Chapter Text
It’s late at night. Wonbin is sitting behind his desk with his eyes glued to the computer, tapping his hand against the table absentmindedly. He’s supposed to be working on an advertising campaign for a coffee brand. The deadline is close enough to make him doubt he’ll manage to finish it in time. He’s finally succeeded in getting the time to sit down and actually get some of it done, but it’s like he cannot focus for the life of him.
Every time he gets an idea and wants to build on it, his mind stubbornly traces right back to the memory of yesterday, with the morning breeze making the soft brown strands of hair on the alpha’s forehead dance. He’d had his hair down, and it was the first time Wonbin had seen him with his hair splayed carelessly like that across his forehead. It gave the older a more boyish look somehow, made him seem younger. Less untouchable. And it made those glowy eyes of his seem rounder too.
Wonbin groans quietly and lets his forehead hit the desk.
Coffee. He’s supposed to be thinking about coffee.
Not Jung Sungchan. Not the way the alpha’s hair had looked. Not the way the sunlight had caught on the curve of his cheek.
Just coffee.
Yet somehow, the half-finished work on his screen has been abandoned for nearly ten minutes while he sits there thinking about a man’s forehead.
“Wanna go in together?”
The alpha had flashed him a grin, and somehow Wonbin had found himself walking side by side with him into the building, traces of cedarwood dancing in the air around them.
The odd thing Wonbin’s noticed about Jung Sungchan’s pheromones is that he’s notoriously known for being good at not releasing them much. And when he does, it’s always done in moderation, usually too faint to notice if you’re more than a few feet away. But somehow Wonbin finds the scent overwhelming. It’s like his senses pick up on it the second the alpha enters the vicinity. Like his body recognizes it before his brain does. It’s a blessing and a curse all at once.
“Was that your roommate dropping you off?” the alpha had asked lightly.
“Hm? Oh. Yes.” Wonbin had sounded stiff because he didn’t exactly enjoy walking beside the alpha when apparently every person passing by either wanted to greet him or stare at him blatantly. Some smiled. Some bowed. Some outright turned their heads to watch him pass.
The alpha, meanwhile, acted like none of it was happening.
“It’s a shame I didn’t get to greet him last time. I heard about him from a friend after that. She was praising him like crazy.”
He had been looking at Wonbin from the side, and Wonbin never really mustered up the courage to look back for longer than a second at a time.
“Sohee? Yeah, he’s quite likeable,” Wonbin had sufficed. The understatement of the century, honestly.
He’d been running late and should’ve been hurrying more, but there he was, walking mechanically beside the one guy he should be actively avoiding.
And somehow, despite all the effort he’d spent taking different routes across campus, timing his breaks differently, leaving rooms earlier than necessary and entering buildings later than he normally would, all it had taken was one smile and a simple “wanna go in together?” for him to fall right back into step beside Sungchan as if none of that avoidance had ever happened.
“About last time,” the older had stopped walking, hands rubbing against the fabric of his thighs nervously a few times before he continued, “this is a bit awkward and long overdue, but i’m sorry about, you know, my behavior that night,” and his eyes were pleadingly plastered on Wonbin like a kid begging for forgiveness. Wonbin had never been more confused, and it probably showed on his face.
“I’d gotten a bit too much to drink, and i was out of line. I’m sorry, really.”
By that point Wonbin was finally looking fully into the older’s eyes, and he was awestruck by that fragile emotion mirrored in those doe-like orbs that sucked him in so mercilessly. Sungchan always seemed so put together, so effortlessly composed, that seeing him like this felt wrong somehow.
All of it was so unexpected, and Wonbin couldn’t quite process why the older was suddenly apologizing to him.
“You know, i’ve been thinking...” Sungchan rubbed the back of his neck before dropping his hand again. “I must’ve made things uncomfortable between us, and that was really never my intention, so...”
Wonbin’s heart had been beating so fast he could hear the aggravated pulse in his eardrums.
“So can you please stop avoiding me?”
And the drumming noise had gotten so loud Wonbin was sure his heart would explode any second.
There, behind a random wall in a random corner of the very building Wonbin had continuously taken different turns through just to prevent any possible interaction between the two of them, Jung Sungchan stood tall, looming over the omega’s smaller frame.
But why had he looked so small in Wonbin’s eyes in that moment? With his face twisted into an all sad-looking expression that Wonbin didn’t quite know how to handle.
The door unlocks, the sounds of the process messy and uncoordinated. Soon after it opens, and a longer moment after it closes with a bang.
The noises thankfully pull Wonbin out of his unwanted train of thought. He stares at his screen for a few seconds, his unfinished work staring right back at him. The blinking cursor seems almost accusatory now, waiting for him to come up with something useful instead of daydreaming like an idiot.
Suddenly there's a loud thud.
Wonbin sighs as he gets up.
At the entryway, Sohee has collapsed against the wall, eyes only half open and mouth hanging low as he seems to be mumbling to himself. His backpack lays discarded beside him, and his shoes are in two entirely different directions on the floor, making Wonbin guess the beta had fallen while trying to take them off.
"Seriously?" Wonbin mutters.
It takes a few attempts and a whole lot of grunting and grumbling for Wonbin to finally get Sohee's limp frame moved up. The beta's arm hangs from his shoulder, his head tilted lazily onto Wonbin's neck as the omega tries to move him to his room.
"How'd you even get home like this?" Wonbin grunts as he releases Sohee off his body and watches as the beta freefalls onto his bed, completely unfazed.
Wonbin sits on the edge of the bed, pulling Sohee's sleep-heavy frame up by the arms into his own. He's trying to get Sohee's jacket off and the younger is weakly putting up a fight, eyes closed as his brows twist in pained arches.
"Hold still. I'll let you sleep soon," Wonbin says evenly, hoping he registers it.
"I'm hot," Sohee mouths against Wonbin's collarbone, his warm breath tickling Wonbin's skin through the fabric.
"There, it's off."
And the beta is lying flat on the bed again. Wonbin stares at his sleeping face for a few seconds more before pushing himself off the bed to leave. He's got a whole project to finish.
There's a weak grip on the tip of his index finger that stops him. "What?" Wonbin glances back. "Do you need something? Water?"
He sits back on the bed, Sohee's fingers still holding onto his one finger. The beta's skin is burning hot.
"Should I go get you water?" Wonbin asks again. Sohee starts shaking his head rapidly as he grabs Wonbin's finger tighter.
He whispers something barely audible, so Wonbin leans in closer. "What?"
"Stay here." The beta repeats it again, turning onto his side and fully taking Wonbin's hand into his own chest, burying it there.
Wonbin stares at the younger's peaceful expression, complexion tinted slightly pink and his face completely relaxed—making his cheeks look puffed up against the pillow.
"I have work to do though?" Wonbin mumbles impatiently.
His free hand automatically reaches up to brush away the strands of hair poking Sohee in the eyes. At the remark, the beta lets out a few weak grumbles before suddenly pulling Wonbin in closer.
"Hey—"
Ten minutes later, Sohee has one arm laying limply across Wonbin's entire chest, his chin tucked over the omega's shoulder and one leg thrown over him too, practically locking him down on the bed.
This is the first time Sohee has come home this drunk. And Wonbin is realizing now that the younger gets really clingy when he's had a lot to drink. So he’s trying to be patient here. Really patient.
He's waiting for Sohee to fall completely asleep so he can release himself from his grip and leave.Except the warmth is making his eyelids heavier by the minute. Sohee always runs warm. Even back in high school he'd complain about winter jackets while everyone else was freezing. Now, trapped beneath the beta's hold, Wonbin can feel that familiar warmth seeping into his bones.
Sohee never actually falls asleep. He seems to be sobering up slightly, just to the point where he can actually talk cohesively. And Sohee does exactly that.
"Hyung?"
"Yeah?"
"Aren't you scared?"
It's utterly silent aside from their asynchronous breathing patterns. The occasional car passes somewhere outside, tires hissing against the road, but in here it feels like the entire apartment has gone still.
There's a lot Wonbin is scared of. Fear seems to be the recurring emotion threading through his life, urging him forward in all its vicious ways. "Scared of what?"
"Of having a kid, of course." he sounds quiet.
Wonbin takes a while as he stares aimlessly at the ceiling. "I keep forgetting that part."
His voice comes out softer than intended. "Sometimes it's just like i'm waiting for the pregnancy to be over... and that seems manageable enough, you know?" He lets out an airy laugh. "But there's actually gonna be a kid by the end of this." The words sound ridiculous when said out loud. A whole kid. An actual human being. One that's currently growing inside him while he struggles to finish assignments on time and remember where he put his keys.
"And i know i'm not ready for that part," Wonbin admits. "Like, at all."
"So you are scared." Sohee's voice comes out slightly muffled from where his face is half buried against Wonbin's shoulder.
"Guess so." The answer lingers between them. Sohee shifts a few times before nuzzling closer, settling more comfortably against him. The beta's hand ends up resting over Wonbin's stomach.
"What do you want it to be?" Sohee asks. "A girl or a boy?"
He looks up at Wonbin with half-lidded eyes, the rims tinted red from exhaustion and sleep.
Wonbin takes a second to think. "I don't really care, i guess." His hand absentmindedly fiddles with the blanket gathered near his waist. "Maybe raising a boy would be easier."
He pauses. "What do you think it's gonna be?"
Wonbin shifts his gaze from the ceiling down to Sohee, only to realize the beta is already looking at him.
"Doesn't matter." Sohee's fingers start playing with the fabric of Wonbin's shirt slowly. "Whatever the gender is, i just hope the baby looks like you."
The younger's fingers continue tracing lazy patterns against the fabric, and every now and then the tips brush against Wonbin through the shirt, leaving behind a faint ticklish feeling.
From where Wonbin's looking at him, Sohee seems a little flushed. That rosy tint has spread across his cheeks. Maybe it's the alcohol.
Wonbin decides it's probably the alcohol.
"Like me?" Wonbin's lips purse in curiosity. "Why?"
He'd actually never considered the baby ending up looking like him.
People always told him he looked like his mom. Same eyes. Same mouth. Even the same habit of frowning whenever he concentrated too hard. He supposes it wouldn’t be too bad if the baby looked like him.
"Y'know, just..."Sohee's eyes dart away immediately. "Just because!"
The answer is terrible.Absolutely awful. And Sohee clearly knows it too.
"That's not an answer."
"It is."
"No, it isn't."
"It kinda is."
Wonbin lets out an offended scoff. "Tell me."
"No."
"Tell meeeee." Wonbin starts wiggling his shoulder relentlessly where Sohee's head is resting.
The younger immediately groans. "Hyung."
"Tell me."
"Stop moving."
"Then answer."
"You're twenty-three years old."
"And?"
"You're acting twelve."
Wonbin wiggles his shoulder even harder. "Tell me already."
For the first time all night, Sohee actually laughs. The kind that gets caught in his chest. And for a brief second, with the room dim and warm and neither of them rushing to go anywhere, everything feels strangely easy.
The younger's face twists in feigned annoyance as he moves his head up to avoid getting hit with Wonbin's bony shoulder.
"Do I really have to spell it out for you?" Sohee groans. "Hyung, you're pretty!" The words come out so loudly they practically bounce off the walls of the small room.
Wonbin freezes. His already big eyes round up even more in surprise. Neither of them says anything. The air suddenly feels awkward.
Sohee is now laying on his side, one elbow supporting him up as he looks at Wonbin.
And if Wonbin had any doubts before, he's now completely certain the tint spread across Sohee's face has nothing to do with the alcohol anymore. The sleepiness in his eyes seems to have worn off a little too.
"You think i'm pretty?" Wonbin finally asks. His voice sounds strangely small to his own ears.
"Not just me, everyone thinks you are." Sohee sounds genuinely baffled. Like the answer should be obvious.
"What are you saying? That's not true..."Wonbin's pupils waver awkwardly.
Growing up, Wonbin actually heard that a lot. That he was pretty. At the market, older ladies would shower him with compliments and slip candy into his pockets when his mom wasn't looking. His mom's friends would pinch his cheeks until they started hurting and call him cute and pretty with the same smitten expressions every single time.
Wonbin looks a lot like his mom. He's been told so many times that he's lost count. And for that reason alone, he'd never hated being called pretty.
After presenting, he'd only started hearing it more frequently. That word. Pretty. The one people mutter in the most shallow ways while looking utterly stunned, eyes roaming over him like he's something to be examined rather than spoken to. Like he's not even standing there. Wonbin is no stranger to that word in a world where being pretty means a lot more than it should.
But somehow, now, in this very moment, with Sohee looking straight at him, he feels himself running hot. His ears. His neck. The tips of his fingers. And it’s like he suddenly doesn't know where to look. Like some invisible gravitation keeps pulling him right back because Sohee's eyes won't let his flee.
"Hyung," Sohee says, sounding almost offended now, "you're just too oblivious when it comes to these things."
He shifts slightly closer without seeming to realize it himself. "Honestly, if you knew how much people actually talk about you, you'd be shocked."
Wonbin groans immediately. "Don't tell me."
"No, i'm telling you."
"Lee Sohee!" Wonbin protests weakly.
"It's like everywhere i go, you're somehow brought up." The beta points dramatically at the older as if presenting evidence before a jury. "Just like tonight." Wonbin already hates where this is going. "'Oh, Lee Sohee, what's it like living with the mysterious beauty from marketing?'"
Sohee drops his hand again and raises one eyebrow meaningfully. "That's your nickname, y'know."
Wonbin stares at him in horror. "No it isn't."
"It is."
"No."
"It literally is."
"No one calls me that."
“Of course you wouldn’t know that. You’re too swamped with work and your studies to notice. Always busy. People seem to find you unapproachable, so that only makes them more curious about you.”
Wonbin’s eyes flutter anxiously as Sohee seems to be moving his head closer, closer, and so perilously closer that he retreats his head as much as he can into the soft pillow. Their faces are so incredibly close now that Wonbin can pick up the smell of booze on the beta’s breath, the younger’s neck flushed and heat radiating off his body.
When Wonbin finally dares to look up at Sohee’s face, he finds the younger’s gaze lingering just below his own.
“Hey, back off a little,” Wonbin’s forearm weakly tries to push the beta away by his chest.
“I’m dying to know,” Sohee exhales. Then he moves even closer and buries his nose completely into Wonbin’s neck, prompting the omega to scrunch up defensively at the sudden ticklish sensation. His shoulders rising instinctively. “What about your pheromones has everyone so invested?”
Sohee takes a whiff off Wonbin’s neck, the fruitless attempt coming back in the form of a slow breath of warmth against Wonbin’s already burning skin.
“Sohee, what’s gotten into you—”
“These days, you know what I hear a lot?” Sohee breathes out. His nose brushes against the side of Wonbin’s neck as he speaks. “That I smell like you, apparently…”
The words settle strangely between them. “And you know, I’ve been thinking.” Sohee’s voice turns quieter. “You go through all this trouble to hide your scent. You buy the strongest scent blockers you can find, and you get so paranoid about people being able to tell your secret by your scent alone, and yet…” The beta seems to be drifting off.
Wonbin can still feel the rapid rhythm of his breathing against his skin. “Yet you let me walk out the door with your pheromones all over me.”
The younger’s fingers curl slightly into the fabric near Wonbin’s waist. “You’re really confusing me, hyung.”
For a second, Wonbin could swear his heart stops working altogether. His breath falters. His throat feels drier than ever.
“I’ll wear my scent blockers at home too, then,” Wonbin says lowly after a while. The words sound wrong even to him. Like he's providing a solution to the wrong problem.
“That’s not my point here!” Sohee groans, finally lifting his head enough to look at him properly. His brows are drawn together now.
“I’m asking why.” There’s something almost pleading in his sleepy voice. “Why you don’t seem to care if people get the wrong idea?”
Wonbin stares at him. Suddenly, the room feels strangely small. The only sound filling it being Sohee’s uneven breathing.
“And what’s so wrong with people getting the wrong idea?” Wonbin asks evenly.
The younger's eyes drift somewhere over Wonbin's shoulder, as if the answer might be written on the wall behind him. His fingers are still gathered in the fabric of Wonbin's shirt, knuckles brushing against his stomach whenever his grip loosens and tightens again.
“What kind of question is that?” Sohee finally mutters.
Wonbin raises an eyebrow.“A normal one.”
“No, it isn't.”
“It is.”
“Come on, hyung, you know what I mean.”
The younger sounds frustrated now, the way Sohee always gets when he has something to say but can't seem to force the words into the right shape.
Wonbin watches him carefully. The beta's hair is sticking up in three different directions from where he'd been rolling around. His face is still slightly flushed from the alcohol and the warmth of the room.
He looks even younger like this. Not like the Sohee who rushes around campus carrying a big backpack and sheet music under his arm. Not like the Sohee who stays up until three in the morning trying to get work done. Just Lee Sohee. The kid who'd follow Wonbin around the music club room years ago.
“Clearly I don't,” Wonbin says.
Sohee groans dramatically and lets his forehead fall against Wonbin's shoulder.
The impact is soft. “You're annoying.”
“You started this.”
“I know.”
“Then explain.”
“I can't.”
Wonbin lets out a laugh through his nose. “You can't?”
“I just can't.” His voice comes out muffled against Wonbin's shoulder. The sound vibrates straight through Wonbin's chest. For some reason, it makes his stomach feel strange.
Sohee shifts again. The movement only ends with him somehow even closer than before. Wonbin doesn't understand how that's physically possible anymore.
The younger's arm is still draped over his waist. His leg is still hooked over Wonbin's. He's practically been turned into a human body pillow.
“You know,” Sohee starts again. His voice is quieter this time.
“Hm?”
“I don't think anyone believes we're just roommates.”
Wonbin's entire body goes still. Just as he was thinking the alcohol was starting to wear off from Sohee’s body, he starts to have doubts that’s true. For his own well-being, of course.
Because this entire conversation has been heading into dangerous territory for a good while now, and Wonbin’s scared of the awkward repercussions they might have to deal with tomorrow when Sohee’s sobered up from the alcohol, and Wonbin from his own idiocy.
“What?” Wonbin mouths, dumbfounded, although he’s not entirely dumb.
Sohee and he are without a doubt close. In the honest, unthinking way that has built itself over time without either of them ever naming it. Their routineized ways of living all tangled up in small mundane ways that keep reoccurring in that grounding rhythm they both unspokenly appreciate.
Sohee receiving a notification on his phone with the content of which being a list of groceries, nothing more, and Sohee reacting with a thumbs up without question.
Wonbin willingly always doing the younger’s laundry along with his because he knows Sohee despises the chore more than anything.
Their wardrobes being an inexchangeable distinction for everyone around them because they keep wearing each other’s pieces so much that those around them have stopped questioning it.
Each of them being the first one each other’s friends reach out to when they’re out of reach.
Sohee bringing home a container of food from work on days Wonbin gets too busy to even remember his primal needs.
So many ways in which they offer such quotidian affection to each other without a thought.
And Wonbin doesn’t even realize his grip has tightened slightly around Sohee’s sleeve until Sohee shifts under it.
At the end of every hard day for Wonbin, there’s Sohee. Always there in the background of everything, giving him the bits and pieces of strength to keep it together.
For Wonbin, someone constantly astray in their own turbulent mind, Lee Sohee is the anchor that keeps him grounded.
Somewhere in another apartment a door closes. The sound is faint, but it lands anyway. Life keeps moving. But inside the small room, everything feels suspended.
Then Sohee sighs. “Forget it.”
His fingers tighten around Wonbin’s top for the briefest moment.
“I’m just drunk.”
They don’t really address whatever happened that night after that. But as much as Wonbin had feared things would somehow become painfully awkward between them, they don’t. It almost feels worse in a way. Like they’ve both silently agreed to step around it instead of into it. Like the two of them are going through countless awkward trials lately as a test of how much they can handle before they start to fall into a tension-filled abyss.
Days pass by quickly. So quickly they all seem to merge together into one, making the passage of time feel disorienting and overwhelming in the tempo in which Wonbin has to keep up with.
Morning blends into afternoon without much distinction, and evenings arrive almost abruptly.
Sohee is busy with preparing for the upcoming festival, constantly singing and humming the melody of the songs around the house, belting in the shower until their upstairs neighbor starts giving them that annoyed look whenever she sees them.
The sound carries through the thin walls, half muffled, half completely unbothered and Wonbin has started associating it with routine more than noise.
The weather is becoming cooler by the day too, the usual dew ornamenting the grass now having a glowingly frosty look in the mornings, like the world itself is slowly putting on a softer filter.
Their drawers are overflowing with a very particular flavor of a specific brand of ramen neither of them particularly enjoys. Sohee has been stacking up the packs in any and every empty gap in their small kitchen, and when Wonbin had finally gotten enough of the lack of space given the exponentially rising amount of ramen, he'd questioned it. Sohee had simply shrugged and said, “Anything for vengeance.”
The target of said vengeance being the kid in their neighborhood who likes to occasionally tease Sohee. So the beta had spent time observing the kid and his patterns, just so he could buy out his favorite brand of ramen to deliberately annoy him.
The plan is working. Because after some time of being unable to buy any ramen at the local convenience store, the kid only seems to get more agitated, trying harder to get back at Sohee in increasingly petty ways that never quite land.
So now Sohee is in a quiet war with a literal kid. He’s eating ramen he doesn’t even like that much daily, handing packets out to friends, stacking them in cupboards, under counters, in places that make no architectural sense. And yet there’s still not enough space. At this point, even their pots are negotiating territory with instant noodles.
The containers of food and side dishes his mom had brought are, one by one, becoming fewer in the fridge, the emptied ones washed and stacked in a bag under the sink, piling up to be returned. The sight of them is starting to feel like some kind of countdown Wonbin didn’t agree to.
And even though Wonbin is still too cowardly to tell his mom anything, he’s mustered up the courage to pick up her calls now, the excuse of “I’m too busy” having been exhausted beyond usefulness.
It’s comforting and torturous all at once, having his only form of contact with his mom confined to phone calls, but he’s decided it’s for the best—for now—at least until he finds a proper explanation as to why it’s taken him so long to reveal things.
Procrastination is like the pile of clothes thrown on a chair in a corner; once you’ve reached a certain point, you just stop questioning that the chair isn’t visible anymore, you just keep throwing the clothes on it from instinct alone.
Wonbin’s finally back to being able to eat normally—or more precisely, he’s eating more than he’s ever eaten. He’s constantly hungry, and it’s just never-ending.
It’s like as soon as he eats, he wants more, and this high-maintenance need to consume food at all times is becoming so much that he’s starting to miss the days he couldn’t stomach anything at all. There was at least control in the emptiness. Now there’s just appetite.
As a result of the weeks now being double digits, and also the constant eating and snacking, the inevitable, the one thing amongst many he’d dreaded, has finally happened.
He’s having trouble buttoning his jeans. At least his favorite ones, the ones that fit more tightly and give him that slim silhouette he ideally wants, the ones he reaches for without thinking and now hesitates in front of.
For some time he ignores it, forcing himself through increasingly absurd attempts of jumping, twisting his hips, pulling the fabric up while standing at different angles, bargaining with physics like that might help. And although the button doesn’t start flying off (he’s not there yet), sitting down becomes a kind of torture, because he has to find the exact angle where the waistband doesn’t feel like it’s cutting into him. Eventually he just stops sitting properly at all, perching on the edge of chairs like he’s half ready to leave at any second.
When the day comes that he can’t get the two sides of the jeans together at all, he practically throws himself onto the bed and shouts in misery.
When Sohee comes running to his door and realizes Wonbin hasn’t actually fallen and broken multiple bones—which would honestly be the only reasonable explanation for that noise, he pauses in the doorway, takes one look at him, and leaves again wearing the most unimpressed expression imaginable.
Wonbin skips all his classes that day and spends the entire day curled up on the couch watching anything and everything his YouTube algorithm throws at him, while stuffing his face with snacks he pretends he’s not actively choosing for emotional reasons. Overeating probably (definitely) isn’t helping his cause here, but he doesn’t even care. He wants to eat everything edible in the apartment just out of spite alone.
When a video finishes and the screen of his laptop on the coffee table goes dark for a few seconds before the next video loads, Wonbin catches a glimpse of his reflection on it. With one knee tucked up and moving side to side slowly, one leg stretched and resting on the table close next to the laptop, Wonbin has both hands resting on top of his stomach.
And from the angle in the reflection, even with the loose long-sleeve he’s wearing, there’s clearly no sign of his previously flat abdomen anymore.
His fingers shift slightly, fingertips making small, awkward, uncertain movements through the fabric, the intention behind them feeling foreign to him, like he’s testing something he doesn’t fully understand yet.
The sound of the video playing becomes background noise for him, everything slipping just past his consciousness as he grows hyper-focused on where his hands are, like they’re learning how to move for the first time, hesitant and curious all at once.
It feels like the first time Wonbin has actually chosen to acknowledge the reason for the ever-changing factors of his life instead of just moving around them.
“Slow down a bit, will you? I’m having a hard time keeping up with you, seriously,” Wonbin whispers in a small pout as he continues to curiously caress his stomach over the fabric of his shirt.
It feels odd. New. A little ticklish, even, in a way that makes his shoulders tense and then slowly drop again. It’s like finally acknowledging something you’re physically nurturing constantly, something that exists whether or not you decide to look at it. A whole life growing in you, that you’re just starting to accept as such.
It’s sometime in the afternoon when Wonbin finally peels himself off the couch after hours of being on there, the imprint of his body still faintly visible in the cushions as he stands. He draws the curtains open properly this time, letting the light spill into the room and it briefly feels too bright at first.
He does the dishes while humming a simple melody he’s picked up from Sohee’s constant singing around the house.He throws on a loose set of sweatpants he finds and a hoodie that goes with it. Wonbin walks out of the door with a newfound resolve. He’s going to come back home with pants that actually fit him properly.