Chapter Text
Minho is four weeks pregnant.
He finds out on a Tuesday morning, alone in the bathroom of the apartment that no longer feels like his. The sunlight coming through the blinds is too bright, too cruel — it lands on the small plastic stick in his shaking hand like it’s exposing him.
Two red lines.
Clear. Unmistakable.
He stares at it longer than necessary, like if he waits long enough, one of them will disappear out of pity.
It doesn’t.
He laughs once. Soft. Breathless.
Of course.
Of course life would choose now.
The doorbell rings an hour later.
A thick envelope. His name is written neatly in familiar handwriting. He already knows what it is before he opens it.
The divorce papers are signed.
Chan’s signature sits at the bottom — steady, confident, final. The ink hasn’t even fully faded into the page yet. It’s fresh. Minho traces it with his thumb.
He imagines Chan signing it in his office. Straight posture. Calm expression. The same expression he wore when he said, “This is what’s best for both of us.”
Best.
Minho folds the papers carefully. He doesn’t cry.
Not yet.
His phone is already in his hand before he realizes it.
Changbin would come. Loud, protective, ready to curse on his behalf and threaten to sue someone for emotional damages just for the satisfaction of it. Han would cry first and ask questions later, clutching Minho’s shoulders like he could physically glue him back together. For one disorienting second, Minho even thinks of calling Chan — muscle memory, not logic. His thumb hovers there before he catches himself.
He exhales through his nose.
No.
His contact list scrolls almost on its own until it stops on another name.
Seungmin.
The irony makes him almost laugh. If he wants comfort, Seungmin is an odd choice. Seungmin won’t yell or cry or wrap him in suffocating sympathy. He’ll observe. He’ll assess. He’ll say the exact thing Minho doesn’t want to hear but probably needs.
Minho thinks about whiskey again — about numbness, about silence.
But he can’t.
His free hand drifts down to his stomach before the thought even fully forms. His palm settles there, tentative at first, then firmer, as if anchoring something fragile.
Four weeks. Probably.
It’s barely anything. A secret the size of a seed. A quiet pulse that hasn’t even formed properly yet.
He presses his palm there like he’s holding something fragile that might float away if he doesn’t anchor it.
“What timing,” he whispers to the empty apartment.
He almost laughs again. Almost.
Seungmin answers on the second ring.
“Hyung.”
No greeting. Just recognition.
Minho swallows. “Coffee.”
“Location.”
And that’s that.
They meet at a small café two blocks away — neutral ground. Not the one Chan used to drag them to during finals back in college. Not anywhere with memories.
The bell above the door chimes softly when Minho steps inside. The warmth hits him first, followed by the scent of roasted beans and fresh bread. It should feel comforting. It doesn’t.
Seungmin is already seated near the window, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, a ceramic mug resting untouched in front of him. His posture is straight but not rigid, expression unreadable in that way that makes people underestimate him.
He takes one look at Minho and doesn’t comment on the pale face, the too-straight posture, the divorce papers probably still sitting on the kitchen counter at home.
They order.
Black for Seungmin and sourdough and tea for Minho.
Seungmin notices that too.
“You hate tea.”
“It’s healthy.”
Minho ignores him.
The tea arrives. Steam curls upward in delicate spirals. Minho wraps his hands around the cup, absorbing the warmth, grounding himself in something simple and physical. They sit in silence for a moment and he’s thankful that Seungmin doesn’t push.
That’s what Minho appreciates most about him — no dramatics, no intrusive pity. Just presence.
“I’m pregnant,” Minho says flatly, like he’s just announcing the weather.
Seungmin blinks once.
Twice.
That’s it.
No choking on coffee. No “what?” screamed across the table.
Just a slow inhale.
“Will you tell Chan hyung?”
No tease. No judgment. Just quiet, steady concern.
Minho slices into the sourdough carefully. Too carefully.
“No.”
The word lands softly. Almost casual.
But Seungmin is watching him now — really watching him — with that irritatingly perceptive stare that feels like it strips the skin off his composure and examines what’s underneath.
“Because if he can’t be a good husband to me,” he says evenly, the knife pausing mid-slice, “what does he know about being a good father?”
The tightness in his throat comes fast, sharp and unexpected. He forces himself to swallow again, jaw locking.
You will not cry in front of Kim Seungmin. Absolutely not.
“I can take him leaving me, Seungmin,” Minho continues, voice controlled, almost clinical. “I- I can take him signing those papers like it’s just another document.”
His fingers tighten around the knife.
“But him denying my child — our child?” His jaw clenches. “That I cannot bear hearing.”
There it is.
Not anger. Not even heartbreak, not entirely.
Fear.
Not that Chan won’t love the baby. Minho knows him too well for that. Knows the softness he hides, the way he lingers over small things, the way he plans ten steps ahead for everyone’s safety.
That’s exactly the problem.
Chan calculates. He weighs. He measures consequences like they’re numbers on a scale.
And what if the baby becomes one of them?
And Minho would rather break alone than watch Chan look uncertain.
“Hyung isn’t like that,” Seungmin says quietly.
“You know him.”
Minho doesn’t respond, instead he stares down at his tea, watching the steam fade.
Knowing him doesn’t make this easier and that’s the problem.
Seungmin sighs softly.
“You can’t avoid him forever,” he says, voice level but firm. “He’ll eventually find out.”
Minho’s lips curve suddenly.
“Then I’ll tell him it’s yours.”
For a split second, Seungmin just stares at him.
Then his hand jerks, nearly knocking his coffee over. “The fuck are you thinking?!”
Minho laughs — light, almost manic, a sound that doesn’t match his eyes.
“Relax. You’d make a decent scapegoat.”
“Hyung.”
“I’m kidding.”
Minho leans back in his chair, crossing his arms as if settling into a debate. The posture is defensive masquerading as relaxed. He tilts his head slightly, expression cool.
“Imagine it,” he continues, voice smooth. “Lix will probably kill us both.”
“First of all,” Seungmin snaps, offended despite himself, “I have standards.”
Minho scoffs.
“Second of all,” Seungmin adds, leaning forward now, forearms braced on the table, the humor gone, “don’t turn this into a joke.”
The laughter drained from Minho’s expression as quickly as it came.
The café swells around them — porcelain clinking against saucers, low conversations overlapping in warm, indistinct waves, the sharp hiss of the espresso machine punctuating the air.
For a moment, Minho looks smaller.
Not physically.
Just… tired.
“I’m not joking,” he admits quietly.
The words sit between them, heavier than anything he’s said so far.
Seungmin’s jaw tightens as understanding settles in.
“You’re scared he’ll think it’s a trap.”
Minho doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t roll his eyes or deflect this time.
He just doesn’t deny it.
“You think he’ll believe you kept it to hold him back,” Seungmin continues, voice gentler now but no less precise.
Silence stretches.
Minho’s fingers uncurl slowly from where they’d been gripping his arms. His gaze drifts somewhere past Seungmin’s shoulder, unfocused.
“And if he says he doesn’t want it?” he asks at last, softly.
He finally looks at him then.
And there it is.
The real fear.
Rejection.
Not for himself — he’s already endured that. He survived the papers, the signatures, the way Chan’s pen didn’t tremble when it should have.
But this?
Seungmin doesn’t answer immediately because this isn’t something you swat away with optimism. It isn’t solved with a simple he won’t.
Instead, he chooses his words carefully.
“Then he’s an idiot,” Seungmin says evenly. “But he won’t.”
Minho looks down at his hands.
To his palm.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, his fingers drift downward again, pressing lightly against his stomach. There’s nothing there yet — no visible change, no curve beneath the fabric of his shirt.
“I won’t let him feel obligated,” Minho whispers. “I won’t have my child grow up knowing they were a compromise.”
Seungmin exhales slowly.
“You don’t get to decide for him.”
Minho’s gaze sharpens. “Watch me.”
For a moment, neither of them speaks.
Seungmin studies him — the rigid posture, the stubborn set of his jaw, the fear disguised as resolve. He’s seen Minho like this before. When he’s decided he’ll endure something quietly rather than risk burdening anyone else.
Then, softer, almost careful, Seungmin says, “You don’t have to do this alone, hyung.”
Minho’s lips twitch faintly.
“I know.”
Chan has a future ahead of him.
Courtrooms. Prestige. A name that means something.
Minho clearly remembers those nights.
Their apartment would be dim except for the yellow pool of light above the dining table. Highlighters scattered across thick law books, caps left off in distraction. Sticky notes clinging to the edges of pages like desperate little flags. The hum of the refrigerator in the background. The steady scratch of Chan’s pen moving across paper.
Minho would sit across from him, chin propped on his palm, watching.
Chan always looked the most beautiful when he was working hard.
Brows furrowed in concentration. Lips slightly parted as he reread a provision for the fifth time. That faint crease between his eyebrows appearing when he was thinking too hard, like his mind physically pressing against its own limits.
There were nights Chan would fight sleep stubbornly, codal in hand like scripture. His thumb would mark a page possessively, as if the law itself might vanish the second he let go.
He remembers the way cases used to overwhelm Chan — stacks of readings towering higher than his patience. That was when Minho would slide his chair closer.
Chan starts with fragments — half-formed arguments, messy thoughts, words that tripped over each other halfway out of his mouth.
He wouldn’t get far.
Because somewhere between “So the doctrine—” and “Wait, no, that’s not—” he’d stop, eyes drifting, shoulders sagging.
And then he’d lean.
Just a little at first.
Then more.
Until his forehead pressed against Minho’s shoulder like it belonged there.
“What if I just drop out? I’ll be your house husband instead. I’m just gonna stay here with the cats.”
Minho sighed like it was inconvenient.
It never was.
“And what if I go to jail someday?” Minho shot back, even as his hand came up automatically, fingers threading into Chan’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “Who’s going to defend me then?”
“Changbin will defend you, I can’t do this anymore,” Chan whined.
“No,” Minho said immediately, tugging lightly at his hair. “He will go to jail with me.”
“Focus now Bang Chan,” he’d say, even as his hand came up automatically, fingers threading into Chan’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.
Chan would hum at that, already gone.
“Can’t,” he’d admit, turning his head just enough to press a lazy kiss against Minho’s collarbone.
Minho would freeze for half a second.
“Yah. You said you needed help.”
“I do,” Chan would say, lifting his head just enough to look at him — eyes softer now, unfocused in that way that meant he was running on nothing but stubbornness.
Then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he’d lean in and steal another kiss.
Minho would click his tongue, unimpressed. But he wouldn’t move away.
“Bang Chan,” he’d warn, though his fingers were still playing with the ends of Chan’s hair.
“Define quasi-delict,” Minho would try again, pretending nothing happened.
“Distinguish void and voidable contracts.”
Then when Chan won’t answer. Minho clicked his tongue. “You called me here to study.”
“I am studying.”
“You’re lying on me.”
“Multitasking.”
Minho finally looked at him, unimpressed. “You’re lucky, I love you.”
Chan only tilted his head, pressing a slow kiss against the side of Minho’s neck.
“I love you more.”
Then Chan would get up and pace the length of the living room, one hand dragging through his hair, answering quickly — sometimes confidently, sometimes stumbling when his memory faltered. When he got something wrong, he’d look at Minho like he had personally disappointed him.
Minho would just shake his head, stand, and walk over to fix Chan’s collar absentmindedly, smoothing out a wrinkle that didn’t exist.
“You’re going to be fine,” he’d say.
Not because he was reassuring him.
But because he knew.
He had watched Chan build himself from nothing but discipline and stubborn belief.
Minho was there when Chan’s hands trembled before his first major presentation.
There when he came home after a brutal recitation, silent and tight-jawed, dropping his bag by the door like it had personally betrayed him.
There when he passed an exam he thought he’d fail — Chan’s relief so overwhelming he’d lifted Minho clean off the ground, laughing breathlessly into his neck.
Minho loved him most in those in-between moments.
Not during celebrations. Not during grand declarations.
But when Chan was slumped over textbooks at 2 AM, eyes red, whispering case doctrines under his breath like prayers.
Minho loved him when he was tired. When he was unsure. When he was becoming.
Because that was when Chan needed someone the most.
And Minho had been there.
Always.
Minho used to think he could run beside him.
But somewhere along the way, he felt like weight instead of support.
A distraction..
And Chan deserves to run without looking back. That thought had settled slowly, painfully — like realizing you’re holding someone’s coat while they’re trying to sprint.
So Minho signed the papers too.
Even when it felt like peeling his own ribs open one by one. Even when his vision blurred halfway through his signature and he had to steady his hand so the ink wouldn’t betray him.
He sits on the edge of the bed now, divorce papers on one side, pregnancy test on the other.
An ending.
A beginning.
Both happened on the same day.
He exhales slowly.
Chan doesn’t know. Chan will never know.
Minho refuses to be the reason Chan hesitates. Refuses to be the chain tied around his ankle when he steps into the life he’s worked so hard for.
This — this tiny heartbeat that doesn’t even exist yet — will not become a bargaining chip.
It will not become guilt.
It will not become an obligation.
“If I love him,” Minho murmurs, voice barely audible, “I let him go.”
And if loving Chan means stepping out of his future entirely — even from the parts that carry his own blood — then Minho tells himself he will survive that too.
He has always been good at loving quietly.
Even when it breaks him.
When he comes home, the apartment feels impossibly empty.
The air still carries Chan in it — faint cologne clinging to the edge of the pillow, the clean trace of his soap lingering in the bathroom tiles. It’s subtle, almost gone, but not quite. Like a ghost that hasn’t realized it’s supposed to leave.
Minho steps inside, boots soft against the floor, and closes the door behind him with careful hands. The click of the lock echoes louder than it should. For a moment, he just stands there.
The coat rack still holds one of Chan’s jackets. The kitchen counter is wiped clean in the way Chan always preferred — no crumbs, no water rings. The dining table is bare now, but Minho can still picture highlighters scattered across it, pages left open mid-thought.
He walks to the sink mechanically and pulls the pregnancy test from his coat pocket. He doesn’t look at it this time. He already knows what it says.
He drops it into the trash.
It makes a hollow clink against the metal can.
The sound is small. Final.
Minho freezes.
His fingers curl against the edge of the counter as something twists low in his chest. The idea of it sitting there — tossed aside between paper towels and coffee grounds — feels wrong.
Before he can think himself out of it, he reaches into the trash and retrieves it.
His hands tremble slightly as he unwraps it from the plastic bag. He stares at the faint lines again, steady and undeniable. Then, slowly, he pulls a sheet of tissue from the box beside the sink and wraps the test carefully, folding the paper around it as if it were fragile porcelain.
He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. Maybe because this is the only proof that something of them still exists.
He tucks it into the back of the drawer beneath the sink, hidden but not discarded.
Then he moves to the bedroom.
The bed stretches before him, sheets slightly crumpled from that morning — or maybe from weeks ago. Time has blurred in this room. The silence here feels heavier than the rest of the apartment. It still smells faintly of someone who once shared it.
Minho sits at the edge first, staring down at the mattress.
Then he climbs in and lies flat on his back, hands resting at his sides, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
His gaze drifts to the nightstand. The picture frame still sits there, dust collecting along its edges.
Their honeymoon in Jeju. Three years ago.
They’re both laughing in the photo, sunburnt and squinting, those stupid tangerine hats crooked on their heads. Chan had insisted on buying them from some roadside stall, said it would be a waste not to commit to the experience.
God, they look so happy.
He hasn’t turned it face down. He hasn’t moved it at all. In the bathroom, Chan’s toothbrush still leans in its usual place in his memory, neatly tucked and untouched.
His hoodies remain folded in the cabinet, smelling faintly of fabric softener and him.
I should wash these, he tells himself for the hundredth time. Or give them away. Or pack them up. Do something.
He doesn’t.
Because the moment the scent disappears, the last tangible proof that Chan was ever here will go with it.
Chan is still everywhere.
Even in the spaces where he isn’t.
Minho can still hear it if he lets himself—voices raised, overlapping, neither of them really listening anymore. Just reacting. Just trying to win.
You always do this.
And you don’t?
Then what do you want me to say, Chan?
Silence had followed, thick and suffocating.
And then—
That night.
Anger had blurred at the edges, softened into something reckless, something desperate. The kind of closeness that didn’t feel like love, not fully—not the way it used to. It was messy, unfinished. Neither of them said stop.
Neither of them said stay.
Minho squeezes his eyes shut, jaw tightening.
What were we even doing?
It wasn’t supposed to end like that.
Not after everything.
He remembers waking up to the quiet. The space beside him already cold, sheets barely disturbed like Chan had made sure not to leave a trace. No note. No message. Just absence—clean, deliberate.
Of course you’d leave first, he thinks, something bitter curling low in his chest. You always do.
And now, this.
A month of silence stretching thin over everything they never fixed, never said. A month of replaying that night, that fight, that look on Chan’s face right before everything tipped over.
A month of wondering—
If I had just shut up for one second… would you have stayed?
The apartment is quiet in a way that feels unnatural. The kind of quiet that hums in your ears. Minho lies on his side of their bed — no, his bed now — staring at the faint crack in the ceiling he’s memorized over the past four weeks. The sheets are cold.
He hasn’t turned on the heater even though the February air seeps through the windows, because the cold feels deserved somehow. Punishing.
His phone vibrates once on the bedside table.
A message.
“Take care of yourself.”
That’s all it says.
No nickname.
No Are you eating?
No I miss you.
Minho stares at the message for a long time. So long the screen dims. So long it goes black again. He doesn’t reply.
His palm moves to his stomach — hesitant at first, then more firmly. There’s nothing to feel yet. No curve. No change. Just the flat plane of his body beneath his oversized shirt. But he presses there anyway, protective without meaning to be.
His throat tightens.
The tears he held back all day finally break free again.
They don’t come in sobs. Just quiet, relentless tears sliding down the sides of his face, soaking into the pillow. Warm against the cold sheet. He doesn’t wipe them away.
He stares at the ceiling, vision blurring, chest rising and falling in controlled, silent breaths.
“I will,” he whispers into the darkness.
He doesn’t say for whom.