There was a time when afternoons meant leisure and relaxation.

A time before college

There was a time when evenings meant staying up late, drinking with friends, flirting at the bar.

A time before parenthood.

Now, responsibility and family duty mean Joonmyun spends his free time working from home and listening for suspicious silences.

They’re too few.

He can hear his boys arguing about something in the living room. They argue an awful lot for a couple kids who don’t have to worry about taxes, overtime, or local politics.

They hiss and whisper fiercely back and forth, and Joonmyun hears the distinct slap of skin on skin, followed by a drawn out whine. He sighs.

“Boys…” He doesn’t raise his voice; he knows they hear him from the hurried shushes and apologies and empty threats. When he walks into the living room and looks over the sofa, he finds Sehun sitting on Jongin and looking guilty. “Why are you trying to kill your brother?”

“He started it!”

“I don’t care who started it; I’m ending it. Let him up and find something constructive to do with yourself, please. I’m grading.” They’re thick as thieves and fight just as often. He waits until Sehun removes himself, rubbing a hot pink mark on his arm.

Joonmyun returns to the kitchen table and reminds himself that being a parent is rewarding, and he loves his children. He loves them with all of his being, but sometimes he wonders what it would be like to still be single. Or to only have the kids on the weekends, like his wife does. Sehun and Jongin are very sweet, talented, and well-behaved, in public, but they also have energy levels that rival any other child he’s ever known. Put them together, and he feels himself aging with each passing day.

But it is nice. He doesn’t always feel old with his kids until they start talking about new idol groups that he’s never heard of or set aside their video game controllers for the VR system he bought a couple Christmasses ago.

Time is always moving, flowing like the Nile, wearing deeper and deeper into the earth and carving monuments into memory.

He rubs his eyes behind his glasses. A break is needed when he starts creating poetry in his head.

His back cracks when he arches in his seat, and he slowly slouches again. There’s a straining pull in his neck that feels worse with his fingers digging into it. He may need to make another appointment with a chiropractor. He never used to need someone to remold his body back into shape, but the older the gets, the more he sits, and he’s starting to catch himself leaning closer and closer to things he’s reading when sitting for a long while.

Myeon, the deaf family cat, rubs around his ankles with a shrieking meow, hooking her tail around his calf. She stills, rotating her ears towards the living room. Sensing nothing exciting, she ducks and turns to rub around him the other way and trots into the laundry room after leaving a noticeable cluster of white fur on Joonmyun’s dark pantlegs. She goes into the living room with a stuffed mouse in , looking for someone to throw it for her.

They used to have a dog, but he died of old age. A work colleague was planning on moving at the beginning of the semester, and she couldn’t take her cat with her. Somehow, Joonmyun became a cat owner, disregarding the fact he’s never in his life owned or wanted a cat, and she’s adapted to her role of playmate and protector to the boys.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something flying. The tiny sequins on the mouse’s body catch light for a moment before it falls, landing on the coffee table. The cat follows, leaping gracefully but landing on a smooth surface with very fuzzy paws. She gets back on her feet with the dignity of a queen, retrieves her toy, and runs back to the source of the giggles.

Returning his attention to the final paper in his pile to grade, Joonmyun holds it up in his hand to re-read. This student usually has very good ideas, but they are not well-expressed. At least she’s handed in a pretty solid draft.

Time passes, and his pile of papers to read shrinks. He catches himself almost nose-to-paper twice.

“Dad.” The boys are in the opening between the kitchen and living room.

“Hmm?” Joonmyun turns his head a little but doesn’t look up from the paper he’s reading.

“Dad,” Sehun says. “Look at me.” He has a cell phone up to his face. “Smile.”

Joonmyun smiles obediently, holding still until he sees the screen flash on his son’s face. They look at it together and thank him, returning to the living room. “What are you two doing?”

They respond in unison, a suspiciously high, “Nothing!” They’re probably vandalizing the photo with stickers and filters.

Since they were born, Joonmyun’s been taking photos of them and taught them how to use phones and cameras. He doesn’t want them to be afraid of social expectations of looks. They have a habit of taking three photos together; two will make weird expressions while the third poses nicely. A lot of the photos hang on the walls, now, sort of in chronological order, but as the walls fill up, they kind of just go where they fit.

A couple have his wife in them. Sometimes, he’ll catch Sehun or Jongin staring at those photos, a somewhat wistful expression on his face, but they’ve never expressed anything but love for their mother.

He should call her. It’s been a while.

Maybe tomorrow. It feels like a good time to go to bed.

“Whatever you’re doing, take it upstairs. Bedtime.” It’s a night they don’t argue, thankfully, and they trek single-file upstairs—Myeon, Jongin, Sehun, and then Joonmyun, who turns out the lights.

After overseeing their nightly routine and making a thinly veiled threat that lights out at ten o’clock means lights out at ten o’clock, Joonmyun crawls into bed himself.

He’s tired. Children and work are exhausting. He misses going to bed not tired.

At least his kids are beyond the point of not sleeping through the night. There’s an odd nightmare every so often, but even then, it’s rare for Jongin or Sehun to wake him up. So he sleeps through the night and Myeon’s pouncing his feet, waking up reasonably ready for another day.

His alarm is weirdly far away. Not near him or downstairs.

Next door, the boys’ bedroom.

Sehun is sitting up with the phone in his hand, squinting through the haze of sleep. Joonmyun takes his phone and silences the alarm, planting a kiss on Sehun’s head. “Morning,” he greets softly. Jongin’s a very heavy sleeper, anyway. “You’ve still got an hour before you need to be up.”

Sehun nods and lies back down, asleep almost instantly.

Myeon is waiting in the hall to try and trip him down the stairs. She squeaks when Joonmyun picks her up, but she quickly begins to purr when she’s cradled and pet.

Joonmyun watches the neighborhood wake up and sun climb higher as he waits for his coffee to brew. He finishes two mugs while finishing grading from last night, and just over an hour later hears Jongin and Sehun walk downstairs. Sehun’s walking unaided; Jongin still has his eyes closed.

“Good morning, my sunshines.” Joonmyun cuts a large cinnamon bun in half for the boys to share, warming it up in the microwave until the icing starts to melt.

Jongin grunts and lays his head on an arm at the table, picking his breakfast apart with his fingers. Sehun dunks his into a glass of milk. Crumbs and sugar drift to the bottom of the glass.

“Once you’re done, get your things for school.” Joonmyun pours a final mug of coffee. “Homework, books, lunch is in the fridge…” He can see Jongin mimicking him out of the corner or his eye. Sehun smiles.

He readies his own bag after Jongin and Sehun clear from the table. Pens, papers, notebook with lesson plan, ID, and he quickly checks his phone to see how much battery it has left. Sixty-one percent. Good enough. There’s an email notifying him about a new message through an app he doesn’t recognize, but he swipes the notification off the screen and ignores it.

Ten minutes later, the family is out the door and in the car.

Maybe because it’s the end of the week, the day seems to go quickly. Joonmyun only fields one truly dumb question and faces classrooms of defeated young writers with an encouraging smile.

Home again, after dinner and homework, Joonmyun plugs his dying phone in to charge and opens his personal email. He’s neglected if for so long follow-up emails are piling up, asking if he’s received the first one.

The email from that morning is near the bottom of the notifications.

“Elite Singles—oh no…boys!” He opens the app and finds seven “matches” but only one message. “Jongin and Sehun.” He rarely calls them by name, so they know they’re in trouble and look nervously over the sofa.

“Yeah?”

“Come here, please.” He watches as his sons go very still, looking at each other and probably deciding if they should pretend to not hear him or just run for it. Joonmyun is between them and any exit, though, so they pause their game and file out to the kitchen.

“What’s up?” Sehun asks casually. Jongin looks at his feet. His socks don’t match.

Joonmyun holds up his phone. “Remember when I said to not download apps without asking me?”

They nod slowly.

“So why did you?” He sighs and sets the phone on the table. “Where did you even hear about a dating app, and why would you create a profile for me? You know it costs money.” He pinches between his eyes. “You went into my wallet, too.”

Jongin finally breaks his silence. “We thought it’d be a good idea for you to start dating again. You and Mom aren’t together, and you seem really lonely…” His voice gets smaller until it’s more a mumble. Myeon rubs along his legs and stands on her hind feet to reach his hand.

“And it’s a two-week trial for free,” Sehun adds. A silver lining. Light in the darkness. “You’re only charged if you don’t cancel it.”

“Well, I’m cancelling it, now, and I am taking your games away. If you have the time to make dating profiles, you must be terribly bored and have time for homework. That last history test was unacceptable, Jongin.” He lets them squirm under his disappointed stare for a while. “I appreciate the thought, but please ask me before doing something like this. I know it’s not the same without Mom. I’m doing my best.”

“We know,” Sehun mumbles.

“Sorry.”

“Alright. Now go upstairs. Bedtime.”

After removing the cords and controllers for the game consoles, he returns to his seat and picks up his phone again. The screen wakes up to his email, and he scans the unread messages. Most are spam or promotional. The dating app surrounds its message line with eye-catching emojis.

💕💘💌WUFAN HAS SENT YOU A MESSAGE💌💘💕

“Wufan…” Joonmyun vaguely recognizes the name and opens the email to follow the link. Happily, the message isn’t full of shorthand and emoticons, and he reads it aloud. “‘Kim Joonmyun-ssi, it’s been a while. Sorry to use this app as a means of reaching out, but I live in Korea, now. Could we get coffee, sometime? Wu Yifan.’”

He remembers Wu Yifan. He’s rather hard to forget—both for his looks and his goofy personality. They got along well, back in high school and college. He actually had a crush on him for a long while, and he thought Yifan had felt the same, but it cooled when Yifan just up and left mid-semester one year. Dropped all contact.

Maybe it’s serendipity.

It’d be easy to ignore the message and just delete the app. Go back to meeting people on campus or the convenience store and navigate a relationship the tried-and-true old-fashioned way.

But here’s an opportunity literally in his hand. If nothing else, he’s curious. Is Yifan still as handsome in his thirties as he was in his twenties? Maybe he’s more handsome.

“I remember. Never thought we’d meet again like this. Coffee sounds good, but what if we make it an early lunch? I have a break between classes at 10:30.” He suggests a place near campus and adds his cell number after a minute’s deliberation. He quickly closes the profile account, deletes the app, and turns off his phone.

Reconnecting after literal years. It’s like something out of a drama. It doesn’t happen in real life, except it apparently does, because Joonmyun accepted a date with a virtual stranger. It’s been nearly fifteen years since they saw each other and probably thought about each other. Curiosity is most likely the only motivation behind reaching out.

Joonmyun can’t deny the bubbling of giddiness in his chest, though, and it’s a ridiculous feeling.

“You’re ing thirty-six, not sixteen,” he mutters. “Act like it.”

“Dad?” one of the boys calls downstairs. “Could you come here?”

Joonmyun sighs and leaves his glasses on the table. Sehun and Jongin, wearing a towel around his waist and a towel over his shoulders like a cape, are sitting on the stairs.

“What’s up?”

Jongin pouts and holds his towel tighter around his shoulders. “There’s a spider in the bathtub.”

Parenthood. What a glamorous life he leads.

a/n: Written for round for of Suhoney. (prompt no.49 Kid!Jongin and Kid! Sehun somehow make their dad (Junmyeon) an online dating ad/profile. One of Junmyeon's old acquaintances (crush from school) answers. He slightly freaks out.)

The prompter wanted something humorous. I feel that I've failed. Most of this didn't turn out how I'd envisioned, because my mind and hands experience frequent disconnect. Enjoy, anyway! ╰( ･ ᗜ ･ )╯Hopefully more to come, because Joonmyun's gotta meet Yifan again and be wowed with his decision to wear leopard-print pants with a casual outfit.

The cat's name, Myeon, means cotton. Because she's white. And because of his Instagram.

I don't know when an acceptable bedtime for children is. I know the Korean school system really pushes the students to ridiculous degrees, but anything after ten seems too late for a child. Personally, once it hits eight, I'm ready for bed, and I'm considerably older than twelve-years-old. orz