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Outside, the summer rain cascades, pattering against the windows and trickling down the exterior paint of the house.
Inside, the lighting is warm and casts gentle shadows along the walls. Someone laughs, loud and bright, in the kitchen. From there, the smell of slow-roasted potatoes and lamb wafts into the main room, where there’s music playing from the television that’s been set to a random radio channel. Golden oldies and red wine and cider and beers. Soft drinks and orange juice and a couple of other mixers kept chilled in the cooler by the sink. Warm throw-rugs and cloth-encased cushions on the couch in exotic patterns.
A rowdy card game on the right, a far more sedate conversation on the left. Chan, in the middle, parrying questions from Felix’s cousins on the topic of their recent trip to Seoul where they’d spent a week reconnecting with university friends in person and going on almost daily food-trips. It’s easy conversation despite the unending flurry of curiosity from the three who’ve never been out of Australia before and the two who have, but not to Korea.
Behind her there’s the tell-tale clink of ice against glass, and then a familiar hand on her lower back. Felix sets a refilled glass of orange juice onto her unoccupied coaster and smacks a kiss against her temple to the bemusement of his relatives.
“Hey, hey.” Chan nudges him, careful not to spill her drink as she picks it up. “In front of your family?”
“They think it’s cute,” Felix says, mouth twisting comically into a pout. Even now, it fills Chan right up to the brim with the same unending fondness that she’s felt since the day they met. “Right? Right? Jonno? C’mon.”
“Yeah, nah, mate—we’ve had to watch you make heart-eyes at Chris the entire night. It’s disgusting.”
“Oi,” Felix protests to scattered laughter. “You and Tara were exactly the same!”
“And then they had the kid,” Callum points out, “and now they’re lucky if they even get a moment alone to hold hands.”
“Hey. We hold hands. We hold hands plenty.”
They’re pretty fun, Felix’s cousins are. Even as goofy as Felix can get sometimes. Chan sips at her juice and thinks about the time she’d been terrified to come along as Felix’s girlfriend. That’d been years ago. Now, she’s part of the family. It’s nice. It’s really nice. It feels like being at home.
Felix’s youngest cousin, Allie, just a couple of years shy of twenty, turns to Chan and clasps her hands together, gushing, “It’s amazing that you’re having one too! We’re gonna have so many babies running around here soon, aren’t we?”
Just as Callum is about to open his mouth to say something like ‘babies can’t run,’ someone else cuts in.
“Oh, are you?” A passing aunt, perhaps—Chan doesn’t really remember all of Felix’s family members with how little they’d gotten to meet pre-pandemic—pauses on her way to the bathroom. “You’ve never mentioned it! When are you due?”
You.
“We don’t know,” Chan answers, smiling apologetically, “we’re still waiting on the agency to get back to us.”
“Oh,” the aunt says, eyebrows furrowed like she’s missing something, “you’re not…?”
You’re not.
The words lodge themselves high up in Chan’s throat. I can’t, Chan doesn’t say, but Felix rests a hand over her wrist and replies easily, “Ah, yeah, we’ve wanted to adopt since forever, actually. But we’re in luck, ‘cause like, they’ve moved us up the waiting list, they said it’d be anytime this year, actually—”
You can’t.
Chan excuses herself once the aunt’s left to go to the bathroom, leaving her orange juice to go stale in the air-conditioning and Felix’s cousins to glance after her with looks she doesn’t quite want to dissect at the moment.
The water from the tap is cool against her skin. She splashes her face a couple of times and rubs her eyes. There’s a towel hanging off a hook that she dries her hands on before she meets her reflection in the mirror. One of her hands comes up to wrap around her middle reflexively. We don’t know, she thinks. We can’t. I can’t.
Chan stares at her strong jaw and her big nose and her broad shoulders and thinks, almost bitterly, that maybe it’s a good thing that their kid won’t look like her. The baby won’t have her dark eyes or her messy curls or her lanky, double-jointed arms. The baby won’t have her matching dimples, set deep like a surprise waiting to pop.
The baby won’t have Felix’s pretty freckles, or his big, perfect smile.
There’s a knock on the door. “Channie,” comes Felix’s voice, and she unlocks the door for him. He shuts it behind him and looks at her with concern in his eyes. He’s always been sweet that way. “Chris.”
She lets him wrap his arms around her and tug her close, lets him kiss her cheek where there’s a drying tear that she refuses to acknowledge. The strange, unwarranted devastation that she doesn’t understand. The grief for something she will never have the chance to lose.
“I love you,” he reminds her, and she croaks, “I know.”
It’s good news. It’s perfect news.
Chan rereads the email a dozen times the night they receive it. Then, she rereads it the next night too, stretched out across the couch with their spaniel, Orion, curled up in their lap, snuffling at her hand every time she moves to idly pet him.
She thinks about the dog doing the same to the baby’s hand. Sticking his inquisitive nose through the columns of the cradle and licking the baby’s tiny hand when it squirms and grabs for his fur.
The baby. Their baby. It’s good to start preparing, their caseworker had written, because we’re looking at a timeline of three or so months, now.
Three months isn’t long at all. Three months until they’re sharing their home with someone new. Someone who’ll get to grow up with their habits and mannerisms, someone whom they’ll get to watch take on life as part of their family. They’ve waited for years and now they’re down to months, single digit. Weeks, even.
It’s the best news. It is.
(The want lingers. The hurt lingers. It is merciless despite all things.
It’s just unfair.)
Chan lets her phone fall to the side of the couch just as Felix, who’s been sat at his computer playing League with Jisung and Changbin for the last couple of hours, shucks his headphones off and turns to set one arm over the back of his chair. “Hey,” he says, “I’ve sorta been thinking about something.”
His eyes rest on her stomach, and Chan tilts her head. “What is it?”
She feels completely fucking ridiculous when the package finally arrives a week later and Felix hands it to her, eyes encouraging as he shuts the door behind him to leave her to open it. Alone, just in case she decides that it’s a terrible idea and throws it out and pretends they never bought it.
It’s wrapped nicely, like a little Christmas present. Thoughtful of the store, she supposes. She undoes the paper and ribbon and lays it out on the bed, poking at it a few times. The latex stretch of it bounces back, and she lets out an inadvertent laugh. Embarrassment curls around her spine and threatens to snap her with shame. She can’t believe she’s doing this.
Chan tugs it up around herself and fixes the straps up. Not too tight, just secure enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s going to slip right off if she jumps. Then, she tugs a loose shirt and her sweatpants back on. The weight of it bears down around her middle and for a moment, she feels a swoop of something indescribable in her gut. The same feeling she’d gotten when she’d first seen herself with longer hair, when she’d gotten top surgery.
When she goes to stand in front of the mirror, her mouth falls open.
She looks pregnant.
From the side, from the front—it looks indistinguishable from the real deal. The strap-on belly is a thick, round form that stretches down and out and makes her shirt drape in a way that looks and feels so real. She places her hands on the front, like she’s cradling it, and imagines feeling a little kick. Just right there.
Something muddled and complicated happens in her chest. She wants it so badly.
“Alright,” Chan says, running her hand over the bump. “Okay. Okay. Yeah.”
It’s so hard to look away.
A few more minutes. Just a little longer. Chan turns to the side again and drags her palm down over it. Imagines it growing bigger, day by day. This one that Felix had found online isn’t small by any means, but Chan can just picture it, in her mind, a little more roundness along the bottom, around her hips.
Speaking of Felix.
She goes out into the living room where Felix is lounging by the counter in an attempt to look casual. The moment he sees her, he stops and stares. Chan waits and watches as he pads over to her, eyes fixed on her middle. His ears are a little red at the tips.
His knees thump loudly against the carpet when he drops to the floor. “You look,” Felix starts, soft and amazed, “so good.”
Hands on either side of her waist, he leans in and presses a kiss to her belly.
Even though she can’t feel it, she still shivers. “Felix,” she says quietly, desperately hoping that he understands what she means by the words that she can’t say right now.
Felix stands, and leans in to kiss her sweetly, resting one hand along the side of the bump, where it meets her waist. That, she does feel. “You must be so tired from carrying our baby all day,” he murmurs, and Chan inhales sharply, eyes falling shut. Oh. “C’mon. Sit down. Wanna give you a foot-rub.”
“Felix, you don’t—” Chan begins to protest, because as much as they’re just playing at it, she’s not really—she doesn’t need it, he doesn’t have to—
Felix squeezes her hand, thumb running over her wedding ring. “Please,” he says. “I want this to be real for me too. Just for a little while.”
Chan cups his cheek. “Yeah,” she says, letting herself smile, “okay.”
He’s allowed to lead her to the couch, where she slowly takes a seat like she’s being careful not to jostle the baby, and shifts around just enough to get her feet up in Felix’s lap as the dog bounds over to get up with them too.
This is nice, she thinks, resting one hand on her stomach as Felix begins to knead along the length of her sole. Even if it’s just pretend, there’s no harm. It’s just for her. For them. She rarely lets Felix do this for her anyway—too stubborn and too stuck in the belief that she doesn’t deserve it. No matter how much Felix attempts to convince her.
But—just for a little while. It’s only fair.
It’s only fair.
Felix is the one who gets the idea to take a bunch of photos of her with the thing on. “Just for fun,” he whines, whipping his phone out. “Noonaaaa.”
“Bruh.” Chan swats at his hand. “Not when I look like this. Just gimme a moment to change into something else.”
She doesn’t own very many dresses, always passing over them for hoodies and shorts instead. Comfortable sweatpants and sweaters that are all based within the colour spectrum of black to dark grey. But—when she’d first come out, Jamie had dragged her out to the mall, insisting that she deserved to wear pretty things that made her feel pretty too.
Chan doesn’t think she looks very pretty in general. She still sticks out like a sore thumb next to Jamie, or Sana, or any of the other women in her life.
But she puts it on anyway. The sundress that’s loose enough to fit the bump under too. The one with sunflowers patterned all over it, yellows and oranges that bring out the colour of her pink mouth and her pale skin. The dress that Felix had seen her in exactly once, and had loved so much that she’d started teasing him about him wanting to wear it instead (he did, and they’d had fun with that too, but that’s besides the point).
Chan tucks her hair behind one ear. Maybe she’ll let herself feel pretty today. Just for once.
“Oh,” Felix says, head peeking through the doorway. He beams. “You’re wearing The Dress.”
“It’s a dress,” Chan says, “why d’you have to say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“With the capital letters.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Chan says. “I can tell.”
Felix’s face scrunches up, nostrils flaring, and Chan giggles. “Either way,” he declares, “you look amazing, so, c’mon. The sun’s in a really good spot right now.”
He holds his hand out, and she takes it.
And he’s right. The sun streams through the glass doors of their balcony and illuminates the open space where the couch and carpet are, lighting everything up in a pretty glow. Chan lets Felix take a zillion photos, laughing when he gets down on the floor and lies on his back to take one of her upside down, and protesting when Felix says, “One more,” for the thirtieth time. “No, wait, one more, promise.”
“’Lix, seriously, you’re gonna run outta phone storage at this rate—”
“I wanna remember this,” Felix says, snapping another as he walks right up to her. “Wanna remember us having our baby.” He slides to his knees, right there, and rests his cheek against her belly as he looks up at her through his lashes. “Take a selfie of us like this,” he murmurs, voice rumbling through her midsection, “and we’ll get to show her in ten years.”
Her, Felix always says. Like he just knows they’re going to have a baby girl.
“Eomma and appa,” Felix continues, “getting ready for our littlest one.”
Chan swallows back the intense wave of affection that rises in her throat and threatens to capsize her heart. “Yeah, little one,” she says, stroking his hair. “Smile for the photo.”
She fumbles the shot a few times before finally getting a viable one. She takes another for good measure, and the third is of Felix kissing the bump as she pets the nape of his neck. Then, when Felix straightens back up, she drops his phone onto the couch and kisses him.
They won’t show the photos to their kid, Chan knows. They won’t show them to anyone. They’re the kind of photos that belong in a private album, hidden in the bottom of a shoebox that’s hidden under the bed. They’ll go right in there, right next to the photos from the night that Chan proposed to Felix. Next to the photos of Felix dressed in silk and lace, the ones of Chan tied to their bed’s headboard. Next to the photos of them on dates way back in their college years, when Chan had been pre-transition and she’d been he at the time and hadn’t quite realised the reason for never feeling comfortable in his own skin—her own skin.
But they’d still looked at each other the same way.
Felix hadn’t ever cared. Felix loved her. Even back then. Even right now.
Felix, Chan thinks, letting their noses touch briefly before their lips touch again too, deeper, with more intention. Felix Bang, Chris Lee. And baby Bang-Lee makes three.
In hindsight, perhaps it should’ve been obvious that their night would eventually lead here.
“Channie, Channie.” Felix sounds drunk as he noses along the line of Chan’s bare thigh, slurring his words. He presses a wet kiss to one cheek before dipping down to lick a thick strip up from the base of her cock to her sensitive, stretched hole. Chan moans and bucks back into him, fingers curling into the sheets. “Love you.”
They’d had dinner together just half an hour ago. When Chan had gone to set her plate in the sink, Felix had bracketed her against the counter, catching her mouth with his in an imitation of their earlier kiss on the couch. “You look good,” he’d whispered, “but you look really, really hot like this.”
It hadn’t taken much for Chan to drop everything after that, all but throwing Felix over her shoulder to get him to their bedroom.
“Felix,” Chan breathes, already wrecked by the way Felix is touching her, hungry and gentle all in one, “please.”
“Yeah, yeah, just.” Felix shuffles closer on his knees. His arms snake around Chan’s waist and his hands rub at her still clothed belly like he’s trying to soothe her. She’s still wearing the dress but it’s hiked up around her hips now. “Can’t wait to put another baby in you.”
The words are like whiplash. Chan’s cock firms up, even though she hasn’t even touched herself—even though she can’t even reach down to do so, having to keep her weight on her arms.
Felix fucks her tenderly, slowly. “The doctor said to do it like this, remember,” he says, rubbing at the backs of her shoulders. His cock slides in, thick and hot, and slides back out again. In, out. Chan can only breathe and think about the way it feels when her knees shift further apart to accommodate his thrusts, driven by the heavy weight around her stomach. “So that you don’t get hurt.”
Chan mmhmms unevenly. “Feels good, Felix.” Her eyes flutter when Felix grinds in with little circles of his hips, driving the pleasure up until she feels it right how she likes it the most, deep inside and aching. “Mm. Yeah. Feels real good. You take such good care of me.”
“You do too. Fuck.” Felix gasps, a shuddery breath punctuated by the smack of his thighs against her ass. His movements quicken, but he keeps himself steady, one slick hand grasping for Chan’s hip as he pushes in again. “You’re gonna take care of our baby so well.”
“Yeah,” Chan says, and she lets out a whimper when Felix bends to press a kiss to her spine, and another, and another. His hands grope at her tits, thumbing and squeezing at her nipples until they feel sore in the way she imagines they really would feel if she were pregnant. “’Lix, please.”
“So full,” Felix says, like he’s in her head, like he knows exactly what she wants to hear from his honeyed mouth, “full of milk for our baby, Chris.”
Chan moans. Yeah, she thinks, dazed and awed as Felix continues to fuck her, he’s right, he’s right, she’s having their baby and she’s going to take care of their baby, their baby that Felix put in her. Abruptly, for one singular moment, it all feels so real—her muscles ache and her breasts feel full and her belly feels round, alive. “C’mon,” she begs, voice high and reedy, “one more baby, please, Felix, need it—”
She feels him come like that, clutching at her hips as he spills hotly into her. Knocking her up, making something inside her that’s all theirs. She can pretend, she can, just for another minute as she whines and moans for Felix to touch her cock. He does, fisting his small hand around her as he pushes his face into the side of her neck to suck a bruising kiss into her skin.
It does the trick. She comes on the sheets, and thrusts back against him with a sigh, once, twice, and then the high begins to subside slowly.
The latex is starting to stick to her, sweaty and uncomfortable. “Undo the thing,” she tells Felix, who takes a moment to gather his bearings and take it off her, but once he does, she lets out a breath and slumps down onto the bed. “Cheers.”
Felix flops down beside her, his hair sticking to his forehead. She reaches up to push it back, booping the heart-shaped freckle by his eye as she goes. “Feeling okay?”
“Yeah.” Chan’s hand lingers by his face. He kisses her palm, and she tweaks his nose playfully. “M'good. It was so good. Really good.”
“Good,” Felix echoes, and he snuggles close to her, arms sliding around her once-again slim waist even though they’re both gross and sticky and are most definitely lying in the wet spot. “Y’know, as much as you looked amazing with my baby, I really missed your abs.”
“Your priorities are astounding, Felix Lee.”
Felix laughs and grins at her, bright and easy. “I just missed you as you,” he says, looking up at her. “You’re perfect like this. I love you.”
She’d never believed it at first. She’d convinced herself that Felix wanted him, the Chan from before, the Chan that now only exists on paper and in photos, and that nobody would think of her like this, as this.
But Felix does. He loves her like this. And maybe she’s learnt to love herself like this too.
In a few months time, long after the fantasy has been set aside and tucked into the back of their closet, Felix is going to get to hold their baby in his arms and she’s going to get to hold the both of them in hers, her little one and their littlest one, and it’s going to be more real than anything she could’ve ever imagined.
It’s going to be enough.
Chan kisses his hair. “Love you too,” she says, and that’s that.