Freak. Special. Unique. Based on the person’s point of view, he’d been called many things in the past month. To Taemin, they’re all the same, different. And different is just a synonym for disappointment. He can almost live with the disappointment now, his body having walled off his mind until every day was just a haze where he woke up, scooted about the house to relieve his boredom with life, and went back to sleep. Most of the time he didn’t even leave his room because no matter how much of a haze his mind was in, he could still feel the word “disappointment” piercing his skin whenever he so much as met their eyes. He had put all the mirrors from his room and bathroom in the closet, separating them carefully with towels so they wouldn’t get scratched or broken, they weren’t his after all, but that didn’t mean that he could stand the self-hatred that he saw in his own eyes whenever he caught a glimpse of himself in one of their reflective surfaces.

He both hated and loved the child growing inside of him, or the “abomination” as his mother liked to call it. But no matter how much his father loved his mother, he was a doctor before he was her partner and even though the subject was his son, this was a huge opportunity to research a previously unexplored phenomenon, so he wouldn’t allow her to terminate Taemin’s pregnancy. Can you even call it that when it’s a guy that’s having the baby? Taemin had a lot of time to think now, and it was questions like these that were frequently floating across his consciousness.

He remembered what his parents had told him a month ago when they’d finally found out what was wrong with him. When his mom had become pregnant with him, she and his dad had been living in rural China. His dad was working as a doctor in a small town where life revolved around a factory that manufactured and packaged estrogen pills for hormone replacement and birth control. No one realized until too late that the factory was old and way out of line with modern standards and huge amounts of estrogen were spilling into the water supply of the quiet little town without anyone being any the wiser. They noticed first when a 2 year old boy got sick, sick with cancer. Not normal cancer, but cancer of something that shouldn’t even have been there in the first place. Too much estrogen in the womb when his mom was carrying him, they said. The boy had developed a womb of his own and his body was attacking it from the inside. They had to get it out, but more importantly, they had to get it out without anyone knowing. The factory was the town’s lifeline, it couldn’t be shut down. So Taemin’s father had operated on the boy, tearing the abomination out of his little body, the disease luckily being carried with it. Taemin’s mother was scared, her pregnancy was already 5 months along and she didn’t know what she would do if her baby had the same problem. What if her baby wasn’t perfect? They had been able to stem the flow of estrogen out of the factory, but it was too late for the babies already growing in their mother’s bellies. More and more mothers were having baby boys with more obvious deformities (mainly in the s). To Taemin’s mother’s relief thankfully Taemin was outwardly perfect when he’d been born, no signs of disease and no signs of obviously feminized features.

When he was growing up, though, he was different. For the first 5 years of his life, his mother couldn’t even begin to count the number of times she’d had to correct people who’d thought he was a girl. And later when he’d entered school, he whined until his mom allowed him to take ballet, even though his father forced him to play soccer as well, mostly for his own peace of mind. Not that he minded much, that was how he’d met Minho after all.

 The two boys had hit it off immediately, quickly becoming best friends even though Minho was many times better at soccer than Taemin.  Taemin could still hold his own on the field, though, mostly because of good footwork. When Taemin hit high school he quit playing soccer against his father’s wishes and concentrated all of his efforts on dance. Minho and Taemin were still as inseparable as ever, though, and Minho was actually the one who had convinced Taemin to finally quit, since he could tell that devoting his energy to both dance and soccer was wearing Taemin down. Besides, Minho had said, Taemin didn’t even really like playing soccer outside of a casual hobby. So Taemin had switched out his soccer cleats for a pair of dancing shoes, devoting his after school time to dance practice instead of soccer. That was how he’d met Key and Key was kind of the reason he was in this situation in the first place. If he’d never met Key, he’d never have gone to that party, and if he’d never gone to that party, he’d (probably) never have slept with Minho.

But, at that thought, Taemin’s mind paused for a minute. Would he really have never slept with Minho if he didn’t go to that party? He liked Minho, he knew that for sure, liked him beyond the boundaries of “just friends”. But the thing was that he’d been satisfied with just being friends, he didn’t feel like he’d needed more before that party. Something at the back of his mind nagged him, though, saying that he wouldn’t have been satisfied with just being friends forever and that he’d have been in this situation no matter what sooner or later.

The party had been an after-party for their fall dance, which was incredibly lame, but everyone always went to it anyway. Key had pulled Taemin and Minho aside close to the end of the dance and asked them if they’d wanted to come. Key’s friend Jonghyun was hosting the party in his parents’ basement, which was conveniently only a few blocks away from Minho’s house, where Taemin was supposed to stay the night anyway. They’d said yes, exchanging excited looks at each other since it would be their first time drinking alcohol. Well, Minho’d had that one beer at his uncle’s bonfire in the countryside before, but that hardly counted. Taemin remembered the rest of the night perfectly, they’d gotten completely wasted playing drinking games with Jonghyun, whose alcohol tolerance was way too high for a 17 year old, if Taemin had anything to say about it. Anyway, they’d ended up stumbling back to Minho’s house, climbing the stairs to his room, and for some reason while they were changing; they’d both apparently thought that banging each other was a pretty awesome idea. In the morning they’d looked at each other nervously and decided that they wouldn’t talk about it again. They had enough to worry about, Taemin with trying to balance dancing and school and Minho with trying to secure a soccer scholarship. Well maybe that’s probably not exactly how it went, but that was the gist of it.

About a month later, Taemin started getting sick and he was in and out of school for about 3 months before they found out what was wrong with him. His mom let him stay in school until he couldn’t hide his expanding stomach behind baggy sweatshirts anymore and he was forbid from telling anyone. He’d wanted to tell Minho or, at least, Key, but he couldn’t think of any way to tell them without relinquishing his manhood. Could he really even call himself a man anymore? When the doctor (his father's friend) had checked him out, they found out that his body wasn’t producing any , so he was technically infertile if you didn’t count the fact that he had a ing uterus in his body. He wanted to claw it out and throw away all evidence of it. What would those guys at school who’d before about his looks say now? He was disgusted at himself. His mom had said “if you were going to be ing gay, why didn’t you use a like a normal person?” Tears had been streaming down her cheeks, but anger was flashing in her eyes and Taemin could see that she wasn’t concerned about him, but about the bad reputation he would bring upon the family if he was found out. He couldn’t find it in his heart to yell back that men don’t get pregnant, so he didn’t even think about using a since it was both his and Minho’s first time with anyone. Now tears were streaming down his own cheeks as he stepped out of the shower and pulled a towel around his constantly expanding waist. It was impossible for him to ignore his obvious pregnancy when he didn’t have any clothes on and his showers had recently gone from 20 minutes to about 10 because he couldn’t stand looking at himself for any longer.

His hatred was so bottled up inside and it was getting to the point of bursting. He just needed someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t judge him. Someone he trusted. He hesitated for a moment, knowing that his mind was going straight to Minho. Did he really want to burden him with this when his soccer scholarship was depending on him doing well both on the field and in the classroom? Minho had once said to him that if he ever needed anything, he was there. Taemin knew he couldn’t keep this from his best friend forever. Although they were not in a relationship, even friendships are built on trust and Taemin had been lying to Minho constantly for the past month that he’d been out of school, making excuses as to why he couldn’t come to school and why he couldn’t hang out. He had to tell him and telling him started with picking up the phone. Taemin sighed, sitting down heavily on his bed after putting on a tattered old sweatshirt and some boxers. He picked up his phone from the bedside table, scrolling down to Minho’s name and hesitantly selecting it.

He raised his phone to his ear and listened to the ringing.

Author's note: Ughhhh, I don't even know if this story will be up anyone's alley lol. I don't know if anyone in this fandom is even okay with/into mpreg stuff. This is the first time I've written it, but this story just wouldn't leave me alone until I started writing it. Updating might be slow (I'm sorry! ;_;) because I'm getting stuff ready to graduate and I just generally at writing chaptered things, but I wanted to get this out there to see if anyone is even interested in reading something like this lol.
Let me know what you think!