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It’s three in the morning when Tay wakes up to the sound of soft cries ringing through the dead of the night. It reminds him of himself crying as a child and how his mom would always be by his side while he did.
He remembers how she teased him when he was five and he cried over his favorite cartoon show ending for the day. He doesn’t remember what show it was but he remembers the way she coddled him to get him to stop, and how the ice cream she gave him made the tears just a little bit worth it.
He remembers how she wiped his tears for him when he was 12 and he cried over losing the science fair competition. He made a ping pong plop but he guesses it wasn’t enough to win him first place. It was too embarrassing to let anyone see so he had to wait until they got back to the car, and it’s when she tells him it’s okay and she’s proud of him that the tears just started falling, and all the while, from the school to the car, she had her handkerchief ready to catch them.
He remembers how painful it was when his first and greatest love left at 23, and his mom hugged him until he stopped crying. It was something he’s accepted for quite some time and it shouldn’t hurt as much as it did but she held him through each tear and every piece of his heart that fell.
He isn’t sure if the way you grow up a crybaby is something you can pass on to your child but he’s sure he’ll always be by his son’s side whenever he cries (the same way his mother was with him when he did).
So when his son tugs at the edge of his shirt, he does what he‘s gotten used to doing when Nanon was a baby. But instead of a crib, he scoops him up from where he’s standing all scared and shaky on the floor, and then tucks him right by his side in bed.
“What’s wrong, Nanon?”
“Bad dream. A monster ate dad.”
Nanon is five now. It’s times like this when Tay starts to reconsider if he should let him sleep in the same room still. Maybe he should. They’ll talk about it in the morning.
“Ah, my love. Daddy’s here to fight the monsters, okay?”
Tay doesn’t know how someone so small could make his heart grow so big. But of all the things Tay doesn’t understand, there’s one thing he’s certain of: when everything in his life felt wrong, Nanon is the one person that was right.
“Come here.”
His son is quick to fill the space just after Tay opens his arms, and that’s how Tay knows that nothing could fill the gaps in his life better than Nanon does. It’s his son who needs comforting but he’s the one who feels his warmth.
Have you ever loved someone so much? Tay did. Still does, thrice in this lifetime, in fact. The first one is his family, the second is Nanon, and the third…
He still falls in love with them every day, maybe more today than he did yesterday, and maybe even more tomorrow and every one after that.
“Tell me the story of the sun and the moon again, daddy.” Tay doesn’t notice but Nanon curls his hand around an even bigger one when he asks this. Tay doesn’t notice it too but it’s one warm night in summer when a smile blooms at the presence of two suns.
Ahhh, Tay thinks. The sun and his moon.
“ Are you sure you want to hear it again?”
How many times has the story been told? Because while other children liked to hear a different one each time, Nanon only wanted to hear the same over and over again
“Yes because I love the moon.”
Nanon’s voice still cracks a bit when he talks but he’s more composed in Tay’s arms now. There’s a cheeky smile that comes right after and Tay just knows that he’s doing it on purpose.
“What about the sun? You don’t love him?” Tay plays it off with a pout and it makes his son giggle.
One of the quotes he loves say: Something has started to live in you that will live longer than the sun. Tay takes a careful look at Nanon with his head resting on Tay’s side, his nose still red from crying, and when he looks up to meet Tay’s eyes and he smiles, pure and sweet and everything that relates to good, does Tay fully understand what it means to have the sun live in a person.
“I love the sun too, daddy! The sun and moon are my favorites.”
“The sun loves you to the moon and back, Nanon. The sun loves you that much, don’t forget.”
Maybe Nanon’s too young to understand what it means to love someone so much; the lengths and depths people would go. He’s going to understand when he gets older but for now it’s enough that he knows he’s loved by so many, and although love is never a competition—that Tay loves him the most.
“Do you still remember the name of the sun?”
“Yes, it’s Tawan! And the moon’s name is Hin.”
“Hm. Very good. I’ll start now, okay?”
A light nod from Nanon symbolizes green so Tay starts retelling him the story of the sun and the moon.
“Thousands of years ago everyone knew that the sun and the moon were inseparable...”
Achilles had Patroclus the same way Tay has New. Tay has always been a believer of the great unknown, and he likes that New is, too.
“Do you believe in fate, Tae?”
Fate. Kismet. Destiny. There are many names for it. But Tay decides he’s going to call it—
“Hin, I do.”
“You know you can always tell us about what’s going on between you two, right?”
Tay has it all memorized at this point. First they’re going to say this, and then next goes the teasing. The thing is…they wouldn’t even try to keep it if there was something. Except there isn’t so he honestly wonders where all of these assumptions are coming from.
“Okay, I’ll tell you this only once so listen well. Hin is my...”
“Best friend.”
Tay, in all his years learning and relearning about the things he find interesting, never truly quite grasped the real meaning of romantic love. Sure, he’s seen it with his parents, every day when they eat together and his dad tells his mom just how good she cooks. He’s seen it the other night, too, when he was walking in a park and he watches a woman go down on one knee as they cry out a speech that feels a little too intimate for him to hear.
He takes a fleeting look at New under his lashes and it makes him think that maybe love is also the way New holds his hand to assure him that it’s fine when he gets nervous before a class presentation and it gets his heart racing for a whole new reason. Maybe love is how the sky just opens up a little when New talks to him about his dreams and Tay hopes he could be there to watch him go after them all.
It’s when New steals a shy glance at him through his fringes does Tay realize that maybe the reason why he didn’t really understand what romantic love was is because he’s always just been a bystander.
And it’s when New smiles at him and everything goes silent under the sound of his heart beating does he realize that you’ll never really know what love is unless you stand a heartbeat away from someone and still feel the urge to be closer them.
Tay smiles a bit after seeing how hard his son is trying to fight off the weight under his eyes just so Tay wouldn’t force him to go back to sleep.
“You know what’s next, right? Can you help me, buddy?” This gets Nanon excited like it’s waking up to find chocolates inside the stocking he hung the night before on Christmas Eve.
“Legends say the sun and the moon are both beautiful and they brought light to everyone…”
Like you, little one. You are the sun and the moon and everything that’s bright and beautiful.
“And around the sun were Mars and Venus and Pluto. But even then, the sun only looked at the moon.”
“I’m setting you up on a date with Mild. How does Friday night sound?”
It’s times like this when Tay hates New just a bit more than he loves him.
Last week it was Joss, and while Tay did enjoy his company, Joss was aware of the boundaries they couldn’t cross because he knows that New is in between all of them.
“I told you, Hin. I don’t want to date right now. I have uni to think about. And there’s you too...”
This makes New pause the same time Tay’s world stops. Did he just confess his feelings like that?
“You treat me like a three-year-old. Come on, Tae. I can take care of myself.”
“I mean…who’s getting cake with you at two in the morning when you suddenly crave it if I’m out with someone else at the same time?”
This gets New to reconsider when he says, “You’re right. I guess you’re stuck with me forever then.”
And it’s the way moonlight sneaks through Tay’s window and it streaks New’s head with halo does Tay start to believe that this, whatever it is, with New is going to last.
“Daddy, did the moon love the sun too?”
Sometimes Tay and New would be sitting on the side of the road drinking canned beer just to talk about the most random things like how New’s physics professor was late to class that day because he had to take his cat to the vet, or how Tay gave someone a hug today for their social experiment. He tells them they are loved and that no one could ever make their choices for them.
Sometimes New would tell Tay about his dreams; tells him he wants Tay to be with him when he chases after them.
And sometimes New would look at Tay like he’s scared of losing him that it scares Tay that he’s making himself believe in things that aren’t real.
“Tae, remember what I told you when we reached Doi Inthanon’s peak?”
“You told me a lot of things, Hin.”
Tay doesn’t tell him that he remembers it all.
“I asked you to hold my hand.”
Tay still gets clear images of it. The cool breeze got New’s hair flying in unwanted directions as Tay watched the view overlooking the city 8000 feet below them and he thought of how little of the world they can see. He wondered—just as New asked him to hold his hand—if falling into it is worthwhile. New sank into his touch and told him he no longer feels too scared, and that’s when Tay thought that maybe it is.
“Maybe the moon did.”
“If he did, then why did the moon have to go?”
Time is a complex concept. A minute could feel like a lifetime when you’re in pain. Forever could end as fast as 7 years, 3 months, 1 week, 6 days, 13 hours, 48 minutes, and 20 seconds when the person you love tells you they’re leaving.
Yes, Tay loves New so much but who is the sun to keep his moon from going after his stars?
“I will miss you, Tae.”
Tay has never really been good at goodbyes. He’s the kind of person who says ‘see you tomorrow’ instead. So when he leans in to hug New before he gets on his plane, Tay whispers to him, soft and wavering, “Don’t make me spend a long time missing you.”
New York is 8600 miles away and it’s where New’s dreams are. But here, where they promised to meet again no matter how many sun cycles it takes, Tay has his own.
“Was the sun sad, daddy?”
“He was. And the moon probably was, too.”
The first few months were hard. Tay has so gotten used to New being at an arm’s breadth that it takes so much effort to remind himself it’s no longer like that, but during that time, New would call him when he couldn’t sleep because the time difference is still unsettling, and Tay would always, always be there until the only sound left is of him breathing.
New shows him the places he goes to and introduces him to the people he meets, but he still wishes he were there too.
“Everything moves so fast here, Tae. It’s like I couldn’t even find time to breathe.”
‘Come home’ is what Tay wants to tell him but that would be selfish so instead, Tay reminds him of one of the many things New taught him.
“Don’t forget yourself, Hin.”
It’s half past midnight for Tay and his eyes are closing shut so he doesn’t hear it when New, from a thousand miles away, whispers, “And everything that brought you here.”
“Was the sun ever happy after the moon left, daddy?”
Outside, the stars shine down over everything they see, but here beside Tay, the stars shine in his son’s eyes when he smiles at him.
“He was because he found another light.”
“Tay, I’m pregnant.”
Namtan doesn’t cry when she tells him this. But Tay knows her a little too well to know that it pains her more than she makes it seem.
It’s been two years since New left and sometime ago, Tay figured he should move on from his feelings, and in the process of it, he meets Namtan. She is sunshine personified and Tay was drawn to her like moth is to flames.
“I’ll take responsibility.”
It’s when Tay opens his arms for her and Namtan allows him to shield her from the world does she start crying.
“You’re such a good friend, Tay.”
“You deserve better than that bastard, Namtan, so much better. You’ll get through this and I’ll be with you every step of the way, okay?”
“Did the sun find another moon?”
Tay takes his son’s hand and places it over his heart, and surely, like the heart beats the same name after all this time, he says, “It’s always been the same moon.”
“As it should.”
Tay scoffs at the sound of a new voice just as he watches his moon kiss his little sun, and it makes the light of the stars incomparable to the light they emit.
“Did we wake you up, Hin?”
“I’ve been awake all this time, Tae.”
“Finish the story for us?”
New smiles. “Always.”
Tay and New look at their little eclipse the way the sun and the moon watch over everyone on earth, and their eclipse smiles at them the way people wish upon the stars.
“After so long, the moon came back to see his sun again because the moon knows deep inside his heart that the sun is his favorite star. And not only did he have the sun, but he came back to a little moon, too.”