note: i'm trying to write this as close to what I think Gary/Jihyo's relationship is like outside of RM (purely co-workers who get along well enough for work and the occasional hang-out in a group setting, but haven't come around to being really friends yet, unlike Kwangsoo/Jihyo and Jongkook/Jihyo) so if anyone finds things to be going too slow romance-wise, I appeal for patience, lol. I think they'd need to smooth out all the technicalities of what the publicity of their partnership has done to how they interact with each other before anything can really happen, so the romance will kind of be a slow build, as appropriate to their situation.

Thanks again for the new subscribers!

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The shining, unconquerable afterglow of her epiphany lasts them about fifty minutes more—thirty spent listening to Dr. Byun give her even more pamphlets and warnings about physical exertion and diet and age and lifestyle and the chances of spontaneous terminations and con defects, the remaining twenty left for Gary to drive her home silently, eyes unerringly set on the road and hands faithfully gripped at ten and two on the steering wheel—before the awkwardness picks up where it left off, imposing itself on every corner of the car like some persistent new strain of an antiquated mold. 

"Oppa," she says at the one-hour mark—and she counts, because she's that in need of a distraction from whatever novel tension they're having now—thinking that she should be the one to start. She'd been the commander this whole time leading up to the fact, so she might as well be the commander until the end. "You should say something."

"What?" he asks, still not looking sideways, as if glancing away once will have him missing a streetlight. He's never been a reckless driver, but he's never been this careful, either. Impending fatherhood really did change you somehow, apparently; the proof was right here, Kang Gary driving above and beyond the stipulations made for a law-abiding citizen. "What should I say?"

"I don't know," she says, crosses her ankles over each other, then remembers Dr. Byun saying something about it exacerbating foot swelling in the later stages of pregnancy, so she uncrosses them again. It's never too early to be cautious. A loveline being dragged half-dead for a better part of eight years, and she's learned that lesson. "You're the one who wants this."

His jaw ticks from her purview. "So that's still why? You only backed out because I want the baby? You're just doing me some kind of solid?"

"No offense," she says, just as acerbically, because if that's how he's going to be after she'd just finally accepted carrying his ing baby, then she can be difficult, too. "But you're not important enough to have any of your opinions bear real weight on my decisions."

"Obviously, or you wouldn't have dangled the choice right in front of me," he says, below his breath, the corners of his lips tugged down in a scowl.

It's not much of an insult, but something about it still stings. "You're really going to do this now?"

He finally looks at her then, just a speedy flicker of his eyes to his right, and then he sighs. "Sorry."

"What are you even upset about?" she asks, less hostile, because his apology had sounded true enough, but she's still wary. "It's all worked out in your favor, hasn't it? I chose what you want."

"Exactly," he says, evocative—voice too loud for what's appropriate in the confines of his car, chin too locked to not be from him gritting down on his teeth—but he doesn't elaborate further.

She crosses and uncrosses her ankles again to fill in the gaps between conversations—the little that they had, at the very least, if it could even be called that—before he speaks again, calmer and smoother but not lacking in the fervor he'd spoken with before, "In the beginning, when they'd made us start it—the Monday Couple—I never wanted to force you into doing it. You were miserable, and I never said much back then, but I'd always felt like it was my fault. That I'd pushed you too far into something you were only doing because you thought it was what you had to do."

Half of his face is illuminated by the moon, the signboards of the streets, when she faces him fully; carving shadows on his cheeks, under his eyes, burdens pronounced by the open light. They'd always exaggerated his looks on the show; he was never as ugly as what they'd perpetrated, as he'd deprecated himself to be, but it's the first time she thinks him entrancing, even if it's not about what he looks like, right now, but all about what he does, what he's willing to share.

"I don't want that to happen with this, either," he continues, the sinews of his knuckles flexing on the steering wheel he's holding, "I know what I said, back there in the clinic, and I've been a ing mess, going back and forth on what I'm telling you, but—I'd rather you do it, if it's what you want. I don't want it if you don't want it. Or I won't, at least. I'll learn not to want it. Eventually."

She sinks back into her seat, leather squeaking with the movement, tries to reconcile what exactly it is he'd said with what she'd believed, in the past. It was always the easy route to blame him for what's happened to them; he'd been the one to make the first move, the one to bring it up during taping when he could feel his screen time dwindling, the one to go past the scope of the show's cameras, baiting people beyond the equipment with throwaway comments to any sort of press about how she's his ideal type and that the timing just wasn't right for them to date.

Like he'd said, she'd gone along with it because it's what she had to do. But what she's always ignored is that he was only doing what he had to do to survive, too; had garnered him fans, recognition, enough to propel his music skywards, the one thing he'd always been working for, right from the very beginning, until whenever he'll end. Even if he didn't realize the catch to that kind of fame then, she knows he gets it now; sees it in the way his shoulders slump when he performs solo onstage and the crowds scream for someone else, another name, an entity that isn't, shouldn't be there; in the way he'd kept his distance from her during his last year of taping, as much as he'd been permitted by the script directors who'd kept banking on them as the show's last gasp salvation; in the way that he can barely even talk to her now, at all, without having it feel conditional, like they were warring sides operating on a drafted peace treaty that's long been obsolete.

"I never blamed you," she says quietly, and at the end of it all, it's what's truest to her, is just as much as fault as he'd always been. "I knew what I was getting into then. You're not the only one responsible for how it's turned out."

He doesn't say anything in response—doesn't look at her, either—but his fingers loosen slightly, blood seeping back under the skin of his hands with the change in color, and she decides to go on, to try even harder, "And I know what I'm getting into now, too. I know what it'll all mean," she pauses, rubs at her stomach over her shirt thoughtfully, subconsciously, "You were right, last week. I'm tired of having to want things because it's what everyone else wants. But I'm even more tired of making myself not want something that everyone else does, just because it's the only way I know how to fight them off. I still lose in the end if I do that, don't I?"

"It's not a competition," he says, gruff, serious, but the arch of his brows are duller, the curve of his mouth gentler, defeated.

"But it is a game," she says, looking out of her window, watches the passersby walking down the sidewalk, Seoul nightlife gearing into life; wonders what they'd all say, if the glass barricade wasn't tinted to the darkest of shades, if they knew that they were driving together now, knew the secret they carried. "We've always been good at games."

"Ace Jihyo," he says, a murmur, almost as if he hadn't meant to, was just thinking out loud.

She smiles, can't help it. Whatever it is she feels for him, whatever it is she doesn't, he'd always been able to make her smile. "Random Mr. Capable." 

They don't talk for the rest of the drive back, leaving off their conversation at one of the street corners they pass, a passenger unloaded. She's content, somehow; finally knows, finally accepts, that after all is said and done, they're still always on the same page. A team, before a loveline, before anything else. She rubs at her belly absentmindedly again, and thinks that her baby—that their baby—had earned the best of odds. Like mother, like child, they say; and so it inherits her luck.

"I'm not playing," he says, when they arrive at her complex's parking lot and she's already opening her door. She turns around to look at him, and what she sees is sufficient enough proof. "Not anymore. I'm too old to play games."

"Me too," she says, something like affection flowing through her limbs as she reaches an arm over to twist his hat around his head, back to front, the youth of its look juxtaposed against the maturity of his conviction. "Good night, oppa."

She steps out of his car, shuts the door behind her, looks forward and not back; has hope in her step rather than the desolation she'd cradled since the moment she'd found out.

They may be too old to play, now, but they're never too old to grow.

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Because filming falls on a Tuesday that week, Kwangsoo hounds her the minute she arrives on set: walks right beside her, not a step too far advanced or behind, arm hovering at various heights on her back, like a safety measure for when she collapses in whatever pain he thinks she's nursing after going through an ordeal that she'd told him she would.

Even she's not cruel enough to keep him in suspense like this when she knows he's only doing it because he cares, so she decides to tell him the truth during one of their breaks, "I'm okay, Kwangsoo. I didn't get it, so you can relax. Jongkook-oppa's looking at us suspiciously."

Another sound reason, because as permanent as her choice is, it's still a little too early to ring up everyone she knows for some overblown reveal and a premature baby shower that would just turn into another grand show she doesn't want to star in. She's going to have to be careful; Jongkook has a way of just knowing something's off, and Sukjin may be Big Nose, but Jaesuk has him functionally beat, finds things out through the sheer obstinate force of nosing through matters that no one but the involved would know if not for the MC in him.

Kwangsoo was another problem. Kwangsoo was always just so plain and painfully obvious. "Noona—!"

"Oh my god, would you be quiet?" she hisses, pinches the little meat he has on his sides and elicits a jerky spasm from him. "I don't want anyone else to know yet."

"Fine, sorry," he says, prying himself out of her clutch with a wince. "But come on, you have to at least tell Gary-hyung now."

"I already did," she says, and Kwangsoo gets the slyest grin on his face, variety persona coming to life along with the matchmaker he tries to be—she doesn't even know how many times he'd tried to hook her up with In Sung once news broke out that he'd ended his previous relationship, basing their compatibility on the grounds of, "You've already done a scene together! You're familiar!", but she has a niggling feeling that his intentions had been a tad self-serving; Kwangsoo's often busy, and she knows how much it'd save him time if all his friends were friends with each other and hung out all together in one gathering. The one thing that's always been true about her own variety profile is that she loves to sleep, so she's been pretty sympathetic to his plight, had tried to humor him occasionally with the odd call to In Sung in his presence to set up a date that they didn't have any solid commitment of going to if not to fool Kwangsoo.

But this, her and Gary: it's a completely different story, one she's making off-limits to anyone else's input. "So does this mean—" he doesn't get to finish whatever seven-point plan to their romance he's concocted in his head, has her hand slapping his mouth shut before he can even try it.

"Wipe that smile off your face," she orders, lowering her hand only when he nods in acquiescence. "And stop plotting. Nothing's going to happen between us, still. We just agreed to keep it as friends."

"And how'll that work out?" he asks, a