Like a Volcano

Jisung barely had time to look up from his desk before you launched yourself at him.

"Hi."

The impact nearly sent his chair rolling backward. He laughed anyway, wrapping his arms around you automatically. "Hi."

Worth the stairs.

Pleasantries were exchanged first, of course. You'd missed him, and Jisung genuinely wanted to know how classes were going. But somewhere between the updates and the complaining, the conversation migrated to his bed, where talking became significantly less productive when you ended up on top of him.

Clothes had long since vanished. You smirked against his mouth, amused as your hands played with his hair. He was inseparable from your face and neck, kissing every inch of you. He chuckled little I miss you’s into your skin with each one, but he slowed down at some point, staying in one spot for a little too long. He wouldn’t leave your chest alone.

You leaned backwards, allowing him more access. He didn’t hesitate, humming gratefully before his scattered kisses got messier.

“Are the condoms still in the drawer?” you asked, tone casual.

Jisung popped up, lips and cheeks a matching shade of magenta. He flashed a shy grin as he reached over to retrieve protection. You pulled it from his hand impatiently, giggling as you quickly got it on him.

Today wasn’t the day to act bashful, but neither of you were desperate either. He carefully lifted your hips and lowered you onto him, making you sigh contently at the stretch. You took him in quickly and well, your body having memorized his already.

You braced yourself with his shoulders and rose and fell with urgent rhythm. The sound of you bouncing off his thighs was mixed with his creaky bed and stifled groans. He tried his best to keep quiet, but he couldn’t help but squeak when you circled your hips just right.

“Missed you,” he mumbled, buried in your neck. “Don’t leave me again.”

His bangs tickled you as you quickened the pace. He could only grip you harder, letting you feel every inch of him tremor inside you. He was close and you felt kind enough to let him finish, so you grinded into him, hard and rough. He groaned, not expecting the force. He panted through it, voice high and strained as he thanked you. He sounded so delicate, even delighted, as you kept him there, using him until it was your turn.

Eventually, you collapsed on top of Jisung with a soft smack. He was sweaty and warm and breathed with the labor of a man who almost died. You sprawled out on his chest, getting comfortable.

Jisung let out a long, dramatic groan beneath you.

“Alive?” you asked.

“…debatable.”

You giggled, nestling closer. His heartbeat thumped steadily beneath your cheek. Neither of you seemed particularly interested in moving anytime soon.

As your gaze wandered around his room - past the shelves of figurines and Legos - something unfamiliar caught your eye. There was a big glass box in the corner. You were a little embarrassed that you missed it on the way in earlier. It wasn’t a fish tank, exactly. It looked more elaborate than that, with branches, climbing structures, and serious looking equipment.

You frowned. That definitely hadn't been there last time.

“Ji,” you said, poking at his chest. “What's that?”

“Huh?” He turned his head like the motion required a sacrifice from his life source.

You pointed. Jisung followed your finger, squinting across the room. His glasses had long since disappeared somewhere into the abyss of his bedroom, forcing him to rely on pure intuition. Then his eyes widened.

“Oh!" The reaction was immediate. Not merely excitement, exactly. More like activation. One second Jisung had been half-dead and incapable of movement. The next, he was sitting upright, forcing you to straddle him and gaze up into his now twinkling eyes.

You burst out laughing. "No way."

"What?"

"You weren't even conscious ten seconds ago."

"I'm conscious now."

"Because of the mystery tank?"

"Maybe."

"Jisung."

"Do you wanna see or not?"

You loved having a nerdy boyfriend. Not the aesthetic kind - not the people who carried books they never finished in tote bags from museums they’ve never been to. Despite his standoffish, slightly brooding exterior, he was a real one. Jisung collected hobbies like they were achievements all while maintaining a 4.0. He watched anime. He read manga and comics and then acted personally offended when you mixed the terms up. He treated competitive games like a second job despite complaining about them constantly. He could quote the Silmarillion and the Orange Catholic Bible. He could spend an hour explaining why two guitars that looked identical were completely different instruments in his humble opinion. Every few months, he discovered something new and immediately devoted his entire personality to it.

Which meant absolutely anything could be waiting inside that tank.

“Wait here,” he said, already scrambling off the bed. He clumsily redressed himself, passing you your shirt and underwear, as well.

After making yourself kind of presentable, you sat on the edge of the bed, kicking your feet while your imagination ran wild.

A turtle would be fine.

A snake would be manageable.

A tarantula would test the limits of your devotion.

The door opened before you could decide where exactly you drew the line. Jisung stepped inside with both hands raised dramatically, like a doctor preparing for surgery.

"Okay," he said. "Important question."

You cocked your head to the side.

"Are you gonna want to hold her?"

Her. Your curiosity doubled.

"Maybe?" You lied.

"Then you need to wash your hands first."

You wanted to hesitate; you wanted to interrogate a bit further. But his hair was a mess. His cheeks were still pink. There was a shine to his skin that made him look warm and impossibly pretty, and he was smiling at you with all the excitement of a little kid about to show off his favorite toy.

You folded immediately.

"Okay."

"Okay," he echoed, pleased.

You dutifully headed for the bathroom. On your way back, you passed through the living room. Minho was stretched across the couch, scrolling through his phone with one hand. One of his cats - the enormous orange one that seemed to gain mass every time you visited - was sprawled across his chest like a weighted blanket.

Without looking up, he said, "You'll be fine."

You paused.

"Hm?"

"Just don't freak out."

That did not inspire confidence.

"And call her cute."

Now you were even more concerned.

"It'll make him happy."

You stared at him. Minho finally glanced up.

"Trust me."

Considering Minho's definition of cute included an almost literal gang of mean, chunky cats, you weren't sure that helped very much.

When you returned to Jisung's room, he was standing in front of the tank with one arm inside. "Hey," he was saying softly. "Daddy wants to introduce you to somebody."

You opened your mouth and then closed it, not having the time to unpack that statement. A beat later, he carefully withdrew his hand. Something tiny clung to his fingers.

"Oh." Your heart immediately melted.

The lizard was adorable. It was mostly white, covered in soft brown patches that reminded you of a cow. It looked impossibly small perched against his hand - not even the size of a full palm, barely as long as the fingers its little toes were wrapped around. For a creature that looked like a miniature dinosaur, it was unbelievably cute.

"This is Richard," Jisung announced. The smile on his face could have powered a city. "She's a crested gecko. She's still a baby, so she's really little."

You looked from the gecko to Jisung. Then back to the gecko. Then back to Jisung.

"...She's a girl?"

"Yeah!"

"Why is her name Richard, then?"

A moment passed.

"Changbin named her."

That somehow explained everything and nothing.

"It's a pun," he continued bashfully.

You laughed. “Of course.”

"But she likes it."

"She likes being named Richard?"

"Yeah!” He said it with such conviction that you couldn't even argue.

Jisung stepped closer and gently held out his hand. Richard immediately turned her head toward you. You froze. The gecko stared. You stared back. She had huge, curious eyes. The kind that made it look like she was genuinely trying to figure you out.

"She's looking at you," Jisung said quietly.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"She's wondering who you are." The fondness in his voice nearly killed you. “She's really only met me and Minho. She hid from my dad when he dropped her off."

You reached out carefully, wiggling a finger. Richard followed the movement with her entire head.

"Oh my God."

"I know," Jisung said immediately, proudly.

"How long have you had her?"

"A few weeks." The answer came instantly, but the follow-up was stammered a bit, like he was guilty. "I-I wanted to introduce you guys when you were less swamped and she was settled in first. I figured it'd take longer, but she's such a happy baby."

His entire face lit up. The gecko could not possibly understand what he was saying. That didn't stop him.

"She lets me hold her every morning before she goes to sleep. Sometimes she'll just sit with me in bed." He smiled down at Richard. "And she'll come out of her cave to stare at Minho and the cats."

"Just stare?"

"Just stare."

"Judgmentally?"

"A little. They deserve it.”

You laughed. Jisung laughed too.

And for a moment, watching him gush over a tiny lizard named Richard, you found yourself thinking the same thing you'd been thinking for months now - somehow, every new thing he cared about became your favorite thing to hear about.

"Do you want to try holding her?" Jisung asked.

You nodded, truly excited. The smile that spread across his face was almost unfair.

"Okay." He adjusted his hands carefully. "Just hold your hand out like this.”

You copied him.

“If she wants to come over, she will. If she doesn't, that's okay too." His voice softened. "She might need more time. She still won't let Minho hold her."

The smug satisfaction that gave you was completely irrational.

You held your hand steady. The tiny gecko tilted her head as though she were conducting a very serious evaluation. For a moment, she simply watched you. Then, after what felt like an eternity, she leaned forward.

One foot. Then another. Slowly, she climbed from Jisung's hand onto yours. Your entire face lit up.

"Oh my God - I've been chosen."

"You have."

You bit your lip to stop yourself from squealing. She was even smaller up close, delicate. Ridiculously tiny compared to the hand she perched on. Richard blinked at you intently. There was something strangely self-satisfied about her expression, like she knew exactly how adorable she was.

"What a brave girl!" Jisung cooed. He was smiling so proudly it was embarrassing. "Daddy is so proud of you."

You paused, then slowly turned toward him, with a poorly hidden smirk.

"Daddy?"

Jisung looked back at you.

"Daddy," you repeated.

"Yeah?" The confusion on his face was genuine.

"You call yourself that?"

"Well..." He shrugged. "She's my daughter." The answer was delivered with complete sincerity.

You hummed. "I'll remember that."

The tips of his ears immediately turned pink.

Richard shifted on your hand, completely unaware that her father was currently being psychologically observed.

"Can I be her mommy?" you asked suddenly.

Jisung's eyes widened. "What?"

You lifted Richard slightly. "I think she likes me."

Richard chose that exact moment to climb farther onto your hand.

"See?" you said. "We're bonding."

Jisung looked between you and the gecko. Then, to your surprise, he smiled. "Of course."

Your heart did a stupid little flip. "Really?"

"Yeah." He reached over to gently scratch beneath Richard's chin. "She already has uncles."

You laughed, an airy, surprised sound. The domesticity of that sentence hit you far harder than it should have.

Richard: one.

Your ability to function: zero.

"Hm." You pretended to think. "Can I be your—"

"Absolutely not."

You burst out laughing. “You don't even know what I was going to say."

"I do."

"You don't."

"You can’t joke like that in front of children!” His face was red now.

Richard suddenly licked the tip of your finger. Both of you froze. Then Jisung pointed. "See? She agrees with me."

"That's not what happened."

"That's exactly what happened."

"Richard, blink twice if you support me."

Richard simply continued sitting there, unblinking, looking pleased with herself.

Traitor.

You lifted her closer to eye level. She watched you back. Tiny. Inquisitive. Completely content.

Honestly, you understood why Jisung was obsessed with her. Then again, you also understood why you were obsessed with Jisung.

Richard settled comfortably in your stretched hand, curling in on herself almost sleepily.

"I really do think she's adopted me," you whispered.

"Good."

"Good?"

Jisung nodded without hesitation. "Yeah."

"Why?"

He looked genuinely confused by the question. "Because I wanted her to like you."

Your heart immediately betrayed you. "Oh."

Jisung reached over to gently pat Richard's head. "You're important to me," he said simply. "I wanted you guys to get along."

Just like that. No grand declaration. No dramatic speech. Just a statement of fact. You looked down at Richard before he could see the ridiculous smile threatening to spread across your face.

Unfortunately, your boyfriend was observant.

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"No reason."

"There is absolutely a reason."

"Focus on your daughter."

"She's our daughter."

You turned around to hide your red face growing hotter and hotter by the second, startling Richard as she peered at her father judgingly. Jisung stood frozen, surprised by his own charm.

From somewhere in the apartment, Minho yelled, "I heard that one."

"Mind your business!" you shouted. Richard stretched forward in solidarity.

98%.

The number glared up at you from the paper.

it's a good grade, objectively a great one. but there had to be a mistake - you’d stayed up three nights straight reviewing every possible permutation of the material. Your notes had been immaculate. You’d even rewritten them twice just to be sure.

Behind you, someone cleared their throat. you braced yourself for whatever annoying thing Jisung was about to say.

"Oof," Jisung said, leaning over your shoulder. "Ninety eight? I mean, close enough."

His own test fluttered into your peripheral vision, 100%. Of course.

"Better luck next time," he added. His voice was light, teasing - a tone he’d used since freshman year whenever he edged you out by fractions of a point.

You exhaled through your nose, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. Instead, you shoved your test into your bag, zipping it shut.

Jisung didn’t take the hint. He never did. He propped his hip against your desk, grinning as he watched you pack up.

"Don’t worry," Jisung continued, "I’ll let you copy my notes next time."

You finally looked up at him - his stupidly perfect face, his stupidly smug grin, stupidly big framed glasses.

"Like hell I’d copy your chicken scratch," you muttered, shoving your chair back harder than necessary. making its legs screech against the floor.

Jisung’s grin widened. "y'know, if you actually got enough sleep instead of staying up all night-"

You stood up and stomped on his foot, hard.

He yelped, hopping backward with exaggerated agony. "Ow! What was that for?"

You didn’t dignify him with an answer. You slung your bag over your shoulder and walked off without a backward glance.

Behind you, Jisung’s dramatic whining faded into the background noise of the lecture hall, punctuated by a burst of laughter from somewhere near the exit. You didn’t need to look to know it was Changbin, doubled over with amusement while Chan stood beside him, hand resting on the strap of his bag, waiting patiently.

The three of them had been inseparable since their second year of high school, when Chan, already broad shouldered and responsible beyond his years, had stepped between a scrawny, loudmouthed Jisung who'd just learned curse words and a group of seniors looking for an easy target.

Changbin, who’d been watching the confrontation from a nearby bench, had tossed a water bottle at the ringleader’s head mid threat. The resulting chaos had somehow ended with all three of them in detention, and that was where their friendship formed.

By graduation, the three of them had already cemented their fate - Chan, Changbin, and Jisung were a package deal, an inseparable trio that had somehow survived four years of high school without murdering each other.

So when university acceptance letters rolled in, the decision was already made, they’d stick together, signing a lease for a cramped apartment near campus before the ink on their diplomas had even dried.

And then there was you.

Orientation week had been the beginning of it all, though you hadn’t realized it at the time.

You hadn’t noticed Jisung at first during orientation. Not really. He’d been just another face in the crowd, another overeager freshman with bad posture and a laugh too loud.

as for him though, he had a stupid, undeniable crush on you.

he tried to talk to you, you’d been too busy rearranging your schedule to register his existence - some mumbled joke about the professor’s hair that you’d brushed off with a polite smile before walking away.

Another time, still during orientation, he’d lingered near your seat after the icebreaker games, hovering like he expected you to acknowledge him. You hadn’t.

What had caught your attention was the first exam. You’d walked out of that lecture hall certain you’d aced it, only to find your name one spot below his on the results board.

he'd realized then that you're probably a perfectionist, and that you did not like being in second place. you never were in second place, ever since high school.

he became your competition from then.

Jisung noticed the shift immediately. He could’ve backed off. He didn’t. Instead, he leaned into it.

It wasn’t that he wanted you to hate him. He just wanted you to look at him.

Don't get him wrong, he did try to befriend you, but when that ended in inevitable failure, he opted for his last option, the one thing guaranteed to make you react, relentless, obnoxious teasing. If you couldn’t stand him, at least you’d notice him.

It worked better than he’d expected.

three years later, and Han Jisung was still the single most irritating person you'd ever met.

~

The sound of the apartment door jolted Jisung awake. He blinked at the ceiling, groggy and disoriented, sunlight already painting stripes across his unmade bed.

His phone lay facedown on the floor where he’d tossed it last night. He fumbled for it, thumb smearing against the screen as he squinted at the time, 9:47 AM.

"Shit."

Jisung groaned, rubbing his face with both hands as the pieces clicked together - his snoozed alarm, the muffled knocking he'd sleepily batted away earlier, Chan had tried. Chan had definitely tried to wake him up.

Jisung rolled out of bed, scrambling upright, one hand already tugging his hoodie over his head while the other fumbled for his backpack.

He was not gonna be that late if he decided to take a short cut. And so he did.

Cutting through the science building was a gamble, technically off limits to non majors before noon, but Jisung had long since memorized the janitor’s schedule.

He ducked under a half raised security gate, sidestepping a cart of lab equipment as he beelined for the west exit. His footsteps echoed too loudly in the empty hallway, but he didn’t slow down - not until a sharp clang from an adjacent lab made him skid to a halt.

Jisung turned his head just in time to see a door marked 'BIOTECH RESEARCH - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY' swing shut, the tail end of a lab coat disappearing behind it.

He hesitated for half a second, before the distant chime of the campus clock tower rang. He was so late.

Jisung shouldn’t have been there.

The lock mechanism whirred as he hovered near the entrance, the distant hum of machinery inside prickling at his ears. Curiosity had always been his fatal flaw.

He glanced over his shoulder. The hallway was empty.

The door hissed open with a nudge of his shoulder, just wide enough for him to slip through. The lab was a maze of steel tables and humming equipment, bathed in the sterile glow of overhead LEDs.

Glass tanks lined the far wall, their murky contents swirling with movement - something skittered behind the frosted glass, too fast to track. spiders.

"Cool," he muttered, stepping further inside.

Jisung's fingers hovered over the nearest microscope, its lens gleaming under the lab lights. The surface was cool to the touch. Before he could explore more, a sharp click from the far end of the room froze him mid reach. His breath hitched. The sound wasn't mechanical. It was footsteps.

He ducked behind a lab bench, his knee connecting painfully with a drawer handle. He bit his tongue to keep from swearing.

Through the gap between two beakers, he could just make out the silhouette of a researcher - tall, white coated, absorbed in a clipboard. The man moved methodically down the row of specimens, pausing occasionally to adjust dials or scribble notes.

When the researcher turned toward a computer terminal, Jisung seized his chance. He crab walked backward, keeping low, until his shoulder bumped into something decidedly not a lab table. it was one of the glass tanks from earlier.

The container wobbled. He lunged to steady the glass before it could shatter and give away his presence that was not allowed in this lab, but his palm slipped against the condensation slick surface. The lid shifted with a silent clink.

A spider the size of a quarter dropped onto his wrist.

Jisung's entire body locked up. The spider's legs were needle thin, its body an unnatural shade of iridescent blue that shimmered under the lab lights.

For a suspended second, neither of them moved - Jisung paralyzed by instinctive revulsion, the spider crouched like a coiled spring. Then it bit him.

The pain was sharp and sudden, Jisung clamped his free hand over his mouth to smother the yelp threatening to escape. The researcher's footsteps paused.

"Who's there?"

Jisung froze. His wrist burned where the spider's fangs had pierced his skin, the pain radiating up his arm in slow, crawling waves.

The spider twitched between his fingers, its iridescent body pulsing unnaturally as he pinched it. For a split second, he considered tossing it aside - but the memory of its bite made his stomach twist.

Without thinking, he squished it between his finger, killing it.

Jisung grimaced, wiping his hand against his pants as the researcher's footsteps grew louder. He ducked lower behind the lab bench. A clipboard clattered onto the table above him, followed by the metallic click of a pen. The researcher muttered something under his breath - numbers, maybe, or measurements - before his shoes squeaked against the floor, turning away.

Jisung exhaled silently through his nose. His wrist throbbed. The bite mark was already red, the skin around it blotchy and hot to the touch. He flexed his fingers experimentally, half expecting his hand to lock up, but aside from the sting, nothing seemed immediately wrong.

The researcher's footsteps faded toward the far end of the lab. Jisung waited ten seconds before risking a glance over the edge of the bench. The man's back was turned, his attention fixed on a row of specimen jars. Jisung didn't wait. He walked backward until his shoulders hit the wall, then slid along it toward the door, keeping low.

The door clicked open just enough for him to slip through. He didn't look back.

The hallway was still empty. Jisung broke into a sprint, rounding the corner just as the lab door groaned shut behind him.

By the time he burst through the science building's side exit, the pain in his wrist had dulled to a steady ache. The sunlight hit his face, momentarily blinding him. He blinked, disoriented, before his phone buzzed violently in his pocket.

Changbin's name flashed across the screen.

Jisung fumbled with his phone, nearly dropping it as Changbin's second call lit up the screen. He swiped to answer just as a cyclist swerved around him, yelling something unflattering about his lack of spatial awareness.

"Where the hell are you?" Changbin's voice crackled through the speaker.

He rolled his wrist experimentally, half expecting a jolt of pain, but only a dull ache remained. strange, but not alarming enough to mention.

"Chill, I'm literally two minutes away," Jisung huffed into the phone, sidestepping a group of freshmen clustered around a campus map.

Jisung skidded to a halt outside the lecture hall, his sneakers squeaking against the polished floor as he yanked the door open. Twenty pairs of eyes swiveled toward him - including yours, narrowed with undisguised irritation from the front row.

The professor paused mid sentence, her laser pointer flickering against the projection screen.

"Nice of you to join us, Mr. Han," she said dryly.

Jisung flashed her a grin "Traffic was brutal."

The professor arched an eyebrow. "You live on campus."

"Exactly."

Jisung collapsed into the empty seat next to you with a sigh. Conveniently, there were no other free seats.

The professor resumed her lecture, but Jisung wasn't listening. His fingers drummed restlessly against the desk, his knee bouncing so fast it blurred. You gritted your teeth.

"Would you stop?" you hissed under your breath, jabbing your pen toward his twitching leg.

Jisung blinked at you like he'd forgotten you were there. "Stop what?"

"That." You gestured pointedly at his knee, "You're shaking the entire row."

He glanced down, as if surprised by his own body. "Huh."

Jisung blinked again, his fingers stilling mid tap against the desk. "Oh. Sorry."

He stopped. His knee went still. His fingers curled into a loose fist against the desk. Even his breathing seemed to slow, like he was consciously holding himself in check.

The professor's lecture droned on, but you couldn't focus. Your peripheral vision kept catching on Jisung's unnaturally still form.

Then he sneezed.

The sound was sharp, explosive, and entirely too loud for the lecture hall. Half the class jumped. The professor paused mid sentence, her laser pointer flickering off the screen. Jisung sniffled, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.

"Bless you," you muttered automatically.

Jisung turned his head so fast you heard his neck crack. "Thanks," he whispered back. His voice was hoarse, like he'd been yelling earlier - though you couldn't remember hearing him speak at all today.

The strangeness of it prickled at your neck. Jisung didn't whisper. He didn't apologize. And he certainly didn't stop fidgeting for twenty straight minutes.

weird

~

after lectures, you were supposed to be studying.

Keyword: supposed.

Currently, your textbook lay abandoned as Yunjin scrolled through her phone, legs kicked up onto the library table in direct violation of at least three campus rules.

"I swear to god," she muttered, stabbing her screen, "if Professor Kang assigns one more reading—" she cut herself off with a sigh.

"I'll drop out," Yunjin announced, tossing her phone onto the table. "I'll move to a remote island. Raise goats. Never think about electron configurations again."

You snorted, flipping a page in your textbook without absorbing a single word. "You'd cry over the first goat that liked someone else better."

"Excuse you, I'm extremely likable-" Yunjin's protest cut off mid-sentence as she caught you glancing sideways for the third time in five minutes.

"Ohhhh. That's why you're failing to absorb basic chemistry. Distracted by your archnemesis over there."

You stiffened. "I don't know what you're—"

"Han Jisung," Yunjin sing songed, nodding toward the table where Jisung was slumped over a pile of notebooks, dead asleep.

His cheek was pressed against an open textbook, one arm dangling off the edge of the table, the side of his wrist adorned with what looked like a nasty bruise. A thin line of drool connected his mouth to a page. "You were staring at that."

"I was not staring," you hissed, slamming your textbook shut . Several students at nearby tables startled. Jisung didn't even twitch. "I was just—"

"Admiring his scholarly dedication?" Yunjin smirked, kicking her feet down from the table. "Or maybe his impressive drool radius?"

"I was wondering how someone who sleeps through every lecture still manages to ace every exam."

As if on cue, Jisung shifted in his sleep, his dangling arm swinging. he nearly toppled him sideways out of his chair. Your body reacted before your brain could stop it, half standing, hand outstretched - only to freeze when he somehow righted himself without waking.

Yunjin's eyebrows shot up. "Wow."

"Wow what?" You dropped back into your seat, face burning.

"Nothing," she said, stretching the word into three syllables. "Just never realized you cared so much about Jisung's spinal health."

"I just didn't want to witness a concussion in the library."

Yunjin grinned, kicking you lightly under the table. "Uh huh. Sure. That's definitely why you looked ready to dive across three tables like a superhero." She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. "You secretly like him."

You choked on air. "Like him? Are you insane? He's—" You gestured wildly toward Jisung's sleeping form. "—that. That's what he is. A menace. A sleeping menace."

"Aw, but look how peaceful he is," Yunjin cooed, feigning innocence. "Like a little angel."

At that exact moment, Jisung snorted loudly in his sleep, mumbled something unintelligible, and promptly face planted directly onto his textbook. You winced. Yunjin burst out laughing.

He lifted his head blearily, blinked at the drool smeared page stuck to his cheek, then promptly slumped back down without a single coherent thought behind his eyes.

Yunjin wiped tears from her cheeks, still giggling. "Oh my god. He's adorable."

"You're delusional," you muttered, shoving your notebook into your backpack. The zipper caught on a loose page, and you yanked it free with a frustrated huff. "Let's get lunch before I have to listen to any more of this."

Yunjin’s eyes lit up suddenly, "Oh! Right," she said, snapping her fingers as you shoved the last of your notebooks into your bag. "You’re coming with me to that party tonight."

You blinked. "What party?"

"The one hyunjin’s throwing at his apartment," she said, as if this were obvious. "The one I told you about last week."

"You absolutely did not."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Semantics. Anyway, after lunch, we’re going back to our dorm so you can try on at least three outfits before I approve one."

You groaned, slinging your backpack over your shoulder. "No way. I have actual responsibilities."

Yunjin stood, shoving her phone into her pocket "Nope. You’ve been holed up in the library for weeks. You’re coming, and you’re going to socialize, and you’re going to like it." She paused, then added with a smirk, "Unless you’d rather stay here and stare at Jisung some more."

You nearly tripped over your own feet. "What? I wasn’t—"

"Uh huh." She linked her arm through yours, steering you toward the library exit "lunch first, outfits second, party third. No arguments."

You dug your heels in halfway to the door. "What if I want to argue? - who the hell even hosts a party on a school night-"

Yunjin sighed dramatically, turning to face you with a look of exaggerated pity. "Sweet, naive, delusional you. When have your arguments ever worked on me?"

"...Never."

"Exactly." She patted your cheek. "Now move. I’m starving."

You did end up going according to Yunjin’s plans - not that you had a choice, given she’d physically dragged you out of the library, then out of your dorm.

to top it all off, you had to wait for her because if you didn't, there'd be no one to take her drunk ass home, and you'd end up finding her in a ditch somewhere next morning.

so you had to wait till the asscrack of the night to take her home because no matter how un enjoyable a party is, you were not a bad friend.

and you were gonna be so late tomorrow.

~

The blaring alarm tore Jisung from his sleep this time. He gasped awake, limbs tangled in sheets that felt suspiciously sticky - had he spilled something last night? His hand shot out blindly toward the nightstand, fingers slapping against anything but his phone.

The alarm continued shrieking. Jisung groaned, pawing at the edge of his nightstand until his fingertips brushed warm metal. He grabbed his phone and hit the screen repeatedly-

The screen cracked under Jisung's fingers with a pop when he swiped to turn off the alarm. not a full shatter, but a spiderweb of fractures radiating from his thumbprint.

He blinked at it, sleep fogged brain struggling to process why his phone screen suddenly broke just from a few taps of his finger.

The display still functioned beneath the damage, the time, 8:15AM, visible through the splintered glass. Jisung flexed his fingers. He hadn't pushed that hard. Had he?

Jisung frowned, pushing himself up onto his elbows. The cracked phone screen wasn't the only thing that felt off, his head throbbed like he'd pulled an all nighter.

He grabbed his glasses from the nightstand, fingers fumbling with the frames in his haste.

The moment he slid them on, the world tilted.

Everything blurred into a nauseating smear of colors and shapes - like someone had smeared Vaseline across his lenses.

Jisung ripped the glasses off his face. The world snapped into focus, he could see perfectly without his glasses. He blinked rapidly. His vision hadn't been this clear since elementary school.

"What the fuck," he whispered, turning his hands over in front of his face. The calluses on his fingertips stood out in stark relief, the whorls of his fingerprints unnervingly detailed.

He rubbed his eyes hard till he saw colors and shapes behind his eyelids, but when he opened them again, his dorm room remained horrifically, impossibly sharp.

Jisung exhaled slowly through his nose and tossed the glasses onto the nightstand - they landed with a clatter, one temple arm snapping off completely.

His wrist itched. The bite mark from yesterday was gone.

Jisung rolled out of bed, his feet hitting the floor with an audible thud that made the loose change on his nightstand rattle.

He stretched, arms arching high above his head - and froze mid yawn when he heard the distinctive rrrip of fabric.

His sleep addled brain registered two things at once, the sudden draft across his shoulders, and the fact that his favorite hoodie, the one he’d slept in last night, now had a gaping tear along the seam.

He blinked down at himself. The fabric clung to his torso in ways it never had before, stretched taut across shoulders that suddenly looked broader. His biceps pressed against the sleeves, the cuffs riding up his wrist like they’d shrunk in the wash.

Jisung frowned and tugged at the hem. It didn’t budge.

his full length mirror confirmed it. His reflection stared back at him - same messy hair, same sleep creased cheek, but it was like he hit a second puberty overnight.

The hoodie that used to hang loose now hugged every contour of his torso, the fabric straining across his chest when he inhaled.

he took his hoodie off - since when did he have abs?? he was met with whole six pack. he even counted them.

he prodded at his own bicep experimentally, half expecting it, I don't know, deflate? It didn’t.

The bedroom door creaked open - Chan appearing at the doorway, "I swear to god, if you're still asleep-" His threat died halfway out of his mouth when he saw Jisung.

Jisung stood frozen in front of the mirror, shirtless and wide eyed, one hand still gripping the torn remains of his hoodie. The morning light caught the sharp new definition of his shoulders, the lean muscle coiled along his arms like he'd spent the last six months living in a gym.

"...Did you steal Changbin's protein shakes?"

Jisung whipped around "What? No! I just-" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "I woke up like this."

Chan stepped inside, kicking the door shut behind him with his heel. His gaze flickered over Jisung's torso - the previously soft lines of his stomach now taut, the faint shadows of ribs replaced by something decidedly more athletic.

Chan reached out and poked Jisung's bicep with two fingers. It felt like pressing against granite.

"Ow," Jisung lied automatically, then blinked. "Wait. That didn't actually hurt."

Chan's eyebrows raised. "You're telling me you went to bed and woke up as-" He gestured vaguely at Jisung's entire existence. "-whatever this is?"

A beat of silence. Then, from the hallway, "If you two are having a moment, I'm throwing myself off the window." Changbin's voice, muffled through the door.

Chan ignored him. "Did you take something? Experimental pre workout? Sketchy supplements from the gym bros?"

Jisung's fingers twitched toward his wrist - where the spider bite had been. The skin was smooth. "I might have... broken into the biotech lab yesterday."

Chan's expression grew even more confused. "okay...?"

The bedroom door slammed open before Jisung could answer. Changbin stood in the threshold, mouth already open to ask why the hell they were whispering with the door closed - then his eyes landed on Jisung’s bare torso. His eyebrows shot up. "Woah. What happened to you?"

Jisung threw his hands in the air, "I know! I woke up like - okay listen," he took a deep breath,

"yesterday I was late, like super late, so I took a shortcut through the science building even though I’m technically banned from the biotech wing after the centrifuge incident—"

Changbin mouthed 'centrifuge incident?' at Chan, who pinched the bridge of his nose.

"-and then I heard this noise from the restricted lab, right? So obviously I had to check it out-"

"You didn’t have to," Chan groaned.

"and there was this spider, this huge freaky blue one, in a tank that I maybe knocked over-"

"You knocked over-"

"-and it bit me! Right here!" Jisung brandished his unmarked wrist, "It hurt like hell yesterday but now it’s gone and suddenly I can see everything without my glasses and I just ripped my favorite hoodie like it was tissue paper-" He demonstrated by grabbing the hem of his remaining sleeve and tugging. The fabric split with a sound like tearing paper.

Changbin's mouth dropped open. Chan's blinked in disbelief.

"Okay," Chan said very slowly, "So you're telling me a genetically modified spider bit you, and now you're..." He gestured vaguely at Jisung's new physique. "This?"

Jisung flexed his arms experimentally. His biceps jumped under his skin "I mean, when you say it like that-"

Changbin suddenly lunged forward and punched Jisung square in the stomach - or tried to. His fist connected with what felt like solid concrete instead of soft flesh.

Jisung didn't even flinch. Changbin yelped, shaking out his hand. "Holy shit, dude. That's not normal."

Jisung looked down at his own abdomen, prodding the spot Changbin had hit. "Didn't feel anything." His voice went unnervingly quiet. "Should I be freaking out?"

Chan grabbed Jisung's shoulders - or attempted to, before his fingers slipped off the unexpected slope of muscle. "You shouldn't be able to bench press a car after one spider bite!"

"Technically I haven't tried that yet-"

The alarm on Jisung’s shattered phone blared again, 8:45AM, and Chan visibly flinched. “Shit. Class starts in fifteen.”

Changbin was already halfway out the door, yelling over his shoulder, “I’m not getting marked absent because you two want to dissect Jisung’s sudden glow up!”

Chan walked out of Jisung's room too, coming back after a moment,

"Here," Chan grunted, tossing a black hoodie at Jisung's face. It smelled faintly of fabric softener and Chan's inexplicably expensive cologne. "It's the biggest one I've got. Don't pop the seams."

~

Jisung reached campus a full minute before Chan and Changbin, his sneakers skidding to a halt outside the lecture hall with unnatural ease.

His lungs barely burned, just a pleasant warmth where there should have been heaving breaths.

He turned, bouncing on his toes while waiting for his roommates to catch up, when a sudden prickle raced down his spine. His scalp tingled.

Something was about to happen.

The prickle exploded into full body alarm a half second before the weight hit him.

Jisung spun without thinking - his hands snapping up just as you tripped. His palm connected with your shoulder an instant before you would have face planted into his chest.

The force should have sent both of you crashing to the ground, but Jisung didn’t budge an inch - just absorbed the impact like you weighed nothing.

Your coffee wasn’t so lucky, The cup slipped from your grip. Jisung’s free hand shot out, snatching it mere inches from the ground. Hot liquid sloshed against the inside of the lid but didn’t spill. He held it there, frozen, your shoulder still cradled in his other hand, both of you staring at each other in stunned silence.

Up close, you could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes - something you’d never noticed before.

“You-” you started.

“I-” he interrupted at the same time.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Uh. You okay?”

“Yeah,” you said, too quickly. His hands were still there.

Jisung blinked like he’d just remembered they were attached to him, then jerked them away. The coffee wobbled dangerously in his grip. You grabbed it before it could spill .

“Late too?” he asked, stuffing his hands into the pockets of Chan’s hoodie.

You nodded, adjusting your bag strap. “Yeah.”

You stared at him for a second too long, suddenly noticing how the hoodie strained across his shoulders - when had Han Jisung gotten broad? The absence of his usual thick framed glasses left his face strangely exposed, his cheekbones and dark lashes more pronounced than you remembered.

"Thanks," you muttered, brushing nonexistent lint off your sweater where his hands had been.

After a beat, you added, "Good reflexes," because it was true and you hated leaving truths unsaid, even for him.

Jisung blinked at you, momentarily stunned by the compliment - his mouth opened, closed, then opened again. A faint pink spread across his cheeks, "Uh," he managed. His fingers twitched toward his face, a habitual gesture to push up glasses that weren't there, before aborting the motion halfway.

"Uh, thanks," Jisung managed after an awkward pause, He cleared his throat "I mean - you're welcome. Obviously. Because I saved your life."

"You caught my coffee," you corrected flatly, lifting the cup slightly as evidence.

His grin returned, familiar. "Same difference." He rocked back on his heels, "You would've face planted on the pavement if I hadn't intervened. Tragic, really."

"I take it back. Never complimenting you again."

before he could retort, Changbin's voice cut through the courtyard "If you two are done flirting, we're gonna be late!" He stood at the lecture hall doors with Chan, who was rubbing his temples like he'd aged ten years in the past hour.

Jisung whipped around so fast his sneakers squeaked against the pavement. "We're not-!"

You walked past him before he could finish the sentence, shoulders brushing hard against his as you passed.

~

Jisung didn't plan to become a hero - it just sort of happened at 1:37 AM outside a convenience store three nights after The Bite.

He'd been pacing his dorm room, fingers twitching with pent up energy, when Chan threw a couch cushion his head and told him to "go climb a building or something, Jesus Christ."

So he did. Sort of. Mostly he just jumped fire escapes until his thighs burned and his lungs finally felt normal again, which is how he ended up perched on a rusty AC unit overlooking the 24 hour convenience store when the guy in the ski mask walked in waving a gun.

The gun glinted under the lights of the convenience store, its barrel wavering between the cashier and the racks of snacks. Jisung's body moved before his brain caught up, one second he was crouched on the AC unit, the next he was dropping through the open window like a damn action hero.

His sneakers hit the floor with barely a sound, knees bending to absorb the impact that should've shattered his ankles. The robber whirled around, gun swinging wildly. Time slowed. Jisung saw the trigger finger tense, saw the cashier duck behind the counter.

He lunged.

What happened next was equal parts luck and whatever the hell that spider had pumped into his veins. His palm smacked the gun sideways just as it discharged - the bullet embedding itself in a display of energy drinks with a sickening thunk.

Jisung's other hand grabbed the guy's wrist, twisting until the gun clattered to the floor. The would be robber screamed. Not from pain, Jisung realized, but from the sight of his own fingers bending the wrong way under Jisung's grip. He let go like he'd been burned. The guy bolted, leaving his ski mask behind in Jisung's fist.

Silence.

Jisung didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the cashier wheezed out a shaky "Holy shit." The gun lied abandoned on the floor between them, still warm from the misfired shot.

Jisung stared at it, then at his own hands - his bare hands, no gloves, no mask, just his stupidly recognizable face that was probably caught on camera. His stomach dropped.

Chan was going to murder him.

The cashier - a guy his age with a nametag reading 'jeongin' - slowly straightened from behind the counter, eyes darting between Jisung and the discarded ski mask. "...Are you gonna rob me too?"

"What? No!" Jisung’s voice cracked. He kicked the gun farther away for emphasis. "I just-" He gestured vaguely at the empty space where the robber had been. "-stopped that guy. Obviously."

The ski mask stared up at Jisung from the convenience store floor. He scooped it up, fingers brushing the rough knit fabric, still warm from the robber's panicked sweat.

The cashier was already dialing the police with shaking hands, but Jisung's feet were moving before his brain caught up. He bolted out the door like he was the criminal, the stolen mask crumpled in his fist.

His knees nearly buckled when he hit the pavement - the sudden realization that he'd just stopped an armed robbery barefaced hit him.

Jisung sprinted down three alleys and ducked behind a dumpster just as police sirens wailed past the mouth of the alley. His heart hammered against his ribs, not from fear, but from something far worse. exhilaration.

He lifted the ski mask toward his face, hesitating for just a second before remembering its previous owner had been sweating bullets into the fabric.

He tentatively sniffed it - then recoiled so hard his head smacked against the dumpster behind him.

"Yuck," a stench clung to it, absolutely not.

He sprinted home in record time, sneakers barely touching the pavement. His enhanced legs carried him up the fire escape in three leaps. The window to their apartment's living room was still cracked open from his earlier escape, curtains fluttering in the night breeze. Jisung slid inside, falling right onto his ass.

"Ow," Changbin deadpanned from his bed, not looking up from his phone.

Jisung scrambled upright, ski mask still clutched in one hand. His gaze flicked from Jisung's disheveled hair to the crumpled mask.

Chan’s eyebrow twitched. “So. You robbed a robber.”

Jisung flapped the ski mask like a surrender flag. “No! I disarmed a robber. Then maybe borrowed his mask. Temporarily.”

Changbin snorted "And you didn’t think to cover your face before playing hero?"

this rooted a bad, bad idea into jisungs head.

he spent the next morning hunched over Chan’s laptop, scrolling through fabric stores frantically. His fingers drummed against the keyboard, pausing only to zoom in on a breathable material that promised "enhanced mobility" and "sweat wicking technology."

The description sounded like something straight out of a superhero movie - which, he supposed, was exactly what he needed now.

Chan watched from the doorway, arms crossed. "You realize this is insane, right?"

Jisung didn’t look up. "Less insane than stopping another robbery barefaced."

his first attempt at making a suit for his superhero persona was a disaster.

Jisung had underestimated the complexity of sewing stretch fabric, resulting in a lopsided mess of seams that bunched uncomfortably around his shoulders.

The second attempt fared slightly better - until he tested its durability by scaling the dorm’s exterior wall, only for the pants to split straight down the middle mid climb.

soon enough, Chan saw jisung's genuine dedication, and had taken pity on him. they spent late nights hunched over fabric scraps, Chan’s steady hands guiding the sewing machine - that chan bought from is own money earned from DJ gigs, mind you - while Jisung sketched designs in the margins of his notebooks.

The final prototype emerged from their shared efforts, a sleek red and blue suit with reinforced stitching and breathable mesh panels. The mask took another three attempts before achieving the perfect fit, complete with oversized white lenses that concealed his identity while enhancing his already unnaturally sharp vision.

Jisung examined himself in the dorm’s full length mirror for the first time, twisting to check the fit. The suit hugged his new musculature without restricting movement, the fabric stretching effortlessly as he flexed. He rolled his shoulders experimentally - it was the most comfortable model so far.

"Okay," Chan admitted, "That actually looks... decent."

Changbin tossed an empty soda can at Jisung’s head from across the room. Jisung caught it without looking, reflexes kicking in. The can crumpled further in his grip.

"Show off," Changbin muttered.

The mask was the final piece. Jisung hesitated before pulling it on, fingertips brushing the blank white lenses. Once these went on, it'd be an official embodiment of... whatever this was.

The fabric settled over his face. His breathing echoed strangely in the enclosed space, but his vision remained clear. He blinked, adjusting to the surreal sensation of seeing more while being seen less.

Chan exhaled sharply. "Well. That's... a look."

Jisung twisted to examine his reflection in the mirror. The suit clung to his new physique like a second skin, the red and blue panels accentuating rather than hiding the slope of his shoulders. with a spider logo stitched across the center of his chest.

"So. What now?" chan cleared his throat.

Jisung exhaled through the mask, watching the fabric flutter slightly with his breath. "Now I test it."

His fingers found purchase on the brickwork without thought, his body moving with an instinct he shouldn't possess. He scaled the dormitory wall in seconds. Below, Seoul sprawled in a grid of neon and shadow, its pulse thrumming through the pavement under his palms.

He jumped.

The world tilted. His stomach lurched from the sheer impossibility of what his body was doing. He arced over the alleyway, arms outstretched, fingertips brushing the opposite fire escape before his feet even registered the landing.

The impact should have shattered his knees. Instead, he rolled smoothly onto the grated metal platform, his pulse steady in his ears.

That was when he heard a scream.

It cut through the ambient city noise . Jisung's head snapped toward the sound. Four blocks northeast. A woman's scream. fear, urgent terror in her voice.

He moved.

His body propelled him forward before conscious thought could interfere. The city blurred around him as he swung from ledges, his shot web lines that shouldn't have held his weight. Yet they did.

The polymer strands stretched taut as he launched himself between buildings, and landed on the third story balcony of a love hotel just as the scene unfolded below, a man dragging a woman toward a waiting car, her heels scraping against pavement as she fought.

Jisung didn't think, he immediately droped down, landing between the assailant and the car with a thud. The man recoiled, dragging the woman tighter against him as a human shield. Up close, Jisung could see the knife glinting in his free hand, the woman's smudged mascara.

"Back off!" the man snarled, blade pressing into her side.

Jisung's hands came up instinctively, palms out. The woman's wide eyes locked onto his mask. "You're-" she gasped.

Then everything happened at once. The man lunged, knife flashing. Jisung's body moved - his hand shot out, catching the blade mid air. Metal screeched against reinforced fabric, but didn't pierce.

The man's eyes widened comically as Jisung twisted his wrist, sending the knife clattering to the ground.

The knife skittered across the pavement. Jisung didn’t wait for the guy to process what had just happened, he pivoted on his heel, using his own momentum to yank the woman free in one motion.

She stumbled forward, gasping, but Jisung was already stepping between them, his body angled to shield her completely.

“Run,” he said. The word came out muffled and distorted through the mask, more like a growl than actual speech. The woman didn’t need to be told twice. She bolted, heels clicking against the sidewalk as she disappeared around the corner.

The would be attacker stared at Jisung, then at his own empty hand, then back at Jisung. “What the hell are you?”

Jisung's breath hitched behind the mask - What was he? A broke college student who'd bitten off more than he could chew. A walking science experiment. Definitely not someone who should be standing between an armed assailant and certain doom at 3 AM on a Tuesday.

"Uh," he managed, voice cracking through the fabric. "spiderman?"

The man lunged. Jisung sidestepped on instinct, the guy's momentum carried him straight into a dumpster with a metallic clang that echoed down the alley. Jisung winced. That had to hurt.

Police sirens wailed in the distance, close enough to spook the would be kidnapper, who scrambled upright and bolted in the opposite direction.

Jisung let him go. Chasing him down would mean explaining why he was dressed like a rejected Power Ranger, and frankly, he'd already pushed his luck far enough for one night.

Jisung crouched on the rooftop ledge, peeling off the mask with a wet shluck sound - the fabric sticking stubbornly to his sweaty forehead.

Below, the woman he'd rescued was giving a statement to the police, gesturing wildly toward the rooftops. He ducked back before she could spot him.

His phone buzzed violently against his thigh. Chan's caller ID flashed across the cracked screen, followed immediately by Changbin's bombardment of texts

BRO

DID YOU JUST GO VIRAL ON TWITTER

THERES VIDEO OF YOU DOING A BACKFLIP OVER A CAR

Jisung groaned, flopping onto his back. Gravel dug into his shoulder blades through the suit. Above him, Seoul's light pollution drowned out the stars, leaving only a murky orange haze.

He held up his phone, squinting at the blurry footage someone had uploaded. there he was, mid backflip, his red and blue suit a neon smear against the night. The caption read

Spiderman??? In SEOUL????

The first tweet had thirty seven likes. By morning, it had seventeen thousand and counting.

Jisung woke to Changbin shoving his phone in his face, screen displaying a grainy video of someone in a red and blue suit flipping over a moving car. "Congratulations," Changbin said. "You're a meme now."

Chan was less amused. He paced their dorm room, pausing only to read the growing pile of news articles on his laptop:

SPIDERMAN IN SEOUL? SUPER-HERO OR SUPER-ZERO?

before rounding on Jisung. "This," he hissed, jabbing a finger at the screen, "is the opposite of keeping a low profile."

Jisung groaned into his pillow. "It was one car."

~

You'd seen the videos. Everyone had. Grainy footage of some idiot in red and blue flipping over cars and catching falling flowerpots like it was nothing. The internet had collectively lost its mind - #SpiderManSeoul was still trending and it's been a whole two weeks - but you refused to join the hype.

"Obviously fake," you muttered in the cafeteria, stabbing your chopsticks into a piece of kimchi. The table next to yours erupted into excited chatter about the latest clip, Spiderman allegedly stopping a truck from hitting a pedestrian near Hongdae.

Yunjin slammed her phone down on the cafeteria table hard enough to make your soup bowl rattle. "That's three robberies he's stopped this week," she hissed, scrolling through blurry footage. "How can you still think this is fake?"

You rolled your eyes, stirring your half cold soup. "Easy. Because physics don't work like that, and neither do people." You pointed your chopsticks at her phone screen where 'Spiderman' was currently doing something that should've snapped his spine in five places. "That's either CGI or a really dedicated performance artist with a death wish."

Across the table, Yunjin made a noise like a deflating balloon. "You're impossible." She flicked to another video, this one showing the vigilante webbing a purse snatcher to a lamppost mid sprint. "Explain that then,"

You leaned in, squinting at the pixelated mess. "Okay one, that 'web' looks suspiciously like industrial grade fishing line. Two-" you tapped the timestamp in the corner "-this was filmed at 2 AM near Hongdae. Everyone's either drunk or sleep deprived enough to hallucinate shit like this."

You snorted into your soup, watching Yunjin's face contort in frustration. "Honestly, anyone dumb enough to believe in 'Spiderman' probably thinks pigeons are government drones too." You waved a dismissive hand toward her phone. "He's probably just some adrenaline junkie with too much free time and a GoPro."

From the neighboring table, someone choked on their rice. You glanced over just in time to see Jisung wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Chan smacked him hard on his back, whether to help him breathe or silence him, you couldn't tell.

"Or," Jisung wheezed, voice still rough from coughing, "maybe he's actually helping people?" He twisted in his seat to face you fully, elbows propped on the table behind him. "Ever think of that, genius?"

Changbin groaned audibly and slid down in his chair.

You arched an eyebrow. "Didn't realize you were such a Spiderman fan, Han. Got a poster of him over your bed?"

Jisung's ears turned pink. "I'm just saying-" he jabbed a chopstick in your direction "-if someone's stopping crimes for free, maybe don't trash talk them while chewing with your mouth full."

Yunjin added "You're just jealous because you can't backflip over cars."

"I could if I wanted to," you shot back, knowing full well your athletic abilities peaked at speed walking to morning lectures.

Jisung snorted. "Sure, and I'm the queen of England."

Chan materialized between the tables. His palm hit Jisung’s shoulder with a dull thwack that knocked him forward into his bibimbap. “We’re late,” Chan announced, already dragging Jisung upright by the collar like a misbehaving kitten.

Jisung spluttered, chopsticks clattering to the tray. “Late for what?”

“The thing,” Changbin interjected smoothly, sliding out of his seat “The very important thing.”

You watched as Chan dragged Jisung toward the exit, Jisung still craning his neck to shout over his shoulder, “Ask me about my queen of England autograph later!”

Chan’s exasperated groan echoed down the hallway as the door swung shut behind them.

Left in their abrupt absence, you blinked at Yunjin. “What the hell was that about?”

She shrugged, scrolling through more Spiderman footage. “Dunno, but Han Jisung defending a vigilante’s honor is weirder than you denying literal video evidence.”

She paused the playback right as Spiderman executed a midair twist that defied every law of physics. “anyway, I think you’re just salty because Spiderman could probably out academic you and out athletic you.”

well...he literally did.

~

your disbelief in spiderman came back and smacked you right in the face.

you were at the library after you finished your lectures for the day, the library was unusually quiet for midterm season, the usual chatter replaced by the frantic scratching of pens and the occasional sniffle from sleep deprived students. You rubbed your temples, staring at the same differential equations page for forty five minutes straight. At this rate, you'd be here until sunrise, again.

Outside, Seoul had long since plunged into darkness, the campus pathways illuminated only by streetlamps. You hesitated at the library doors - your dorm was a fifteen minute walk through the least lit part of campus, but the alternative was another all nighter hunched over textbooks.

You'd taken three steps onto the pavement when the first catcall sliced through the quiet.

A group of drunk frat boys loitered near the bus stop, their laughter too loud, eyes tracking your movement.

You tightened your grip on your backpack straps and picked up the pace. Their footsteps followed, uneven against the pavement.

"Hey sweetheart, why you walking so fast?"

Your pulse jackhammered against your ribs. The shortcut through the engineering building's side alley was suddenly a terrible idea — too narrow, too dark, too isolated. You fumbled for your phone just as a hand grabbed your elbow.

Your elbow jerked instinctively, but the grip tightened. One of the drunk guys leaned in, his breath sour with soju as he slurred, "Don't be like that. We're just walking you home."

The others chuckled, closing ranks around you. Your phone slipped from your sweating fingers, clattering to the pavement.

You tried to say something, anything, but your voice came out shaky and thin, "Let go," you managed, but it sounded more like a question than a command.

The guy holding your elbow laughed, his grip tightening just enough to make your bones protest. His friends shuffled closer, their shadows swallowing the dim streetlight whole.

A second hand clamped onto your shoulder from behind. "Relax," someone slurred. "We're nice guys."

You twisted against the hold, but there were too many of them, too many hands, too many laughs, too many bodies boxing you in.

Then, movement. A flicker of red and blue in your peripheral vision. One of the drunk guys yelped as his hand was suddenly gone from your arm, yanked backward by an invisible force. The others barely had time to turn before something - someone - slammed into their midst like a human wrecking ball.

The drunk guy's hand vanished from your elbow with a wet thwip sound, followed by his startled scream as he was yanked backward into a dumpster.

His buddies whirled around - just in time to see a red and blue blur drop from the fire escape above, landing between them with a crouch.

"Hey guys," Spiderman said, tilting his head. The blank white lenses of his mask made his expression unreadable, "Didn't your moms teach you it's rude to grope strangers?"

One of the drunk guys lunged. Spiderman sidestepped without looking, webbing the guy's sneakers to the sidewalk mid swing. The dude faceplanted with a grunt, his friends gaping as he struggled against the sticky white strands now gluing his shoes to concrete.

"Oops," Spiderman said, tapping his chin. "Must've slipped."

Another guy charged. Spiderman flipped over him effortlessly, landing on the dumpster lid with a metallic clang. "Wow," he mused, watching the guy stumble past. "You're really bad at this. Like, impressively bad."

You stood frozen against the alley wall, watching Spiderman web the third guy's hands to his own jacket zipper. "There," he said, patting the stuck zipper. "Now you can't unzip or zip. Poetic, right?"

The last drunk guy made a break for it. Spiderman sighed dramatically. "Come on, man. Group project participation counts toward your final grade." A web shot out, snagging the runner's ankle mid stride.

He yelped as Spiderman reeled him in like a fish, depositing him neatly beside his webbed up friends.

Spiderman dusted off his gloves. "Alright, team huddle! Here's the deal-" he crouched to their eye level,

"-next time you think about cornering someone in a dark alley? Don't." He tapped the first guy's forehead with one finger. "Or I find you."

The drunk guys paled. Spiderman straightened, turning toward you then froze. His masked head tilted slightly, the lenses widening almost imperceptibly.

You realized three things at once

one, Your knees were shaking.

two, Spiderman was much shorter in person than the videos made him seem.

three, You'd dropped your phone and backpack during the scuffle, and your differential equations notes were now scattered across the alley like confetti.

Spiderman bent to gather your papers, his movements almost... familiar. He stacked them neatly and held them out. "You, uh. You okay?" His voice was softer now, the earlier bravado gone.

You took the notes with numb fingers. "Yeah. Thanks." The words came out hoarse.

Spiderman nodded awkwardly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Cool. Coolcoolcool." He cleared his throat. "So. Should I web these guys to a lamppost for the cops, or...?"

One of the webbed up drunks whimpered.

You swallowed hard. "Lamppost's good."

Spiderman saluted. "Lamppost it is."

Spiderman made quick work of securing the drunk guys to the nearest lamppost, his webs forming a messy cocoon around their legs. One of them hiccuped pathetically as Spiderman gave the webbing an experimental tug. "There," he said cheerfully. "Now you can reflect on your mistakes while waiting for the cops."

You hugged your notes to your chest, still processing the fact that Spiderman, the same one you'd spent weeks insisting was fake, just saved you.

"You're... shorter than I expected," you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

Spiderman's head snapped up. For a second, the mask's lenses just... stared.

Then he pressed a hand to his chest. "Excuse you, I'm perfectly average height for a-" He cut himself off abruptly, clearing his throat. "Anyway. You're welcome for saving your life or whatever."

"You didn't save my life," you muttered, kneeling to gather the last of your scattered pens.

Spiderman made a noise between a laugh and a wheeze. "Right. Sorry for interrupting your very important... pen collecting."

You looked up at him, "I was handling it."

"Uh huh." He crossed his arms, the red fabric stretching taut over his shoulders. "Because saying 'let go' in a squeaky voice is totally handling it."

Your cheeks burned. "I wasn't squeaky."

Spiderman's mask tilted slightly, "Sure," he drawled, dragging the word out.

You opened your mouth to retort when a police siren wailed in the distance. Spiderman's head snapped toward the sound, his posture more alert. "Right. That's my cue." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Need a swing home?"

You blinked. "A what?"

Before you could protest, he'd already grabbed your wrist, his grip firm but careful, "Do you trust me?"

"No," you said immediately.

Spiderman grinned beneath his mask - you could hear it in his voice. "Perfect."

Then he yanked you forward before you could react, making you drop your bag in the process, his other hand shooting a web line to the nearest rooftop with a sharp thwip.

Your stomach lurched violently as your feet left the pavement, the ground dropping away beneath you with terrifying speed.

You shrieked, instinctively locking your arms around his neck in a death grip as the world tilted sideways. Buildings blurred past, wind howling in your ears loud enough to drown out your own panicked breathing.

Spiderman's arm banded around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest as he swung into open air. "Relax!" he shouted over the rush of wind. "I've only dropped one person!"

"WHAT?!" You dug your fingers into his shoulders hard enough to bruise - if normal humans could bruise whatever weird super skin he had.

"Kidding!" He adjusted his grip slightly, angling his body to catch the updraft as he launched you both higher.

he released the web line, freefalling for one terrifying second before another thwip sent you arcing upward again. The city sprawled beneath you, the view would've been beautiful if you weren't convinced you were about to become sidewalk confetti.

"wait- you passed my dorm!" you yelled over the wind, nails digging into Spiderman's shoulders as another swing took your breath away. The familiar building of your residence hall flashed below - then vanished behind you .

Spiderman's grip tightened fractionally around your waist. "Yeah, well," he called back, voice strained from the wind and what sounded suspiciously like laughter, "you looked like you could use some fresh air!"

You tried to say something back, but your words dissolved into a startled squeak as the city tilted dizzyingly. Your fingers clawed at his shoulders, but somewhere between the fourth and fifth swing, you realized your death grip had eased slightly. Maybe it was the way his arm stayed locked around your waist like a seatbelt, or how he angled his body to shield you from the worst of the wind.

"See?" Spiderman's said, "Not so bad once you stop trying to strangle me." He flipped midair just to hear you yelp, catching another webline with practiced ease.

"You're insane!" you managed, but your arms relaxed incrementally as you adjusted to the rhythm of his swings. The initial terror dulled into adrenaline, mixed with reluctant awe as Seoul sprawled beneath you in glowing grids.

The Han River flashed between buildings, and for one insane second, you understood why people did extreme sports.

Then Spiderman corkscrewed sideways without warning, shooting a web toward a higher rooftop. "check out this view!"

Before you could protest, he backflipped off the webline, sending you both soaring over a pedestrian bridge in a wide arc. Your stomach dropped straight to your shoes.

and suddenly you let out a laugh at the sheer absurdity of everything. at the fact that you were saved by spiderman in an alley, at the fact that you were finally getting your first breath of fresh air after days of being cooped up in either your room, or the library, or the lecture Hall.

The sound burst out, bright and startled against the roar of wind. Spiderman's head snapped toward you so fast, then he laughed too, the sound muffled by the mask but real, bubbling up from somewhere deep in his chest as he swung you both higher.

you spent a minute or two like that. Spiderman took a sharper turn than intended, nearly clipping a Samsung billboard with his shoulder. "Shit, sorry!" he yelped, twisting midair to avoid impact.

The sudden jerk should have terrified you, but instead you just laughed harder, your fingers loosening their death grip on his shoulders as you clung to him more out of habit than panic now.

"Are you trying to kill me?" you shouted over the wind, a smile still on your face.

"Only a little!" he called back.

Your dorm building came into view far below, Spiderman slowed his swings gradually, letting momentum carry you both downward in gentler arcs until. He landed with surprising grace on the sidewalk out front, setting you down carefully - though your legs wobbled like jelly the second your sneakers hit concrete.

"Whoa there," he chuckled, steadying you with a hand on your elbow. You swayed slightly as your feet touched solid ground again, still dizzy from the swinging.

Spiderman's gloved hands lingered on your elbows, steadying you. "You good?" His voice was softer now .

"I'm-" You swallowed hard, willing your legs to stop shaking. "I'm alive. Which is... surprising."

The adrenaline was fading now, leaving you strangely lightheaded. "I... thanks. Really." The words came out quieter than you intended, but you meant them.

"Yeah. No problem. That's kind of... the whole point of the suit." He gestured vaguely at himself, the red fabric stretching with the movement.

You snorted despite yourself. "Yeah, well. You're still insufferable."

"Ouch. And here I was going to offer you a free ride anytime."

"Hard pass," you said immediately, but you were smiling, a small, reluctant thing.

Spiderman chuckled, the sound muffled by his mask. He rocked back on his heels slightly. For a second, neither of you spoke, just stood there in the quiet aftermath, the distant city sounds filling the space between you.

Then he straightened. "Right. Don't get kidnapped again."

you smiled. "I'll try."

Spiderman gave a two fingered salute, already backing toward the alley wall. "If you do get kidnapped again-" he shot a webline upward without looking, the *thwip* cutting through the night air "-I'll be there." He tugged the web experimentally before adding, "But try not to make it a habit, yeah? My web fluid's expensive."

Before you could retort, he launched himself upward with a sudden burst of movement, the red and blue blur disappearing over the rooftop edge before you even processed the motion.

You stood frozen on the sidewalk, staring at the empty space where he'd been, your brain still trying to reconcile the fact that Spiderman - the same Spiderman you'd spent days dismissing as fake - had just swung you across half of Seoul.

The walk up to your dorm felt surreal. Your legs were stilll shakey, and you were still slightly dizzy.

You collapsed onto your bed fully dressed, convinced you'd lie awake replaying the night's events - then promptly passed out the second your head hit the pillow.

outside, Spiderman nearly faceplanted into a building mid swing. Because he was smiling like an absolute idiot under his mask, cheeks aching from the stupid, unstoppable smile that had been plastered on his face since he'd heard you laugh mid air.

He landed on the fire escape of their building, still buzzing with adrenaline. Peeling off the mask felt like surfacing from underwater - cool air hitting his sweaty face, the sounds of the city rushing back in clearly.

he shoved the window open, tumbling into the living room. Chan and Changbin were sprawled on the couch when Jisung crashed through the window.

Changbin glanced up from his phone. "Oh good, you didn't die." He paused his game just long enough to take in Jisung's disheveled state, mask off, hair sticking up in wild directions, and that ridiculous grin still plastered across his face. "Wait. Why do you look like that?"

"guys, you won't believe what just happened"

Jisung was halfway through inhaling to launch into his story when he froze mid breath, his eyes widening comically. "Wait - shit, her bag" He scrambled to his feet so fast he nearly tripped over.

Chan blinked. "Whose-"

"Be right back!" Jisung yanked the mask back over his head, the lenses setteling into place as he lunged for the window. "Forgot something super important"

Changbin's shout of "What the hell-" was cut off by the sharp thwip of a web line as Jisung flung himself back into the night.

~

You woke to sunlight stabbing your eyelids and the distinct sensation of having been hit by a bus.

The events of last night rushed back in - drunk guys, Spiderman, swinging through Seoul.

You groaned into your pillow, half convinced it had all been some dream.

Then a gust of wind hit your face like a slap. You squinted against the sunlight, realizing with a start that your window was wide open, and you definitely hadn’t left it that way.

you scrambled out of bed and approached your window sil. There, dangling from a single strand of web, was your missing backpack.

The backpack swung slightly as you reached out, the web strand stretching oddly. You tugged it free with a disgusting schlorp sound, and you saw a folded square of notebook paper stuck to the fabric with another glob of web.

You peeled it off with two fingers, The note was written in messy, angular handwriting that looked familiar.

you dropped this. your phone is inside too, you're welcome.

also, you snore.

- s

you stared at it, brain short circuiting between he brought my bag back and he watched me sleep?! before settling on the most pressing question, how the hell had Spiderman even known which dorm was yours? You hadn't told him. You were certain of it.

but maybe he'd just checked every single window till he found you -which would be extremely creepy, but made sense.

"There you are," Yunjin's voice cut through your spinning thoughts. You spun around to find her leaning against your doorframe, hair still mussed from sleep, squinting at you. "I was worried sick - where the hell were you last night?"

You opened your mouth - then froze. The backpack in your hands suddenly felt like damning evidence. "Library," you blurted too quickly.

Yunjin’s eyes dropped to the backpack in your hands, then narrowed at the sticky web residue still clinging to the fabric. Her gaze flicked to the note in your hands, then back to you. "Library," she repeated flatly. "Right."

She padded into your room, plucking the note from your hand with two fingers, then reading it, "You do snore," she said laughed, squinting at the handwriting. "Also, who the hell wrote this, who's 's'?" She waved the note in your face, the web glue still tacky.

You snatched it back. "no one."

She pointed at the webs on your bag. "spider webs?" Her voice pitched higher. "Did you, oh my god. Did Spiderman bring you home last night?"

She planted herself on your bed, legs crossed. "Start talking. Now." Her eyes flicked to your window, then back to you "And don’t even think about leaving out the part where Spiderman apparently knows where you live."

You sighed, sitting infront of her, "It’s not that dramatic. Some guys were being creeps last night, Spiderman showed up, webbed them to a lamppost, and then-" You hesitated, "And then he insisted on swinging me home."

Yunjin’s eyebrows shot up. "Swinging you home?" She grabbed your shoulders, shaking you slightly. "You swung through the city with spiderman?!"

"Yes! And it was terrifying!" You pried her hands off your shoulders. "And also... kind of amazing? But mostly terrifying. I almost threw up on him twice."

Yunjin's mouth fell open. "You- what" She grabbed your shoulders again, shaking you "You rode Spiderman?!"

"Swinging with Spiderman!" you corrected, cheeks flushing as you smacked her hands away.

Yunjin's grin turned positively feral as she flopped onto your bed, "Details. Now. How tall was he?"

"he's definitely shorter than you'd expect"

"Did he smell nice? Was he hot under the mask? Did he-"

"I didn't see his face. And you're disgusting," you hissed, chucking a pillow at her face.

"I'm invested," she corrected, hugging the pillow to her chest. "Also, I told you he was real."

You groaned, collapsing onto the bed beside her. "Okay, fine, he's real. Happy?"

"Ecstatic,"

safe to say, Yunjin wouldn't stop fangirling over this all afternoon.

~

Midterms came and went. You barely had time to process the fact that Spiderman had swung you across Seoul before exams swallowed your entire existence whole.

The only upside was that Jisung, for once, wasn't hovering around to gloat about his grades.

He seemed more busy, like he got a life or something, you'd catch him dozing off more than once, dark circles under his eyes like he hadn't slept in days.

Winter break arrived soon after. If not at some party with yunjin, you spent most of it holed up in your bedroom, halfheartedly scrolling through Spiderman footage.

The videos had multiplied exponentially, now there were compilations of him rescuing cats from trees, stopping bike thieves, even helping an old lady carry groceries up six flights of stairs when her building's elevator broke.

The comments sections were flooded with debates about whether he was a hero, a menace, or just some guy with too much time.

You never commented. But you watched.

When the new semester started, campus was buzzing with fresh Spiderman gossip. Someone claimed they'd seen him perched on the humanities building at 3 AM.

Another swore they'd spotted him buying convenience store ramen in full costume.

Yunjin, of course, had compiled an entire folder of sightings on her phone and updated you daily despite your protests.

Jisung stumbled into Professor Kim's lecture hall seventeen minutes late, face still puffy like he'd rolled straight out of bed, which, given the pillow crease still visible on his left cheek, he probably had.

he blinked blearily at the seating chart projected on the board before shuffling toward the only empty seat in the room- right next to you, of course.

"You're late," you muttered as he collapsed into the chair with a groan.

"Yeah, well," Jisung yawned so wide his jaw cracked, "tell that to the asshole who decided 9 am classes were a good idea."

His elbow slid off the desk mid sentence, nearly knocking over your water bottle before he caught it with reflexes that were still annoyingly precise despite his obvious exhaustion.

Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, deep enough to be visible even in the lecture hall's dim lighting. and when he reached for his notebook, you caught a glimpse of fresh scrapes across his knuckles.

You didn't think much of it - Professor Kim clears her throat, and announced the semester's major project.

"Partners are assigned randomly," she said, tapping her clipboard as murmurs rippled through the lecture hall. "No swaps, no complaints. You'll be working together for the next eight weeks."

You barely had time to dread the possibilities before the projector screen lit up with the pairings list. Your stomach dropped straight to your shoes when you saw your name right next to Han Jisung's.

"Aw, we're finally spending quality time together."

You rolled your eyes so hard it almost hurt, but didn’t protest. Because - annoyingly - Jisung would a good project partner if he bothered to focus.

“Here,” you muttered, shoving your phone across the desk toward him “Put your number in before I change my mind.”

Jisung’s eyebrows shot up, he just stared at your phone. Then his face split into that infuriating smile.

“Aw,” he cooed, snatching the phone before you could reconsider. “You do care.” His thumbs flew across the screen with alarming speed. “Should I put a heart next to my name? Or maybe-”

“If you put anything besides your name and number, i'll take Chan's number and all interactions will be through him”

Jisung pouted before deleting the heart emoji he'd already typed, and then handed your phone back. "You're no fun,"

after class was over, you spotted Yunjin leaning against the courtyard railing, scrolling through her phone per usual.

The moment she caught sight of you, her eyebrows shot up, then immediately waggled suggestively as she took in your exhausted expression.

"Let me guess," she drawled, pocketing her phone with a smirk. "Spiderman swung by again? Or was it just Han Jisung being his usual pain-in-your-ass self?"

You groaned, dragging your hands down your face. "the latter." You paused, then sighed dramatically. "And also... we got paired for Kim's semester project."

Yunjin's eyes widened. "Oh my god. You're finally spending quality time together"

"You said the exact same thing he did," you groaned, "Word for word. I swear, both of you share the same overworked brain cell."

Yunjin snorted, "Girl, I wish I did share a brain cell with him, then maybe I'd actually be able to solve Kim's exams without wanting to yeet myself into the Han River."

you sighed, already drained from all the work you'd have to do this semester before it even started "then there's the university festival too"

"oh yea, what'cha planning to do for the big fair" yunjin said. "gonna work on something with han too?" she wiggled her eyebrows.

"absolutely not" you answered quickly, "I won't do anything, I'll just rest. yeah. I'll catch up on all the sleep I'm about to lose"

"aw, what a shame," yunjin said, then she leaned in, whispering, "Though honestly, if you really want to tap into that academic powerhouse, there are way more fun ways to-"

"Finish that thought and I'm throwing you into the Han River myself."

"I'm just sayin'," she said, dodging your attempt to push her, "both of you just need to have a good fuck for this rivalry to go away."

"Speaking of fucks," you said, leaning against the courtyard railing, "I’ll be working on the project at Jisung’s place most days. Which means our dorm will be delightfully empty."

You flicked a stray leaf off your sleeve "Feel free to bring your Tinder disasters over, just keep them away from my room, please"

Yunjin gasped dramatically, clutching her chest. "Excuse you," she said, tossing her hair over one shoulder with exaggerated offense. "My Tinder disasters are upstanding gentlemen—"

"Who leave their boxers on your floor and eat my cereal," you deadpanned, "Just wash the sheets afterwards. And hide the good mugs."

~~~

when Jisung kicked the door open - a lethal combination of unwashed socks, stale ramen, and the faint metallic tang of something that might have been blood hit his face.

Chan looked up from his laptop just in time to see Jisung hurdle over the couch, skidding to a stop in front of the coffee table where changbin was demolishing a bag of chips.

"We have a problem," Jisung announced .

"You are the problem." changbin said.

Chan sighed, closing his laptop, "What did you break this time?"

"Nothing!" Jisung paused. "Well. Maybe the window latch. But that’s not the point." he paused. "She is coming here. To work on the project."

Changbin froze mid chip. "Who’s ‘she’-"

Chan’s eyes widened. "Oh no."

Jisung nodded frantically. "Oh yes."

Changbin’s eyes darted between them. "Wait. Are we talking about-"

"Yes," Chan groaned, already dragging a hand down his face.

Changbin’s chip bag hit the floor with a crunch. “Oh, hell no.” He scrambled up, scanning the apartment with mounting horror.

Medical supplies littered the kitchen counter, spare web cartridges rolled under the couch, and most damning jisung’s half finished suit upgrades dangled from a makeshift clothesline strung across the living room.

“We have twenty minutes to make this place look like normal people live here.”

Chan was already in motion, snatching stray web shooters off the coffee table. “Jisung, hide your suit. Changbin, take the first aid kits.” He paused mid step, “And for the love of god, air out this place. It smells like a rat died in here.”

Jisung went to yank the prototype suit off the clothesline, "It's not that bad," he protested, bundling the fabric under his arms.

The apartment was almost presentable by the time you knocked.

You stood outside their door, knocking twice, when a crash echoed from inside followed by frantic whispering.

after a minute, the door opened, revealing Changbin "Heyyyyy," he drawled, voice pitched an octave too high. "You're early"

you blinked, pointing your thumb back towards the elevator, "I can come back in a bit if you guys are busy-"

Changbin waved a hand like he was shooing away smoke. "Nah, nah, we’re good!" he stepped aside,

“Home sweet home,” Changbin announced, “Ignore the-” He gestured vaguely at a suspicious lump under a blanket that was definitely not laundry. “Decorative choices.”

You toed off your shoes at the entrance, noting with mild surprise that the apartment was cleaner than expected - though said suspicious lump under the blanket suggested they'd simply relocated the mess rather than actually cleaned it.

Chan looked up from his laptop, offering a casual salute as you stepped further into the apartment. "Hey," he said, "Jisung's in his room pretending he didn't just spend twenty minutes panic cleaning."

You snorted. "Sounds about right."

Jisung's bedroom door was slightly ajar, revealing a space that had clearly undergone a last minute excavation.

The floor was visible and his desk was suspiciously organized, textbooks stacked next to his laptop.

"Wow," you said, leaning against the doorframe. "I didn't know you owned a trash can."

Jisung spun around from where he'd been adjusting a poster that was still slightly crooked. "Shut up," he muttered, He gestured vaguely at the desk. "I set up already. Figured you'd want the, uh-" He waved his hands. "The workspace. Or whatever."

You walked in and over to the desk, project outline stared back at you from Jisung's laptop screen - neatly formatted, color-coded, and some parts were already done . You blinked. "You... started without me?"

Jisung shrugged, spinning a pen between his fingers, "Couldn't sleep last night." His knee bumped yours when you sat down, "Figured I'd get a head start before you could accuse me of slacking."

You stared at the spreadsheet he'd prepared, grudgingly impressed despite yourself. The formulas were flawless, the research sources ready, "Well. At least you're not completely useless."

"Wow. Wow. That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me." he leaned closer, "Careful. Keep this up and people might think we like each other."

"get to work," you muttered, pulling your chair closer to his desk.

Jisung straightened, "Yes, ma'am."

You shook your head, but the corner of your mouth betrayed you with a twitch. He noticed instantly, and his grin widened like he'd won something.

You kicked his chair leg under the desk in retaliation, sending him wobbling sideways with a yelp.

Working with Jisung turned out to be - annoyingly - far less painful than you’d anticipated.

He had a way of cutting through your overthinking, dismantling problems you’d tangled into knots. When you got stuck on a statistical analysis, he spun his laptop around to show you a ridiculously simplified formula that somehow worked.

When he hit a dead end with the literature review, you pointed him toward three obscure sources he’d missed. It was infuriatingly efficient.

you'd also grew to realize that Jisung focused when it mattered.

Then there were the snacks. Jisung kept shoving food at you - convenience store food, but its the thought that counts “Eat,” he’d say, nudging a bar of chocolate toward you without looking up. “Your blood sugar’s crashing. I can hear your stomach growling from here.”

You’d protest, but he wouldn't hear any of it until you tore open the packaging begrudgingly.

and he actually remembered things. Tiny, insignificant details you’d mentioned in passing - your preference for blue pens over black, the way you organized your citations, the fact that you always forgot to save drafts until it was too late.

Halfway through typing, your laptop would ding with a message from him You didn’t save again, genius. You’d glare at him, but he’d already be smirking at his own screen.

You didn't expect to bond with Chan and Changbin too, but somehow their apartment became your second home for the past 6 weeks.

you stayed past 10 pm once, Chan slid a takeout menu across the table. "Pick something," he said, "Jisung forgets to eat when he's focused, and you're worse than he is."

The takeout containers were long empty by the time you stretched your arms over your head, joints popping from hours hunched over textbooks.

"You should head back," His voice was casual, but his eyes flicked to the time on his phone, 11:47 PM, then back to your face. "It's late."

You sighed, gathering your notes into a pile. "I've walked home later than this."

"Yeah, and nearly got followed by drunk assholes," Jisung muttered under his breath.

"I'll be fine. It's like, twelve minutes max." You slung the strap over your shoulder.

"at least let me walk you home?" jisung asked.

"Relax. you don't have to act like my hero for the night, i'll be fine."

jisung heard the word "hero" and an idea popped into his mind. bingo

"Fine. Die in a dark alley. See if I care."

"You won't," you shot back, toeing on your shoes by the door.

"Night, guys," you called over your shoulder as you stepped into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind you.

Inside the apartment, Jisung was already running to put his suit on before Chan caught him by the hood. "Are you serious right now?"

"I'm just gonna-" Jisung started.

"Follow her as Spiderman?" Changbin supplied, "Dude. That's creepy."

Jisung froze. "It's not creepy if I'm making sure she doesn't get murdered."

"It's extremely creepy."

"She literally said she didn't need an escort!" Changbin pointed out.

Jisung waved a hand. "She always says that."

"Because you always try to escort her!"

Jisung hesitated, just long enough for Chan to sigh and release his hood. "If you're gonna be an idiot, at least put the mask on first."

Changbin tossed a web shooter at Jisung's head. "And try not to get arrested for stalking."

Outside, you were halfway down the block when a shadow flickered across the streetlight above you. You glanced up just in time to see a blur of red and blue vanish behind a rooftop.

"Really?"

A thwip sounded overhead. Spiderman landed lightly on a lamppost ahead of you, "Fancy meeting you here," he said, voice dripping with faux surprise.

You crossed your arms. "Are you following me?"

Spiderman gasped, pressing a hand to his chest. "I'm patrolling. This is a coincidence."

"A coincidence," you deadpanned.

"Yep." He swung down to street level, falling into step beside you like this was completely normal. "Totally random."

You sighed. "I don't need an escort."

Spiderman tilted his head. "Says the person who nearly got jumped last time."

"That was one time-"

"And here I am," he said, spreading his arms wide, " not letting it happen again."

You glared at him. He smiled at you - or at least, the mask's eyes crinkled in a way that suggested a smile.

"Fine," you muttered, stomping ahead.

Spiderman matched your stomping pace, "So," he drawled, swinging around a lamppost to land directly in front of you, forcing you to halt mid step or you'd have walked straight into his chest. "What's a pretty girl like you doing out so late?"

Your ears burned "I was just coming back from a friend’s place," you muttered, sidestepping him to continue walking. "Working on a project. Unlike some people, I actually take my education seriously."

Oh the irony.

he fell into step beside you, his posture casual, "So this friend," he pressed, "What's their deal? Study buddy? Secret admirer?"

You shot him a glare. "None of your business."

Spiderman gasped, "Ouch. And here I thought we had something special." He swung ahead, landing lightly on a parked car’s roof just to force you to look up at him. "Come on, humor me. Tall? Short? cute?"

You stayed silent, refusing to dignify that with an answer. But Spiderman was nothing if not persistent, he dropped down directly in your path again, close enough that the lenses of his mask reflected your exasperated expression back at you.

"Han Jisung," you finally said, shoving past him. "My project partner. Happy?"

"Han Jisung," he repeated, "Wow. Sounds like a real catch. Bet he’s incredibly handsome and talented."

"He’s annoying," you corrected, kicking a pebble harder than necessary. "And arrogant. And-"

"And?" Spiderman prompted, suddenly right beside you again.

"And none of your concern," you finished through gritted teeth.

Spiderman made a wounded noise, "Rude. Here I am, risking life and limb to escort you safely home-"

"You invited yourself," you corrected.

"-and you won’t even indulge my harmless curiosity about your mysterious project partner." He swung ahead to perch upside down from a streetlight, "Tell me more about this Han Jisung character. Does he have any redeeming qualities? Or is he just tragically, devastatingly handsome?"

You scoffed, refusing to acknowledge how accurately that described Jisung’s stupid face. "Fine. Jisung’s... not completely terrible." You looked at the sidewalk. "He remembers stupid things. Like how I always forget to save my work, or that I hate when people highlight in yellow."

Spiderman’s mask tilted, the lenses narrowing slightly. "Wow," he said, his tone an exaggerated awe. "Truly, a monumental compliment. Does he also breathe air and occasionally blink?"

You kicked a pebble at him, which he caught mid air with a web before it could hit his chest.

"Shut up. He’s..." You hesitated, then sighed. "He’s weirdly considerate. Makes sure I eat when we’re studying. And his roommates are..." You gestured vaguely, as if that explained anything. "nice. more tolerable than him, actually. they insist on feeding me too"

Spiderman went suspiciously quiet. Then, in a voice devoid of sarcasm "They sound nice."

You snorted. "They’re menaces. But yeah. They... grew on me."

A beat of silence. Then Spider-Man dropped from the lamppost, landing softly beside you. "And Jisung?" he prompted, suddenly closer than before. "What’s his fatal flaw?"

You didn’t even have to think. "He's always right somehow. And he gloats about it. alot."

"Horrifying," he agreed solemnly. "Anything else?"

"He’s always there," you muttered, more to yourself than to him. "Even when I wish he wasn’t."

The mask hid his expression, but his next words came out oddly soft. "Sounds like you’ve got it pretty bad, genius."

The familiar nickname prickled at the back of your memory, but you couldn't place it, until Spiderman abruptly straightened, realizing his mistake, clearing his throat.

"So!" he said, "How much further to your dorm?"

You narrowed your eyes at the obvious subject change. "Why? Getting tired already?"

Spiderman scoffed, "Please. I could do this all night." then shrugged "Just making conversation."

"You were doing just fine until the nickname," you pointed out, watching his lenses widen fractionally.

"What nickname?" he asked, voice pitching slightly higher.

"Genius." You tilted your head, studying his frozen posture. "Jisung calls me that."

spiderman got into character again, "Jisung calls you that?" His voice was pitched an octave higher than usual, his hands fluttering in dramatic disbelief.

"Wow. What a coincidence." He leaned closer, "Maybe l'm Han Jisung. Ever think of that, genius?"

He lowkey regret what he said the second the words came out of his mouth. but hey, reverse psychology?

you stopped walking for a second, facing spiderman, genuinely considering what he just said.

"nah" you snorted, shaking your head. "Jisung can barely walk in a straight line without tripping over his own feet." You gestured vaguely at Spiderman's lithe posture. "No way that disaster could pull off... whatever this is."

"Ouch. That hurts. I'll have you know some people find my-" he gestured at himself, "this extremely charming."

"You mean annoying," you corrected.

"Charmingly annoying," Spiderman corrected, He swung lazily ahead, landing atop the lamppost outside your dorm building.

You stopped beneath the lamppost, glancing up at Spiderman’s silhouette squatting on top of it. "This your stop, genius?" he asked, voice lilting with amusement.

"Yes," you said flatly. "And don't call me that."

"Call you what? Genius?" He leaned forward, resting his chin in one gloved hand. "Or pretty girl?"

Your face heated instantly. "Both."

Spiderman laughed, a sound that you swear you heard before.

"Fine, fine. Wouldn't want to inflate your ego too much." He swung down from the lamppost.

He turned to leave, then hesitated, just long enough to glance over his shoulder and add, voice softer than before, "Sleep tight, pretty girl."

Then he was gone, vanishing into the night sky with a thwip of webbing before you could retaliate.

you stayed glued to the pavement for a minute as you watched spiderman's figure get smaller the more he swung away, face slowly heating up.

"Talking 'bout some pretty girl," you muttered under your breath, walking to the entrance of the building

who is this guy?

~

You met him two years ago at a charity art event.

You were there representing your own company, a small but growing creative studio you built from nothing but stubbornness and long nights. He was there because his family name was attached to half the sponsors in the building.

He had been standing near a sculpture, pretending to read the plaque, when you caught him staring at you instead.

“You look like you’re planning to buy the whole exhibition,” you had said.

He smiled, a little embarrassed.

“I don’t even understand half of it.”

That was the beginning.

Now, on a quiet Tuesday evening, you stand in the lobby of Seo Holdings, waiting for the elevator to take you up to the top floor.

The building is entirely made of glass and steel.

Employees bow politely when they pass you. Some of them recognise you now. Some of them don’t.

But they all know who you’re here for.

When the elevator doors open, his secretary greets you with a warm smile.

“He’s been checking the clock every five minutes,” she whispers.

You laugh softly.

“Don’t tell him that.”

You don’t knock when you reach his office. You never do.

Changbin is sitting at the long conference table, sleeves rolled up, glasses resting low on his nose as he reads a file. He looks serious.

Then he hears the door close.

He looks up.

And everything changes.

His shoulders drop. His mouth curves into the kind of smile he never gives to investors.

“You’re late,” he says, but there’s no accusation in it.

“It’s been five minutes,” you reply.

“That’s five minutes too long.”

He stands, crossing the room in a few easy steps. He doesn’t kiss you immediately. He just pulls you into him, arms wrapping around your waist like he’s been waiting all day to breathe properly.

For a moment, the company doesn’t exist.

There’s just his heartbeat under your ear.

“I missed you,” he murmurs.

“You saw me last night.”

“That was yesterday.”

You pull back to look at him.

“You’re dramatic.”

He leans down and presses a soft kiss to your forehead.

“Only about important things.”

Dinner that night is takeout eaten straight from the containers on his couch. His tie is gone. His jacket is draped over the back of a chair. The city glows through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.

He rests his head in your lap while you scroll through ideas on your tablet.

“You’re not listening,” you say.

“I am,” he insists.

“You just called my new concept ‘adorable.’”

“It is adorable.”

“It’s a brand expansion strategy.”

He smiles up at you.

“Exactly.”

You try to stay annoyed, but you can’t. He reaches up and catches your wrist, pressing a kiss to the inside of it.

His voice softens.

“I’m proud of you, you know.”

That’s what makes it so hard to doubt him.

He doesn’t see you as someone smaller. He never has. He listens when you talk about your work. He asks questions. He invests in your ideas without trying to control them.

When you fall asleep on his couch sometimes, he carries you to his room. When he’s stressed, he buries his face in your shoulder like you’re the only place he can put down the weight.

It feels safe.

But the world around him is not gentle.

The first time you notice it clearly is at a company gala.

The ballroom is filled with crystal chandeliers and quiet, expensive laughter.

Women in silk dresses. Men in tailored suits who speak in low, confident tones about numbers large enough to change countries.

You stand beside Changbin, your hand lightly tucked into the crook of his arm.

He looks stunning in black. Calm. Commanding. Untouchable.

But when someone asks how long you’ve been “working with the company,” you catch the subtle shift.

“I don’t,” you say politely. “I run my own studio.”

There’s a pause.

“Oh,” the woman says, smiling too tightly. “How… independent.”

Later, near the champagne table, you overhear two board members speaking.

“He’s young. He’ll understand eventually.”

“Marriage is a strategy at this level.”

You pretend you didn’t hear it.

Changbin notices anyway.

On the drive home, his hand stays wrapped around yours in the back seat.

“Don’t listen to them,” he says quietly.

“I wasn’t.”

He studies your face.

“You were.”

You look out the window at the city lights blurring past.

“Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“That they expect you to marry someone… useful.”

He turns your hand over, threading his fingers through yours.

“You are useful. You’re the only person in my life who tells me when I’m being an idiot.”

You laugh, but your chest feels tight.

“I’m serious. I don’t need a merger. I need you.” he says and places a kiss to the back of your hand.

You believe him.

That’s the dangerous part.

Changbin has never looked so nervous in his own house.

You notice it the moment he adjusts his cufflinks for the third time in the car.

“They already like you,” he says, more to himself than to you. “They will love you.”

You manage a small smile.

“You sound like you’re about to introduce me to royalty.”

“They kind of are,” he mutters, then reaches for your hand. “I’m serious. This is important to me.”

That part softens you.

He isn’t doing this out of obligation. He isn’t being pressured. He’s the one who asked for tonight. He’s the one who told his parents that he wants them to meet the woman he plans to build his life with.

When he looks at you, there is nothing strategic in his eyes.

Just love.

And that makes you brave.

The estate looks even larger tonight, lights glowing warmly behind tall windows. The gates open slowly. The gravel crunches under the tires.

Your stomach twists, but Changbin squeezes your hand.

“Don’t be nervous,” he says gently. “You’re the best thing in my life.”

You breathe out slowly.

Inside, his mother greets you with elegance and a perfectly measured smile. His father stands just behind her, hands clasped behind his back.

“Welcome,” his mother says. “We’re glad you could join us.”

Dinner is beautiful. Immaculate. Carefully prepared.

Changbin talks more than usual. He tells stories about you. About your studio. About how you once stayed up all night redesigning a project because it didn’t feel right. About how you refused an investor who tried to control your creative direction.

He sounds proud.

You watch his parents as he speaks.

They are listening.

But they are calculating.

At one point, his father asks, “And your company. It is stable?”

“Yes,” you answer calmly. “It’s growing.”

“And funded independently?”

“Yes.”

He nods once.

“That is commendable.”

There is something underneath the compliment.

After dessert, his mother suggests that Changbin help the staff bring in a bottle of wine from the cellar.

It feels casual.

It is not.

The moment he leaves the room, the air changes.

His father’s expression hardens, just slightly.

“You care about our son,” he says.

“I do.”

“And he cares deeply for you.”

“Yes.”

His mother folds her hands neatly in her lap.

“Which is precisely the issue.”

The words hit softly, but your spine straightens.

“At this level,” his father continues, “relationships are not simply personal. They are public. Strategic.”

You stay quiet, listening.

“There are families who would align with us through marriage,” he says. “Partnerships that would secure the company for decades.”

You swallow. “I’m not asking him to give that up.”

His mother’s gaze sharpens.

“But he would.”

Silence stretches between you.

“We have observed the pattern,” his father continues. “You appear at events. His focus shifts. Investors notice.”

Your pulse quickens.

“He is young,” his mother says. “He confuses emotion with permanence.”

There it is.

The dismissal.

“I don’t,” you say quietly.

His father studies you.

“You are intelligent. Ambitious. But you are not from our world.”

“I never claimed to be.”

His mother’s voice remains smooth.

“We are concerned that your interest in him may not be entirely… sentimental.”

For a second, you don’t understand.

Then you do.

Your chest burns.

“With respect,” you say carefully, choosing every word, “I built my company before I ever met your son.”

His father does not blink.

“And yet his name elevates you.”

You sit up straighter.

“I have never used his name for anything.”

His mother tilts her head slightly.

“Perhaps not intentionally.”

It is an accusation.

You inhale slowly, grounding yourself.

“I love your son,” you say, your voice steady despite the shaking in your hands. “Not his position. Not his company. Him.”

That is the only sentence you allow yourself.

It hangs in the room.

His father’s expression does not change.

“Love is rarely enough.”

His mother reaches for a small envelope on the side table and places it in front of you.

“We would prefer this to end quietly.”

The world feels very far away.

“If you step away now, there will be no scandal. No unnecessary pressure. You will both move forward.”

You look at the envelope but do not touch it.

“You believe I’m with him for money,” you say softly.

His mother meets your gaze.

“We believe that if you truly care for him, you will let him fulfill his potential.”

It’s not screaming.

It’s not cruel.

It’s worse.

It’s controlled.

Because deep down, you know they are right about one thing.

If pushed, Changbin would choose you.

And that choice would burn everything. And you couldn't live knowing he lost everything he worked so hard for just because of you.

Footsteps echo down the hallway.

You slide the envelope toward yourself just as he reenters the room, smiling.

“What did I miss?”

You force a smile back.

“Just tea.”

He looks between you and his parents, unaware of the storm that just passed through.

The drive home is quiet.

“I think it went well,” he says, glancing at you. “They just need time.”

You stare out the window at the city lights.

“Yeah,” you smile. “Time.”

That night, you sit on your couch thinking.

Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm goes off. The world keeps moving.

Your phone buzzes.

Changbin: Are you okay?

You type back: Yes.

Another message appears almost instantly.

I’m glad they finally met the love of my life.

Your vision blurs as your tears begin to fall.

You put the phone down.

The next evening, you ask him to come over.

He arrives with that familiar softness in his eyes. No jacket. Just a sweater you bought him.

“You sounded serious on the phone,” he says gently.

You nod.

There’s music playing faintly from your speaker.

Some slow, sad ballad you didn’t realise you had put on repeat.

He notices the tension immediately.

“What’s wrong?”

You don’t look at him.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s never good,” he jokes softly.

You don’t smile.

His expression changes.

“Hey,” he says, stepping closer. “Talk to me.”

You grip your hands together to stop them from shaking.

“This isn’t going to work.”

The words feel foreign in your mouth.

He freezes.

“What?”

“We’re too different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t belong in your world.”

His brows draw together.

“Who told you that?”

“No one.”

He steps closer.

“Did my parents say something?”

You shake your head quickly.

“This isn’t about them.”

“Then what is it about?”

You force yourself to look at him.

“I’m tired of trying to keep up. Of pretending I fit into rooms where I don’t.”

“You don’t have to fit,” he says. “You just have to be you.”

Your throat tightens.

“I don’t love you the way you love me.”

The second the words leave your mouth, you want to take them back.

He stares at you like you’ve hit him.

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“No,” he says, his voice breaking slightly. “No, don’t do this.”

Tears burn behind your eyes.

“If this keeps going, we’re both going to get hurt.”

“We’re fine. We’re good.”

You shake your head.

“We’re not.”

He runs a hand through his hair, frustration creeping in.

“Is this because of one dinner? Tell me what they said.”

“Stop,” you whisper.

“Did they threaten you?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

Because I love you too much to ruin your life.

But you don’t say that.

Instead, you step back.

“I just don’t see a future.”

The silence that follows is unbearable.

He looks at you like he’s trying to memorise your face.

“Was any of it real?” he asks quietly.

That question nearly breaks you.

“Yes,” you whisper. “It was.”

“Then why are you giving up?”

Because someone has to.

But you don’t say that either.

You walk toward the door and open it.

His face falls.

“So that’s it?” he asks.

You nod.

He stands there for a long moment, like he’s waiting for you to change your mind.

You don’t.

Finally, he steps past you.

When he reaches the hallway, he turns once more.

“I would have chosen you,” he says.

The door closes before he can see you fall apart.

The second it shuts, you slide down against it, hands over your mouth to muffle the sobs that escape.

On the other side, you hear his footsteps retreat down the corridor.

Slow.

Heavy.

Each one sounds like something breaking.

The sad song on your speaker keeps playing and you sit there on the floor, crying against the door, while the man you love walks away believing you never loved him enough.

-

You avoid places you know he might be.

The café near his office.

The restaurant where he once insisted on ordering for you because “you overthink menus.”

Even the street outside Seo Holdings.

It’s easier that way.

Your apartment feels quieter now.

The music still plays at night, but you don’t let it get loud anymore.

You throw yourself into work instead.

Meetings. Deadlines. Revisions.

Anything that keeps your mind from wandering back to him standing in your doorway, asking if any of it was real.

You tell yourself this is strength.

It feels more like survival.

Three weeks after the breakup, your assistant rushes into your office holding her tablet.

“Have you seen this?”

You look up, confused.

She turns the screen toward you.

A headline.

SEO HOLDINGS CEO ANNOUNCES PRESS BRIEFING ON CORPORATE RESTRUCTURE

Your stomach drops.

“He never does surprise briefings,” she says. “This is huge.”

You stare at the time.

It’s live in ten minutes.

You don’t mean to watch it.

You do anyway.

The broadcast shows a familiar conference room. Long table. Reporters seated in rows.

Changbin walks in.

He looks thinner. Sharper somehow. His expression calm but distant.

He bows slightly before taking his seat.

“I will keep this brief,” he says into the microphone.

His voice is steady.

“Effective immediately, Seo Holdings will restructure its governance. Personal decisions regarding my life will not be subject to board approval or family oversight.”

The room changes.

Cameras flash.

One reporter raises a hand.

“Is this in response to recent speculation about your personal relationships?”

“Yes. I built this company with my own work,” he continues. “I respect my parents deeply. But my personal life is not a merger. It is not a strategy.”

Your eyes blur.

“If any partnership depends on controlling who I am allowed to love, then it is not a partnership I require.”

Silence fills the room.

He bows again.

And walks out.

You don’t realise you’re crying until your assistant gently closes your office door behind her.

That evening, there is a knock on your apartment door.

You freeze.

It happens again.

Slower this time.

You already know.

When you open it, he’s standing there in a simple black coat, hands in his pockets.

He looks exhausted but determined.

“Can I come in?” he asks quietly.

You step aside.

He walks in like he’s memorizing the space all over again.

For a moment, neither of you speaks.

“I saw the briefing,” you say finally.

“I know.”

“Why did you do that?” you ask.

He looks at you like the answer is obvious.

“Because you were right.”

Your chest tightens.

“You shouldn’t have to choose, but you didn’t give me that chance.”

You swallow.

“They asked me to end it.”

The words hang in the air.

His brows knit together. “What?”

“They said investors were watching. That you would sacrifice too much.”

His jaw tightens.

“They said if I loved you, I would step aside.”

His hands curl into fists at his sides.

“And you listened?”

“I didn’t want you to hate them, or resent me.”

His voice rises, just slightly.

“So you let me think you didn’t love me?”

Tears spill over.

“I thought it would be easier if you believed I left.”

“You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”

“I didn’t want to stand between you and your family, I didn’t want you to choose.”

He stops in front of you.

“I already did. I chose you the night I asked them to meet you,” he says. “I chose you when I imagined my future. You weren’t an option. You were the plan.”

Your legs feel weak.

“I thought I was protecting you,” you whisper.

“I don’t need protection from loving you.”

He steps closer, slower this time.

“I went to them after the briefing,” he says.

Your head lifts.

“And?”

“They were angry at first.”

You can imagine it. His father’s controlled tone. His mother’s disappointed silence.

“But then I told them everything.”

His voice softens.

“I told them you walked away because you were trying to protect me. That you never used my name. That you built everything you have on your own.”

Your heart pounds.

“My mother asked one question.”

“What?”

“She asked if you make me happy. I said you’re the only person who makes this life feel like mine.”

Your vision blurs again.

“They didn’t know you took the blame. They thought you were chasing security.”

A tear slips down your cheek.

“And when they realised you gave me up so I wouldn’t lose them… They understood.”

You stare at him.

“My mother wants to see you. Not to negotiate, but to apologize.”

You can’t process that.

“They were wrong about you. And they know it.”

The weight you’ve been carrying for weeks cracks open.

“I never wanted to fight them,” you whisper.

“You didn’t. You fought for me.”

He reaches for your hands.

You don’t pull away.

“I don’t want a future built on fear. I want one built with you.”

You start crying again, properly this time. Not the quiet tears you’ve been swallowing back for weeks. Your shoulders shake. Your breath stutters.

He pulls you to him.

You cling to his coat like you’re afraid he’ll disappear.

“I’m sorry,” you sob into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologising for loving me,” he murmurs against your hair.

You both stand there in the middle of your apartment, holding each other like you’ve been under water and just found air.

When you finally pull back, he cups your face.

“I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself again, I’m asking you to stand next to me.”

You nod, tears still falling.

“Yes.”

It’s barely a whisper.

But it’s enough.

"I love you, Changbin." you say and he smiles.

"I love you too."

Oh, just how you love his smile.

-

A week later, you return to the Seo estate.

Your hands shake slightly, but Changbin’s fingers are intertwined with yours.

His mother meets you at the door.

She bows slightly.

“I owe you an apology,” she says.

You blink, startled.

“We misjudged you. We saw risk where there was devotion.”

His father steps forward.

“Few people would walk away from power for someone else,” he says. “You did.”

You swallow.

“I never wanted his position, I only wanted him.”

His mother’s expression finally softens completely.

“That is precisely why you are worthy of standing beside him.”

It isn’t dramatic.

But it feels like a door opening.

That night, back in your apartment, Changbin pulls you onto the couch.

“No more noble sacrifices,” he says, brushing your hair back.

“No more secrets,” you reply.

He smiles, the soft one you fell in love with.

“You and me,” he says.

You lean into him, resting your head against his shoulder.

You almost lost him.

He almost lost you.

But love, messy and imperfect and stubborn, survived.

And this time, no one is standing in the doorway.

A/N: I love kdrama cliché, so, I was like, why not?

“Are you still sick?” Jisung asked in surprise with wide eyes. 

Y/N had been cleaning around the kitchen; she now leaned against a cold counter top, her hands gripping the sides as her head spun and her stomach churned with nausea. “Baby?” 

“I'm … fine,” Y/N managed. She wiped the back of her hand over her forehead - it came away damp, perspiration beading her skin. “I need to finish this.” 

Jisung pried the cloth out from her warm hand and set it down on the counter. “You're not fine. Go sit down … I'll finish this. Baby … you look terrible. Really terrible.”

“Ugly terrible?” Y/N asked in a joking manner. 

Jisung smiled widely. He cupped the woman's feverish face in his hands and blinked slowly at her like a friendly cat. “You could never be ugly. Except for right now.”

His response made Y/N crack up with laughter. A second later another rush of queasiness came over her and her face crumpled, Jisung's expression becoming a mirror of her own.

“Okay, go sit down,” Jisung said with worry. He pressed a loving kiss to his wife's lips before turning her around and pushing her towards the living room. “Get some rest. I'll clean and I'll cook and I'll feed Coco.” 

Y/N smiled. “Oh yeah? You have milk, do you?”

Jisung peered down at himself. He patted his chest. “Well … no. But, I do have something else.”

He turned and pointed to a fat tub on the kitchen counter. “Formula!” 

Giggling, Y/N leaned over and kissed the man on his cheek. “It's okay. I can feed Coco. Leave the formula for emergencies.” 

“This is an emergency,” Jisung whined, setting Y/N down onto their sofa. “Baby I love you, but you look so bad. Like you're on the verge of becoming a zombie. If you go outside, people are gonna scream and run away, and -  “

“Okay, that's enough, Han Jisung,” Y/N snorted with more laughter. “Such kind words from my loving husband.” 

“You know I love you,” Jisung laughed, kissing her temple. “Stay here. I'll bring you food.” 

“You're cooking?” Y/N raised an eyebrow. 

Jisung grinned. “I am.” 

“Good luck to the kitchen!”

“Hey! I'm good at cooking now,” Jisung huffed. “I didn't take those lessons with Minho for nothing.”

Smiling, Y/N reached over the back of the sofa and pulled up a thick blanket. “That's true. But I wouldn't say you're good at it. Yet.” 

It turned out that Jisung's cooking skills extended to garnishing a steaming bowl of instant ramen with a barely cooked egg and a generous handful of grated cheese. He proudly carried the large bowl over to his wife, and he set it down on the table with an extravagant flourish that made Y/N erupt into a fit of giggles. 

“Fair play, Han Jisung,” Y/N grinned as she sat up. She wasn't one to ever be opposed to instant ramen, especially on a cold, autumnal evening such as this one. It would always be one of her comfort foods, no matter how many new extravagant foods she encountered. With her face over the bowl and the savoury aroma warming her nose, Y/N already felt as though she was miles better. “Do you want some?” 

As if on cue, Jisung whipped out another large bowl and set it down on the table beside hers. “Wanna eat ramen together?” He wiggled his eyebrows. 

Y/N stirred the noodles around with her chopsticks, her stomach grumbling loudly. “Are you talking dirty to me, Mr Han?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jisung said before shovelling a heaping mouthful of the steaming ramen into his mouth. He immediately regretted his action a moment later, and he started blowing in and out with rapid speed as the heat from the food singed his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Maybe not. Ow.”

“You never learn,” Y/N giggled, delicately blowing on her ramen in contrast to her ravenous husband. “You do this every. Single. Time.”

Jisung gulped down the nearest glass of water, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like an exhausted puppy. “I forget.” 

With amicable chatter, the couple made their way through their bowls of ramen with gusto. Both her head and stomach feeling a little better now that her appetite had been satiated, Y/N had begun to feel drowsy instead, and her eyes drooped as she pushed her empty bowl away. She curled up on the sofa under the fluffy blanket with Jisung's instruction and promptly allowed herself to doze off, and Jisung cleared away their bowls before finishing cleaning the rest of the kitchen.

Three days passed, and still Y/N was feeling under the weather, if not more so. Her stomach continued to fill her with a tumultuous feeling as if she was out at sea, and her head throbbed in a fluctuating pattern around the perimeter of her skull. She was permanently glued to the sofa, despite attempting to convince Jisung that she was okay, and it was secretly amusing watching the man stumble around the house with Coco tucked up in his arms.

“I'm making you a doctor's appointment,” Jisung proclaimed loudly on the fifth day. “You're not well, baby.”

“But I'm fine,” Y/N insisted. 

“No, you're a liar,” Jisung said as he dialled a number into his phone. 

That was how Y/N found herself staring wide-eyed and shaking into a mirror in the doctor's bathroom. The past ten minutes in her general practitioner’s office had passed by in a distorted blur, and now her chest was constricting with heightening levels of premature anxiety the longer she stared into her own eyes. 

Pregnant? 

She couldn't be.

It … wasn't possible. 

She had only given birth seven months ago. 

This wasn't how things were supposed to go … at all

*☆*☆* 

She couldn't focus. 

On anything. 

She hadn't told him yet either.

“What did the doctor say?” Jisung asked cheerfully as he tugged harshly at the netting of a bag of clementines. It was a clumsy attempt to open up the packaging; the net split, and the man yelped loudly as his oranges spilled out and rolled across the floor. 

He scrambled up to his feet from his place on the floor and ran after the flying fruit. “Baby?” 

Y/N blinked. She had been staring into complete space ever since she got home. “Hm?” 

“The doctor,” Jisung laughed. His arms were full of the clementines as he made his way back to her. “What did she say?” 

Y/N swallowed thickly. Her throat was sore, and before she knew it, her eyes burned in a way she couldn't prevent. Tears began to spill over her cheeks.

Jisung's eyes widened. He dropped the clementines onto the floor again in his urge to get to his wife, and he knelt down in front of Y/N before reaching out to slowly hold her trembling hands. 

“Baby? What's wrong, what did she say?” 

His eyes were as round and brown as chocolate truffles when Y/N looked at him. The man appeared both surprised and worried, though his face still radiated the same warmth that it always did when he gazed upon his wife. Jisung's tender expression only made Y/N cry harder; she was silent as her body shook, and completely bewildered, Jisung moved his hands from her hands to her face. He smoothed his fingers over her wet cheeks and wiped away her relentless tears. “You're worrying me now, baby. Tell me what happened before I start crying too.” 

His words usually would have made the woman splutter with laughter. But this time they only made her eyes blur all over again, and she rubbed her own hand over her face. 

“Ji … “ her voice wobbled when she spoke. She looked down at her lap. “JiI'mpregnant.” 

Jisung blinked. He laughed suddenly in minute disbelief, sure he misheard her. “What?” 

“I'm … pregnant,” Y/N repeated a little more slowly. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and she clenched her eyes shut. “I'm. Pregnant.”

She watched as the confused smile on Jisung's face dissolved. His face closed in on itself and he let go of his wife's hands as he fell away from her, sitting back on the floor with a sharp inhale. 

“P … “ Jisung ran his fingers through his hair, his hands cupping the top of his head. “Pregnant? No … you can't be pregnant … “ 

That was exactly what Y/N had thought when she had found out. 

“But … you … we - “ Jisung's shoulders begun to shake; his words trailed off as his breathing took on an uneven, hurried pace. He laughed incredulously, the sounds and the upcoming words that escaped his lips leaving in feeble wheezes. “You're not pregnant. You're not. This is a joke, right?” 

“It's not a joke, baby,” Y/N whispered. “The doctor made me take a test. It's why I've been feeling so sick lately.”

Jisung laughed. 

He laughed again. 

His face crumpled and his hand closed over his heart, his fingers closing in on his t-shirt in such a tight grip that the tanned skin of his knuckles turned porcelain . 

“But we just had Coco,” Jisung gasped. He felt like his heart was being squeezed slowly by the enclosure of his ribs. “We … we aren't ready. How are we going to raise two babies at the same time? I … can't … fuck. Shit. Fuck!” 

In and out, in and out, in and out. Jisung's entire body pulsed with difficulty as his breaths took on a sharp form, piercing his insides with needle-like pain. A mixture of laboured breathing and nausea and disbelieving laughter overwhelmed his body, and Y/N watched as he began rocking back and forth, his lips moving slowly. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck … “ Jisung chanted under his breath. 

“Ji,” Y/N reached out and placed a hand on her husband's shoulder despite her own internal turmoil. “Ji … you're sounding like thirteen year old Jisung again.”

“I feel like I'm thirteen!” Jisung exclaimed in a small voice. He was as anxious as he had ever been, but Y/N's light touch immediately decreased the level of anxiety inside of him, and he looked up at her with a little more clarity. “A thirteen year old can't raise a child!” 

“Ji, we already have a child,” in spite of the stress she was feeling, Y/N couldn't help but start to giggle. She leaned closer to him and placed her other hand on his cheek. “We've had a child for seven months. Her name is Coco.” 

Jisung furrowed his eyebrows. He grew quiet as he processed her words. And then, “That's not the point.”

“What is your point?” 

“ … I don't know. I'm stressed.”

“Me too.” 

Looking each other in the eye, Y/N and Jisung burst into frenzied laughter. Jisung dropped his face into his hands as Y/N slid off of the sofa, settling herself on the floor before wrapping her arms around him. 

“The timing is terrible,” She murmured against the soft skin of his neck as her hand slid up and down his back. “But … we can do this. We can. I don't think the universe would give us another child if we couldn't handle it.” 

“I think the universe is fucking with us,” Jisung declared simply, though he curled his own arms around her wife's shoulders and kissed her temple. “I think it should back off before I fight it.” 

Y/N giggled. She pulled back a little, surveying Jisung's tired yet determined face. “Oh yeah? How are you gonna do that, Ji?”

Jisung slowly raised his fists. He waved them around aggressively, his hair bobbing up and down in fluffy clumps with the movement. 

“Okay, okay, don't hurt yourself,” Y/N smiled as she placed her hands over his and dropped her head against her shoulder. “You'd never win.” 

Jisung smiled at her words. He tilted his head to the side and rested it against Y/N's. 

“I'm scared,” Jisung whispered a moment later. 

“So am I,” Y/N murmured. “We already don't get enough sleep as it is.”  

“I get more than you.” 

“Stop bragging.” 

Giggling again, the couple sighed and squeezed each other a little tighter. Their racing hearts soon slowed down, and it wasn't long before Y/N started to feel sleepy with the steady drum of her husband's heartbeat against her fingers. 

“I'm happy,” Jisung hummed suddenly, his fingers carding through Y/N's hair. “Just in case I forgot to say it before.”

Y/N spluttered against his neck.

“I'm being serious,” Jisung laughed. “I am really grateful. And happy. And grateful.” 

“Really?” Y/N pulled back again.

“Really,” Jisung nodded. “Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?”

Y/N tilted her head to the side with a knowing glance.

“Stop that,” Jisung chuckled. He planted an adoring kiss on the woman's cheek. “We're gonna be parents!” 

“Ji, we're already parents.” 

Jisung's lips twitched. “We're gonna be parents again!” 

Smiling at her husband, Y/N leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. In doing so, she caught sight of the little bursts of orange dotted around the floor. She nodded to the spilled fruit over his shoulder with a smile. “Those clementines are gonna be so bruised.” 

It turned out that the clementines did indeed suffer substantial bruising from the force of which Jisung had repeatedly dropped them at. To prevent them from becoming even worse, Jisung attempted to quickly peel the slightly squishy fruits so they could eat them together. His clumsy yet admirable efforts resulted in orange juice squirting in his eyes more than three times even though his glasses should have shielded them, as well as the remains of it running down his veiny forearms before dripping off of his elbows. 

“Give them to me,” Y/N snorted with laughter for the umpteenth time as Jisung battled with his sixth clementine. She watched the soft fruit explode over his fingers in a pulpy mess, and Jisung yelled in the process as more giggles bubbled inside of his wife. “Ji. Let me do it.”

“No baby,” Jisung was as adamant as he was dramatic. “I'm doing it, baby. I'm doing it for you, baby. Give me a chance, baby.” 

Laughing at his response, Y/N couldn't do anything but shake her head at him. “You're making a massive mess.” 

“It's a mess made with love though,” Jisung grinned widely. He finally managed to peel another orange with ease, and he segmented the abnormally neat orange before placing it into his wife's hands. “Eat.” 

And so she did just that. Being the back end of autumn, the oranges were sweet and fragrant; Y/N couldn't remember the last time she had enjoyed the fruit as much as she currently was, and before she knew it, the couple deftly made their way through the three bags of the clementines Jisung had purchased the previous morning.

“Aren't there any more?” Y/N huffed as she finished her last segment. 

“More?” Jisung laughed in surprise. “Nope. I only bought three bags.” 

“I want more … “ Y/N whined. She clutched at her husband's arm, shaking him slightly. “Ji, get me more.” 

Chuckling at Y/N's expression, Jisung squished his wife's cheeks with his soft hands. “I'll get you some more tomorrow.”

Y/N pouted. “Promise?” 

“I promise,” Jisung grinned. “This time I won't drop them on the floor.” 

*☆*☆* 

“I'm gonna be a dad,” Jisung kept repeating in what resembled a worrying chant as his body slid further and further down his friend's sofa. “I'm gonna be. A. Dad.” 

“You already are a dad, Han,” Chan laughed for the third time at the extravagant look upon Jisung's face. The older man's one year old daughter wriggled around in his lap, and she looked up at Chan with red cheeks as though she was listening to his voice. Chan smiled warmly and lightly tickled the underside of Sky's nose with the tip of his index finger. “You have been for a while.” 

Jisung sighed loudly. “That's what Y/N said.” 

“It's not that surprising, idiot … it's a fact. A very well known fact,” Changbin rolled his eyes. He was huddled in a cosy corner with Noah, the six year old's eyebrows furrowed as he turned a page of his book. His cheek was pressed up against Changbin's bicep, and Changbin was unable to keep the soft smile off of his face at the affection from the little boy.

“You're so annoying, Seo Changbin,” Jisung scowled. “I wasn't talking to you.” 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Chan tutted once as Jisung made to pick up one of the large cushions on the sofa, clearly intending to throw it at Changbin's head. “Behave. The kids are watching.” 

Noah giggled over the top of his book. “Uncle Jiji always throws things at Uncle Binnie when you're not looking, daddy.”

Chan swivelled his face slowly to Jisung, and gave him a long, hard, pointed look. 

“Your uncle is just demonstrating his emotions in a very unethical way,” Chan said to Noah with a smile. “Don't follow his example. You don't wanna turn out like him.” 

“Okay,” Noah said simply, his eyes sparkling. And then, “Uncle Jiji, you're bad.” 

“You're pitting him against me!” Jisung exclaimed melodramatically, just as Chan cracked up with teasing laughter. “I came here for support and you're being very rude, Mr Bang Chan.” 

“Okay, okay, sorry Hannie,” Chan chuckled, leaning over to squeeze his friend's arm. “I was kidding.” 

Jisung stuck his tongue out at him in a very childish way. 

“What's on your mind?” Chan asked him in a softer, less playful tone as he played with the fat buttons on Sky's cardigan. “Do you not want another kid?”

“No,” Jisung said a second later. 

Both Chan and Changbin turned their slightly startled gazes towards him.

“No, I mean, it's not that,” Jisung said hurriedly, his hands waving in the air in mild panic. “I didn't mean I don't want another kid. I do want another kid. But … we only just had Coco, and Y/N is exhausted, and I don't want her to be more exhausted, and I still can't believe I'm actually a dad, and I don't think I'm going to be a good one, and - “ 

Chan reached out and gently patted Jisung on his head. “Deep breath.”

Jisung's cheeks puffed up considerably as he did what his older friend told him to do. Resembling a balloon, Jisung inhaled a few times before flopping against Chan's broad frame. He absent mindedly traced his fingertip over Sky's palm, and the toddler flopped into Jisung's lap like a fish with a large smile. 

“You already are a good dad, Uncle Jiji” Noah said in his quiet voice. “Ky thinks so too.” 

Chan smiled fondly at his son, the richness of his eyes melting further as he regarded him wordlessly. He watched as Changbin slid an arm around Noah, the man pulling the six year old closer to him in a warm hug.

Jisung resisted the urge to burst into tears at the boy's simple, gentle comment. He knew just as much as anyone that children were often the most honest of people. “Thanks Noey.”

He started to giggle as Sky rolled around on his legs without a care in the world. “She has so much energy.” 

“Because she likes you,” Chan said with a smile. “Because she thinks you're a good uncle.”

Jisung's lips curled up at the corners as he curled his fingers gently around Sky's. “Do you think so, Ky-Ky?” 

Sky smiled again. She squeezed Jisung's hands, making the man sniff loudly.

*☆*☆*

Jisung had only dumped new bags of clementines onto the coffee table ten minutes ago. He watched in fascination as Y/N attacked them like a starving animal.

“Baby … baby slow down,” Jisung was perplexed as Y/N ripped open another bag of clementines. “You're gonna choke.” 

Y/N ignored him. “I have never had anything as tasty as these clementines. I don't want to eat anything else ever again. I want them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” 

Jisung stole a glance at Coco. She was looking back at him with the same gormless expression as though she shared his bafflement, and it made him chuckle.

“Even Coco is shocked,” Jisung pointed out. “Look at her. She's never seen her mummy eat so many oranges in her life.” 

“No, Coco is impressed,” Y/N corrected, peeling another clementine. “She wants to be like mummy when she grows up.”

Jisung burst into affectionate laughter. “What, a clementine monster?” 

Y/N looked thoughtful. “Yes.” 

“Do you want to be a clementine monster, baby?” Jisung cooed towards Coco. 

Coco blinked at him. She flopped forwards on the sofa, a rogue clementine caught beneath her. 

“That was a yes,” Y/N shrieked with laughter as she gently pried the fruit away from their seven month old. She kissed Coco on the top of her head before going back to her clementines. “Do you want some?”

Jisung responded by leaning close to his wife, his mouth dropping open widely. He clamped his lips shut after Y/N placed two segments into his mouth, and he chewed joyously on the fruit before suddenly bursting into laughter. 

“You know,” Jisung laughed to himself, covering his mouth as he spoke. “If we have another girl we should name her Clementine. Good thing you're not craving pickles like you said the other day.”

Y/N's stomach lurched at the idea of pickles. In her current state, she never wanted to think about a pickle again. 

“Think about it,” Jisung said as he opened his mouth again, waiting for more fruit. “We named Coco Coco technically because you craved so much chocolate in your first pregnancy. Now you're craving clementines … so it'd make sense if we call our second baby Clementine.”

Y/N stared at her husband when she realised he wasn't joking. “You were actually being serious?”

“Yeah.” 

Blinking slowly, Y/N looked to Coco. The baby was already looking up at her with round eyes, and Y/N couldn't help but start to laugh. 

“Yu-Ja for her Korean name?” Jisung continued helpfully. “You know … like … yuzu lemons.”

“Yuzu?” Y/N repeated with another giggle. “Talk about a very citrusy child. What if it's not a girl?”

“It will be,” Jisung was adamant. “I know it will be. If not … we can still name a boy Clementine.” 

Y/N bit her lip at Jisung's suggestion. A large smile spread across her face, and she gently patted her stomach. “Hey, Clementine.” 

As if on cue, a second later Coco started to giggle energetically. She flopped onto Y/N, her hand landing over the top of her mother's. 

“Coco approves too,” Jisung hummed, translating their child's movements. He reached for Coco and immediately snuggled his nose against her cheek. “My little Cocoa Bean. Do you like the name Clementine?”

Coco giggled again. She reached out and gently patted Jisung's forehead with her tiny fingers.

The parents beamed. They took her reaction as a positive one, and so the name Clementine took place in their minds much faster than the name had materialised for their first child. 

*☆*☆* 

True to the friend group's nature, the garden was soon the picture of utter chaos. 

“Hannie … Coco is in the chocolate fountain … again,” Chan called across the garden as he jogged to the other side, his curly hair flying in the wind. He hurriedly scooped the child up from the small food table before she could consume the entirety of its contents. “No, no, no … that's not for you, yeah?” 

Chan started to chuckle as Coco looked up at him with round, innocent eyes, her fingers smeared with the melted chocolate; a second later his affectionate laughter morphed into an expression of shock as Coco promptly stamped her hands onto Chan's t-shirt.

Chan sighed as he looked down at the two brown handprints staring up at him against the white material. There also appeared to be a drip of chocolate on the thigh of his blue jeans, though how it got there, the man had no idea. He shook his head at Coco with a smile. “Cheers, little one. Really thoughtful of you.” 

“Aw, she thinks you're her canvas,” Astra came up behind her husband with a wad of wet tissues in her hands. She gently took a hold of Coco’s hands as the baby settled down in Chan's grip, and the woman started to clean the chocolate off of the baby's fingers.  

“Sounds like you,” Chan said wryly. It made Y/N laugh, and she kissed the man's cheek before wiping down his clothes quickly and making her way to toss the dirty tissues into a bin.

“Woah, cool shirt,” Jisung suddenly appeared in front of Chan. He flipped his thumbs up at his friend, and Chan shook his head again in mild disbelief. 

He hoisted Coco a little higher in his muscular arms, his hand soft against her back. “Your child won't stop eating the chocolate. She's just like you.” 

Jisung grinned widely. He too had a smear of chocolate on the side of his lips, and Chan started to chuckle as he reached into his pocket and threw a tissue at him. 

On the other side of the garden, Yumi and Minho were trying their hardest to situate a large black balloon onto the grass. Despite the heavy stopper at the bottom of it that was supposed to hold it down, the balloon kept swaying to the left and the right as well as into the fence behind it due to the cold breeze. Minho was becoming increasingly agitated at its inability to stay still.

“Who's idea was the balloon?” Minho asked in annoyance after he'd got the balloon's ribbon for the seventh time. 

Yumi grinned. “Yours!” 

“It wasn't!” Minho was defiant. And then, “Oh wait, it was. Oops.”

Laughing as Minho's face broke into a shy smile, Yumi moved towards him and playfully ruffled his hair. Minho sagged under her touch, his cheeks flushing pink. 

“Why don't we tape it to the fence? You won't really be able to see It in pictures.” 

Minho pursed his lips. 

“We could dig a hole and bury the stopper in there?” Yumi said mischievously. 

Minho started to laugh devilishly. “I like that idea better.”

“What idea?” Y/N suddenly asked as she emerged from their house. She was wearing a knee length dress, and it swayed in the wind as she moved towards her friends. She looked up at the large balloon with a smile. “Where'd you get such a big balloon from? I don't think Ji is gonna be able to reach that.” 

“I think I'm being spoken about,” Jisung suddenly popped up beside his wife. “I think I'm being ridiculed. I can sense it.” 

“No,” Minho said innocently. “We're just talking about you being short and not being able to pop the balloon.”

“Hey!” Jisung was aghast. He lashed out, his elbow connecting with Minho's side, and the man burst into high pitched cackles.

“Maybe we should bury the stopper in the ground after all,” Yumi said.

Minho and Yumi high fived each other around the string of the balloon. 

“Can we dig this?” Minho asked, toeing the grass. “I'm gonna dig it anyway even if you say no.” 

“You can,” Y/N grinned as she rested her hands on the small of her back. “Go crazy.”

Y/N and Jisung stood together, watching as their friends situated themselves in various levels of mayhem; the balloon Minho and Yumi had brought along with them was filled with either pink or blue confetti, the colour of which would be unknown to Y/N and Jisung until a little while later when they'd pop the balloon together. To accompany the small gender reveal gathering, Felix had brought along a couple of large boxes, in which he had neatly stacked individual cheesecakes. Unassuming on the outside, Felix had secretly filled each one of them with a filling to match the innards of the black balloon floating around in the wind. Only himself and Minho knew the baby's gender, the rest of the group left in the dark.

“Mama?” Noah gently pulled on Astra's sleeve. He was sitting on a small chair, Sky for once completely calm as she rested on his lap. She was slowly chewing on tiny pieces of strawberry that Astra had cut up for her, her fingers stained with red juice.

Astra leaned down and gently caressed Noah's freckled face. “Yes baby?” 

“When are they popping the balloon?” Noah asked his mother. 

“Hmm … soon, I think?” Y/N smiled as she tucked her trousers beneath her and sat beside him. She nudged his shoulder amicably. “Whenever uncle Minho stops stomping on the ground, I'm guessing.”

The two of them watched with growing smiles as Minho finally buried the balloon's stopper under the grass. Dusting damp dirt off of his fingers, the man stood up proudly and pointed to his handiwork with a single finger.

“Done,” Minho called simply. “Popping time. Baby time.” 

From beside his wife, Chan burst into amused chuckles as his mind took an obscure turn upon hearing his friend's peculiar way of phrasing things.

“What's funny?” Noah asked curiously. 

“Nothing,” Chan cleared his throat just as Astra slid her knowing gaze towards him. “Just … uncle Minho is a really funny person sometimes.”

“Either that, or someone has a really inappropriate mind,” Astra murmured to him, leaning towards her husband so only he could hear her words.

It only made Chan grin wider. He placed a warm hand on her knee, shuffling a little closer to her as he watched his family.

“Time to be enlightened!” Jisung exclaimed, running haphazardly towards the balloon. Y/N was already there with Coco in her arms, and she handed him a long pin, twin to her own. 

She looked down at Coco, kissing her temple. “Your daddy is the silliest man I've ever met,” she said, making their friends laugh. “Let's hope uncle Seungmin takes some really silly photos of him for you to see when you're older, hmm?” 

Face splitting into a soft smile, Seungmin raised his small camera in response. It was covered with holographic stickers in all shapes and sizes, the man privately too fond of Noah to say no when the boy asked if he could decorate it with his expansive sticker collection. 

“Okay, are we all ready?” Y/N asked as she  turned towards Jisung. 

“Are you both ready?” Changbin responded from beside Jeongin. 

“What do you think it is?” Hyunjin asked curiously as he shook his hair back with his slender fingers. “I think it's a girl.”

Jeongin slapped Hyunjin on the back of his head, a frazzled look blooming on Hyunjin's face. “Idiot! You can't say that first, you have to let them decide. They're the parents.” 

“Oops,” Hyunjin burst into laughter. He raised his hand. “I think it's a boy!” 

“I think it's a baby,” Jisung proclaimed loudly over their chatter. It caused them all to crack up with laughter, and Coco joined in by giggling against Y/N's chest. 

“What do you want it to be, Coco?” Y/N asked the girl. “A little sister, or a little brother?” 

Coco gurgled in response. It was a funny sound, and Jisung couldn't help but gently grab her face and plaster with kisses.

“Coco is indifferent,” Jisung chuckled. “Okay … time for the balloon? I want those cheesecakes.”

“I hope they actually taste good,” Felix suddenly looked anxious, his fingers pulling down his tanned cheeks as he side eyed his desserts. “I worked really hard on them.”

“They're cheesecakes. They'll be perfect,” Jisung grinned at his friend. “Who's counting down?” 

“We'll all count down,” Chan said. He looked around at his friends. “Ready? Seungmin, camera ready? Hyunjin, are you seated? You're not gonna accidentally trip and fall onto the balloon first, right?” 

Noah giggled at his father's question and smiled brightly at a flabbergasted Hyunjin. The man refrained from retorting and smiled back at Noah instead as he shook his head lightly. 

“Okay then … count of three?”

Everyone nodded in approval. 

“Three,”

“Two,” 

“One!” 

“Ahh!” 

Jisung yelled loudly just as Y/N pierced her side of the balloon; Jisung had aimed to stab his side with the pin at the same time, but true to his nature, the man tripped over the long ribbon that was attached to the balloon, and he stumbled forwards instead. The pin dropped from his hand onto the grass with a thud as he fell onto his face with an even louder thud, just as an explosion of pink fell around him. 

“Oh boy,” Chan wheezed through a sudden bout of laughter. Sky looked up at him and followed suit, suddenly shrieking with laughter - though why she was laughing, she had no idea.  

“I can't find the pin!” Jisung cried in distress as he scrambled around on the grass. “Oh my gosh … we're having a girl! Minho … why is everything pink?” 

From the side, Minho let out a loud guffaw. Being the pranksters of the group, both Yumi and he had made sure the high pressure balloon was filled with just the right amount of pink powder, glitter, and confetti. The combined substances now covered everything from the grass, to Coco, who looked as utterly bewildered as a one year old could. 

“You're such an idiot,” Minho giggled as he watched Jisung's round glasses fall off of his nose with the intensity at which he was searching the ground. “It's pink because you're having a girl.”

“No I know that, but … “ Jisung's voice trailed off as he banged his head against the fence. He yelled again and sat up in indignation, wiping glitter from his eyes with muddy hands. 

From beside him, Y/N couldn't breathe. She had placed Coco down in Yumi’s lap before she could drop her, and she braced her hands on her knees as her entire body shook with silent laughter. Tears of mirth dripped from her eyes as pink continued to fall around them all, and she finally fell onto the grass beside her husband as the force of her laughter cracked her at last. 

From amongst the mingled laughter and chaos as his uncles rolled around the floor, Noah got up from his seat. He diligently walked towards the heart and root cause of the pandemonium, and he crouched down onto the floor a foot away from Jisung before deftly picking up the lost pin. It had been winking at him from a distance, the metal shining under the cold sun.

“Here, uncle Jiji,” Noah held it out to the wide eyed man. “You can pop it now too.”

Relief washed through Jisung from the pin being found before it could hurt anyone . He set it down on the table beside him so he wouldn't drop it again, and he scooped Noah into a warm hug.

“You're a hero, Little Bang,” Jisung whined. “What would we do without you? I'd say you get it from your daddy but I don't want to flatter him.” 

“Oi! I can hear you,” Chan called with a chuckle. 

Jisung grinned at him. He then stood up again and very belatedly stabbed the rest of the balloon for himself, his friends laughing around the couple.

“See, I told you it was a girl!” Jisung squealed as he returned his glasses onto his nose and jumped onto his wife. He plastered numerous fat kisses to her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, and then finally her lips. “Our little Clementine!”

Y/N rubbed her wet eyes before returning the man's big hug. She squeezed him as tightly as her growing bump would allow her to, and she kissed the side of his head. “You did. You're also hands down the most chaotic dad out there.” 

Jisung pulled away, blushing with embarrassment. He rubbed the nape of his flushed neck. “I hope at least one of the babies takes after you.” 

“Oh, I don't know … I wouldn't complain if they're both like you,” Y/N smiled. “More fun that way.”

Grinning widely, Jisung then turned his gaze to their daughter. She was sitting demurely in Yumi’s lap, and the woman was gently dusting the pink out of her dark hair. 

“Coco!” Jisung laughed incredulously, dropping to his knees again. “My little Bean … you're all pink!” 

Coco giggled at her father. “Pik!”

“Yes, pink,” Jisung laughed as he caressed his fingers over her glittery cheek. His face crumpled at how adorable she looked, and he cupped her face before dropping his own face into his hands. “God you're so cute. Why are you so cute, baby? Did I really have to give you all of my cute genes?” 

From beside him, Minho and Seungmin both groaned in disgust. 

“Ew,” Seungmin drawled. 

“Can we eat the cheesecakes yet?” Hyunjin asked loudly from the chocolate fountain; he was busy dunking fat strawberries into the chocolate, sneaking some to Sky in the process, and his face contorted with increasing joy with every berry he ate. 

“Cheesecake!” Jisung gasped, his face lighting up. “I want some!” 

“I made loads,” Felix grinned as he gestured to the food table. “There's more in the fridge if you want them later.”

Reaching for one of the small desserts, Jisung bit into it with eager anticipation. He pulled it away to reveal the strawberry centre pooling out of his generous sized bite, and his eyes widneed.

“It's pink!” Jisung yelled, shoving it into his neighbour's - who happened to be Jeongin - face. “It's pink!” 

“Yeah because you're having a girl,” Jeongin rolled his eyes mildly. “We already know that.”

“Yeah, but it's pink!” Jisung repeated excitedly. “Lix … bro how did you do that?”

Felix looked shy all of a sudden. “I just made a separate batter and spooned it into the middle.”

Jisung offered the rest of his cheesecake to Y/N. “I don't know what that means but I love it. Make me more, bro. I want them everyday, every week, every month … ” 

*☆*☆* 

Jisung shivered as he reclined back onto the sofa; the depth of winter had slowly but surely graced the city in the form of grey clouds and biting winds, and despite the heating and heavy blankets covering most parts of the house, there was a persistent chill that managed to find its way into every room. It hugged Jisung in an unwelcome manner, and the man sighed fondly as he looked over at his sleeping child.

“You're lucky,” he said in a quiet tone, smoothing the back of his finger over her flushed cheek. “I bet you're all warm and toasty under that blanket.”

Earlier on in the day, Astra had brought over two bundles of something soft and warm to Jisung and Y/N's home. As soon as the couple had disclosed the information to their family at their gender reveal that they were naming their new baby Clementine, Chan's wife put her mind to work and had had the idea of making two themed gifts for Jisung and Y/N's children in the form of matching baby blankets. 

Coco was peacefully huddled under hers; hazelnut coloured yarn with chocolate brown fringing and accents, the patchwork blanket sported motifs of cocoa beans, squirrels, and autumnal leaves. It was as neatly made as it was beautiful, and Y/N couldn't stop stroking her hands in wonder over Clementine's blanket that was in her lap. 

“She's insane,” Y/N kept saying, her fingers running down the stitches. This blanket was the softest of baby pink's, and flat renditions of clementines dotted the entire fabric. “The gender reveal wasn't even that long ago … how did she have the time to make these?” 

“I don't know bro,” Jisung hummed in admiration of his own as he played with Coco's blanket. “That entire family is insane. I think they're supernatural beings. Nothing they ever do makes sense.”

Giggling at her husband, Y/N carefully folded up Clementine's blanket and set it to the side, excited for the day her new child could use it. A second later, Coco started rustling around, and her eyes slowly opened.

“Dinner time?” Y/N asked the baby in a silly tone. Coco kicked around, her clothed feet creating mounds in her blanket as she stared at her mother. “Dinner time it is.” 

As she lifted Coco into her arms, a sharp twinge spread across Y/N's lower back. She inhaled abruptly and her body jerked at the feeling, lifting her a little off of the sofa. 

Jisung's eyes widened. “Baby? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Y/N breathed heavily as she sat back down again. She cradled a sleepily blinking Coco to her chest. “Just a bit of back pain.”

“Back pain?” Jisung's eyebrows shot into his hair. “Is that normal?” 

Y/N waited for Coco to latch onto her, and she leaned her head back onto the sofa as the small of her back continued to pulsate in a dull fashion. “Yes. It's fine Ji, don't worry.” 

The creases between Jisung's brows softened slightly at her words, though he still looked a little worried as he watched her. “I'll give you a massage once you've finished feeding Coco.”

“A massage? But I'm fine,” Y/N smiled, not wanting to inconvenience her husband. But seeing the pure, loving expression in Jisung's eyes, she nodded at him slowly and gently kissed his cheek. “Okay.” 

“I win,” Jisung grinned in victory. Wanting something to do - anything he could do to be helpful -  the man reached over a second later to the table and picked up a clementine. They had accumulated an ever-present stash since Y/N's cravings had kicked in at full force. Jisung carefully peeled the fruit, and, with no plate nearby, the man deftly rested both the peels and the fruit on top of Y/N's bump.

“Ji!” Y/N snorted with sudden laughter, and she clamped a hand over her mouth. The sight was so bizarre in that moment that it took all of her strength and willpower to not shake with laughter as Coco continued to feed.

“Table,” Jisung wiggled his fingers in satisfaction towards the clementine. “And, hey, look … Clementine in the belly, clementine on the belly.” 

Fearing she would choke with the way she was trying to not laugh too much, Y/N gently slapped the man's arm. “At least save the joking for when I'm done with Coco. I don't wanna give her an earthquake.”

“Okay,” Jisung raised his hand to his forehead in the form of an obedient salute. 

He then reached for the peeled clementine on Y/N's stomach and separated its segments. “Say ‘ah’.”

“Ahh … “ Y/N's voice trailed off into more giggles before Jisung placed the clementine piece into her mouth. “You better move those peels before I accidentally move and they go all over the floor.”

“Oh no that would not be a good idea,” Jisung said in a robotic voice as he quickly scrambled around and picked up the clementine peel. He slid off of the sofa and placed the peels into the bin. “Gone.”

Giggling at him, Y/N gently patted his vacated seat as she realised she immediately missed his presence. “Come sit back down.”

Only too happy to oblige, Jisung zoomed over to the sofa again, his hair flopping in animated waves over his ears. He sat down in his seat, and, making sure Coco was still firm in her grip, Y/N stretched her legs out in front of her before leaning her head onto her husband's shoulder. 

Jisung was quick to slide his arm tenderly around her waist. He turned his head to the side and rested his cheek against Y/N's head, a soft smile spreading over his face as he did so.

“Do you think Clementeeny Tiny is in the same position you are?” Jisung hummed in question after a while, breaking their quiet.

Y/N grinned. “What, bent at an angle?”

“Well, yeah,” Jisung chuckled. He looked down at her. “I used to think when a woman is pregnant the baby has the exactly same position inside … standing, sleeping, sitting … “

Spluttering at her husband's words, Y/N lifted her head and stared at him in bewilderment.

“I'm being serious,” Jisung was embarrassed, flustered laughter escaping him. “I didn't know.”

“Wow,” Y/N said dryly. “You never fail to impress me, Han Jisung.” 

Just then, the woman's back struck her with pain again; she gasped, and she used a hand to rub at her body in perplexity.

“Ow,” Y/N tutted to herself. “Clementine is being a menace.” 

Jisung waggled his index finger at Y/N's baby bump in a joking manner. “Now listen here, Clementeeny Tiny. Stop causing your mother so much pain.” 

Cracking up with giggles again at Jisung's words, Y/N dropped her head against his arm once the pain had settled down. “Ji, I love you.” 

“I love you too, baby,” Jisung said in a dramatic voice. And then, “But which baby am I talking to?”

Coco looked up at him with wide eyes, just as the baby inside of Y/N's stomach kicked out against her. 

“She kicked!” Jisung said, hand suddenly on his wife's stomach. “I saw that.”

“And I felt it,” Y/N groaned, placing her own fingers over her husband's. “She's crazy in there. Already kicks so much more than Coco did.”

She leaned down and nuzzled her nose against Coco's cheek. “Is Clem-Clem going to be a crazy baby? Are you both going to be silly babies together?”

Coco giggled at her mother's voice. She pointed slowly to the woman's bump. “C … Cem?” 

Both Y/N and Jisung gasped, their eyes widening in shock at their daughter's sudden comprehension.

“That's right! Little Clem-Clem is in here,” Y/N smiled widely, patting her stomach. 

Coco turned around in her mother's arms with frantic eyes, her head facing the small table in front of them. She pointed to the pile of rolling clementines on the table. “Cem?”

“Woah … she's so smart already,” Jisung was stunned, his wide-eyed expression matching his daughter's perfectly. “Yes baby. They're clementines!”

As she slowly registered her father's response, Coco’s face started to crumple. She whipped her head back to Y/N with teary eyes and her hands begun waving around like the flapping of bird wings. 

“Nono … no eat … Cem,” Coco pointed repeatedly in a worried fashion to Y/N's stomach. “Cem!” 

Y/N blinked at her daughter, and it took her a few moments to realise what she was saying.

“Baby, I didn't eat your sister,” Y/N laughed quietly as she shook her head at Coco. “She's growing in here until it's time for her to be born. She's safe, I promise. Your mama didnt eat her, okay?”

Coco’s lower lip wobbled. But her brows smoothed out a moment later and she wriggled around on Y/N's lap before curling up against her stomach again.

Jisung, on the other hand, was sporting an overly emotional face. His eyes crinkled into the shape of crescent moons as he looked down at Coco, unshed tears of his own glistening at the base of his lashes.

“She thought you ate her sister,” Jisung whimpered. “She's so … cute.”

“And she definitely takes after you,” Y/N commented, making her husband giggle. “Next thing you know, she's going to start asking if babies have the same positions too.”

Her words made Jisung burst into laughter, his nose turning the colour of a ripe tomato. “Don't repeat that. To anyone. They're gonna think I'm stupid.” 

Y/N smirked at him.

“Yeah okay, I know they already think I'm stupid. They're gonna think I'm stupider.”

“ … Stupider isn't a word.” 

“ … I'm the stupidest.”

*☆*☆*

Over the next few weeks, the pain in Y/N's back had spread. It progressed to her pelvis, her thighs, her hips, and the entirety of her baby bump. Deep cramps stretched across the width of her stomach, and it felt as though the pain was rooted in her skin, her tissue, her organs and her bones. It was everywhere, casting a blanket of fatigue over her, and soon Y/N couldn't do anything but lay down on the sofa despite attempting to ignore the pain as much as she could. 

Thirty two weeks pregnant, Y/N had been anticipating a little bit of discomfort here and there. She knew she still had a while to go, and her body was preparing for the end stages of her privacy; but at the same time, in the back of her mind she couldn't help but feel as though perhaps her current situation wasn't entirely as it should be. She couldn't remember feeling this way when she was pregnant with Coco. The situation she was in had even resulted in the woman bursting into tears whenever she was alone; when her husband wasn't at home, when she was in the bathroom, late at night when she couldn't sleep. 

At first she had thought it was just the hormones getting to her.

Later she realised in the back of her mind that deep down, she still wasn't ready for another baby. 

Feeding Coco every few hours was tiring her enough as it was. Her breasts were constantly sore, her clothes wet with milk even when she wasn't feeding. The rest of her body ached from carrying their second baby. And on top of that, her panic and anxiety were at an all time high; she could feel the same emotions flooding through her husband from time to time too, when he thought she wasn't paying attention. Knowing that they both felt as anxious as each other should have been a mild comfort. But in this case, it wasn't. It filled her brain with more worrisome thoughts, and soon Y/N couldn't stop thinking about everything that could go wrong with the birth. 

But she couldn't tell her husband. She didn't want him to suffer from the consequences of her own untamed brain. 

“It's okay, this is normal,” Y/N constantly reassured Jisung - and herself - with laboured breathing whenever a wave of pain struck her and tried to rob her entirely of her breath. She was sitting beside Coco, the toddler perfectly calm and occupied as she watched the montage of sharks swimming around on the TV. “I'm pretty sure it was like this last time.” 

Jisung filled up a glass with cold water for her. “Baby, it was not this bad last time.”

“No … but it's fine,” Y/N huffed. “Maybe a tiny bit worse, but honestly Ji, I'm fine. I can handle it.”

She extended her hand to reach for the glass of water Jisung was holding; but Jisung stumbled, and the water sloshed up the rim before splashing over both Y/N and Coco. 

Coco blinked in surprise at the sudden chilly shower. She looked up at her father just as Y/N burst into a hormonal fit of tears. 

“No … “ Jisung sobbed with annoyance aimed at himself and regret for his family having to witness his silly behaviour as he reached for a wad of tissues. “My babies … I'm so sorry.” 

“Ji … “ Y/N sniffed hard before suddenly bursting into quiet laughter. It came over her just as quick as the tears had, and Jisung stopped himself from staring at her. “Ji, you're a menace to society.”

“I know,” Jisung continued to sob as he dropped a tissue onto Coco's head. It floated down onto her hair like a flat hat, and the baby sneezed as it brushed against her nose.

Y/N took a hold of the tissue and gently patted Coco's hair dry. “Thanks for the water.”

“You're welcome,” Jisung replied as he pressed tissues into the water seat. “I hope it was refreshing.”

He dodged the wet tissue that Y/N threw at him with a chuckle before picking up the empty glass. “I'll go refill it.”

“Try not to drop it this time,” Y/N said. She sighed and cuddled Coco to her, ignoring her spinning headache as she did so. “Your daddy is crazy, isn't he?”

Coco dropped her head against Y/N's bump, her fingers like a starfish on her stomach. “Sill dada.”

“Silly daddy,” Y/N agreed with a giggle. Jisung appeared again and a smile turned up the corners of his lips at his daughter's words. He extended his arm again and he managed to hand Y/N her water without dropping it. 

He then frowned as he noted the sheen of perspiration that was glowing just below Y/N's hairline. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay, Ji,” Y/N laughed. “I've said I'm fine so many times. Stop worrying.”

“Are you sure? We can go to the doctor if you're not … I can drive,” Jisung said. 

“Ji,” Y/N placed a hand on the man's arm, her eyes soft as she looked into his. “I promise. I'm fine. If I feel worse I'll tell you. Okay?”

“Okay … “ Jisung hummed, though he didn't look convinced. 

Jisung spent the rest of the day cleaning around the house as best as he could, as well as gathering multiple items that were written down on Y/N's baby bag list before he packed them all away for her. He knew there was still a while to go until his wife's due date, but he still wanted to make sure they were completely ready beforehand. He even tucked in a few tiny outfits he had bought for their new baby as a little surprise, and the sight of them continually filled Y/N's eyes with tears when he held them up to show her. 

He was diligent - even if he was a little slow - in his tasks. Though he was a clumsy man most of the time, dropping things here and there, (including himself on more than a couple of occasions) once Jisung had set his mind to something, he was able to accomplish anything that he wanted to. He washed the dishes when required, he ran around the house vacuuming the floors, he picked up the inevitable mess that every home seemed to accumulate … and, most of all, he made sure Y/N never got up from her seat on the sofa unless she absolutely had to. Such as when nature was calling - which was quite frequent, Jisung had soon come to realise. 

Not wanting his wife to lift a finger in any way, Jisung eventually called Minho over so they could cook together - even though he would have liked to do everything by himself, Jisung did have his limits too. He didn't want to feed Y/N ramen everyday, no matter how much she claimed to like it. Y/N was only slightly better at cooking than he was … and he decided that drastic measures definitely needed to be taken in order for her to stay healthy during the last portion of her pregnancy. 

With Minho's much needed help and guidance, soon both the fridge and the freezer were packed with meals the couple could easily warm up when both Y/N and Jisung were too busy - or didn't want to - cook. Tubs of freshly prepared kimchi sat in the back of the fridge to ferment, and numerous tupperware containers of various side dishes kept their inventory bursting at the seams. 

Jisung had reserved a generous quantity of the food and for the next few days, he filled up a large bowl of the steaming meals before spoon feeding his exhausted wife. 

One night, Y/N couldn't sleep. She was claustrophobic and suffocated in her bedsheets; she tossed and turned as sharp twinges bloomed across the lower half of her body, and unable to take it any longer, the woman kicked the sheets off and slid out of bed with enormous difficulty. 

Just as her feet touched the cold ground, Y/N felt a rush of something hot trickle down the inside of her legs. Her eyes widened and she looked down; her eyes widened further when she saw not only the signs of amniotic fluid on the floor, but that it was tinged a light green.

“Ji,” Y/N inhaled sharply, her heart suddenly beating a hundred times a minute against her tightening chest. Now that she was standing, the pain in her lower back increased from her hips to her upper stomach, and she groaned as she pressed a hand into her side table to hold herself up. “Ow … Ji.” 

“Baby?” Jisung rolled around in bed and sat up, his eyes nearly glued shut and his hair a frizzy mess over them. He rubbed his eyes and pushed his hair back. Seeing the woman's uncomfortable stance at the edge of the bed, his eyes rounded and he immediately sat up a little straighter. “What's wrong? Are you okay?” 

“Ji … I think … I think my waters have broken … ow,” Y/N grimaced, tears making her vision swim. “And it hurts … so bad … “  

Jisung stuttered, reaching for his glasses before crawling towards her. “What? Are you sure? You can't be … you're only thirty three weeks!” 

“I know,” Y/N cried, panic flooding through her at a rapid pace. “Ji … Ji there's … I think there's meconium.” 

“What is that?” Jisung shot out of his bed immediately at the foreign word and helped Y/N to sit down. He looked down at the patch on the floor. He gulped, all of a sudden very anxious, and very queasy with his acknowledgement of the substance.

Jisung forcefully dragged his gaze away. His own conflicting feelings could wait … he had to be strong for his wife. The little bit of sickness he was feeling was nothing compared to what Y/N was probably going through.

“The baby's first poop,” Y/N was gasping, her words sticking against her dry throat. “It's dangerous … Ji … if the baby inhales it … she might not be able to breathe properly … ow … “ 

Jisung's stomach churned violently until he felt as though it had dropped to his feet. His mind drummed uncomfortably as a whirlwind of thoughts flew at him; he didn't know much when it came to birth and labour despite them already having a child. But even Jisung knew that Y/N was definitely already in labour. He also knew that it was entirely too early for their baby to be born … and along with that, everything else his wife was continuing to say filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread. 

He ran his trembling hands through his hair, his hands clutching his head as he shut his eyes to collect his swimming thoughts.

“Okay … “ Jisung swallowed, dropping his hands before going to cup them around Y/N's red face. He looked into her eyes, willing his gaze to help calm her down a little. “We need to go to the hospital. We need to go to the hospital now. I'll call Chan, he can drive us … I don't think I should drive.”

Y/N nodded at his simple plan. Even though she was panicking and her heart felt as though it was about to explode, she smiled faintly and placed a hand over Jisung's shaking one. “I don't think you should drive either.” 

Chuckling nervously, Jisung softly kissed Y/N's clammy forehead before scrambling around for his phone. His wobbling fingers caused him to drop the device multiple times; by the time he had picked it up again, he was gripping it extremely tightly as he clicked on his emergency contact list. 

The man was incredibly thankful when Chan picked up his call within a few seconds despite the late hour. He was even more grateful for the short distance between their homes when Chan arrived at their door a mere five minutes later, the sight of the older man alone filling Jisung with a wave of relief. 

“I brought Astra,” Chan said on the doorstep of Jisung's home. “Thought she'd be able to help Y/N a bit. Are you guys okay?” 

“Yes. No. I don't know,” Jisung's eyes immediately teared up his gaze landed on his older friend. He looked down at the floor, and Chan smiled softly as he stepped up towards him.

He placed a tender hand on Jisung's shoulder. “Hey. It's gonna be okay, yeah? Everything is going to be completely fine.” 

Jisung nodded, rubbing the back of his hand across his nose. He didn't trust himself to speak; in truth, he was more terrified than he had ever been in his life. 

The feeling alone scared him even further. 

Chan moved closer to him before gently curling his arms around Jisung's frame. He reassuringly patted his back, his chin on Jisung's shoulder. “Come on. Let's get you guys to the hospital. Where's Y/N? Coco?”

“In there,” Jisung pointed to the room behind him just as Astra stepped up behind her husband. “Coco's still asleep … I think Y/N's strapping her into the carrier.”

“I brought some stuff,” Astra said in a soft voice to Jisung, holding up a bag. “Is Y/N okay? Are you okay?”

“Yes. No. Yes,” Jisung nodded and shook his head at the same time. His face crumpled, and he dropped his face into a hand as tears spilled over his fingers. His voice broke when he spoke. “I don't know what I'd do if I lost either of them. I can't lose them. I … can't.” 

“Hey, don't think like that,” Chan was firm, yet kind. “Baby's just a little early, yeah? Babies are born early all the time and they make it … both of your girls are gonna be completely fine.” 

Jisung nodded. He sniffed hard and rubbed his hand over his face before plastering on a brave smile. 

“Go sit in the car with Chris,” Astra was gentle, placing a soft hand on Jisung's arm. “I'll go get Y/N and Coco.” 

“I should get her … “ Jisung rubbed the nape of his neck. 

“It's okay, I'll get her,” Astra said. “I've got a few things I need to give her anyway.” 

Nodding gratefully at Astra, Jisung let himself be led by Chan to the car as Astra made her way into his house. She found Y/N struggling with the clasp of Coco's carrier, and Y/N burst into a fresh set of tears upon seeing her friend.

“Aw … “ Astra immediately hugged Y/N, her hands soft against her hair. “It's all gonna be okay. You've done this before … you're gonna be a pro now.” 

Y/N sobbed against Astra's shoulder as she clutched onto her shirt. “It wasn't like this before. Everything feels wrong. It hurts so badly … I can't breathe, and I can't move, and I can't even get Coco into her carrier … who's going to look after her?” 

“Shh,” Astra murmured, soothing the distressed woman as best as she could. “Don't worry about Coco, Chris and I will look after her. Let me get you some water and then we can go to the car … where's your hospital bag?” 

After buckling Coco into place and helping Y/N to calm down a little, Astra helped the woman to her Chan's car while carrying Coco's carrier in her other hand. She sat beside Y/N in the back of the car, her hand rubbing circles over Y/N's back as Jisung mentally gave himself a pep talk beside Chan in the front of the car. 

“How are you feeling, baby?” Jisung turned and asked his wife once they were halfway to the hospital. 

Y/N had one hand clasped in Astra's, her other hand on the car seat as her back arched forward. Her face would have been comical in any other situation, but now, it just filled Jisung with more worry. “Trying my hardest to not give birth on the seat,” she grunted out as a contraction squeezed her stomach.

Jisung visibly blanched. “Baby, please don't give birth in Chan's car.”

From the driver's seat, Chan smiled a little worriedly. “As long as everyone is safe and healthy, I don't mind.” 

“He's just being polite,” Jisung said, making Y/N smile through the pain. “Don't do it.” 

Chan chuckled as another contraction washed over Y/N. She breathed heavily, her face scrunching up as she tightened her fingers on Astra's hand. 

“There we go … breathe slowly,” Astra murmured, continuing to rub Y/N's back. “We're nearly there.” 

Soon Jisung had his arm around Y/N's shoulders, his grip on her soft yet strong as they entered the hospital. Chan and Astra followed, Coco still fast asleep in the carrier that Chan was holding. It wasn't long before Y/N was attended to in the triage room, and after being told she was nearly fully dilated, she was ushered swiftly onto the labour ward. 

“Ji … Ji don't leave me,” by this time, Y/N was in hysterics; tears dripped down her red cheeks, her eyes frantic and bloodshot with worry. Even though she had been reassured multiple times by the midwives and the nurses that everything would be fine, Y/N couldn't shake the panic that had its claws hooked on her body. Everything that could potentially go wrong with both the labour and their baby echoed repeatedly in her head … it didn't help that there were now multiple midwives in the room, their hurried movements and brisk speech raising her alarm further. 

“We'll wait out there,” Chan touched Jisung's elbow softly. “Give us a call whenever you need anything, yeah?”

Jisung nodded at him with wide eyes. Both Chan and Astra left the room with Coco, and once they had gone, Jisung swiftly moved to the side of Y/N's bed. 

He reached for her hands and firmly clasped them in his own. For once, there was a steadiness and a calmness in his eyes, warmth and love and overflowing affection spilling out of his face as he looked down at his wife. The look on his face made Y/N's heart soar for the first time that night, and she looked up into his familiar face for comfort. 

“I'm not going anywhere,” Jisung murmured in a low tone, kissing her knuckles. “I'm staying here, right by your side.”

The tears wouldn't stop gushing out of Y/N's eyes. The monitor she was hooked up to bleeped faster and faster as her heart rate escalated, and Jisung bit his lip.

“Listen to me,” Jisung said in the same level tone, his hands travelling to Y/N's cheeks. He cupped them firmly, his eyes even steadier than before. “You're going to be fine. You're safe now … all these people in here, they're here for you. They know what they're doing. And I'm here … I'm not going to leave you, baby.” 

“I don't care about me,” Y/N's chest rose and fell quickly. “Clementine … “

“ … Will be fine,” Jisung said. “I promise she'll be fine. Take some deep breaths … the more you worry, the more Clem will panic too.”

Y/N nodded at that, suddenly realising her husband was right. She shut her eyes and focused on her breaths; with Jisung's hands tucked around hers, she gradually found a glimmer of hope to cling onto, and she inhaled slowly through her nose. 

She exhaled, and then inhaled again … the monitor stopped bleeping as chaotically as it had been doing previously, and Jisung smiled down at her with pride in his eyes. 

“I feel like a terrible mother,” Y/N whispered after a while. She couldn't keep her thoughts inside her any longer; too tired to do anything, her words tumbled out of her in a jumbled, rapid pace. “I feel like you deserve a better wife.”

At that, Jisung's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “What are you saying, baby?”

“I … this isn't how this is supposed to go,” Y/N breathed, eyes clouding over again. “I'm supposed to be better than this. But I'm having our baby too early, and the baby is distressed, and - “ 

“Don't say that,” Jisung said, hand going to sweep Y/N's limp hair away from her sweaty forehead. “This isn't your fault, baby. You can't control this.”

“But I should be able to,” Y/N said. “I have one job and I can't even do that properly.” 

“No,” Jisung said firmly. “No matter what happens, you've done your job more than properly, baby, and I am so proud of you. I'm always going to be proud of you no matter what happens. You can't control everything … you're perfect to me, baby. Don't say things like that … you're a perfect mother and a perfect wife. I wouldn't want anyone else to be by my side. Only you.” 

Y/N's eyes filled with tears all over again. She squeezed Jisung's hand. “Really?”

“Really, really, really,” Jisung kissed her forehead. “Forever and always.” 

Mind temporarily satiated, Y/N's body finally started to relax. She hadn't realised just how tense she had been for the past few hours, and the relaxation of her body immediately resulted in her finally fully dilating. A moment later, the room was filled with nurses, paediatricians, and midwives. 

“Baby is in distress. We need to get her out now.”

The next stage of Y/N's labour felt like a blur. Whereas her birth with Coco had been slow and virtually a textbook pregnancy and labour, Clementine's birth progressed alarmingly quickly; one minute Y/N was pushing extensively, the next the room was filled with feeble cries. Every one of her minutes were coated in fire like agony, her body burning with fatigue and stress. She felt as though she had barely seen Clementine's face when she was suddenly bundled up into a paediatrician’s arms, the faintest sliver of yellowed skin visible before she was being taken away. 

“Where is she going?” Y/N attempted to sit up; her head felt as though a rubber band was being snapped against the inside of her skull, and she had no strength to hold her body up. She sagged against the pillow, words around her mushing together as she felt fatigue press down onto her chest. 

“Premature baby of thirty three weeks … “

“ … Meconium inhaled … placental abruption … “ 

“ … Jaundice … “ 

“ … Small … NICU … “ 

Y/N couldn't stay conscious any longer. The last thing she saw was Jisung's worried face before her eyes fell shut.

*☆*☆* 

Beep.

Beep.

Beep. 

Jisung's eyes were sore and red as he continued to stare at his baby. Clementine was fast asleep, her small body hooked up to multiple thin tubes that weaved their way out of the incubator she was being kept in. Her skin was still the colour of mustard, and Jisung sighed softly as he leaned his head against the walls of the incubator. 

He pulled down the tiny latch in the side and gently reached for Clementine's fingers. Even though she was sleeping, the baby's delicate fingers immediately wrapped around Jisung's index finger and he sniffed.

It had been an extremely long day. Y/N had given birth in the early morning; being born six weeks early, Clementine was much smaller than Coco had been, and since she was the second child, labour had been swift. After a few initial checks on the baby, it had appeared that Clementine suffered from Meconium Aspiration Syndrome. The meconium she had inhaled had clogged her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe, and after clearing her airways, the paediatricians rushed her to the NICU. 

Hooked up to oxygen, milk, and exposed to light therapy to cure her touch of Jaundice, the NICU nurses were certain when they told Jisung Clementine would recover completely. 

“You're so … tiny,” Jisung breathed, unable to tear his gaze away from his daughter. “And … orange. Like a - “

“Like a clementine.” 

Jisung whipped his head around to see his tired wife being wheeled towards him in a wheelchair. Though there was a ghostly pallor to her skin, she was smiling in the way she always did when she looked at her husband. It made Jisung's heart swell, and his face suddenly lIt up with joy. 

Y/N had suffered a partial haemorrhage after giving birth to Clementine. She had lost a substantial amount of blood, though not enough to warrant a transfusion. The nurses assured her she would be completely fine in a few days - though still weak, she was instructed to rest entirely.

She had however managed to convince them to take her to the NICU to see her baby. 

“Yeah,” Jisung laughed under his breath once the nurse who had brought her in walked away. “Clementeeny is literally the perfect name for her.” 

He reached out and slid his hand into Y/N's. He didn't know what to say; so much was going through his head, and most of it brought him to tears if he lingered on it. He had already spent so much time crying when Y/N was asleep earlier on in the day … he decided to push all of his thoughts away for a while, and instead tried to crack a joke.

“You ate so many clementines that she looks like one,” Jisung said, caressing Clementine's fingers. “Small and orange. Maybe Coco was right. Maybe you did eat her.” 

Y/N burst into quiet laughter. She leaned her cheek against her husband's comforting arm, and curled her hands around his bicep and she relished the familiar warmth of him. “Coco knows everything.”

A moment later, Y/N sighed. “Poor baby. She suffered so much because of me.”

Jisung turned his gaze onto her in question.

“Teeny,” Y/N said, nodding towards the incubator. “I was stressed and anxious for almost the entire pregnancy. They said high amounts of stress and high blood pressure can cause premature birth. I was worried so much the entire time about what could go wrong that I ended up being the reason why things did go wrong.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” Jisung asked her quietly. 

Y/N shrugged against him. “I knew you were already anxious. Didn't want to make it worse.” 

Jisung groaned. He squeezed her hand. “Silly baby.”

Such simple words, and yet, they made Y/N laugh. She snuggled further into him, grateful to have him at her side. 

Jisung smiled. He turned his head and dropped a loving kiss to the top of Y/N's head. “Where is Coco anyway? Is she okay?” 

“She's with Chris and Astra … and I think Hannah is there too,” Y/N hummed. “I told them to go home. Neither of them got any sleep last night either.”

At that, Jisung looked wistful. “I'm so grateful that we all live so close together. Wouldn't have been able to get through this without them.”

“I know,” Y/N hummed. “You'd probably have crashed our car. I love you, Ji, but you were a nervous wreck last night.”

Aghast at his wife's words, Jisungs mouth fell open. “Can you blame me? I was so scared. I thought … for a moment I thought I'd lose you. Both.”

Y/N's eyes widened. “What?” 

Jisung shrugged. He then shook his head, his body shivering with the memories of the previous hours. “I'm just thankful it's all over and you're both okay. I can't live without you guys. You're my everything. I love you so much.” 

“Ji … “ Y/N's eyes shone brightly. She leaned over and kissed his cheek softly before dropping her head against Jisung's shoulder. “I love you too.”

*☆*☆*

Four weeks later

“Gift,” Minho said simply. He nestled a tiny kitten plushie beside Clementine's head, the orange toy soft against her skin. “Look after it. You have to have it when you're twenty.” 

Clementine's eyes resembled that of round saucers as she looked up at Minho. She stretched her hand out and settled it over the plushie.

Minho's lips twitched. He looked away, concealing the affectionate and shy smile exploding over his face. 

“She's so cute,” Both Hyunjin and Felix cooed; they were kneeling on the floor in front of Y/N, their eyes glued to the baby in her arms. “She looks like Hannie … but actually cute.”

“Hey, I am cute,” Jisung protested, pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. The gesture made Chan snort with laughter. “But … yeah she's cuter than me.” 

“Way cuter,” Hyunjin rolled his eyes. His face was one of bubbly happiness and he ever so slightly tapped Clementine's nose with the tip of his finger. “Aren't you?” 

“Yes!” Y/N answered in a silly voice, hiding behind Clementine. It made everyone in the room laugh, and Jisung beamed. 

Clementine had stayed in the NICU for a little over three weeks. Over the days her jaundice had died down, and her chubby cheeks were now a rosy pink that matched her father's. 

The couple had brought her home for the first time two days ago. Coco had immediately formed a precious connection with her younger sibling; she spent her time curled up beside Clementine as much as she could, and the sight warmed both Jisung and Y/N's hearts more than they had ever anticipated. 

Upon their arrival, they had been greeted with their friends huddled in their garden. It wasn't surprising, considering they often invited themselves over; they had all been standing around one spot on the grass where Minho and Jeongin were kneeling on the ground.

“It was there!” Seungmin grumbled, toeing an uneven patch of grass with his shoe. “Are you blind? You can see it so clearly.”

“No, it's there,” Minho pointed to a patch a millimetre away. He looked up at Seungmin with a smirk, and the other man rolled his eyes.

Jeongin's fingers were covered in wet dirt. “Can you hurry up and decide where you want to put it? My fingers are going to smell like soil for life.”

“Well, no one told you to hold it the entire time,” Changbin cackled. “Just put it down.”

Jeongin pursed his lips. “No.” 

Clutching a small clementine tree, Jeongin waited patiently for Minho to dig a hole into the ground. It was in the same place he had placed the balloon stopper for his friends’ gender reveal months ago, the idea of tying the two things together incredibly appealing to all of them.

“Okay, put it in,” Minho said to Jeongin, waving his shovel around. “Don't break the branches.”

Jeongin narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to do it?”

“Good job, Yenie,” Minho grinned instead, chuckling to himself as the younger man lowered the trunk’s roots into the soil. 

Now, Y/N nuzzled her nose against Clementine's cheek. “Do you like the tree your uncles got you?” 

Clementine waved her hands up and down in an energetic way in response. It made Y/N smile. “I think that was a yes.” 

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"oh," you squeaked. your brain was screaming at you to run out the door, down the hall, and entirely out of the building, but your feet were glued to the carpet. "that's... so... cute."

it was not cute. it was a reptile. you hated reptiles. lizards, snakes, frogs—anything cold-blooded and scaly made your skin crawl. you were absolutely terrified of them.

"i knew you'd love her," jisung said, completely missing the sheer panic in your voice because he was too busy admiring the little thing. "she's a crested gecko. look at her little eyelashes! she doesn't even have eyelids, she just licks her eyes to clean them. watch, maybe she'll do it again."

"fascinating," you muttered, slowly taking half a step back to put some much-needed distance between your face and the lizard. "where did you... why do you have this, sungie?"

"well, i went out with changbin hyung yesterday, and we passed this pet store. i saw her in the window and just felt this instant connection, you know? like, she looked as stressed as i do when i'm trying to write a bridge," he explained, holding her up a little higher. "so i bought the whole setup. she's a girl."

"a girl," you repeated, trying to keep your voice level. "nice. does she have a name?"

"yeah! changbin hyung named her richard."

you blinked. "richard. for a girl gecko."

"yeah, he said she looked like a richard. i didn't want to argue with him, he was really passionate about it," jisung shrugged, looking down at richard with pure affection. "here, you want to hold her? she's super soft, i promise. she feels like a little piece of velvet."

he started to move his hand closer to yours, and panic shot through you.

"no! no, that's okay!" you said a little too quickly, putting your hands behind your back. "i don't want to... disrupt her. she's transitioning into a new environment. she needs her space, jisung. structural stability."

jisung paused, finally looking up from the lizard to scan your face. he noticed the way your eyes were wide, your shoulders were hitched up to your ears, and how you were practically leaning your entire weight away from him.

a slow, amused grin spread across his face. "wait. are you scared of her?"

"i'm not scared," you lied, keeping your eyes glued to richard, who chose that exact moment to do a tiny, uncoordinated head-tilt. "i just have a healthy respect for prehistoric creatures."

"she's harmless, baby. she doesn't even have teeth, she eats fruit puree," jisung teased, taking a step closer to you.

"jisung, i swear to god, if you bring richard any closer to me, our relationship is on pause," you warned, pointing a finger at him from behind your back.

he let out a loud, dramatic laugh, his shoulders shaking. "oh my god, you're terrified. i had no idea. i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i won't make you hold her."

he carefully walked over to the desk, where a brand new glass terrarium was sitting under a warm light, filled with fake plants and little branches. he gently let richard crawl off his hand onto a large green leaf. as soon as she was safe inside the glass, you finally let out a massive breath you didn't realize you were holding, your shoulders dropping.

jisung closed the screen lid of the tank, turned around, and immediately walked over to wrap his arms around your waist. he was still giggling, burying his face in your shoulder.

"you're awful," you mumbled, though you couldn't help but wrap your arms around his neck, finally feeling safe now that the tiny dinosaur was behind glass.

"i'm not awful, i'm a proud pet dad," he mumbled into your skin, kissing your shoulder. "but really, are you okay? i didn't mean to freak you out. if you really hate her, i can keep the tank strictly on my side of the dorm and cover it when you come over."

you looked past his shoulder at the tank. richard was currently hanging upside down from a plastic vine, looking incredibly goofy and not at all threatening now that she was contained.

you sighed, running a hand through jisung's messy hair. "no, no, it's fine. she can stay. she's actually kind of funny looking. i mean... i'll get used to her."

"she gets her looks from me," jisung joked, pulling back to look at you with a grin. "so... you'll help me feed her? she eats stuff that looks like baby food."

"absolutely not," you said instantly. "that is a hundred percent a dad job. i am strictly the cool aunt who visits and stays on the other side of the room."

"fair enough," jisung laughed, leaning down to press a quick, sweet kiss to your lips. "come on, let's go get some food. richard needs her rest anyway. she's had a big day terrifying my girlfriend."

"i was not terrified."

"sure, baby."

m a s t e r l i s t .ᐟ i n b o x .ᐟ

Jisung is sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of your classroom with a plastic tambourine balanced on his head, three glitter stickers on his cheek, and twenty-two elementary school students staring at him with a mixture of excitement and confusion.

You stand near your desk with one hand braced against the edge, your other hand resting lightly over the soft curve of your stomach, trying very hard not to laugh loud enough to disrupt what he clearly thinks is a serious artistic demonstration. His expression says focus. His posture says professional. The bright green sticker stuck to the corner of his mouth says otherwise.

“Okay,” he announces, lifting both hands like he is conducting an orchestra inside a very tiny, very chaotic concert hall. “Who can tell me what rhythm is?”

Several hands shoot into the air at once.

“It’s when music goes—!” Minseo shouts, standing up mid-sentence to bounce around.

“It’s when the song has feet!” Joon adds, completely confident.

“It’s when Mr. Han makes that face because we’re clapping wrong,” Jiwoo offers, which sends half the class into immediate giggles.

Jisung looks betrayed, one hand flying to his chest as if a seven-year-old has just wounded him beyond repair. “That face is called passion, actually. Some people pay good money to see this face in a studio.”

“They would ask for a refund,” you say sweetly.

His head snaps toward you, eyes wide with theatrical offense. “Babe.”

The entire class explodes.

“Ooooooh, Miss Y/N is his babe!”

“You said babe!”

“Are you married?”

“Is Mr. Han your husband?”

“Is the baby going to have your big cheeks?”

Jisung’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again, but nothing comes out except a tiny sound that might have been a plea for help. His face burns so red so quickly that you almost feel bad for him, though not enough to rescue him right away. This is what he gets for trying to be casual in a room full of children whose entire purpose in life is apparently to detect any form of weakness and weaponize it.

You clap twice, smooth and practiced, and the class settles almost instantly, though several of them are still vibrating with the joy of having witnessed adult embarrassment in the wild.

“Alright, musicians,” you say, giving Jisung one merciful glance as he peels the tambourine off his head with as much dignity as possible. “Mr. Han is here to help us with our spring showcase song, not answer questions about my personal life.”

“But is he your husband?” Sora asks, blinking at you with the innocent ruthlessness of a child who knows exactly what she is doing.

Jisung suddenly becomes deeply invested in organizing a pile of rhythm sticks that were already organized.

You smile, warm but firm. “He is very important to me.”

That answer, somehow, satisfies them more than any proper label would have. A few of the girls sigh like you have given them the ending to a drama. One of the boys mutters that his dad calls his mom “babe” only when he is in trouble. Jisung’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and when he glances up at you, there is something soft tucked under the amusement, something that still catches in your chest even after years of knowing him.

He is not your husband.

He is not anything that could be explained neatly on a family tree or in the blank spaces of a school emergency contact form, though his name had started appearing in the practical parts of your life long before either of you said it out loud. He was the person who knew which grocery store brand of strawberries you hated, the person who tucked your cold feet between his calves even while complaining that you were trying to freeze him from the inside out, the person who could turn a bad day into a story so ridiculous you forgot where the ache had started.

He was your boyfriend, yes, but the title no longer seemed big enough to hold everything he had become to you.

You met him in this same classroom, though back then he had been less glitter-sticker-covered and more visibly terrified.

The school had been running a small arts enrichment program that year, one of those underfunded miracles built out of donated supplies, teacher overtime, and the fierce belief that children deserved beautiful things even when budgets forgot them. Someone had known someone who knew Jisung, a music producer with a soft spot for community projects and an unfortunate inability to say no when kids were involved.

So Jisung had shown up one Tuesday afternoon wearing an oversized hoodie, carrying a backpack full of cables, portable speakers, and three kinds of panic. He had bowed too deeply to the principal, nearly tripped over a bucket of crayons, and introduced himself to your students with a voice that cracked on the word “producer.”

You had liked him immediately.

Not because he was smooth, because he absolutely was not. Not because he knew what he was doing, because during the first session, a seven-year-old had asked him if bass was “the sound that makes your tummy dance,” and he had looked at you like he needed professional backup. You liked him because, once the initial awkwardness settled, he became gentle in a way he did not seem aware of. He crouched to speak to the quieter kids. He listened seriously to nonsense lyrics about dinosaurs eating noodles. He made every small idea feel worth building into something.

You watched him turn a classroom full of noisy children into collaborators, not by controlling them, but by making them feel heard.

He watched you manage twenty-two small storms without losing your calm, redirecting tears, tying shoelaces, finding missing pencils, soothing hurt feelings, catching lies with a single raised brow, and somehow remembering which child needed praise privately because attention embarrassed them. Later, he told you that the first time he saw you handle a paint spill, a nosebleed, and a friendship breakup within the same seven minutes, he thought you might actually be a government-trained crisis negotiator disguised as an elementary school teacher.

“I was scared of you,” he had confessed over coffee after the third week of the program, his hands playing with the crumpled paper left over from your straw.

“You were scared of me?”

“You smiled while commanding children,” he said, eyes round and earnest. “That is power. Ancient power. Village elder power.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, then took one sip of his drink and burned his tongue badly enough to yelp.

You fell in love with him slowly, which is maybe why it lasted. There was no lightning strike, no dramatic confession spoken under rain, no orchestra swelling at the exact right moment. It was smaller than that, and because it was smaller, it became harder to ignore. It was Jisung staying after the program ended to help you stack chairs. It was him bringing extra snacks for the kids who always forgot theirs, pretending he had “accidentally” packed too many. It was the way he started lingering in your classroom after everyone else left.

By the time he asked you out, the students had been whispering about it for weeks.

By the time you said yes, you already knew how he took his coffee, which songs he hummed when he was thinking, and that he got shy when complimented sincerely but would accept harsh feedback as a challenge to improve.

Months passed the way ordinary life does, not in grand chapters but in collected evidence. A toothbrush at his apartment. His hoodie on your chair. Your lesson plans spread across his coffee table while he edited vocals beside you. His phone charger permanently living on your side of the bed because, according to him, you committed battery crimes. Your name in his emergency contacts. His hand finding yours in grocery store aisles without either of you looking.

Moving in together had not been a dramatic decision so much as a gradual realization. His things settled beside yours in careful little stages until the apartment no longer belonged to one person or the other. Then one lease came close to ending, someone finally said what both of you had been circling for months, and suddenly it made more sense to split rent than keep pretending you still lived in two different places. After that, home became something shaped by shared routines, late nights, forgotten mugs, tangled laundry, and the quiet intimacy of building a life beside someone day after day.

You were not married, and for a while, neither of you felt the need to be.

It was not avoidance. It was not fear. It was just that love had already made itself at home in every practical corner of your lives, and neither of you had rushed to name what was already being lived. You had chosen each other in sick days and late nights, in tough conversations and family dinners, in hard weeks and gentle mornings. Marriage was a possible someday, maybe even a wanted someday, but it had never been the proof.

The proof was Jisung now, sitting on your classroom floor, laughing because a group of children had just decided he was legally obligated to marry you.

“Mr. Han,” one of your students says, holding up a triangle instrument with great seriousness, “if the baby cries, you can just make music and then they will stop.”

Jisung considers this with the gravity of a man receiving sacred wisdom. “That is actually an excellent plan. You may have just saved my future sleep schedule.”

You snort. “That is not how babies work.”

He points at you without looking away from the child. “See, this is why I need consultants. Your teacher is very smart, but sometimes she crushes dreams.”

“Your baby will like your songs,” Sora says, softer this time.

Something shifts in his face. It is quick, almost hidden under the practiced brightness he uses when emotion comes too close in public, but you see it. You always see it. His mouth curves, but his eyes go glassy for one vulnerable second before he blinks it away and taps the rhythm sticks together.

“You think so?” he asks.

Sora nods. “Babies know.”

Jisung looks at you then, and his smile is smaller this time, less performance and more wonder.

Your baby kicks. Just a small flutter beneath your palm, quiet and familiar now, though it still has the power to steal the breath from your lungs every time. You draw in a quiet breath, and Jisung catches that too, because for all his spiraling and distractedness and dramatic complaints about having the attention span of a squirrel at a firework show, he notices you with painful precision.

His eyes drop to your stomach.

You nod once.

The class keeps chattering, the fluorescent lights keep humming, the world keeps behaving like nothing enormous has happened, but Jisung’s expression softens into something so open that it makes your throat tighten. He does not move toward you because he is still surrounded by children and instruments and the fragile structure of your lesson plan, but his hand lifts slightly from his knee, instinctive and unfinished, like he has to stop himself from reaching for both of you.

You save him from becoming emotional in front of twenty-two tiny investigators by clearing your throat.

“Alright,” you say, though your voice comes out warmer than you intend. “Back to rhythm.”

Jisung nods too quickly and picks up the tambourine again. “Yes. Rhythm. Excellent.”

And just like that, the moment folds itself into the day, tucked away beneath noise and glitter and the steady pulse of a future that is becoming harder to imagine without trembling.

Later, when the classroom empties and the last student is collected by a parent running ten minutes late, you find Jisung at the sink trying to scrub glitter glue from his fingers with the grim determination of a man who has learned too late that elementary school crafts operate by the same laws as curses.

“You know,” you say, leaning against the counter, “you don’t have to volunteer every showcase season.”

He looks at you through the mirror, appalled. “And abandon my fans?”

“Your fans asked if your cheeks are genetic.”

“They are also interested in science.”

“They also asked if you were my husband.”

He goes quiet in that rare way of his, not uncomfortable exactly, but careful. The water runs between you for a moment before he shuts it off, drying his hands slowly on a paper towel that immediately sticks to the glitter he failed to remove.

“I mean,” he says, trying for casual and landing somewhere more fragile, “I’m not.”

“No,” you agree softly. “You’re not.”

He turns to face you, his shoulder brushing the cabinet, the classroom around him suddenly too bright and too ordinary for the tenderness gathering in his face. “Does that bother you?”

The question does not surprise you, not entirely. Pregnancy has a way of inviting other people’s assumptions into places they were not asked to enter. Since the first ultrasound photo appeared on your fridge, people had begun speaking as if a proposal were the next logical symptom. Some asked sweetly. Some asked with judgment dressed as curiosity. Some looked at your bare ring finger before they looked at your face, as if your child needed a legal sequence to be loved properly.

You push away from the counter and step closer, taking his glitter-specked hand in yours.

“No,” you say, because you mean it. “I don’t need us to be married for me to know you’re committed to me.”

He stays silent, watching you.

“You’re already here,” you continue, thumb brushing over the back of his hand. “You’ve been here. That matters more to me than doing things in an order that makes other people comfortable.”

Jisung swallows, and for once he does not make a joke quickly enough to hide behind it. “You’re all I ever want.”

“I know.”

“And the baby.”

“I know.”

“I want to be the dad who forgets pickup time or burns instant noodles or teaches our child that cereal counts as soup.”

You blink. “Cereal does not count as soup.”

“I know that now,” he says solemnly. “Growth.”

You laugh, and he grins, relieved by the sound in a way that makes you want to kiss him right there in your classroom between the sink and the drying rack of tempera paint masterpieces. So you do. His mouth meets yours softly at first, smiling too much to make it clean, one hand coming up to cradle the side of your face while the other settles carefully over your stomach.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours.

“I love you,” he says, so quiet it sounds like a secret.

“I love you too.”

Your baby moves again beneath his palm, and this time Jisung feels it.

He freezes. Every ounce of humor drains from his face, replaced by awe so unguarded it nearly hurts to look at. His fingers spread gently, as if he is afraid to startle the tiny life inside you, and his eyes shine before he can stop them.

“Hi, Baby,” he whispers.

You cover his hand with yours.

He laughs once, breathless and watery, and looks down at your stomach like the world has just answered him in a language he is still learning. This was not the first time he’s felt a kick from his unborn baby, but he acts like it is every single time.

“Our baby is going to be a genius just like me, don’t you think?”

“You called cereal soup.”

“And I will overcome that for my family.”

You laugh again, but his hand stays where it is, warm and careful, long after the joke fades.

That is how Jisung loves you these days, with laughter first, then wonder close behind.

And sometimes, when you see him standing in your classroom with glitter on his skin and one hand over the place where your child grows, it is impossible not to remember the night everything began, though at the time neither of you knew it had begun at all.

It had been raining in a steady and inconvenient way that made the whole city smell like wet pavement and laundry left too long in the machine. Jisung had come home late from the studio, hair flattened by his cap, cheeks flushed from the cold, carrying takeout in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.

“For you,” he had said, dropping the takeout on the counter with suspicious casualness.

Inside the bag was a pack of your favorite pens, the expensive kind you only bought when you were feeling reckless, and a little keychain shaped like a cartoon squirrel because, according to him, it looked “determined despite its anxiety” which was apparently a compliment.

You had been grading spelling tests at the kitchen table, wearing one of his hoodies and your most exhausted expression, and something about the sight of him standing there with damp hair and nervous eyes made the room feel smaller, softer, strangely suspended. He had been overworked. You had been tired. Neither of you had said much at first, but the quiet had not felt empty.

He sat beside you, stealing fries from the container he claimed he bought for both of you, and you pressed your cold feet under his thigh just to hear him complain. He did, loudly, accusing you of trying to kill him. You laughed until your stomach hurt. He watched you like he wanted to memorize the sound.

Later, when the rain thickened against the windows and your papers were abandoned in a crooked stack, he kissed you in the dim light of the kitchen with one hand at your waist and the other still smudged in ink from the pen he had tested for you. Love, familiar and easy, tipping into hunger because the night was quiet and he was warm and his mouth kept smiling against yours.

You remember thinking, briefly, that your life already felt full.

You did not know it was making room.

His hands were already under your shirt, your bra already unhooked, the air in your kitchen cool against your suddenly bare skin. Jisung’s mouth was on yours, hungry, and all you could taste was the need and exhaustion you both carried. 

“Fuck, I missed you,” he mumbled against your lips, his voice a low, tired rasp that vibrated right into your bones.

Your fingers were in his hair, pulling him closer. “Missed you too. Missed this.” Your own words were slurred with fatigue and want.

Your shirt hit the floor. His followed. The tangle of clothes was a testament to the haste, the desperation. His belt buckle clattered against the tile. You stepped back, just enough to give him room to kick his jeans away, and your own leggings were already halfway down your thighs. You helped them the rest of the way, kicking them into the dim corner near the fridge.

You stood there, naked in the warm yellow glow of the kitchen lighting, the only light left on in the whole apartment. Jisung looked at you, his eyes dark, his chest heaving with a breath that wasn’t just from exertion. It was from relief. From finding home.

“Come here,” he said, his voice firmer now. It wasn’t a request.

You went to him. He caught you, his hands sliding around your waist, lifting you with a grunt of effort that was pure male satisfaction. He carried you to the kitchen counter, the cold granite meeting the backs of your thighs as he set you down. The contrast—his hot palms, the cool stone—made you gasp.

“Open for me,” he whispered, his head already dipping between your legs.

You leaned back, your elbows finding purchase on the hard surface, and you let your knees fall to either side of him. The exposure was immediate, total. The kitchen, usually a place of mundane routine, transformed into a stage for this raw, private thing.

Jisung didn’t hesitate. His mouth found you, not with a gentle kiss, but with a firm, wet press of his lips directly against your center. His nose nudged your pubic bone. His breath, hot and sharp, washed over you.

“God, you smell good,” he growled, the words muffled by your flesh. “Like you’ve been thinking about me all day.”

You hadn’t, not really—you’d been thinking about spelling tests and snack time—but the way he said it made it true. Made your whole afternoon feel like a slow-build foreplay to this moment. You moaned, a sound that started low in your throat and broke free into the quiet room.

His tongue found your slit. He traced it, a slow, deliberate stripe from bottom to top, collecting the moisture that had already gathered there. He licked, a broad, flat stroke that made your hips jerk. Then he focused. His tongue narrowed, became a point, and he pushed it into you, just a little, just enough to tease the entrance. You cried out, your head falling back.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling back to speak. “Yeah, you like that. You’re so wet for me already. Dripping, baby.”

He went back in. This time, his technique changed. He used the flat of his tongue again, but he pressed harder, rubbing you with a firm, rhythmic pressure that built a steady thrum of pleasure right at the core of you. His hands came up, gripping your thighs, holding you open, his thumbs digging into the soft inner flesh. He owned the space.

Then he found your clit. He didn’t toy with it. He zeroed in on it like a target. His tongue circled it, fast and tight, a dizzying orbit that sent sparks shooting up your spine. You were panting now, your breaths short and ragged. One of your hands flew to his head, gripping his hair.

“Jisung…fuck…right there…”

“Right here?” he asked, his voice a dirty, knowing murmur. He sucked. He pulled your clit into his mouth and sucked on it, hard, the pressure exquisite and almost too much. Your whole body tightened, a wire pulled taut. You arched off the counter, your back bowing.

He released it with a pop of his lips. “Tell me,” he commanded, his tongue still flicking against the swollen nerve. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want…” You were gasping. “I want you to fucking eat me. Make me come on your tongue.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” he said, and his tone was almost arrogant, almost proud. He dove back in.

His mouth was a messy, wonderful instrument. He licked, he sucked, he probed. He used his lips to massage you. He used his teeth to graze you, so lightly it was more a threat of sensation than the sensation itself. The wet sounds were obscene in the quiet kitchen. The slide of his tongue, the slick noise of your own arousal, his hungry grunts. It was a symphony of filth.

The pleasure was coiling in your belly, a tight, hot knot that was winding tighter with every stroke of his tongue. Your thighs began to shake in his hands. Your moans became continuous, a low, desperate hum that broke into sharper cries when he did something particularly good—when he dragged his tongue over your clit in a long, slow pull, or when he pushed two fingers into you alongside his tongue, filling you suddenly.

“Oh, god!” you shouted, your voice echoing off the cabinets.

He fucked you with his fingers, a steady, deep rhythm that matched the frantic circles his tongue was making on your clit. The dual sensation—the invasion inside, the focused torment outside—was unbearable. It was perfect. Your vision blurred. The world narrowed to the feeling of his mouth, his fingers, the cold counter under your ass, and the impending explosion in your nerves.

“Come on,” he urged, his voice thick and wet. “Come on my face. I want to taste it.”

It was the permission you needed. The command.

The knot snapped. Pleasure erupted out of you, a white-hot wave that crashed through your entire body. You convulsed against his mouth, your hips bucking uncontrollably. A sharp, broken scream tore from your lips. He kept his mouth on you, kept licking, kept sucking, drawing out the climax until you were whimpering, until your body was slack and trembling against the counter.

He finally pulled back, his lips glistening, his chin wet. He looked up at you, his eyes blazing with a satisfied fire. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a slow, deliberate motion that was unbearably sexy.

“Good?” he asked, a small grin playing on his lips.

You could only nod, your body still pulsing with aftershocks.

He stood up, his own nakedness fully presented to you now. He was hard, his cock standing upright from his body, thick and flushed and demanding attention. He put his hands on your hips and pulled you forward on the counter, until you were sitting right at the edge.

“Need your mouth,” he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly promise.

He didn’t need to say more. You slid off the counter, your legs still shaky, and you knelt on the kitchen floor. The tile was hard under your knees. You looked up at him. He was towering over you, his cock at eye level. You reached for him, your hands wrapping around the base. He was hot, almost feverish, the skin smooth and tight over the hard shaft.

You leaned forward and kissed the tip, a soft, reverent press of your lips. Then you opened your mouth and took him in.

The first inch was a surrender. You let your jaw relax, let your throat open, and you slid him into your mouth. His taste was musky, male. You moaned around him, the vibration making him groan.

“Fuck, yes,” he hissed, his hands coming to rest on your head, not pushing, just holding.

You began to move. You pulled back until just the tip remained between your lips, and then you pushed forward again, taking him deeper. You set a rhythm, slow at first, a deep, sucking pull each time you went down. Your tongue worked against the underside of his shaft, pressing and swirling as you moved.

His breaths became heavier. His fingers tightened in your hair. “You’re so good at this,” he muttered. “Your mouth is fucking perfect.”

You took the praise and used it. You sped up. Your head bobbed faster, your lips sealing tightly around him, your suction increasing. You could feel him swelling in your mouth, getting harder, thicker. The little choked sounds he made above you were fuel. You wanted to hear more.

You pulled back all the way, letting him pop out of your mouth with a slick sound. You looked up at him, your lips wet. “Tell me,” you said, echoing his earlier command. “Tell me what you want.”

His eyes were hooded, his face tense with pleasure. “I want you to deep throat me. Take it all. I want to feel your throat around my cock. Please, baby.”

You nodded, a flush of heat spreading through you at the dirty instruction. You opened your mouth wide, tilted your head back, and let him guide himself. He didn’t thrust. He let you take control. You leaned forward, swallowing him down, down, until the head of his cock bumped against the entrance to your throat. You paused, let your muscles relax, and then you pushed past it.

He slid into your throat. The feeling was intense—a deep, full pressure that made your eyes water. You held him there, your throat working around him, and then you pulled back, dragging him through the tight channel again.

“Oh, god, fuck,” Jisung groaned, his whole body shuddering. “Just like that. Don’t stop.”

You didn’t. You found a rhythm that worked, a deep, throaty fuck with your mouth. Each time you took him deep, you could feel his hips twitch, could feel the raw want in his body. Your own arousal was building again, a secondary fire kindling low in your belly. The subjugation, the act of serving him like this, was turning you on just as much as the physical sensation.

You used your hands too. While your mouth worked on the top half of his cock, your hand wrapped around the base, pumping in tandem with your bobbing head. You twisted your wrist, squeezed gently, matched the pace. It was a full-service blowjob, messy and thorough and completely devoted to his pleasure.

You could taste the pre-come now, a slick, slightly bitter fluid that seeped from him. You swallowed it, let it coat your throat, and the act made him curse again.

“You’re going to make me come,” he warned, his voice strained. “You want that?”

You pulled off again, your lips leaving him with a wet smear. You looked up, your eyes locked with his. “Yes,” you said, your voice husky. “I want to taste all of you.”

A savage grin split his face. He pushed your head back toward his cock, guiding you. “Then finish me.”

You obeyed. You took him back into your mouth, and this time you went for the end. Your rhythm became frantic, desperate. You sucked him hard, your throat constricting around him on each downstroke. Your hand pumped his base vigorously. The sounds were loud—your gagging breaths, his ragged moans, the wet slap of your lips against his skin.

He was close. You could feel it in the way his muscles tightened, in the way his cock seemed to swell to its absolute limit in your mouth. His breathing was a staccato rhythm of sharp inhales and shuddering exhales.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m—” he started, but the sentence was cut off by a deep, guttural groan.

Then it happened. A hot, sudden flood filled your mouth. It was thick, copious, and the taste was stronger now, more potent. He was coming, his hips jerking forward, his hands clamping on your head to hold you in place. You kept sucking, kept swallowing, drawing every drop out of him until his shuddering stopped, until his body went slack.

You finally released him, your mouth empty, your lips sore. You stayed on your knees, looking up at him as he caught his breath. He was glorious in his aftermath—sweaty, spent, his eyes half-closed in satisfaction.

He reached down and cupped your cheek. “You’re incredible,” he said, his voice soft now, almost awed.

You smiled, wiping your mouth with your hand. The floor was hard under your knees, but you didn’t care.

He didn’t let you stay there long. He bent down, his arms hooking under yours, and he lifted you back up to your feet. Your legs were unsteady, but he held you.

“Now I want you,” he said, his desire clearly not sated, just redirected. His cock was already hardening again, the resilience of a young, hungry man.

He turned you around, your back to his front, and pushed you gently toward the counter. Your palms flattened against the cold granite. He positioned himself behind you, his hands grabbing your hips, pulling you back until your ass was pressed against his renewed erection.

“Remember how I fucked you last week?” he whispered into your ear, his breath hot. “From behind, while you held onto the headboard?”

You remembered. The memory made a fresh wave of heat wash through you. “Yes.”

“I’m going to do it again. But harder. I’m going to fuck you so hard you feel it tomorrow when you’re passing those graded papers back.”

The promise was vulgar and perfect. You nodded, your head dropping forward. “Please.”

He didn’t need more encouragement. One hand stayed on your hip, the other reached between your legs, finding your wetness, slicking his fingers with it. He brought those fingers to his cock, stroking himself with your own arousal, getting himself fully hard and ready. Then he positioned himself.

The head of his cock pressed against your entrance. He didn’t push in slowly. He pushed in with a single, solid thrust that buried him halfway inside you in one motion.

You cried out, a sharp sound of pleasure and shock. The fullness was immediate, breathtaking. He was big, and he filled you completely, stretching you in a way that was almost painful in its intensity.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he groaned, his voice strained with the effort of holding still. “Even after you come. It’s like you’re sucking me in.”

He began to move. He pulled back, almost all the way out, and then thrust forward again, deeper this time. The slide was smooth, wet, and obscenely easy. Your body accepted him, welcomed him, clenched around him.

He set a pace, brutal and beautiful. Each thrust was a deliberate, powerful drive that pushed you forward against the counter, then pulled you back with his retreat. Your palms slid on the granite. Your breasts pressed against the cold surface. Your head hung down, your hair swinging with the motion of his fucking.

The sound of it was raw. The slap of his hips against your ass, the wet, rhythmic noise of his cock moving inside you, his grunts, your moans. It was a cacophony of sex that echoed in the tidy kitchen.

“You feel that?” he asked, his voice rough behind you. “You feel how deep I’m in you?”

You felt it. Every inch. Every vein. Every pulse of his hardness inside your softness. “Yes,” you gasped.

“I’m going to come inside you,” he said, the words a blunt, hot declaration. “I’m going to fill you up. You want that?”

“Yes!” you shouted, the word torn from you by another deep thrust.

“Tell me,” he demanded, his rhythm increasing, becoming faster, harder. “Tell me you want my cum inside you.”

“I want your cum inside me!” you yelled, the confession loud and shameless. “Fill me up, Jisung! Fuck me full of it!”

He growled, a sound of pure male triumph. His hands tightened on your hips, his fingers digging into your flesh, holding you in place for his final assault. His thrusts lost any semblance of rhythm. They became frantic, pounding drives, each one slamming you into the counter, each one sending a shockwave of pleasure through your core.

You were coming again. The pressure of his cock, the force of his movements, the dirty, possessive words he was growling into your ear—it all coiled together and snapped. Your second climax crashed over you, a deeper, more internal wave than the first. It clenched around his thrusting cock, milking him, pulling at him.

He felt it. “You’re coming, baby?” He panted. “Fuck, that’s so hot. Coming while I’m fucking you…”

He couldn’t hold back any longer. With a final, driving thrust that felt like it reached your soul, he buried himself as deep as he could go and let go. “I’m coming! Fuck, I’m coming, baby.”

You felt the hot surge inside you, the sudden flood of his release filling the space he’d carved out with his cock. He held himself there, pulsing, pumping, until every last drop was spent.

His body slumped against yours, his weight pressing you into the counter. His breath was ragged against your back. You were both panting, sweating, trembling in the aftermath.

He stayed inside you for a long moment, just feeling the connection, the mess they’d made together. Finally, he slowly pulled out. The sensation of emptiness was acute, followed by the warm trickle of his come seeping out of you.

He turned you around, his hands gentle now, and pulled you into his arms. You clung to him, your face buried in his sweaty chest. The kitchen was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of your slowing breaths.

The weeks after that pass the way weeks always do when something life-changing is hiding inside them. Ordinary. Almost rude in their ordinariness.

You teach fractions and conflict resolution, break up an argument over scented markers, attend a staff meeting where someone says “data-driven instruction” eight times in forty minutes, and come home to find Jisung asleep on the couch with one headphone still on and a half-eaten bowl of ramen abandoned on the coffee table. He writes melodies. You grade essays. He sends you voice notes at midnight because he wants to know if a synth sounds “too haunted but in a cute way.” You tell him that haunted and cute are not usually neighbors. He sends back three crying emojis and a file named “cute_haunting_final_FINAL2.wav.”

You make love the way you always have, in quiet bedrooms and lazy mornings and half-asleep laughter, but later, when you count backward with shaking hands and a calendar app open on your phone, you know exactly which night changed everything when your period fails to make an appearance.

At first, you do not panic. You are not a panicker by nature, and your body has been late before during stressful school months, especially when report cards and parent conferences turn your calendar into a cursed puzzle. Plus, you’re on the pill, and a quick Google search says that it’s 93% effective. It’s crazy for you to be that 7% that would get pregnant. Right? 

But a few days become a week, and a week becomes you standing in the bathroom before work, staring at two pink lines while Jisung sings loudly in the kitchen because he is making toast and believes every domestic act deserves a soundtrack.

You sit on the edge of the bathtub for a long moment, pregnancy test in hand, heart beating with a strange, steady force.

You are surprised, but not afraid in the way you expected you might be.

There is fear, of course, because only fools and people in diaper commercials think babies arrive without fear, but underneath it sits something quieter and stronger. You think of Jisung’s hand on your back when you fall asleep. His voice through your phone on late drives home. His ridiculous laugh. His tenderness with your students. The way he says your name when he thinks you are not listening.

Then he knocks on the bathroom door with his knuckle. “Baby, your toast is getting hard and cold.”

You stare at the door.

“Also, I may have burned one corner, but I’m calling it rustic.”

You open the door.

Jisung is standing there with a plate in one hand, wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt with one sleeve pushed up higher than the other. His hair is a mess on one side from sleep. He looks so painfully himself that your throat tightens before you can speak.

His smile fades.

“What happened?” he asks immediately, plate lowering. “Are you sick? Did I poison you even before the rustic toast?”

You lift the test.

For once, there is no joke.

His eyes drop to your hand, and the entire hallway seems to hold its breath with him. You watch understanding move across his face slowly, because the truth is too big to enter all at once. His mouth parts. His eyes shine. His gaze jumps from the test to your face, then back again.

“Is that…” His voice breaks, and he clears his throat, trying again. “Are we…”

You nod.

The plate tilts dangerously.

You grab it before breakfast becomes a casualty.

Jisung laughs, but it comes out strangled and disbelieving, one hand flying to his mouth as he stares at you. “You’re pregnant?”

“I think so,” you say, though the evidence feels rather persuasive.

“We’re having a baby?”

You smile, and your eyes burn. “Apparently.”

He steps forward, then stops, hands hovering uselessly because he cannot seem to decide where to touch you first. Your face, your shoulders, your stomach, the air around you. He looks overwhelmed enough that you set the plate down on the hallway table and take his hands yourself.

“Breathe, Ji.”

“I am breathing,” he says, then inhales so sharply he nearly hiccups. “See? Oxygen.”

You laugh, and that breaks something open in him. He pulls you into his arms carefully but completely, holding you with his face buried in your neck, shaking with a laugh that turns wet around the edges.

“We’re having a baby,” he whispers.

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god.” His arms tighten, then loosen immediately as if he remembers you are suddenly made of glass. “Sorry. Sorry, did I squeeze too hard? Is squeezing bad? Can I squeeze the baby? Not the baby, obviously, you. But the baby is in you. So indirectly, can I…”

“Jisung.”

“Right. Calm. I’m calm.”

“You’re vibrating.”

“I have entered a new plane of emotion.”

You laugh into his shoulder, and he holds you while the toast goes cold, rustic corner and all.

That morning becomes one of the private myths of your relationship, something you both return to in pieces over the months that follow. Jisung tells the story like he was composed and dignified. You remind him that he almost dropped toast and asked whether hugging was medically dangerous. He insists that responsible fathers ask questions. You let him have that because he is adorable when he is defensive and because, secretly, his panic had made you feel even safer.

At first, pregnancy is a strange little secret tucked between you.

Jisung becomes unbearable in a way that is so sweet you do not have the heart to complain properly. He downloads three pregnancy apps and reads all of them, even though they contradict each other and cause him unnecessary emotional distress. He compares the baby’s size to fruit with great seriousness, then becomes personally offended by the lack of consistency.

“This one says lemon,” he says one night, lying beside you in bed with his phone held too close to his face. “This one says peach. Those are different vibes, baby. Which one is our child?”

“Maybe they’re a lemon with peach energy.”

He lowers the phone and looks at you with deep admiration. “You’re going to be such a good mother.”

“Because I understand fruit metaphors?”

“Because you bring peace to chaos.”

“Your chaos specifically.”

“Yes, but I am a full-time position.”

By the second trimester, the secret is no longer small. Your stomach rounds softly beneath your dresses. Jisung starts touching it absentmindedly, in elevators, grocery aisles, while waiting for water to boil, while pretending he is not emotional about a commercial involving dogs in animal shelters. He talks to the baby when he thinks you are asleep, voice low and careful in the dark.

“Hi,” he whispers one night, palm warm against your skin. “It’s me. Your dad. That is so weird. Not bad weird. Good weird. Huge weird. Anyway, your mom is sleeping, so we have to be respectful because she’s very scary when tired. Beautiful, but scary. Like a queen with a vendetta.”

You keep your eyes closed, smiling into the pillow.

“I’m going to be cool,” he continues. “Not too cool, because then you won’t trust me, but cool enough that your friends think I’m fun. Unless your friends are mean, then I’ll be uncool on purpose. Also, please don’t inherit my sleep schedule. Or my inability to fold fitted sheets. Actually, inherit your mom’s everything, except maybe her habit of leaving mugs in strange places, because yesterday I found tea in the bookshelf that had a whole ecosystem.”

You pinch his arm lightly without opening your eyes.

He goes silent. Then, very softly, he says, “I knew you were awake.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” he admits.

You roll over enough to look at him, and he props himself up on one elbow, caught and bashful, hair messy, eyes too tender for the hour.

“You talk to them a lot,” you say.

His hand stays on your stomach. “Is that weird?”

“No.”

“Good.” He looks down, thumb moving in a slow arc. “I want them to know me.”

“They will.”

His expression flickers.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing.”

But it is not nothing. You know him too well for nothing.

Still, you do not press right away, because Jisung is someone who sometimes needs to circle his own feelings a few times before he can stand in the center of them. Push too early and he jokes. Push too hard and he shuts down. So you let the quiet hold him gently, let him rest his head against your shoulder, let his hand remain over the baby as if touch can translate everything he is not ready to say.

Around twenty-four weeks, things begin to shift.

Jisung is still funny. Still affectionate. Still the kind of man who sends you a photo of a tiny pair of baby socks from a store with the caption, these are stupidly small and cute, should I buy 50 pairs? He still drives you to school on mornings when his schedule allows, still makes your tea wrong but with conviction, still presses his lips to your stomach before kissing you because he claims the baby will feel left out otherwise.

But his nights in the studio grow longer.

At first, it makes sense. He has deadlines. A producer’s work does not clock out just because life becomes tender, and you have always known that music lives in him like a second bloodstream. He hears things other people do not. A melody under rain. Percussion in the rhythm of footsteps. Harmony in the refrigerator hum, which is romantic until he records a voice memo beside the open freezer at two in the morning and scares you half to death.

But then one late night becomes three. Three becomes a pattern. You wake up more often to his side of the bed still cold, the faint glow from the studio bleeding under the door at the end of the hall. When he does come to bed, he moves carefully, apologetically, like he is trying not to disturb the life he already feels guilty for missing while still being inside the same apartment.

He checks on you constantly.

That is the part that would fool someone who did not know him.

He asks if you ate. He refills your water bottle. He orders your favorite soup before you mention craving it. He rubs your lower back without being asked and insists he is simply “protecting company property” when the baby kicks against his palm. He is not distant in action. Only in spirit. His body stays with you, but his mind keeps slipping somewhere harder to reach.

You find search tabs open on his laptop one evening when he leaves to answer the door for delivery.

how to be emotionally stable parenthow much money baby first yearnewborn sleep schedule realisticsigns you are not ready to be a fathercan babies sense stress in wombhow to stop being anxious before baby arrives

You don’t snoop further. You don’t need to.

When he returns with food, happy little grin on his face, you close the laptop gently and say nothing, because he is smiling too brightly and asking whether the baby wants dumplings as if the baby has placed a formal order.

You let him have the performance for one more night.

The next week, after a doctor’s appointment, the pressure inside him becomes almost visible.

The appointment itself is good. Better than good. The baby is healthy, stubbornly positioned, and apparently committed to making the ultrasound technician work for every measurement. Jisung spends half the appointment laughing nervously and the other half staring at the screen with his mouth slightly open. When the heartbeat fills the room, fast and steady, his hand finds yours and squeezes so tightly that your fingers ache.

On the way home, you mention what the doctor said about the baby recognizing voices soon, maybe already responding to familiar sounds.

You mean it as a sweet fact.

Jisung goes quiet.

Not silent in the normal way, because he is rarely silent without making it clear that silence is an event. This quiet is different. He looks out the car window, thumb picking at the edge of his nail, and when you ask if he is okay, he smiles too quickly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, just thinking.”

That night, he works until four in the morning.

The night after, until three.

By Friday, he has become obsessed with a track that, to your untrained ears, already sounded beautiful two versions ago. It is soft, lullaby-like without being obvious, built around a piano line that seems to rise and hesitate, rise and hesitate, as if trying to become brave. Every time you pass the studio, you hear him replay the same four measures, stopping before the resolution, adjusting something so small even he probably could not explain it to anyone who did not live inside his head.

You give him space until space becomes distance.

On Saturday night, you wake to an empty bed and the low, muffled pulse of music through the walls.

For a while, you lie still, one hand resting over your stomach, waiting to see if he will come back on his own. The apartment is dark except for the pale city light slipping through the blinds, painting the room in soft gray-blue. Your body aches with the familiar heaviness of late second trimester sleep, that strange combination of exhaustion and restlessness that makes comfort feel like a negotiation with your body.

The baby shifts.

“I know,” you murmur, rubbing the spot. “He’s being ridiculous.”

You feel a kick.

“Don’t encourage him.”

You push yourself up carefully, padding down the hallway in socks, the wooden floor cool beneath your feet. The studio door is not fully closed, and through the narrow gap you can see Jisung hunched over his desk, headphones around his neck, one hand buried in his hair. The monitor casts his face in tired light. His shoulders are tense. The same section of music loops again and again, delicate and unfinished.

You knock softly.

He startles anyway, spinning in his chair so quickly he nearly tangles himself in the headphone cord.

“Baby,” he says, guilty immediately. “Why are you awake? Did I wake you? Is the music too loud? I can turn it down. I was just fixing one thing.”

You lean against the doorframe, taking him in. The rumpled hoodie. The shadows under his eyes. The frantic brightness in his expression. The way he looks seconds away from either apologizing or making a joke, whichever will get him out of being seen too clearly.

“It’s four-twelve,” you say gently.

His gaze jumps to the corner of the screen, and his face falls. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“I know.”

He turns back toward the desk, rubbing both hands over his face. “I’m almost done.”

“Ji.”

“It just doesn’t sound right yet.”

You step into the room, careful around the cables he always swears he will organize and never does. “It sounded beautiful yesterday.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s done.”

“No,” you agree, lowering yourself onto the small couch against the wall. “But it might mean you’re not actually fixing the song.”

His hand stills on the mouse. For a moment, only the loop plays between you, soft piano trying and failing to land. Jisung stares at the screen as if the waveform might rescue him from the conversation. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re not.”

He laughs once, too thin. “Wow. Direct. Very teacher of you.”

“You respond well to structure.”

“I respond well to kisses too.”

“You can get kisses after you stop lying to me.”

He looks at you then, and the attempted humor collapses before it fully forms. He is so tired. Not just sleepy, not just overworked, but worn down by thoughts that have been chewing at him quietly for weeks. His eyes shine, and he blinks hard, turning back to the screen too late to hide it.

Your heart aches, but you keep your voice steady, because panic meeting panic never helps him. “Come here,” you say.

He shakes his head. “I’ll get up in a second.”

“Han Jisung.”

His face crumples a little at the sound of his full name, just enough that you know he is fighting something bigger than embarrassment. He stands, then seems unsure where to go, so you hold out your hand. He crosses the small room and takes it, lowering himself carefully beside you on the couch, leaving enough space for your stomach before curling toward you like he wants comfort and thinks he has not earned it.

You reach up and take the headphones from around his neck, setting them on the table beside the couch. Then you smooth his hair back from his forehead, your thumb brushing the faint crease between his brows.

He closes his eyes.

“You’re exhausted,” you say.

“I know.”

“You’re scared.”

His eyes open. There is no point denying it. Not to you. His mouth trembles once before he presses it tight, jaw working as if he can chew the feeling into something smaller. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Most new parents don’t.”

“No, I know that, but…” He stops, breathing out shakily, gaze dropping to your stomach. “It’s different when I think about other people not knowing. When it’s me, it feels like… like I should have figured myself out before this happened.”

Your hand stills.

He laughs again, but this time there is no humor in it. “I keep thinking about how they’re going to need us for everything. Everything, Y/N. Not just food and clothes and a crib and all the things I can Google until I go insane, but like…what if they’re sad? What if they’re scared? What if they need me to be calm and I can’t be? What if I’m in my head and I miss something important? What if I’m not steady enough?”

“Ji,” you whisper.

He shakes his head, tears spilling before he can stop them. “And I know you’ll be amazing. I know that. I’ve seen you with kids. You just know how to do it. You know how to make people feel safe, and I’m over here reading five different articles about swaddling and somehow getting worse as a person.”

A surprised laugh slips out of you, soft and sad, and he huffs through his tears.

“It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“I’m having a crisis.”

“I know, baby.”

His face twists at the pet name, and suddenly the rest of it breaks open. “What if loving them isn’t enough?” he asks, voice cracking so hard the question barely survives. “What if I love them more than anything and still mess them up because I’m too anxious or too emotional or too…me? What if they need someone better than me?”

The studio feels unbearably quiet after that, even with the music still looping faintly from the desk.

You take his face in both hands. “Listen to me,” you say, calm but fierce enough that his wet eyes snap to yours. “The fact that you are this afraid of failing them tells me exactly what kind of father you’re going to be.”

He tries to look away, but you hold him gently in place. “Bad fathers don’t sit awake at four in the morning terrified that they won’t love their child well enough. Careless fathers don’t memorize every appointment, read every article, talk to a baby that isn’t even born yet, and panic because they want so badly to be good.”

His breathing shudders.

“You are not scared because you don’t belong in this,” you continue, thumbs brushing his cheeks. “You’re scared because you already care so much that it has nowhere to go yet.”

His eyes squeeze shut, and another tear slips down.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” you say. “You have to show up. You have to listen. You have to apologize when you’re wrong. You have to try again when the day goes badly. You already do those things, Jisung. You do them with me all the time.”

His hands come up to your wrists, holding lightly.

“And you’re wrong about me just knowing how to do everything,” you add, softer now. “I’m scared too.”

He opens his eyes.

You give him a small, honest smile. “I’m calmer than you are. That doesn’t mean I’m fearless. It just means I had my panic a little better than you.”

A watery laugh breaks out of him before he can stop it, and the sound loosens something in your chest, making you lean forward to kiss his cheek.

He wipes at his face with his sleeve, then immediately looks annoyed at himself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you comfort me at four in the morning while you’re pregnant. That feels like a top ten bad boyfriend moment.”

“You are not a bad boyfriend.”

“I’m at least a medium inconvenience.”

“You are a beloved inconvenience.”

He nods weakly. “That feels fair.”

You lean forward again and kiss his forehead, lingering there as his breathing begins to slow. His hands slide carefully to your waist, then to your stomach, like he needs to remind himself that the fear is not the only thing in the room.

“He’s going to know your voice,” you say quietly.

His fingers pause.

You feel the mistake the second it leaves your mouth, because the sentence exposes the secret you have been carrying for three days.

The secret you were not supposed to know yet.

The secret you had told yourself you would reveal properly, sweetly, maybe with a tiny pair of socks or a little envelope or some gentle private moment where Jisung was not already cracked open on the studio couch at four in the morning.

You had not meant to find out without him.

That had been the plan, at least. You both agreed to wait, partly because Jisung declared that surprises are fun and partly because he did not trust himself not to buy every gendered baby item in a ten-mile radius. But after the appointment, after seeing the way he stared at the screen, after feeling the future press closer than ever, curiosity had gnawed at you until you called the office and asked.

You planned to tell him later. Not like this.

His eyes search your face, catching the shift. Even exhausted and teary, he notices you.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

His brows pull together. “You said he.”

You press your lips together. “Yes.”

His hands tighten slightly over your stomach, not enough to hurt, only enough to reveal that his whole body has started listening.

“Y/N,” he says slowly. 

You close your eyes. “I was going to tell you differently.”

Jisung stops breathing for a second. “You know we’re having a boy?” he whispers.

You open your eyes, and the look on his face nearly undoes you. Fear still lingers there, but wonder has begun pushing through it, fragile and bright.

“I called,” you admit. “After the appointment. I know we said we would wait, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I just…I wanted to know. I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you first.”

He does not seem upset. He barely seems capable of understanding the apology.

Your hand covers one of his over your stomach. “He. It’s a boy,” you repeat.

For a moment, Jisung only stares at you.

Then his face breaks. Not into any of the ugly assumptions people sometimes attach to sons and fathers and legacy. It is nothing like that. You know he would have cried this way for a girl, for any child, for any small life that belonged to both of you. This is not joy because the baby is a boy. It is joy because the baby is suddenly someone.

His son.

Your son.

A little boy who will know his voice.

“We’re having a boy?” he asks, and the words wobble in the middle.

You nod, tears slipping down your own cheeks now. “Yeah.”

Jisung laughs, covering his mouth with one hand, then presses that same hand over his eyes as if the feeling is too bright to look at directly. His shoulders shake. For a second you think he might be crying harder than before, but then he makes a sound that is half sob and half stunned laughter, and you realize the panic has cracked open into something else entirely.

“A boy,” he says, like he is trying the word carefully. “Our baby’s a boy.”

“I’m sorry I found out without you,” you whisper.

He shakes his head immediately, still crying. “No. No, don’t be sorry. I’m not mad. I’m…” He laughs again, helpless and wet. “I’m so happy. Oh my god, I’m so happy.”

The baby kicks, firm enough that both of you feel it beneath your joined hands.

Jisung gasps. You start laughing through your tears. “I think he knows we’re talking about him.”

“He,” Jisung repeats, and then he is gone all over again, folding forward carefully until his forehead rests against your stomach. His hands cradle the curve of you with trembling reverence, and his voice drops into a whisper so tender it makes the whole world feel hushed. “Hi, baby boy.”

Your hand finds his hair.

He closes his eyes, breathing unevenly against you. “I’m your dad,” he says, and the sentence sounds like both a confession and a promise. “I’m really scared, and I’m probably going to cry a lot, and your mom is going to be way better at pretending she knows what she’s doing, but I’m here. Okay? I’m here.”

Your throat tightens.

“And I already love you so much,” he continues, voice breaking again. “So much that it’s making me weird. Ask your mom. I’ve been very weird.”

“You have,” you whisper.

He nods solemnly against your stomach. “See? Honest household.”

A laugh escapes you, soft and watery, and Jisung presses a kiss to the place where your son moved beneath his hand.

“I’ll try really hard,” he whispers. “I won’t get it perfect, but I’ll try.”

The track still loops behind you, that same unresolved piano line rising and rising without ever landing. Jisung lifts his head slowly, eyes swollen and shining, and for the first time all night, he looks at the desk without urgency.

“I kept trying to fix it,” he says quietly.

“The song?”

He nods. “It felt wrong if it wasn’t perfect.”

You brush your thumb beneath his eye. “Maybe it doesn’t need to be perfect.”

His gaze returns to your stomach, and something gentle settles over his face, not certainty exactly, but the beginning of trust.

“Maybe it just needs to be honest,” he says.

You smile. “That sounds like something a producer would say after crying his eyes out.”

He narrows his eyes, though the effect is ruined by how damp his lashes are. “You’re bullying the father of your child.”

“I’m grounding the father of my child.”

“That sounds nicer.”

“It is.”

He leans into you, and you shift carefully so he can rest against your side without pressing too much weight on you. For a while, neither of you moves. The studio hums softly around you, filled with cables, notebooks, half-finished melodies, and the small evidence of a life being rearranged by love. Jisung’s breathing slows. His hand stays on your stomach. Your son moves once more, softer now.

Eventually, Jisung reaches blindly toward the desk and stops the loop.

The silence that follows feels merciful.

“I think,” he says, voice rough, “I should come to bed.”

“I think that’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night.”

You help him shut everything down, though he insists on saving the file under a new name first. When you glance at the screen, you see what he types.

babyboy_lullaby_draft_one.wav

Your heart clenches. “Draft one?” you ask.

He looks shy, one hand at the back of his neck. “He deserves options.”

“Of course.”

“And also, I don’t want to put too much pressure on him musically before birth.”

“How considerate.”

“I’m a modern father.”

“You are a sleep-deprived father.”

“That too.”

In the bedroom, he moves around you with exaggerated care, fluffing your pillow, adjusting the blanket, placing your water bottle within reach, then moving it half an inch closer like that will determine whether you survive the night. You let him fuss because the panic has softened into tenderness, and because sometimes care needs somewhere to go.

He climbs into bed and settles behind you, one arm wrapping carefully under your chest, his palm coming to rest over your stomach. His body is warm along your back. His breath touches the nape of your neck.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs.

“About being a modern father?”

“About trying.”

You cover his hand with yours. “I know.”

“I’m still scared.”

“I know.”

“But less like I’m drowning,” he says, and his voice is thoughtful now, tired but clearer. “More like…I’m standing in water and it’s cold, but you’re holding my hand, so I’m not being as dramatic about it.”

“You are always a little dramatic.”

“I said as dramatic.”

You smile into the dark.

After a while, he whispers, “Do you think he’ll like me?”

The question is so naked, so very Jisung, that you have to close your eyes for a second.

“I think he’ll adore you,” you say. “I think he’ll know you’re silly and emotional and warm. I think he’ll know your voice before he knows almost anything else. I think he’ll grow up understanding that love can sound like music from down the hall, and bad jokes in the kitchen, and someone trying again even when they’re scared.”

Jisung is quiet for so long that you think he might have fallen asleep.

Then he sniffles.

“Are you crying again?”

“No,” he says, obviously crying. “Your speech was just well thought out.”

You turn carefully in his arms, slow and awkward because pregnancy has made every movement a small engineering project. He helps immediately, hands hovering like you are a priceless artifact being rotated in a museum. When you finally face him, he looks embarrassed and soft and impossibly young in the dark, yet somehow more grown than he had yesterday.

You touch his cheek. “You’re going to be amazing,” you say.

His eyes search yours, wanting to believe it.

“Not because you’ll never mess up,” you continue. “Because you’ll care when you do.”

His mouth trembles once, but this time he does not fall apart. He nods, pressing his forehead to yours. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you too.”

“And him.”

“And him.”

His hand slides between you, settling over the baby again. For a moment, the three of you are quiet together, folded into the small dark room with no rings, no ceremony, no perfect plan, no promise that fear will never return. Just love. Just the choice to stay. Just Jisung’s thumb moving slowly over your stomach, keeping time with a rhythm only he seems able to hear.

“Baby boy,” he whispers, already half asleep. “Please inherit your mom’s emotional stability.”

You laugh softly. “And your creativity.”

“And my cheeks.”

“That too.”

“And none of my search history.”

“Definitely none of that.”

He hums, satisfied, and pulls you a little closer.

Outside, the city continues without knowing anything has changed. Cars move through wet streets. Lights blink in distant windows. Unfinished music waits in his studio for morning. But here, in the quiet, Jisung’s breathing evens out against you, his hand still protective over the life you made together on a night that had seemed ordinary until it became everything.

m a s t e r l i s t .ᐟ i n b o x .ᐟ

Jisung is sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of your classroom with a plastic tambourine balanced on his head, three glitter stickers on his cheek, and twenty-two elementary school students staring at him with a mixture of excitement and confusion.

You stand near your desk with one hand braced against the edge, your other hand resting lightly over the soft curve of your stomach, trying very hard not to laugh loud enough to disrupt what he clearly thinks is a serious artistic demonstration. His expression says focus. His posture says professional. The bright green sticker stuck to the corner of his mouth says otherwise.

“Okay,” he announces, lifting both hands like he is conducting an orchestra inside a very tiny, very chaotic concert hall. “Who can tell me what rhythm is?”

Several hands shoot into the air at once.

“It’s when music goes—!” Minseo shouts, standing up mid-sentence to bounce around.

“It’s when the song has feet!” Joon adds, completely confident.

“It’s when Mr. Han makes that face because we’re clapping wrong,” Jiwoo offers, which sends half the class into immediate giggles.

Jisung looks betrayed, one hand flying to his chest as if a seven-year-old has just wounded him beyond repair. “That face is called passion, actually. Some people pay good money to see this face in a studio.”

“They would ask for a refund,” you say sweetly.

His head snaps toward you, eyes wide with theatrical offense. “Babe.”

The entire class explodes.

“Ooooooh, Miss Y/N is his babe!”

“You said babe!”

“Are you married?”

“Is Mr. Han your husband?”

“Is the baby going to have your big cheeks?”

Jisung’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again, but nothing comes out except a tiny sound that might have been a plea for help. His face burns so red so quickly that you almost feel bad for him, though not enough to rescue him right away. This is what he gets for trying to be casual in a room full of children whose entire purpose in life is apparently to detect any form of weakness and weaponize it.

You clap twice, smooth and practiced, and the class settles almost instantly, though several of them are still vibrating with the joy of having witnessed adult embarrassment in the wild.

“Alright, musicians,” you say, giving Jisung one merciful glance as he peels the tambourine off his head with as much dignity as possible. “Mr. Han is here to help us with our spring showcase song, not answer questions about my personal life.”

“But is he your husband?” Sora asks, blinking at you with the innocent ruthlessness of a child who knows exactly what she is doing.

Jisung suddenly becomes deeply invested in organizing a pile of rhythm sticks that were already organized.

You smile, warm but firm. “He is very important to me.”

That answer, somehow, satisfies them more than any proper label would have. A few of the girls sigh like you have given them the ending to a drama. One of the boys mutters that his dad calls his mom “babe” only when he is in trouble. Jisung’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and when he glances up at you, there is something soft tucked under the amusement, something that still catches in your chest even after years of knowing him.

He is not your husband.

He is not anything that could be explained neatly on a family tree or in the blank spaces of a school emergency contact form, though his name had started appearing in the practical parts of your life long before either of you said it out loud. He was the person who knew which grocery store brand of strawberries you hated, the person who tucked your cold feet between his calves even while complaining that you were trying to freeze him from the inside out, the person who could turn a bad day into a story so ridiculous you forgot where the ache had started.

He was your boyfriend, yes, but the title no longer seemed big enough to hold everything he had become to you.

You met him in this same classroom, though back then he had been less glitter-sticker-covered and more visibly terrified.

The school had been running a small arts enrichment program that year, one of those underfunded miracles built out of donated supplies, teacher overtime, and the fierce belief that children deserved beautiful things even when budgets forgot them. Someone had known someone who knew Jisung, a music producer with a soft spot for community projects and an unfortunate inability to say no when kids were involved.

So Jisung had shown up one Tuesday afternoon wearing an oversized hoodie, carrying a backpack full of cables, portable speakers, and three kinds of panic. He had bowed too deeply to the principal, nearly tripped over a bucket of crayons, and introduced himself to your students with a voice that cracked on the word “producer.”

You had liked him immediately.

Not because he was smooth, because he absolutely was not. Not because he knew what he was doing, because during the first session, a seven-year-old had asked him if bass was “the sound that makes your tummy dance,” and he had looked at you like he needed professional backup. You liked him because, once the initial awkwardness settled, he became gentle in a way he did not seem aware of. He crouched to speak to the quieter kids. He listened seriously to nonsense lyrics about dinosaurs eating noodles. He made every small idea feel worth building into something.

You watched him turn a classroom full of noisy children into collaborators, not by controlling them, but by making them feel heard.

He watched you manage twenty-two small storms without losing your calm, redirecting tears, tying shoelaces, finding missing pencils, soothing hurt feelings, catching lies with a single raised brow, and somehow remembering which child needed praise privately because attention embarrassed them. Later, he told you that the first time he saw you handle a paint spill, a nosebleed, and a friendship breakup within the same seven minutes, he thought you might actually be a government-trained crisis negotiator disguised as an elementary school teacher.

“I was scared of you,” he had confessed over coffee after the third week of the program, his hands playing with the crumpled paper left over from your straw.

“You were scared of me?”

“You smiled while commanding children,” he said, eyes round and earnest. “That is power. Ancient power. Village elder power.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, then took one sip of his drink and burned his tongue badly enough to yelp.

You fell in love with him slowly, which is maybe why it lasted. There was no lightning strike, no dramatic confession spoken under rain, no orchestra swelling at the exact right moment. It was smaller than that, and because it was smaller, it became harder to ignore. It was Jisung staying after the program ended to help you stack chairs. It was him bringing extra snacks for the kids who always forgot theirs, pretending he had “accidentally” packed too many. It was the way he started lingering in your classroom after everyone else left.

By the time he asked you out, the students had been whispering about it for weeks.

By the time you said yes, you already knew how he took his coffee, which songs he hummed when he was thinking, and that he got shy when complimented sincerely but would accept harsh feedback as a challenge to improve.

Months passed the way ordinary life does, not in grand chapters but in collected evidence. A toothbrush at his apartment. His hoodie on your chair. Your lesson plans spread across his coffee table while he edited vocals beside you. His phone charger permanently living on your side of the bed because, according to him, you committed battery crimes. Your name in his emergency contacts. His hand finding yours in grocery store aisles without either of you looking.

Moving in together had not been a dramatic decision so much as a gradual realization. His things settled beside yours in careful little stages until the apartment no longer belonged to one person or the other. Then one lease came close to ending, someone finally said what both of you had been circling for months, and suddenly it made more sense to split rent than keep pretending you still lived in two different places. After that, home became something shaped by shared routines, late nights, forgotten mugs, tangled laundry, and the quiet intimacy of building a life beside someone day after day.

You were not married, and for a while, neither of you felt the need to be.

It was not avoidance. It was not fear. It was just that love had already made itself at home in every practical corner of your lives, and neither of you had rushed to name what was already being lived. You had chosen each other in sick days and late nights, in tough conversations and family dinners, in hard weeks and gentle mornings. Marriage was a possible someday, maybe even a wanted someday, but it had never been the proof.

The proof was Jisung now, sitting on your classroom floor, laughing because a group of children had just decided he was legally obligated to marry you.

“Mr. Han,” one of your students says, holding up a triangle instrument with great seriousness, “if the baby cries, you can just make music and then they will stop.”

Jisung considers this with the gravity of a man receiving sacred wisdom. “That is actually an excellent plan. You may have just saved my future sleep schedule.”

You snort. “That is not how babies work.”

He points at you without looking away from the child. “See, this is why I need consultants. Your teacher is very smart, but sometimes she crushes dreams.”

“Your baby will like your songs,” Sora says, softer this time.

Something shifts in his face. It is quick, almost hidden under the practiced brightness he uses when emotion comes too close in public, but you see it. You always see it. His mouth curves, but his eyes go glassy for one vulnerable second before he blinks it away and taps the rhythm sticks together.

“You think so?” he asks.

Sora nods. “Babies know.”

Jisung looks at you then, and his smile is smaller this time, less performance and more wonder.

Your baby kicks. Just a small flutter beneath your palm, quiet and familiar now, though it still has the power to steal the breath from your lungs every time. You draw in a quiet breath, and Jisung catches that too, because for all his spiraling and distractedness and dramatic complaints about having the attention span of a squirrel at a firework show, he notices you with painful precision.

His eyes drop to your stomach.

You nod once.

The class keeps chattering, the fluorescent lights keep humming, the world keeps behaving like nothing enormous has happened, but Jisung’s expression softens into something so open that it makes your throat tighten. He does not move toward you because he is still surrounded by children and instruments and the fragile structure of your lesson plan, but his hand lifts slightly from his knee, instinctive and unfinished, like he has to stop himself from reaching for both of you.

You save him from becoming emotional in front of twenty-two tiny investigators by clearing your throat.

“Alright,” you say, though your voice comes out warmer than you intend. “Back to rhythm.”

Jisung nods too quickly and picks up the tambourine again. “Yes. Rhythm. Excellent.”

And just like that, the moment folds itself into the day, tucked away beneath noise and glitter and the steady pulse of a future that is becoming harder to imagine without trembling.

Later, when the classroom empties and the last student is collected by a parent running ten minutes late, you find Jisung at the sink trying to scrub glitter glue from his fingers with the grim determination of a man who has learned too late that elementary school crafts operate by the same laws as curses.

“You know,” you say, leaning against the counter, “you don’t have to volunteer every showcase season.”

He looks at you through the mirror, appalled. “And abandon my fans?”

“Your fans asked if your cheeks are genetic.”

“They are also interested in science.”

“They also asked if you were my husband.”

He goes quiet in that rare way of his, not uncomfortable exactly, but careful. The water runs between you for a moment before he shuts it off, drying his hands slowly on a paper towel that immediately sticks to the glitter he failed to remove.

“I mean,” he says, trying for casual and landing somewhere more fragile, “I’m not.”

“No,” you agree softly. “You’re not.”

He turns to face you, his shoulder brushing the cabinet, the classroom around him suddenly too bright and too ordinary for the tenderness gathering in his face. “Does that bother you?”

The question does not surprise you, not entirely. Pregnancy has a way of inviting other people’s assumptions into places they were not asked to enter. Since the first ultrasound photo appeared on your fridge, people had begun speaking as if a proposal were the next logical symptom. Some asked sweetly. Some asked with judgment dressed as curiosity. Some looked at your bare ring finger before they looked at your face, as if your child needed a legal sequence to be loved properly.

You push away from the counter and step closer, taking his glitter-specked hand in yours.

“No,” you say, because you mean it. “I don’t need us to be married for me to know you’re committed to me.”

He stays silent, watching you.

“You’re already here,” you continue, thumb brushing over the back of his hand. “You’ve been here. That matters more to me than doing things in an order that makes other people comfortable.”

Jisung swallows, and for once he does not make a joke quickly enough to hide behind it. “You’re all I ever want.”

“I know.”

“And the baby.”

“I know.”

“I want to be the dad who forgets pickup time or burns instant noodles or teaches our child that cereal counts as soup.”

You blink. “Cereal does not count as soup.”

“I know that now,” he says solemnly. “Growth.”

You laugh, and he grins, relieved by the sound in a way that makes you want to kiss him right there in your classroom between the sink and the drying rack of tempera paint masterpieces. So you do. His mouth meets yours softly at first, smiling too much to make it clean, one hand coming up to cradle the side of your face while the other settles carefully over your stomach.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours.

“I love you,” he says, so quiet it sounds like a secret.

“I love you too.”

Your baby moves again beneath his palm, and this time Jisung feels it.

He freezes. Every ounce of humor drains from his face, replaced by awe so unguarded it nearly hurts to look at. His fingers spread gently, as if he is afraid to startle the tiny life inside you, and his eyes shine before he can stop them.

“Hi, Baby,” he whispers.

You cover his hand with yours.

He laughs once, breathless and watery, and looks down at your stomach like the world has just answered him in a language he is still learning. This was not the first time he’s felt a kick from his unborn baby, but he acts like it is every single time.

“Our baby is going to be a genius just like me, don’t you think?”

“You called cereal soup.”

“And I will overcome that for my family.”

You laugh again, but his hand stays where it is, warm and careful, long after the joke fades.

That is how Jisung loves you these days, with laughter first, then wonder close behind.

And sometimes, when you see him standing in your classroom with glitter on his skin and one hand over the place where your child grows, it is impossible not to remember the night everything began, though at the time neither of you knew it had begun at all.

It had been raining in a steady and inconvenient way that made the whole city smell like wet pavement and laundry left too long in the machine. Jisung had come home late from the studio, hair flattened by his cap, cheeks flushed from the cold, carrying takeout in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.

“For you,” he had said, dropping the takeout on the counter with suspicious casualness.

Inside the bag was a pack of your favorite pens, the expensive kind you only bought when you were feeling reckless, and a little keychain shaped like a cartoon squirrel because, according to him, it looked “determined despite its anxiety” which was apparently a compliment.

You had been grading spelling tests at the kitchen table, wearing one of his hoodies and your most exhausted expression, and something about the sight of him standing there with damp hair and nervous eyes made the room feel smaller, softer, strangely suspended. He had been overworked. You had been tired. Neither of you had said much at first, but the quiet had not felt empty.

He sat beside you, stealing fries from the container he claimed he bought for both of you, and you pressed your cold feet under his thigh just to hear him complain. He did, loudly, accusing you of trying to kill him. You laughed until your stomach hurt. He watched you like he wanted to memorize the sound.

Later, when the rain thickened against the windows and your papers were abandoned in a crooked stack, he kissed you in the dim light of the kitchen with one hand at your waist and the other still smudged in ink from the pen he had tested for you. Love, familiar and easy, tipping into hunger because the night was quiet and he was warm and his mouth kept smiling against yours.

You remember thinking, briefly, that your life already felt full.

You did not know it was making room.

His hands were already under your shirt, your bra already unhooked, the air in your kitchen cool against your suddenly bare skin. Jisung’s mouth was on yours, hungry, and all you could taste was the need and exhaustion you both carried. 

“Fuck, I missed you,” he mumbled against your lips, his voice a low, tired rasp that vibrated right into your bones.

Your fingers were in his hair, pulling him closer. “Missed you too. Missed this.” Your own words were slurred with fatigue and want.

Your shirt hit the floor. His followed. The tangle of clothes was a testament to the haste, the desperation. His belt buckle clattered against the tile. You stepped back, just enough to give him room to kick his jeans away, and your own leggings were already halfway down your thighs. You helped them the rest of the way, kicking them into the dim corner near the fridge.

You stood there, naked in the warm yellow glow of the kitchen lighting, the only light left on in the whole apartment. Jisung looked at you, his eyes dark, his chest heaving with a breath that wasn’t just from exertion. It was from relief. From finding home.

“Come here,” he said, his voice firmer now. It wasn’t a request.

You went to him. He caught you, his hands sliding around your waist, lifting you with a grunt of effort that was pure male satisfaction. He carried you to the kitchen counter, the cold granite meeting the backs of your thighs as he set you down. The contrast—his hot palms, the cool stone—made you gasp.

“Open for me,” he whispered, his head already dipping between your legs.

You leaned back, your elbows finding purchase on the hard surface, and you let your knees fall to either side of him. The exposure was immediate, total. The kitchen, usually a place of mundane routine, transformed into a stage for this raw, private thing.

Jisung didn’t hesitate. His mouth found you, not with a gentle kiss, but with a firm, wet press of his lips directly against your center. His nose nudged your pubic bone. His breath, hot and sharp, washed over you.

“God, you smell good,” he growled, the words muffled by your flesh. “Like you’ve been thinking about me all day.”

You hadn’t, not really—you’d been thinking about spelling tests and snack time—but the way he said it made it true. Made your whole afternoon feel like a slow-build foreplay to this moment. You moaned, a sound that started low in your throat and broke free into the quiet room.

His tongue found your slit. He traced it, a slow, deliberate stripe from bottom to top, collecting the moisture that had already gathered there. He licked, a broad, flat stroke that made your hips jerk. Then he focused. His tongue narrowed, became a point, and he pushed it into you, just a little, just enough to tease the entrance. You cried out, your head falling back.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling back to speak. “Yeah, you like that. You’re so wet for me already. Dripping, baby.”

He went back in. This time, his technique changed. He used the flat of his tongue again, but he pressed harder, rubbing you with a firm, rhythmic pressure that built a steady thrum of pleasure right at the core of you. His hands came up, gripping your thighs, holding you open, his thumbs digging into the soft inner flesh. He owned the space.

Then he found your clit. He didn’t toy with it. He zeroed in on it like a target. His tongue circled it, fast and tight, a dizzying orbit that sent sparks shooting up your spine. You were panting now, your breaths short and ragged. One of your hands flew to his head, gripping his hair.

“Jisung…fuck…right there…”

“Right here?” he asked, his voice a dirty, knowing murmur. He sucked. He pulled your clit into his mouth and sucked on it, hard, the pressure exquisite and almost too much. Your whole body tightened, a wire pulled taut. You arched off the counter, your back bowing.

He released it with a pop of his lips. “Tell me,” he commanded, his tongue still flicking against the swollen nerve. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want…” You were gasping. “I want you to fucking eat me. Make me come on your tongue.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” he said, and his tone was almost arrogant, almost proud. He dove back in.

His mouth was a messy, wonderful instrument. He licked, he sucked, he probed. He used his lips to massage you. He used his teeth to graze you, so lightly it was more a threat of sensation than the sensation itself. The wet sounds were obscene in the quiet kitchen. The slide of his tongue, the slick noise of your own arousal, his hungry grunts. It was a symphony of filth.

The pleasure was coiling in your belly, a tight, hot knot that was winding tighter with every stroke of his tongue. Your thighs began to shake in his hands. Your moans became continuous, a low, desperate hum that broke into sharper cries when he did something particularly good—when he dragged his tongue over your clit in a long, slow pull, or when he pushed two fingers into you alongside his tongue, filling you suddenly.

“Oh, god!” you shouted, your voice echoing off the cabinets.

He fucked you with his fingers, a steady, deep rhythm that matched the frantic circles his tongue was making on your clit. The dual sensation—the invasion inside, the focused torment outside—was unbearable. It was perfect. Your vision blurred. The world narrowed to the feeling of his mouth, his fingers, the cold counter under your ass, and the impending explosion in your nerves.

“Come on,” he urged, his voice thick and wet. “Come on my face. I want to taste it.”

It was the permission you needed. The command.

The knot snapped. Pleasure erupted out of you, a white-hot wave that crashed through your entire body. You convulsed against his mouth, your hips bucking uncontrollably. A sharp, broken scream tore from your lips. He kept his mouth on you, kept licking, kept sucking, drawing out the climax until you were whimpering, until your body was slack and trembling against the counter.

He finally pulled back, his lips glistening, his chin wet. He looked up at you, his eyes blazing with a satisfied fire. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a slow, deliberate motion that was unbearably sexy.

“Good?” he asked, a small grin playing on his lips.

You could only nod, your body still pulsing with aftershocks.

He stood up, his own nakedness fully presented to you now. He was hard, his cock standing upright from his body, thick and flushed and demanding attention. He put his hands on your hips and pulled you forward on the counter, until you were sitting right at the edge.

“Need your mouth,” he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly promise.

He didn’t need to say more. You slid off the counter, your legs still shaky, and you knelt on the kitchen floor. The tile was hard under your knees. You looked up at him. He was towering over you, his cock at eye level. You reached for him, your hands wrapping around the base. He was hot, almost feverish, the skin smooth and tight over the hard shaft.

You leaned forward and kissed the tip, a soft, reverent press of your lips. Then you opened your mouth and took him in.

The first inch was a surrender. You let your jaw relax, let your throat open, and you slid him into your mouth. His taste was musky, male. You moaned around him, the vibration making him groan.

“Fuck, yes,” he hissed, his hands coming to rest on your head, not pushing, just holding.

You began to move. You pulled back until just the tip remained between your lips, and then you pushed forward again, taking him deeper. You set a rhythm, slow at first, a deep, sucking pull each time you went down. Your tongue worked against the underside of his shaft, pressing and swirling as you moved.

His breaths became heavier. His fingers tightened in your hair. “You’re so good at this,” he muttered. “Your mouth is fucking perfect.”

You took the praise and used it. You sped up. Your head bobbed faster, your lips sealing tightly around him, your suction increasing. You could feel him swelling in your mouth, getting harder, thicker. The little choked sounds he made above you were fuel. You wanted to hear more.

You pulled back all the way, letting him pop out of your mouth with a slick sound. You looked up at him, your lips wet. “Tell me,” you said, echoing his earlier command. “Tell me what you want.”

His eyes were hooded, his face tense with pleasure. “I want you to deep throat me. Take it all. I want to feel your throat around my cock. Please, baby.”

You nodded, a flush of heat spreading through you at the dirty instruction. You opened your mouth wide, tilted your head back, and let him guide himself. He didn’t thrust. He let you take control. You leaned forward, swallowing him down, down, until the head of his cock bumped against the entrance to your throat. You paused, let your muscles relax, and then you pushed past it.

He slid into your throat. The feeling was intense—a deep, full pressure that made your eyes water. You held him there, your throat working around him, and then you pulled back, dragging him through the tight channel again.

“Oh, god, fuck,” Jisung groaned, his whole body shuddering. “Just like that. Don’t stop.”

You didn’t. You found a rhythm that worked, a deep, throaty fuck with your mouth. Each time you took him deep, you could feel his hips twitch, could feel the raw want in his body. Your own arousal was building again, a secondary fire kindling low in your belly. The subjugation, the act of serving him like this, was turning you on just as much as the physical sensation.

You used your hands too. While your mouth worked on the top half of his cock, your hand wrapped around the base, pumping in tandem with your bobbing head. You twisted your wrist, squeezed gently, matched the pace. It was a full-service blowjob, messy and thorough and completely devoted to his pleasure.

You could taste the pre-come now, a slick, slightly bitter fluid that seeped from him. You swallowed it, let it coat your throat, and the act made him curse again.

“You’re going to make me come,” he warned, his voice strained. “You want that?”

You pulled off again, your lips leaving him with a wet smear. You looked up, your eyes locked with his. “Yes,” you said, your voice husky. “I want to taste all of you.”

A savage grin split his face. He pushed your head back toward his cock, guiding you. “Then finish me.”

You obeyed. You took him back into your mouth, and this time you went for the end. Your rhythm became frantic, desperate. You sucked him hard, your throat constricting around him on each downstroke. Your hand pumped his base vigorously. The sounds were loud—your gagging breaths, his ragged moans, the wet slap of your lips against his skin.

He was close. You could feel it in the way his muscles tightened, in the way his cock seemed to swell to its absolute limit in your mouth. His breathing was a staccato rhythm of sharp inhales and shuddering exhales.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m—” he started, but the sentence was cut off by a deep, guttural groan.

Then it happened. A hot, sudden flood filled your mouth. It was thick, copious, and the taste was stronger now, more potent. He was coming, his hips jerking forward, his hands clamping on your head to hold you in place. You kept sucking, kept swallowing, drawing every drop out of him until his shuddering stopped, until his body went slack.

You finally released him, your mouth empty, your lips sore. You stayed on your knees, looking up at him as he caught his breath. He was glorious in his aftermath—sweaty, spent, his eyes half-closed in satisfaction.

He reached down and cupped your cheek. “You’re incredible,” he said, his voice soft now, almost awed.

You smiled, wiping your mouth with your hand. The floor was hard under your knees, but you didn’t care.

He didn’t let you stay there long. He bent down, his arms hooking under yours, and he lifted you back up to your feet. Your legs were unsteady, but he held you.

“Now I want you,” he said, his desire clearly not sated, just redirected. His cock was already hardening again, the resilience of a young, hungry man.

He turned you around, your back to his front, and pushed you gently toward the counter. Your palms flattened against the cold granite. He positioned himself behind you, his hands grabbing your hips, pulling you back until your ass was pressed against his renewed erection.

“Remember how I fucked you last week?” he whispered into your ear, his breath hot. “From behind, while you held onto the headboard?”

You remembered. The memory made a fresh wave of heat wash through you. “Yes.”

“I’m going to do it again. But harder. I’m going to fuck you so hard you feel it tomorrow when you’re passing those graded papers back.”

The promise was vulgar and perfect. You nodded, your head dropping forward. “Please.”

He didn’t need more encouragement. One hand stayed on your hip, the other reached between your legs, finding your wetness, slicking his fingers with it. He brought those fingers to his cock, stroking himself with your own arousal, getting himself fully hard and ready. Then he positioned himself.

The head of his cock pressed against your entrance. He didn’t push in slowly. He pushed in with a single, solid thrust that buried him halfway inside you in one motion.

You cried out, a sharp sound of pleasure and shock. The fullness was immediate, breathtaking. He was big, and he filled you completely, stretching you in a way that was almost painful in its intensity.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he groaned, his voice strained with the effort of holding still. “Even after you come. It’s like you’re sucking me in.”

He began to move. He pulled back, almost all the way out, and then thrust forward again, deeper this time. The slide was smooth, wet, and obscenely easy. Your body accepted him, welcomed him, clenched around him.

He set a pace, brutal and beautiful. Each thrust was a deliberate, powerful drive that pushed you forward against the counter, then pulled you back with his retreat. Your palms slid on the granite. Your breasts pressed against the cold surface. Your head hung down, your hair swinging with the motion of his fucking.

The sound of it was raw. The slap of his hips against your ass, the wet, rhythmic noise of his cock moving inside you, his grunts, your moans. It was a cacophony of sex that echoed in the tidy kitchen.

“You feel that?” he asked, his voice rough behind you. “You feel how deep I’m in you?”

You felt it. Every inch. Every vein. Every pulse of his hardness inside your softness. “Yes,” you gasped.

“I’m going to come inside you,” he said, the words a blunt, hot declaration. “I’m going to fill you up. You want that?”

“Yes!” you shouted, the word torn from you by another deep thrust.

“Tell me,” he demanded, his rhythm increasing, becoming faster, harder. “Tell me you want my cum inside you.”

“I want your cum inside me!” you yelled, the confession loud and shameless. “Fill me up, Jisung! Fuck me full of it!”

He growled, a sound of pure male triumph. His hands tightened on your hips, his fingers digging into your flesh, holding you in place for his final assault. His thrusts lost any semblance of rhythm. They became frantic, pounding drives, each one slamming you into the counter, each one sending a shockwave of pleasure through your core.

You were coming again. The pressure of his cock, the force of his movements, the dirty, possessive words he was growling into your ear—it all coiled together and snapped. Your second climax crashed over you, a deeper, more internal wave than the first. It clenched around his thrusting cock, milking him, pulling at him.

He felt it. “You’re coming, baby?” He panted. “Fuck, that’s so hot. Coming while I’m fucking you…”

He couldn’t hold back any longer. With a final, driving thrust that felt like it reached your soul, he buried himself as deep as he could go and let go. “I’m coming! Fuck, I’m coming, baby.”

You felt the hot surge inside you, the sudden flood of his release filling the space he’d carved out with his cock. He held himself there, pulsing, pumping, until every last drop was spent.

His body slumped against yours, his weight pressing you into the counter. His breath was ragged against your back. You were both panting, sweating, trembling in the aftermath.

He stayed inside you for a long moment, just feeling the connection, the mess they’d made together. Finally, he slowly pulled out. The sensation of emptiness was acute, followed by the warm trickle of his come seeping out of you.

He turned you around, his hands gentle now, and pulled you into his arms. You clung to him, your face buried in his sweaty chest. The kitchen was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of your slowing breaths.

The weeks after that pass the way weeks always do when something life-changing is hiding inside them. Ordinary. Almost rude in their ordinariness.

You teach fractions and conflict resolution, break up an argument over scented markers, attend a staff meeting where someone says “data-driven instruction” eight times in forty minutes, and come home to find Jisung asleep on the couch with one headphone still on and a half-eaten bowl of ramen abandoned on the coffee table. He writes melodies. You grade essays. He sends you voice notes at midnight because he wants to know if a synth sounds “too haunted but in a cute way.” You tell him that haunted and cute are not usually neighbors. He sends back three crying emojis and a file named “cute_haunting_final_FINAL2.wav.”

You make love the way you always have, in quiet bedrooms and lazy mornings and half-asleep laughter, but later, when you count backward with shaking hands and a calendar app open on your phone, you know exactly which night changed everything when your period fails to make an appearance.

At first, you do not panic. You are not a panicker by nature, and your body has been late before during stressful school months, especially when report cards and parent conferences turn your calendar into a cursed puzzle. Plus, you’re on the pill, and a quick Google search says that it’s 93% effective. It’s crazy for you to be that 7% that would get pregnant. Right? 

But a few days become a week, and a week becomes you standing in the bathroom before work, staring at two pink lines while Jisung sings loudly in the kitchen because he is making toast and believes every domestic act deserves a soundtrack.

You sit on the edge of the bathtub for a long moment, pregnancy test in hand, heart beating with a strange, steady force.

You are surprised, but not afraid in the way you expected you might be.

There is fear, of course, because only fools and people in diaper commercials think babies arrive without fear, but underneath it sits something quieter and stronger. You think of Jisung’s hand on your back when you fall asleep. His voice through your phone on late drives home. His ridiculous laugh. His tenderness with your students. The way he says your name when he thinks you are not listening.

Then he knocks on the bathroom door with his knuckle. “Baby, your toast is getting hard and cold.”

You stare at the door.

“Also, I may have burned one corner, but I’m calling it rustic.”

You open the door.

Jisung is standing there with a plate in one hand, wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt with one sleeve pushed up higher than the other. His hair is a mess on one side from sleep. He looks so painfully himself that your throat tightens before you can speak.

His smile fades.

“What happened?” he asks immediately, plate lowering. “Are you sick? Did I poison you even before the rustic toast?”

You lift the test.

For once, there is no joke.

His eyes drop to your hand, and the entire hallway seems to hold its breath with him. You watch understanding move across his face slowly, because the truth is too big to enter all at once. His mouth parts. His eyes shine. His gaze jumps from the test to your face, then back again.

“Is that…” His voice breaks, and he clears his throat, trying again. “Are we…”

You nod.

The plate tilts dangerously.

You grab it before breakfast becomes a casualty.

Jisung laughs, but it comes out strangled and disbelieving, one hand flying to his mouth as he stares at you. “You’re pregnant?”

“I think so,” you say, though the evidence feels rather persuasive.

“We’re having a baby?”

You smile, and your eyes burn. “Apparently.”

He steps forward, then stops, hands hovering uselessly because he cannot seem to decide where to touch you first. Your face, your shoulders, your stomach, the air around you. He looks overwhelmed enough that you set the plate down on the hallway table and take his hands yourself.

“Breathe, Ji.”

“I am breathing,” he says, then inhales so sharply he nearly hiccups. “See? Oxygen.”

You laugh, and that breaks something open in him. He pulls you into his arms carefully but completely, holding you with his face buried in your neck, shaking with a laugh that turns wet around the edges.

“We’re having a baby,” he whispers.

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god.” His arms tighten, then loosen immediately as if he remembers you are suddenly made of glass. “Sorry. Sorry, did I squeeze too hard? Is squeezing bad? Can I squeeze the baby? Not the baby, obviously, you. But the baby is in you. So indirectly, can I…”

“Jisung.”

“Right. Calm. I’m calm.”

“You’re vibrating.”

“I have entered a new plane of emotion.”

You laugh into his shoulder, and he holds you while the toast goes cold, rustic corner and all.

That morning becomes one of the private myths of your relationship, something you both return to in pieces over the months that follow. Jisung tells the story like he was composed and dignified. You remind him that he almost dropped toast and asked whether hugging was medically dangerous. He insists that responsible fathers ask questions. You let him have that because he is adorable when he is defensive and because, secretly, his panic had made you feel even safer.

At first, pregnancy is a strange little secret tucked between you.

Jisung becomes unbearable in a way that is so sweet you do not have the heart to complain properly. He downloads three pregnancy apps and reads all of them, even though they contradict each other and cause him unnecessary emotional distress. He compares the baby’s size to fruit with great seriousness, then becomes personally offended by the lack of consistency.

“This one says lemon,” he says one night, lying beside you in bed with his phone held too close to his face. “This one says peach. Those are different vibes, baby. Which one is our child?”

“Maybe they’re a lemon with peach energy.”

He lowers the phone and looks at you with deep admiration. “You’re going to be such a good mother.”

“Because I understand fruit metaphors?”

“Because you bring peace to chaos.”

“Your chaos specifically.”

“Yes, but I am a full-time position.”

By the second trimester, the secret is no longer small. Your stomach rounds softly beneath your dresses. Jisung starts touching it absentmindedly, in elevators, grocery aisles, while waiting for water to boil, while pretending he is not emotional about a commercial involving dogs in animal shelters. He talks to the baby when he thinks you are asleep, voice low and careful in the dark.

“Hi,” he whispers one night, palm warm against your skin. “It’s me. Your dad. That is so weird. Not bad weird. Good weird. Huge weird. Anyway, your mom is sleeping, so we have to be respectful because she’s very scary when tired. Beautiful, but scary. Like a queen with a vendetta.”

You keep your eyes closed, smiling into the pillow.

“I’m going to be cool,” he continues. “Not too cool, because then you won’t trust me, but cool enough that your friends think I’m fun. Unless your friends are mean, then I’ll be uncool on purpose. Also, please don’t inherit my sleep schedule. Or my inability to fold fitted sheets. Actually, inherit your mom’s everything, except maybe her habit of leaving mugs in strange places, because yesterday I found tea in the bookshelf that had a whole ecosystem.”

You pinch his arm lightly without opening your eyes.

He goes silent. Then, very softly, he says, “I knew you were awake.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” he admits.

You roll over enough to look at him, and he props himself up on one elbow, caught and bashful, hair messy, eyes too tender for the hour.

“You talk to them a lot,” you say.

His hand stays on your stomach. “Is that weird?”

“No.”

“Good.” He looks down, thumb moving in a slow arc. “I want them to know me.”

“They will.”

His expression flickers.

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing.”

But it is not nothing. You know him too well for nothing.

Still, you do not press right away, because Jisung is someone who sometimes needs to circle his own feelings a few times before he can stand in the center of them. Push too early and he jokes. Push too hard and he shuts down. So you let the quiet hold him gently, let him rest his head against your shoulder, let his hand remain over the baby as if touch can translate everything he is not ready to say.

Around twenty-four weeks, things begin to shift.

Jisung is still funny. Still affectionate. Still the kind of man who sends you a photo of a tiny pair of baby socks from a store with the caption, these are stupidly small and cute, should I buy 50 pairs? He still drives you to school on mornings when his schedule allows, still makes your tea wrong but with conviction, still presses his lips to your stomach before kissing you because he claims the baby will feel left out otherwise.

But his nights in the studio grow longer.

At first, it makes sense. He has deadlines. A producer’s work does not clock out just because life becomes tender, and you have always known that music lives in him like a second bloodstream. He hears things other people do not. A melody under rain. Percussion in the rhythm of footsteps. Harmony in the refrigerator hum, which is romantic until he records a voice memo beside the open freezer at two in the morning and scares you half to death.

But then one late night becomes three. Three becomes a pattern. You wake up more often to his side of the bed still cold, the faint glow from the studio bleeding under the door at the end of the hall. When he does come to bed, he moves carefully, apologetically, like he is trying not to disturb the life he already feels guilty for missing while still being inside the same apartment.

He checks on you constantly.

That is the part that would fool someone who did not know him.

He asks if you ate. He refills your water bottle. He orders your favorite soup before you mention craving it. He rubs your lower back without being asked and insists he is simply “protecting company property” when the baby kicks against his palm. He is not distant in action. Only in spirit. His body stays with you, but his mind keeps slipping somewhere harder to reach.

You find search tabs open on his laptop one evening when he leaves to answer the door for delivery.

how to be emotionally stable parenthow much money baby first yearnewborn sleep schedule realisticsigns you are not ready to be a fathercan babies sense stress in wombhow to stop being anxious before baby arrives

You don’t snoop further. You don’t need to.

When he returns with food, happy little grin on his face, you close the laptop gently and say nothing, because he is smiling too brightly and asking whether the baby wants dumplings as if the baby has placed a formal order.

You let him have the performance for one more night.

The next week, after a doctor’s appointment, the pressure inside him becomes almost visible.

The appointment itself is good. Better than good. The baby is healthy, stubbornly positioned, and apparently committed to making the ultrasound technician work for every measurement. Jisung spends half the appointment laughing nervously and the other half staring at the screen with his mouth slightly open. When the heartbeat fills the room, fast and steady, his hand finds yours and squeezes so tightly that your fingers ache.

On the way home, you mention what the doctor said about the baby recognizing voices soon, maybe already responding to familiar sounds.

You mean it as a sweet fact.

Jisung goes quiet.

Not silent in the normal way, because he is rarely silent without making it clear that silence is an event. This quiet is different. He looks out the car window, thumb picking at the edge of his nail, and when you ask if he is okay, he smiles too quickly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, just thinking.”

That night, he works until four in the morning.

The night after, until three.

By Friday, he has become obsessed with a track that, to your untrained ears, already sounded beautiful two versions ago. It is soft, lullaby-like without being obvious, built around a piano line that seems to rise and hesitate, rise and hesitate, as if trying to become brave. Every time you pass the studio, you hear him replay the same four measures, stopping before the resolution, adjusting something so small even he probably could not explain it to anyone who did not live inside his head.

You give him space until space becomes distance.

On Saturday night, you wake to an empty bed and the low, muffled pulse of music through the walls.

For a while, you lie still, one hand resting over your stomach, waiting to see if he will come back on his own. The apartment is dark except for the pale city light slipping through the blinds, painting the room in soft gray-blue. Your body aches with the familiar heaviness of late second trimester sleep, that strange combination of exhaustion and restlessness that makes comfort feel like a negotiation with your body.

The baby shifts.

“I know,” you murmur, rubbing the spot. “He’s being ridiculous.”

You feel a kick.

“Don’t encourage him.”

You push yourself up carefully, padding down the hallway in socks, the wooden floor cool beneath your feet. The studio door is not fully closed, and through the narrow gap you can see Jisung hunched over his desk, headphones around his neck, one hand buried in his hair. The monitor casts his face in tired light. His shoulders are tense. The same section of music loops again and again, delicate and unfinished.

You knock softly.

He startles anyway, spinning in his chair so quickly he nearly tangles himself in the headphone cord.

“Baby,” he says, guilty immediately. “Why are you awake? Did I wake you? Is the music too loud? I can turn it down. I was just fixing one thing.”

You lean against the doorframe, taking him in. The rumpled hoodie. The shadows under his eyes. The frantic brightness in his expression. The way he looks seconds away from either apologizing or making a joke, whichever will get him out of being seen too clearly.

“It’s four-twelve,” you say gently.

His gaze jumps to the corner of the screen, and his face falls. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“I know.”

He turns back toward the desk, rubbing both hands over his face. “I’m almost done.”

“Ji.”

“It just doesn’t sound right yet.”

You step into the room, careful around the cables he always swears he will organize and never does. “It sounded beautiful yesterday.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s done.”

“No,” you agree, lowering yourself onto the small couch against the wall. “But it might mean you’re not actually fixing the song.”

His hand stills on the mouse. For a moment, only the loop plays between you, soft piano trying and failing to land. Jisung stares at the screen as if the waveform might rescue him from the conversation. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re not.”

He laughs once, too thin. “Wow. Direct. Very teacher of you.”

“You respond well to structure.”

“I respond well to kisses too.”

“You can get kisses after you stop lying to me.”

He looks at you then, and the attempted humor collapses before it fully forms. He is so tired. Not just sleepy, not just overworked, but worn down by thoughts that have been chewing at him quietly for weeks. His eyes shine, and he blinks hard, turning back to the screen too late to hide it.

Your heart aches, but you keep your voice steady, because panic meeting panic never helps him. “Come here,” you say.

He shakes his head. “I’ll get up in a second.”

“Han Jisung.”

His face crumples a little at the sound of his full name, just enough that you know he is fighting something bigger than embarrassment. He stands, then seems unsure where to go, so you hold out your hand. He crosses the small room and takes it, lowering himself carefully beside you on the couch, leaving enough space for your stomach before curling toward you like he wants comfort and thinks he has not earned it.

You reach up and take the headphones from around his neck, setting them on the table beside the couch. Then you smooth his hair back from his forehead, your thumb brushing the faint crease between his brows.

He closes his eyes.

“You’re exhausted,” you say.

“I know.”

“You’re scared.”

His eyes open. There is no point denying it. Not to you. His mouth trembles once before he presses it tight, jaw working as if he can chew the feeling into something smaller. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Most new parents don’t.”

“No, I know that, but…” He stops, breathing out shakily, gaze dropping to your stomach. “It’s different when I think about other people not knowing. When it’s me, it feels like… like I should have figured myself out before this happened.”

Your hand stills.

He laughs again, but this time there is no humor in it. “I keep thinking about how they’re going to need us for everything. Everything, Y/N. Not just food and clothes and a crib and all the things I can Google until I go insane, but like…what if they’re sad? What if they’re scared? What if they need me to be calm and I can’t be? What if I’m in my head and I miss something important? What if I’m not steady enough?”

“Ji,” you whisper.

He shakes his head, tears spilling before he can stop them. “And I know you’ll be amazing. I know that. I’ve seen you with kids. You just know how to do it. You know how to make people feel safe, and I’m over here reading five different articles about swaddling and somehow getting worse as a person.”

A surprised laugh slips out of you, soft and sad, and he huffs through his tears.

“It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“I’m having a crisis.”

“I know, baby.”

His face twists at the pet name, and suddenly the rest of it breaks open. “What if loving them isn’t enough?” he asks, voice cracking so hard the question barely survives. “What if I love them more than anything and still mess them up because I’m too anxious or too emotional or too…me? What if they need someone better than me?”

The studio feels unbearably quiet after that, even with the music still looping faintly from the desk.

You take his face in both hands. “Listen to me,” you say, calm but fierce enough that his wet eyes snap to yours. “The fact that you are this afraid of failing them tells me exactly what kind of father you’re going to be.”

He tries to look away, but you hold him gently in place. “Bad fathers don’t sit awake at four in the morning terrified that they won’t love their child well enough. Careless fathers don’t memorize every appointment, read every article, talk to a baby that isn’t even born yet, and panic because they want so badly to be good.”

His breathing shudders.

“You are not scared because you don’t belong in this,” you continue, thumbs brushing his cheeks. “You’re scared because you already care so much that it has nowhere to go yet.”

His eyes squeeze shut, and another tear slips down.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” you say. “You have to show up. You have to listen. You have to apologize when you’re wrong. You have to try again when the day goes badly. You already do those things, Jisung. You do them with me all the time.”

His hands come up to your wrists, holding lightly.

“And you’re wrong about me just knowing how to do everything,” you add, softer now. “I’m scared too.”

He opens his eyes.

You give him a small, honest smile. “I’m calmer than you are. That doesn’t mean I’m fearless. It just means I had my panic a little better than you.”

A watery laugh breaks out of him before he can stop it, and the sound loosens something in your chest, making you lean forward to kiss his cheek.

He wipes at his face with his sleeve, then immediately looks annoyed at himself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you comfort me at four in the morning while you’re pregnant. That feels like a top ten bad boyfriend moment.”

“You are not a bad boyfriend.”

“I’m at least a medium inconvenience.”

“You are a beloved inconvenience.”

He nods weakly. “That feels fair.”

You lean forward again and kiss his forehead, lingering there as his breathing begins to slow. His hands slide carefully to your waist, then to your stomach, like he needs to remind himself that the fear is not the only thing in the room.

“He’s going to know your voice,” you say quietly.

His fingers pause.

You feel the mistake the second it leaves your mouth, because the sentence exposes the secret you have been carrying for three days.

The secret you were not supposed to know yet.

The secret you had told yourself you would reveal properly, sweetly, maybe with a tiny pair of socks or a little envelope or some gentle private moment where Jisung was not already cracked open on the studio couch at four in the morning.

You had not meant to find out without him.

That had been the plan, at least. You both agreed to wait, partly because Jisung declared that surprises are fun and partly because he did not trust himself not to buy every gendered baby item in a ten-mile radius. But after the appointment, after seeing the way he stared at the screen, after feeling the future press closer than ever, curiosity had gnawed at you until you called the office and asked.

You planned to tell him later. Not like this.

His eyes search your face, catching the shift. Even exhausted and teary, he notices you.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

His brows pull together. “You said he.”

You press your lips together. “Yes.”

His hands tighten slightly over your stomach, not enough to hurt, only enough to reveal that his whole body has started listening.

“Y/N,” he says slowly. 

You close your eyes. “I was going to tell you differently.”

Jisung stops breathing for a second. “You know we’re having a boy?” he whispers.

You open your eyes, and the look on his face nearly undoes you. Fear still lingers there, but wonder has begun pushing through it, fragile and bright.

“I called,” you admit. “After the appointment. I know we said we would wait, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I just…I wanted to know. I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you first.”

He does not seem upset. He barely seems capable of understanding the apology.

Your hand covers one of his over your stomach. “He. It’s a boy,” you repeat.

For a moment, Jisung only stares at you.

Then his face breaks. Not into any of the ugly assumptions people sometimes attach to sons and fathers and legacy. It is nothing like that. You know he would have cried this way for a girl, for any child, for any small life that belonged to both of you. This is not joy because the baby is a boy. It is joy because the baby is suddenly someone.

His son.

Your son.

A little boy who will know his voice.

“We’re having a boy?” he asks, and the words wobble in the middle.

You nod, tears slipping down your own cheeks now. “Yeah.”

Jisung laughs, covering his mouth with one hand, then presses that same hand over his eyes as if the feeling is too bright to look at directly. His shoulders shake. For a second you think he might be crying harder than before, but then he makes a sound that is half sob and half stunned laughter, and you realize the panic has cracked open into something else entirely.

“A boy,” he says, like he is trying the word carefully. “Our baby’s a boy.”

“I’m sorry I found out without you,” you whisper.

He shakes his head immediately, still crying. “No. No, don’t be sorry. I’m not mad. I’m…” He laughs again, helpless and wet. “I’m so happy. Oh my god, I’m so happy.”

The baby kicks, firm enough that both of you feel it beneath your joined hands.

Jisung gasps. You start laughing through your tears. “I think he knows we’re talking about him.”

“He,” Jisung repeats, and then he is gone all over again, folding forward carefully until his forehead rests against your stomach. His hands cradle the curve of you with trembling reverence, and his voice drops into a whisper so tender it makes the whole world feel hushed. “Hi, baby boy.”

Your hand finds his hair.

He closes his eyes, breathing unevenly against you. “I’m your dad,” he says, and the sentence sounds like both a confession and a promise. “I’m really scared, and I’m probably going to cry a lot, and your mom is going to be way better at pretending she knows what she’s doing, but I’m here. Okay? I’m here.”

Your throat tightens.

“And I already love you so much,” he continues, voice breaking again. “So much that it’s making me weird. Ask your mom. I’ve been very weird.”

“You have,” you whisper.

He nods solemnly against your stomach. “See? Honest household.”

A laugh escapes you, soft and watery, and Jisung presses a kiss to the place where your son moved beneath his hand.

“I’ll try really hard,” he whispers. “I won’t get it perfect, but I’ll try.”

The track still loops behind you, that same unresolved piano line rising and rising without ever landing. Jisung lifts his head slowly, eyes swollen and shining, and for the first time all night, he looks at the desk without urgency.

“I kept trying to fix it,” he says quietly.

“The song?”

He nods. “It felt wrong if it wasn’t perfect.”

You brush your thumb beneath his eye. “Maybe it doesn’t need to be perfect.”

His gaze returns to your stomach, and something gentle settles over his face, not certainty exactly, but the beginning of trust.

“Maybe it just needs to be honest,” he says.

You smile. “That sounds like something a producer would say after crying his eyes out.”

He narrows his eyes, though the effect is ruined by how damp his lashes are. “You’re bullying the father of your child.”

“I’m grounding the father of my child.”

“That sounds nicer.”

“It is.”

He leans into you, and you shift carefully so he can rest against your side without pressing too much weight on you. For a while, neither of you moves. The studio hums softly around you, filled with cables, notebooks, half-finished melodies, and the small evidence of a life being rearranged by love. Jisung’s breathing slows. His hand stays on your stomach. Your son moves once more, softer now.

Eventually, Jisung reaches blindly toward the desk and stops the loop.

The silence that follows feels merciful.

“I think,” he says, voice rough, “I should come to bed.”

“I think that’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night.”

You help him shut everything down, though he insists on saving the file under a new name first. When you glance at the screen, you see what he types.

babyboy_lullaby_draft_one.wav

Your heart clenches. “Draft one?” you ask.

He looks shy, one hand at the back of his neck. “He deserves options.”

“Of course.”

“And also, I don’t want to put too much pressure on him musically before birth.”

“How considerate.”

“I’m a modern father.”

“You are a sleep-deprived father.”

“That too.”

In the bedroom, he moves around you with exaggerated care, fluffing your pillow, adjusting the blanket, placing your water bottle within reach, then moving it half an inch closer like that will determine whether you survive the night. You let him fuss because the panic has softened into tenderness, and because sometimes care needs somewhere to go.

He climbs into bed and settles behind you, one arm wrapping carefully under your chest, his palm coming to rest over your stomach. His body is warm along your back. His breath touches the nape of your neck.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs.

“About being a modern father?”

“About trying.”

You cover his hand with yours. “I know.”

“I’m still scared.”

“I know.”

“But less like I’m drowning,” he says, and his voice is thoughtful now, tired but clearer. “More like…I’m standing in water and it’s cold, but you’re holding my hand, so I’m not being as dramatic about it.”

“You are always a little dramatic.”

“I said as dramatic.”

You smile into the dark.

After a while, he whispers, “Do you think he’ll like me?”

The question is so naked, so very Jisung, that you have to close your eyes for a second.

“I think he’ll adore you,” you say. “I think he’ll know you’re silly and emotional and warm. I think he’ll know your voice before he knows almost anything else. I think he’ll grow up understanding that love can sound like music from down the hall, and bad jokes in the kitchen, and someone trying again even when they’re scared.”

Jisung is quiet for so long that you think he might have fallen asleep.

Then he sniffles.

“Are you crying again?”

“No,” he says, obviously crying. “Your speech was just well thought out.”

You turn carefully in his arms, slow and awkward because pregnancy has made every movement a small engineering project. He helps immediately, hands hovering like you are a priceless artifact being rotated in a museum. When you finally face him, he looks embarrassed and soft and impossibly young in the dark, yet somehow more grown than he had yesterday.

You touch his cheek. “You’re going to be amazing,” you say.

His eyes search yours, wanting to believe it.

“Not because you’ll never mess up,” you continue. “Because you’ll care when you do.”

His mouth trembles once, but this time he does not fall apart. He nods, pressing his forehead to yours. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you too.”

“And him.”

“And him.”

His hand slides between you, settling over the baby again. For a moment, the three of you are quiet together, folded into the small dark room with no rings, no ceremony, no perfect plan, no promise that fear will never return. Just love. Just the choice to stay. Just Jisung’s thumb moving slowly over your stomach, keeping time with a rhythm only he seems able to hear.

“Baby boy,” he whispers, already half asleep. “Please inherit your mom’s emotional stability.”

You laugh softly. “And your creativity.”

“And my cheeks.”

“That too.”

“And none of my search history.”

“Definitely none of that.”

He hums, satisfied, and pulls you a little closer.

Outside, the city continues without knowing anything has changed. Cars move through wet streets. Lights blink in distant windows. Unfinished music waits in his studio for morning. But here, in the quiet, Jisung’s breathing evens out against you, his hand still protective over the life you made together on a night that had seemed ordinary until it became everything.

When he awoke, everything was wrong. The sky was different. The city stood above him. It was cold. His body was half-submerged in the river, clothes missing. Three days had passed, but there were no memories. Where he had gone, what he had done, was lost.

He went home.

Upon arrival, his first heartbreak came the moment the door opened. You collided into him with a force that should’ve knocked the air from his lungs. You weren’t someone who cried but now the sound of it tore through you. You held onto him like he might vanish again if your grip loosened even a little.

The second time his heart shattered, all he did was try to hold you. Having thought he’d never get this chance again, his arms wrapped around your back like he’d done thousands of times, pulling you close, his fingers sinking into your soft flesh. But the moment he applied even the smallest bit of pressure, you flinched under him. The sounds you made would haunt him - your ribs cracking underneath a cry like a cornered animal.

You had been so overcome with misplaced grief that you hardly registered the exchange; you were only focused on him. Even later, it would take you days to notice the bruises. You could be absentminded like that, but he didn’t miss anything anymore.

He couldn’t.

Now, the world constantly pressed in on him from all sides - every one of senses were heightened to an inhuman degree. He also seemed to develop a secret sixth one which made him hyper-aware of everything around him. It was like he simply knew the world around him.

Even then, the worst of it was actually his strength. He couldn’t measure or trust it. The first night back, he snapped his glasses (useless anyway) without meaning to. Then the bathroom counter. Then his skateboard, split clean in half. Then some expensive equipment at the lab. And if he could do that without trying, he didn’t want to risk again what might happen if he couldn’t control himself around you.

You tried to stay close. Never said out loud, a part of you thought that if he was never too far from you, he’d be safe. But safest thing was distance, according to Jisung. Stay away. Don’t touch. Just until he could make sense of things or fix them.

He tried to fake normal with a little kiss or a brief hug but there were lines he wouldn’t cross. At night, he’d lay beside you long enough to see you fall asleep. Watching you was the only indulgence he’d permit himself. But then - when he ached to reach over - he’d leave. At first, it was to the couch, then it was out of the apartment entirely. He’d convinced himself it was for the best, going against the one thing you wanted.

But it still hurt you.

One night, three months in to his self-sentenced quarantine, he had gotten home before you, a rare feat. The quiet tempted him and he fell asleep in the bed he hadn’t let himself touch in weeks. He woke to you curled into him like nothing had changed. Instinct took over; he kissed you, soft at first, then deeper when you leaned into him. Your hands followed. For a moment, he almost let it happen. Then it hit him, where it was going and what he could do, so he caught your hand, too hard.

“Ji, are you okay?” you had asked, startled.

“Yeah,” he muttered, avoiding your eyes as he pulled away. “I just remembered something I have to do.”

“It’s late, Ji.” He tried to get up, but you held onto him. You had grown to hate when he left after dark. “Stay,” you whispered. Just one word, but it was loaded like a gun.

“It’s not and it’s for my final, y/n. The deadline is soon—”

You sucked in a breath. “It can wait, can’t it? ‘Til the morning?” Your grip tightened, even if it didn’t really hold him there.

“It really can’t. I have to go to the lab. You know - before they lock up.”

“It probably is already. It’s the holidays. Just st—”

“Y/n, no. I gotta—”

“What do you mean ‘no’?” The sob broke through before you could stop it. There was so much you had to say, to scream at him, but the words stayed lodged in your throat. You shoved his arm away and folded in on yourself. Your hands pressed to your face. Your voice was so small, “What am I doing wrong?”

“Baby,” he said quickly as he dropped to his knees in front of you. “You haven’t done anything, I swear.”

“Then what is it?” You looked at him, not disguising the anguish you had been enduring. “Because if it’s not my fault, then it’s yours and I don’t know what to do if it is.”The tears came all at once after that.

He hesitated exactly three seconds before pulling you into him, pulling your face to his chest. He hoped time had passed in that way only he could have noticed, but you pushed him back. Hard. You didn’t need superpowers to tell time.

“You can go,” you said, your voice shaking despite the effort to steady it. You said it more to yourself than him. You wiped at your face, breathing rough. He didn’t move so you did. You stayed at your best friend’s place for a week.

If anything, he made it worse.

Whatever he’d been doing to distract himself started to consume him. He vanished at hours that didn’t make sense, came back just as unpredictably, marked up in ways he couldn’t hide.

When you went back home upstate together for Christmas, he forced you to carry the semblance of normalcy for him. You smiled through questions asking if Jisung was really still in grad school, laughed when they’d joke about his new physique, swallowed the prying that came in too sharp and too often. You defended him, defended you, being the only one trying to keep things from unraveling.

So you finally let it fall apart.

You pulled back. No more check-ins when you got home. No texts in the middle of the day just to see if he was okay. His injuries went unnoticed. Any new changes, unacknowledged. You were still polite, but there was a distance now, cold and deliberate. You’d finally matched what he’d been giving all along; it was not like he had anything warmer to offer.

The realization he had fucked up took maybe two weeks to sink in. He kind of thrived in your silence, flourishing with all the new freedom he had to himself, ignorant of the cause. The realization came one evening, walking home with you. He let himself feel a little proud in how he was finally getting the hang of things, like maybe he could be normal again. So he reached for your waist.

And you dodged him. Quick and intentional, you nearly stepped off the curb in the process.

He froze, his chest tightening. His first thought was that he’d hurt you again, but then it clicked. You weren’t in pain at all. He hadn’t touched you. You just hadn’t wanted him to.

Weeks later, he could only watch you.

Jisung stared at you from the couch as you prepared yourself tea in the kitchen. The place was small so there weren’t very many places to look at anyway. You wore an old high school band shirt that now fit like a baby tee with plaid shorts. Jisung thought he’d be cute and wore his matching pajama bottoms, but you didn’t feel like noticing. Beneath the stretched out band, he could make out the white lace trim of your underwear. It was the pretty floral pair, the one with the little flower where a button should’ve been. You were always so pretty.

You walked past to make your way to the bedroom when he held you by the hips and yanked you swiftly on the couch. Instinct helped him save the mug. He’d been practicing lately, not that you really cared it seemed.

“We should start planning something for Valentine’s,”Jisung pitched.

“No,” you retorted. “I’ll be planning what to catch up on during the break.” 

“Hey, just stay.”

You shot him a mean look, unfiltered, unkind. Jisung averted your gaze, so guilty his ears were turning red.

You attempted to leave and got a few steps away, before Jisung took advantage of your lowered guard and guided you down again, so that you straddled one of his thighs.

The movement startled you. In the soft glow of the tiny tree that was still up, it lit him just enough for you to really look at him. Some things hadn’t changed - the shadows under his eyes, his mouth pulled into a tired pout, his unruly bangs. But you were sure the rest of him had changed. His neck looked thicker. His shoulders were broader, more solid than you remembered. Even that ugly Fall Out Boy shirt clung to him now, stretched across his chest instead of hanging loose. And his hands - they felt different when they found your hips. Bigger. Rougher.

So much was different.

Eight years ago, on the first day at Midtown School of Science and Technology, Jisung had tripped and ate absolute shit, taking you down with him. Before the bell had even rung, you were both at the nurse. His hands were fidgety in his lap and he had an aggressive stammer he couldn’t control. He wouldn’t look at you. He was so small back then, hidden behind fluffy bangs and oversized headphones, like he wanted to disappear. Where was that Jisung?

You touched a hand to him, the version in front of you. Your hand hesitated for a second before it moved, slow and uncertain, tracing the line of his collarbone, then over his chest, over his abs. You kept going, like you were trying to map him. You traveled slowly down until you reached his waistband—

“Ow!” you yelled.

Jisung flinched and caught your wrist. Again, like he was repulsed by you, you thought bitterly. He let go almost immediately, guilt written all over him. His mouth opened and closed, searching for an excuse, but nothing came out. You shifted to leave. He didn’t let you.

“Y/n,”he finally mumbled. “I’m trying. I swear, I am.” He pushed his glasses up and ran a hand through his hair, pulling slightly. You saw his arms. They were so much bigger, beefier even. Why were they bigger? Why was he gone all the time?

Why didn’t he want you anymore?

You buried your head in your hands. You had never cried more than you had in those past few months. Jisung used to be the resident crybaby in the relationship. Three years back, he confessed by sobbing uncontrollably in the rain the first time he had gotten super drunk. He’d cry when he’d watch movies, after sex, when he’d see a disabled pigeon. Now it was you who was hiding your breakdowns. Not that there he was ever there to risk seeing them.

None of these words could pass through your lips, but sobs did. Jisung attempted to rock you. He could only gingerly cradle you, wrecked by fear and guilt. He was too stiff. You needed him. He needed you.

He didn’t know what else to do.

So he kissed you. Your forehead first - soft, careful - then your cheeks, and finally, your mouth. You didn’t pull away or resist. It was like your body knew it needed him. Your breathing was uneven, panicked, but he stayed there, steadfast against your lips like he could breathe for you.

Slowly, your arms came up around his neck, and his hands settled at your waist. He felt like he was in a lucid dream. Every movement was deliberate, every sensation too present. He was aware of everything - every shift, every breath, every inch of you. He decided he’d let you lead. He’d follow carefully, adjusting, holding himself in check with everything he had. If this was what you needed, he’d do it. Anything to keep you from crying.

It was like a pact; you moved together. Your fingers tangled in his curls, pulling him closer, and he let you part his lips against yours, tasting like salt. It made his breath hitch, low and quick. His hands stayed at your waist, wary, but then they slipped beneath the edge of your shirt, brushing warm skin. He hesitated for half a second, yet you leaned into him anyway.

When your lips broke apart, it was just to move, to find something better. His hands steadied on your hips as he guided you fully onto his lap, and suddenly there was no space left at all. You took advantage of it before he could process his next move, hands dragging restlessly over him - his face, his chest, his arms.

He felt every bit of it, even the sting. That was the dangerous part because he liked it, missed it. Somewhere in the blur of it, he let himself fall back against the couch, pulling you with him without thinking. You followed easily, settling against him, your hands back in his hair. His grip tightened on your thighs and ass, so you grinded into him, slow.

He felt like he was coming apart. Every cell in his body was vibrating, like his body didn’t know how to contain any of it. Control was slipping.

And it was like you could sense it, so you pressed closer, rolling onto to a very obvious bulge beneath you. The change dragged something out of him, a strained sound catching in his throat. He let go of you instantly, back arching, hands hovering uselessly in the air.

But you didn’t stop.

You moved against him, even closer, grounding and undoing him all at once. Your mouth found his neck, and he exhaled shakily, words breaking apart before they could form. Your name slipped out of him like it hurt.

That’s what broke you. You hadn’t heard him say your name like that in so long - soft and wrecked.

You pulled back, using his chest to balance yourself as you sat up. The distance pained you immediately. He looked up at you, dazed, flushed.

“Hey, you alright?” His voice came too fast, still catching his breath. His hair was a mess, his lip bruised from where you’d bitten it, color still high in his cheeks.

“I am,” you whispered, though your throat tightened again. “Are you?”

He swallowed hard. This was where it could fall apart. He knew it. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, hands settling leerily on your thighs.

“I’m fine, baby. I promise. Don’t worry—”

“Are you sure?” Your voice wavered, quieter now. “You…you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” You wouldn’t quite look at him, your fingers brushing the hem of his waistband, longing.

“Y/n…” He exhaled, softer this time. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

You looked at him then. And he held your gaze, as fragile as it was.

“I’m here,” he said, even quieter now. “I’m not going anywhere.”

You searched his face. You’d never called him liar, but the truth had been stretched so thin lately.

“Y/n,” he tried again, gentler, his thumbs brushing slow, meticulous circles into your skin. “You have to trust me.”

He wanted it to be enough. He just didn’t know if it was.

You leaned down, pressing a slow, soft kiss to his chest - a question more than anything else. When you lifted again, your fingers caught at the edge of his pants and boxers. You both paused there, just looking at each other, making sure.

Jisung answered gently.

His hands came over yours, shaking ever so slightly, not stopping you, just guiding. He helped you unleash him.

You thought you imagined it, but no, he had gotten longer, thicker, veinier. His member sprang free with a graceless slap against his abs. But it was still just as pretty as before, with precum glistening the pink tip. You looked at Jisung again nervously. As delicately as he could, he guided your hand to his cock.

You brushed your thumb across the tip, hesitantly. Jisung sighed a low groan, polite like a secret. Was that good? You wrapped your fingers around him slowly, admiring how little you could hold. Your grip barely tightened. You moved bit by bit, inch by inch. His own hand didn’t speed you up, so you kept your delicate pace. These past few months made you doubt yourself.

Suddenly, Jisung’s hand moved and gently held your wrist, a ghost of a touch. You knew what he meant - you gripped tighter and watched him twitch.

“Fuck,” he exhaled. His abdomen flex, in and out.

That was enough.

You pumped him harder, wanting to see his body jerk. It did. His hips bucked into your fist as you pumped, encouraging you to hold him tighter and go faster. You missed the feeling of him throbbing in your hands, him searching for mercy. You’d edge him for over an hour sometimes, just to watch him squirm. Tonight, he wouldn’t allow him himself the grace of losing himself to you, but his head was thrown back, mouth hanging open, struggling to catch his breath. You twisted, earning broken moan.

Jisung’s free hand clawed at his thigh, hoping the pain would distract him. You were doing so well; you were even considerate. But he was so overwhelmed by you. He could feel your heat radiate onto him. Your knees already shook above him. He could hear how your heart was beating against your chest, the sweat falling down your breasts, how wet you grew by the second. He could feel the blood pulse your fingers as they stayed unrelenting around him.

“Y-y/n,” he whispered lowly. “’m going to get a condom.”

Your eyes widened. You stopped. “Ji, don’t force yourself,” you said as he got himself up. “We don’t have to—“

“Hey.” He was already sweaty, his large chest heaving against flimsy fabric. He spoke with a restless look in his eye. “I said to trust me.”

He was a lot less cool than he planned as he got up with a groan and hobbled away, but it was only because every nerve in his body was ready to combat. He ended up pushing the bedroom door open too hard on his way, the hinges whining in protest. “Shit.” He forced himself to breathe, slow it down. He reached for the bedside drawer and missed the control he wanted.

“Shit, shit—”His fingers dragged through his hair, resetting. He could do this. He’d been preparing for this.

He emerged from the room to you still knelt on the couch, wringing your hands together. He let a long exhale before returning, landing with an audible creak. He spread himself wide and handed you the condom.

“You may do the honors.”

You were momentarily incredulous. You couldn’t remember the last time he’d been funny. You scoffed.

He smiled.

You pulled his pants and underwear down again and removed your shorts altogether. But not the panties out of habit - he always liked pulling them to the side. As you ripped open the condom with your teeth, his hands found your hips, his fingertips heavy against your soft flesh. It was hard to roll it on, the condom getting caught on how tacky his cock was from all the precum. When it finally fit, he groaned with a hop, shifting himself to get comfortable.

You positioned your hands in his shoulders. Before you could check in one more time, he lifted up and on to his tip. The initial stretch sent a ripple through your spine, he could feel it. You gasped at how little effort it took to slide down him; you wanted him so bad.

He actually needed you be as slow as possible, though. His mind was already jelly. He wanted to fuck right into you right then and there and make up for lost time. He’d take you there on the couch, the floor, the kitchen counter, the bed, later in the shower. The thoughts raced like visions. It was so difficult not to grip you hard and slam you down, but he kept himself in check.

“Good fucking girl,” he rasped as you slid down.

You were so full. Your wetness made it so easy to let him bottom out. It was like he was in your organs. Your forehead dropped to his shoulder, the both of you wordlessly admiring how it like it was like he was born to be buried inside you.

The stretch was intoxicating. Your fingers dug desperately at his shoulders, down his arms, while trying to regain your breathing. Jisung didn’t rush you at all as you took your time, his fingers drumming against your waist patiently. Good for him, but you were losing yours. Your movements began, languid and subtle.

It was like a slow burn, like a candle with a broken wick, but Jisung was alight. It was a simple affair; you never had to be fancy to drive him insane. You would drag yourself up almost to the tip, almost drowsily, and then glide back down, leisurely. Every so often you’d grind him demurely, with not enough pressure to provide more than modest friction. You loitered on his cock, making every inch of him feel every drop of you through the latex. Your idle pace made his nerves raw, hypersensitive. Each tiny motion, each flutter of your walls, roll of your hips, was electric and hot. You were all he sensed - all he heard, all he felt, all he knew. 

“Fuck, I missed you.”

His hands gripped you roughly in a fit of anguish. The pressure startled you out of your lazy stupor. Your eyes locked with his, as he revered you from below. Yours were blown wide, his were watery and red.

No one needed anything more to be said.

Jisung, abandoning all he had worked toward, began to push into you, a fast-paced rhythm snapping into you. All he could think about was you - you, who waited for him to come home when it was clear he wouldn’t. You, who rushed from work everyday to check if he was still there. You, who didn’t ask why he was bruised and cut up. His thrusts grew from slow to frenzied, knocking the air from your lungs, but plastered a smile on your face. Every impact was a jolt of pleasure.

Your nails scraped down his broad, sweaty back, drawing your signature. He was yours, you thought. As wet, sticky sounds mixed with breathless moans, choked gasps, and cut-off curses, you surrendered to him, at the mercy of his chaos.

“Y/n,” he whined, “look at me. Watch me.”

He held your face in his hand, forcing you to meet his gaze. He was the most beautiful you had remember ever seeing him. His eyes were teary and glazed. His hair damp, his lips bitten and bloody.

“…all because of you.”

Each slam into you tore through you with absolutely no grace - you couldn’t control how loud you screamed and he could barely control himself. He was erratic at this point, choosing to let himself be consumed by you.

All coherent speech dissipated into muffled moans as you collapsed into him, your high hot and unstoppable as it dared to crash. You didn’t even possess the strength to announce it, you merely trembled violently as your needy cunt tightened around him.

Jisung had the foresight to held you closer, his own rhythm faltering but not stopping. You shook, your core tightening violently, but he was still chasing his own pleasure. He was greedy. He was enveloped in you - you were scorching and strangled around his cock, as your back arched. You whined so gently against his ear, too. Your shaky breaths were the prettiest sounds he’d ever hear.

“I’m close, too, I promise.”

He knew he couldn’t be here forever. The way your heart beat against ribs was a sign you were growing too stimulated and needed your own release right then. He willed a few desperate thrusts, deep and hard, pounding into you a little bit more. With a jagged groan, he lost control and slumped against the couch, your walls clenching around him, squeezing out the last dredges of his orgasm as you fell victim to yours.

Silence.

Except for your uneven breathing and the fading thud of both your heartbeats, the apartment was quiet. Not the awful kind that had lived between you these past few months. This felt familiar. The kind built and softened over eight years together.

Jisung lifted you off him easily. You landed beside him with a graceless little flop, groaning tiredly before giving him a weak thumbs-up that made his chest loosen. You looked exhausted - flushed, damp with sweat, completely worn out. He probably looked just as rough, though his body had already started recovering.

“I’m gonna reheat your tea, babe,” he murmured as he got up. “And grab the baby wipes.”

You shifted like you wanted to follow him, or maybe stop him, but your body barely cooperated. Your lips parted around some unfinished thought before you looked down instead, guilt flickering across your face.

Jisung understood anyway.

“Or,” he said softly, settling back down beside you, “I can stay here a bit. Or a while.”

You smiled then - small and wobbly. Tears welled before you even noticed them, and Jisung brushed them away with confidently careful hands.