Uncle Small-Eyes [Part 1]

[yeolmonster]

Title: Uncle Small-Eyes
WooGyu, MyungYeol (raising a baby together lol)
Rating: PG-15-ish (for sexual references, very troubling, yes.)
Summary: Kim Mookyul wants everything to be like in the pictures. Woohyun, too, wants everything to be like in ‎the pictures. Only it's not, so they need to work on that. ‎
Author's Note: IT'S CANON, BUT IT'S LIKE IN THE FUTURE. YEAH.

...
Uncle Small-Eyes
Part 1

.
Woohyun is just about to go to the gym, when he gets a call.
It’s roughly seven pm.
He answers it when he catches the name on the phone. It's probably  the first time Sungyeol voluntarily calls him in months, and it's not to congratulate him on his birthday.
“Are you busy?” He's talking really quickly, and Woohyun almost misses the sentence. Accompanied by the hum of cars, he can almost hear panic somewhere on the line.
“No, but I was just about to go to the gym, actually-”
“Great. Stay home. I’ll be there in 5.” With that, Sungyeol hangs up.
Woohyun removes the phone from his ear.
In five pm? Five pm is long gone. Maybe Sungyeol finally snapped. Maybe he meant 5 am.
He scratches his head, looking around the kitchen.
He probably meant in five more minutes. That's the kind of shortcuts they used back in the dorms. As if they were always out of time, always rushing somewhere, unable to finish a sentence. Funny how melancholic those little habits feel right now.
His flat looks both empty and messy at the same time; not exactly the perfect place to host.
He sighs, tries to shove empty beer bottles and healthy shakes he buys at the store down stairs to his building, but then just decides that Sungyeol already saw it all, for better and for worse, and decides to make some herbal tea.
In the process, he understands that maybe Sungyeol would like coffee instead. He hadn’t seen him for a long while; maybe Sungyeol decided to quit it.
What arrives at his doorstep, though, seven minutes later (two minutes late), isn’t just Sungyeol.
It’s Sungyeol, hair all messed up, glasses on his nose, t-shirt half tucked in his jeans. There’s a large bag hanging from one of his shoulders with unicorns on it, and in his arms, a creature.
It’s a baby, probably not older than 5.
Woohyun isn’t good with babies so he can’t really tell. Maybe it's two. He can't be sure.
“Hi.” Sungyeol’s shoulders slump upon seeing his face and he walks into the apartment with a few strides. Woohyun managed to forgot how tall he is, and how frickin' long his legs are, but those thoughts don't stay in his mind for very long because he's more bothered by the baby in his arms.
The thing is frowning.
It looks unhappy.
No, let him rephrase himself. It looks like an unhappy Myungsoo.
“Did you… did you shrunk Myungsoo?”
Sungyeol lets the bag on his shoulder slid and drop down, then rolls his eyes.
“Don’t be stupid. It’s Mookyul.”
“Oh.”
Woohyun watches as Sungyeol puts the toddler down. The little guy stabilizes on his own legs and clutches onto Sungyeol’s jeans, peeking at Woohyun from there.
After Myungsoo finished his military service, he disappeared for a year or so years. Said he took a trip around the world to clear his head or some Myungsoo-ian bullshit along those lines. When he came back, though, in addition to carrying more camera equipment he left with, he also had a little baby carrier.
Woohyun remember there was a whole ordeal about it on the news. There was a lawsuit, but he never figured who sued who, some asshole reporter went all the way to America to find the mother of the baby and a group of crazy fan-girls who all claimed they are the biological mothers.
Back then, when they all got together for old times' sake, the baby was pink and small, with light colored hair, and he looked nothing like Myungsoo. Woohyun easily assumed that even though Myungsoo gained custody, the boy was adopted.
He’ll take the words back, now. The baby looks like an exact copy of Myungsoo when he woke up in the morning, groggy and always displeased, at least until fed.
“Mookyullie, say hi to uncle Woohyun!” Sungyeol encourages it. He puffs his cheeks and looks away from them. “Mookyul is a big boy. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“But what if the bad uncle with the small eyes comes back? This uncle knows how to keep him away, guaranteed!”
Funny.
That used to be quite the opposite with them.
“Really?”
“Yeah." Sungyeol glances at Woohyun before adding; "This is Uncle Woohyun from the photos!"
This causes a curious flare on the boy’s features. "Uncle Woohyun?" He cocks his head to the side, then squints his eyes. "Are you sure?"
It’s Woohyun’s turn to frown.
"Yes, I'm sure, he's just really hairy and wrinkly now, because he's old." Sungyeol grins to him, then finally turns to Woohyun.
Woohyun cuts him off; “I don’t know how to take care of a child. You can’t leave him here.”
“Relax, Woohyun. You just need to take care of him for a few hours. I’ll be here before nine, I promise.”
“What did you do? Did you kidnap him?”
“What?” Sungyeol laughs. “Of course, not. Myungsoo is out in Busan for a photoshoot, so… I’m taking care of him. Right, baby?” Sungyeol looks down on him fondly and caresses underneath the boy’s chin.
“I’m not a baby! Mookyul is a big boy!” He stomps his foot.
“Alright, alright. Yeollie is sorry.”
Woohyun finds that he doesn’t know what to say besides; “Well, leave him with someone else!”
“I can’t! Everybody is busy, and my script finally got confirmed, so I have to show up. I would’ve taken him with me, but he’ll get sleepy, and I don’t want to drag him from place to place in the studios.”
“What about Myungsoo’s brother?”
“What about him?” Sungyeol says, still messing with the child’s hair, until he finally notices the glare from Woohyun; “Oh, he’s overseas with his girlfriend. Or something. I don’t know. And Daeyeol isn’t answering his phone, so he’s out.”
“And Sungjong? Sungjong adores kids!”
“Sungjong is at duty. He’ll be in his army base until weekend.”
“That’s great, but I already made plans.” Sungyeol stares at him pointedly, until Woohyun adds; "I need to go to the gym."
Now his eyes narrow down at him; "Really? The gym? That's your plan for tonight? Please, Woohyun, these past few years, you've been living off the money we got from our last album, and you're a complete bum. The only thing that's keeping you from looking like a complete drunk, fat hobo is the fact that you go to the gym - and you sexually harass every other young girl there like a douche.”
“What is sek-sua-lly?”
Sungyeol looks down at the toddler.
“A bad word. Yeollie shouldn’t have said that word. Pinky promise we never say it ever again.” He reaches his pinky and he warps his own tiny pinky on Sungyeol’s.
He turns back to Woohyun.
“He has all his toys there, and he’s really independent. All you have to do is feed him and make sure he doesn’t get near any windows  or falls down. Or starts a fire. Kind of like you'd have to look after Myungsoo when he's hung over. Only without the painkillers and the awful groaning.”
Woohyun sighs.
Sungyeol looks around, and snatches Woohyun's playboy magazines that were lying on his coffee table; "I'm confiscating these until I come back." He tells him. "And clean up." He adds.
On his way out, Sungyeol crouches on the floor. “Give Yeollie a big kiss.”
The boy gives him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “And be a good boy, okay? Yeollie will be back in a few hours.”
“Why can't Mookyul go with Yeollie?" Sungyeol looks torn after Mookyul hugs his leg.
"Don't be like that, baby, you know why. Play a bit with Uncle and show him your teddies and dragons, and I'll be back before story-time." He puts his hand through his hair. The kid's hair is nothing like Myungsoo's hair - it's not black, but has this weird darkish mocha color and it looks silky and falls down from Sungyeol's hands like a waterfall.
“Please, just don’t kill him or mess him up or get perverted ideas into his head, alright?” Sungyeol says that part to him, and Woohyun looks up from little Myungsoo back to Sungyeol.
“I’ll try.” Woohyun takes him to the door.
"Seriously, I would have found a baby sitter or something, but I'm really in a pinch. You're my only hope."
Woohyun looks down at the toddler, who looks back at him.“Why are you even taking care of him?”
Sungyeol rubs his head and shrugs. “Who else will? His father is-” he clamps his hands to Mookyul’s ears; “an asshole. I can’t leave an asshole with a child, can I?” It's like they're back in the dorms, and they're not even thirty, and Sungyeol is still calling Myungsoo an asshole every opportunity he gets.
He leans down again and kisses Mookyul’s forehead, before going down the hall. Then turns around again and waves.
Mookyul waves back.
Woohyun slams the door.
Who knew Sungyeol would get so affectionate with a kid?
Woohyun used to be fond of kids because they were easy to trick into loving him.
But this one turned up out of the blue, and he has no idea what to do with it. Especially because it looks like Myungsoo.
Woohyun has the urge to poke him and see if he's real.
"Are you really Uncle Woohyun?"
"Yes."
"Yeollie says Uncle Woohyun is really fun. You don't look like in the pictures at all."
"What picture?"
Little Myungsoo face twists with distrust, so he circles the sofa to get to his bag and takes out a little carton box. "I need to draw now," He explains.
Woohyun sighs and gets up, but isn't sure he has blank pages lying around everywhere.
He notices the books Sunggyu left behind, and decides they're as good as any.
"Here," He says.
"Yeollie says drawing in books is very bad," Mookyul exclaims loudly.
Woohyun cringes at the volume of the squeaky voice; "Well, I'm going to throw these books out. I don't need them."
Mookyul looks wary again.
"Appa says it's bad, too." He still takes the book from his hands; "But I'll tell them Uncle Woohyun said it's bad books. It's okay if it's bad books."
Woohyun sits back at the sofa as he watches the boy go. He sets all his crayons on the table and opens the book right in the middle, then crawls up to the unicorn bag and takes out a toy dragon and a toy whale.
He sets the whale next to Woohyun. And keeps the dragon to himself.
"This is Grongi," He introduces the whale. "And this dragon is Yongie.  You and Grongi are going to sit here. I'm going to paint with Yongie." He nods to himself, as if he's happy with what he just said, and heads to the table.
"Can I watch TV while I sit here?"
Mookyul makes a face; "Grongi doesn't like to watch cartoons without me, and I'm drawing now."
"Here," Woohyun says, and turns Grongi to face the back of the couch. "Grongi won't watch the TV with me."
"But he'll hear it!" Mookyul insists.
"I'll cover his ears."
That doesn't make him all that happy either.
"Alright, I'll tell you what - I'm going to watch TV, but not cartoons, just boring adult stuff."
That sure makes Mookyul think. "Yeollie watches boring adult stuff too." He says.
Little dude seems to idolize Sungyeol, just like his daddy. It's a little funny, now that Woohyun thinks about it.
"How old are you, Mookyul?" He asks.
"I'm three. It's almost my birthday soon."
"So you're almost four."
He nods.
"So you like Yeollie? He babysits you a lot?"
The boy turns to him with furrowed eyebrows; "Yeollie doesn't babysit me," He argues.
"So he just comes sometimes to play?"
The boy looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn't, scribbling something between the words on the paper. "Appa says Uncle Woohyun's face is pretty like my butt cheeks."
Woohyun starts to laugh. Myungsoo probably meant to say that his butt cheeks are smooth."Yeah that used to be true, I guess."
After that Mookyul starts to make noises as he draws airplanes and submarines and dragons on the books. Woohyun keeps glancing at them from the TV screen; he's not sure if he's remorseful or relieved. Perhaps something in the middle. He did want to throw them out eventually, but a part of him still kept stubbornly thinking that Sunggyu might come back for them.
Mookyul makes explosion noises when he paints an explosion.
And for some reason Woohyun finds it such a Myungsoo thing to do.
How nostalgic this feels - to know that a certain behavior is Myungsoo-ish. He remembers he used to have an arsenal of jokes about that.
It's not like they don't keep in touch - they do. They call each other a lot. Sometimes just for the sake of calling. Once a year they have a get-together, where they mostly just get drunk. This year they didn't even do that, because everybody were busy.
Although for Woohyun it seems as if just yesterday they were standing on stage - the horrible truth is that it's been quite awhile. Five, maybe even six years, now? INFINITE wasn't as eternal as they hoped it to be.
Six of them understood that and moved on:
Sunggyu tried to pursue his singing career after he came back from the army, but it was a bit too sloppy and messy and he was way too old to deal with the buzz that came with his errors. After that he produced things for small studios, still dedicating his life to music. Hoya continued as a freelance dancer, and went back to Busan and opened a choreography studio. Dongwoo got married and inherited his parent’s line of squid restaurants. After quitting his modeling, Sungyeol started writing scripts for sitcoms. Myungsoo was a famous photographer. Sungjong became a permanent host in a TV-show until he finally got called to the army.
And Woohyun?
Woohyun did a few more movies after the army, but none of them went big. Now Woohyun likes his flat. Woohyun likes hiding in the shadow of the glow he left behind. Woohyun likes his sweatpants. Woohyun likes to remember what he used to be, not how he is right now.
His twenty year self that danced on the stage, that was Nam Woohyun. Infinite's Nam Woohyun.
What he is right now is some kind of a temporary role he has to play.
All of them moved on, but Woohyun didn't have anywhere to move on to.
“I’m hungry!” The kid breaks the train of Woohyun's thoughts. He must have been staring at him for a long minute.
Woohyun peeks at the watch on his iphone. What the hell is taking Sungyeol so long?
“Yeah?”
“Yes!”
“And uh, what do you eat?”
“I like chocolate, but Yeollie says I can’t eat it before dinner.”
Huh? So maybe he’s not an exact copy of Myungsoo? Myungsoo hates sweets.
“What… do you usually have for dinner?”
The child, probably too smart for his own good, pauses, trying to hide a smirk, when he understands Woohyun doesn't actually know what he has for dinner.
“Two ice-creams,” he decides, testing the waters. “And a large portion of pancakes. It has to be this big.” He shows him half of his size.
Okay, the dude has a lot more brains than Myungsoo, he’ll give him that.
“Pancakes, huh? I can do that.”

.

Little Myungsoo is excited at the sight of the food, and is eager to help.
Woohyun feigns hardship as he cooks, and in return receives encouragement and cheering as if making pancakes is something really hard to master and Woohyun is some sort of a superhero.
Before they sit down to eat, Woohyun asks him if he washed his hand properly, and he replies with; "Yeollie says Uncle Woohyun takes hours in the bathroom but Appa needs encouragement to actually visit there, so I should be somewhere in the middle."
That makes him crack up more than it should have.
Mookyul is full of little facts like that, little things that only Myungsoo or Sungyeol or Sungjong can know, but come out a lot funnier when a toddler says them.
After they eat, he politely takes his plate to the sink and helps Woohyun with the dishes.
He giggles a lot and talks too much - a bit like Sungyeol when he's excited about things. He also seems rather bright for his age, able to say complex sentences or using words he's not sure how to pronounce.
Once they're done cleaning the dishes, Woohyun goes back to what he does best, which is lying on his couch and watching entertainment news and laughing about some actress that wore the wrong color of lipstick to some red carpet event.
Only then Mookyul comes up to him with a small tin box.
He stares at him but doesn't speak, waiting until Woohyun asks; "What?"
“These are secret pictures, and Yeollie said I can show them to you. And since you made me pancakes, I can show you my pictures!”
Begrudgingly, Woohyun sighs and sits up, patting the place beside him.
He was kind of hoping to watch celebrity news.
Didn't the kid like to draw?
Mookyul crawls beside him, and opens the tin box.
It’s a pile of photographs, he understands. Well, of course, Myungsoo’s son would take interest in that, obviously. But then he understands that it’s pictures Myungsoo took with his camera, long, long time ago.
Mookyul raises the first picture. It’s of Myungsoo and Sungyeol, back in Dongwoo’s 26’s birthday party. They both carry drunk, smiling expression on their faces.
“This is Appa, Mookyul’s favorite person. And this is Yeollie, Appa’s favorite person. Yeollie is also Mookyul’s favorite person, but he says I should never say that because Appa will be offended. But he told me in secret that I'm his favorite person too.”
“Aha.” What an interesting piece of information. He wonders if Myungsoo actually said that Sungyeol is his favorite person. Out loud. In front of his son.
He puts down the photo on his lap, handling it very carefully, as if it might shatter if he uses too much force. He continues to a picture of Sungjong, right before one of their concerts. “This is the person Mookyul will marry when he grows up.”
“You’re going to marry Sungjong? Good luck with that.”
Mookyul raises two angry eyes at him. “Uncle Jong is the only person who plays with Mookyul video-games, because Appa and Yeollie say that these games give me bad temper. And my temperature is just fine!”
Woohyun chuckles. “What else you got there?”
"This is Mookyul's favorite picture." He proudly raises that one from the box. It's all seven of them. Woohyun isn't sure who took that one, probably one of the managers. That must have been during the Be Mine era, because they were wearing their red performance clothes. Woohyun has his mouth opened as if he's about to crack a joke, Sungyeol is making a face at the camera, Myungsoo is giving his famous 'ssh' pose, Dongwoo is laughing about something, Hoya looks amused, Sungjong looks like he's judging the rest of them idiots, and Sunggyu - Sunggyu looks so happy his eyes disappeared. "Appa says Mookyul is in the picture, but you can't see him."
Oh god, Woohyun sure as hell hoped Myungsoo didn't refer to his child as a little sperm swimming around in his balls.
"But I did this," He turns the picture around and somebody draw there a stick figure with brown hair and large beady eyes, and there's an arrow pointing to it that says 'Mokyol'. "So I could be in the picture, too."
Woohyun ruffles his hair.
"This is Uncle Hoya. He's a little scary, but he's a good uncle. Yeollie and Appa say they don't know if to call him Howon or Hoya when he comes over, but I called him Uncle Hoya, and he smiled and touched my hair. I really like this Uncle, too, but Mookyul won't marry this Uncle instead." He puts Hoya's picture down with the others.
 “This is Appa and Uncle Dino. But Yeollie says I can't call him Uncle Dino, but Auntie Amy - she's married to Uncle Dino and she laughs when I say it, so I wonder if that's okay. Appa says it's not okay too."
Almost all his sentences start with 'Yeollie says', huh?
"And this is Uncle-Small-Eyes," He scrunches his nose as he points at Sunggyu. “He’s really mean. He bullied Mookyul, so I hit his face. And then he looked really scary, but Uncle Dino saved me! ”
That sure makes him laugh. “You punched him? You’re my new hero!”
“It’s because he said that Yeollie will leave me and have his own baby. But I’m Yeollie's and Appa’s baby, so Yeollie can’t leave. Who will make me food and put me to bed? So he was just mean like that so I did like this." Mookyul swishes his hand, as if he's punching the air.
“Oh.”  Woohyun squints his eyes.
"But -" Mookyul puts his hand on his mouth. "That's a secret, and you can't tell anybody."
"Can't tell them what?"
"That-" He puts his hand on his mouth.
Only then it registers in Woohyun's head; “That you're Yeollie and Appa's baby?"
He nods, but keeps his hand on his mouth.
Oh.
Oh.
Oooh.
"Yeollie makes you food and puts you to bed every day?"
Another nod.
Curiosity takes the best of him;"Does Yeollie live with you, Mookyul?”
“Yes, he buys food, and stays with me during the day, and Appa makes food but only sometimes and stays with me when Yeollie goes to work. Appa is busy because he needs to go away to other places, but Yeollie always stays with me. We all live together in a big house. Just like your house. But we also have a bigger TV.”
“Yeollie has his own apartment, you know. I've been there, and it's really big.”
Little Myungsoo furrows his eyebrows; "Yeollie lives with me and Appa, I know because I live there too."
"Where does Yeollie sleep, then?"
“Yeollie sleeps with Appa on the big bed. Mookyul sometimes sleeps there too.”
“Oh really. That’s fascinating.”
He should’ve known by the way Sungyeol treats him. He obviously was too fond for an occasional babysitter.
Wow.
If this was happening in the dorms, Woohyun would've already snitched them to the rest of the members and embarrass them to no end about it.
“What about your mom? Where is your mom?”
“I asked this of my Appa and Appa said I don’t need a mom, because I have Yeollie and him and they take care of me.”
Woohyun finds that perhaps because he doesn’t know yet the definition of a normal family, that he thinks it’s completely natural to have Myungsoo and Sungyeol.
“Yes.” Mookyul encourages himself to continue, and fishes out another photo. “Hey! And this is Uncle Woohyun..." Mookyul makes a face that might indicate as if he's thinking, and glances between the picture and Woohyun's. He looks skeptic, whether they are the same Uncle, and Woohyun doesn't blames him. He should probably at least cut his hair; he probably looks like he just returned from a deserted island.
"Yes, I'm that Uncle Woohyun."
"But you don't look like in the picture, you have to look like in the picture."
"Well, I'm a prime example to how unfair life is."
"Appa says Uncle Woohyun is a sleaze-ball, but you don't even look sleazy."
Woohyun makes a face.
"Appa says once Uncle Woohyun made a cake, but it farted and broke."
"That is not true, there was air from the baking inside the cake, and it didn't break; Sungjong, Sungyeol and Sunggyu flocked it like a trio of hungry vultures. They looked like pigs."
Mookyul looks like he almost believes him, but then he returns his eyes to the picture. "Yeollie said you make the uncle with the small eyes go away, but you're hugging him here!"
Woohyun takes the photo from his tiny hands.
It's a back stage concert photo. They look so happy together, staring at each other. Sunggyu's hand is wrapped around his shoulders, while Woohyun's hand is sneaking on his waist.
This was taken when they were in a good era. Before things got messed up, before Kibum got into the picture, before Sunggyu became the reason why the sun raised in the morning.
It was that silly phase where any touch of his would flare up Woohyun's stomach, where they kissed in the passion of the moment in their room and then said sorry and laughed about it because it was okay, it was when they talked about sex into the ungodly hours of the night, and every time Sunggyu would describe something, vividly, slowly, tasting the words on his mouth - Woohyun would close his eyes in his bed, and imagine Sunggyu doing it to him. That silly phase, when he lied to himself that this is all because he's deprived from having a girlfriend, or because he needs to get laid.
And Sunggyu looks so glorious. He looks like he came out of a dream. Together they look so...
The doorbell rings one time, then another. Always so impatient.
Woohyun sighs, gives Mookyul a small smile as he gets up to open the door for Sungyeol.
Mookyul runs to hug his legs. Sungyeol lifts him up into his hands and rubs their noses together. "Wow, Yeollie wasn't here just for a few hours and you already grew so big!"
"Uncle Woohyun made me pancakes!" Mookyul giggles.
"Uncle Woohyun should know by now that children need to have an healthy dinner instead of pancakes, but its forgivable because Uncle Woohyun was never the sharpest crayon in the box."
Woohyun cringes. "Excuse me, you just dropped this huge present on me and I didn't have the time to do proper research about what these things eat."
Sungyeol sighs and puts Mookyul down, who's trying to figure out what the conversation is about. His eyes widen at the sight of the mess in the apartment.
"Mookyul!" Sungyeol has a phenomenal scolding voice. "Look what a mess you made out of uncle's apartment! What did we say about cleaning up after ourselves?" He scans the living room with the colorful crayons and the painted books, the dragon dolls Mookyul had to sit by the table so they could eat the pancakes too, the dolls on the couch and the opened tin box with the photos , then promptly tries to put everything Mookyul took out back into the bag.
"I'm so sorry, Woohyun. He's a bit messy." He flips through the pages of some of Sunggyu's books, making faces. "You can't draw on books, Mookyul! How many times did we agree on that?"
"Uncle Woohyun said it's fine because it's bad books that need to go away."
Sungyeol clicks his tongue, and ruffles Mookyul's hair before giving Woohyun an apologetic gaze.
"It's okay, I really don't need these books. They're Sunggyu's." Woohyun sits back on the couch and looks at him go. Sungyeol was always energetic. Even after a busy schedule he looks as if he's ready for a party.
"Huh." Sungyeol says, trying to collect all the crayons at once. "Why do you have Sunggyu's books?"
"Can I stay with Uncle Woohyun a little more? Can I?"
"No, it's way past your bedtime, baby."
Mookyul stomps his foot; "I'm not a baby, I can stay with Uncle Woohyun!"
"Yeah, he should stay. I heard some fantastic stuff from him today. I can't wait for him to tell me more." Woohyun lets a grin spread on his features, as he crosses his hands on his chest.
Sungyeol slows down on collecting the crayons. "Yeah?" He seems uncomfortable and avoids his gaze, and it's just like they're back in the dorms and Sungyeol ate the lasagna Woohyun's mom cooked and won't admit it.
"Yeah. About how Appa and Yeollie share the big bed. That one was a particular favorite of mine."
Sungyeol sighs and looks back at Mookyul. "You pinky promised not to tell anybody!"
"I didn't tell! I didn't tell! It's a secret!" Mookyul puts a finger on his mouth and Woohyun puts a finger to his mouth as well, as if they're keeping a secret.
Sungyeol makes a face, then goes back at collecting the crayons. "It's really past his bed time. I have to get him to sleep. He's probably going to jump up when Myungsoo gets back home."
"Is it true? Are you sleeping together?"
"Does it really matter? Mookyul, collect your photos."
Mookyul makes a few unwilling shrugs of shoulders, but then gets to his tin box, and while furrowing his eyebrows, collects gently the photos back into the box.
Woohyun stands in Sungyeol's way; "For how long?"
"Woohyun," He has that bad habit of escaping confrontations, and if he could dive into the window by now, he probably would've.
"It was always obvious on his face, but I never expected you-"
"I know it's stupid, but I..." He looks at Mookyul, then drops a tone. "After he came back from aboard, things were different."
"Different how?"
Sungyeol shrugs his shoulders, and shakes his head; "I don't know," He blurts out, putting his hand through his hair as he looks around. "I guess I never expected him to leave like that. To leave me like that."
"Aren't you scared?" Woohyun asks, almost desperately. "Of the media?"
"Of what media? Woohyun, people don't even remember our names anymore. Nobody cares about the private life of a photographer and a sitcom writer."
"Sungyeol," He wants to tell him about Sunggyu, because he never told anyone about Sunggyu. But there's so much to tell and he doesn't know where to start, so he's at loss of words.
"I'm done!" Mookyul announces, hugging one of his dragon plushies.
"Good boy! We will wake up early to see Appa come home!" Sungyeol smiles and tickles behind his ear.
He giggles helplessly, squirming away from Sungyeol's touch.
"Thanks for babysitting, Woohyun. It was good seeing you. And stop going to the gym."
Woohyun nods.
Sungyeol nods.
The door is closed, and suddenly the apartment is more silent than ever.

...

So give this story a chance. And I don't have a beta :(
But.
Yay, I'm back...?
lol, anyway, stay tuned for next week for scenes from Mookyul's daily life with his dork parents~ woo~