WHO IS CRYING!?
I AM BACK ES!!!!! (I mean, ahem... I mean everyone~~~)
Anyway! Just one more chapter to go before I end this journey! I am OFFICIALLY Weeping ya'll!

Busan 1997

Youngjae rubs his hands fervently, failing to fight off the cold as he waits in the soju tent. He keeps looking out through the plastic wrap windows, eyes darting every time he thinks he sees Daehyun. Having downed a few glasses of soju, he’s buzzed already (he’d always been a lightweight after all).

As he waits, relentlessly watching his wrist watching tick seconds away, he thinks back to the morning he’d left Youngwon’s house. Two days ago. After a less than happy farewell.

Flashback

“Youngjae,” Youngwon trembles with the effort to not cry as he holds Youngjae's hand and begs him, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry but please. Please, I… i… I need you right now. You can’t just leave me, please!”

Youngjae snatches his hand out of the grip of his brother’s and takes one look at a weeping Junhong in his niece’s hands and walks out the door. Leaving Youngwon in his knees, crying.

Flashback Over

A knock on his table makes him shake out from the reverie and he sees the hand on the table in front of him. He sees it and his lungs forget how to function for slightest of seconds. Because he’s scared. He’s scared because it’s Daehyun.

Shaky breath and trembling lips adorn his features as he looks up and is greeted by a warm smile. A young man, no more than twenty five he would guess, pears at him with an inquisitive eye, carrying a child in his right arm and pulling a chair with his left. “You must be Yoo Youngjae… right?” Youngjae dumbly nods his head and allows the man to order a platter of soondae and three bowls of samgaytan. “Dad’s freaking out outside so I decided to just come in and order some food first.

“Da… Dad?” Youngjae wonders out loud and the man in front of chuckles loudly, rocking the kid in his arms as he nods giddly.

“Yep!” the young man laughs, almost falling back in his seat. Something in his manners seeming so eerily familiar. “Jung Daehyun?” he snickers, eyes shining with mirth. “He’s my Dad. And he’s really nervous he finally gets to meet you tonight.”

“Daehyun... Dae… Daehyun’s here?” Youngjae tries craning his neck to look at the tent entrance for the man he’d been waiting for for the past two hours.

The young man in front of him, Daehyun’s son, shakes his hand smirking as he tells him to “don’t bother. He’s been dusting his sweater since he left home. I’m pretty sure he’s not coming in for another fifteen or so minutes for sure.”

The older man nods his head and eyes the younger one and the child in his arms before asking, “you… you’re his son? And this is…” he points of at the child in Jonghwan’s arm and ends up smiling unconsciously.

Jonghwan looks at the child in his embrace and smiles warmly at the kid as he nods and looks back at Youngjae, “this here is Jongup.” Jonghwan rocks the boy in his arms, making him giggle an eye smile. “My son.”

“May I?” Youngjae gestures towards Jongup with open arms and Jonghwan happily obliges. “How old is he?” He asks the man, swaying the child like he used to with Junhong.

“He’s one” a voice speaks out. And Youngjae’s pupils shake in their sockets as he continues to stare at the table in front of him. He can barely hear Jonghwan call of ‘Dad’ but he’s knocked out senseless by the mere voice of the man he’d come to meet.

“Let me take him from you, Uncle Yoo” Jonghwan says as he pulls Jongup out of his embrace and Youngjae is left grappling onto the table cloth instead.

He can see Daehyun move beside him and take Jonghwan’s seat from his peripheral vision. He can hear Daehyun’s breaths coming in shorts. Can sense the tension between them thicken by the second. And he has to compel every nerve ending in his body to cooperate. But finally, excruciatingly gradually, Youngjae looks up.

Daehyun has grown old. He has grey hair and his eyes have crow feet. Daehyun’s hands have wrinkles and his voice has turned deeper than what he remembers from thirty five years ago. But he’s still the Daehyun he remembers. Down to the eye smile. The warm eyes. And the handsome visage.

And Youngjae. Gosh! Youngjae has aged for days. All his hair has turned grey and his eyes are drooping. And his fingers, once sinewy are bent at an angle. But he’s still exhaustingly beautiful. His box smile has just turned better with age. And he wears glasses that make him look all the more ravishing now. Age sure has done him well.

And just looking at each other is enough to make the two remember all those days during their childhood. All those playground hangouts. And coffee shop visits. Homework dates and vocal lessons. Their fight. Youngjae leaving. Their waiting.

Jonghwan watches them from a distance as they cry and hug and laugh and practically forget they’re surrounded by people. He watches them forget the world around them and talk for hours. And Jongup, his head resting on Jonghwan’s shoulder, watches his future guardians getting back together. Unable to understand that today is one of his life’s biggest day.

Because today is the day his Uncle Yoo met his Grandpa.

Suwon 2009

“I don’t want any more discussion on this topic, Jongup!” Daehyun yells at the boy uncharacteristically. “You are not going out to meet Junhong this week! He’s grounded and I don’t want you butting into Youngwon’s punishment!”

Jongup folds his arms across his chest and puts on a petulant pout on his face as he shoots back, “but Wonnie Grandpa is grounding him for the dumbest, ing reason ever!”

“Jongup!” Youngjae screams back at the boy, scandalously. “What have I told you about using that word or any variation of it?!”

The fourteen year old just rolls his eyes and scoffs at the elder. His eyes turning into slits as he sneers at his Grandfather. “I will not have you rolling your eyes at your Uncle, Boy!” Daehyun chides the boy, pulling at his ears fiercely.

“ !” Jongup yells out again, earning a fist over his head and he pulls back angrily from the elder, running away and into his bedroom. Yelling as he goes, “I will meet Junhong no matter what happens!”

“We’ll see, you peepsqueak!” Daehyun yells back. Already prepared for the boy climbing out his bedroom window as soon as the lights turn off.

*

“You’re being silly,” Youngjae chides the man pacing anxiously in front of him, arms folded on his chest and a look of utter judgment on his face. Standing out on the porch, with a belt in his hand, Daehyun chooses to ignore the shaking head being directed at him.

“Nonsense!” Daehyun snickers, “if he tries running out his bedroom window, he’ll have to come out the porch. And I’ll nab that brat on his way out!” The man adds a maniacal laugh at the end of his sentence, making Youngjae roll his eyes at him.

“You do realise that if he wanted to run away, he’d just climb out of his window and go through the back door, right?”

Daehyun stops pacing for a second and stares at Youngjae comically. And had Daehyun not been so serious about keeping Jongup away from Junhong for the week, he would’ve laughed at his face.

“How long ago did he tell you he was gonna go to sleep exactly?” Daehyun asks, already moving towards the back of house, towards Jongup’s room to the second floor.

Youngjae tiredly follows his partner towards the back of the house and sure enough, there’s a rope made of clothes hanging out Jongup’s bedroom window. He chooses to ignore Daehyun’s question instead adding, “he’s probably already at Junhong’s place, Daehyun.”

At seeing Daehyun fuming, chest heaving and eyes dark with anger, Youngjae pats the man’s shoulder and adds, “relax. You can always punish him when he comes back.” When Daehyun doesn’t look back at him, instead continues to stare at the open window, he further adds, “Daehyun? It’s okay, kids do this all the time.”

Daehyun still doesn’t reply back, and Youngjae frowns looking back up at the window again to see a figure moving in the window and then closing it.

“Huh?” Youngjae softly hums, letting a smile slip onto his lips. “Guess we were wrong, huh?”

“That’s not Jongup” comes Daehyun’s reply and Youngjae frowns at the man’s words. Daehyun, on the other hand, choose to huff a sigh and walk back into their home, shoulder scrunched and a tiredness surrounding him. The younger man follows his partner with a worried expression and wonders why Daehyun isn’t worried like he is that instead of Jongup there’s a stranger in the boy’s room.

And when Daehyun doesn’t make to speak, he asks the man instead, “why aren’t you doing anything then?!” He quickly moves towards Jongup’s bedroom, but he stops short.

Because through the bedroom door he can silent sobs that he almost surely knows aren’t from Jongup. He is just about to open the door when Daehyun places a hand over his shoulders and Youngjae turns to him in alarm. Ready to spill the beans on the boy but Daehyun gets to him first.

“Junhong’s in there” he states and starts pulling Youngjae back and when the younger man resists, Daehyun pulls him once more, as if to tell him to let it be. “It’s Junhong’s fault. He’s the one who came here. Youngwon can’t blame Jongup. I won’t allow him to.”

Youngjae bites his lips as he nods his head morosely and starts walking towards their bedroom. And as he walks he wonders just what his brother might actually think. He’ll probably hate Jongup for turning Junhong into a misbehaving and sly kid. And he’ll probably hate Youngjae for raising him that way.

“What if he thinks Jongup is like this because I raised him? What if I’m the reason he’s so rude all the time? Maybe I’m not strict enough. Maybe I should just give up on trying to be normal. Maybe Daehyun hates me too, just like Youngwon and Jongup do for being such a !”

Thoughts that he knows are nothing but lies swarm his mind and Youngjae feels his airways choking up. And he tries to hide it because he doesn’t want to give Daehyun more reasons to hate him.

But Daehyun sees it. He sees right through him. He stops Youngjae just as they reach the bed.

And he kisses the man.

No warning and no apology in his manners. He leans on the tip of his toes and presses his lips lightly against Youngjae’s.

And suddenly Youngjae’s mind is empty as a blank slate. He stares at Daehyun as the elder pulls back. And he’s only slightly aware of the fact that the man’s hands are sitting gently on his hips. His head angled towards him. His eyes remorseless.

“Why’d you…” Youngjae tries to form a query of sorts but his mind isn’t working.

So Daehyun completes the question instead, “why’d I kiss you?” When Youngjae nods his head rather stupidly, Daehyun chuckles pulling the man into bed with him. “You were thinking all sorts of bad things, I wasn’t going to let you dwell on those thoughts.”

“Daehyun…” Youngjae whispers as the man switches the bedside light off and lies across him. “You don’t have to do these things, Daehyun.” He says. Because he knows Daehyun isn’t gay and that the kiss that means the world to him is just like any other hug between them to Daehyun.

“I kissed you because I wanted to, Jae” Daehyun said irritated. “Why can’t you just accept my feelings and intimacy? Why can’t you just let me love you the way I want to?!”

“I don’t want to fight, Daehyun” Youngjae tiredly replies but he already knows that an argument is sitting at the tip of Daehyun’s lips, ready to attack him.

“No!” Daehyun shoots back sitting up in bed and affectively pulling Youngjae up with him. “No, you always say that, and we never get to discuss this matter! Not today!”

Youngjae sighs, pressing his knuckles into his forehead and whimpers out helplessly, “Daehyun please. I’m too tired and this discussion doesn’t have an end.”

“Why are you so scared of this?” Daehyun presses on, anger so vivid in his eyes that Youngjae can feel the burn in his bones. “Why can’t you just accept that fact that I DO love you and whatever I do is BECAUSE I love you?!” He huffs annoyed and slams his fists on the bed covers angrily as he continues yelling at the man. “It’s been more than twelve years now and you’re still so insecure and scared of everything thing I do and everytime I so much as touch you!”

“Because!” Youngjae screams by. Not caring that his voice, heavier than Daehyun, is echoing all over the house. “Because you’re not gay! Because that kiss was not out of love but out of pity! Because any day now you could wake up and realise that you could STILL do so much better than me and you’ll let me go! Because I’m gay and I lov