my favorite word is fatigue

Title: midnight highway Author: @fatiquen Series: 2am series For: Melly and Kim Fandom: none Inspired by: GOT7 Mark Based on: >>2am series<<

The silence is comfortable and you allow the fatigue to eat you up; you feel your limbs get heavier and heavier. A content sigh rolls over your lips – silent enough not to wake John in the backseat, but loud enough that Mark peeks over quickly.

“You okay?” he asks, and for once you can say that you are not playing games as you nod.

The street lights, at least the ones which are not broken, light up the pale man’s face. They also shine their light onto the highway that is stretching out before you and you know that it’s barely two hours until you have to say Goodbye to the man next to you who means so much to you and to the man sprawled out behind you who means slightly less, but still a lot, to you. Your heart gets heavy at that thought and you curl yourself up a bit more, deeper into the jacket that Mark gave you, that smells so much like him. Inhaling the scent as quietly as possible, you look out of the window and you see darkness and nothing but darkness.

Mark shifts next to you, finding a more comfortable position behind the steering wheel. He quickly looks back to John, who is completely passed out over the backseat, and the light snores of the dark haired man provide a nice background sound.

“He seems pretty knocked out”, Mark says and smiles his wonderful smile that shines oh so bright even in the dark night.

You hum in agreement but say nothing, too focused on the thought that as soon as the car stops in front of your house, you will enter your lonely apartment and not see these two again for a pretty long time. You feel selfish, but you wish for something to happen, just enough to give you more time with Mark and you look up to an outstanding bright star while you think that.

And your wish gets fulfilled. Hardly half an hour later you sit on the roof of the old Chevy, Mark stretched out next to you, his long legs dangling off the side. You take a sip of the drugstore wine in your hand and enjoy the fresh 1am breeze on your skin and the feeling of Marks hair between your fingers.

Mark had found a gas station, closed and dark and quiet, and had decided that it was time for a talk.

“You are so quite”, he remarks, gently taking the bottle out of your hand and taking a sip too. “What are you thinking about?”

And telling him is hard, because how do you tell someone you love them without telling them that what they will do in just a few hours will break your heart? How do you tell them that they are everything for you without giving them the power to hurt you? But you do, after staring at him for what felt like days, unsure of how to start, but you do.

“I’m going to miss you”, you say and let your hand glide through his blonde locks, “And I’m going to be scared.” You keep silent for a minute, but you carry on after fighting back tears. “How am I supposed to keep calm when my two best friends leave me behind to fight for our country? So many come back and they are not the same anymore because they have seen some pretty fucked up shit.”

And there are the tears, and they spill like ink and soon your cheeks are wet and the wine in your hand is long forgotten because your heart aches and there’s no way to calm it.

Mark sits up and pulls you into his lap, his masculine scent surrounding you and he pulls you so close that your ribs crack, but you don’t want him to let go, you can’t let him go yourself. You bury your fingers in his shirt, scared he might vanish when you let go and your sobs break through the night and the black fabric of his sweater catches your tears. He presses you against himself, resting his hand in your hair, trying to avoid the crown of rose thorns tangled in your locks, mumbling sweet nothings and slowly rocking you from side to side to calm you down.

“I’m sorry”, he whispers and his voice is so silent that you almost didn’t hear it and it is so sincere and broken and your heart aches even more.

“Promise me”, you sob, “Promise me, that you won’t forget me.” You pull away, just a tiny bit, just enough to see his face. A single blood drop, caused by one of the thorns digging into your forehead, makes its way down your face, mixes with a tear and leaves a pinkish path.

He is smiling again and that makes you feel a bit better. “I will think of you whenever I can. When I’m eating, while I’m cleaning, in the lonely, sleepless nights when I want nothing more than going home.”

 And you hope he kept his promise. There’s nothing you can think of as you place the thorn crown on his grave two months later, watching a tear fall onto your hand and mix with a bloody drop on your palm, caused by the thorns, and finally vanish in the fresh earth of his grave.