We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.
~Tolstoy

31.

It was dark when the couple wake up from their not so holy activities having fallen asleep right after they met again---both a bit calm and relaxed.

As decided, both of then go out but this time instead of walking they both sit on seashore, looking quietly at the sunsetting. Both of them lost in their own thoughts. But it wasn't a weird or awkward silence. It was silence of companionship. A silence that oozed calmness and security... The mind of silence that made you close your eyes and feel the air brushing your skin as you remembered the happiest moments of your life or you just sat in complete oblivion to the world. Satisfied, nay, content with your life. Most people, or couples especially new couples didn't appreciate the beauty of silence. Peope filled silence with words, meaning garbles that they don't mean. Only a few knew how holy silence was. How pregnant silence could be. Because the words that came after a long silence were always meaningful, straight from the heart.

The couple was happy that they weren't one of them. They were both used to being surrounded by the people the entire day. Silence to them was meaningful. In their heart, they were happy to know that the other appreciated as much as they did.

Tae, in particular, glad that Kook enjoyed it. When you aren't so good with words and emotions, silence is a constant companion. It had been Tae's companion for so long that he felt restless when he could not get some essence of it the entire day. Unadulterated silence---just letting nature weave a symphony of cocophonies like a warm hug from your grandmother's handwoven sweater in winters.

Both of them lay on the shore concentrating just on the sea waves, the birds chirping and the sun going down.

Tae was amazed how used to silence he had gotten. He had hated it when he used to be alone years ago. When he became a young CEO, nights were the most horrible thing for him. It was too silent. Slowly, he made it a companion. Don't get him wrong, it wasn't a pathetic attempt to merge in your weakness. It was the strongest thing he could have done. Facing your enemy head-on and making an companion out of it.

For Kook, Silence was rare. His nights were always spent in loud clubs and days during people. Silence had always made him miserable. But the past few days with Tae, he had surprisingly come to enjoy it. Needing to drown the voices in your head with a bitter liquor wasn't exactly a pleasant way to live. It wasn't that the voices had gone away miraculously but he had gotten better at managing them. When he was alone in his city, the thoughts of Tae had kept them at bay and now his presence did.

There was something about Tae which made him feel secure. He couldn't exactly point it out. He knew he was slowly falling for the elder. How could he not? The elder was so caring, so selfless, so thoughtful. But it wasn't how he usually imagined love to be. Wasn't love an all ferocious force taking you by storm. Hadn't he thought that when he would fall in love, he would immediately know because of the Strom in his heart or the burning of his desires or the passion that made one feel like holding the other till there was no space?

Or was it just what he had seen in movies? Being so full of passion, being impulsive, making rash decisions....

But, He didn't feel like this with Tae. He didn't feel like a hurricane was brewing inside him or an avalanche of feelings unabling him to breathe. He didn't feel uprooted from his very core. He didn't feel that suddenly everything had turned rosy. He didn't feel like laughing like a mad man shouting it to the world that he was falling in love or was in love and was just scared to accept.

With Tae, he felt calm. He felt rooted. He felt the ability to see things more clearly. He felt the need to be more thoughtful of his actions. He didn't want to make impulsive decisions anymore or drink himself to sleep. He wanted to mature. He wanted to be better. He felt a stillness taking over his body, rooting him to Tae, his family and the universe around him. He felt more responsible. He felt the need to take care of Tae and Eomma and Appa instead of running on the streets and yet he realised, he had never felt more free before. He could go to any end of the earth, now he was a CEO, no one could deny him anything, tae could never say him a no to anything and yet he wanted to stay in teh elder's arms. He dreamt of slowly assimilating in the Kim household. He saw himself helping Eomma in the kitchen. Taking care of Appa and giving him company when he felt lonely in the evenings. He looked forward to the time when he would wait see Tae in the privacy of their room.

Love didn't make him careless or shirk his responsibilities but rather embrace them. He wanted to be the one whom househelp turned to ask whether the garden needed tending to or if the curtains were to be changed or if the groceries needed to be bought.

Kook wanted a Home. He had been a nomad for so longer. He had been to the states and tried to make that place a home and as soon as he got familiar to it, he had to come back. After his return, things weren't same. He felt he could make a home with his lover but he left him. He tried making a home in his company but it never fulfilled the empty space in his heart. He had visited pubs, restaurants, beaches, mountains on any chance he would get hoping to find a home. The place he lived in was a house. He wasn't lying when he had said that he didn't envy Namjoon for his mother's affection. But, in the dark of the night, he had hoped if he and his mom could ever go back to what they were when he was a child. He had tried to make that home in friendship too... Jin was support, kook had never imagined. But he wasn't home too. He could bask in his warmth on the coldest days but he couldn't lose himself in him like a tangled sheet on breezy days. Jin had his own life, he was already helping so much. He couldn't turn to Namjoon hyung... He was already sacrificing his music to buy kook more time. And honestly, Joon didn't even have the time. Working his ass off when he was supposed to. Kook loved autumn. He felt less lonely then. He always saw himself at that last brown leaf on a tree that was mid air after being detached from its tree... The dead brown leaf swaying with the wind that had no destination or roots to hold on to anymore.

Kook desired a Home much more than anything else. More than marriage or love. He wanted to have a Home. And he had one now. He had found it finally. After being homeless for ten years. He had found a home in Tae. He knew Tae would not reject him. His actions had made it abundantly clear that he intended to stay and be with him. This marriage was not a contract for them. They had been bound by a force greater than the comprehension of humans. It maybe god or universe, whatever it maybe but their sould had been tied to each other for eternity.

Kook liked this version of love. He felt too old to be behaving like a 15 year old. It didn't mean he didn't have butterflies in his stomach when Tae touched or that his heart didn't flutter when Tae looked so cute. But along with that excitement came another wave of slowness... A slowness he didn't know. The slowness that emanated from Tae... In his words and actions... A slowness in life that he hadn't known he needed. A slowness that settled him down.

Ome of the things he admired about the elder was that he never rushed anything. He didn't rush them being intimate or them understanding each other. He let them things go with the flow. And if life exacted him to be fast, he handled it with such grace that his aura calmed Kook. He still remembered the day Tae had come to pick him up in his office. How he had handled everything for him. How even though everything his marriage the company, the collaboration had been done in just one month. All the hurry, the rush... Tae had tried to keep it away from him. Or when he couldn't like the press releases, the legal documents, the announcements that had needed to be made. He made sure that the fast pace ended in office and never entered their phone calls before marriage. And now he never let it enter his home. Always leaving work at the gate or inside his library.

For kook, this slowness was new. This constancy, this calmness, this steadiness, this stability... All of it was new but it hadn't scared like he could have imagined. It made him feel better. It made him feel like Tae had engulfed himself in the air around him to calm his overworked heart. Or maybe he had just started to associate stillness with Tae. So anything that made him feel constant in a fast moving life, reminded him of Tae which indirectly calmed him down.

Even this, lying down on sand wasn't what usually Kook would have done. He would have ran and shouted and danced and sang or played or drank in a seashore. But here he was, sitting in absolute silence rich with meaning with a man who was lost in his thoughts and yet thoughtful enough to wrap a sheet on him when it started getting cold. Kook realised that it wasn't that he wouldn't enjoy doing all of what he did before. He didn't feel the need to change himself for love. But he was discovering parts of him he didn't know. He was doing things he hadn't realised he would enjoy. He turned to his husband and stared at him. Tae was looking at the sky above. His arms stretched on the sound. His knees bent and his cap now on the sand. He had a white shirt with a red bandana on. His Khakhis covered him till his knees. Tae's eyes were closed but Kook knew better than to assume that he was sleeping.

He turned fully to his side now and asked Tae, 'Penny for your thoughts, hyung?'

Tae looked at Kook and said:

If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

An: Why did Tae say that?