Chapter Text
Kibum sat in the clinic’s empty parking lot in the sweltering heat for almost half an hour, AC blasting, one song on repeat as he zoned out. On his lap, a sonogram photo. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. His hands wandered nowhere below the ribs, as if afraid of what he might find.
I estimate you’re between seven and eight weeks along. Your baby’s about the size of a hazelnut.
Kibum hadn’t thanked her as he left the hospital. Hadn’t even looked at her.
The clinic was one he knew well, who knew him well. He’d gotten plenty of tests done here, undergone hormone treatment here. And now, this would be the place where he would terminate his pregnancy, unlikely as it was. Impossible as it seems. The place that would welcome him with this hazelnut in tow and send him off without it.
He looked down at the sonogram. Kibum thought it looked more like a kidney bean than a hazelnut.
He cursed, then drove himself home.
Now, in bed, Minho won’t stop texting him. Kibum won’t stop ignoring him. This is Minho’s style, always blowing up Kibum’s phone. Sometimes it’s cute. Now, not at all.
Kibum knew it was a mistake telling him he was at the hospital. Minho had given an interview and gone to the gym, and evidently had only received the message after Kibum had made it home. Now the buzzing is endless. Kibum mutes him.
Kibum doesn’t want a boyfriend. Especially not one like Minho, so woefully dedicated, passionate to a fault. Passionate about sports. Passionate about his career. Passionate about Kibum.
Kibum also knows that Minho has never brought up kids, possibly because Kibum has always bitched about them. He bought in-flight wifi once just to complain to Minho about a crying baby on board with him on his way to Singapore. And now, regrettably, Kibum has effectively silenced any discussion about children, and he has no idea how Minho will react to the news.
It’s not like Kibum even wants to have a family with him. Sure, the sex is good, but sex is good in general, it doesn’t make Minho special. Plus, a baby would slash his sparkly career as a soccer player, always traveling overseas, maintaining rigid workout schedules and strict diets. Practice, games, interviews— where does a baby fit into any of that?
Kibum’s spent the last hour in bed, foregoing his shower and stripping down naked and crawling between his sheets to hide. When he’d left the clinic earlier, he told himself this was a decision he had to make as well as one he wanted to make, but later. Not now, not today, not this week. Nobody at work would have to know, none of his loyal brand followers would have to know. Minho wouldn’t have to know, and neither would any of his millions of international fans.
It’s an easy decision.
A necessary decision.
The only logical solution.
Yet Kibum knows he won’t do it. That he can’t do it, and couldn’t even if he wanted to. The realization had dawned on him quickly, as he examined the gentle swell of his abdomen by the dimming light beaming through his window. He twisted and stretched, but it was certainly there, in plain sight. Most people don’t show at all at eight weeks, since hazelnuts aren’t very big. But most men don’t wind up pregnant from hookup arrangements. Obviously Kibum is an exception.
Eventually he gathers up the courage to stroke the little thing, pat it. Hello in there.
It would be nice if he could feel a response. The kicks won’t happen for a while, he knows, but if only there was something that made him feel less alone.
Hours pass. He lies there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, stroking the little bump with curious fingers. Kibum had wondered only earlier this week why clothes fit him differently, if only by a few centimeters. He wonders how he failed to notice; it seems so obvious now, the soft weight just below his belly button, the way it fits so perfectly against his palm.
Thinking about it now, it’s an indescribable feeling. In the privacy of his own mind, he lets his thoughts wander. His second trimester, shopping for tiny clothes. His third, fawning over a much clearer sonogram, one with visible fingers and toes. A bouncing baby boy, smearing cake all over himself on his first birthday. Falling asleep on Kibum’s chest well into his grade school years, singing along to Kibum’s idle humming as they walk hand in hand down the sidewalk.
One of his two fathers, an internationally recognized soccer star, absent and none the wiser.