Work Text:
Besides the sheen of white light and yellow tinges against the back of his eyelids, warmth flattens down on his chest, shifts through his heartbeats enough to flutter the world to his eyes. In seconds, surfacing from the cacophony of quick stove clicks and slides of metal into the sink, his eyes shut once more. Under the break of the curtains wisping further away from the window sill, he chuckles at the sight under him, morning scratching his voice raw and awakening.
The blanket tents high above him for sunlight to delve into everything under the blanket, to his own son curling into his side. A giggle freeing into their morning, the urge to hug him closer only grows when Hajoon sits up to leverage a palm on Wonwoo’s stomach, to lean over and drop a wet kiss to his cheek.
“Happy Parents’ Day, Papa,” Hajoon greets him against his cheek, his lips lightly brushing under his eye. The words would fog up where the rim of his glasses would perch.
Wonwoo’s hands roam for Hajoon’s cheeks not too far from his own. Aside from the odd tendrils of cinnamon within their proximity, his hands falter for a split second when they run into the rough remnants of a scratch on his forehead. He frowns a slight at the memory from days ago, erases the frown completely when fingertips finally meet the soft strands of his hair, uncombed and matted into the milky way of his hair. He tilts Hajoon in his palms to the side, carries his face much closer until he rains down kisses on his cheek and over his forehead, ignoring the gasps for air that fills the room as Hajoon tries to curl himself away from the onslaught of affection.
Like all their other times, Wonwoo’s voice parades around in a threat behind the smile. Between every kiss, in that fraction of a second from the loss of contact, the words “Do you know I love you, Hajoon?” fill between those gasps for air, those wishes to seize these relentless attack of kisses. And when he does give into Hajoon’s wishes, when he finally catches his breath, Hajoon lazes across his chest, legs bent by his sides.
“Thank you for greeting me, Hajoon,” Wonwoo’s voice crackles for his first steady words of the day. As he pats Hajoon’s hair, questioning why little white crumbs fall into his fingertips then, he asks, “Where did Daddy go?”
A soothing rub of his cheek over his heart, Wonwoo stops playing with his hair to hug him closer, to pull the blanket over the both of them and hug him warmer than the first. “In the kitchen.”
“Oh, really?” his voice piques, but his heart succumbs under a couple of hard, profound beats. His son nods, scratching his eye with his fist. “Did you greet him, too?”
“I greeted him first,” he huffs, exhausted almost, even if the morning sun has just begun to call them away from the bed, “because he woke me up very, very, very, very early. The earliest I woke up ever.”
The exaggeration in his words strings a smile on his face, strings a heavy ache in his heart around and around.
He knows his son is too old for this, and he hears Mingyu’s voice in his head with a dip of a scolding to stop doing it sometime soon, that “Hajoon is getting too big for that.” But one reason why he refuses to drop this habit is because Hajoon’s cheek paints his shoulder in ease and comfort he needs at the end of his days. Or Hajoon’s breath relaxes against his neck as he tightens his arms around Wonwoo’s shoulders and, if he’s shaken morning completely out of his system, tightens his legs around his waist, as if he doesn’t want to let go the days go by and grow older.
The groan out his lips escapes unhindered as he hops Hajoon in his arms and starts their journey out of the bedroom and to the kitchen.
There, Wonwoo squints away from the sunlight bashing everywhere he tries to look at, to discern the blurs of kitchen granite and Hajoon’s short step-stool by the sink. He digs his face into Hajoon’s hair for a split second to hide from the sunlight brightening up the kitchen cabinets and striking stainless steels of the fridge more blinding than usual.
And there, he finally catches sight of Mingyu. Leaning down by the oven, slow to pull the pan out from the rack. A white streak of batter hangs from the tips of his side burn, perhaps more recent than the ones in Hajoon’s hair, but it’s too early for him to begin questioning how and why it clings onto there, of all places. A little too early, because he focuses more on the stronger wafts of cinnamon in the air, so sweet to his lungs. Warmth patches up his neck as Hajoon buries his face there, exhales coming by without a sparing thought of time. He would have sworn sleep has taken him once more, and he and Mingyu would have to accompany the moon longer than they usually would later tonight.
“I think the cookies are all done, Hajoon.” When Mingyu stands back up, pan secured under his oven mitt, the gentle smile on his face coaxes one out of Wonwoo’s own. Mingyu greets him first, just like every year, and it’s quiet, as if he, too, is convinced that Hajoon slips back to sleep under his arms, “Happy Parents’ Day, Wonwoo.”
But, just like all of their other times, Wonwoo musters enough energy, snaps a few strings around his heart to return a hollow “Happy Parents’ Day, Mingyu.”
He rakes in the entirety of Mingyu this morning—from the flour smears on his apron to the rough folds of his flannel up to his elbows, from the shock of his hair into these early hours to the red stamp of a forming bruise on his shin. He thinks he shouldn’t do so much for him on this day. But deep down, Wonwoo is aware that Mingyu is doing this also for Hajoon.
As if he eavesdrops into the questions in his mind, Mingyu finally offers an explanation, “Hajoon wanted to make cookies for today, so we woke up early.” Wonwoo’s smile flashes at the gesture, showcases just as fast as they draw back to a flat close.
“Are we going somewhere?” Hajoon reminds them that he’s up and awake under Wonwoo’s arms, cupping all his warm breath and unwavering voice into the shell of his ear. The quip question startles Wonwoo, tickles the giggle scratching out his throat, and it all makes Hajoon cup his own giggle to his ear. His legs swing back and forth by Wonwoo’s sides. “My classmates tell me they always go somewhere.”
At this, the smile disappears from Mingyu’s face, but his voice touches in sweet understanding to their ears. “Papa gets tired when he gets Parents’ Day off.” He pulls his apron off and sets it on the counter, comes over to pick their son off his arms. His arms refuse to let go for a second but once he does, Mingyu sets Hajoon to stand on the floor and crouches down to his height, bears straight into Hajoon’s eyes. “Hajoon, we don’t have to celebrate the day the same way your friends do.” Mingyu tilts his head one way. “Your friend goes somewhere with his family.” He tilts his head the other way. “Your other friend goes somewhere else with her family, but what do they all have in common?”
Hajoon scratches his temple in thought, and he and Mingyu wait in the contemplation of his question. “They’re all going to a place?”
Given this serious talk, Wonwoo steers his head to a different direction from them, sputters his laugh behind his hand at Mingyu’s attempt in explaining it all to Hajoon. He shouldn’t ruin such a moment, but the suppressed sound to the back of his throat still sneaks through. Mingyu’s face blanks out, lips knocked parted until he picks himself back up with a defeated chuckle. “You’re right about that, Hajoon. But another thing is that they’re spending the day together. Your friends aren’t going to the same place, and home can be our place.” Mingyu lifts his hands up, runs his thumbs over Hajoon’s palms halfway. His small palms try to gather as much of Mingyu’s hands as they can, fiddle with the ring at Mingyu’s pinky instead when they can’t grasp onto much. “We went out with your aunt a few days ago. We went to…” Mingyu’s eyes skate around in that facade of forgetting just so their son remembers, understands better, “Where did we go to?”
Hajoon’s pout draws in a tad deeper. “To the mall,” he grumbles.
“That mall is really big,” Mingyu gasps, “and you got a new dinosaur from there, too.” Like all their previous time-taking lectures with Hajoon, Hajoon’s eyes start their smooth descent in connecting two things together. Mingyu applies the faintest touch of his fingertip to his chin, gently knocking his head back up to look at him in the eyes. “Papa told me he gets tired from walking around the big mall then going to work the next day.” He combs back Hajoon’s hair this time, and Wonwoo watches the short spell of white rain sprinkling onto the kitchen floor. “It’s not that we don’t want you to go out and have fun. We just like to stay home for Parents’ Day. That’s all, Hajoon.”
“You promise it’s just that, Daddy?”
Mingyu takes a long nod into a promise. “I promise it’s just that.” Mingyu brushes Hajoon’s hair back once more, smaller white lumps falling through. “I’m sorry it’s not so fun for you.”
He crosses his arms behind his back, rocking a slight on his heels until his back knocks into a magnet on the refrigerator, Los Angeles misaligned. “It’s not not fun,” he shrugs and suspends his shoulders there for as long as his next thought. “It can be funner.”
“I know,” Mingyu says, “I know, but this is fun for me and your dad, like how the mall is fun for you. Can we spend the day like this?”
Hajoon’s eyes flit up in thought. “Maybe we can.”
Wonwoo’s ears pick up the quick patter of Hajoon’s steps around the linoleum, growing louder and louder besides the sound of his phone going off. Hajoon standing in front of him at the couch, his hand barely securing around the phone under his shorter fingers, his son holds out the screen to him with a tilt of his head.
“Who is this person, Papa?”
When the phone touches his hand, screen bright with the name, his fingertips nearly give away.
It’s the first time Jihoon has called him in so long. This one call is the first in years, nearing a decade, perhaps. But he knows this call isn’t to greet him the holiday or to jog some considerate conversation of recent happenings, curt catching-up.
He locks the call black on his phone and slides it on the coffee table in front of him, making sure not to hit any of Hajoon’s tiny dinosaur figurines. Bzzz, bzzz the only sounds between him and Hajoon. Hajoon’s eyes flicker up at him with a question knitted in his eyebrows, lingering after his phone stops marching closer to his pterodactyl.
But just as Wonwoo thinks they've earn some peace of mind, his phone revives with Jihoon’s name again. And just like the first time, he locks his phone and slides it back onto the coffee table, splitting the silence with an apology to Hajoon when it does hit the pterodactyl and scrambling to get his phone.
“It’s okay, Papa.” He crouches down, picks up the toy off the floor, and places it back where it’s fallen from. “Why do you keep it ringing?” sparks his voice up when Jihoon calls a third time, when he locks his phone a third time. This time, he powers his phone off.
“I don’t want to talk to him today,” and it’s not entirely a lie. “I-I just want to spend the day with you and Daddy, if that’s okay.”
“Is he bad?”
Wonwoo’s mind shutters through a flipbook of working alongside Jihoon for several months that made him fall in love with the job deep enough for years. Often several late nights in a row, Jihoon’s encouraging words ran sparse towards others but overwhelming towards Wonwoo. This, about how Wonwoo is able to do the job well. That, about how Wonwoo is the only one who can bring justice. But when he hesitates to shake his head upon the question, he thinks Hajoon might have caught on.
“So he is bad?” Before he can clear it up or think about changing the subject, he asks on, “Why do you have a bad person’s number?”
Why is Mingyu taking so long in the shower?
With no words, no dodging route to save him from these questions, all Wonwoo can come up with is to open his arms and wait for Hajoon to walk in, to not be afraid of him. Hajoon stands between his knees, backing up until the scent of his fruity shampoo hits him and he kisses the back of his hair. Not long after leaning his back into his chest, he begins to play with the tips of Wowoo’s fingers, something he might have inherited from Mingyu’s mindless habits.
Wonwoo lets out a heavy sigh, a little hopeless about escaping this subject tonight. “The guy is not bad. I used to work with him.”
His digits freeze altogether. “Why did you work with a bad guy?” A hesitant turn towards him, Wonwoo can’t read the downcast eyes, slight pout of his lips. Nothing can prepare his heart for the fear in Hajoon’s voice when he asks, “Are you a bad guy, Papa?”
His heart cracks at the question, and all he can do is clear his throat to smother the sound. “No-no, that’s not what I mean. The guy and I used to work together.” He swallows down his heartbeat, and he hates that the first time he opens up about his past to Hajoon has to be this way. “We worked together to find the bad guys.”
The pause between them weighs him down. The gears in Hajoon’s mind wind and wind. It’s not until Hajoon looks up at him from the tops of his eyes, never moving his head up, does he feel like he’s breathing again. “Does that mean you’re the good guy?”
Wonwoo doesn’t know if he can blame all of those children superhero movies for these types of questions. But the words strangle Wonwoo’s throat. Unsure of which parts of the truth to let into Hajoon’s judgement but for Hajoon, he simples out an “I guess you can say I am.” His eyes dart around in barely successful attempts to dry his tears, and he wishes that Mingyu can just walk in right now to cut this conversation off. But then he notes the slow flutter of Hajoon’s eyes, possibly his only way out of this without making his apprehensions too obvious. “Are you getting sleepy?”
Hajoon shakes his head with all his might, his sleepiness dragging through water. “Not anymore. What kind of bad people did you catch? Did you catch the doctor that hurt my arm?”
He can’t help but smirk at the memory of their last visit to the doctor’s office. A typical check-up that started off with seemingly harmless height and weight records, but it all ended with Mingyu holding Hajoon’s face away from the glint of the needle, with Wonwoo holding Hajoon on his lap and kissing his tears away. The truest words of “You’re so brave, Hajoon” from both him and Mingyu before, during, and after the needle pricked through his skin and drew a drop of blood. Even then, as Hajoon licked the chocolate chip ice cream dribbling from the waffle cone and onto his hand, a reward Mingyu brought up once they all exited the facility, Hajoon murmured about the pain, “the most biggest pain.”
“The doctor who hurt your arm is not a bad person. She gave you a shot so you won’t get sick later.” He lightly pinches Hajoon’s cheek, and he notes how Hajoon doesn’t pull back from him. Instead, his head lowers until his temple grazes his wrist, searching his palm to melt into. “If you didn’t get the injection, you could get sick and if you get sick, it will hurt more.” Hajoon shivers at his words, tips of his hair tickling his chin. “But no, I didn’t have to catch doctors.”
The last words set on his tongue bitter in half of a lie. Wonwoo has caught one doctor before.
“Or-or what about the people who steal crayons?”
Wonwoo muffles his snort behind his hand. “I’m sorry, Hajoon, but I didn’t catch your classmate. I think your teacher can catch them better than me.”
Hajoon’s yawn sails by the back of his palm when he pulls away. “Then what kind of people did you catch?”
He can’t steel himself from answering this question, but he thinks he can water down his past for Hajoon. He leans back onto the couch, cushions molding around him, and pats a tiny rhythm onto his chest. Hajoon crawls over to him, pressing the side of his face onto his shoulder once more, as he reclines deeper into the couch. “I caught the kind of people that made the world scary,” Wonwoo spells out as gently as he can with Hajoon’s ear so close to his lips.
Shrinking into his hold at these words, Hajoon concludes matter-of-factually through another spell of yawns, “So you are the good person.”
“Come on, let’s get you to sleep” earns out a whine as Hajoon rubs his eyes once more.
For the second time today, he gathers Hajoon back into his arms and lifts him up and to the bedroom. In a fit of clinginess, another thing he’s inherited from Mingyu, Wonwoo allows his arms to ache as he lowers himself onto the smaller bed, next to the one he and Mingyu sleep on, until Hajoon frees his hands from his shoulders. With Hajoon rolling onto his side, sliding his feet to the end of the bed for his blanket, he stands up, unfolds his blanket, and snaps it wide open. It spreads over until Hajoon tucks it under his neck. Even then, he fixes the blanket all around, ensuring it covers his feet and Hajoon isn’t sweating up a fever from under.
Tiptoeing between the world behind and the reality in front of his eyes, Wonwoo sits on the floor, pats his chest a goodnight before kissing his cheek a goodnight, until the smooth and languid blinks close to smooth and languid breaths.
In the living room, Wonwoo resettles at the couch with a pang in his heart, elbows digging into his knees and his face falling nowhere else safe besides his hands. His chest trembles, and it’s only then, with the whimper behind pinched lips, that he notices his chest burns to shove his cries quiet and unheard of in Hajoon’s ears.
The creak of the bathroom door open loosens the grip around his lungs, and a breath spills out. He listens for the footsteps, makes it halfway through the usual from the bathroom to the bedroom. But the footsteps ring louder in his ears one by one, instead of silencing into another creak of a door shut.
Hands clasped around his wrists, he clears up his thoughts to listen to Mingyu whisper, “What happened?” Hands slide up to his face, Mingyu pulling him closer to him, and all Wonwoo’s mind thinks about doing is to slip his hands to the sides of his face this time, blanketing his palms over Mingyu’s hands there like an anchor. “Wonwoo, can you talk to me?”
The air in the room isn’t enough for Wonwoo, but he waits until the world tells him it is. But when he starts, his voice can’t keep itself solid, falling away for Mingyu to pick them up and put his words together, “Jihoon called me, and Hajoon brought my phone to me. He kept calling and calling and I wasn’t answering and Hajoon asked me why I wasn’t answering.” A hard swallow down his throat, it opens up for a single cathartic breath that doesn’t last long enough. He registers the tears in his eyes, the chill along his cheeks and jaws for the ones already hitting the floor. “I-I told him what I used to do before and I just told him that I used to catch the bad guys, and-and-” something unsettles at the pit of his guts, discomfort of a storm home in his stomach, and all he can do is squeeze Mingyu’s arm to let go and let him run to the bathroom. An arm around his waist, he leans onto Mingyu’s side when the floor can’t keep still.
Knees burning onto the tiled floor, Wonwoo’s arm wipes all rough across his eyes as he wipes the tears off. “He kept asking me who’s the bad person, who’s the good person. He thinks I’m the good person, Mingyu.”
A hand comes up to pull his glasses off just as the curdling sound of his stomach lurching leaves his lips. His stomach squeezes and aches, swirling in the prospect of not giving in just yet. His throat burns tracks along its path, and his hands strain from the tight grip around the toilet rim. “I can’t be the good person here, Mingyu,” Wonwoo sobs.
Mingyu waits until the quick breaths pass before he says lowly, “His first parents weren’t good people.”
It’s a term that Mingyu coined when Wonwoo had Hajoon registered. Mingyu is the one who actually threw the idea into the air when they were unsure of what to call themselves during that odd period between when they realized they would take care of Hajoon from then on and when they realized what those parental duties really are. Real would be off-putting for both of them. Wonwoo and Mingyu have been feeding, clothing, supporting, raising Hajoon to the best of their abilities, resources, and circumstances since they found him. Genetic would be a mouthful and an eminent issue they have to bring up later on in their lives when Hajoon notices that the only trait he has in common with either him or Mingyu are the blacks of his hair. Perhaps Mingyu’s sun-kissed skin, too, from playing outside in school or helping Wonwoo tend the garden or washing their cars out front with Mingyu.
“But, Mingyu, I-” makes way for another twist of his stomach, acid up his throat- “I’m the reason why his first parents are gone.”
As the struggle for air pains his lungs, all he thinks about is how it was his purpose to track these wretched people, but why is it much easier to justify himself as the one who did wrong? He turned this infant into an orphan in less than a night with no memories of his actual parents.
“If his first parents were around, his dad would still pretend to be a doctor. His mom wouldn’t be any better, either. His first parents were the last people who should be parents.” A solid hand cradles his face and turns it to the side. A warm towel to his forehead, streaking over his cheeks, down the sides of his nose, hooking along his jaw, then to his lips and finally down his chin. Mingyu’s accustomed to the routine of wiping his face and the order he should do it. “You saved so many lives because you found them.”
A chill takes his body captive, freezes him to that secluded halo of trees in the middle of nowhere. He would do that sometimes on assignments tagged with bigger pay-outs, to arrive on the scene the night after the reward to check out the area. It was a silent murder, was all that Jihoon told him about it. Wonwoo only tracked down Hajoon’s first father and mother, and someone else held the responsibility of the rest in their hands.
Or almost the rest.
His stomach sets him back to the white porcelain of the toilet, and his throat coughs out acidic air at this point when he remembers the baby toys brimming a plastic hamper, the pale blue blanket waterfalling to the floor from the couch. He remembers never forgiving Jihoon for missing this piece of information as he recalled the outcome to Wonwoo.
The infant’s cries inside the empty home echo in his mind around this time of the year and still haunts him to this day. Hajoon’s first sounds to his ears are ones that follow him to sleep on some nights.
It took him the following night to trek that long journey to that run-down shack. An entire day without Hajoon being held close to a steady chest or fed with his small hands curling around an all-forgiving finger or a lullaby to scare out a nightmare.
He remembers cleaning themselves up, he and Mingyu. The task of tracking all these awful people under Jihoon’s management eventually grew into a punishment for Wonwoo because maybe one day, because he was only doing his job, someone will discover the truth and put a bounty above Wonwoo’s head. Wonwoo also surrendered every last pack of his cigarettes. And through the smokescreen, they cleared out Mingyu’s stashes of soju, beer, wine, flavored indulgences in the fridge, sold that wine cooler along the way to a good friend they no longer can put a finger on the right name for. Mingyu concluded that he couldn’t give up the kind of job he held and the duties he undertook through Jihoon after jumping around job to job. For Wonwoo’s sake, to meet in the middle, he continued in a less underground route to not revive any bad memories.
But for Wonwoo?
He left his job of years for a child he found, never entertained the idea of going into a new job during that first year with Hajoon because he never knew how little he actually knew about taking care of a child. He didn’t know how to break the news to his parents, either. At twenty-seven, how was he supposed to explain to his parents that he decided to take up the responsibility of raising a kid, let alone the child of the people he was assigned to track to kill?
Even then, years later, Wonwoo still can’t distance himself from these memories. All these years, Wonwoo still doesn’t know if the guilt in him became the parent of Hajoon or the compassion, the love he has for him, or if guilt just became the parent of love in him.
They could have left Hajoon’s first parents to Jihoon’s disposal or let the government do their bidding. Mingyu let the words about stopping future crimes under Jihoon’s work, how much more of an evil Wonwoo eradicated engraining to his brain, but he never lets the thought come anywhere close to his heart, his own judgment.
If anything, robbing someone’s parents away is the only idea that his heart is willing to acknowledge and accept. Maybe Hajoon could have been the one good thing in his first parents’ lives and just maybe, Hajoon could have been their reason to quit their schemes and clean their own selves up.
Wonwoo doesn’t know.
But Mingyu does. Mingyu keeps this conversation as a routine between them at least once every Parents’ Day or the days skirting around the holiday.
“Wonwoo,” speaks out to him like a dream too forgiving for what he has done. His eyes ache to glance up and towards him that even the dimmed bathroom lights send his temples pounding into a migraine. “His first parents had so many chances to stop, but they never took it. Who knows how many people you’ve saved because you found them?”
“I really don’t know, Mingyu,” he rasps out.
Did I really help anyone?
“Who brought Hajoon home right after finding him? Who decided to be Hajoon’s parent because he had no one else?” Mingyu’s voice drops in urgency, in the urge to drill that idea into Wonwoo’s mind, and a thumb begins to run along his wrist in a soothing path. “Who took a long time to pick out Hajoon’s name? Who sings to Hajoon when he can’t sleep? Who teaches Hajoon that plants don’t need all the water in the bucket? Who helps Hajoon learn that it’s okay to cry?
“Who, Wonwoo? Who does all of that for Hajoon?”
“I-I-” Wonwoo’s voice exhausts himself, and he surrenders the task of talking altogether. He doesn’t know if irritation is gnawing his patience to a thin wire because Mingyu barrels him with a slew of questions or because each syllable slips like a bullet past his temples, because the moon waits for them to finally retire the day into mere memory or because Mingyu is right.
“We don’t know the exact number, but there’s definitely one life you saved.” Wonwoo wipes his tears with the back of his hand, and he can’t help but wear out the tension at his shoulders, the muscles at his wrists from gripping porcelain, to sink into the safe space of Mingyu’s chest. “Hajoon’s right, though. You’re a good person, Wonwoo.”
He closes his eyes. Mingyu’s heartbeat against his ear plays like a lullaby he doesn’t deserve.
So you are the good guy, Papa rings in his mind. You’re a good person, Wonwoo chases after their son’s voice.
Around and around, those two voices play a game in his mind.
____
Eight o’clock on the nightstand shakes him into sitting up. The sudden disorientation kicks the migraine back to his temples, and a groan slips through as he heels his palms to his eyes. He wonders when Mingyu canceled his alarm to dress Hajoon up and drive him to school. An arm secure around his waist, he turns down to Mingyu still lying under the sheets with him, curiosity quirking his eyebrow up.
Wonwoo reaches across to pull the sheets off his waist, an “Is Hajoon up already?” scarring down his throat, bile and words and all.
But the arm around his waist refuses to free him. “He’s in the bathroom” tapers off to the strain in Mingyu’s voice as he sits up, slides his arm around his waist to slip a palm over his instead. “Don’t worry about getting him ready, Wonwoo,” Mingyu assures him with a feather-touch of a kiss to his shoulder. He perches his chin at the slope. “I’ll take him to school today.” A kiss to the column of his neck, Wonwoo moves his head to the side, opens himself up more for Mingyu to place another on the same spot. “Stay in bed if you’re not up for it, okay?”
Somehow, like a shot into pitch black, Wonwoo wonders if Hajoon hates him.
“Okay,” Wonwoo breathes out. It might give him some time to gather himself before seeing Hajoon after he’s opened up too much.
While Mingyu gets up to help with Hajoon’s routine for school, he scans all around him on the bed before lying back down in the plush. The first thing he notes, once his eyes adjust to the sunlight from the pillows, is his pair of glasses at Mingyu’s side of the bed, how long since the last time he woke up with Mingyu before sending Hajoon off to school. In all honesty, his heart wishes it isn’t just for today.
The morning passes by in a haze. His hand tucked under his head, his eyes drawing the curtains sweeping the floor from the pillows, he listens to the voices of Hajoon and Mingyu as they count his notebooks in his backpack. Hajoon’s “One blue, one red” is disrupted by the ebbing urgency in Mingyu’s “Wait, where’s the green one?”
After footsteps around the hallway, “You have your lunch bag, right?”
“I’m holding it here, Daddy.” Wonwoo smiles into the pillows upon hearing this out of Hajoon.
“Okay, I wanted to make sure.”
But his smile melts away into the pillowcases the moment Hajoon’s voice wanes indecipherable under the clicks of the front door open, slides of slippers before heading out. All he hears afterwards is Mingyu explaining that “Papa’s feeling tired from yesterday.” An uneasy wordless veils their home until a gracious, “Do you still want to kiss him before you go?” strikes something in Wonwoo.
A quick shut of his eyes and turn over the bed so that his back builds a barrier from facing the door, facing Hajoon’s questions or expressions so soon, the play-pretend of sleeping in convinces Hajoon well-enough for the small lips to his wrist.
When the front door clicks back shut and Mingyu’s “Let me get your car seat from Papa’s car” rumbles into whirring of the engine and crunching of the sidewalk out the driveway, Wonwoo opens his eyes, ices down a deep inhale. But rather than watching the curtains dance, he pushes himself over to Mingyu’s side of the bed. Saving up the last patches of warmth Mingyu leaves behind, his eyes refuse to leave Hajoon’s bed not too far from the edge of their own.
Two pillows at the end of the bed, fluffed to the center. There’s the triceratops plushy sitting in the valley between two pillows. At the end of the bed, his blanket is folded neatly.
It was Mingyu who carried the patience to teach him how to fix his bed in the morning, to build that habit in him of doing so before heading out of their bedroom.
It was also Mingyu who opened Hajoon up to these gestures of affection. From gentle kisses of perked lips or rubbing noses and quiet embraces to reassuring holds of hands. Excited arms tight around his waist, sweaty palms tight in joy or exhilaration or succumbing to the nerves with no twitch of letting go, giggling that soothes the riot of heartbeats down. Soft dusting of fringe away, lying next to one another in the silence, or the drawing fingertip over his chest asleep.
Mingyu fills in all the gaps that Wonwoo lacks in. He wonders if Mingyu understands that.
“You had to...I didn’t think you would stay with me when I brought Hajoon home,” Wonwoo confesses when Mingyu slips back into bed with him. “Did I ever tell you that?”
Mingyu smiles over the shake of his head, sinking the side of his face into the pillow deeper until one corner of his canines disappears. “I didn’t like the idea at first. But I really wanted to love Hajoon after seeing how much he made you happy.”
“Do you remember what you told me last night?” The uncertainty in his words scatters his voice apart one by one. “When you were asking me who did those things for Hajoon?” Mingyu’s eyes tread up to his slowly. “You do a lot for Hajoon, too, Mingyu. It’s not just me.”
“But I’m aware of that.” Mingyu’s smile fades off. “I don’t know if you know how much you do for him, and I wanted to remind you.”
His mind runs on blank slates. He thinks maybe he can start thinking about it sometime in the future, conjure up a list so that Mingyu doesn’t have to carry the burden of doing so, but he continues to run into a blank.
With his stomach growling so hollow that it hurts, his migraine refusing to move anywhere outside of his body, and his throat burning dry, it’s a smart move by Mingyu to call in for him. Mingyu shushes the guilt out of him with a peck to his forehead and to his lips when he learns that he’s called himself in from work, too.
“I needed this, too,” Mingyu hushes the whole world down with these words.
And somehow, it feels like it’s been more than a day since this morning and yesterday night.
By the time noon hits their day, they find themselves at the dining table. His headache lifts the weight off of him within a few bites of the breakfast Mingyu saved for him and a couple gulps of water. But his eyes bear a screen of a sting everywhere they yearn to wander to. When he voices this aloud, he listens to the rumble of the dining chair and the ziiip of the blinds close, the woosh of the curtains in their homes shut.
“I think doing that just makes me want to sleep more,” Wonwoo jokes as they wash the dishes from the breakfast of Mingyu and Hajoon first before his late own.
Mingyu’s head tilts upwards towards the small band of light through the blinds in front of them. “What’s stopping you from sleeping in?”
No mental energy can refute Mingyu’s point. He slips into bed after every bowl and cup line up the drying rack, and Mingyu accompanies him soon after with quiet kisses along his neck.
The aftermath of last night continues to rob him of reaching out for affection, for craving it at all. He would return each one of mingyu’s kisses, but all that his energy manages to pick up is to lie flat on his back and accept each and every one of them. Any other time, he would trade giggles between each other’s lips, maybe sneak a palm under Mingyu’s shirt with an excuse of sapping some of his body heat, but not now.
Something in Mingyu clicks within seconds. His lips halt their travels on his neck, the hook of his jaw, and Mingyu settles back on his side of the bed. But even with this retreat, he keeps an arm draped over his waist.
“Your parents called me yesterday. They told me they tried calling you yesterday,” Mingyu tells him with a small voice. Wonwoo only lets the small world of their bedroom listen to a small sigh, long-lost grazes of skin as he brings a hand to Mingyu’s wrist by his navel. “They bought Hajoon a jacket and wanted to come over to give it to him.” Mingyu’s eyes, despite in this sun-shielded afternoon, are easy to trace out. “I told them Jihoon called, so tomorrow might be a better day to come by.” Wonwoo nods his head once. “Is tomorrow okay for you?” He nods his head again.
“Did your parents call you yesterday, too?” Wonwoo asks weakly, and they dismiss the exhausted crack of his voice.
Mingyu’s body snaps rigid beside him, fingertips digging into his hip for a moment. “They did early in the morning. They wanted to come over, too, but…”
Wonwoo turns over this time to decipher what Mingyu can’t say, to dig up the hesitation from his features or a reason why he can’t continue that sentence in one go. He loves Mingyu’s parents, close to his own but not quite, but maybe something has come up between Mingyu and his parents that requires some hours, maybe days, before it can be brought up to Wonwoo. “But?”
“They asked me again when we’re getting married,” comes out as a pathetic joke, one performed too many times that the punchline is lost in their speculations of why they even bother to ask anymore.
But it’s true that he and Mingyu aren’t married.
They have everything that their parents want out of their sons, except for that one thing. They have a kid, technically, yes, and a home that their little family can call their own, but they still have their first rings on their pinkies from not long after they started dating. They haven’t replaced their rings for a bigger stone or a thicker band nor have they, at the bare minimum, moved their rings just one digit over. There have been times when Hajoon would play with his hand or Mingyu’s hand and ask why the ring rests on their pinky finger, rather than on the ring finger, like what he catches on from the movies and show the three of them watch together.
Deep down, Wonwoo thinks he and Mingyu have been through too much together in the years they’ve known each other that the thought of marriage has fell through the cracks of their plans together. The idea of marriage comes up time and time again, only to fall back into the waters. Instead of washing away with the current, the idea of marriage sinks to the bottom and lets everything else in their lives rush about it, dulling it out.
All the times where he and Mingyu have told each other “Let’s get married today” runs to the ground. Everything surrounding the better and the worse, in sickness and in health, and every extreme in between that his years of being with Mingyu entails, he can’t conjure up a single one of them without Mingyu somewhere in the picture. Mingyu is always blurred off in the background or crystal clear beyond his glasses’ needs, just always somewhere within his periphery.
The thought losing Mingyu’s eyes on him, all that comes out of Wonwoo’s lips is a quiet, “Aren’t we already?” that flutters his heart to speak.
Mingyu shifts onto his side and back to him, eyes probing for something he’s unsure of, before he breaks into a smile. A slide of a palm up Wonwoo’s neck, he finally lets himself let go. He delves more into the touch Mingyu holds on him. He lets Mingyu’s smile, too, hold onto his own.
“It’s been a while” are Mingyu’s first words long after they’ve settled into the bathtub, Wonwoo leaning back against the tiled wall and Mingyu reclining onto his chest. With Wonwoo’s legs bent around him, knees poking above the water, Mingyu steals this chance to draw shapes on his kneecap.
They’ve moved Hajoon’s small pail of shower markers from the bathtub and to the sink. Beyond the bathtub, displayed on the toilet cover, he can’t believe they have never bothered to move or donate Hajoon’s toy boat there after all these years, more as decoration at this point than an actual toy. His parents’ voice comes to mind, his mother’s cooing revelation that “Hajoon still likes to play with toys in the bathtub?” to his father’s “We can buy him a bigger one.”
Wonwoo leans over, tangles a gentle kiss to the back of Mingyu’s hair. “I can’t remember the last time we did this.”
“It’s been too long.” He leans back into his lips, and Wonwoo drops a second one there. “Since you started working at the orphanage, maybe.”
“You’ve been working much longer than that, though.” The tension at Mingyu’s shoulders and arms fall lax against him, the comfort of his weight growing the closer he comes. “I’ll wash your hair,” Wonwoo offers softly. Mingyu hums and sits up a slight, muscles drawing definite lines on his back. But he shakes his head, palms smoothing down his shoulders. “No, stay like this,” and Mingyu sinks back into him.
He feels like he’s twenty-three again, Mingyu twenty-two. Back when they haven’t formed the iron heart to stomach all the people they were assigned to look for, the kinds of people they would learn that roam the earth.
Out of his reverie, a question startles the calm. “Do you miss how it used to be?”
Mingyu hums, and Wonwoo imagines him peering up in thought, lips pouted in the reminiscence, as if their bathroom ceiling has the answer somewhere beneath the paint. “I wouldn’t change our life right now. I only wish there were more hours in a day so I can spend more time with you and Hajoon.” Wonwoo smiles at his answer, how his answer stands not far off from his own. “What about you? Do you miss how it was before?”
Wonwoo shakes his head. “I like our life right now, too. But there are some things I just don’t want to go back to.”
Mingyu’s voice is a grave tone of deep and jaded when he affirms, “Smoking?”
“Yeah,” barely forms out of his lips. “It was...hard to give up, but I’d never go back.”
“Those cranky first months were worth it,” Mingyu attempts to joke. “I’m glad Hajoon won’t remember them.”
“You gave up drinking,” he reminds him of that period of their lives together. “That’s something.”
Mingyu cards his digits through his hair harshly, flaring down an exhale until his palm lifts off from his scalp. “It’s something I’m not proud of starting.”
Just then, Mingyu tenses up under his arms, along his legs, up his chest. As much as Mingyu assures him that he’s open with talking about this part of his past, his bad drinking habits, it still drags pain into his voice to do so, clawing back the days into repeating them in his present, his future. And he’s sat through these kind of memories with Mingyu before, countless times with or without Hajoon roaming or dozing off around in their home.
And like his past talks, he gives Mingyu time to contemplate it, to ruminate in the memories, and hopefully put their past and present side-by-side. He cups water in his two palms and brings them up to Mingyu’s head with a quiet warning of rinsing his hair. Mingyu’s stiff nod allows the shampoo bubbles to wash away and once they do, he sits up, pushes Mingyu up along the way with the leverage of his chest. Slowly, testing the waters—if they will suddenly strike against the bathtub walls or if Mingyu will pull the plug and call this conversation done—Wonwoo slips his arms around his waist. His hand searches for his heartbeat and when the solid drumming touches his fingertips, he covers his heart with the center of his palm.
“I’m not proud of it, Wonwoo,” his voice racks in the nerves, drowns in what used to be, and the uncertainty, the sudden strike of the past travels from the palm of his hand, through every breath out Mingyu’s lips, all the way to his shoulder blade where the side of his face inclines. “I feel so-so bad with how I treated Hajoon in the beginning, and I think withdrawal just made everything worse.” Mingyu’s arms move until he covers Wonwoo’s hand with his trembling palm, as if both of them agree to protect his heart. “I wanted to quit to be healthy but later on, I wanted to quit for Hajoon.”
Wonwoo lifts a kiss to the back of his shoulder. “And you did, Mingyu.”
“Did I tell you about my boss lately? He keeps asking me to go out for drinks, but I can’t. I don’t want to.” Mingyu shakes his head furiously, conviction straining his neck soon if he doesn’t stop. “Not again.”
He smirks into the warm skin of Mingyu’s shoulder. “Your boss can fuck off.”
He can hear Mingyu’s own smirk when he remarks, “It’s been a while since you last swore.”
“I told myself not to around Hajoon. At least, not yet.”
“That’s valid.” Mingyu nods a couple shallow of times. “It enhances vocabulary.”
Wonwoo doesn’t know what it is with his point, but a laugh bubbles into the bottom pit of his chest until it blends in with Mingyu’s own. The ache in his temples and his eyes, this long-lost and almost-forgotten closeness from Mingyu finally returning to his senses, he would have easily convinced himself that it’s the first time in a long time since he last laughed like this. But in reality, the last time their stomachs ache this way is just yesterday, over glasses of milk and homemade cookies.
He brings Mingyu closer to him, sitting in the silence after their fair share of laughter, calming their breaths. After a while, Mingyu’s sniff echoes between the bathroom walls, and he brings a hand up, patience guiding that exhale out. His arms taut over his and all at once, as if waking up from a dream too good to be their reality, Mingyu’s propping his arms on the sides of the bathtub, ready to step out.
But he holds him tighter, quiet kisses along his shoulder and the back of his neck, until the water slows beneath the bathtub walls and no longer cracks in the sudden intrusion of leaving.
“If how you treated Hajoon in the past makes you feel bad, Mingyu,” Wonwoo treads this out carefully, “I think it just means you’ve changed.”
A moment with the words out in the air, the knot at his shoulders, the taut arms ebb away. He uncurls his fists from the side, running his thumb along Wonwoo’s wrists by his chest instead, drops falling one by one into the bathtub not from Mingyu’s hair.
“Papa!”
Mingyu’s suggestion of occupying his mind with something else while he picks up Hajoon from school works for them this afternoon. Before his eyes dart away, he takes one last gloss over the work he should have done today if he were to come in, leafing over applications fora new teacher at the local orphanage.
He spins around in his chair at his desk. When Hajoon walks in, his collared shirt still points to sharp corners and his black pants tuck under his heels like their main purpose is to sweep the floor clean of debris and crumbs. Backpack still strapped on and lunchbag in one hand, as Hajoon runs up to him, he notes the part in his hair is a little off today, leaning more even than the obvious part of how he usually styles. But despite the discrepancy of the routine, he mentally commends Mingyu for getting this close to the way he combs and gels Hajoon’s hair, especially when Mingyu’s shift calls him into the office and long-gone from the their home before either he or their son wake up for the day.
“I got this back today.” Hajoon tugs his attention towards the sheet of paper in his other hand, waving it above his head until he crashes into Wonwoo’s embrace.
As he helps pull Hajoon’s backpack off of him and places his lunchbag on the floor, Mingyu comes by the door but without a step further inside. He wonders if Mingyu knows what this assignment is all about, if Hajoon’s already allowed Mingyu a peek into the paper he’s about to show him right now. Mingyu stuffs his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, leaning against the doorframe with a tiny yet suspicious lift of his lips up.
He waits for Hajoon to hand the paper to him and when the paper perches at his hands, Wonwoo first takes in the red stamp of Spiderman’s symbol next to the Jeon Hajoon.
A fill-in-the-blank assignment, the first line steals Wonwoo’s breath, nearly chokes him.
My favorite superhero is my Papa.
The second his eyes begin to burn, he doesn’t stop the tears from pricking his eyes in front of Hajoon’s blatant sight. He reads the first line of his writing assignment over and over again, tattooing this short string of words into the truth, reviving the need to wipe his ears to read the next word over and over again.
My favorite superhero is my Papa because my Papa is a good person.
My favorite superhero is my Papa because my Papa fights bad peeple.
My favorite superhero is my Papa because my Papa wants no more scary things.
The jingle of keys shift his eyes from the page and Hajoon’s eyes to Mingyu, to the creak of the floor when he lifts himself off the doorframe and ready to let either him or Hajoon for both of them into his arms.
But Wonwoo looks back to Hajoon in the eyes, to the worry cascading the tears there. Instead of Mingyu opening his arms this time, Wonwoo spreads out his own arms towards Hajoon. Not a fraction of a thought passes when Hajoon comes closer, arms around his waist and his face leaning into his shoulder.
For once, something in his heart opens up.
And for once, he thinks it’s something he can remind himself true.