A/N: Based off that gay as hell HWH mv for From Zero, b/c there’s absolutely no hetero way to explain that lmao

 

Hoseok wanders through the Parisian streets, the warm spring sun beating down on him. He glances around and lifts his camera to his eye every so often, snapping photos here and there of the different people collecting around this landmark.

It’s been a week already since he was sent here on assignment, and he can’t believe he only has a week left in this beautiful city. Time flies when you’re taking pictures of countless landscapes and people, he supposes.

With a small sigh, he drops his camera and runs a hand through his black and blue hair. He supposes he should call it a day, as he’s already taken about fifty shots of this area today alone. After the hundred he’d taken earlier in his trip, he knows he has plenty for his company to choose from.

Maybe just a few more… he thinks, smiling fondly as he reaches the end of yet another set of steps of the Sacre Coeur. It’s a good thing he’s a man who likes exercise. Otherwise, he’d have had to just spend even more of his company’s money paying for the metro to get himself here. Then he’d missed out on all these shots he’d gotten on the way up.

He turns to take in the view from the landing, smiling widely at the breathtaking scenery. After taking a handful of shots, he turns towards the crowd, snapping photo after photo of the tourists scattered about on the steps. A family of four with the two kids playing hopscotch on the landing, a couple giggling together as they take selfie after selfie, a young man wearing a flowy white shirt and light blue jeans reading a book…

Hoseok pauses, slowly dropping his camera as the light of recognition fills his eyes. Images of his childhood flash before him. A skinny boy with a round face smiling, laughing…

A skinny boy with a round face very much resembling the man he’s now staring at.

His heart skips a beat, and he can’t help the light, incredulous chuckle at the odds of what’s just happened actually happening.

Wonnie…

 

“Yes, Eomma, I’m being careful,” Hyungwon laughs fondly at his mother’s nervous tone. Despite having already lived here in Paris for a few months for school, the woman still worries over him like he’s only been there a day. He knows the worry only comes from a place of love, though, so he can’t really complain.

He assures her that he’ll be sure to send her and his father a postcard soon and says he has to go, coming to a small hole-in-the-wall store. He slips his phone into his pocket as he goes to the spinning rack outside the doors, thinking he might as well buy that card while it’s still on his mind. Otherwise, he knows he’d just forget again, and that’d just send his mom into a nagging frenzy.

He finds a cute little card with a cat riding a bicycle on the front. A smile pulls at his thick lips at the cartoonish drawing, and he decides this is definitely the one.

As he steps away to go inside and pay for the card, a print of a Polaroid catches his eye. It’s nothing special, just a scenery shot of a pair of trees in a forest. However, something resonates within him about this Polaroid, reminds him of someone he’d known so long ago.

 

“Thtay thtill, Wonnie!”

“’Thtay thtill, Wonnie’,” Hyungwon had teased back, though he’d stayed motionless as the older had requested. His friend managed to capture the photo before he began jumping around all the uneven mounds of dirt, and the camera began to print it out as the boy had come to join Hyungwon at his side.

“See?” he’d asked proudly, clearly trying to control his lisp. “It’s a great picture!! The best I’ve ever taken! I told you it’d be good!!!” Hyungwon looked at the photo in his friend’s hand, his brow creasing together.

“It’s just a photo of me, hyung,” Hyungwon had said bluntly. “There’s nothing special about that.” His friend had looked at him then with a gaze beyond his eleven years of age as he met Hyungwon’s eyes.

“You make it perfect, Wonnie~”

 

Hyungwon chuckles at the treasured memory, clutching the Polaroid print close as he takes it in along with the postcard. He’s been needing a new bookmark, anyway. It’s just a bonus that it reminds him so much of those cherished days.

 

After paying for the card and photo, Hyungwon wanders through the streets a bit aimlessly. It’s the weekend, so he doesn’t have any classes to rush to get to. He figures he could just go and read on the steps of some random tourist attraction. He tends to do that on his free days, as the hustle and bustle of all the international visitors provide great background noise for reading.

He comes across the pathway leading up to the Sacre Coeur, not even hesitating before starting down it. If he’s going to be sitting on those concrete steps for hours on end, he might as well climb a few dozen to get some exercise in beforehand.

After making his way up the path and the few flights of stairs he feels like climbing, he takes a seat off to the side and opens his book, sticking the polaroid into the back of the thin book. He loses himself in the text, a story about young love and loss… Something he can relate all too well to.

 

He isn’t too sure how long he sits there, as he’s become all too absorbed in his book. However, at a particular part where the speaker just drones on and on about the damn carriage ride, he glances up, feeling a curiously familiar gaze on him. He looks up, taking in his surroundings.

His breath sticks in his throat, and he can quite literally feel the blood in his veins freeze with recognition. His jaw drops open at seeing the man. It’s been years, over a decade, but the man is so impossibly recognizable. An incredulous grin pulls at his thick lips as he drops the book, as if in a daze.

“… Hyung?” he asks, his voice barely audible over the din of people around them. Despite this, the man seems to hear it well enough.

“Hyungwonnie??” the man asks, practically leaping forward with a camera hanging from his neck. Hyungwon barely has the time to stand before his childhood friend wraps him up in a tight embrace. Hoseok chuckles in the younger’s ear as he crushes the thin man close to him. He begins to babble on and on about how he’d thought this to be impossible, how he’d never thought he’d see Hyungwon again. Hyungwon only listens, chuckling at how familiar it is despite the years that have passed since they’ve last laid eyes on each other.

Fourteen years, to be exact.