Archive of Our Own

Phase 1: The Rich Guy

***

The club was gleaming, only having been open maybe six months or so. It was full of music, and moving bodies, and body heat. Minho liked dancing, worked with an amateur company even, but that wasn’t really his scene. He preferred the quieter clubs, smaller bars. But Minho made the best of it, dancing with his friends, dancing with strangers. A night out. A different kind of night out. But it definitely didn’t end like any of the typical nights that had come before it. Minho had hardly been out in the crowd of dancers twenty minutes before someone intercepted him from going to get a drink. It was a slim, nicely-dressed man. Like he was going to a wedding.

“My employer, an alpha, is interested in spending some time alone with you.”

He gestured upward, to a private suite. The glass was tinted, but Minho could make out the figure of a man standing near it, hands in his pockets, in what looked like a dark, short-sleeved shirt. An alpha wanted to spend time with him. Not to read poetry and hold hands, he assumed. He looked assured of himself, standing up there. Assured enough to send an employee instead of trying to fetch Minho himself.

“Give me just a second to talk to my friends,” Minho said, glancing back up at the silhouette. The man nodded and moved away toward the staircase.

“Holy shit,” Hyunjin said, almost before the man could’ve been out of earshot.

“You know who it is?” Minho asked. A celebrity, maybe.

“That’s the private suite in this club. The only one who ever uses it is Bang Chan. That Bang Chan.”

Hyunjin was making a face at him like Minho was going to throw his hands up in surprise. It did take him back. Bang Chan. Bang Corp. They had their fingers in everything. Bang Chan was one of the richest men in the country. Maybe even the world. He’d have had to have been under ten layers of rock not to have seen that assured, dimpled smile on any number of TV interviews, or financial magazine covers. Or tabloids. Those, too. If he wasn’t the richest man in the world, he absolutely was the richest, unmated alpha. And Minho had caught his eye. It was like a celebrity, then. Definitely no poetry to be involved.

“Should I?” Minho asked.

He had three heads nodding at him, all wide-eyed.

“Even just to see the suite! They make people sign an NDA!”

Well, and that’d mean Minho couldn’t tell them about it either. But they’d know someone who had seen it.

“See you around, then,” Minho said, grinning.

It was more interesting than any other plans he’d had for that night. Though he felt conspicuous walking up the set of stairs behind the man who’d fetched him. Did a billionaire fuck any differently than the guy working the corner store? He didn’t think so. Though one of those two ought to pay the other more. He didn’t know if they were going to get into deep philosophical debates about the inherent jackassery of wealth, but his brain also stopped working shortly after getting ushered into a door that led past that tinted glass. The door closed behind him, and the sound of the club music faded to a distant thump of bass. But it wasn’t the quiet that caught him as he took off his boots to step further up into the room. It was alpha. The scent. He couldn’t have described it in any way that someone could have recreated it. Sensual, like the haze of dusk, a newly lit candle, and a warm clasp of body against body. It pulled his belly taut as the man who’d been leading him took him to a table.

“Standard NDA, if you could please look it over and sign it.”

Nothing unexpected there, then. It wasn’t long, a single page in fact. And he wasn’t a slow reader.

“He needs to sign the NDA first.”

An interaction was happening behind him in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He hadn’t seen the alpha in question. Chan. And he wasn’t signing away his life, he knew that, when he picked up the pen to date and sign it. He could feel a presence behind him even before he could set the pen down, before the paper was whisked away, and the door closed again. He stood, still, seeing only vaguely in the reflection of the glass that a face had neared his neck. He heard the inhale. When he inhaled, he wondered if it was imagination that the scent of an alpha got stronger.

“I couldn’t smell you from up here. But I knew you’d smell like this,” Chan said.

Like what?

“How did you know I was an omega?” Minho asked, turning his head slightly.

“Only part of me could. Come back this way.”

Minho could guess which part. And if that part hadn’t been right, the employee sent to fetch him would’ve been able to tell before asking Minho up. He was let through a second set of doors. But that time, there were only two of them in the room, and he had his first real look at Chan. He clearly worked out, the shirt fitting him in all the right ways. Even in the dimmer light of the second room, he could see that Chan’s eyes were lined, his dyed brown hair neat. And he was all about Minho. Looking at him, walking backwards like he could stand not to have Minho in front of him. Like Minho might get lost. Backwards towards an enormous king sized bed. No hand puppets and lemonade, then.

Chan reached for him, taking his jaw, turning his head so that Chan could look him over. It made Minho’s nose flare, his heart pounding at the overly familiar, actually quite rude, touch.

“I liked the way you moved. But how are you even more gorgeous than you were on the floor?” Chan asked.

Had he been able to move his jaw, he might’ve replied. But the question was rhetorical, it seemed, as Chan stepped closer, let the tip of his nose drag along the length of Minho’s neck.

“Fuck. You smell…” And Chan laughed at himself. “Sounds wrong, but ripe. Like you’d squish between my fingers. Are you protected?”

“I have an implant,” Minho confirmed.

Letting Minho go and moving to his left, Chan lifted a small device from the stand near the wall. “You’re familiar with an implant reader?”

“Of course,” Minho said. And he wasn’t offended by Chan not taking his word for it. He held out his arm, and heard the device beep. It would show the status of his implant, when it was put in, if it was active and not malfunctioning. It kept him from having a heat, or from ovulating. Something that someone like Chan specifically would have to be cautious of. Chan nodded at whatever he saw, and held it up to his own arm. He turned it to Minho, so that Minho could see the status of Chan’s own implant. Active. Within the last couple of months even. Between the two of them, dual implants would keep anything unwanted from happening.

That acknowledgement went unspoken between them.

Chan watched as Minho lifted his mesh overshirt over his head, leaving him in the nearly-sheer black tank top beneath it. Chan gestured, indicating he shouldn’t stop. He breathed, carefully, as he tossed his tank top aside, as he undid the belt, and the top button of his pants. He paused, wondering if Chan was maybe going to alternate with him. Instead, Chan watched as Minho worked the tight fabric down over his hips and thighs. Chan inhaled sharply. He had to have been able to smell that Minho was aroused. But like that, it had to have been even more obvious.

“How much?” Minho asked, teasing, testing just how far Chan could be pushed. Not that far, it seemed, as Chan took two long steps to close the distance between them.

“Everything,” Chan said, like he was at a board meeting.

And then he had an alpha all over him. Chan’s mouth on his neck, Chan’s hands on the skin he’d bared. And why only him? He pulled at Chan’s shirt, and with Chan’s cooperation, it fell, too. Skin for him to touch, too, that wasn’t just Chan’s admittedly strong arms. Pants were left behind in awkward puddles of fabric, underwear following as they eased toward the bed in mutual agreement. Chan was scenting him, marking him in little nips along his neck, his shoulder. When his knees threatened to give, Chan gripped him closer. And when he gripped, his hand grasping onto Minho’s thigh, Chan made a strangled sound. Minho could feel it, too, that the skin he’d touched was wet. From the moment he’d smelled Chan’s scent. From the moment Chan had touched him, he’d only been getting wetter. Slick. Ready.

Minho pressed his cheek to Chan’s neck, inhaled. The scent of Chan himself. Cologne, something sweet and murky.

“What are you going to do about it, alpha?” Minho asked.

Chan didn’t throw Minho onto the bed, but Minho wasn’t entirely sure he moved all under his own power either. Clambering forward with Chan behind him, touching Minho’s hips almost reverently, stroking up the inside of one of his thighs and pausing, his fingers circling but not trying to press inside even as Minho hissed.

“Why are you waiting?” Minho asked, trying and failing to look behind his shoulder.

“Not for me. I can’t wait to be inside you. Tell me if it hurts, or if it’s too deep,” Chan said. “Most omegas can’t take me, so don’t be afraid to tell me.”

Either he was huge, or he had an inflated urge to brag.

“Just put it in,” Minho said.

Chan huffed a little, and no matter how much Minho braced himself, tried to relax, his eyes still widened at the first press of Chan against him. Pressing against muscles that weren’t used to stretching so far. It was hard to think in the moment, to compare. Had he had bigger? Toys, maybe. And when Chan paused and Minho thought that was it, there was more. Thick and stiff and making his thighs alternate between spasms and jelly, tingles rocketing down his spine as he arched, moaned, when it was obvious Chan couldn’t get any deeper. Held against Chan’s body. Filled to what felt like the brim of him. Muscles fluttering around him, trying to feel out the edges of him as Chan panted harshly behind.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck, you—“

The sudden, total emptiness as Chan drew back hurt more than any part of him pushing in had. Chan was touching him, turning him, until he was on his back, his legs guided around Chan. Chan’s face was over his, eyes dark and intent. And he could see every expression moving over Minho’s face as he took Chan in again. Even if the angle was different, Chan still ground against him, unable to get any deeper.

“Incredible,” Chan groaned.

That would’ve been a word he’d have used, had he been able to use words at all. He felt like he was being devoured as Chan began to move. The tingles of before passed over all of his skin that time, making him want to twist, and gasp. What began slow, Chan pulling back an inch, maybe two, and easily, became quicker, deeper, rougher. It became audibly clear how wet Minho was for him, even over their moans. And when Minho reached to touch himself, Chan took his wrist, both of them, pinned them.

“You’ll come on my knot,” Chan told him.

Arrogant fucker. Sexy, arrogant, clairvoyant fucker. Because if his cock felt thick and heavy, the beginning of Chan’s knot made Minho’s eyes roll. That was the edge of pain, the stretch of it coming out, and pushing in. It made him gasp.

“I can’t—“

“It’s okay. I won’t take it out again,” Chan promised, almost growling with it. That was when it hurt, a flash of pain that subsided even as it lingered. Inside, it felt like Chan was wedging him wider. Chan was groaning, rocking him, rocking the whole bed. It made Minho gasp, but with wonder that time as it got tight. Tighter. Chan let Minho’s wrists go and Minho grabbed for him, but not to push him away. To pull him in. His head rolled back, almost silently keening as his body shook under Chan’s.

The only thing Chan got out as his own orgasm started was, “Omega.”

Minho’s body surged, and he came on Chan’s knot, came like he’d been waiting hours for it, like Chan coming demanded it from him. And when Chan’s teeth bit against the base of his neck, not hard enough to mark, at the same time that Chan’s fingers squeezed along his cock, Minho’s vision swam. He came, unable to stop, clutching almost painfully around the thick knot, without enough air to yell, or even moan. Helpless sounds, and cries, and pleas, as Chan sucked against his neck, and fondled his cock, and kept his knot nudged deep, right where it felt best. Until the sound he made was protest, his last orgasm still pulsing through him. That was when Chan's fingers slipped away, when all he did was breathe against Minho instead. His mouth was dry. His eyes blurry. He could feel that where the knot had stretched would be achy afterward, a lasting feeling that he didn’t think would quickly pass. Chan’s face was flushed when he lifted his head, when they looked at each other. He must’ve looked wild himself. He felt wild, like he’d lost himself in a fuck in a way he wasn’t sure he ever had before.

Chan’s eyes were heavy as he looked Minho over, and he shifted slightly, getting the hand up that had been by Minho’s shoulder. Chan traced Minho’s lips, and when he pressed to dip between them, Minho clamping his teeth on Chan’s fingertip made Chan laugh silently. It hadn’t been hard, just to let him know Minho wasn’t a toy to be fooled with. But to show there weren’t any hard feelings, he sucked that finger like it was a cock not long after, with his eyes on Chan’s. It made Chan’s hips shift as he watched, as he very likely imagined what Minho’s mouth would feel around his cock instead. And even that tiny movement had Minho keening in denial. Too much, when Chan was still tied to him. Chan used that finger, wet then, to paint over Minho’s lips.

“Fuck,” Chan breathed.

He leaned in, and for the first time, kissed Minho. Minho moaned at the immediate demand of his tongue, like he couldn’t resist the urge to taste Minho fully. It seemed there was another way Chan could have him. Not even part of him, but fully, completely as Minho stroked through Chan’s hair and kissed him just as fully in return.

There was a quiet knock on the door, and Chan tensed over him, reaching pulling the covers they were on up around Minho like he was hiding him somehow.

“Come in,” Chan ordered, his tone flat, irritated without being harsh about it.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but the gentleman’s friends are about to leave and one of them is inquiring if he’s going with them, or staying.”

“Tell them he’s staying,” Chan said, before Minho could even get his mouth open.

Minho snorted. The knot was obligating that a little bit longer. And ignoring that Chan had replied, he said, “Tell him I’m staying, and I’ll text him tomorrow.”

That seemed to satisfy the man who’d come in, and there was the quiet sound of the door closing again. Had he gone to get fucked? No. Was he giving it up once he’d gotten it? Also no. He’d get a taxi home, whenever it seemed things were wrapping up.

“Would’ve been inconvenient to carry you down the stairs still knotted,” Minho said.

And as Chan chuckled, he also relaxed, like he was satisfied they were safe again together.

“Don’t like someone near you when you’re like this,” Minho observed.

“Instinct,” Chan said. “Protection and all that. But mostly, the whole club would’ve been welcome to watch me fuck you. But no one’s going to interrupt me breeding you.”

Minho’s breath caught. The implants, he reminded himself. But it was the easy, offhand, infuriating way Chan had of speaking something like that as though it was true. As though that knot, just starting to give, had been for that purpose only instead of satiating pleasure. And Chan, still touching him in a dozen ways, didn’t miss the way he’d responded.

“Oh, do you like that? You’re gorgeous, and you smell like sin. Perfect. And so fertile that all an alpha wants to do is tie with you for hours to make sure that there’s no other chance but for you to grow soft and round with your alpha’s child.” The pang inside of him was like cymbals clashing, and Chan chuckled like he could feel it. “If it was your heat… That bite might’ve marked you. You could’ve been mine.”

And Chan really laughed when Minho hissed at that, kissing Minho hard.

“Something to think about for next time. Let’s see if this will let us free.”

There was both relief and regret when Chan braced Minho’s thighs, and got his cock free. Still thick enough, but with just the slightest of tugs, it let loose with Minho relaxed. Minho stared at Chan’s cock for a moment, a little startled, before glancing up to see that Chan had been watching him, and smirking.

“Yeah, all of that was in you. Incredible doesn’t even touch what you are. Think you can walk?”

Minho bristled. “You’re not that big!”

Apparently Chan found him amusing as Chan got out of his way and stood by as Minho rolled over and sat up. His head almost swam a moment, and Chan was in front of him almost immediately with an open bottle of water. Minho drank half of it, and sighed, almost sagging. Between the exertion, and all of that, he’d needed that. Chan finished what was left, and took Minho into a bathroom he could’ve fit another bed into. It had not one but two showers, one enclosed, one open. Minho used the enclosed one, when Chan let him choose. Not following him, when Minho wondered if he would. It let him rinse himself off, get the slick off his skin before it got uncomfortable. There wasn’t anything to be done for Chan’s come, not yet anyway. Chan had already finished showering himself, and was waiting with a thick robe that he held for Minho to wrap himself in. Chan stripped the cover from the bed, and Minho sat up against the plush pillows, cradling another bottle of water that Chan handed him. At least it wasn’t awkward, even with the fucking out of the way.

“A nice setup you have here,” Minho said.

“It is,” Chan agreed. “It cost quite a bit, but it’s been worth it.”

“How many omegas do you bring up here a week?”

Chan leaned back beside Minho, his eyebrows raising. “Two or three on average, I suppose.”

“And none of them can take your cock,” Minho asked.

“That’s right. Not all the way. The one who was up here last night barely took half of it before he was coming and couldn’t stand it any more. Though I guess that’s good for my ego, too. Some of them beg to come back and try again, but.” Chan shrugged, as though it was nothing to him. “He jacked me off after, so I got something out of it, anyway. Sometimes I just send them off and try another.”

Charming. Didn’t come in him, then. Didn’t knot. Couldn’t knot, if half his cock didn’t even make it.

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, then, though I didn’t do anything for it. It’s just how I’m built. I’ve definitely never had a cock like yours, though. If you want your ego inflated a little more.”

“Consider it inflated,” Chan said, smiling. “Do you fuck alphas often?”

“Not two or three a week,” Minho said. “One sucked me off a week ago. Don’t remember how long since I got fucked. So you caught me at a good time.”

He could see the way Chan’s eyes flared at the mention of someone sucking him off. It made him laugh inside. He was still in post-knot alpha mode. Like Minho was his cute little omega that was his to protect.

“So you got jacked off. Couldn’t even get his mouth around you?” Minho asked.

“Not much, and not for long,” Chan said. “His jaw hurt.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” Minho said.

That was a different kind of flare, as Minho touched Chan’s thigh. Chan’s cock wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t hard yet, either, when Minho pulled the cloth away to expose it.

“Whatever you do with your mouth, I’m going to enjoy,” Chan told him. “But you’re fooling yourself if you don’t think I’m going to want to knot you again instead of coming on your face.”

Minho raised his eyebrows, and wiggled a little more firmly between Chan’s thighs. “Let’s see where this takes us, then.”

He could have spent far longer like that than Chan might have wanted him to. He wasn’t some prodigy of cock sucking, but he thought he’d done all right for himself. Clean and hard, and hard for him, as a bonus. He couldn’t take that much of Chan’s cock in his mouth either, and his jaw did get tired. He liked drawing little sounds out of Chan’s mouth as Chan struggled not to touch him, guide him. He’d have only done that if he’d wanted to get bitten, to be honest about it. But he thought he got more of Chan in his mouth from the words of affirmation Chan was spilling, and lasted longer. Lasted long enough, in fact, for Chan to get desperate.

“Fuck. Please. I want to fuck you. My cock is yours, now let me give you my knot like you need.”

It rested there, ready to swell, as Minho looked up at Chan with friction-swollen lips.

“Show me I need it,” Minho said.

Show him, spread out on his back, Chan panting over him, filling him slowly again, but not quite so gently. Watching as Minho’s eyes sank closed, his mouth parting in a moan as it felt like Chan filled him more than he’d ever felt in his life. And Chan kept him close, kissing the taste of himself on Minho’s lips, scent marking along Minho’s neck and shoulders.

“This time I’ll breed you,” Chan said against his ear, hips working into Minho steady and quick. “Even when you’re pregnant I’ll fuck you and know that was exactly how you got like that. When you come on my knot it’s because you’re full of my cock and nothing will stop it from making a child in you. Everyone will know what I did to you to make you swell.”

Minho scoffed, using his thighs to pull Chan deeper. “You’ll have to do better than this, then.”

He wanted to fight it. Not because he didn’t want it - the fantasy of it. But because he wouldn’t let it be so easy. Chan wanted to own him, to plant a flag in him. And it wasn’t in him to go so easily. If Chan wanted him, he’d have to do the work. More than just talk.

He came on Chan’s knot again. Not once, but twice, gripping at Chan’s back, gasping as Chan bit at his nipples, stroked him. Made him come, gasping Chan’s name against his mouth, and with Chan groaning as the squeeze around his knot. Breeding him. Minho snorted.

“I want this again,” Chan said, still huffing against him.

Minho agreed with that, his body already quite willing. But then Chan asked, when? Which trickled in slowly. Not that night, then. Again. A different day.

“Almost any time,” Minho got out. “I work, but—“

He couldn’t lose his job to follow an alpha’s dick, even an exceptional one. Definitely not an alpha the reports had suggested might’ve put the terms playboy and fuckboy on the map. He had that luxury. Rich. Good looking. Hung like a dream, and with enough of an alpha’s attitude that it was a turn on instead of a turn off. Maybe not to everyone, but to him.

“We’ll exchange numbers. I can text you,” Chan murmured.

It was the softest he’d been, stroking Minho’s hair, kissing and breathing against his neck. The alpha thing, again. Post-orgasm possessiveness.

But getting fucked by him again? No, Minho wouldn’t mind that at all.

***

What Chan wanted, Chan got when Chan wanted. Some of the time. Did he want Minho again? He certainly had. The last two nights in fact, he’d gotten messages of where to go, what room to go to. It made him wonder if he was going to get another invitation that day, too. He wasn’t going to decline. Regular sex felt good on him after being without for so long. Nice hotel beds, good food, great orgasms. And with a man who was handsome, and smelled amazing. The money paid for some of it, but that was less Minho’s concern. Chan would get his fill, and they’d see what happened after that. Chan was used to having fun, taking what interested him. Going to his club room, snacking on omegas as he wanted. Well, and for then he wanted Minho. His friends had the gist of what he was up to. The NDA, that he’d been given a copy of, meant he couldn’t blab about it. But by reason of being there when Minho had been called up to the lair on high, they knew. He didn’t have to say anything specific for Hyunjin to send a shushing face and winking emoji back at him when Minho indicated he’d be out. He wasn’t sure what he’d have said. Sure, getting fucked within an inch of his life. Great. How are things with you?

Minho looking up from his computer to find his manager all but wringing his hands had Minho blinking. He was being given the afternoon off, and there was a car waiting for him outside. The first part happened on holidays sometimes. He almost wondered if he’d missed one coming up. But as he grabbed his stuff, it was the car waiting outside part that really raised his suspicions. Unless he’d secretly won the lottery, or it was his birthday and he didn’t know it, something was up. He had a feeling. He wouldn’t have called it a sinking one. It half felt like a sword might appear in his hand as he went out the doors and saw a limo waiting there and a driver beside it who smoothly opened one of the back doors for Minho to enter. And sure, he could’ve pivoted and went down the sidewalk instead. He knew he wasn’t getting abducted by the mafia or something. It wasn’t some ooh shock when he got into the car to see Chan sitting there, relaxed, legs spread. Minho sat primly with his jacket on his lap as the door closed after him.

“Did you…just summon me out of work? Like I’m your kid in school who needs to go to the doctor?” Minho asked. “Do you own the fucking company or something?”

Instead of being even the slightest bit sheepish, Chan had the gall to laugh about it as Minho hastily buckled in before the limo could dart back into traffic. He could imagine his coworkers watching from above.

“It’s a subsidiary,” Chan said. “So, yeah, a thread was pulled to encourage them to give you the afternoon off without any mention of me.”

“Subtle,” Minho said. And unless the higher ups had no brain, they’d have to have known where the order had come from.

“As I could be.. I didn’t call them up and tell them I needed to fuck you. But they’d have done what I wanted one way or the other.”

Absolute faith in his own power. There was that little tickle of fear in some way. If Chan was annoyed by him. If Minho didn’t give Chan what he wanted, put out when and how he wanted, then Chan could pull more than a thread. He could pull strings, and ropes, and whole factories of them. He could shut down Minho's branch. He could keep Minho from getting hired almost anywhere, not just at what businesses he owned, but for who he did business with. Chan could ruin him. And he knew it was a little sick that he actually found that arousing. The abstract of it, anyway. And Chan could tell it, the way he inhaled, the way he reached to touch Minho’s leg. So sensitive to every change of Minho’s body. It was why he was good at fucking, if Minho was honest.

“What are you thinking about?” Chan asked.

“Where we’re going for your middle of the afternoon booty call.”

Definitely not the many ways Chan could dominate him. Chan’s mouth twisted into a bit of a growl, and he reached pressing some sort of button. Even before the limo came to a full stop, Chan had undone his seatbelt, reached to undo Minho’s. He looked out the window, half expecting to see they’d pulled up to some sort of hotel. Or any building at all, in fact. Instead, they were in the far reaches of some store’s parking lot where only stragglers parked. A limo, not exactly subtle. Chan reached, curling his hand around Minho’s neck and kissing him hard.

“Take off your pants,” Chan said.

The windows were tinted dark. Chan was opening his own pants.

“Can’t even wait to get to a hotel?” Minho probed.

But he wasn’t protesting. He’d slipped out of his shoes, out of his pants and underwear. Wet from his earlier thoughts, and just being close to Chan at all. The smell of him in the limo’s confines like white-hot smoke. Chan wasn’t pulling Minho into his lap for some slow, sensuous fuck. No. He was kissing Minho, mouthing at his neck, groaning as Minho ground against his cock. And when Minho demanded what he was waiting for, it was that same cock inside of him as he sank down around it. Watching Chan’s head arch back, his moan filling Minho’s ears as he luxuriated in Chan taking his cock straight in. At least the limo had good suspension as they rocked with each other, pulled at each other. Chan’s scent, his cologne, his cock, his hands, it felt like it was all making Minho drunk with more than he could process. Forgetting where they were as they wrapped around each other, Chan fucking up into him as Minho settled, gasping. And the knot, it was no slower than he’d thought it would be, chasing his own pleasure as he spilled on Chan’s belly, as Chan bit against his neck and came deep in him. Chan stroked him through coming again, the knot a hot, thick presence in him as he panted and groaned. His legs and muscles were straining. His lungs were working hard, with Chan’s arms banded tight around him. When he came back to himself, when he lifted his head to peer blearily out of the back window of the limo, he watched someone push a shopping cart into a metal cage for return.

He was knotted on an alpha in a limo in a parking lot. That was his life, apparently. He closed his eyes again, letting himself relax, letting out a long sigh as Chan nuzzled into his neck. It took a few minutes, but he pushed back a little, waiting for Chan to be ready to open his own eyes.

“I can’t just go running off in the middle of work all the time for booty calls. I have bills to pay.”

“I can compensa—“

Chan blinked at him, silent because of the hand Minho had almost immediately pressed over his mouth.

“I’m not a prostitute. Today’s your freebie, one time get out of jail free card because it was hot. You don’t pay me for sex, or compensate me for my trouble or whatever. You want to hook up, next time we do it when I’m free, not when I’m working.”

Chan tugged at Minho’s wrist, freeing up his mouth.

“All right. I’ll agree to that. But I wasn’t trying to insult you or pay you for the sex.”

“No, just for my time. I imagine you think money gets you everything you want, whenever you want. My time isn’t one of those things. I’m here because it’s fun, not to suck the golden teat. You’ll have to show a little restraint.”

That did make Chan’s lips twitch as he eased Minho so that their faces were closer.

“Then the only thing of mine that’s golden here is what’s knotted in you,” Chan said.

“He has a high opinion of himself,” Minho said, as though observing to someone who wasn’t there. And like Chan had expected that, he laughed, kissing Minho, and not stopping until the knot had given way. He got himself dressed again, making sure to be cautious about leaving a mess so someone cleaning up behind them didn’t have to suffer. They ate dinner in the hotel room after they’d showered, fucked again before the night was over. In more comfort and style, that time.

“You’re incredible,” Chan murmured, knotted in him again. It made Minho preen with no amount of embarrassment. It wasn’t a frivolous thing, or even meant to arouse. It was the compliment of alpha to omega. It hit him bone deep, a satisfaction he couldn’t begin to explain. They weren’t mated, but it went beyond that. He wasn’t offended, just as he hadn’t been the times before, when Chan left him there in the middle of the night. To go back to his own place, get ready for work, whatever. Minho made his own way home when he woke up, pleasantly satisfied.

They spent six of the first seven nights after they met together. Several nights the week after that. The longest stretch apart was three nights when Chan had been at a conference in the middle of the week. He’d mused out loud that he’d take Minho on the trip with him, but he didn’t think Minho would let him. Minho hadn’t disagreed. If Chan wanted to get laid while he was gone, he was a big boy who’d managed to do so before.

He was human, though. If most omegas before Minho hadn’t taken all of Chan’s cock, then he was unlikely to find another in just a few days. And then he’d be back, sniffing around. And while Minho wasn’t privy to absolute information about whatever happened while Chan was gone, the sniffing around part had been true. And if the way Chan had fucked him when he’d gotten back had been an indication - three knots before the sun had even come up - he was fairly sure Chan was making up for lost time. And it was hard not to smile about that into the pillow his face was on, when there was a naked man panting behind him, and a thick knot throbbing in him. If Chan asked, he was smiling because he’d gotten off. Minho knew better.

***

It was another hotel room, set up with snacks and drinks, that Minho waited in. He’d been left the key in his mail box, a text message telling him it would be there. He ate dinner, picking at it more than anything with his stomach feeling not quite into it. Excitement, he’d told himself. It’d been two nights since they’d met up, though they’d gotten off on the phone together the night before. He was ready, more than ready. And he’d dressed, and gone to the hotel, walking in as though he had no concerns, letting himself into the room to wait. Chan was occasionally there before him, but not that night. Minho tore back the blankets first, and the sheet, giving them a nice place to start on. They’d fucked on top of the hotel blankets a few times, which hadn’t been ideal. He didn’t particularly care what it looked like, letting the cloth drape down as he went to browse the food that was there. He selected a grape, and then a few more, hoping that would help soothe the flipping feelings in his stomach. It had, by the time Chan let himself in. He’d stripped off his suit jacket and tie already, only in his dress shirt and slacks. And Minho watched him come in a ways before he stood from the bed. He was dressed like Chan liked, in sleek fabrics, dark colors. And he could see Chan’s expression get more intent the closer he got.

No greetings. No how-are-you’s. Chan wrapped both arms around him, pulling him up close. And kissed him with just as little restraint. Chan knew what he wanted, how he wanted it. And knew he didn’t have to play at soft seduction for Minho to want to respond to him. He moaned as Chan kissed him, as the taste of Chan replaced the sweetness of the grapes.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Chan groaned and moved to begin nipping his way down Minho’s neck. It would’ve been a lie to say Minho hadn’t as he strained to breathe against Chan’s neck as well. The smell of Chan’s cologne had always interested him, drawing him in. He inhaled, puzzled by the tight feeling in his chest rising again after it had settled. He breathed in again, and felt his stomach turn, the back of his throat almost rippling as he pushed himself back, half gagging into the back of his hand as Chan let him go.

Chan blinked at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s your cologne.”

Even thinking of the smell had him gagging again, turning and making for the bathroom in case. Just being there made him feel ill, mind replying why he’d fled there to start with, though he caught himself before his throat could tighten again, breathing carefully, sucking air between his teeth as he braced himself on the counter. He hovered between the sink and toilet, and Chan turned on the overhead fan after him.

“Are you all right there? I’m going to shower this off. I’ll get a different room to do it if it’s too much.”

“I’m fine,” Minho got out, still breathing carefully. “Go ahead.”

There was the feel of steam as Chan stripped and got into the shower. The smell of soap. But that was a nice smell, a clean one. He’d eaten something that hadn’t settled right, clearly. There wasn’t anything in that cologne that would’ve done anything like that. He liked the smell. And had to stop thinking about it before he actually made himself sick.

“I’m going to get a drink of water,” Minho said.

“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute,” Chan said.

He got that water, sprawling onto his back on the bed. He smelled of the bed, too, but nothing there smelled odd. Just the cologne. Chan’s neck, when he came out in a hotel robe, was pink from scrubbing.

“Hopefully that does it,” Chan said, and eased onto the bed beside Minho. “How do you feel?”

“Better. I don’t know what that was,” Minho said. “Maybe something I ate.”

“Is it okay now?” Chan asked, and Minho leaned in, sniffed halfheartedly at him.

“Yeah.”

At the answer, Chan leaned right back, nuzzling into the base of Minho’s neck and inhaling. It half felt good, half felt like he wanted to protest if that was Chan's thought, some sort of foreplay. Yeah, he was better, but still not great, and definitely not in a way he could stomach sex, like his stomach might revolt at any second. But Chan’s head lifted after worrying at his neck a little.

“You smell…” Chan said. “I don’t know how to explain it. You smell like you, but when I really focus, you smell like… Like me.” That wasn’t so unusual, for them being lovers. Maybe something lingered from the last time they’d hooked up. They sat in silence for a moment as Chan took a bracing inhale. “Could you be pregnant?”

The sudden shift of the conversation had Minho’s head snapping to the side, staring at Chan.

“No. I have an implant. You have an implant.”

“They can fail,” Chan said. “Smell me. What do I smell like now?”

He still smelled sexy and exciting, when Minho hesitated, but complied. He was curious, after all, and every part of him was denying what Chan had suggested could be true. Instead of only sniffing, Minho did as Chan had done, taking several full inhales against Chan’s neck, and letting that wash over him. Even if Chan had recently washed, the scent of himself was still readily apparent under the soap. Still sexy, yeah, and there was something else. Instead of making him sick, it felt almost the opposite. Chan smelled like Minho was walking through a cold night, snow up to his waist, and lost. And like Chan was the warmth of a cave, something he could crawl into, burrow into. Safe, and warm, and—

“What do I smell like?” Chan prompted him again.

“Safety,” Minho said.

Chan’s hand curled hard into the sheet under them as he cursed softly under his breath. It was a bad sign, and they both knew it. For a moment, that hand that had just made the sheet creak with strength, hovered gently over Minho’s abdomen, like he could divine what rested inside. If anything. Maybe he wasn’t pregnant. Maybe it was a breakthrough heat, a false sense of connection encouraging them to get to it. A weird burst of hormones that had nothing to do with anything. Not just a weird bit of food.

Chan sat up, retrieving his phone and typing furiously on it for a moment.

“We need to know for sure. There’s a medical spa my parents are fond of nearby. We’ll book you a room for you to stay there in comfort while tests can be done. They can extract fetal DNA from the blood these days. I’ll pay for it to be rushed.”

“Don’t want me wandering the world alone in case it is your child?” Minho asked. And heard Chan snort. “Is it safe there? No beatings.”

“It’s safe. If they don’t take care of you, they’ll answer to me. If it is— If you are pregnant. And all of that. We’ll figure out the next steps when we have the confirmation.” Chan’s phone dinged and he checked it again. “They’re preparing a room for you now. We can be there within the hour. Do you feel steady enough to go?”

He did, and he didn’t. He needed time to think, and time to orient himself, and Chan was hustling him. That was what he did, hustle people. He marked his path, got his way. Always. Fighting it was like fighting the tide. If it was a spa, then it might be relaxing.

“Let’s go, then,” Minho said.

He got himself back together, moving slowly as Chan dressed as well. They left the room only half used, not the tryst they’d been expecting. And Chan didn’t touch him as they rode together in the limo to the two-story building tucked among trees, with a lake glimmering in the moonlight beyond it. Maybe they’d drown him. Do away with the evidence. It was ridiculous. He could run. But he hadn’t sensed any malice in Chan. Confusion, frustration, determination. All of those, yeah.

There was no pause at the front desk to check in. They were led to the far end of a wing to a large room that didn’t resemble the type of institutional sterility he’d expected. There was a bed there, a real one. Real furniture. A large window overlooking the dark lake. A mini fridge and kitchenette, it was cozy, like some sort of studio apartment. There, he signed a raft of paperwork, including one that allowed the staff to talk to Chan on his behalf, and about his care, and results. It concerned both of them. There wasn’t anything anyone would find out that he cared to hide. Not about that, anyway. Chan stayed, knees on his elbows most of the time, looking rather grim and serious. One of the staff came, directing him to the bathroom for a urine sample. Another came not long after that to draw blood. He didn’t wince at the pinch of the needle, and knew what it meant. They’d test to see if Chan was the father, and whatever else to confirm the urine sample. If the urine sample showed a positive result.

Word came shortly after that in answer to the first sample, with both of them in different chairs, in almost silence besides Minho picking at the tape that held the cotton ball against where the needle had been. The woman who knocked and entered with the news was there for only moments, handing Minho a folded printout and leaving them in privacy. It told them what Minho had at that point reluctantly accepted, and what Chan had been far more sure of.

He was pregnant.

***

Chan did not stay overnight, at least not with Minho. The room was just as comfortable and private while alone, but the next morning after a breakfast had been brought to him, a nurse arrived asking if he felt well enough for an ultrasound. They settled on a time, and when Minho was retrieved to go to a room for the ultrasound, Chan joined them in the hall, silent and somehow looming with it.

“I won’t go in with you if you don’t want,” Chan said.

Giving him that choice. He waved a hand, indicating it was fine. Chan still didn’t have the DNA confirmation he was so eager for, but Minho knew well enough for both of them. He hadn’t had sex with anyone but Chan since they’d met. There was little doubt for him. And given that it was his body that had been almost guaranteed not to conceive that had betrayed them, he felt he owed it to Chan, at least a little. For that first sight. Something more than smell, and words on paper.

The gel that was squeezed onto him was warm, at least, and Minho relaxed back, his eyes closed. It was Chan’s slightly sharp inhale that had him opening his own eyes, to look at the screen with its black-centered void, and the little kidney-bean shaped haze inside. Well, little wasn’t quite the word. It took up almost a third of the space, and seemed to rest there. There were various clacks, and keyboard sounds. The sound of whooshing. Screen shots being taken. Or whatever was being done. There was a flutter of activity when the screen changed again. Cardiac cells. What would be a heart.

“Seven weeks, four days,” the tech said, when it seemed it was finished. “As an estimate. The doctor will be able to confirm a due date.”

“Seven weeks?” Chan asked, his voice steady.

Almost eight. They hadn’t been sleeping together for two months, but the tech explained it was by the size of the fetus itself, how that sometimes resulted in a couple of weeks being added from the date of conception. Because he had an implant, there was no heat to go by. Had it been that long? He couldn’t have gotten himself pregnant. They were left alone again, with printouts of the best angle of the little blob.

“Five weeks? Six weeks?” Chan mused out loud again. “I don’t remember the exact date we met. The NDA would have it. So it’s possible.”

“Unless it’s a medical miracle on my part, it’s absolute,” Minho said. “Parthenogenesis hasn’t been demonstrated in humans before. Maybe you can make another fortune off of me.”

That got a laugh out of Chan instead of the tightly controlled words. They shared an amused glance, at least. The doctor was there shortly after, briskly efficient, and very kind, and not at all asking any questions other than Minho’s condition, his occupation. Then giving suggestions for supplements, and activity levels. Including sex and his lack of restrictions there for the moment, not looking at them, as she tapped those recommendations into a laptop to be forwarded to Minho. His body would change. His ability to dance would, from the stretching of ligaments to the change in his center of gravity. He would have to withdraw from public performances. Maybe then at least coaching, stretching, practicing. Staying involved. Others had had children, took breaks, and returned. She numbed his arm, carefully removing the implant that had been as useful to him as a raincoat made of paper. He was bandaged, and he breathed carefully, slowed his heartbeat, breathing carefully as the visit concluded. It was only a preliminary visit. He would need to be established with a doctor who specialized in pregnancy and birth. Oh yes, the follow up to the event they were already at. The part he hadn’t yet begun to consider where a baby ceased to be a concept.

Chan followed him like a shadow to the room, the quiet privacy of it. The lake was beautiful that day, bright, glittering. The ultrasound photo was dropped onto the table as Minho, suddenly half queasy, poured himself into a chair with a bottle of sparkling water.

Chan was on his phone again, as he too sat.

“The NDA was signed five weeks and one day ago,” Chan said.

Their eyes met and Minho snorted.

“Congratulations, you’re very fertile,” he said to Chan.

“Apparently you are, also.”

He resisted reaching to touch the bandage on his arm. His body had given him no choice in the matter. He hadn’t ovulated because of Chan, but Chan had certainly been there at the right time. If not Chan, then perhaps some other alpha would’ve approached him in Chan’s place. Without even knowing it, he’d been ready for it. Maybe even looking to be— What. Bred? Chan had teased him with it. Like he’d spoken it into existence somehow. He understood why Chan had taken him to that place. Very private, very secure. Keeping Minho, and the assumed child safe until they could confirm the possibilities. He suspected the implant would be tested, to see if Minho had been lying, or trying to trap Chan into a continued association with him. A very tangible and physical association.

“Do you need anything?” Chan asked. “Clothes? Food? Different blankets, electronics?”

Minho shook his head, looking around the room. “No, I’m fine for now. How long do you intend for me to stay here?”

He could walk out, when he wanted. Or assumed he could. But he was interested in Chan’s answer. It was not a prison. The situation they’d found themselves in was a complication, but from Chan’s point of view, he wasn’t sure how much of one it was. Chan was rich enough that any problems he encountered could be arranged, somehow. Disappeared. It made him watch, cautious, as Chan watched him just as carefully. Wary. Two animals in a cage they hadn’t intended to fall into.

“Until we get the confirmation of the blood test,” Chan said. “Then we can be more certain of what our next steps are. I wanted you to be able to relax until we know. Both because of who I am, and. Well. As an alpha. Better here and safe than keeping you near me so publicly. The blood test is overkill, but I need that box checked. It’s too important not to.”

“I’m not judging you on that. You don’t know me, or what I was doing between us meeting up. You’re doing your due diligence.”

A corner of Chan’s mouth quirked. “So if you are comfortable, I won’t take away from it. If you think of anything you need, text me, and I’ll make it happen.”

“My job—“

“We’ll let them know. Just take care of you.”

Chan patted his hand almost awkwardly, and left Minho there again. Minho exhaled, averting his eyes from the ultrasound photo in favor of looking out at the lake. He understood why Chan wanted him there. And though the NDA they’d signed wouldn’t have covered any of that, he didn’t pick up the phone, call his friends, or even his parents. For all they knew, his life was continuing as normal. They’d have questions, and those questions he didn’t have any answers to. Not yet, anyway.

***

It was another day before the other results came in. His bloodwork, just the simple counts of it, had looked good. But the results of the DNA test had been what he suspected they’d both been most concerned about. Minho to get them over with in interminable waiting, and Chan to have the black and white confirmation in his hands. It was there, he knew that much, when Chan tapped at the door and came in. He could see it on Chan’s face.

“The courier’s not far behind me,” Chan said.

There was not much small talk, Minho answering that he was fine, that he’d been eating all right, felt fine, before another tap on the door. It had to be signed for, and Minho gestured that Chan should sign for it. When the door closed behind the courier, it left them alone with the envelope, and silence.

“Did you want to…?” Chan offered, holding out the envelope.

Minho shook his head. “No. I already know half what’s in there anyway.”

Chan acknowledged that with a nod, and sat down, letting out a breath as he undid the top of the envelope and drew out the papers inside of it. Minho watched him read it, watched him skim, then go back up to the top of the page to read again, more slowly.

“The probability that I am the father is 99.9%. Plus a lot of other nines,” Chan said. Minho could have told him that part without any sort of test, but he knew the value for Chan in knowing absolutely for certain. An alpha would know, gut-deep, but some instincts weren’t so easily believed with how removed they were from the origins of them. And Chan had said that Minho had smelled like him. Or whatever about the pregnancy that made Minho smell familiar to him. But Chan had paused for a moment, taking all the air out of the room as Minho waited for him to read the second page, which held information not even Minho knew yet. “It’s a boy.”

The kidney bean was a boy, then. A son. Only his little finger tightened on the arm of the chair, not wanting to be a cliche of touching his stomach, like it would feel any different than the day before, or the day before that. Kidney beans didn’t take up much space. He didn’t have an ultrasound in his fingers. A boy. Somehow more real than the abstract of baby, or child, or fetus.

Chan carefully tucked the paperwork back in the envelope, and set it on the table beside him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced together. A familiar pose, but instead of looking at some abstract spot, his eyes were on Minho.

“Then we’ll discuss next steps. Are you aware of how inheritance law works among pairs like ours?” Chan asked.

Minho blinked at him. Inheritance law. Usually it went along bloodlines, but bloodlines that had two specific features. It was with a mating bond completed or registered before conception, or by legal marriage afterward. But either of those states had to be conferred before birth. For the baby, for this boy, to be eligible to inherit Chan’s great fortune, he had to be acknowledged legally as Chan’s child. There were other ways. Adoption one of those. But it was complicated, needlessly so. And if Chan later had another natural child within any of those other two states, their rights would automatically supercede, though not entirely replace, any child born outside of them. A mating bond couldn’t be completed, outside of a heat, and once pregnant, there was no chance at that. It left only the one other option, if what he inferred from Chan’s question was true. To make their child his legitimate, firstborn heir.

“You want me to marry you,” Minho said. Stated. Not asked. And saw with some surprise that Chan relaxed at the words, somehow relieved that Minho understood.

“For the child. Not only for the child,” Chan clarified. “It will give you rights, too, and privileges. You wouldn’t have to worry about your job, while you were pregnant. Afterward, you could make any choice you wanted. My lawyers are drawing up a prenuptial agreement already in anticipation of this confirmation. I’ll hire you the best lawyers in the city to review it and advocate on your behalf.”

“I don’t want anything from you. What you want to provide for the child, yes, but— The baby isn’t a lottery ticket I’m cashing in at the bank of Bang Corp.”

Again, Chan was amused, a smile apparent in his eyes. “Well, we may meet each other halfway in that aspect, then. Of course, that agreement only takes effect if the marriage contract ends. Short of hiring a fortune teller, I have no way of expecting that. But you are right, I won’t compromise on what is provided to any child within the marriage, either. We can at least start from that place. You are certainly welcome to relax here longer. If you wish, though, I can send someone to pick you up as early as tomorrow so that we can meet with our respective lawyers and begin that process. As soon as it’s confirmed, we’ll marry. Any and all of your belongings you wish to keep will be brought to the Bang Corp tower. I live in half of the penthouse space, and have been reserving the other half for my future mate’s private space. It has a private elevator, staff, and security. You can meet with our interior decorator when you feel up to it, and I’ll give them a budget to decorate the space to your specifications. The only thing I would ask is you not finalize any nursery designs. I’d like to be involved in those.”

He had not been asked on many of those points, Minho realized. He was being told. The last was more of a request than the rest. Otherwise, it was marry him, live near him, and all of that. There was no soft anticipation in it, no romance, or affection. It was business, brisk, and organized. Just like Chan himself.

“Will I stay in my own apartment while all this happens?” Minho asked.

Chan pursed his lips. “I would…request that you don’t. The penthouse is only partially furnished, and might not be as comfortable as this. Until it can be outfitted, there is a hotel nearby where you’ll be able to stay. It’s not that I find your apartment to be substandard, but walls have ears, and there are people who would gladly cash in a lottery ticket with you and the child as the expense. Retrieve anything you wish to take to the hotel with you. And the same as here, if you need anything, I’ll make it happen.”

Or his staff would, anyway.

“Sounds like you have everything under control. Tomorrow will be fine, then,” Minho said.

Chan stood immediately like he’d been both ordered and compelled.

“I’ll get those plans in motion, then. We’ll adjust as you feel up to it. Just keep me informed.”

“I will,” Minho said, looking up at him.

Chan hesitated for moment before nodding. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

He watched Chan leave, vaguely dissatisfied and unsure of what he actually wanted. There was no point in congratulating Minho, from Chan’s point of view. He hadn’t summoned Minho from the dance floor to knock him up and marry him, and then celebrate it. No. He hadn’t congratulated Chan on his upcoming fatherhood either. He did touch his abdomen then, though. Not because he anticipated feeling anything. More to remind himself that any steps that Chan dragged him through, lawyers, decorators, moving— It was for the baby’s sake. He just had to remember that.

***

Phase 2: Pregnancy and Marriage

***

It turned out that negotiating an agreement was not hard when there were few demands from the other party. Chan’s demands had been more aimed toward providing for the child in the event of the marriage ending, that he should be kept in the style he was accustomed to. It would, by necessity, mean keeping Minho in that same style at least part of the time. It wasn’t something he could, or was willing to try, arguing against. In addition to the maintenance for the duration of the child’s time in school, Chan also determined as a course of their marriage or after that Minho be compensated in trust for every day of work he missed, to be invested for his future. Because, as the lawyer indicated, Chan had insisted Minho would only be not working because of the baby, or later child, and Chan wouldn’t see his future diminished because of it. Reasonable. He hadn’t tried to give Minho a house in the tropics, or a cabin in the mountains. Things Minho would have had little use for, and no right to. It was maybe slightly more than was fair, but it wasn’t so much that it grated at him.

He signed without much worry. He could have asked for more, and still felt that it would have been wrong to do it. He went directly from the lawyer’s office to the office of his new doctor. Instead of a waiting period, Chan had gotten him in almost immediately. Of course. Chan met him there, and most everything from their first appointment was confirmed by the second. They were free to continue about their lives as normal, including sex. Again, not something either of them had explicitly asked about, though Chan had asked about travel. They hadn’t had sex since finding out. It wasn’t exactly the easy little hookup they’d started out with. Still it was a relief. This omnipresent thing, and so early still.

With the prenup in hand, and the appointment out of the way, Chan was ready to charge forward.

“I didn’t want to make any firm plans until the doctor was out of the way,” Chan said, when they were back in the car. “I’ll text the office, and they can expedite an appointment to sign the marriage contract at the courthouse. If we can get that done later today, or early tomorrow morning, we can take a long weekend, though I need to be back into the office on Tuesday. It’ll be warm in Jeju. We’ll fly down and stay in the house a friend keeps there near the beach.”

“Sounds like you have that under control,” Minho said.

“Any objections?” Chan asked.

“No, none. Should we talk about our expectations after the marriage contract is signed? Or will I need to punch a time card and report to the bathroom according to your choices also.”

Chan opened his mouth, shut it. “Have I been that bad?”

“I don’t know if bad is the word, exactly, but you have made sure everything has happened according to what you want. You are a very efficient bulldozer.”

“It’s how I’ve made it through the bad times in the past,” Chan said, not telling Minho anything he didn’t know. “I don’t mind delegating to see tasks done, but high level things it feels as though if I don’t have control, things are slipping away from me.”

It was maybe the longest string of personal information that wasn’t sexual that Chan had ever told him.

“Feel free to delegate my personal functions to me, then. I’ve heard that some partners get a bit overbearing when there’s a child coming. I don’t need every choice questioned, or every molecule of food weighed and debated. Not by you or anyone else you delegate to. A doctor’s orders are different.”

“Of course,” Chan said. “I wouldn’t consider it.”

They would see about that. At least Chan knew he was on notice.

“Do you terrorize the low level workers when they aren’t meeting your deadlines?” Minho asked.

“Of course not,” Chan said rather primly, and then laughed, shaking his head. “If there’s a question about it, there’s a chain of command. I couldn’t imagine being a new hire in a cubicle getting questioned by the CEO. It’d be terrifying.”

He had some sense and empathy, then. And some…something. Chan could’ve had them sign the marriage contract and gone about his day, dismissing Minho like the mail boy. Instead he seemed to have planned some sort of honeymoon which was a good deal more personal and thoughtful than Minho had expected. Chan the focused businessman, and Chan the lover were two separate coins. It seemed like Chan the soon-to-be-husband had facets of both.

***

There wasn’t much to the “wedding.” When Chan had asked if Minho had wanted anyone in attendance, he’d said no. His mother might disown him after the fact, though he didn’t think there was a chance when it meant not meeting her only grandchild. Something about it being more of a spectacle than the necessary amount of witnesses that Chan provided felt wrong. There hadn’t been time to get Minho some sort of fancy suit, with the rush things had been in. So, he wore his own. It might not’ve been designer, but it wasn’t wrinkled, and was clean. Chan was clearly familiar with the man they were put in front of, who looked over their paperwork. Instead of vows he’d heard at typical marriage or joining ceremonies, it felt more like a question and answer session. Yes, he would marry this man. The judge didn’t have to know about the child. No, he wasn’t married or mated to anyone else. Yes, it was of his own free will. Mostly. No, entirely. But he did wonder when he looked at Chan, if the quickness of it all was to be sure it could be done before Minho could change his mind. He wouldn’t have, if that was Chan’s main concern. If Chan had been a monster, perhaps, but he’d never shown Minho that type of side of himself. The root of it was that Chan wasn’t marrying him because of who he was. Chan hadn’t gotten down on one knee and pledged eternal love, or even lust, when he’d proposed. Chan stood there, serious in his dark suit, for the same reason Minho was. For the baby. If they kept that as their baseline, then they were on the same page.

Chan had also taken care of another facet Minho had not considered. Rings. He’d slipped a ring onto Minho, before subtly pressing a ring into Minho’s hand to put onto Chan’s own hand. He hadn’t been consulted, but that was just another facet of how quickly things had moved. If he complained, he imagined Chan would have let him choose his own ring. He half wondered if Chan had chosen it himself, or if some faceless assistant had picked up a ring that appeared to contain the GDP of a small country. And because they had married, it was Minho’s. There’d been no provision for giving it back. It wasn’t obscene, but the diamonds that ran across the top weren’t tiny chips either. Pictures were taken after the fact, just a few. To be documentation of the act, he guessed. As much as their notarized signatures were on the contract.

He was given the chance to change out of his suit and eat lunch before they were whisked to the airport. The trip to the airport was almost longer than the flight itself, the flight quiet as Minho watched out the window he’d seated himself by. It was a relatively short trip to the house they’d be staying at afterwards, and instead of Chan following the staff, who were taking their luggage inside, Chan came to Minho’s side of the car.

“The beach,” Chan said. Just that. It stood either as order or invitation. They walked down the wide steps leading down from the patio to the sand, pausing to take off shoes and socks. And Minho extended his hand when Chan reached for it, walked with Chan as Chan seemed to have some destination firmly in mind.

A destination that became obvious, because as soon as they walked out onto the wet sand, Chan let out the longest sigh. And then taking in a deep breath, sighed again.

“Is that the first time you’ve breathed in the last week?” Minho asked.

“Maybe,” Chan acknowledged. “Though I always feel like I can breathe better at the ocean. Like it’s pulling my worries out with it.”

Minho nodded, watching him. But Chan seemed to shake himself out of that session of relief, turning to Minho, squeezing his hand, and squeezing the wedding ring so newly placed there against his fingers.

“How are you feeling? The private chef here will make us something for dinner, but if you want to rest, we can go in. I was going to walk a while, but I’ll do whatever you feel up to.”

“Let’s walk,” Minho said.

Everything had been so cramped. From the medical spa, to a hotel room. Cars. Lawyer’s offices. Doctor’s offices. Judge’s office. Plane. Everything moving along at a breakneck pace where even the downtime had seemed fraught. No open spaces like that, for sure. And even the silence between them there felt more free, like the silence could breathe as well as they walked along the wet sand, occasionally getting close enough to let the water rush up and around their ankles. The tide had begun to rise on their return walk, obscuring some of the prints they’d left behind.

“I’d stay out here forever, but my stomach has other plans,” Chan said.

“There’s always later.”

Chan smiled at that. They rinsed clean of sand at a convenient little washing station, before going inside. The dinner was a simple menu, but it was filling, and good. Since they were there in time, they were able to choose the next day’s menu, like some sort of fancy hotel room service. When he began to yawn when they had occupied themselves at a television that was at least half the size of his apartment wall, Chan took his hand and led him upstairs. The bedroom was spacious, overlooking the water, but not so large that he felt he’d get lost. And certainly not with Chan turning to him, close, touching his face, and exhaling before kissing Minho.

“Is it still a little surreal to you, too?” Chan asked, when their mouths had parted.

“It is,” Minho agreed. He had a husband. He was kissing his husband, in their getaway, on their honeymoon.

His skin prickled as Chan’s thumbs ran along Minho’s jaw. “I kept glancing at you today, seeing your ring. It kept hitting me like, oh. He’s mine. He chose me.”

He had. And his arms slid around Chan as they kissed, easing into it, feeling each other out. Not an overtly sexual kiss, not at first. But Chan made a sound as they moved between kisses, almost like he’d realized what they were doing, who he was kissing, and what they could do. Not just kissing him, or with him, but kissing into him. Trying to get more of Minho’s mouth, and shuddering as Minho’s hands stroked up Chan’s chest to try and pull him closer.

“Are you feeling up to…” Chan’s words faded off, when Minho tilted his head.

“Yeah. My libido didn’t die at fertilization.” He barely held back the grin at the way Chan’s lips tightened at the mention of that. “Might as well make the marriage official this way, too, yeah? You’re not wearing the cologne, so I should be fine.”

Whatever had been in that that had been wrong to his nose. Maybe not even something in it, but how it had twisted Chan’s own scent. He’d noticed Chan hadn’t been wearing cologne since, not any sort of it. To make it easier on himself, he stripped as Chan moved back the sheet and blankets, and had the pleasure of watching Chan strip as well. He wanted to kiss that belly, feel the rumble of his moans. Another time.

And yet, when Chan got in bed after him, was half over him, he hesitated again, stroking over Minho’s shoulder, his collarbone.

“Tell me, and I’ll stop. If you need me to. At any point,” Chan said.

It wasn’t something that should have had to be said, but Minho appreciated it regardless.

“I will. It’s fun. I’ve read about it a bit. Some people don’t want it, others want as much or more of it,” Minho said. “It just depends.”

“Which one are you?” Chan asked.

“So far? About the same,” Minho said. “But tonight maybe more, since I’ve been without for a while.”

Since the night they found out about the baby. Sex, anyway. He’d jerked off just fine.

“The baby is—“

“Not even near your penis. You’re not having sex with the baby, you’re having sex with me,” Minho said.

Chan grimaced, like that wasn’t quite what he’d been asking. “I would never forgive myself if—“

“People do it every day,” Minho interrupted him, before he could go on to list any number of dire consequences. His overthinking. His need for everything to be ordered. “Don’t twist me into a pretzel or choke me out. And stop if I ask you to. Otherwise. We’ve had two doctors tell us it was fine. If you don’t want to, don’t.”

“I want to. Fuck,” Chan cursed, the word almost a growl, as he braced himself up a little further, his hand sweeping down over Minho’s chest and side. “You don’t understand how much. I want to breed you again even knowing you are already. I want to be inside you and know I did that to you. I want to feel you come because you’re so full of hormones that I caused in you that you can’t help it. I want to eat you up. You smell like—“

Minho had sat up in the middle of the tirade, getting their faces close, and Chan had only then seemed to notice, words dropping out from under him as Minho touched his throat.

“I smell like what?” Minho asked.

Chan hissed. “Like a fucking temptation.”

It made Minho laugh before he kissed Chan, and let his teeth sink a little too hard into the plush of Chan’s lower lip. Chan would have chased him, except that Minho held him back.

“Then be tempted. Let me be the CEO today. Chief entertaining office. Chief…erotic officer.”

The laughter was stupid. And as freeing as the walk on the beach had been as Chan acquiesced to that, and kissed him. Kissed him until he was slick and ready. Kissed him beyond that, touching over him, all but worshiping him. His stomach, his chest. Kissing against his hands, his forearms. His thighs. His neck. Until Minho felt like a fucking temptation and one that wanted to fulfill that role. Chan’s cock hadn’t gotten any smaller in the ensuing time, but Minho wasn’t complaining. It just took a moment remembering, and he had those moments because Chan, too, was taking his sweet time nudging into him. Watching Minho for any hint of strain, or pain. There was none, not to be concerned about. He was so wet that there was little trouble anyway, and when Chan couldn’t move any more, eyes wide as he stared at Minho, Minho squeezed around him with a sigh. And then almost couldn’t stop as his body got the message. That was what he’d been missing.

It wasn’t the wildest sex they’d ever had. Maybe the most sedate. But maybe Chan’s thought about the hormones, or maybe it was blood flow, or whatever, was on point. Because he came before the knot. And as Chan groaned and came, came with it. And one time more for good measure as he lay like a dead man with an alpha braced and panting above him.

“How do—“

“Good,” he said, not waiting for the end of Chan’s question. Whatever it had been. How did he feel? How had he felt? Great. Perfect. Satisfied. Drugged on pleasure and contact and the scent of an alpha at rest.

Chan nuzzled at his cheek then, nodding like he was glad. Yes, it was good. Chan had always felt right there. And maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe it would get unpleasant, and awkward, or even hurt. And they’d switch things up, then. Whenever they had to. Every day was different. He was still wrapping his head around that.

“How is your first knot as a married man?” Chan asked, when both their breathing had slowed.

Minho laughed. “No different than the ones before. Still too new to feel real. Did you ever want to get married? To anyone?”

Strange he hadn’t asked that question before. They’d run into the situation where it was impossible to avoid, but that hadn’t meant that Chan had been yearning for it. If he’d been sating himself with several omegas a week, what need had there been?

“At some point, yeah. I mean, I can’t take what I have with me. Even if I set up everything in trust, donate it all, there’s no telling where it ends up once other people get involved. Can’t dictate that after death. So I thought…have my fun. Find a mate, get married. Have some kids. Have some kind of family life like my parents had, though quite a lot different.”

“And you’re having all that backwards. Kid first, marriage second. Mate, to be determined,” Minho said.

Chan huffed out a laugh. “Well. I told you that you were something special. Guess our bodies proved that.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I haven’t slept with anyone exclusively for as long as I did with you since…” Chan’s gaze went blank like he was trying to recall. “I don’t know. Maybe since I started hooking up regularly. Guess that should’ve told me something. I’m going to lease out the club suite.”

“Huh?” A sudden shift in topic.

“I won’t be using the club suite any more. Not just because I have a ring on your finger. I guess it served its purpose. But I won’t be going out anywhere like that unless you’re with me. I won’t be making you worry. Or embarrassing you in the tabloids.”

Minho blinked up at him. He hadn’t expected that, nor Chan’s solid determination about it.

“We know the marriage was for the sake of the baby,” Minho ventured. He hadn’t really thought that far. Somewhere in his head he hadn’t expected total monogamy. He didn’t expect anyone was going to be sniffing after a pregnant, married omega except the alpha who’d knocked him up, so his own prospects had been rather Chan-limited. Still, Chan kissed him softly.

“Whether it was or not, I meant the vows. That’s something you won’t have to question.”

Not a husband in name only. Minho wasn’t sure if that was something inside of Chan himself, or if that was the alpha in him talking. The alpha who saw the man he’d been sleeping with with his child in him, and said mine. It was admirable dedication. Something he maybe ought to have been more expecting of, somehow.

They had showered together in the large, tiled stall, politely, and mostly hands to themselves. He half thought Chan stayed in case Minho would collapse, or find something wrong. But he hadn’t. Back in bed after getting dry, exhaustion swamped him. The day. The activities. The thoughts. The heaviness of the ring on his finger.

He glanced over at a hand against his arm, as he tried getting comfortable.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve touched you everywhere else, in almost every other way, so it’s almost strange to ask,” Chan said. “I know there’s nothing there to feel yet, but—“

The direction of Chan’s thoughts weren’t hard to divine, as he took that hand, pulled it over, rested it on his own belly. If there had been anything to feel, Minho thought he’d have felt it already. But there was a curiosity in it, a wonder in it. And Chan’s thumb stroked against his skin, like he could stroke both Minho, and the baby within.

“Thank you,” Chan said.

“You can do that any time you want. Almost any time,” Minho said.

Chan’s hand moved to Minho’s, squeezing it, before letting go. Appreciation. It just wasn’t something that Minho was experiencing alone. He didn’t mind sharing it, whatever little bits that he could. He woke to Chan touching him once in the night, several fingers splayed over Minho’s wrist, and Chan still asleep. And the next days followed much like that. They ate the personally prepared food, and took long beach walks, even when it was a little blustery. At night - mostly at night - they made use of the big bed. A different sort of bonding between husbands. Chan always careful, but listening when Minho asked him for more.

They were driven around one afternoon when it was rainy, so Chan could show him some of his favorite sights. They couldn’t go anywhere public, not yet anyway, and Minho didn’t mind it. It was nice. A change to what life had been before. Almost a transition. Except going “home” didn’t mean going back to his own apartment. It meant going to Bang Corp Tower. A new home. New marriage, new husband, new child. All piled in together. He would have to tell his parents. His friends. He’d have to quit his job, withdraw from the active dancer list of the dance studio. They’d be performing as his belly got bigger. If Chan had no objections, he’d still take part in practices, lessons.

The job hadn’t been mandated by Chan or anything. But it was a job where someone could support themself. And being married to the richest man in the universe made that feel a bit like a joke. Like he was taking money from someone who needed it, when Minho did not have to pay rent, or for food, or anything else. And since Chan had designated that he would fund a retirement account for Minho based on his time away from work, which was probably more like change that dropped out of his pockets, then Minho didn’t feel particularly bad. It would give him more time to keep in shape, to prepare for being a father. To do whatever rich husbands did. But before he did pull the rope, he said so.

“I’ll be sending in my resignation to my workplace,” Minho had told Chan. Much as Chan had informed him that he’d be leasing out his club rooms.

“Good. I don’t want you to lose your identity, but… I’m sure you’ll find other ways to occupy yourself. Anything you want to do. You know I’ll take care of everything for you.”

“Skydiving,” Minho immediately suggested, and Chan looked skeptically at him before Minho shook his head. “No. I can fly fine, but I’m afraid of heights. You’d have to sedate me.”

Chan exhaled slowly, raising a hand to his own chest as Minho chuckled.

“I do want to continue a connection to my dance company. I’ll withdraw from performing, but some of the classes I can stay in for a while longer, or help teach when it’s too dangerous to continue.”

“Of course,” Chan said. “I’m glad you’ll have that outlet. Do they need funding?”

“Doesn’t every artistic pursuit?” Minho mused.

“If my husband is going to be there, to keep him safe I want to be sure they have good floors, and equipment, and ventilation, heating and cooling, and all of that,” Chan said, curling his lip a little when Minho ooh-ed at him. “So if you want to set up a meeting with the director, we can see where they might need a little injection of cash.”

“I’m clearly still alive despite what they already have,” Minho said. “But I can’t say he’d say no to making a list. Do you want me to bring it to you, or do you want to go yourself?”

“I’d like to go myself, if that’s all right with you. I like seeing things as they’re explained, getting a feel for them. Again with my not delegating some things, but it’s served me well over the years.”

“Said the old man,” Minho said, and that time got an eye roll.

It was all right with him. It was another of those little moments like the honeymoon had been, of Chan taking initiative to do something for Minho. It would have been easier, cheaper, for Chan to say no, find a place that was funded, where rich people dabbled.

So a meeting had been scheduled, and his job had been resigned from, by the time they boarded the plane for the return trip. It felt claustrophobic after the big house, the expanse of the sea. He fell asleep, until they started their descent. And he could pick out the tower from the ground, as they drove toward it. Home.

***

The space he had walked through with the interior designer had been transformed. He almost thought he’d walked into the wrong place, except that Chan hadn’t directed him elsewhere. Instead of bare walls and mostly empty rooms, he realized the main room closely resembled one of the pictures he’d chosen. Walls had been painted. New furniture. Decorations. He moved deeper into the house, seeing the bathroom had been decorated. The main bedroom had a new, wide bed, rugs, curtains. All in the time they’d been gone?

“How?” he wondered out loud, as Chan chuckled at the look on his face when he turned around.

“Money,” Chan said simply. “Do you like it?”

“So far,” Minho said. “It looks like a magazine shoot right now.”

Not his. And Chan seemed to get that. “Change anything you like. Move it around. Make it home instead of a magazine. If any of the furniture doesn’t suit, we’ll get something that does. I want you to be comfortable here, for both your sakes.”

The only room that hadn’t been painted or filled was the one they’d marked out as the nursery. Per Chan’s request. Just seeing the emptiness of it was a contrast to what he knew what his body was about to begin doing. Filling out, making space for a growing child. Chan hovered as Minho got his butt solidly onto the new couch, testing it for comfort. He squinted up at Chan.

“Are you going to try it out, too?”

Like he’d been given permission, Chan sat down, too, wiggling a little.

“Nice. Comfortable,” Chan said.

They looked at each other for a moment, and Minho wondered what went on in Chan’s head. A realization that all the previous steps had led to that. That there weren’t any more immediate ones. That the ones they’d made had changed things so that that, sharing a couch, or a floor at least, was their future. That in some way they were tied together, the two of them. Even if it was a legal thing. Even if there was nothing between them but a shared love of sex, and a child.

“How do you feel,” Chan asked, reaching to touch the back of Minho’s hand.

Minho moved that hand, somehow unable to take any concern, or hint of whatever passed as tenderness in the vast newness of the place.

“Fine,” Minho said. “Though I might lie down. I’m more tired than I’m used to being. I’ll have to start finding a new routine now.”

Chan nodded, and briskly stood. “All right. I’ll leave you to that. I’ll head to the office. Do you want to stay in for dinner?”

“Tonight at least,” Minho said, looking up at him.

“All right. You know how to order.”

“I do,” Minho agreed.

And then Chan was gone. He rubbed at the back of his hand where Chan had touched him. Jeju had felt like a world away. Back, it felt like— He didn’t know yet. It was impossible to know, somehow, how he’d feel. The sheets on the bed were laid so smoothly that he almost felt guilty getting into them as he pulled the curtains over the windows to block the light. The mattress had some kind of topper on it that was comfortable. The pillows, and there were four of them, had different firmness. He chose what he wanted, and rested there. And half wished Chan hadn’t gone to work. That Chan had followed him, laid down with him, experienced that with him.

Because Chan tried, when they talked later, to be a part of at least the baby’s experiences.

“Do you want to be there for all of the appointments with the doctor?” Minho asked, so that he knew. And knew he could refuse, even if he never would have.

“Yes,” Chan said. “I’d go to all of them, but definitely all of them you want to have me at.”

“How should I organize it around your schedule?”

“You organize it around your schedule, and I’ll organize mine to be there. You won’t have to go through even a second of it alone.”

Minho nodded, and ate more of the dinner they’d shared there. There were so many things to navigate. Where did Chan sleep? He had his own half of the penthouse level, so maybe he wanted to sleep alone. But not that night, at least. Chan followed him to the bedroom, pausing only once for Minho to wave him on. Tested the mattress with him. Not with sex, not that night. Even with the nap earlier, Minho felt like he had been running away from a herd of horses. His body was working hard to make a human. So he was still unwilling to get up, when Chan’s alarm went off. Chan stroked over Minho's hair as he got up, went off to some secret abode to dress for the day. And Minho went back to sleep.

***

The news broke not long after they’d gotten back. Minho’s name had as yet been kept out of it, as the license had yet to be properly filed. Though that would change.

The CEO of Bang Corp was married in a private ceremony Thursday. A spokesman for Korea’s richest businessman said the couple are expecting their first child and thank everyone for their well-wishes and respect for their privacy. Not much is known about the new husband—

So when Minho asked to meet up with two of his friends one night, at one of their places, he wasn’t sure how much they knew, or suspected. But rather than make them ask, after they’d gotten seated, and some chatter had gotten out of the way, Minho stuck out his hand. The diamonds played like fire in the lights of Hyunjin’s apartment.

“Nice ring,” Seungmin said, not getting it at first.

Hyunjin didn’t either, but as Minho didn’t acknowledge the compliment, and instead kept rolling his hand, he could see the gears turning. And he could feel his ears going red as Hyunjin gaped at his hand, and then at Minho directly.

“Is that— Are you engaged? That’s— Are you married?”

“Yeah, it’s a wedding band,” Seungmin said, reaching for and turning Minho’s hand a little. And then he was the one pausing. “Fuck, are those real stones?”

“Holy shit,” Hyunjin breathed. “Chan. I heard something in the news, but I didn’t even— Holy shit. It’s Chan, isn’t it? You got married? When? Why didn’t you say anything?”

That was why Minho had met with them in private. If they’d been in a restaurant, the whole city would’ve heard. And there was no point in waiting, in being slow, in bringing out some grand reveal. He plucked an ultrasound printout out of his bag, and slid that across the table, too. That took far less questioning to understand what it was.

“You’re married, and you’re going to be a dad,” Hyunjin said faintly.

“The second part came first,” Seungmin surmised, and Minho tilted his head, acknowledging that. “And he’s got that fortune, so it makes sense so the kid can inherit.”

Seungmin saw right through it, as Minho laughed.

“So, that’s how my week has been. How about yours?” Minho said, sitting back.

Hyunjin brushed that right off, latching onto Seungmin’s words. “So, what, it was only because of the baby? Is he happy? Are you happy? Where are you going to live? Is he nice?”

“You might have to submit those in writing,” Minho said. The old NDA had been voided. They were under a new one, of a sort, of what kind of information Minho or Chan both could go waggling around about the other. None of which was included in what Hyunjin was asking. “I haven’t asked him about the status of his happiness. He seems…adequately enthused for something that was a surprise to both of us. I’m still processing, but I’m not angry about it. I was shocked at first. We both had an implant, and they clearly failed. It’s growing on and in me, I guess. I’ll live with him, in the top floor of Bang Corp Tower. And he is. Nice.”

“At least he did the right thing,” Seungmin said. “Would’ve been easy to pay you off, send you to live in the Arctic or something. He’d been playing around since he got his degree, it seems like. So maybe settling down with a husband and a kid’s something he wanted.”

“He’ll have to confirm that for you himself,” Minho said.

“He didn’t force you into marrying him, did he?” Seungmin grinned when Minho snorted. “Well, that’s good then.”

“It was what was best for the baby, on both our parts. There wasn’t any arguing about that.”

He didn’t speculate about what would come after, the whole baby becoming real, when he hadn’t been able to conceptualize it himself. He was able to answer most of their questions, anyway. When he’d found out, when they’d married, how his parents had reacted. Surprised. Cranky about the secret yes, but happy for him. Who wasn’t happy for him? He’d hopped from gently comfortable to almost out of the realm of gravity in wealth. And of course happy at the concept of a grandchild. He assumed Chan’s parents knew. They hadn’t spoken about it. Chan hadn’t gone with him for the announcements, and he hadn’t gone with Chan, if Chan had gone at all. It stoked a little unease in him. He hadn’t invited Chan, either. Maybe he ought to have. It wasn’t something he could undo. But he smiled, anyway, for his friends.

***

All of Minho’s financial information was available to him not long after they returned from the honeymoon. His financial information in regards to Chan, that was. He was given a credit card with no upper limit of balance. He was given a separate bank card with access to an account labeled “Personal.” According to the assistant who’d put it very professionally into his hand, it was for day to day expenses, personal needs, bills, or any of that. And when she’d gone back downstairs, he’d almost choked when he saw the balance. The amount of money available to him was beyond his comprehension. Like his job had just dropped his whole year’s paycheck in at one time.

And asking Chan hadn’t helped. He’d glanced at the paper, and nodded.

“This place is set up and all, but there might be other things you want to get to personalize it. Now and going forward, you’ll be needing new clothes. You might want to order food, or—“

“Buy a car?” Minho blurted. Not a super fancy one, but it was enough to buy a fairly nice one.

“If you want to ride in something different than what I already have, sure,” Chan agreed, rather cavalierly. But he sobered a little, no more joking in his tone. “Look. It’s for you. It’s yours. You can do anything you want with it. You can go withdraw it, and hand it to people on the street. I’m your husband, not your boss, or accountant. Your money before the marriage is yours, and this money is as well. You can use the credit card to build points if you want. Put whatever you want on it. Anything for the baby, anything. Buy your parents a nice meal, or a fridge, or a puppy. If you actually want to buy them a car, that might require a chat with the financial advisor.”

The giggle that burst out felt a little hysterical, and Chan smiled.

“Who— Who pays the balance on the credit card?”

“My staff will. It won’t come out of your balance. I meant what I said before we married. I won’t let you or the baby go without. If you don’t like your mattress, buy a new one. Buy pillows, cushions, food. If you need an assistant to help with things, we’ll hire the best there is. A driver will take you anywhere you want. I’d have put more in the account, but for the baby’s sake so you didn’t just fall over, I thought I’d start small.”

Small. Small. The baby was small. The bank account wasn’t. And it wasn’t as though Chan had said, ah, that’s all you’re getting until the baby’s born. Chan had seemed to indicate more would be deposited. How much, how frequently, he hadn’t asked. There was always the credit card, for emergencies, but he portioned it out in his head so that there would always be enough in the account to cover things he needed. And found it absurd that if he’d asked, that Chan might’ve given him more without hesitation. What was beyond what he portioned for himself, he found uses for. He paid several bills of his parents, replaced an ailing set of appliances for his grandparents.

He helped a friend get their car repaired, helped another with bills from school, and another with moving costs. Most of those were things he’d known about before his sudden marriage, not people coming to him to ask for help. He wasn’t out there playing Santa. They all by then knew his new position, and his ability to sprinkle money, wasn’t guaranteed long term. He wasn’t going to be able to support them in full. But everyone else who didn’t have a great need yet, he gave them a little bit so they could have a nice meal without having to worry about it. Just something nice that he had the ability to do without even half thinking it. And even with all of that, the dent he’d made hadn’t been all that large. Chan had said there was no need to account for it.

It felt…odd. Like he was a kid spending his dad’s paycheck instead of his allowance at the store. The concept of Chan’s net worth was so enormous that he felt like an ant trying to contemplate a tree. And he was so tenuously connected to that world, hitched on by the way of the tiny blob growing in him.

“Do you mind me sleeping with you?” Chan asked that night, when the lights were off, and Chan felt close next to him.

“There’s plenty of room on the bed.” And Chan sent him a look, because that hadn’t been his question at all. “No, I don’t mind. I suppose biologically there’s a comfort to it.”

Chan nodded. “I think for me, too. I know you’re not going to fall off the side of the building if I’m not right here while you’re sleeping. But even leading up to the wedding— Well, there were other anxieties there, but it felt like I needed to get to you. Protect you.”

Protect the baby. Well, and Minho by extension. He got it. Chan had been very cautious not to overstep, perhaps. Not push too much on him. Let Minho feel out how he felt about Chan’s presence, before getting his opinion. And he hoped that Chan knew Minho wasn’t just humoring him. It was a comfort, even when Chan’s breathing got loud at times. Sometimes touching, but just knowing he was there.

***

Chan was true to his word, accompanying Minho to the dance studio. The director met them there, rather early one morning before much was happening in the surrounding area. There definitely were things that could use help. One room needed a bigger air conditioning register. Another needed surfacing. The fund for costumes needed topping up. It went on, but it wasn’t as much as Minho knew could’ve been asked for. No mention of the chipped sink in the toilets, or the rickety doors in some of the changing areas. The bare necessities, what would keep them going, and enhance the lives of the dancers and students. The check didn’t arrive before they’d walked out of the building, but he’d gotten a beautifully thankful call later the day that it had. Enough to fix all those itemized items, and more. The “and more” part, since Chan was involved, didn’t surprise him. There would be a card sent, signed by the students, to Chan. Well. To the mysterious benefactor, as Chan’s name had been kept out of it. Hell, they’d have put a plate over the door in his honor if he hadn’t wanted it kept secret. It meant Minho couldn’t peacock in because his husband was fixing things up, as though he would’ve. Though, the ones who knew or cared who he’d gotten married to, they probably guessed. The only time money actually managed to trickle down. Chan had gotten his own thanks from Minho, in person, but had shrugged it off as though almost embarrassed by it. It had been insignificant in terms of amounts, to Chan, but the thought itself was significant to Minho.

Minho settled on a two day a week schedule, going in the afternoons while Chan was still working. After consent from his doctor, and a consultation with a physiotherapist about what was beneficial for him and the baby, what he could keep doing. It’d change, over time. He enjoyed working with the students, keeping in shape, keeping sharp. Even if he wasn’t involved with the later practices for the performances, it made him feel not so removed from the whole of what his life had been before. Especially with the newness of getting used to marriage. To living with someone. Chan worked an incredible amount of the time, which left Minho mostly to his own devices. Being able to run around, see his family, friends, eat whenever, was fun for a while at least. Chan did live up to his promise, going to all the prenatal appointments, and also held to his promise not to scold. Much.

His pants had definitely begun to get tighter. When he looked at himself sideways in a mirror, he both could and couldn’t see. He left it to Chan one night, his shirt off, underwear slung low.

“Can you see it, or am I imagining things?” Minho asked.

Chan looked first, thoroughly before, with his sole blanket stomach-touching privileges, reaching out. His hand was hot almost, covering Minho’s lower abdomen.

“Yeah, I can see it,” he said, meeting Minho’s eyes.

Another dose of the reality they were getting into. They ate together some nights, when Chan wasn’t working. Chan continued to sleep next to him. Sex stayed fairly regular, too, though he suspected Chan maybe didn’t ask for it as often as he wanted in favor of letting Minho rest and gestate. He appreciated that, at least partially. The most important part was that Chan was interested and involved whenever Minho made a move.. Not holding back. Not asking if Minho was sure. Give and take, then.

At month four, and month five, and month six, Minho didn’t have to ask if Chan saw the changes in his belly. His idea of a human being had to have been highly stylized if the increasing curve didn’t register to him. Chan couldn’t cover the bump, as it were, with his whole hand, or even two. When the baby’s scans came back healthy, it was a relief. When the baby grew normally, it was a relief. There was so much waiting. He read so many books. Like the fact that the doctors were keeping an eye on his placenta, where it had attached itself. It’d improved, which was good. Starting to move up as the baby grew, out of serious danger, but still being watched. He hadn’t liked that, or the look it had brought to Chan’s face. But the baby grew, and Minho grew. He still went two times a week to the studio, but he’d dialed back his demonstrations and some of his participation. With only two months left, he felt out of sorts, like his body had changed in so many ways. The baby kicked his bladder, or maybe head butted it. Jammed what felt like various body parts into his ribs. Sometimes making him stop mid-step to wheeze. If Chan was there, taking his hand, letting him feel where a whole dance routine was taking place inside of him. It made the baby feel less conceptual. No longer the size of a kidney bean. He had fingers, and toes, and all the usual human sort of things. Confirmed as a boy on the anatomy scan, too, not that there’d been much doubt of that.

When Chan was free, they went to parks sometimes, walking, taking in the outside air. Chan took him to private rooms of restaurants to dine. They sometimes went to movies. They had sex. Minho wasn’t sure how to define it, marriage. Like living together with a partner, he supposed. A constant. A roommate he also had sex with. He wasn’t startled any more by Chan’s sudden explosion of laughter from another room, and if Chan was irritated by Minho having to scrape himself out of bed in the middle of the night because his bladder seemed to have shrank to the capacity of a teaspoon, Minho didn’t hear about it.

When he was asked how he was, he said he was fine. He was. He was healthy. The baby was healthy. He slept nightly with a man prone to cuddle for a while against his back and breathe into his neck, and join their hands together over Minho’s stomach. And the bigger that stomach got, the more Minho appreciated that, shoving a round pillow in his lower back and leaning back into Chan, and groaning at the relief of his spine and back muscles stretching in a combination of pain and pleasure. Gravity, when he was suddenly frontloading a kid, wasn’t terribly kind. Of all the times, he liked that best. Chan supporting him quite physically, talking about their days. Quiet, intimate times that made it feel like they were married, and not just waiting out the interminable time between conception and birth so that their signing of the marriage contract would be fulfilled in the form of one tiny child. One that didn’t feel so tiny. He was glad for the classes, the prenatal stretching, the physical therapists. Most days that seemed to keep him from trying to roll forward, to wish the birth even sooner. Though there were some days he appreciated the interim experience of being pregnant more than others.

Sometimes he wished he could talk to his friends about the liminal space he found himself in. Between feeling married and not. Being a mate, but not. Having a husband, but not entirely feeling secure in it, like it was a dandelion seed barely holding on. While Chan worked far too much, Chan hadn’t put him on a shelf to forget about, to check for an expiration date at nine months. It was unfair to Chan to even think it, but it swirled sometimes. He was acting like an alpha expecting a child. He wasn’t angry about it. He didn’t want his friends to be angry on his behalf. And the thought of a therapist, finding one who was trusted enough not to share the news of the richest man in the galaxy, was more frightening than some of the thoughts he had. Not always. Not persistently. Not when Chan was there, and touching him, and engaged with him.

“Lively,” Chan said, when Minho had put his hand against his stomach at one point. It felt different from the outside, but the experience was shared, Chan’s head lying on Minho’s chest, their hands joined and feeling the baby move.

“It’s like I woke up in a sci-fi movie. It’s alive,” Minho said, and Chan laughed. And then pressed his lips to Minho’s skin for a moment before lifting his head with an inhale.

“Have you thought of names?” Chan asked.

Minho looked over his face, strangely serious for the question he’d asked. Though Chan broke almost immediately, ducking his head a little, smile a bit more hopeful.

“I held off on thinking for a while,” Minho said. “Until everything was more settled. I don’t have any fixed ideas. He’ll have your last name, inherit from you. If you want to pick the name, I’ll just veto any I don’t like.”

“I could think of a list of names, and you could pick the one you like best,” Chan suggested.

Minho nodded, and Chan sighed, cuddling back into him. That was the biggest thing besides the body being assembled, a name. An identity.

***

The nursery was an ongoing project. They had settled on a neutral color overall, though it had been painted in murals by an amazing artist afterward with stars, and planets, and trees, and animals. It was like a little snapshot of the world, in a little room meant for the baby to grow in. They independently researched things like car seats, and other items, choosing what they liked best in safety first, and then design. Money being no object certainly helped that out. When they made their way through a high end baby store, closed for an hour just for them, it was hard not to get distracted by the tiny outfits, shoes that everything he’d read said were somewhat pointless if cute. They chose furniture, a plush and comfortable rocking chair. A bassinet, and chest of drawers. Some baby items would come as gifts, from Minho’s parents and friends, from Chan’s family and friends. Because those were personal gifts, from people who would have a relationship with the baby. Others were encouraged to donate to various causes instead. But Minho liked the thought of the brightly colored board books, the soft, crinkly, rattly toys, the clothes, being given to be used. He didn’t have a traditional baby shower, instead meeting up in small groups. He wasn’t sure why it felt strange to think of a party on his behalf, for the baby. There were still pictures of him with little cupcakes lit with candles. Those pictures were tucked into the baby book that he and Chan had been assembling. Memories, scans, gifts and who had given them. Milestone pictures of his stomach, either taken in the mirror, or by Chan.

Chan had integrated Minho more into his own life, his friends, his family, than Minho had integrated Chan. He had met Minho’s parents, but not his friends. It felt like a strange and delicate balance, two halves of his life held carefully separate. Both consciously, and not. Everything being so rushed at the beginning made him feel like some things had to be slow. How did he introduce a man he was still learning about? A man who had married him only because of inheritance rights. A man who rubbed his back, and let Minho breathe probably obnoxiously against his neck to calm whatever spike of emotion had overtaken him over the course of that particular day. At least he didn’t feel sick as much. And he didn’t feel as though he had been run over by a hangover and trying to sleep it off. The good things were very good, and the bad things were bad. And when sex had to stop, out of an abundance of caution after some bleeding caused some worries - of no fault of either of their’s - Chan didn’t question it. They could still touch each other, as there was no restriction on that. Chan treated him the same. Slept beside him. Learned about how birth would be with him. Learned about the baby with him.

Part of him held back, he realized over time, because when the baby was born, that locked in his status as Chan’s heir. A marriage then was no longer needed. Maybe it was being pregnant that left that fear in him. When Chan was cuddling belly to belly against him on his lunch break, it didn’t feel possible that Chan might do something like leave him. It happened to others, though. He had no mating mark. The prenup was in place already, to say what happened when they might divorce. But he put it from him, when it trickled back. Worrying wasn’t good for him, or for the baby. He exhaled, and carefully entered that day’s doctor’s notes into the baby book. The baby was the one thing he had no question would continue.

***

It seemed like when the time for the baby to happen happened, it happened fast. One night he’d been resting at home, Chan’s hand on his lower back, massaging it. The next he was in a hospital bed, hooked up to a dozen monitors. The bleeding had sent them in, spotting at first, and then a sort of cramping. Something different than the little practice contractions that had interspersed Minho’s days. He felt hot, and heavy, and round, and tired. And in the hospital, scared. The baby was still all right, which was the important thing. They, the medical staff, had decided a c-section was the safest option. If that blood was the placenta doing what it ought not to be, it could save Minho’s life. Because it wasn’t the baby’s blood in danger, it was Minho’s. Middle of the workweek or not, Chan stayed with him. Asked the nurses if things were getting ready. They were waiting on another surgery to end, he was told, but there was another OB on the way, as his own wasn’t available. He patted Chan’s hand. Nothing they could do to speed that up. They couldn’t just toss him on a dirty surgical table and go. Everything was in motion, though. He would get numbed. Chan would get to be in there with him.

“Do you faint at blood?” Minho asked.

“I don’t think so,” Chan said. “I hope not. Whatever happens, I’ll keep looking at you, okay?”

Minho nodded, and tried not to work his head around fretting. He was supposed to be still. There wasn’t anything he could do, but wait, and expect a baby to be the gift that came from his patience. Months, and months of patience.

“We’re going to get to hold him,” Minho said.

“I’m going to take a million pictures of the two of you,” Chan confirmed, making Minho laugh.

And he breathed, and the nurse came in again, checking on him, on the baby. The doctor was there, which was good. He was on his way up.

Minho opened his mouth to ask a question when it felt like someone had ripped into him with claws and teeth and the shout rent him just as harshly. He heard Chan asking what was wrong as the nurse monitoring the baby’s heartbeat turned to him as he frantically tore at the blanket and sheet, a moan keening in him. The sheet was bloody coming away from him. His hands, his thighs, the bed underneath of him. Bright red blood, and not any small amount of it. Blood that was spreading, and wasn’t stopping.

The baby. The flickering peaks of the baby’s pulse. He craned up his head, his mouth numb, trying to get out Chan’s name. Chan, staring at the bed in horror, as the nurse pushed buttons, yelled out the open doorway. Movement, pain, nausea. All of it converged as he grabbed at Chan’s hand. Too much blood. So much. It had to be him. Not the baby. Not the baby. He grabbed for Chan’s hand, gripped it.

“Name him—“ Minho tried to get out, his fingertips torn from Chan’s hand as Chan was held back, shocked, clearly afraid. Minho’s mind was swimming, hearing voices that sounded like shouts, pain roiling through him, unable to hear even the faintest beeps of the baby’s heartbeat. Were there monitors? They’d disconnected them. Chan needed to name the baby. If Minho couldn’t, Chan had to. Name him something beautiful, and look at him with Chan’s eyes. Someone spoke to him the whole way, tried to explain. The lights were so bright over him. They were going to help the baby. Yes. Please. He tried to fight as someone put a mask over his nose and mouth. There was blood in a bag being hung above him. The IV at his elbow burned. His arm burned. Someone was speaking to him, reassuring him. He stared up at the white-bright lights of the surgical bay, wondered why Chan’s hand wasn’t holding his, struggled in another breath, and faded.

***

Phase 3: Postpartum

***

Minho woke and began to shiver, and someone spoke softly to him as he opened his hazy eyes. Yes, he was okay. Yes, he was in pain. He felt sick. Yes, he was cold. He said at least part of those answers, nodded the rest. He dozed again, and woke to movement, no longer shivering, or cold, and only in the vaguest of pain. He reached for his stomach, the curve of it, and startled out of his stupor remembering— He was alive. The baby.

“My baby.”

“We’re taking you to your room soon. You’ll be able to see your baby there,” he was told.

The room was quiet, the curtains pulled to the outside, though light enough he could see it was daytime. How long had it been? It was a boy, with tiny toes, and tiny knees, and soft cheeks. He’d dreamed it, somehow. He dozed again, and woke, his chest aching, body in pain, to a warm hand clutching his. Warm, and firm, and sure. He inhaled, and the scent of the room, clean, was overtaken by the scent of warmth, and fire, and sweetness.

Chan. Sitting next to his bed, staring at Minho through the rail of the bed as he held Minho’s hand.

“Hey,” Chan said.

“Hey,” Minho said, and nearly croaked it, his throat dry. “The baby.”

Just saying those words, to Chan, made his throat close for a different reason. Everyone was being so kind, that a new fear rose in him. He was going to be able to see the baby? But he couldn’t. He hadn’t yet. What if—

Chan stood, and Minho saw what he hadn’t been able to before then, the tiny, purple-capped bundle nestled in Chan’s free arm. He let Minho’s hand go, adjusting the baby a little so Minho could see the sleeping face. His baby. His boy. His son.

“Here he is.”

“It is him?” Minho asked, still addled from the anesthesia. “He’s beautiful.”

“He is,” Chan said. “Let’s get a nurse in here.”

Minho touched the edge of the baby’s blanket until a nurse arrived, helped Minho to sit up a little more. He had to be careful of the incision where they’d gotten the baby free in order to save both their lives. But he could hold the baby, like that, very carefully.

“Did I do anything to cause it?” Minho asked, and was rebuffed. No, of course not, she told him. And with her okay, the baby was put in his arms.

The baby’s eyes opened, and Minho felt choked again, as he stared at the tiny face. And at the tiny fingers that curved around his.

“Happy birthday,” Minho told him, and got a sound that was more kitten than human as the baby shifted and snuggled. Minho pressed his nose against the baby’s forehead, breathed him in. He had very little scent, more powder than anything else. He’d get his own as he grew, instead of taking what he got from his parents. But Minho knew intimately, instinctually, that he would have picked that baby out of a thousand others, a million. Chan hadn’t lied, nor had anyone else. This one was his, the one he’d carried. The one he’d bled for. He angled his head, pressing his lips to the purple cap, and tried not to let the tears that rolled down his cheeks fall onto the baby. He was still there. They both were. This tiny, solid baby who’d come through it with him. Chan’s hand was on his thigh and Minho nodded, assuring him he was okay even with his cheeks still wet and his whole being full of the scent of the life they’d made.

Chan didn’t ask him questions, just let him be, gave him tissues to wipe his face, and blow his nose. But he stayed close, watching with Minho the change of the baby’s expressions, or the wag of his tiny fist. And when a nurse came in not long after, Chan stayed by him as the baby was fed. Tiny, eager thing. Eager for life. For that first while he couldn’t get up, pick up the baby, or help to change him when his diaper needed it. He was allowed up briefly to hobble into the bathroom, and back again. He felt like an old man, his body unfamiliar to him, and so incredibly sore like his stomach might split and what seemed like his whole supply of internal organs shedding. But not the bright red blood of before. Not that. The baby was feeding again when the doctor who did the surgery came in.

He listened with creeping dread of what had happened. The placenta. There would be scarring, of course there would be. He’d been cut into, after all. But Chan— Chan wanted more children. So had Minho. They’d kept him whole, but to what end?

“Will I be able to have another?” Minho asked.

The doctor smiled as though it was a good sign that Minho had any desire to run out and have another baby.

“Many people go on to after complications like these, and surgery. We’ll be able to look at the scarring after you’ve healed, but I’d say the odds are good.”

Good. That was good. Chan might not intend to keep Minho long term, but if he wanted more children, who shared two parents, then he would have no reason to put Minho out sooner.

“What’s so funny?” Chan asked, when Minho was fairly shaking with laughter after the doctor left.

“Nothing. I’m ridiculous,” Minho said.

Chan looked skeptical. But so was Minho. It was all so ridiculous. He was so tired, and so sore, and so destroyed. His hormones had to be dancing on the roof with him in tow, and he swung from laughing to being on the knife’s edge of weeping again. Chan held the baby again, after, gently cradling the passed out infant.

“I was scared,” Chan said, touching Minho’s fingers. “I’m sorry I didn’t say— When they rushed in to help you, I didn’t know what to say, or do. I thought you might be dying.”

“Me, too,” Minho said.

Chan grimaced, as though that was the very last thing he wanted to hear, but it was resignation on his face.

“I assumed that, after. When you were trying to tell me what to name him. As though you wouldn’t be able to name him yourself. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you, or keep you from feeling afraid.”

Minho told him of what happened. The race to the operating room. The kindness there. Of waking to find himself as just one body and not two.

“You couldn’t have gone anyway. Not even if you bought the hospital,” Minho said.

“I’d have slowed them down,” Chan admitted. “Even if I didn’t mean to. I’d have taken their focus off of you. And him.”

“What does he smell like, to you?”

Chan tilted his head, considering it, and bending it a bit to sniff at the baby’s hat.

“A little sweet? Very…blank almost. But I wouldn’t mistake him for anyone else’s. When they brought him to me before you were brought back, I knew him immediately. That something I could smell when I tried, when you asked me, I knew him from that.”

Chan’s eyes widened when Minho’s closed his eyes and cursed, threatening to well over again just from Chan having the same damn thoughts he’d had.

“I’m fine. Get used to it,” Minho grunted, and heard Chan chuckle as he squeezed Minho’s hand.

“You knew him too, yeah?”

He was going to slap Chan’s hand instead of letting Chan hold his if Chan didn’t stop. Opening his eyes wasn’t any better. Chan was just swaying there beside the bed, smiling at the baby, his fingers tangled with Minho’s still. The fulfillment of one night of lust. That sight, father and child. That didn’t feel like the alpha who’d barely let him sign the NDA before getting Minho into the room to have him. But Minho knew it was. Toward Minho desperate, an alpha, unyielding. But toward a defenseless baby, his own son, he was anything but that. Minho was not small enough to fit in Chan’s arm, but he wanted that. Wanted to rest his head on Chan’s chest and feel him breathe, and hear the rumble of his voice as he spoke softly. But he also saw the baby arch a little, and begin to mewl. The nurse helped again, another tiny, new diaper. The cries made Minho ache in too many ways, as he took more medicine to help with pain, ate a meal, and slipped the hat from the baby’s head for a little while as he fed. Hair, fluffy and fine. Not any small amount of it, either. He stroked it, trying to see if it waved, or was straight. If it would curl like Chan’s or not.

He thought of Chan’s list of names, presented to him in alphabetical order.

“Sunwoo?” he said, looking up at Chan, who was watching both of them. Chan’s lips parted, though, and he nodded.

“Yeah. I think that fits him.”

Sunwoo. Their Sunwoo.

Minho could not do what he wanted, to rest on Chan and sleep. When the baby slept in his clear little bassinet, Chan sat by Minho, rested his arm along Minho’s, and grasped it almost to Minho’s shoulder. A firm hold, one of both man and alpha. It was the closest he would get, there in the hospital. And it felt like with that, Minho slept like the dead. Until another baby cry, hobbling somehow even more painfully to the bathroom again, another feeding, another snack for himself as Chan stood by the baby trying to comfort him while he was waving his legs in his swaddle. It felt like whole decades passed that way, but it was only hours, a day at most. He was able to move more freely, allowed to lift the baby himself instead of only being handed him. The weight of him felt different, standing on his own two feet, or even sitting down in the very nice rocking chair.

Chan never left. He was there in the room, except when he went to the bathroom too, the entire time. Chan’s meals were brought to him, also, and he was there to help. To bring Minho the baby, to stand by as Minho got to change a diaper on his own. To answer any verbalized worries Minho had, and be silent support for him when the doctor visited. And support when their families, very briefly, stopped by. No friends, not yet. It was too much, though they were all aware of the birth and recovery. He was grateful for the nurses, the help, the lack of worry when he was afraid something had gone wrong. They had hired an exceptionally skilled and experienced nanny to be there on call, to look after him when need be. They were ready, as much as they could be.

Chan laughed from beside him, the baby making a silly face, smacking his lips and almost sticking his tongue out.

Yeah. As much as they could be.

***

Walking into the penthouse felt like returning to a foreign land after three days in the hospital, even if it had been barely more than half a week since they’d left. It was clean, and ready. The changing table was prepared. The crib was set up next to Minho’s bed, exactly as he’d wanted it. For a little while, at least, he wanted the baby to sleep in the room with him. Not just “the baby” any more. Sunwoo. They had two or three different types of monitors set up, but Chan didn’t argue with it.

And Chan, again, stayed. He asked, though, if it was all right to stay close so he could help. At least in the penthouse there was a large bed instead of a tiny hospital one. Even with Minho’s collection of pillows, and supports, Chan still had a spot for himself just like before the birth. When Sunwoo cried, Chan was out of the bed like a rocket, checking him, soothing him. Sometimes changing him, other times bringing him to be fed. Chan rested close then, touching Minho in some way. His side, his shoulder, his leg. Sometimes Chan fell asleep again, but woke in time to take Sunwoo back to the crib and gently situate him after he’d been burped and was well again on his way to sleep.

Idyllic, blurred days of sleep, interruption, eating, and more sleep. Holding Sunwoo against his skin, or watching Chan cuddle him like that, too, a light blanket over him as they sat shoulder to shoulder and watched the baby cuddle with them. He didn’t have to lift a finger, not to cook, or clean. Just to eat, and rest, and look after Sunwoo. But Minho had his own, familiar bathroom, and his own, familiar home. They tried to put on a movie only once, on a laptop, and Minho had been asleep almost before the opening credits had ended. Chan, after the first week or so, was gone during the days. Back at work. But the nanny was there, helping him, answering his questions, and giving him advice when he asked for it as they cared for a baby learning about the world. Not before, not unless she saw something that was dangerous. He appreciated that. He was learning as much as the baby was.

But at night, he had some of what he wanted. Chan, all of him resting beside him. Minho slept like he’d been hammered out of consciousness when he held a pillow against his stomach and relaxed. Some of the support pillows got moved, leaving more of the bed open between them as Minho figured out how his body post-baby worked. What was comfortable, what wasn’t. He did not, and was not supposed to, feel normal after just a week. He was still figuring out how a baby operated, reading to him when he was awake, putting on music, showing him some of the soft, colorful toys, making the silliest faces when Sunwoo was looking at him. Letting Sunwoo lie flat on his belly to figure out his own neck, and his limbs, and gravity for all Minho knew. Minho stayed there next to him while he picked up his head and peered around in such a strange way. Minho didn’t lift or carry Sunwoo much that first week. Sunwoo most often was brought to him, or he went to the crib for changing and things like that. Sitting, rocking in the chair. Taking little walks around the hallways and through the rooms. So it felt like adventure when the nanny helped Minho into a sling that sat high on his body, got Sunwoo into it. They stared at each other, faces close, he and Sunwoo. But he didn’t sit down like that,, not trusting he could get himself back up without splitting open. But it let him walk around with Sunwoo cradled, and his arms free. It let him keep his balance high, and to gently exercise by walking and with the weight of a baby adding to that. He was still wearing the baby when Chan walked in, in fact, with the nanny in calling distance.

“Wow, look at you,” Chan said, coming up to them and grinning when he saw Sunwoo was straight up passed out.

“The newest fashion accessory: baby,” Minho said, and Chan laughed.

“Does it hurt?” Chan asked. And Minho shook his head.

“The first time I did, I definitely felt a twinge. I didn’t leave him on long that time. But I think I’ve figured out where my center of gravity is again. So as long as the nanny helps me with him, I can just focus on walking just as if he was in my arms.”

“Good. I know from my own past injuries it can be easy to want to rush. So I definitely want you to take as good care of you as you are of him.”

Chan kissed him as though to emphasize that, and stroked Sunwoo’s back. Chan helped him get the baby out of the sling, and back into his crib. Some of the ways Chan had touched him before the birth had been waning. At first it felt like Chan was trying not to hurt him, when they weren’t in bed. The casual touches, leaning, all of that. Even kisses had seemed to slow. But Chan was there, still, as it gnawed in him.

***

It was stranger, and harder, and better, in many ways than he could have ever anticipated. His insides felt raw and painful, still. Unable to sleep long stretches for helping the baby, he wanted to do nothing more than lie down in a dark cave for a year to nurse his wounds. And at the same time, he chafed against the constraints of his own body, wanting to do more than he was allowed both by doctors and by his own stamina and pain endurance. Healing couldn’t be rushed. And yet, he wasn’t sure when it changed. When he wasn’t absolutely ready to lie down and die of exhaustion and pain every time he happened to be awake whether he was physically attached to Sunwoo or not. It was still hard. His ears still rang when Sunwoo cried, and when his emotions rolled from one extreme to the other, and when he couldn’t understand what his body, or even the baby wanted. But part of the healing - and the magic of a few naps while the nanny or Chan watched Sunwoo - was at least on the upward swing.

He got to leave the penthouse, actually use one of the strollers they’d bought, and actually stroll with it. Though, he waited for that until Chan was there at least. He felt like he’d been trapped in a cave even though the penthouse windows were enormous.

“Land,” he said, when they’d stepped out of the back, private entrance and onto pavement. There was a sky above them and everything. They’d had that on the balcony, too, but it was different, below. And Minho, never a fan of heights to begin with, hadn’t ventured very close to the edge. If he was afraid of falling, he was doubly so with a baby in his arms.

“It’s been a long time,” Chan agreed. Less for him, though. “Any time you want to get out, let me know. If you don’t feel up to walking, we can get him in his car seat and just drive around for a while.”

That sounded nice, too. But it was the walking that felt best. Feeling able to stretch his legs, feeling muscles he’d forgotten wake up. He was doing his best to keep stretching, as much as the incision allowed. But he half wanted to take off at a sprint and knew that was not going to be it. With Chan in charge of the stroller, he was able to walk just a little more briskly, walking ahead, walking back. Peeking in to see Sunwoo firmly asleep, cheek cuddled up to one tiny fist. He wasn’t sure if he was going to have to pay for it later, but it felt like another piece of himself getting back into place.

Since Sunwoo was wide awake after they got back, they had him resting between them on the bed, a small mobile set up over him that he was gazing up at, fascinated by the sight, the sparkle, and movement.

“How is he so good?” Chan asked, when Sunwoo cooed, and shoved a hand in his mouth as he continued staring at the mobile. “I feel like… I feel like I’ve loved him my whole life, and I’ve only known about his existence for less than a year.”

“Yeah,” Minho agreed.

Chan reached for Minho, slipping his arm under the baby’s legs so that they could twine their fingers together. He thought Sunwoo had gotten some of Chan’s features, when he looked from one of them to the other. Chan always denied that, saying his eyes were just like Minho’s, or why not bless Sunwoo with Minho’s nose. He was just a complicated blob of genetics, that was all. What he looked like then wasn’t what he’d necessarily look like in a year, or five years, or ten. He was still a small ball of squish, still figuring out his way in the world.

Minho leaned in closer. “Are you having fun?”

Sunwoo goggled at him like Minho had arrived from Mars, but kicked his feet hearing Minho’s voice, cooing as Minho smiled at him. Chan across the bed had clutched at his own chest with his free hand, like his heart had taken a direct shot. Minho rolled his eyes at him, but Sunwoo’s attention was directed back to the mobile. Minho put a toy in Sunwoo’s hand, a crinkly little circle that looked like a doughnut for him to squeeze and aimlessly waggle.

If not the cutest baby who’d ever lived, then at least a close second. Minho’s mom confirmed that, too, but she was a grandma, and biased. But Minho didn’t mind.

***

Weeks somehow passed that way. When he wasn’t leaving the penthouse so often, and the only people he saw was the nanny or Chan - any housekeepers who came worked while Minho stayed in the room with Sunwoo - he sort of lost track of days. His hair didn’t stop growing, but he hadn’t gotten out to get it cut. Chan doing a double-take at him when coming in the door one evening had him taking a look at himself. He hadn’t had a chance that day, the baby fussy, to do much. His hair was pulled back from his forehead and clipped up on top of his head. His oversized t-shirt was somehow already wet and stained. Baggy pajama bottoms. Fuzzy slippers. He let out a little huff of a laugh. Chan, on the other hand, looked like a rich man at his leisure in his soft, pressed clothes.

“The man you married,” Minho said, doing a bit of a sarcastic curtsy.

“Did I get lucky, then?”

Minho scoffed as Chan came up to him, and as he’d taken to doing, hesitated before reaching for Minho’s arm, stroking it. It was like Minho was fragile somehow, like he was afraid of hurting him, or there was some sort of weekly allowance of touch to be meted out when they weren’t resting on the bed together while Sunwoo ate. When Minho stepped closer, Minho was the one who thought better of it, pulling at his shirt.

“Maybe I should change first.”

“No,” Chan said. “Here.”

Like the hugs before the baby was born, with Chan lying behind him and supporting him, Minho’s back seemed to let free, relaxing with a groan of relief as Chan squeezed him. High on his back, not putting any pressure low where his incision was. Letting Minho choose how close to get.

“Feels good.”

“It does. Not…like that. Well, like that, but not like that, too,” Chan said, laughing helplessly at himself. “Sometimes I think about what happened, like I can get you pregnant just by breathing on you.”

“Is that why you don’t touch me?”

The words, bald and accusatory, slipped out before Minho could stop them. He struggled to try and push back, thinking he might save himself the discussion if he got away. The struggle could hardly be called one, as he got a millimeter into movement before Chan had blocked him.

“What do you mean?” and when Minho tried to look at the ceiling rather than answer, Chan touched his face. “Minho? Touch you? Hug you? Like this? I was following the advice of the doctors, of course. And the books said that some people after they give birth just don’t want more touching because the baby is so much already.”

“Did the books tell you to ask your partner what they needed?”

Chan shook his head slowly. “I thought…you would come to me. I thought I was being respectful.”

“I guess you were, then,” Minho said. Somehow. In his own head. He could appreciate it, in a way. He blinked through it as Chan made a low sound, adjusting his arms, nuzzling into Minho’s neck and just holding him. It sent heat up through Minho’s face. His own arms re-found their place around Chan.

“I’m sorry,” Chan murmured. “I was trying not to be selfish, and… Well, fuck. I’m glad you said something. I could be close to you like this all day. You smell like home.”

Minho nodded, nuzzling into Chan’s neck.

“When you’re not working,” Minho said, unable to resist the jab, as Chan snorted.

“I could buy a two-seater office chair. Or you could sit on my lap. But that’s a thought for a while down the road.”

Definitely a while down the road. He knew what Chan’s office looked like. He didn’t think sitting next to Chan would be any kind of assistance to him working. He wasn’t some kind of statue Chan could put on his desk. And who knew how long they might’ve stood there like that, except Sunwoo burbled from the other room. A particular sound.

“A hungry kid,” Minho sighed.

“Gotta eat to grow,” Chan said. And made them both laugh by nipping at Minho’s neck.

Maybe it was his imagination, but Chan seemed to sleep a little closer that night. And when he got back in bed after changing Sunwoo, or returning him to his crib after being burped in the middle of the night, Chan not only stroked Minho’s hip, but kissed against his cheek, and neck, before relaxing behind him. More than there had been. Chan, thinking of him. Chan, sleeping close, not just because of the baby. Minho loved him. It wasn’t some bolt out of the blue, some shock within himself. And it wasn’t a particularly new feeling, when he addressed it. The realization was mostly that of seeing how easily Chan spoke of loving Sunwoo. Telling him he was loved, telling Minho how much Chan loved him. It seemed irrational to be jealous of a baby who was unable to speak, or even to see much more than a foot in front of his own face. He hadn’t considered it while he was pregnant, because love wasn’t how they had started, or how even Sunwoo had started. He’d been putting one foot in front of the other to get to the finish line. One that hadn’t ended in a finish at all, because it had kept going, opening up an even more uncertain future. He knew, at his basest, gut level, that Chan cared for him, and his wellbeing. Maybe they weren’t mated, but he knew that. He could nearly taste it. But those were not words he gave to Minho. And Minho, though he knew it within himself, hadn’t yet come to an understanding to give that to Chan. Or if Chan would want it. Or, in the long term, keep Minho beside him.

***

Minho’s first outing out with friends included Chan renting out half of a pizza parlor. He got a private haircut in anticipation of it, a barber of Chan’s acquaintance coming to the penthouse to make him look less shaggy. Somehow that even made him feel better, stroking his own neck in the mirror as he realized just how much had gotten cut off. And in addition to friends, it also included Chan, and Sunwoo. There had been the usual life interruptions. Schedules clashing, a cold on Hyunjin’s part. Sunwoo’s immune system was still growing, too, so there weren’t many actual outings. It was their first time meeting Sunwoo, Hyunjin and Seungmin. Hyunjin had thrown his arms out, ignoring Minho and Chan both in favor of getting his arms full of a thankfully awake baby. And charming on all cylinders, as Hyunjin took a careful seat, and cooed at him, and made silly faces.

It gave Minho the opportunity to introduce Chan to Seungmin. See their assessment of each other. Seungmin had brought up a concern once that Chan was isolating Minho. Keeping him from going out as much. Minho had dismissed it. It’d been hard at the time to explain why Minho had chosen to limit some of those things while pregnant, and why his friends couldn’t meet his husband. It felt different then, and he couldn’t put it to words. A fulfillment of something, that when they sat across from Minho’s friends at the table, they felt like some sort of unit. Chan had helped him sit down, sat next to him, a hand on Minho’s thigh. Minho watched with only the tiniest of anxieties as Hyunjin put Sunwoo in Seungmin’s arms. Seungmin made faces, too, but some of that time was spent in contemplation. Minho only took Sunwoo back - well, Chan took him back to hand to Minho - when the food came. He’d gotten pretty proficient at baby cuddling while shoving food in his face, and Sunwoo sooner or later would need to eat, and what luck, Minho was there to help with that.

As fascinating as a baby that slept up to 75% of the day, who was an eating, pooping, growing machine was, he was not the center of the universe. Other topics were raised and grazed upon. When Minho thought he would return to dancing was one of those things.

“As soon as possible, when I’m cleared. I haven’t wanted to expose myself to getting sick for a while, but even if I don’t go back to dancing right away, I’d like to get back involved in coaching, helping out with classes,” Minho said. “Once the doctor gives the okay, my body will have to guide me after that.”

Chan nodded his agreement, squeezing Minho’s knee again. “I haven’t even gotten to see you dance yet, so I’ll look forward to that.”

Minho scoffed, and then glanced sidelong at him. “Except for club dancing.”

Hyunjin hooted as Chan’s laugh acknowledged that.

“We got rewarded that time,” Chan said, defending himself, and moving a baby foot.

He relaxed throughout the dinner, and as Sunwoo ate. Chan was genial, not in business mode, not trying to interview them for their worthiness. Nor them about Chan’s, for that matter. All that pent up worry from his pregnancy had maybe been for nothing. Or maybe, with Sunwoo as a mediator, it was happening exactly as it had been supposed to.

When Sunwoo had been fed, Chan took him, burped him before disappearing with the diaper bag to change him.

“Wow, you really lucked out there, didn’t you,” Hyunjin said, before Chan reemerged with Sunwoo, and the bag over his shoulder.

“He’s a wonderful father,” Minho agreed. And Chan wasn’t sneaky about it, cuddling the baby, making sure everything was settled up at the register. Sunwoo was a bit gripey by the time Chan came back to the table. Not anything they could do made him quiet, not Minho taking him, or even Hyunjin who said he sometimes could get babies to quiet.

“I’ll take him out to the car since he doesn’t want to settle. The bill is taken care of for the table, so don’t worry about that,” Chan said, and shot a smile at everyone else before looking back to Minho. “Stay as long as you want. I’ll see if I can’t get him to sleep.”

Minho nodded, and looking after him as Chan - his husband - and their child left the restaurant. He wasn’t going to take advantage of Chan’s offer to stay as long as he wanted. For one thing, the restaurant would close. And he wasn’t going to leave Chan, even in a luxurious car, for hours taking care of a baby.

“I remember seeing the articles before you met. He was always reported as such a playboy. Clearly they got him wrong,” Hyunjin said.

Well, no, they hadn’t entirely. If Minho had been told Chan was going to settle into a doting father, he’d have been skeptical of it, entirely.

“Maybe he needed the right push,” Seungmin theorized.

Maybe. Maybe Sunwoo had been that push, through Minho.

***

Sunwoo had settled, by the time Minho had left the restaurant. Chan had still been holding him, so they’d carefully tucked him into the car seat for the ride to the tower. And he was still asleep when he got laid in his crib, unaware of the world.

“I liked them,” Chan said, when they’d finished cleaning up and had poured themselves into the bed. Sunwoo would need feeding again before all that long, and Minho could feel the lure of a nap.

“I think they liked you. They thought you were a great father,” Minho said.

“So are you,” Chan said, deflecting. “How soon do you want another? Or how many, I guess.”

“I’d like to give him siblings close in age to him. One or two more, I think,” Minho said, and watched Chan’s eyes light up. “I’ve read most people have their next heat around a year after birth. If they’re close together, and I wanted to go back to dancing, then there’d be less time away.”

“I’d be happy with two or three. Whatever you wanted. We make wonderful babies together,” Chan murmured as he scooted closer, rubbing along Minho’s side and nuzzling into his neck. “I know your body needs time to recover, but if it didn’t, and it was what you wanted, I would make another with you now. Or when your heat comes, mark you as mine, and please you until there was no chance you weren’t carrying another. I can nearly taste it.”

Chan was petting him so encompassingly, talking so passionately, that some of the words took a while to sink deep into Minho’s understanding.

“Mark,” was all Minho could get out. Not just babies. Mating.

“Mm. Here,” Chan said, teeth grazing over Minho’s skin and making Minho’s whole body draw up in a cringe between pain and pleasure. “Make you mine. Take you as mine. Give you all of me. Everything I am. Everything I have. Whatever you want from me. My mate. My husband. My lover. Father of my children. My everything.”

The words stung him as he clutched at Chan and stared, unseeing, at nothing. The surreality of it all. How much he wanted those words to be something that wasn’t lust talking, like the words they’d said before Sunwoo had ever been a thought.

“It is much easier,” Minho began, and was proud of himself for not stumbling over the words, or stuttering from the tightness in his throat. “To end a marriage contract than a mating bond.”

“I know,” Chan said, chuckling. “That’s why I want—“

Chan’s words cut off as cleanly as if they’d been cut with scissors, and the warmth with which he had been holding Minho to him cooled even though Chan himself had not moved. There was a tension to it, touching him, but not touching him fully somehow. A distance that was impossible to ignore.

“You want to end the marriage?” Chan asked. And even in his words, his tone had tightened.

“I don’t want—“ He’d mulled the words a thousand times. “I don’t want to trap you into this forever because of an accident. We married for the sake of his inheritance, because of stupid laws. You’ve treated me incredibly well, and I’ll give you more children. I’ll enjoy making them with you. But I won’t…”

Chan drew back a little, the further withdrawing of warmth that had Minho bracing against a chill that didn’t actually exist. He steeled himself against it.

“Our son is not a mistake, or an accident. If I believed in that kind of thing, I’d say he was a sign. That we were so compatible that literally no precaution we took could keep you from conceiving is too much for even me to ignore. You didn’t trap me into wanting this with you. I pursued you. I talked you into this. I’m the one that made him with you. He’s not a mistake.”

His voice was steady, but Minho could still feel the tension in him, staring at Chan’s jaw.

“Of course he’s not a mistake. I love him,” Minho said. “I would do anything for him.”

“And me? What do you feel for…me?”

Minho inhaled. “You are the father of my child. You are my legal husband. You are my landlord, and my benefactor, and the only man who could right now make me tempted to have sex again.”

“And that is all. You don’t want a mating bond with me.”

“Yes,” Minho said. And lived in the interminable silence of the lie he’d just spoken. Only half meeting Chan’s eyes lest he see the fullness of the lie there. His neck burned with wanting a mark. Whatever in him that made Chan smell like safety nearly implored him to go to his knees and beg for it. There was safety in the mark, too. Certainty. An almost unbreakable forever. But that hadn’t been what Chan had called him off the floor of a club for. Not at all what he’d intended for their future. And until, if ever, they decided they wanted it, no. He couldn’t have that mark. They’d made one child without a mating bond. They could make more without one also. It would give them both an out, if it was needed. They could be happy together going on as they were.

Chan nodded, leaning in, his lips warm and soft against Minho’s cheek. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I will… I will never forget what you have done for me. I appreciate your consideration.”

Like the closing salvo in a business transaction, before Chan rolled off the bed and walked out.

Chan did not sleep in the room that night. He did come in when Sunwoo cried, helping to change him, putting him in Minho’s arms to be fed. But he didn’t rest next to Minho as Sunwoo had his fill, or lie down again after with a comforting hand on Minho’s hip that helped him fall back asleep. He sat in a chair instead, browsing on his phone. Minho did sleep, but poorly, reliving the choice of his words, the retreat of Chan’s affection. Chan hadn’t fought it. Hadn’t pled his case, or tried to change Minho’s mind. Very much not the alpha he’d been the night they’d met, eager to take what he’d wanted, and ready in some way to cajole to get his own way. He wondered if Chan slept in the other room, or on the couch. He wondered if Chan slept as poorly as Minho did.

If that had been the only night he’d slept poorly, it might not have been significant to him. But he was used to Chan’s warmth in the bed, Chan’s breathing, of nudging Chan onto his side if he began to breathe too heavily through his nose. Of being able to turn to touch Chan in the night, or ask him questions about Sunwoo if only to soothe his own mind. Of Chan, and the growing quantity of his casual touches, casual smiles, and kisses. All of those Chan still gave, of course. But to Sunwoo. Only to Sunwoo. Minho didn’t talk to him about it, still reeling, and wondering if Chan was, too. If Chan needed time to process, to think, so they could discuss it, rationally. Even when it sometimes felt like Minho had little rational feeling left in his body after pregnancy and birth. Just needing a nap when Sunwoo was weeping made him feel like the worst person who had ever lived.

It was almost four one morning when Chan was burping Sunwoo when he looked at Minho. “The lawyers are working on a solution to what we talked about the other night. It shouldn’t be more than another day or two before something is ready to show you. I hope you don’t think I’m putting you off about it. It just takes time.”

The other night. What they’d spoken of. What had they spoken of? Minho held a pillow to his chest and fought to think of it. “What we talked about?”

The glance Chan sent him was at first slightly irritated, as though Minho was deliberately being obtuse. It changed when he saw the blank confusion on Minho’s face.

“The marriage contract and how to dissolve it as quickly as possible,” Chan said.

They’d spoken of how to dissolve the marriage contract? No, they’d spoken of mating bites, and their difficulty of being reversed, and Minho not wanting to tie Chan into a lifetime of something he had not initially wanted.

“I didn’t ask to dissolve it,” Minho said, his mind as blank as his memory had been. Tiredness. A sheet over him that almost masked the panic that welled.

“As you said, I am your legal husband only,” Chan said, and those words echoed dully. “It isn’t something that would happen immediately. It would look very bad to end the contract when you have barely given birth. It would look bad on me, and make it seem like we married only for inheritance rights. It would be true, but no one needs to know that but us. The lawyers will find a path that makes it seem more natural. Likely after his first birthday, so that we can separate amicably and continue to coparent as the prenup states. You’ll have a lawyer again to guide you in that separation agreement. It will help having that done legally so that when it comes time to divorce officially, the intent will have been laid out and it can be completed almost immediately.”

“But—“ Why wouldn’t his mind work. “We wanted another child.”

Chan shook his head. “No. By the time he’s one, you’ll have given up almost two years of your life for me. He’ll be fine as my only child. I only needed one child to inherit, anyway. What you do afterward, who you choose to mate and have children with, as long as it is someone safe to have around our son, it will have nothing to do with me.”

Sunwoo was laid down so gently, Chan stroking some part of him, an arm maybe, his gaze only on the baby. The words he murmured, Minho couldn’t hear through the roar in his ears.

“Good night,” Chan said to Minho.

And left him. Left him. Chan was leaving him. Not that night, not that month, or even year. Leaving him. Divorce. It felt like a dirty word, like it was a snake set to bite him from where Chan had been sitting earlier. Divorce. Because Chan couldn’t mark him. Because Minho wasn’t the omega he wanted. But Chan had wanted him. With rainbows and fairy tales, and whispers of marks, and happy laughter.

He slept a little, by the time Sunwoo stirred next, and Chan had not come in to help. He got only a little more sleep before the nanny was up, to take him as Minho napped. Or tried to.

***

For the most part, Minho boxed it out of his head. He might have been herded into getting married, but divorce was not a one-sided thing, not with a child involved. He’d see whatever Chan had the lawyers write, and if he didn’t like it, he’d tell Chan just as plainly. That was his plan, in the absence of Chan. He wanted more sleep first. To clear his head so that there wasn’t a constant whine of exhaustion instead of reason. Where he didn’t feel like if he started laughing about the absurdity of it, that he might not stop, and if that happened, that he might end up in tears. The next night, Minho woke in a panic, flying out of bed to see Sunwoo sleeping exactly where he’d been before. Softly breathing. Perfect. He’d dreamed that Chan had divorced him, that they’d arranged custody, that the baby had been hungry, and crying, and while Minho could hear him, was begging outside, Chan wouldn’t let him in. Ignored him, put him out, cut him off. He walked blindly through the penthouse, hands shaking as he got a drink out of the fridge, and then without thinking of how he’d stand back up, knelt beside it on the floor, the cold container smooth against his face. Trying to center himself. No matter what happened, Chan wouldn’t do that. Chan wouldn’t keep their son from him.

“Minho?”

Shit. He nearly jumped out of his skin, and Chan held up his hands, half in shadows.

“Sorry! Sorry. I was working last night, and fell asleep on the couch. You don’t usually come roaring out of the room, so I wanted to be sure you were all right.”

Minho laughed a little helplessly and opened the bottle’s lid. “I was thirsty.”

That wasn’t all of it, not nearly, but Chan didn’t need to know that. He recapped the bottle after taking a drink, which did help. A little.

“I have to get up,” he said a little bleakly. If he got one foot under him, maybe. If he’d been there alone, he’d have crawled to the counter, or even to the couch, and worked up slowly. He’d been so careful, knowing he was still healing inside.

“Let me help,” Chan said.

With Chan bearing almost all of his weight, it was easier than he might have thought. At least, he knew it was something he could do, if necessary. And every day that passed, every bit of healing that passed, made it easier. And the scent of Chan, so close after several days, was heady. Chan’s hand brushed lightly over the top of Minho’s shoulder once he was at least on his feet again, if not entirely steady.

“Are you? All right?”

“Yes,” Minho said. He frequently went to sit on the kitchen floor in the dead of night in a panic. He was fine. He was going to will himself to be.

Chan nodded then and stepped back, moving towards the living room where his laptop and briefcase were in fact on the table there.

“Do you want to talk? Can I get you something to eat?” Chan asked.

“No. I’ll go back to bed now.”

The baby monitor beside the couch crackled with the sound of a baby’s coo. And Minho shook his head, snorting.

“I guess it is time for him to eat. No wonder I woke up.”

Sunwoo he knew how to deal with. Changing his diaper. Touching the soft hair as he ate, feeling the tension give in his tiny body give as he began to fall asleep with the satisfaction of being full. Chan had come in not long before, sitting in the chair by the door. And when it was clear Sunwoo was done, Chan took him, gently holding him for no more than a minute before Sunwoo let out a little belch while still asleep. He could see Chan was grinning when he laid the passed-out child back in his crib. Normally he was still awake. That night, it seemed like everything had gone to hell for timing.

“Thanks,” Minho said. “Are you going to sleep on the couch the rest of the night?”

Chan glanced at his watch. “Yeah, might as well. Get some rest.”

Minho had almost offered the bed. The wide, empty bed where Chan had slept, that with clean sheets no longer smelled of him. But then Chan had left the room. Minho did lie down, though when he rolled to his side, he was facing the empty expanse of bed where Chan had used to sleep. Would still be there, undoubtedly, if not for Minho.

***

Minho rarely went out without Sunwoo, but he had felt up to it, needed something in fact for the baby that he didn’t want to order online. It was difficult to tell the texture of fabric when looking at it on a screen, and despite the plethora of clothes he’d been given before his birth, he’d outgrown already the tiny newborn onesies, and Minho wanted more of the larger ones. So he’d bought some, and maybe a few other cute things, before returning back to the penthouse. The nanny was in the kitchen, and he let her know he was back, so she could let herself out. Instead of finding Sunwoo asleep, he walked in to see Chan cuddling their son. Chan looked right there, smiling down at the happy baby. Sunwoo was clearly responding to his voice, his tiny hand moving, looking at Chan’s face so carefully. Chan deserved that, more of it. Family. When it so obviously made him happy. Not one child, but two, or three. Like they’d talked about. Like they both wanted.

Chan glanced up, and his smile didn’t stop exactly, but dimmed a little. “Sorry. I meant to be back downstairs by the time you got back.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re free to have access to him any time,” Minho said. “He’s your son. This is your home.”

“When the agreement’s signed, it’ll be yours, this side of the penthouse,” Chan said. “You won’t have to worry about me intruding. He’ll stay here with you, and you can work out access with the nanny. We’ll have a lock installed for you, and I won’t come in without your permission.”

“You’re not intruding. I didn’t ask to end the marriage or for any of that.”

His words came out sharper than he’d meant, and Chan sighed, letting the kicking baby rest back in his crib.

“I know. That’s why I did. Sharing this space as a married couple is one thing, but we’ll be winding that down. You deserve your own privacy and autonomy. I would ask for the time being that you not bring any men—“

“Fuck off!” Minho’s face felt like it was burning as Chan stared up at him from the crib in shock. Sunwoo was a baby. He wasn’t going to care if Minho cursed around his tender ears even as Chan made to herd him out of the room. “Fuck all the way off. I’m not going to bring any men around when he is still a tiny baby. Did you not hear what I told you, or just the pieces you wanted to hear? You’re the only man I could even consider having sex with. I’m not even cleared for it yet.”

“You managed before me. It’s proximity, and just having had the baby. My scent is everywhere. It’ll be here less, when everything is settled.”

“It’s one thing to run off like this—“ Minho leaned back against the couch, but gestured at the room they’d left as he spoke. “I’m an adult. I can understand why you’re abandoning me, but he won’t.”

Chan’s jaw clenched. “I’m not abandoning him.”

“No?” His laugh was brittle. “Am I supposed to let you in at night when you politely knock so you can change his diaper? Or if you don’t want to be near me, you’ll look in on him via the baby cam once a week from your office? Or from your club?”

Back to fucking whatever omegas he wanted, without a husband to hinder him.

“This is why we shouldn’t talk about this between ourselves,” Chan said, and began to move toward the door. “The lawyers will find a way to make things work that suits us both.”

“Yes. If your money can’t get you what you want, the lawyers can.”

For a moment, Chan looked like he wanted to argue back before he composed himself.

“There’s a wrap party for a big project tonight. I’ll be out until late,” Chan said. And then he left. Minho didn’t pick up Sunwoo as much as he wished to. He was too tense, knew that would spread into the tiny body. He locked himself in the bathroom instead, sitting on a bench he’d put there for when he got too tired to stand to take care of his face, and setting a timer for himself. He hated the hormones. Hated he was shaking, fighting tears that wanted to fall as he made frustrated sounds to try and knock back everything.

“This isn’t what I wanted,” he said in the general direction of the toilet, his voice on the edge of creaking as he banged his fist on the flat of the bench several times to try and release anything. Emotion. Anger. Frustration. All of it. He at least got hold of his breathing then, taking deep, steady breaths. Days ago, Chan had been delighted, wanting to mark him. Then, it seemed like he couldn’t get rid of Minho fast enough. Chan had gotten things so wrong. Or had wanted far more than Minho had been prepared to concede to him. He could still feel the ghost of Chan’s teeth on his neck. If only that had taken, too, at the same time he’d conceived. If the mark was there, there wouldn’t have been any questions, even for Minho. They’d have been in agreement, settled. Chan’s alpha drive to lock Minho down would’ve been eased. It felt a bit like cheating. Get accidentally knocked up, and have an alpha desperate to make Minho his own. It wasn’t like he was the first person it’d ever happened to. That was why he’d wanted to keep what they had as it was. To give them time, when everything was so new.

Sunwoo had begun to fuss by the time Minho felt even partially collected, little feet in staccato thrusts into the air in his little bear onesie.

“Come here, baby,” Minho said. He settled into the plush rocker after checking Sunwoo’s diaper, and hoped the contact would soothe both of them.

***

Sunwoo would not settle. No matter what Minho did. He walked, he rocked, he sang, he fed, he burped. He tried a pacifier, music, the sound of a cartoon. Sunwoo’s diaper was dry, nothing pinching the delicate skin. He had no fever, wasn’t cold, wasn’t cutting teeth. He didn’t display any signs of an ear infection. Minho tried massaging the tiny belly, moving his legs, anything in case something hurt there, but there was nothing but kitten cries and angry wails. Not a constant crying, not turning his whole face red like after he’d had his shots. No. Just a tired, unhappy baby, maybe in some kind of pain Minho couldn’t see. There were no words as he stroked the baby’s fuzzy hair, and returning to rubbing his belly, and moving around his legs again. It got him flailing arms, and grumpy, gummy snarls. It might’ve been cute had it not been going on for so long. The nurse line told him he was doing the right things, told him what to look out for, and suggested other things he could try. That they could fit him in if he was still concerned in the morning, or to go to the emergency room if anything changed. A grumpy baby wasn’t an emergency. He wasn’t turning blue, or not eating.

It was three in the morning, he saw, when he turned his head at the sound of the door opening. Chan. He wore his work suit still, his tie undone but still around his neck. His hair was messy, like he’d been running his hands through it. Or like someone had. But he didn’t look like he’d been kissed, and Minho knew the party had been likely to go long. And Minho knew how he looked, too, likely wrecked, sitting on the edge of the bed and rocking a baby unwilling to be soothed.

“Everything all right? I heard crying from the baby monitor in my place when I came in.”

Chan crouched beside them, touching the baby’s frustrated feet.

“I’d say it’s luckily just him and not both of us, yet. I’m not sure what’s wrong,” Minho said. And he told Chan everything he’d tried, how he’d called the nurse line. “Apparently sometimes this just…happens. I tried to leave him in the crib to see if he could soothe himself for a little while, but I could have cut my own heart out first. I didn’t make it five minutes.”

Chan clucked, and cooed at Sunwoo. “Giving you a hard time then. Let me take him for a minute.”

Chan tried almost everything Minho had. Walking the hall with him, putting him on his shoulder, rocking him, singing at him, massaging his stomach. Talking at him like he was someone on his board of directors needing to get his act together. Though kindly, and in baby-appropriate language. Minho would have given an arm for it to have worked, for Sunwoo to have settled, but a small part of him was glad there was no magic that he had been lacking that Chan possessed. No baby wrangling skills an alpha had somehow. He felt worse for their son, though. He wished he could have some kind of telepathy, see what Sunwoo felt.

Sunwoo did settle enough to feed again, though he still whimpered, interrupting himself before eating again. Burped and changed again, he was still restless and wailing.

“Let the nanny take him for a little while,” Chan suggested softly. “It’s nearly dawn, and you need some rest. Just until it’s time for him to eat again. Maybe she has some kind of magic we don’t.”

Minho nodded, so tired he was nearly numb, his ears ringing from hours of intermittent crying. The nanny, so gracious and kind, was filled in on everything, and agreed with the nurse he’d spoken to. Sometimes it just happened. They’d done all they could.

And yet, when she took Sunwoo, and cuddled him a moment, the room was filled by the sound of a fart that seemed 20 times too big for the tiny body.

The three of them stared at each other as Sunwoo whimpered and kicked.

“So it was gas?” Minho said. “Maybe?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him to be sure. Hopefully getting that out will let him settle a bit. Don’t worry about a thing,” she told them.

They stayed there until the sound of the outer door closing had ended.

“We know we did all we could,” Chan said. “You did all you could. Let me get you something to drink, so you can sleep now.”

Minho had just returned from the bathroom when Chan returned with a water bottle that Minho drank deeply from. He hadn’t been able to stomach much in the middle of Sunwoo’s clear misery. Chan set it to the side for him after, holding the blanket for him as Minho got his legs onto the mattress.

“Are you going to sleep?” Minho asked.

“I should. I still need to work some today, but that can wait. Get some good rest,” Chan said.

But before Chan had even reached the end of the bed, the thought of sleeping alone again strangled Minho from his throat straight to his own belly.

“Chan,” he said, and Chan stopped, immediately, looking back to Minho. “Sleep here.”

He couldn’t quite read the expression on Chan’s face, but it looked like flat denial before Minho closed his eyes.

“I want you to be able to really rest,” Chan said. Excuses. It wasn’t the answer Minho wanted. Part of him said to accept it. Most of him, too tired to rebel, could not.

“Alpha,” Minho said. He didn’t know how else to say it. How else to convey a bone-deep need not to lie in that bed alone with Chan so far away as to be in some other solar system. A cold he’d never noticed before. It stung at him, not a weakness, but a theft of something he’d been at the helm of denying himself. It wasn’t fair to Chan to ask it of him. He knew it wasn’t fair.

But Chan had already begun moving. He went into the bathroom too, before coming back out. Minho heard the sound of his belt being undone, the short struggle to get off his dress shirt. Minho’s eyes only half opened when he saw Chan getting into the bed in only his undershirt and shorts. And without words, as though no time had passed, Chan turned to him. They gathered each other in, Chan’s thigh slipping between his, arms over waist, and ribs, faces close on the pillow as they found a position that both of them could live with. They traded no words, just touches, sighs. He could smell Chan, the comfort of him. Feel the heat of him.

And Minho slept like the dead. They moved, he knew that, because at one point his face was buried in Chan’s neck, and at another, he was on his back with Chan’s head mostly on his collarbone. He hadn’t slept enough when the nanny brought Sunwoo back to be fed, but he was awake enough through it, happy to hear Sunwoo had settled some and slept as well. Chan let Sunwoo hold one of his fingers as he ate, muffling a yawn half into the back of Minho’s shoulder. And the nanny took Sunwoo back with her to be changed and to rest more.

Without painful exhaustion goading him, Minho hesitated, when all he wanted was to turn back to Chan.

“Here,” Chan said, his voice a little sleepy still.

He was holding out an arm, wiggling down to sink into the blanket. There. He wanted Minho there. Right there, where the pains in his shoulders eased, and the feeling of aimless drifting was anchored. There, with Chan’s arm tight around him, and Chan’s curls soft between his fingers. There, where Chan’s eyes were soft, almost honeyed brown in the angle of the morning light.

“You’re safe. You can rest,” Chan said. “Your alpha is here.”

There were bowling balls on his eyelids, like Chan had somehow commanded him, instead of comforting him. Or maybe it was both. Chan woke before Minho was yet ready to, murmuring about needing to go to work. He stroked Minho’s hair and back for a moment before leaving, and when Minho woke again, it was to a pillow clutched to his chest, a pale imitation of what he actually wanted.

***

The separation agreement that had been sent over by Chan’s lawyers was very conciliatory. It laid out a timeline for filing this and that, so that within weeks of Sunwoo’s first birthday, the divorce would be final. As Chan had said, it laid out agreements for the penthouse being split, and Chan, or anyone Minho did not want, agreeing not to enter without permission. Chan asked for nothing in return. Not even time with Sunwoo. It was written in as at Minho’s discretion. Exactly as Minho had feared when they’d talked. That Chan taking a dozen steps back from Minho would also take himself away from a baby who needed him. And from Minho, who needed not only Chan’s support with the baby, but his presence in general. Sleeping next to him again had done nothing but confirm that. He had never wanted the marriage to end. He’d never asked for or intimated it. He had only thought that Chan would want to continue on as they were, in case he decided one day he wanted something different. But if he didn’t?

Chan had said what the dirty words to his own mind had been. That Minho was his legal husband only. Not that he didn’t have a mark. But that the law was all that strung them together. That Minho was…disengaged, emotionally. Acquiescing for the sake of the baby only. Keeping Chan close because he had to. He didn’t want the end of things. He’d never wanted it.

Minho crossed out every page, initialed things, wrote “no” next to bullet points, squiggled over other text, drew several faces on pages, and called his lawyer in before signing it. He wasn’t sure if his lawyer was awed or annoyed.

“Does that become binding then?” His refusal. “Then tell them I signed it, but don’t send it.”

He had a husband to speak to first.

***

Minho stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, surprised to see Chan standing by the crib, just watching Sunwoo sleep with one finger against his arm. As soon as Chan looked up, saw him, his eyes dropped immediately. And Minho’s belly clutched. He’d been told, then, about the contract.

“Sorry,” Chan said, straightening, taking his hand away from the sleeping baby. “I asked the nanny for a moment with him.”

He’d seen lust, and pleasure, and worry, and care on that face. But not pain. Not like that. Minho stepped closer.

“He’s your child, too, no matter whose room he sleeps in,” Minho said. Was it even— “Will you marry again?”

The sudden question had Chan looking up again, nearly as surprised as Minho was at the asking of it.

“No,” Chan said softly. “No. I’m not made for this.”

Made for— “For what? Marriage?”

“Yes. I didn’t realize it before, but I do now.”

He let Chan by him, to leave the room, closing the door partly behind him so as not to disturb Sunwoo’s sleep. But he didn’t let Chan outpace him.

“You are a good father, and a good husband. A good alpha!”

That was what had Chan pausing, the rise in tone, in volume. His head turned toward Minho slightly, and Minho came closer, fingers twining in the fabric of Chan’s dress shirt even as Chan still would not look at him directly..

“I’m glad you think so,” Chan said. “Even if this isn’t what you want. But I can’t do this again. When this is over, you’ll find an alpha who lo— Who you want to be with, married and mated both. You’ll be happy then. You’ll feel safe, and protected, and comfortable. You deserve all of that.”

“An alpha who loves me,” Minho said. What Chan had corrected himself from saying.

“Yes,” Chan said.

“Like you do.”

Chan’s hesitation was brief, as was his answer. “Yes.”

Minho’s eyes closed, as his hand tightened in Chan’s shirt, afraid of Chan jerking away from him. That giddy joy Chan had had, when talking about marking Minho, making another child with him. Not obligation, or alpha dedication, or a man who felt regret at having to keep Minho near him. A man who’d wanted to embrace and make the most of something that had spiraled out of their control. A man who could have made it all seem terrible and cold. Made it all a business transaction from the very start. And had instead given and been prepared to give Minho everything.

“And like I love you?”

He could hear Chan swallow several times. But his voice still sounded strained. “I hope that if you— If you loved me. That it wouldn’t be someone else. That you would let me— That we could—“ He felt Chan shake his head before he pressed his face against Minho’s neck and took a shaky inhale. “When you called me alpha. Minho—“

He knew. He knew it’d been unfair, and exploited all of Chan’s natural instincts. Minho was his omega, who’d so recently carried his child, and cared for that infant thus blending both their scents. Minho was his husband, and Chan, even without a mating bite, was his alpha. Not a bigger part of him than himself, but a part that slotted against him. Not like bookends, forever separated. But like iron, wrought together.

“You wouldn’t marry again because of me,” Minho said.

Chan did meet Minho’s eyes then, very steady. Almost forcefully steady, with a wildness contained somehow. “When I said those vows to you, I meant them. The contract can be dissolved a hundred times over, and it won’t mean anything to me. I can’t change it, what it did to me. It might as well have been a mating bite. I’m sorry. If this isn’t what you want, that means nothing. Even if you love me, you don’t have to choose this.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect...me,” Chan said slowly, confused, before his eyes widened. “By making it so I could dissolve the marriage without issue if I—?”

“If you wanted. Like you’re doing now.”

“No.”

It was only one word at first, before Chan squeezed Minho tight to him again. Minho waited, letting him gather himself. Chan had been willing to let Minho go, for Minho’s sake. And Minho to deny himself a mating bond for— For Chan, yes. But out of fear, too. Irrational, hormone-driven, no. Not more than a fear born out of circumstance. He’d birthed that into existence as much as he had Sunwoo. Chan was still taking breaths, opening his mouth, squeezing in little pulses as their heads leaned together.

When Chan could speak again, it was nearly into Minho’s shoulder. “No. From the second I first saw you, it’s been about wanting you, having you, protecting you, keeping you. Even before we knew about the baby. I don’t know if I would’ve ever wanted to let you go.”

Minho would’ve had a slight say in that. But they would never know. All it was was conjecture. Would he have wanted to let Chan go? He certainly hadn’t been ready to give up the sex. If Chan had, back then, cupped Minho’s face, and asked him, in that sexy voice he used, to remove the implant, let a heat come. The feeling it gave him was uncomfortable, to think that yes, he could have absolutely given in. In lust, then. Before he knew the Chan he had gotten to know over time. Not perfect. But neither was Minho. He knew more than just lust. That if they were honest with each other about their feelings and needs, Chan could be an even better husband to him than he had been already. A good father. A good alpha.

“When my heat comes,” Minho said, and the words were as difficult to get out as the wedding vows had been. “If it’s still what you want, too, I want you to mark me, and sleep in that bed with me. And be my mate, and husband, and lover. And the father of my child. And the father of the child we’ll make together then. I’ll be your everything. Whatever that means.”

Chan’s head drew back, eyes surprised as he stared at Minho’s face. “But the separation agreement. You signed it.”

“I crossed everything out and signed that I disagreed with it,” Minho said. “I want another child. I meant it. I want to give him the siblings I always wished I had. And I want your mark.”

“But you said— It’s harder to dissolve a mating bite,” Chan said.

“Oh? Is it?” Minho asked. And began to smile as Chan did.

“You really want it?” Chan asked. Like he wasn’t sure, couldn’t quite yet grasp it. Minho had just days before said no.

“I want it. I can almost feel it, too. Sometimes I wished it’d happened when I got pregnant, so I could just know it was there, and not think about it. The lack of it was hanging over us like a guillotine. When I was deep in my own head, I thought— I used to think that when he was born that you might want divorce, since you’d been lucky enough at least to only get something that could be dissolved.”

Chan had begun to shake his head as Minho talked, but didn’t interrupt. “You didn’t say anything. I didn’t know. I would have told you…something. I don’t know what. That I wanted to mark you as soon as possible. Assured you I wasn’t going to leave. Like I tried to. Just like you were worried about. Fuck.”

Minho shook his head right back at him. “I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, or family. I didn’t want them to be mad, when it was all in my own head. I knew it wasn’t likely. You could’ve treated me like an employee? And when I wondered if it was all for the baby, it was easy to pull myself back, because you had never shown that. Maybe you weren’t around much, and were working. But you never treated me like an incubator. It wasn’t you. You can’t fix what you don’t know about.”

“But I could’ve shown it more. Said words instead of just assuming you knew. If you really want a mark, then I want everything,” Chan said, and there was the businessman again, a gleam in his eye. A bargain struck. “No separation. This half of the penthouse can stay ours. I’ll stay with you every night. I’ll— I’ll give you as many children as you want.”

“A million at least, if we’re going to break up your stupid wealth,” Minho said, but made Chan chuckle anyway.

“Call me alpha again,” Chan urged him. And when Minho turned his head and hummed, Chan squawked. “Please? I’ll call you omega, if you want. Mm, omega.”

“Don’t,” Minho said. “Unless you’re trying to knot me, don’t you dare. It feels awkward if you ask me to say it.”

Chan was pouting, he could feel it. And Minho had been the one to, even accidentally, create that rift of uncertainty between them. Or it not to create it, then to at least expose it.

“Are you saying you want to be all weak and tingly because of me?” Minho asked, prodding at Chan’s back with a finger.

“Yes.”

More of that pouty tone, nearly cute in a way that made his lip want to curl. Minho sighed.

“Alpha,” Minho said, though his tone was quite flat.

Chan’s first reaction was all show, a dramatic little shiver that had Minho barking out a laugh. But the second, the way Chan kissed against his neck and squeezed Minho tight to him, that was the real one.

“Minho.”

Not what he was. Who he was. That was what got the shiver out of him, breathing Chan in deep. In that, he returned the gift.

“Chan,” he said. And Chan alerted like Minho was about to ask a question, but he shook his head. And Chan, realizing that, relaxed, hugging Minho just that much tighter.

“We’re a family,” Chan said, and Minho nodded.

“Is that what you wanted?” Minho asked.

“I think… From the moment I could smell him inside you.”

“Then you shouldn’t have tried getting rid of me,” Minho said. And then made a bunch of random sounds to head off Chan’s outrage in trying to explain his noble intentions and hurt feelings in the face of thinking Minho was just there because he had to be. “What if I was just really slow? What if you’d waited another four hours, and I said, hey, I changed my mind, I guess I’m sort of into this. You could’ve taken it as a challenge. Tried to woo me. My hormones are still setting off bottle rockets. You haven’t even knotted me again.”

Chan grumbled a little in acknowledgement as Minho stared skeptically at him. “I definitely wanted too much. It sounded like that was how you felt, and that nothing would change it. I was just…something you had to put up with for the sake of the baby.”

“I can take responsibility for some of that,” Minho said. “Just hearing you say all that was overwhelming.”

“I ran forward, and you ran back,” Chan said.

Something like that.

“You’re always so organized about things. I thought if you wanted a mark that I might see a spreadsheet about the logistics of when, and why, and the benefits first. Timing and childcare, and bedroom space, and the phase of the moon, and—“

He laughed as Chan groaned against him. “I sound terrible.”

“Maybe a little bit.” And Minho grinned ahead of his next attack. “But you sound like my alpha.”

Chan seized him a little, but sighed. “I do love you. I might ought to have led with that instead of being eager to knock you up again. Even if that’s part of what you do to me. I’ll do better. And maybe the mating bond will do something to help.”

Ah, the hopeful puppy eyes had come out.

“You don’t have to convince me now.”

“Maybe I still should woo you. Make sure you’re still wanting it by the time your heat comes.”

They might have bickered like that until Sunwoo woke up, except that Chan had mostly gently wrestled Minho down onto the couch with him, Minho half in his lap with Chan curled around him and both breathing him in and scenting him. Letting Minho relax into him, and even for a little while, to sleep against him. The certainty he’d been craving for far too long. When Sunwoo woke, Chan was the one who got up, who changed his diaper - a bad one, he said grimly, like he’d faced a battlefield - and brought Sunwoo out to be cuddled, and talked to, and then fed.

When Sunwoo had been awake a while before tiring and was back sleeping in his crib, they laid down together themselves. Not talking, just looking for a while. Just holding on.

“Alpha,” Minho said, a bit teasingly. And Chan sighed at him. And kissed him. And let Minho choose how to rest against him. Even without the baby in him. Even with the hormones changing. Chan still smelled of safety.

***

Phase 4: Functionality

***

Sunwoo was well and crawling, standing up on his own, and scooting around on his butt, as a whole little developing person by the time Minho’s next heat happened. He was safely with his nanny, not privy to the world of adults as Minho could hear Chan pacing in their bedroom. Sunwoo had begun to sleep in the nursery some months before that, not long following a return to more than just gentle fooling around and some shared orgasms. But not that night. No. He’d kept Chan from him almost half the day, wanting it to build a little, sensing the frustration in Chan to have his omega near but not near enough to touch.

Until he did, Chan’s moan almost like a growl when Minho allowed Chan to pull him up against him in the entry to their bedroom. Chan’s hands were on him, stroking over his waist, and hips, and ass. And Chan was inhaling against his neck, groaning at whatever he found there.

“You smell almost the same as the first time we fucked. But stronger,” Chan said.

Minho had been fertile then, too, and hadn’t known it. And Chan had been desperate for him, then, also.

A corner of Minho’s mouth quirked up, letting his eyelids dip so he could look at Chan from under his lashes.

“Come have your omega, then, alpha.”

The desperate look Chan lifted to him was betrayed, and so sexy with it. He rolled laughing with Chan onto the mattress, grinding against him, feeling his gasps as they kissed. He was wet, so slick that his underwear had clung when he’d shed them. And Chan was as hard as he’d ever been when he found his place, when he took. When he shuddered, trying not to spend himself before they’d started.

“This time,” Chan half breathed against his mouth. “I’ll know before any test.”

Yes. As his mate. As his alpha. As the man who’d been there in that same position before, knew what Minho smelled like when carrying Chan’s child. They’d know, soon. Not as soon as the end of the heat, but he didn’t suspect it would be much long after.

But that time, he’d have Chan’s mark. There wouldn’t be any doubts of that kind left between them. It’d be something new, a different type of relationship they hadn’t yet explored. They’d had that new understanding between them, for long months. Learning a balance together. Making their relationship together part of their priority. Chan kissed him again, softly, and kept their faces close.

“I have new vows for you tonight,” Chan said.

Not ones they could legally file, and notarize, and quantify. Words that made Minho’s cheeks, and ears, heat. Unexpected ones. Soft ones. Words no one would ever know but them.

“Do you accept?” Chan asked.

Minho’s neck burned, waiting for it to be time, for Chan to make good on at least one of his promises. Waiting for his own turn to say his piece, words already swirling in his head in anticipation as he tightened his grip on Chan’s shoulders.

“I do.”

***