Prompt #8

He didn’t know it then, but he and that damn bench would be seeing a lot of each other.

The first time was when he was eight years old, waiting on that bench for his parents to pick him up after school. They never made it, he never saw them again.

The second was when he was ten. He’d become rebellious after two years of being shifted through different foster homes, so he ran away to the last thing he remembered before he lost everything. His foster parents eventually found him sitting on a bench at the park and brought him back home.

When he was fifteen he’d given his first kiss away on that bench to a girl who, when he was seventeen would break his heart, in the same spot, on the same bench.

By eighteen he had grown a lot. Graduated, went to college nearby. He still found himself taking lonely walks at night when he was stressed or restless, and every time he’d end up on that same bench.

When he was twenty, a sophomore in college, his life seemingly going nowhere, he found solace in that bench. There would be many hours spent sitting on the withering wood just thinking about how different things could have been.

The night before his twenty-first birthday his life changed forever as he, once again, sat on that bench. A seemingly drunk boy stumbled over to him and sat down, giving him a glare. The drunk boy would introduce himself as Luhan and argue that this was his bench before passing out. Luhan would wake up the next morning with his head in the other boy’s lap, staring up into his still sleeping face. He laughed and poked the other boy’s nose.

“Whats your name?” Luhan finally asked once the boy woke up.

“Minseok.”

They became quick friends and friends quickly turned into lovers and, when Minseok was twenty-three, he would experience his second heartbreak while sitting on that bench.

“I don’t understand why you have to leave.”

“It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up, I’m sorry. I’ll only be gone for three years, and then I’ll come right back to you.”

“I- I can’t do that, Luhan.”

The years that followed passed quickly and Minseok tried to contact Luhan for the first time since he’d last seen him. He wanted to apologize, tell him he’d made the wrong decision, he just wanted to see Luhan’s smile one more time. Luhan never returned his call.

Minseok sat on that bench the night of Luhan’s twenty-seventh birthday and wished he could celebrate it with him. He’d only let himself shed a few tears out of self pity before standing to leave.

“Minseok? Is that- I knew you’d be here.”

“Luhan?”

The bench was there for everything in Minseok’s life. He didn’t realize it until much, much later in life, long after Luhan had passed away, after the kids moved away, after the grandchildren only stopped by to visit occasionally. Minseok still returns to the bench often, sometimes with his youngest grandchild and sometimes alone to feel close to Luhan. He’s grateful to the bench for always being there for him, through good times and bad, it was always there to hold him up.