note: Thank you for all the name suggestions! I'm honestly liking all the ones I've been given so far, you guys have given them good thought!

Also, thank you once again for commenting/subscribing! In regards to my conspiracy theorizing, it's just that lol, conspiracy theorizing. I still lean pretty heavily towards the RM cast being one, big, strictly platonic family (even though if Jihyo would date/is dating anyone I still believe it'd be Jongkook first on her list lol). I'm very much still dedicated to finishing this story, so please don't fret! There will be no love triangles here. (at least not within the RM cast, haha!)

+

"Thanks," Gary says, when she finally succeeds in backing up into the closest parking space to his apartment building's entrance on her sixth try. "For the drive. And for letting me come. Seriously."

"No problem," she says, stares resolutely at her fuel gauge, the marker resting just a notch above the E. She needs to pass by a gas station after he leaves: good. That's more time spent on getting actual done, and less time allotted towards moping in her bedroom about her resignations for the night. Not that that's what she plans on doing, but her candy stock's running low, and she's probably accumulated enough sugar over the last three weeks to be one chocolate square away from a diabetic coma, so. Just in case.

"Alright," he says, rubs his palms against his thighs over the denim of his jeans. "Good night."

"Good night," she says, hand already bearing down on the gear stick to ease it towards drive, but he doesn't move an inch.

"Do you wanna come up for a bit?" he asks, right when the clutch stops at neutral. "For coffee, since I'm still buzzing over the ultrasound, anyways," he pulls on his door's handle, which—finally, "Only if you want, though."

She must still be buzzing, too, because even when the no, thanks, seems all but certain to come out of the speech center in her brain, what she ends up actually saying is, "Yeah, sure."

He gives her a smile—the one where it's like his whole face is smiling, not just his mouth in isolation—and it almost makes up for the misgiving entirely, if not for the landslide of despair that topples over her at the realization that she was so utterly ing gone on Kang Gary, ugh. 

"Okay," he says, and steps out into the stillness of the parking lot first, gives her enough time and privacy to bang her head mournfully against her steering wheel for a couple of turns before she's expected to follow behind him, as per the rules of invitation and proper social decorum.

She waits in her car until he's entered the building, and then she walks out: keeps her head down to twiddle with her phone, lets her hair slide out from behind her ears, strides towards the entrance at an even pace. Paparazzi were like zombies: once you started running, that's when they give chase, so it was sometimes better to act as you are to avoid drawing any attention, roll yourself enough in their own entrails to throw them off your scent. It's a gory comparison, but when you've experienced the bloodbath of getting found out, it's hard not to find the similarities between the two. Trust her; eight years of loveline fanatics calling for both of their heads, and she knows this by heart. Explains why she's so scared of them, too.

He's already waiting for her at the elevators when she walks in. "You took your time," he says, presses the up button to call for one. "I thought you'd changed your mind."

"I'm just trying to steer us away from a scandal," she says, slips inside the elevator the very moment it arrives, because the hunt doesn't just end once they get to the lobby.

He evidently doesn't possess the same affinity for self-preservation as she does, because he enters the elevator shaft with a speed akin to a creaky old man on a four-legged walker. "What's the scandal here?" he asks, doesn't press on the close button when he works the controls to choose his floor, so she ends up reaching over and doing it herself. "It's just two friends drinking coffee. I wouldn't pay for a tabloid headline like that."

She blinks at him. More than anyone, he should know why she's being so careful, has told her himself what the consequences of gambling away his identity had cost him. He was really stretching this just friends thing to its ultimate limit, probably even more than she's been doing. "Two friends of the opposite drinking coffee in the guy's apartment. At night. While expecting a baby."

He shrugs, "Sounds like the usual agenda to me," but his mouth quirks up sporadically, and she finally clues into the fact that he's being purposefully obtuse: he's teasing her.

"Sometimes I really wonder about you," she grumbles, and he finally cracks a laugh as he leans back on the panels right beside her.

"Don't worry, you're still my first," he grins, and the rapid staccato of her pulse only gets fine-tuned when he adds, "On the baby front, at least."

"Like I care," she scoffs, because she doesn't. Or she shouldn't. It's a fine line between the two, really. "You can have as many illegitimate children as you want."

"Thanks for the permission," he says, smile less joking, more sincere. "But I think I'll stick to our illegitimate child for now."

Her stomach flutters. She ignores it. When it happens again without him saying anything, she knows it's not something she can chalk down to his pronoun choice of my to our. "I think the baby just moved."

"Really?" he asks, eyebrows shooting up towards the snaps of his cap. "You can feel it?"

"Yeah," she says, and there it is again, like a wisp of wings. On a whim, she turns towards him and grabs at one of his hands, presses it flat against her belly where she'd felt it just a second ago. "He's moving right—here."

He takes a step closer, fixes his arm's angle, but he's frowning when she casts her head up to look at his reaction. "I can't feel anything."

"Just wait," she says, and like she'd expected, he kicks again. "Did you feel that?"

"No," he says, and he's pouting now, lips pushed out petulantly, and it's—cute. Something inside her bubbles up, but it originates from her chest, this time, not anywhere close to where the baby should be. "Are you sure it's really moving?"

"Of course I'm sure," she says, meeker than she'd intended, because he's somehow ended up monopolizing her personal space, again, and she doesn't mind—might even like it—again. "I guess you'll feel it after a few more weeks."

"He's probably just rioting against you because you called him an illegitimate child," he says, roguish smile back on his face, and then he looks down at her stomach, talks to it openly without the slightest hint of reservation, "You sensitive, Junior?"

Another kick. Yes. "Just like his father," she mutters, but her head swims from the grin he redirects her way and her heart pounds excitedly, because it only fully digests to her then—she’s going to have a son. Her and Kang Gary are going to have a son, together.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” he jibes, looking at her like he's—fond, or proud, or something, and she realizes that he hasn’t pulled his hand away from her stomach when the pads of his fingers indent a little deeper into her flesh, his nails catching on the fabric of her shirt as he moves the appendage around to fit the curve of it more comfortably.

That, and when the elevator door opens with a trill little ding, a lithe body clad in possibly the most microscopic dress she’s ever seen—and she’s seen a lot, has worn a lot, too, but nothing like that—slinking gracefully past the metal barricades like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Gary-oppa—! Oh, sorry, I didn’t see—“

She instantly smacks his hand off of her and retreats into the corner of the elevator, which only makes the girl stare at her even harder, more calculating, until her face lights up with recognition.

“Song Jihyo!” she exclaims, hand flying up to cover . “Oh my god, I’m a big fan of yours! I watched Goong when I was, like, eleven, and I always thought you were so pretty! Prettier than Yoon Eun Hye, even, so eleven year old me wanted you and the prince to get together so badly. When I found out that you and Joo Jihoon dated, seriously—it was like a childhood dream come true,” she gets right in her face after that, eyes with that identifiable glint of someone who’s just passed the minimum level of alcohol tolerance, “I know you guys already broke up and all, but do you guys still talk? How hot is he, really? Do you think you could introduce me to him?”

“Let her breathe, Chaehwa,” Gary cuts in, laughing, but he looks just as uncomfortable as she feels. “Why’re you drunk so early in the week, huh?”

“I’m not drunk,” Chaehwa giggles, like a highschooler flirting with her crush, and if it wasn’t for the few streaks of crow’s feet she’d seen her eyes when she’d gotten up close, Jihyo’d actually believe she was that young. “And as if you’re one to talk, oppa! You used to drink with me any day of the week if I’d asked.”

Jihyo raises a brow at that. Chaehwa may not be that young, but she still looks pretty young. Young enough that it’d be questionable, if not straight up horrifying, if Gary really did used to drink with her and do—other things, things that Jihyo’s not even going to bother envisioning right now, or tomorrow, or ever, if she can help it.

To his credit, Gary visibly stiffens, looks away from her awkwardly to level Chaehwa with a cagey, “I don’t think that’s exactly what happened.”

“Okay, fine, we were just frequenting the same bars. But you were still drinking with me,” Chaehwa sighs, and then giggles again, takes up the spot beside him that Jihyo’d just vacated and leans her head on his shoulder. “I haven’t seen you around much lately. Unnie misses you, you know, even though she acts like she doesn’t. She swears you’re still, like, the best she’s ever had.”

The elevator bell dings again, and Gary lifts Chaehwa’s head off of him gently, holds it upright until her neck straightens to hold it up herself, and then he’s taking Jihyo’s hand and tugging her outside into the hallway, not before telling Chaehwa, “Go home, alright? Sleep it off.”

“You’re so boring now, oppa,” Chaehwa whines, the last thing Jihyo hears before the elevator doors thunder shut.

“I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gary says, after the succeeding silence drags on for a little too long. He lets go of her hand, sidesteps around her to take front lead. “She’s literally just a child.”

It’s none of her business, anyways, but she’s still relieved. “And her sister?” she asks, because apparently her subconscious wants to make it her business, even though the conscious part of her’s already scrambling to think of ways for her to take the question back where it belongs: unsaid.

“No,” is all he says to it, doesn’t expand—doesn’t look like he would, even if she’d asked him to—so she's not clear whether he means, no, she's not a child, or, no, I didn't sleep with her.

And she's not going to clarify. Because they're friends. Friends don't take note of things like that. Not as much as she does, right now, so she tells herself to stop.

He halts at a door to type on the lock’s keypad, twists the handle right below it after it’s been disarmed. “There, go in.”

She does, and it sinks in that this is the first time that she’s ever been inside Kang Gary’s apartment. She’s been over at his studio a lot, too much, that it’s started to feel like she’s trespassing on private grounds, but somehow this feels even more personal of a breach.

“Feel free to roam,” he says, takes his sneakers off in front of the shoe rack, and then disappears past the wall when he turns left afterwards. “I’ll heat up the water.”

She slips her sandals off, pads her feet against cool hardwood as she inspects the rest of his apartment. It’s uncluttered, tidy enough to be passable for guests, but it’s homey in some of its disorder, too: a strewn shirt over the keyboard on the opposite wall, loose pages of a scribbled in notebook scattered across the surface of his coffee table, a bunch of unwashed mugs sitting out on his kitchen counter.

“Sorry if it’s a bit messy,” he says, transferring the mugs from granite to steel, rinses them quickly with water before lathering them with soap. “I haven’t really been home much, so I haven’t had the time to clean up properly.”

“It’s fine,” she assures, rests her hip against the edge of the counter. She likes that his apartment looks lived in, likes that it feels like she's chipping at a shell from the inside and discovering something new about him from it. “It’s actually in better shape than I thought it’d be. I'd expected worse.”

“I’m a man, not undomesticated,” he burs, washes the suds away from his hands after finishing with the mugs.

“As if there's even a difference,” she says, and earns herself a fli