💐

Rose

“Baek?”

Park Chanyeol, twenty-five years old, presses his ear against the door when his husband doesn’t answer. He can hear water running from the faucet. Other than that, there’s nothing else.

He steps back and stares at the carvings on the white bathroom door and knocks on it for the sixth time. He paces back and forth like a puppy uneasily waiting for his owner, fidgeting, and considers knocking again.

“Baby, are you—”

“Go away Chanyeol,” sharply says the tired grunt from the other side before he hears those sounds again—a lurching from the remains of breakfast meeting their porcelain toilet.

Chanyeol lets out a worried whimper but is unable to do anything other than to pace around outside of the bathroom some more. It’s not the first time that he’s been locked out. Neither is it the first time that he’s trying to make friends with the wall while his husband spends his own time clinging onto their toilet. He used to like their bathroom—it makes for a nice place to make love in if you want to be loud—but now that it’s taking more of Baekhyun’s precious time, nope. He doesn’t really like it anymore.

“My handsome face is yours, for better or worse, baby,” Chanyeol retorts, voice effortlessly loud enough for Baekhyun to hear. He slides down to the floor, crosses his legs under him, and waits.

He smiles when he hears a choked snort from the other side. The smile quickly turns into a grimace, however, when he hears Baekhyun lurch again.

Was… was his cooking that bad? He was so sure he followed each step in his mother’s recipe though. He’s pouting right now, and he never pouts, but here he is almost wanting to sob because he wants nothing more than to be there beside his other half instead of out here, on the other side of the door.

This is frustrating. Waiting is frustrating. He's used to waiting, he has waited to be called Baekhyun's for years after all, but he really dislikes frustration.

Chanyeol bolts right up on his two long legs when the water stops. He completely forgets the fact that his boss hates creased shirts because there’s only his husband’s well-being in his mind right now. Almost immediately, he pries the door open once he hears lock come undone.

He finds his lovely Baekhyun sitting on top of the toilet’s closed lid, face buried in his hands.

“I don’t want to see you,” Baekhyun mutters when he’s eased into his husband’s arms, sounding as tired as he has been over the past weeks.

“You don’t mean that,” Chanyeol responds, using his bigger palms to cradle the other’s cheeks and pressing a kiss on his forehead before adding, “I love you too much to stay away.”

He hopes the colour comes back to Baekhyun real soon. He hopes colour stops leaving his Baekhyun altogether. Chanyeol doesn’t think he can stand any more of this.

“Don’t you start,” Baekhyun throws him a weak smile, too tired to laugh and eyes crinkling into a pair of moons, before he wraps his arms around his spouse’s neck and lets Chanyeol carry him back to their room.

​🌹

Contrary to people’s beliefs, Chanyeol isn’t Baekhyun’s first love, although he might as well be.

Chanyeol used to drop by the music room to play the guitar and found Baekhyun in there one day, right after the latter’s first break-up with Oh Sehun. Sehun, the young Park will discover much later, was only in it for the prestige that came from being able to snag someone who was almost half a decade older than him. Chanyeol was never the kind to let seeds of unhappiness grow when he could help it, so he decorated the space between he and Baekhyun with the notes from his guitar, and his voice dangled in the air as comfort for the boy who hid his tear-stained face.

That was a week before Baekhyun’s family moved out. It was the same week that Chanyeol realized he had a crush and finally gave in to the nagging in his head to find the boy from the music room.

Chanyeol isn’t Baekhyun’s first love, but Baekhyun is definitely Chanyeol’s.

Chanyeol hadn’t known about the transfer. Heck, he didn't know who Baekhyun was until that fateful meeting in the music room. He did know, however, that he longed to know the name of the boy whose face he could not easily forget.

He also knew that he couldn’t keep dropping by the music room anymore. His heart would sink every time he wouldn’t find Baekhyun there. It happened every time, and once every time turned into too many times, his feet just couldn’t bear to carry the combined weight of his crushed hopes and disappointment anymore. He strummed the song he played for Baekhyun for one last time before he listened to his mother’s words, tucked the part of him that wanted to be a musician into his little box of boyhood memories, and took his first step in university as a business major.

It was just a crush anyway, he told himself. He would later come to know that he was one of those people whose puppy love was their first love.

Chanyeol isn’t even the second or the third love. He doesn’t know who came after Sehun, but he knows that before him, there was Wu Yifan.

Yifan had this natural swagger to his gait that Chanyeol used to try to imitate. He looked like the type to brood, the type to have been born brooding and just screamed I’m a real bad boy and also secretly sensitive inside for all those girls to fabricate their own love stories about. He turned many heads, Wu ‘Kris’ Yifan, and hanging out with him made Chanyeol’s personality naturally shine brighter in comparison.

Kris gave Chanyeol space during their stay in university as roommates, lots of it, and it made him Chanyeol’s almost-best friend. Almost, because Chanyeol did try to get along with the dude—Chanyeol hates not ever trying—but he just couldn’t completely get along with Yifan after he met Baekhyun again and discovered that Yifan was Baekhyun’s on-and-off boyfriend. On, because Baekhyun believed in Yifan for three years. Off, because Yifan couldn’t believe in himself enough to make any relationship last.

Needless to say, Chanyeol spent his university years pining. For his roommate slash sort-of best friend’s boyfriend no less. He was much more a boyfriend to Baekhyun than Yifan ever was.

Chanyeol doesn’t really mind not being the first or how it could’ve been him if he had just talked to Baekhyun earlier in the music room. Sometimes he still thinks about how he should have punched Yifan—Kris—Yifan’s face, the very moment he realized that Yifan was a complete douche bag who didn't deserve the relationship he was in, instead of having waited until the Chinese transfer student had broken Baekhyun’s heart for the third time.

Chanyeol, however, is hopefully Baekhyun’s last love.

Things worked out for the best, Chanyeol believes.

He now works in an office where his colleagues already anticipate him to talk about the man he excitedly comes home to everyday, no matter the topic or time of the day. He knows there’s nowhere else he’d rather be at this point in life and he cannot possibly be prouder than being able to call himself Byun Baekhyun’s husband, after so many years of friendship and admiring the man from afar. His life is far from perfect, but he feels like it is because he spends his waking moments with Baekhyun—now Park Baekhyun.

So… even though Chanyeol is intimidated by the white walls of the doctor’s clinic and he worries that his palm is starting to become clammy, he braces himself as he sits beside Baekhyun and holds his husband close to him.

He has lost count of how many times he has glanced down at Baekhyun’s fingers to admire them; to feel blessed because their owner let him place a ring on one of them. He brings their intertwined hands up to his lips to kiss Baekhyun’s knuckles, then he tells the man he married that it’s going to be okay. Maybe it's just a stomach bug. Being a head chef’s son doesn't equate to being a good cook himself, right?

Baekhyun smiles at him and nods. Immediately, Chanyeol thinks, that he cannot picture himself doing this for someone else. He doesn’t want to imagine himself being with someone else. There cannot possibly be a Park Chanyeol in each existing universe who isn’t in love with his own Byun Baekhyun.

“Chanyeol, what if—”

“Nothing is going to change this for me,” Chanyeol says, gesturing to their wedding rings. To Baekhyun, it’s reassurance. To Chanyeol, it’s nothing but the truth. “I’ve loved you for ten years. I’m not going to change my mind now.”

Baekhyun smiles, “Okay,” and Chanyeol swears he'll never see a sight more beautiful than this.

He squeezes the hand in his own, pressing a soft kiss on his husband's temple, and says, “I love you, Baekhyun.”

Dr. Zhang enters the room as soon as the words leave his mouth. The doctor’s face is grim. At least, that’s how Chanyeol understands the knot in the man’s brows until the man in white hands over a sheet of paper and he hears Baekhyun gasp in his arms.

“Are you sure you had no idea before you came here?” Dr. Zhang asks with a smile.

Chanyeol is confused, then worried, because Baekhyun suddenly embraced him—very tightly, but not that he’s complaining—and it’s now his turn to try to make sense of the picture in his hands.

Baekhyun laughs at his puzzlement, before finally helping him out, “I’m pregnant, you idiot.”

“Pregnant,” Chanyeol repeats as if words were suddenly a concept so foreign to him.

“You’re pregnant,” He breathes, the wind knocked out of his lungs. Later on, he promises to apologize for making a scene, but right now, right now he’s overwhelmed—with love, with joy, with pride—and he kisses Baekhyun with so much passion, right there and then.

Chanyeol swears that, in that very moment, happiness is being with Byun Baekhyun.

🌹

“You’ve been staring at that for weeks.”

“Of course,” Chanyeol replies as he clears his thrice-organized desk to make space for Baekhyun’s framed sonogram for the nth time. “It’s the only thing I’ll stare at for the next six months.”

Without turning his head, he knows Jongdae and Yifan—Kris, Chanyeol reminds himself—just shared a look. Except that, maybe, he may have underestimated Kris’s disinterest in his married life because the man scoots closer and asks, “How is Baekhyun?”

Now, Kris asking him about Baekhyun usually sets him off the wrong way.

There will always be something about the love of your life’s ex, no matter how many years it’s been and whether or not all of you are close because of their history together. There’s nothing to worry about as far as trust and relationships go, but of course, Chanyeol will always remember Kris as the man who almost made Baekhyun his, the man who came before Chanyeol did. Kris will always be Baekhyun’s biggest almost and, in a way, Chanyeol’s biggest fear.

Chanyeol guesses that the wedding ring he spots around Kris’s finger is a greater weight being lifted off his own chest than he would like to admit. He even surprises himself when he answers Kris’s question with honesty rather than pure positivity, “He’s nervous. About having a baby. I wake up an hour early just in case I need to reassure him in the mornings.”

“That’s good,” Kris nods at this, in thought, “He loves you a lot.”

“I know,” He replies. “I love him a lot too.”

There are a few seconds of silence afterwards, which Chanyeol doesn’t really mind because neither he nor Kris actually converse with each other when it’s not about work, and especially not about Baekhyun. He knows Kris is no threat, he just feels it strange if he were to talk to Kris about the man he now proudly calls the love of his life. But then, it feels even more strange, knowing that he wouldn’t be this happy if Baekhyun never met Kris.

Pregnancy is possible for couples like he and Baekhyun now, but not common. There are procedures to go through and more screenings to conduct in between. Not all males can undergo genetic modification and there are even fewer who undergo it and come out able.

To be honest, the topic of pregnancy hasn’t ever come up before, even though Chanyeol’s job is stable and it pays well enough to provide them with an apartment spacious enough for the two of them. He has thought about wanting to dote on a child of his own, has daydreamed about it many times, in fact, but he didn’t want to burden Baekhyun. He didn’t want Baekhyun to feel obliged to humour him about building their own family.

However, the fact that Baekhyun is pregnant now means that Baekhyun has thought about having a family before. Baekhyun knew he wanted a family and underwent the gene therapy before they got married. Chanyeol is sure it hadn’t been during their dating years.

That’s what Baekhyun never got to tell him. It’s what Kris can’t quite bring himself to just say now, as one devoted husband to another. Chanyeol may be simple-minded at times, but he’s well aware that if Kris hadn’t left, there’s a good chance that Baekhyun wouldn’t be his husband now. Consequently, it wouldn’t be his child that Baekhyun is carrying right now.

“You know, I’m really glad it’s you,” Kris says, trying his usual best to appear nonchalant even though they all feel the thermostat drop a degree or two lower. “I’m really happy for you and Baekhyun.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know what to feel about that, even though his lips automatically curl into a grin at the mere mention of Baekhyun. In the end, the bigger part of him is glad that things turned out the way they have, too.

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” He says, making Kris pause before the latter can scoot back to his own cubicle.

“For what?”

“For letting him go,” Chanyeol replies. “I’m not happy that you broke his heart in the past, but I’m grateful that you let him go so he can be happy with me now.”

Kris nods again. There’s a very tiny smile on his lips before rolling his chair back to his own desk and resuming his report.

They go back to work after that and something in the air seems to dissipate. Jongdae suddenly finds talking about whether to adopt a cat or a dog very interesting. Scratch that, Jongdae starts talking even more as if competing with Chanyeol’s innate ability to gush about his dear Baekhyunee in ridiculous speed, while Kris keeps to his own corner and tries to make the reports that end up being delayed by the rest of his department members’ immersive banter.

Kris tells Chanyeol congratulations when it’s time for everyone to leave. Even Jongdae pats his back and congratulates him as well, saying that he’s excited to be an uncle. Chanyeol just laughs—they haven’t really thought that far ahead—and thanks both of his colleagues before he heads home.

Chanyeol texts Baekhyun an I love you on the way.

The smile that crawls to his lips must be very wide and bright because he notices people glancing at him with worried looks. He smiles even wider, “I’m going to be a dad very soon.”

As if by magic, the question marks on the other passengers’ faces melt into expressions of fondness. He receives even more congratulations. He almost opens his mouth, more than ready and willing to share stories, when his phone lights up.

I know. I love you too. But please stop talking to strangers and come home soon, daddy.

🌹

With pregnancy comes changes.

It doesn’t introduce any new virtues to Chanyeol, who, as a husband, is as devoted, and patient, and loving as a husband can be. Chanyeol works hard as a manager and works even harder to be the best husband to the best man in the world. He believes Baekhyun deserves everything he can give, whether it’s as small as mumbling I love yous while he’s still half-asleep or waking up early so that Baekhyun wouldn’t be alone with his worries in the morning.

Chanyeol adores Baekhyun. He loves Baekhyun. He makes it a point to tell his husband this at least once every day, even though Baekhyun still locks him out of the bathroom and doesn’t let him hug or kiss his husband as much anymore.

It hurts him to see and listen to Baekhyun cry and doubt himself so much. It hurts to the point that sometimes he questions whether they’re ready for this, starting their own family, because all he wants before anything else is for Baekhyun to be happy. It hurts, but he also knows that when things are painful, that’s when Baekhyun needs him the most.

Even if it’s just a smile, or an I love you

, or a few moments of sharing his warmth, he’ll do it for Baekhyun.

“Aren’t you tired?” Baekhyun asks weakly at three twenty-four one morning after the bathroom is closed and he enters their bedroom again.

Chanyeol immediately wraps arms around him, tells him, “For you? Never,” and carries him back to their bed, where they lie facing each other while waiting for sleep to come first or until the alarm tells one of them that it’s time to prepare for work He thinks he will never get used to seeing Baekhyun paler and colder than what usually is.

While he pulls Baekhyun closer to rest on his chest, he wishes he could share the burden. He wishes he could bear it in Baekhyun’s place, or at least share it, instead of seeing the way Baekhyun glances at his own reflection, as if a beautiful growing stomach could possibly make him love Baekhyun any less. He wishes he could fight all of Baekhyun’s inner demons himself.

“I’m here for you. No matter what,” He promises as he cards his fingers through his husband's silky black hair.

Baekhyun fidgets in his arms, “I… I don’t know, Yeol. I’m scared. What if—what if—”

Chanyeol hushes the man he loves with a kiss on the latter’s forehead, before shifting lower down the bed so their eyes can meet, “Baby, it’ll be okay. You have me,” he reassures with a smile and another kiss, on the lips this time. “Both of you will have me.”

Baekhyun eventually surrenders, leaning closer while a loving hand caresses his belly and returning a smile, which transforms into a beautiful, shy laugh when Chanyeol begins to talk about what he loves with such embarrassing conviction.

Chanyeol just goes on and on—about rice cakes with ice cream and cookies as filling, about music, about the dates they had in the past that Baekhyun didn’t know were actually dates until Chanyeol said he wanted them to date for real—until Baekhyun catches his mouth open and pulls him for a kiss. Not a peck, no, not those very momentary joining of their lips, but a real kiss. He never realizes he has missed being intimate this much until he’s making Baekhyun sigh and he’s biting his husband’s lip gently between his teeth.

Yearning. That may be a word for it. He misses being this close to Baekhyun.

The only word that comes to mind every time, however, is love. Love is the only word Chanyeol calls it. He feels like he could fall in love with the mere thought of making love to Baekhyun, if he isn’t yet.

“You’re right,” Baekhyun smiles, and it makes his heart flutter in a way that almost aches. “How lucky is this baby to have a dad like you?”

How is it possible, that he feels like he’s falling more and more in love with the man he already loves so much…?

Chanyeol just embraces his dear husband very tightly, feeling like every part of his body is warm and filled with love and gratitude. “I’m the lucky one,” he earnestly says. “You make me the luckiest man in the world.”

He feels Baekhyun’s fingers his hair while he wiggles his toes beyond the edge of the bed. He doesn’t wear socks to bed anymore, although he still goes to bed almost , much to Baekhyun’s chagrin. He lets his husband have the blankets, which get thrown off the bed because apparently he’s warm enough for the both of them this morning.

As Chanyeol watches Baekhyun sleep and tells his future child that he can hardly wait for them to meet, he starts to believe that—until their baby is born—this, this is as close to perfection his life can get.

🌹

One morning, right as he’s fixing the last button of his dress shirt, Chanyeol suddenly considers calling in sick.

He doesn’t feel sick, but he can’t shake off the feeling of restlessness, especially when he thinks of Baekhyun being left alone in the house. Who knows, Baekhyun might need his help today or might crave for something absurd. His husband’s cravings are cute but they’re still really rather absurd, even for someone with a peculiar taste like Chanyeol.

Baekhyun convinces him to go, though, and even promises to do all the texting today just so he would leave. Baekhyun’s mood swings are much better now. Just this morning, he actually woke up to kisses. Of course, it makes him happy to be kissed awake in the morning, so he steals another one from Baekhyun before he gives in.

“I love you!” Chanyeol shouts from the driveway, grinning when Baekhyun turns red and vehemently shoos him from yards away.

Baekhyun almost cries at how cute but terribly embarrassing the man he married is, every morning, and shouts back a “Go away!”

Chanyeol just laughs, shoots his husband more hearts, and yells a louder and prouder I love you Baekhyun, before driving off to work.

🌹

Red.

“No, no no no please—Baek—”

When Chanyeol comes home to the colour red, he knows—he knows he should have called in sick.

🌹

People always said that it’s impossible to always be happy, that it’s impossible to be happy for so long.

What is so wrong about being happy, though? So what if you’re happy almost seven days a week? Why do people make being happy seem like a sin? Something to reject and feel terrible about?

He’s had people tell him the life he has is impossible; that he’s lying about being happy, or they tell him how unfair it is, being born with his face and not having to work so hard for anything because he comes from an accomplished family. He’s had people talk bitterly about him, spiting his last name and invalidating his competence by saying he uses his face to get around, as if happiness were something not everyone deserves.

Maybe there’s some amount of truth to that. Maybe he has been happy for too long that the universe decided to do something about it, like a sort of cosmic sense of equity. Maybe someone else in the world needs happiness and there’s not much of it to go around, so the universe decided it had to rectify the situation and took his supply of happiness.

That makes sense, doesn’t it?

To Chanyeol, it does, a little. It doesn’t sound the least bit fair, though. It’s not fair at all for Park Chanyeol who has done his best in everything he has ever decided to do—whether it was a measly and unappreciated Student Council project back in high school or pursuing his first love until his first love became his husband—only for the goddamn universe to decide he has had enough of happiness; that there’s someone out there who needs happiness more than he does.

He worked for it. He worked for this. He worked his off for everything he has now, for everything he wanted to offer and has ever offered to the man he loves. The universe can’t just ing decide to crush their dream to make someone else’s come true.

But the universe can, can’t it…? And it just did.

One day, it suddenly went, oh, why don’t I take away Park Chanyeol’s child? Let’s try to snatch Baekhyun away from him too and see how he likes it. One day, Park Chanyeol left home as a husband and an expectant father, as if life was just letting him have a taste of how it was to be both, before he was later on made to choose which he would rather be.

God, he hates it; the universe, the way things could have unfolded if he had called in sick, himself—god, god, he hates himself so much. A husband or a father? How could he possibly choose between Baekhyun and their first child? How could he be forced to save just one when they’re both his precious family?

But he had to. He had to. That’s why he hates himself so, so much. Someone who chooses doesn’t deserve to be either.

He doesn’t deserve to be either.

“Baekhyun, Baekhyun, please—please forgive me,” Chanyeol begs at his husband’s bedside, listening to the consistent beeping that is the only noise in the hospital room; the only thing loud enough to tell him that Baekhyun survived because he made a choice.

He made a choice and he chose Baekhyun, who hasn’t woken up yet since having been transferred from the emergency room. It relieves him to be holding Baekhyun’s hand, it relieves him so much that his husband is alive, but he—

How—how is he possibly going to tell Baekhyun? That their son is gone…? That their son was meant to die regardless of who Chanyeol chose to save?

“Baekhyun, please—baby, please—”

This is so unfair. How can the universe make a father choose to let others murder his son?

Chanyeol is terrified.

Of the universe.

Of being happy.

He doesn’t want to be happy if the universe will take another dream away.

He doesn’t want to be happy. He doesn’t want the universe to realize that Baekhyun is his happiness. He doesn’t want the universe to come back and take Baekhyun from him.

Please—

Please don’t take Baekhyun from him.

🌹