Three cups of weak tea later and Renjun returns to his sketchbook. His legs tingle from sitting in the same position for far too long, but he doesn't want to go back to the dorms. He texts his friends to let them know he'll be staying overnight. The nurse had narrowed her eyes at him before finally relenting, so he unpacked his art supplies and got to work, making it clear he has no intentions of leaving Mark's side.

He blends coloured pencils and erases extra sketch lines that don't satisfy him, all while talking to Mark. He describes the cat videos Jeno sends. He tries to explain the new video game update Chenle phones to tell him about. He walks Mark through the process of his art. Renjun draws the arch of ivy and roses from the park, near the café where the elder was working. The photo from the day they ate there, and from the day Mark's breath was snatched from him. But Renjun prefers to remember the pretty flowers. He's drawing the happy memories, the fairy-tale version of their story.

And turn it into a fairy-tale he does. He picks their favourite photos of their walks and exaggerates the colours, humming mindless tunes to himself and telling Mark why he loves each photo.

"We saw a stray cat, didn't we? Her ginger fur was so beautiful and soft," Renjun says. "Then you bought some food from the store, didn't you?" He giggles at the memory, but it could just be exhaustion pulling the strings, edging him closer to delirious insanity as he pencils the date in the corner of the page.

They turn into fairies that explore every path of their fantastical world together, side by side, content to share each other's company and make the most of it. Renjun has golden wings to match his dust. It was a natural decision, a choice he didn't think too hard about, but he finds himself pausing when he goes to add colour to Mark's wings. He doesn't know what colour to choose.

The vial around Mark's neck is now nowhere to be found.

He knows the dust would still be grey, but even that seems better than no dust at all.

His composure when he stands and places the sketchbook on the chair doesn't match the garbled scream he lets out as soon as he's locked inside a toilet cubicle. He muffles his cries with a trembling hand and bangs his forehead against the wall as though it could knock out the horrible thoughts and leave him with only happy memories. He has to clutch the edge of the sink to stop his knees from buckling, then he splashes a shivering combination of hot and cold water on his face. The hot tap burns his skin. The cold tap also burns his skin, then makes him tremble. Guilt drags him back to Mark's room and kicks his gut. He presses the button by Mark's bed, and two nurses come running in a minute later.

One gets to work fluffing up Mark's pillows and straightening the sheets while the other checks him over, fiddling with the machines and tubing and frowning at the clipboard.

"Did something happen? What's the matter? Why did you call?" There are so many questions, and Renjun only gasps, toes curling off the edge of the chair. He barely even registers the clatter of coloured pencils hitting the floor, not until a nurse bends down to pick them all up. She doesn't put them back in the tin in rainbow order. Renjun scratches his palms and rocks back and forth.

The nurses try to console him only when they're convinced Mark is still stable. His unsteady hand nearly crushes the paper cup of water he's given, and it must have something in it because his heart slows and his breathing evens out and world goes fuzzy at the edges. Peace, but not quite. Like a transparent blanket has been thrown over his head and some cheap headphones placed over his ears; he can still hear the commotion and see his sick soulmate, but it doesn't matter so much. He can't really feel the pencil in his hand when he starts to write, either. The hours pass, he sharpens his pencil four times and fills fifteen pages with words he wouldn't be able to recite if asked. But ignorance is bliss, he finds.

It's also bliss to just sit and watch Mark breathe. The predictable flow of his chest, up and down, up and down, like waves rolling onto a shore, is comforting, and so is the steady beep of the heart monitor. Renjun watches the ECG trace for a while, the corners of his vision blurred as his head grows heavy.

He dreams of soaring through the sky with Mark.

He's roused awake by a cough.

He frowns and rubs sleep from his eyes, a soft groan escaping his dry throat before he looks around the room. His heart leaps in fear, then he remembers everything when the beeping intrudes the emptiness of his head, bringing a whole army of thoughts with it.

It's got faster, too. It's definitely faster. He's not sure that's what it's meant to sound like. But he's not a doctor.

With bleary eyes, Renjun squints at Mark as best he can in the dim light. It must not be morning yet, which would explain his difficulty in waking up. He guesses he was asleep for two or three hours at most.

There's another cough, this time accompanied by the rustle of bedsheets.

"Mark?" Renjun whispers his name through the dark and rubs his eyes again.

He can't get ahead of himself. It must be a cruel trick. Maybe he's still dreaming.

The movement stops. Renjun flicks on the bedside lamp and sits up straight, doing his best to calm the racing of his heart by placing a palm to his chest. It doesn't work, and he frowns harder, repeats Mark's name a little louder.

Mark's eyelids flutter ever so slightly, eyelashes brushing the tops of his cheeks so briefly it could be imagined. Then his forehead creases into a frown and his lips part, only to close again in time with a faint groan of pain.

The heart monitor picks up in a frenzy, Mark's head rolls left to face away from Renjun, and Renjun bites down on his thumb.

A troop of four nurses enters this time, crowding around the bed and barking orders at each other. Renjun tries to peer at his boyfriend and make sure it's really happening, that Mark is really awake and not just dying all over again, but he's guided back to his seat and told to give them space to work. He's too shocked to argue. He stares at the heart monitor and tries to block out the awful beeps all at the same time.

"Why don't you follow me, honey? Just for a moment, then you can come back and see him," a nurse addresses Renjun, hand extended, and Renjun follows her into the corridor. They walk through the maze of white walls and depressing posters.

"As I'm sure you know, we put Mr Lee into an induced coma while his heart stabilised, and while his body got used to the new treatment. Everything has gone smoothly and he's recovering as he should be, so we didn't top up the drugs yesterday and he is now coming back to us," the nurse explains. It's the first one, with the same bright smile even though it's three in the morning now. She smells of sugar and hope.

"He's awake?"

"Not quite." The nurse pats his shoulder and Renjun ducks his head. He's so tired he can't sit up straight, but he can't fall asleep now. "It'll take at least a few days to fully come round. Maybe a week to be sat up and talking. But I just wanted to warn you that he may be a little confused or agitated. He might not recognise you right away. Don't let that upset you, my dear. Alright? Once he's fully awake he'll be right back to his old self."

"He's awake?" Renjun doesn't even realise he's repeating the same question. The nurse smiles, eyes sad, and leads him back to the hospital room.

The ventilator is gone from Mark's face and a nurse holds a tissue to his cracked lips, the red spots of blood making his skin appear even paler. But Mark still doesn't move. If it weren't for the heart monitor, anyone would think him dead.

But Renjun knows he's awake. He can feel it in his heart: a tingle, a gentle singing that coaxes optimism from the depths of his emotions. Once the nurses leave and they're alone, Renjun calls his name again. A nurse will come every hour from now on, so he wants to make the most of their uninterrupted time together, even if the conversation is still only one-sided.

"Mark." Renjun drags the chair closer, but still doesn't hold his boyfriend's hand just in case. "Mark..." Softer this time, as though making the most of every letter, as though afraid any letter could crack, the entire name gone. "Hello. Hi. It's Renjun." Quiet, while he clears his head. "How are you feeling?"

He takes the frown as a response and as a sign to keep going. Pushing through the needles in his throat, Renjun swallows and rubs his eyes and doesn't let his demeanour drop; he doesn't want Mark to wake up and be greeted by tears.

"It's been sunnier these days. It's dark now, though." Renjun gets up on wobbly legs to open the curtains. The sky is clear, an endless stage for the stars to twinkle and for the moon to show off, glowing brighter than ever. It's only reflected sunlight – Renjun knows that – but he takes it as a sign that the days to come will be brighter, too. "You'd love to see the moon, Mark. It's so round and bright. Like your eyes," he says, then sits back down, crosses his ankles and watches Mark's eyelashes flutter once more. "I miss your eyes. Fuck, I... I've missed you, Mark. It's like I didn't... I didn't fully appreciate you until you were gone. I scoffed at the idea of soulmates, but I think it's actually kind of beautiful."

Thumb pressed to the corner of his eye, Renjun catches himself just on the edge before he can tumble over and fall and drown in tears all over again. "Jeno says you look like a cat. I drew you a pet cat. Ginger, like the stray we found. Maybe it's a magic cat, since you're a fairy in my drawings." He finds the most recent page of his sketchbook and smiles, satisfied with his work so far. It's a breath of fresh air to appreciate his own work without any criticism. "A bit of magic would be nice, don't you think?"

Mark's right hand twitches, his thumb curling towards his palm, before it relaxes in time with a tiny puff of breath leaving his lips. The heart monitor skips a beat, and so does Renjun's, before it all settles back into a steady rhythm. Mark doesn't seem to be phased by it, so Renjun carries on. He's talking to distract himself, really.

"This is like magic, though. I think so, at least," Renjun muses. He rolls his dust bottle between his forefinger and thumb, sketchbook balancing on his lap, and tries to picture what colour Mark's would be, if he had one. "I think you'd look cute with blue wings. A sweet sky blue."

Renjun takes five minutes to sort his pencils back into their original order, listing off the colour names as he goes, then finds the closest two shades of blue, blends them together in the corner of the page until he reaches the perfect combination and finally adds colour to Mark's fairy wings. As blue as the sky, with swirls of white like wisps of clouds.

A nurse knocks on the door before entering. He almost doesn't look old enough to be in the job, but his smile settles the trace of anxiety in Renjun's gut while he checks Mark's feeding tube and refreshes the IV. Mark whines a little at being disturbed and Renjun can't quite look, queasy from the needles.

"Is there anything I can get you?" The nurse finally turns to Renjun.

"I'm alright. Thanks." He nods, then looks back at Mark.

The nurse lingers to fill out the details on the clipboard at the end of Mark's bed before addressing Renjun again. "You can hold his hand, if you like. He's in much better condition than he was when he came in, but appears to be dozing on and off at the moment so I'm not sure how much of his surroundings he's registered. And the medicine should be helping his heart a great deal. By the end of the month, we can try for some dust if he keeps improving."

Renjun blinks. "I'm sorry?"

The nurse laughs, a short chuckle of understanding, and replaces the clipboard. "You can hold his hand, let him know you're there. He's strong enough now." His eyes drop to the dust around Renjun's neck and Renjun's eyes drop to Mark's right hand.

Alone together again, Renjun waits a few minutes before slowly slotting his fingers between Mark's, intertwining them as though Mark were made of glass. A buzz hits him, but this time it doesn't hurt. It spreads through his chest and fills him with joy and bliss and love that immediately relax every muscle in his body, and he knows this is how it's supposed to feel. Mark is warm and familiar, and Renjun doesn't know how he could even begin to write down the emotions he experiences when his soulmate's hand is finally clasped in his own. Mark's nails are clipped short, a little uneven in places, and the pads of his fingers are tough from playing guitar long into the night. His fingers are pale and thin, but they're warm.

Renjun doesn't speak much more. He simply rubs his thumb across the back of Mark's hand, like Mark would do to him, until he falls back asleep.

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Happy new year everyone! I wish you many blessings and love and happiness for 2023 ♥ I hope you enjoy the final update of the year x