Chapter Text
Forty years from the time they first met, Woojin hauls his fishing gear to what had lately become their “usual lake”. Jihoon totters along behind him, somehow stepping on every single creaky plank, a litany of muted complaints spilling from his lips in wisps of white. They hunker down at the end of the pier, setting down bags and unfolding the new-fangled chairs Woojin's son had given him last December.
“Chair's too low,” Jihoon adds to his list of things that could be better. It's surprisingly short—about the length of an hour and a half-drive; though from four decades of first-hand experience, Woojin can vouch for Jihoon's ability to fill that much time up with chatter when it's just the two of them.
“It's the chair or the pier.” As far as ultimatums go, that one's relatively inconsequential. Woojin looks like he’s about to dump live bait onto Jihoon's chair to add a bit more drama, but Jihoon plops himself down huffily before he can get into it.
“You're thirty years too late to be scaring me with a worm, you decrepit fossil,” Jihoon grumbles. “Mark my words, I'll be bringing crickets as bait next year. We'll see who's laughing then.”
Woojin ignores the stink-eye thrown his way. “Bah, you said that last year. And the year before that.” He rolls his right shoulder and alternates stomping his legs, still a bit stiff from the drive. “We've pretty much made a tradition of not bringing crickets. Why ruin a good thing?”
“That does not count as a tradition. Skewer your damned worm and let's start this pointless battle.”
“You only call it pointless because you lose every year,” Woojin argues smugly. Even so, he lowers himself onto the chair and rigs his line.
The mist starts to lift with every inch of sunlight streaming into the lake, pale beams warming up their bones slowly. The peace that settles over them like a blanket is pierced only by lilting chirps from the trees and soft splashes of something breaking through the lake surface before diving back under. Light catches on Woojin’s greying hair as he reaches down to scratch an itch on his shin, and when Woojin sits back up, he only just catches a dark blue bonnet tossed his way. He stares at it, bemused.
“For your bald spot,” Jihoon explains, the smile lines around his mouth growing more and more prominent.
Woojin sputters in indignation, but the early morning chill drives him to pulling on the bonnet down to his ears instead of throwing it (and Jihoon) into the lake. “Bald spot my ass,” he mutters and pays twice the attention to his still line.
Two hours later, with ten carps between them and Woojin decidedly in the lead, Jihoon once again scoffs at the pointlessness of fishing battles. Woojin only shakes his head mockingly in response, jeering, “Is that the annual sore loser ceremonial speech I’m hearing?”
“I’m sick of losing.”
“It only took you, what, thirty years?”
“Forty if you count coming in second that one time,” says Jihoon.
Woojin snorts. “Placing second to the likes of Kang Daniel is hardly losing.”
Jihoon shrugs. He pulls up his suspiciously idle line and curses at the missing bait. As he hooks another worm, riding out Woojin’s ever obnoxious cackling, Jihoon can’t help but wonder at the two of them, long past the age when they could’ve been considered spring chickens. They’re just two old geezers now. One with a firm foothold in the film industry, fallen so hard into the trappings of a celebrity romance that he’d stumbled out of it with a high-profile divorce; the other with a small restaurant, a wife, and several kids-turned-adults after having limped away from the entertainment business with an injury.
“Forty years,” Jihoon whispers, the faintest memory of a hundred and one seats grazing the edges of his mind.
“That’s a long time, isn’t it?” The same amazement the Jihoon feels is reflected on Woojin’s face, slipping into his words. “It felt a lot faster.”
“It did.”
They settle back into the serenity that the lake practically imposes upon them, each falling into his own thoughts.
This time, it’s Woojin that breaks the silence. “You didn’t hear this from me, but I’m glad we’re both here now.”
Jihoon barks out a laugh and raises his fishing rod in lieu of a salute. “Well, it’s a year early but... to senior citizens.”
“To senior citizens,” echoes Woojin. “May Jisung-hyung outlive us all.”