack.
He finds it sitting on the couch, with a pink post it stuck to the top. Mark~~ reads Donghyuck’s loopy writing in gold glitter pen. I already finished your homework, so don’t freak out. I bugged Jeno for the answers to the physics questions and the dragon helped me with the math. I hope you slept well! (also there’s fried rice in the fridge stop eating that shit at the caf). Mark stares down at the several hearts following the end of the note feeling confusion and a sort of unexplainable warmth growing in his chest.
What the hell did Donghyuck mean the dragon helped him with the math? Mark digs out his folder and runs through the work in his mind and from what his tired brain can make out, it’s all right. He stares down at the formulas, written in bright pink glitter pen - and really, he can’t stand Donghyuck sometimes - and then casts an eye at the dragon sitting calmly on the back of the couch.
“What did you do?” He demands, shaking the paper at the dragon. The dragon eyes the paper then swivels to look at him before snorting and flapping its wings. “No, seriously,” Mark hisses, trying to keep his voice down. “I know for a fact Donghyuck slept through all of his math classes in high school, so what gives?”
“Are you arguing with the dragon at five am?” Donghyuck asks and Mark turns, startled, to see him leaning against the kitchen entrance, eyes scrunched up against the light, sleepily brushing his hair back. “He doesn’t speak Mark, you do know that right?”
“Shut up,” Mark says on reflex, annoyed, before he straightens brandishing the paper at Donghyuck. “How did you do this?”
Donghyuck looks exasperated. “Mark, it really doesn’t matter. It’s five in the fucking morning and I’m tired.”
“Well I’m not,” Mark snaps, though his frustration is already fading at the sight of Donghyuck rubbing his eyes. “I slept for fifteen hours.”
“Thanks to me,” Donghyuck points out and snaps his fingers so the papers float out of Mark’s unresisting fingers and drift into his backpack. “Now, please shut up and come sleep.”
Mark stares at his backpack, now closed and glowers at the dragon. I know this is your fault he thinks at it, irritably. He doesn’t know how, exactly, but he’s sure the little demon messed something up for him. “I’m not tired,” he says mulishly still staring at the dragon who eyes him right back.
Donghyuck groans and turns around. “Well I’m going back to sleep, so please shut the fuck up and stop arguing with the dragon. It’s so fucking early, for fuck’s sake.” His voice fades as he walks away.
Mark stares after him as he pads back to his room and then follows throwing a warning look at the dragon. It, of course, ignores him, and when Mark curls up under the covers next to Donghyuck, it follows, flapping up to land on the pillow above their heads and rumbling gently.
~
Donghyuck decides at possibly the worst time in their lives, what the name for the dragon is going to be. They’re both sprawled across the living room floor, half empty pizza boxes scattered around, three highlighter caps on Mark’s toes, courtesy of Donghyuck, a textbook opened over a lamp as if someone half delirious had decided that the lamp looked bereft without an accessory and propped the first thing they’d found on top of it, and the slowly growing dread of finals creeping up slowly and treacherous around them.
“I’ve got it.” Donghyuck mutters from where he’s face down on the carpet. He’d been in that position for half an hour now and at first Mark had entertained the idea of trying to get him to move, lest he suffocate, but now he’s given up and remains laying perpendicular to Donghyuck, staring up at the ceiling fan, spinning lazily and covered in glitter which floats down gently and transforms into multi-coloured sparkles of light, disappearing right before it hits the catatonic occupants of the room.
“What?” Mark asks, casting a desperate look at the clock. He’d given himself twenty minutes to lie there, contemplating his failures and mistakes in life, before he had to go back to the true horror that was mechanics. Twenty minutes were nearly up.
“The name.” Donghyuck says and he finally rolls over, Mark relieved to see he hadn’t suffocated to death in the carpet.
“Hmm?” Mark repeats, brain foggy.
“The name ,” Donghyuck insists and whistles lowly and waits, craning his neck from the floor, for the dragon to thump over and land on Donghyuck’s stomach, nosing at his face gently. Mark watches lazily as Donghyuck moves the dragon so it’s sitting on his sternum and very carefully boops his nose with one finger. “I hereby name you,” he says in a tremulously serious voice, “Dork Lee.”
Silence follows this statement, in which Mark finally finds the strength to sit up and stare at his roommate. “What,” he says flatly. They’ve had the dragon for nearly three months now and Donghyuck had insisted on waiting for inspiration to strike, to find the perfect name for it, and this is what he’d decided.
“It’s perfect,” Donghyuck says in a hushed tone and flops back on the ground, eyes shiny. “He’s our son, Mark,” he rolls his head over to look at Mark, who’s still frozen, staring dead eyed. “It’s a mix of our names, Donghyuck and Mark - Dork.” Donghyuck punctuates this by pointing a finger at the ceiling before it thumps back to the ground only for the dragon - for Dork - to pounce upon it, playfully.
“Dork.” Mark states before his brain decides that this is sensory overload and shuts down. He nods and hauls himself up. “Dork.” He repeats as he finds his textbook, somehow on the lamp - when did that get there? - and repositioning himself on the couch.
“Dork,” Donghyuck parrots and when Mark chances a look at him, Donghyuck is crying, slow and dramatic tears dripping down his face, as he pets Dork with a distinctly reddened finger.
Mark nods again and then plugs his headphones in, thankful, for once in his godforsaken life, for the monotony and normality of math.
~
Mark goes home for winter break, braving the crazy road, to drive across country and save a couple of bucks. Donghyuck wasn’t going home, his family on some retreat to the remote forests in South America, and when Mark had questioned this, Donghyuck had merely waved him off and spouted some nonsense about magical beetles - Mark hadn’t bothered to pry further - and declined Mark’s invitation to come home with him.
“I don’t think Auntie would very much appreciate me bringing home a dragon, Mark,” is all he’d said, wryly, and Mark had taken a look at Dork - he still couldn't get used to that horrifying name and now the dragon refused to answer to anything else - now roughly the size of large wolf and starting to cough up balls of flame and had nodded. His family was more than aware of the eccentricity of Donghyuck’s but that didn’t mean they’d put up with a fire-breathing, smoke-snorting, belly-clawing-in-the-excuse-of-kneading, dragon for two weeks.
He called Donghyuck several times over the break, with the excuse of checking up on the dragon, never admitting out loud - or to himself, for that matter - that he missed him.
“What’s wrong?” Was the first thing Donghyuck said when he picked up, three days before Christmas.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Mark says, worried. “Why? Is something wrong there?”
Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “You’ve never called me this much before.” He says suspiciously and before Mark can respond, from across the screen he hears a loud crash and Donghyuck curses. “Hold on one second,” he snaps, putting the phone down and moving away. Mark sits waiting, and he can hear faintly, Donghyuck yelling Dork’s name and a disgruntled roar in response. “I’m back.” Donghyuck says, breathlessly, and when he puts the phone back up to his face, Mark can see soot smudged across his face.
“Dork, uh, doesn’t seem to be settling well,” Mark says cautiously and Donghyuck huffs crossly.
“He’s acting out,” he says throwing a nasty look to the side. “Apparently, you hold some weird authority over him and now that you’re away, he’s decided to try burning half my clothes. Don’t think I’m feeding you anything nice tonight,” he snaps presumably to Dork. “You’re getting sewer rats if I have anything to do with it.”
“Oh.” Mark tries to process this information and all he comes up with is a weird sense of pride. “Well, I’ve had a lot of practice,” he says grinning at Donghyuck. “You weren’t exactly all rainbows and sunshine growing up either.”
Donghyuck glowers at him but the effect is lost as his face is pushed away and instead the screen is filled up with Dork’s large, scaly face knocking into the phone, teeth snapping at the camera. Donghyuck lets out a sound of pure frustration and yanks the phone away. “You idiot, he’s not actually here.” He snaps at Dork, holding the phone up above his head. Mark can’t help but letting out a loud laugh, the image of Donghyuck wrestling with a needy dragon amusing beyond belief. “You can solve advanced calculus in the middle of the night, but you can’t figure out how to work Facetime?” Dork lets out a snort, covering Donghyuck in a cloud of smoke before lunging at the phone again.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Is all Mark hears before there’s a clatter and the screen goes black.
Mark stares at his reflection in the phone’s screen, mildly concerned, before he shrugs. He’s sure Donghyuck would be able to handle it.
He returns to the apartment on New Year’s Eve and let’s himself in. The apartment looks more or less the same as it had before he’d left, but Mark was too well versed Donghyuck’s experiments and he carefully tests each floorboard with a toe, peers around for man eating plants and falling icicles before he steps in fully. Nothing on the surface seems to have changed. The couch is still there, now with the brand new addition of a few scorch marks, and the kitchen is still standing, but something, in his bones, feels off.
“I knew you weren’t dumb,” is all Donghyuck says when Mark tells him, a strange, proud look crossing his face.
“Thanks,” Mark says affronted, but it’s immediately lost when Donghyuck pulls him into a hug, surrounding him in a sharp wave of citrus.
“I missed you.” Donghyuck says leaning back and grinning sweetly at Mark.
“It sounded like you weren’t the only one,” is all Mark manages, thrown off by Donghyuck’s face so close to his.
Donghyuck’s smile dissolves into a frown. “Yeah, come on.” He says jerking his head to the back of their apartment, banishing Mark’s luggage to his room with a lazy flick of his nails- now painted turquoise. “I was wondering whether you’d feel the change or not, and you did.” He tosses Mark a proud smile over his shoulder. “Apparently spending a couple of years in close proximity around magic does heighten sensitivity. It’s interesting.” He trails off, muttering to himself, and Mark waits patiently as they come to a stop at the back of the hallway of their apartment. There was only a closet down here, which from all Mark remembers, housed old textbooks they hadn’t managed to sell, and just stuff they didn’t have space for anymore.
“Hyuck,” Mark prompts after watching Donghyuck produce a piece of paper out of nowhere and start scribbling on it, now talking to himself about the merits of experimentation of the effect of magic on human perception. “Why are we in front of our closet?”
Donghyuck jerks his head up, and his face clears. “Oh, right,” he says, stuffing the paper in the back of his pocket and waving his hand to open the door.
Mark expects to see the same old dingy closet he’s seen for the past three years. He expects to see shelves of junk, covered in dust. He expects to catch the old Monopoly board they’d shoved precariously to the top. What he does not expect to see is the entrance to a large cavern where the closet should be. Mark’s mouth falls open. The closet opens out to a large inky night sky, a lush grassy road leading to a cave a couple of meters away from the entrance. There’s snow covering everything except the path, and somehow it still feels wondrously warm. Stars twinkle above and in the distance Mark can hear the rushing of a river.
“What,” is all he manages as Donghyuck steps inside, the snow crusted grass coming up to his shins.
“Do you like it?” Donghyuck looks proud. “Took me five days to finish it all. There’s a couple of tweaks here and there, but I think, for the most part, it turned out like I wanted.”
“Hyuck,” Mark says hushed, taking a tentative step inside, the snow tickling his bare toes. It feels cooling and comforting at the same time. “This is amazing .”
Donghyuck looks bashful and shrugs, never one to be able to accept compliments, even when they were well deserved. “Well,” he says leading them further in and when Mark looks back he can still see their living room, in all its normality, standing out starkly against the lush landscape. The closet door sits in the middle of a giant snow covered field, the red door looking absurdly out of place. “Dork was getting too big and he needed somewhere to stay that wasn’t my bed.”
“You did this all by yourself?” Mark asks still in awe. He stoops to touch the snow; it’s light and powdery to the touch.
“Mmm,” Donghyuck agrees. “I passed out for 36 hours afterwards, but I think it was worth it.”
Before Mark can scold him for endangering himself like that, because he knows, more than anyone, how bad it is for Donghyuck to overspend himself like that, a dark shape comes thundering down the path and knocks into him. Mark lets out a garbled yell as he’s thrown into the snow back, a heavy weight making him feel like his chest is collapsing in on itself.
“Oh my god, get off him,” Donghyuck snaps and Mark struggles to refocus on Dork, front claws pinning him down to the ground, observing him with sharp golden eyes. “You’re a dragon, not a golden retriever, have some dignity!”
Dork snorts and leans down close to Mark’s face and Mark waits one heartbeat, two, three, before Dork nudges his chin with his nose and lets out a soft rumble, which if Mark had been pressed to describe, would sound very much like a purr.
“Hey,” Mark manages hoarsely, stroking Dork’s head. “You’ve gotten real big, haven’t you?”
“It’s all those sewer rats, they must have had radiation in them.” Donghyuck says disgruntled, finally managing to heave Dork off Mark. Dork now comes up to Donghyuck’s chest, and his wings are about the size of their coffee table, thin enough to see the veins weaving through them and his teeth are the size of knives. He’s grown up stunning, Mark realises, stunning and dangerous. He wonders if Donghyuck can see the same thing he can. If he realises that they’re running out of time. If he knows, like Mark does, deep down in his heart, that they’re going to have let Dork go soon.
~
It’s precisely a year after Mark had opened his apartment door to find Donghyuck with a dragon atop his head. One year of living with a dragon. Dork had grown massive, too big for even the cavern Donghyuck had made for him. And one year later, after Mark had come home to find Donghyuck crying softly, Dork hunched over him, large wings wrapped around him, head still in his lap as if he were the same size when Donghyuck had found him, after Donghyuck had blinked up at him, eyes shiny and red and had said with a wavery voice we have to let him go, don’t we? , Mark knows it’s time. They fly out to Nepal, Dork having been cajoled into a small, magicked cat carrier with many promises of sewer rats and oysters - Mark doesn’t know either - and make the slow, arduous trek up to the base of one of the mountains.
When they’re sure they’re deep enough in the mountains that no unsuspecting people will stumble upon them, Donghyuck lowers the carrier, and takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Mark bumps his shoulder with his own, a silent reassurance. Donghyuck unlatches the carrier and lets Dork out. It’s a fascinating sight, seeing Dork unfold into a massive dragon. He stand towering over their heads and when he takes a deep breath, Mark sees his ears perk up, his eyes widen.
Donghyuck doesn’t say anything as Dork takes a step, sniffing hard, tossing his head back and forth as if searching for something, wings starting to flap rapidly, then breaks off into a run and leaps. He soars into the air, and circles over their heads, letting out a triumphant roar, and belching a large plume of fire into the air before he’s gone. Nothing left behind but a trace of of smoke in the air, and the bright pink cat carrier, sitting at their feet.
Donghyuck stands there for the longest time, staring up at the sky, hand clutching Mark’s tight enough to hurt. Mark doesn’t say anything. He thinks if he opens his mouth, he’ll start sobbing and there’s no way he’s about to do so, not right now. Donghyuck takes a loud shuddering breath, prompting Mark to look at him.
“Okay,” he says, white air puffing out in between his breaths. His cheeks are ruddy, his eyes are glassy and filled with tears and his nose is bright pink and his bright red hair peeks out from the absurd pink beanie he’d insisted on buying discount from the airport shop. Mark still thinks he’s the most amazing person in the world. “Let’s go home.”