Title: Waiting
Pairing: ShiHan, KangTeuk, HenChul
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1483
Warnings: N/A
Notes: Also rated B for Bleh and S for stupid. u_u Sort of dedicated to littletsuki cause she suggested frolicking in response to an earlier fic I did titled Photograph, and it sort of inspired me to do this. The two fics are not necessarily in the same universe or connected, but the links are there. Also frolicking does not actually happen, for the record. Done for my Mission Insane claim, as inspired by Prompt 9: Waiting of my Table: Unthemed 1 .

He waits. It doesn't matter how long it will take. He can wait.

He sits on the couch, resting with his arms crossed. He stays there, late into the night, long past when the other's go to sleep, and it doesn't matter that he has scheduled events in the morning. Shiwon wants to be there when he comes home.

"Hyung will be here soon." he responds softly when he's asked. LeeTeuk frowns, KangIn is stiff but his eyes betray sadness. "Don't stay up too late." the elder man says after a moment of silence, and leaves the room, and Shiwon can hear them arguing in the hallway but their words don't seem to meet his ear properly. He can't understand them.

He always falls asleep where he sits. He'll ask someone in the morning if Geng has returned. He never gets an answer, just some array of shaken heads and sympathetic looks.

LeeTeuk tries to help. One by one, all the pictures of the Chinese man disappear from the house one evening, when Teuk thinks Shiwon is in his room, listening to music and unaware. It's not just for the boy's sake, everyone could do without the reminders. But Shiwon is his primary concern.

It makes no difference, as the younger man has his door left ajar and keeps watch as glossy paper is removed from frames and placed meticulously into a new album.

Shiwon had already taken his own favourite, stolen away to safety in anticipation. He keeps it, hidden away in the locker beside his bed, taking it out to stare a while only sometimes.

When LeeTeuk is done, Shiwon gets up and follows him quietly, peeking in to the leader and KangIn's shared room, and watches him hide the album away underneath the bed. A few hours later, when no one is watching, Shiwon takes it for his own.

He is rarely left alone with his thoughts. It seems like some kind of conscious group effort to make sure he has no time by himself, but for the nights. There's always playing with DongHae, or EunHyuk trying to make him learn new dances, or ZhouMi chatting away incessantly to him or KiBum just sitting in the same room. Shiwon does it all, numbly.

That's what he is inside. Numb. But for a stubborn confidence that Geng will be back.

Until he sees Henry in his room, looking through the album, his album, and he roars. "What do you think you're doing?" The younger boys eyes widen, because Shiwon had never spoken to him that way.

"What are you-? Get out!" his voice is rough as he snatches the album out of the other's hands and Henry's eyes water. HeeChul is in the room suddenly, and Shiwon's cheek stings from where a hand is smacked across his face.

"You're not the only one who misses him. Stop it." The elder man wraps an arm around Henry and leads the crying boy out.

HeeChul tries to help too, in his own way. No good.

At some point, one of the elder men decides that it's been too long, and that Shiwon has started to look too tired in the mornings, that someone has to speak to him.

"I think you should go to bed Shiwon. Don't you think?" LeeTeuk asks, tilting his head. Shiwon shakes his own. "I want to be up when he comes home." he says assertively.

LeeTeuk exchanges a glance with KangIn. "...Shiwon. He's not going to-" The elder begins to explain, but Shiwon cuts him off. "He will be home soon. I know he will." The leader looks at him uncertainly. "How can you know that Shiwon?"

"Because he promised me he'd never leave me. And he never breaks his promises."

There's a pause and he hears Teuk sigh heavily and then a powerful pair of arms wrap around Shiwon's form, KangIn holding him protectively. Shiwon couldn't remember ever hugging the other.

He finds spots of damp on KangIn's chest, and he wonders where they come from, because KangIn isn't crying.

Whatever the other's are told of that night, they never question him about his late nights and tired eyes again. Maybe they just accepted that he'd never change, that it would never be any different.

Time passes and Super Junior ends, citing that they were never able to get over the tragic loss of one of their members.

(Though KiBum would suggest to some of the elder boys that they had not lost one member that night, but two, saying it where he thought Shiwon wouldn't hear.)

Years pass. The others try to stay in touch but it's hard when Shiwon avoids them. One by one they fall away from him, out of contact, till at last he's almost completely alone but for an odd phone call from HeeChul or KangIn.

He tries to hide away the memories, the photo albums and pictures, underneath the dust and locked away in attics. He thinks it will dull the pain but it doesn't.

He still waits. Some time soon, he promises himself. Soon. (Soon could be an hundred years away, it wouldn't make a difference.)

One evening, decades later, he finds the photograph again. His favourite. He was looking for something when the glimmer of broken glass catches his eye. He takes it out from the ruined frame, finding it still in almost perfect condition.

Young faces smile out at him, two boys, one with his arm slung haphazard over the shorter's shoulders, watching the other, leaning on him while the other laughs, eyes narrow and glittering, nose scrunched up, the picture of happiness.

He used to be happy. He used to laugh. He remembers himself doing it, as he returns to the ground. It seems so distant to him. He moves to stand outside, in the cold of the night. Barely feeling it. Barely feeling anything.

He stares at the picture, long and hard, till tears start to dampen the coloured image, and he takes off his glasses as the liquid pools in the lense.

Then, without warning or fanfare, soft arms, still familiar, wrap around his waist, and a chin rests on his shoulder.

Shiwon shudders for a moment, and though he knew, knew that this day had to come, though he had never given up faith, foolishly, even when it hurt him, even when Geng was lowered into the ground, he didn't turn his head to look, didn't dare let himself believe that it was the same touch that he remembered.

"...who..?" he says in a weak, old voice. "You know." A soft voice with an accent he's still well acquainted with responds, and cool lips ghost over the skin of his neck, intimate and frictionless, and Shiwon couldn't mistake that.

"... if I turn around... will you disappear again?" he asks, closing his eyes. "No." the other responds and Shiwon shifts but keeps his eyes closed, arms coming up to pull a lithe frame to his own. Shaking hands trace over a strong back, as if to make sure it's really there.

His eyes peek open after minutes of silence, and there he is, clear even in Shiwon's weak vision without his glasses, still young, still so damn beautiful. Shiwon reached a hand up to cup his cheek a moment. "I knew you'd come... I-I knew.. I told them. I knew." he nods then hides his face in the crook of Geng's neck, breathing him in and holding him tight, tears slipping down his cheeks as the other's digits trace tenderly through his hair.

A million questions but none that matter because he's here.

"Shh~ It's okay. I know." The other moves them inside, seemingly effortlessly, arms comforting around Shiwon, resting their forms on the bed. "You're ... s-staying?"

"Of course. For the night, I'm allowed to be here. Tomorrow we'll leave together." It takes a moment for Shiwon to understand but when he does a soft sigh runs through him.

"I never knew... so long ago when I said I'd love you forever, it was the truth. no matter when or where.... Sleep now." A kiss is left to Shiwon's forehead and the younger man feels strange all over, but not unpleasantly so, and too caught up in bliss to care. He barely notices when the hand he brings up to touch Geng's cheek is unworn and young. Geng's body seems to get warmer, closer.

"You promise you'll be here in the morning hyung? I'm not imagining...?" he swallows. Geng shakes his head, smiling and leaning in to brush a soft kiss to Shiwon's newly unchapped lips for a moment.

"I promise. And I have never and will never break a promise to you." Geng nods, smiling and Shiwon sighs, pressing his face back safely underneath the elder's chin, wanting to be surrounded by him as he slips away, after so long waiting, his paradise found.