Chapter Text
Taehyung Tern has never actually met his father.
And if he’s honest, he’s also rarely thought about the man beyond occasionally cursing his Xothan genes for passing Taehyung both a rare skin condition and a lung condition just serious enough to cause on and off annoyance since he can remember.
It’s not fun, and it’s messed with his quality of life enough that he’s been saving what money he can for years, eager to put aside the necessary credits to undergo gene therapy - what he really needs in order to fix both health problems for good.
Because even on Cyllene, a planet ranked ‘excellent’ when it comes to quality of life by the Intersolar Collective, medical procedures aren’t free unless your condition is life-threatening or judged to be serious by a panel of your peers.
Sometimes he thinks back to the moment he was condemned to learning how to live with the condition.
He can still remember the man who had been the deciding vote - older, maybe in his fifties, with a short beard and mean eyes.
Tae remembers how he’d scoffed and said he didn’t see a reason tax dollars should go to fixing such a trivial condition. Then he’d lectured Taehyung for about six minutes on how people in society needed to take responsibility for themselves. About how if he wanted gene therapy, he’d have to work for it and not expect others to pay for it.
And then he’d voted ‘no,’ breaking the tie in Taehyung’s case. Taehyung had been ten years old.
Despite the setback, he’d managed to avoid becoming bitter. Well, maybe a little bitter, but mostly he’d just felt resigned to get to a place where he would never have to stand before others and beg for things again. And if that drive and desire made him isolate himself from others a little more than might be healthy, at least he wasn’t being hurt.
And his condition had gotten better over time. Not because he learned how to control it, because he’d never really figured that out beyond taking fewer showers and using lots of lotion, which kind of helped sometimes.
What made a difference was when he’d stopped going to school for a week straight because keeping a stone-face as he walked down the halls while others made games of seeing who could get close enough to touch the reddened, hardened patches up and down his arms had proven to be too much.
After finding out he’d been ditching class, his Mom had finally taken out a loan in order to send him to a specialist, his behavior more worrying than how a higher-than-ideal interest rate was going to set them back long-term.
The expensive, prescription-only medicated creams the specialist had prescribed had helped some, so long as he applied it three times per day. And under the specialist’s direction he’d learned less abrasive methods of exfoliation that weren’t as irritating as the stiff brush and cheap three-in-one shower wash he’d been using up to that point.
She’d also introduced him to the wonders of using cold packs to chase away the irritation, maybe the best thing of all because it meant relief if only for a few hours.
It was enough. It had changed his life for the better, even if he still felt guilt for driving his Mom to have to spend so much money with his behavior.
As for the lung condition, there hadn’t been money leftover for that. But he had an inhaler that helped, one he carried everywhere he went. And he’d found that so long as he wasn’t running or working out very hard, it didn’t affect him too much. Which had sucked because he’d had the idea of trying out for sports for a little while to become less of a target when he’d been younger, but even that hadn’t been a possibility.
But he’s worked on his anger around not being able to do the things others can and now that he’s an adult, it doesn’t bother him. After all, his conditions suck, but they’re manageable. They affect his life, but it could be so much worse, as his Mom reminds him all the time. And he knows she’s right.
He’s in a good place when the message comes through.
He hasn’t had any flare-ups in a few weeks, the dry patches fading down. The ones on his neck aren’t even visible right now. And he did well on his exams a few days ago, scores in the top 20% for every class.
It’s his last year before he starts looking for an apprenticeship in his chosen field - medical law - so the fact that he’s handling the workload bodes well. It’ll get a foot in the door at some of the mid-tier firms at least, and that’s all he needs, so he’s feeling positive.
He’s ready for his new classes next semester. He already has the learning modules he needs purchased and organized. He’s been relaxing and working on the cover letter he knows he’ll be asked for when he ultimately submits an apprenticeship application, so nothing too stressful.
Then his Mom calls.
“Would you like to come home for a few days?” she asks him gently, voice soft and nice. Too nice. Taehyung sits up from where he’d been lounging on the couch immediately.
“Are you alright? What happened?” he asks, donning his shoes and looking for his jacket.
“Are you sitting down?” she asks. Taehyung swallows, wanting to hurry out the door. But his Mom is a smart woman. So he listens and sits back down on the couch.
“Yes, I’m sitting. Mom, tell me,” he replies. She sighs, and then she tells him that the father he’s never met - Kim Yejun - is dead.
Taehyung blinks a few times in surprise. And then he shrugs.
“Mom, it’s fine. I didn’t even know the man,” he says. She lets out a long sigh of relief.
“Okay. Well, his brother - Seojun - he said you were left something in the will. How much time off do you have before your next semester? Do you want to go to Xoth and meet his family? Your uncle seemed nice enough,” she muses.
And Taehyung Tern doesn’t know. The whole thing feels bizarre to him. In theory, he’s known he has a father out there somewhere, but traveling to Xoth feels like acknowledging the whole thing in a way Tae isn’t sure he wants to do.
“I don’t know,” he tells his Mom finally. She’s understanding.
“That’s okay. I wouldn’t make you. I just think it might be good for you. Yejun never spoke of his family, but…well, you know I don’t have any. I was thinking it could be good for you. Seojun sounded eager to see you during our call. And I’m not going to live forever. I’d feel better if I knew you had others who care about you in your life,” she says.
Taehyung winces.
“Okay, but if he really wanted to know me then where’s he been? I’m 22 - not a little boy anymore,” he says.
That’s when his Mom explains - carefully - that his Uncle Seojun had insinuated that Yejun had kept Taehyung’s presence hidden from them. Utterly hidden.
“They didn’t know about me at all?” he asks, surprised but not that surprised. Hard to be disappointed in someone’s character when you never actually knew anything about that person’s character.
“No. Seojun said they only found out when they were going through Yejun’s things last week. He’d kept some of your baby pictures, you see,” she says, tone shifting into something more bitter.
“Too bad he couldn’t bother to send any child support,” she mutters, but then brightens. “He left you something though. Your uncle wasn’t sure what it was, and he said your father wasn’t wealthy. But it could be property or some kind of asset you could sell to pay off your educational debt. Or to cover the cost of gene therapy if you still want it. There’s no guarantee but your uncle already paid for the travel arrangements to get you to Xoth so it wouldn’t cost you to go. He even put some extra money - a thousand credits - aside in a fund. ‘Spending money,’ he said,” she chuckles a bit at that.
Taehyung can’t stop the smile stealing across his lips. The idea of spending a thousand credits on a trip is foreign to them both. A thousand credits is the cost of his rent for two months. There’s no way he’d spend that much frivolously.
Even so, the idea is growing on him. He’d fantasized a little bit about his father coming to find him when he’d been younger, though he’d made his peace with the fact that it would never happen when he’d been a teenager.
But having more family could be a good thing. Maybe. He’s definitely curious. His uncle sounds nice. And having enough money to pay for gene therapy sounds nice too.
“I’m technically off until next semester, which is three weeks away, so I guess I don’t have anything better to do. What kind of travel arrangements did he make?” he asks his Mom.