5.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” Lucas inquires once the door clicks shut behind them.

He’s scanning Taemin’s face with an expression far too mature for a child his age, as though he’s waiting for the omega to crumble in front of him.

Taemin smiles thinly and crouches down to look his son in the eyes and assures, “I’m fine, sweetheart, there’s no reason to worry.” And then adds for good measure, “remember what Daddy said about being able to stand up for himself?”

Lucas’s serious expression pulls into a pout as he averts his gaze from the elder’s.

“Yes,” he answers meekly but then rushes on, looking back at his father with a frown, “but the mister was bothering you.”

“He wasn’t,” Taemin lies, his heart clenching painfully as he forces himself to get the next words out. “He’s an old friend whom I lost touch with a long time ago.”

Lucas’s frown wavers and he asks, “what does that mean?”

Sometimes, Taemin forgets his smart little boy doesn’t know everything.

“It means that we haven’t spoken in a long time, which is why he was asking if we could talk,” he explains slowly.

Lucas blinks at him and then inquires, clearly doubtful, “so he wasn’t being mean?”

Taemin shakes his head, plastering his most convincing smile on his face and states, “he wasn’t.”

The three-year-old still doesn’t look very convinced but Taemin muses that’s the best he can do for now. He has to come to terms with the situation himself, before being able to comfort his son on it.

“Now,” he says, helping the boy out of his jacket. “Didn’t you need to use the bathroom?”

Lucas’s eyes widen and he exclaims, “right!”

A second later, he’s discarded his shoes in the entry-way and has run off into the apartment.

Taemin swallows, breathing shakily as his smile disappears. He fitfully takes the leashes off Adam and Eve’s collars, both dogs quickly rushing into the depths of the apartment as well.

As he’s left alone in the entry-way, Taemin rises back to his full height only to find his legs are trembling too much to keep him up. He leans against the wall as his world sways, taking in another shaky breath as he stares at nothing in particular.

Minho’s words echo in his mind. 

“I didn’t know. I didn’t listen to or read anything you left me. I didn’t know.”

He doesn’t believe the alpha. He doesn’t want to.

If anything, the elder’s ignorance of the situation only makes it all worse.

If he’s telling the truth and really didn’t know about Lucas, that means that the elder had never bothered even checking why Taemin had been calling him so desperately.

The omega can’t help but wonder what had gone through the alpha’s head then. Had he just assumed Taemin had been trying to beg him for them to get back together? Had he thought the younger so needy and clingy that he would stoop so low as to pursue him, even after they had established their relationship wouldn’t work?

By the time the thoughts have formed in his mind, the omega is seething in anger, chocked up with so much frustration, his throat hurts from the pressure.

Even so, he forces himself to gain some composure as not to alert his son that something is wrong.

Lucas is a smart boy and it’s obvious he caught up on the fact something was amiss when Minho insisted they talk.

Rare are the times when his little alpha feels the need to protect him like that.

It happened just once before, a couple of months before they moved from Kyoto to Seoul when an alpha had tried getting too handsy with Taemin at the mall.

Lucas’s little frame had shaken with so much anger then that Taemin had been more stunned to see the boy in such a state than he had been to be so boldly hit on.

The boy had kicked the man on the shin and flashed angry red eyes at the older male, growling in almost perfect Japanese for the man to “go away”.

The action had caught the attention of several passers-by who had ultimately stepped up to the rescue.

The memory makes Taemin’s heart clench in sadness that his son, so tiny and young, already feels the need to step up to defend him.

He is by no means defenseless and he does his best to let Lucas know that he can stand up for himself without the boy having to step up. But the small alpha doesn’t seem to understand that.

According to the pediatrician, such behavior from his son is only normal, given his dominant secondary-gender.

“You should expect him to only grow more protective and territorial as he grows up, especially since he has no other alpha to compete with for your affection,” the doctor had told him when he had brought up the fact during his son’s last check-up before moving.

Taemin was more than disturbed by the revelations and has since done everything he can to make sure Lucas doesn’t feel the need to show that kind of assertive behavior anymore.

He doesn’t want Minho striding into their lives and turning everything upside-down.

If the alpha is telling the truth, if he really didn’t know about Lucas, then that’s his loss.

Taemin has since learned not to expect anything from anyone and he sure as hell won’t put his son in a position where he either feels like he has to fight to assert himself or feels as though he depends on someone stronger to go by.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Minho doesn’t wait long to show up on Taemin’s door-step. In fact, he stands there the next day, fidgeting slightly on his feet as the omega opens the door.

Taemin set his jaw as he stares up at the man.

“You didn’t have to come,” he says in-lieu of greeting.

The omega pretends he doesn’t see the flash of hurt in the alpha’s eyes at his terse words.

“Yes, I did,” Minho replies nonetheless. “We need to talk.”

Taemin keeps himself from repeating that they don’t have anything to talk about. Instead, he sighs, telling himself to get it over with. He steps aside and invites Minho in, glad that Lucas is down for his evening nap.

He guides Minho to the living room and then sits across from the man, who’s taken place on the couch.

He doesn’t bother with platitudes or politeness. If anything, he hopes his lack of welcome might help him drive the elder out sooner.

“So?” He presses as the silence stretches.

Minho is looking around, as though searching for something.

“Where is Lucas?” He inquires.

Taemin presses his lips in a tight line, trying to keep his heart from somersaulting at hearing the elder say his son’s name so casually.

“He’s napping,” the omega informs curtly.

“Is he… is he still sick?”

Taemin frowns, wondering how the elder even knows that Lucas was sick. Until the memory of their first encounter comes back to him. He had been bringing Lucas home from the hospital that day.

That faithful day when everything started going downhill again.

“He’s better,” the omega says, itching to add more explanation but restraining himself.

Minho doesn’t have the right to know. He doesn’t even have the right to ask.

There’s the silence again. Heavy and tense and Taemin mourns every part of him that’s trembling at the prospects of how that conversation will go.

“Look Minho–”

“I want to be a part of his life,” the alpha announces with as much certainty as he would’ve stated his name.

Taemin instantly scowls.

“No,” he denies firmly.

Minho sets his jaw and then says, “you can’t prevent me from taking part in my son’s life.”

“You were the one who denied yourself that!” He exclaims and then flinches internally at his loud voice before lowering his tone, “you refused to acknowledge him before. Just because we’re here now, doesn’t mean you can suddenly become a part of his life.”

Minho is the one to frown now.

“I didn’t know before,” the alpha says, voice rough with something Taemin barely recognizes. “I would’ve been there from the start if I did.”

“I told you as soon as I found out,” Taemin argues, closing his fists on his lap, his short nails dig into his palms under the strength he’s using. “You chose not to listen.”

The words seem to make their effect as Minho casts his gaze down, looking at his hands, which are open on his lap, palms up, as though he is offering something. What, the omega doesn’t know.

Actually, there’s a lot of things he notices he doesn’t get from the elder anymore. Once upon a time, Minho had been an open book to him. Now, though, Taemin can’t decipher the expression on his face. There’s something there he can’t recognize. Something painful, foreign on the face of the man he once loved.

“I’m sorry,” the alpha whispers brokenly. “I was an idiot. I– Taemin, I thought I was doing the right thing… letting you go. Putting distance between us… I thought that was what you wanted.”

Whatever it was that the omega had been planning to say, whatever speech he had rehearsed the night before to push Minho away, it all disappears when the elder meets his gaze.

The vivid pain in his irises, the sorrow making his shoulders steep low, making his breathing shallow with barely contained emotion.

This is not the Minho he knows. He gets that now.

There’s something raw in him. As though the elder’s lost a part of him, one that has left a gaping hole behind.

Minho looks the same as he did four years ago, but everything else about him is different.

The proud alpha the elder once was seems to have left place to someone meeker, uncertain, almost clumsy in the way he handles himself.

Taemin’s heart shatters as he takes in the fact and he hates himself for feeling so much. For caring still.

Yet, he wonders what happened to Minho. What happened to the man he fell in love with, to the man he had once given himself to with the utmost certainty that he would be loved, protected and cared for, as any omega would’ve dreamed of.

He wonders if there’s any way to get that Minho back.

“Lucas is my son too,” the alpha says, having reigned in the quivering of his voice. “I know I wasn’t there for the two of you but I’m here now. And I want to be a part of it.”

Taemin doesn’t find it in himself to straight-out reject it this time around. Not when the desperate glint in the alpha’s eyes is making his insides recoil.

He thinks, as frustration and anger start to bubble in his chest, singing his insides like acid, that he should be the one making demands. That, going through the pregnancy by himself, stranded in a foreign country with barely any support system, legally bound by a contract he couldn’t possibly hold up in his state, he had earned every right to put his foot down and say no to whatever it was Minho asked of him. Especially given how the elder had mercilessly left him to deal with it all by himself.

“I know I hurt you,” Minho is saying, though he only meets Taemin’s gaze fitfully. “I made a mistake… and I want to make it up to you. To him.”

Taemin sets his jaw once again.

He recalls the callousness with which the directors had started treating him when he had informed them of his pregnancy. He thinks of how he was side-lined as soon as he started to show. He thinks of the complete disregard that the directors showed him, as they demanded he kept taking part in the rehearsals, even though the bigger and sicker he got, the less he could perform.

He remembers himself stubbornly doing his routines in the studio, despite being unable to perform on stage, pretending he couldn’t feel the dirty looks his fellow dancers threw at him.

He recalls being dismissed only four months since he got in the company, told that since he couldn’t hold up his end of the contract, they found no use for him.

Most of all, he recalls the humiliation of packing his things and having to call his parents in shame, asking them for help in paying the fine his contract termination brought him.

His parents – bless them – paid for everything without question and had him back in Kyoto less than a week later.

Barely a month and a half since he settled there, he gave birth to his little boy.

As the memories flash through his mind, Taemin thinks bitterly that nothing Minho does can ever make up for all of that.

Especially not for Lucas’s premature birth or the month during which his little boy’s life was touch-and-go.

“Nothing you do will ever make up for it,” he states dryly.

Minho looks like he’s been punched in the gut, all wide-eyed and gaping mouth, breath stuck in his throat.

Good, Taemin thinks vengefully.

“He doesn’t need you around. Neither of us does,” he says, rubbing salt on the wound. “I’ll tell you what I told Kibum: it’s been four years, the time to talk about this is over. You were merely a donor and that’s what you’ll stay as.”

Minho doesn’t answer. He’s not even looking at him anymore.

“You should get going. Lucas will wake up soon and I don’t want him to see you here.”

He’s supposed to be relieved when Minho doesn’t argue. Instead, it makes dread wind its tendrils around his insides as the alpha claps his lips shut, gaze unfocused and fleeting and then gets up from the couch, rubbing his hands on his tights.

Even as he follows the movement, to walk Minho to the door, he finds himself hyper-aware of the flagrant fragility of the man he once believed was invincible.

Minho stops in his tracks just outside of the door. He doesn’t turn around to face Taemin as he speaks.

Hell, Taemin wonders if maybe he went a little too hard on the elder when he hears his quivering voice.

“I know I was wrong,” Minho confesses, shoulders slumped. “I should’ve called you back and listened to what you had to say. But I didn’t. Instead, I drowned everything out to get through my days without you. I’ll never stop regretting that decision.”

Minho audibly swallows and goes on, “you have every right to resent me. And I’m not asking for you to have me back. I know that’s not happening.”

Taemin’s the one whose breath gets stuck in his throat then.

“But Lucas…” Minho’s voice has regained some kind of firmness then. “Lucas is my son too. I lost three years of his life and I’m not losing any more time with him. Even if for that, I have to stoop as low as fighting for him in court.”

With that said, Minho walks away, leaving Taemin behind to stare at his retreating back. The promise – th​​​​​​​reat – echoing so loud in his ears, the omega can’t hear anything else for several minutes.

A/N: Please, please don't hate me! I do not take pleasure in hurting them, I promise... Most of you guys are so angry at Minho, and I know this ending definitely doesn't help...

On that cheerful note, I do wish you all a very prosperous, happy and blessed New Year!!

As always, thanks for the comments, subs and upvotes, you guys rock!

With Love,

Joorin <3