Jaebum wakes up when something crushes his ribs, cutting him out his breath momentarily.

 

Then he feels a soft, very slight tingling in the cheeks that he decides to ignore and keeps his eyes closed, trying to fall asleep again.

 

Bad decision, because soon one of his eyelids is pulled open and he can see in the shadows a lump sitting on his chest, and a little hand on his face.

 

He grunts and turns his face to close his eyes again, feeling that tickle on his cheeks again.

 

"Papa," he listens in the distance but ignores it and again someone tries to open his eyes forcefully, "Papa."

 

Jaebum takes the culprit in his arms and still with closed eyes he lies sideways, hugging the baby at his side to keep him still.

 

"Junnie, don't do that."

 

"Papa, mi."

 

Jaebum sighs tired, it's Saturday and he really needs to sleep, but it's not like he can change his daily routine just because he doesn't feel like getting up. No, he can’t lie down when his 10 month old child is hungry.

 

He sighs again and opens his eyes. Yejun looks at him with his huge, bright eyes wide open and smiles when he sees him waking up, putting his plump little hands on his cheeks. Jaebum also smiles, it’s inevitable, although most of the time he’s dead tired and often feels that he can’t with the job, his baby's vision every morning by his side puts him in a good mood.

 

"Mi, okay." He growls as he stretches in an attempt to drive the fatigue away. He makes his usual maneuver to get out of bed by the feet - the bed is with one side glued to the wall and on the other side is Yejun’s cradle, so there aren’t many ways to go down other than crawling down the mattress.

 

He attracts the baby to himself and carries him on one arm, while Yejun hugs his neck, "Mi, mi, mi!" he shouts and Jaebum laughs.

 

The only words his child can say with perfect clarity is 'Papa’, the rest is just cut syllables and strange sounds just like ‘Mi’, the key word for milk.

 

Sometimes he surprises himself when, in fact, he understands him when he babbles all the time. His mother told him that it’s natural for him to understand it, it’s a paternal instinct - now he’s dedicated to translating to everyone what Yejun tries to say.

 

In the kitchen, Jaebum puts water in the microwave and deftly prepares the bottle with one hand, nodding at something that Yejun is babbling about with tons of excitement - something about a toy and he’s sure he mentions Jinyoung, maybe his friend promised him a new one or at least that’s what he thinks it means.

 

Jaebum can’t explain himself how a 10-month-old child can have so much to say, but the baby is a talkative one, it seems as if he has batteries, just keeping silent when he eats or sleeps.

 

Mrs. Choi finds it very funny how he’s so, she says Youngjae was the same as a baby - very loud, something that is still now.

 

When the formula is ready, they go back to the room, crawl over the mattress and Yejun takes the bottle once lying down, Jaebum smiles softly and uses all his willpower not to fall asleep in that same second, forcing himself to stay awake until the baby finishes his milk and hands the empty bottle to Jaebum, who just throws it aside and closes his eyes immediately after Yejun.

 

The second time Jaebum wakes up, a couple of hours later, he does it before Yejun, who is still sleeping comfortably by his side, he’s scattered on the bed, with his legs and arms open and Jaebum's heart jumps as usual when sees him.

 

He pokes one of his chubby cheeks gently so as not to wake him up but still the baby makes a face and Jaebum laughs, he’s so pretty and looks so much like Youngjae, whenever he sees him he wants to squeeze him in his arms and never let go or take a bite because he can’t deal with all the tenderness he causes him - the bite isn’t literal, he thinks a second later just in case someone can hear his thoughts and judge him, but of course nobody can judge if they don’t have their own children.

 

He spends a few minutes watching his baby, with an idiotic smile on his face until he forces himself to get up for breakfast, he hugs Yejun as softly as he can to not wake him though, to tell the truth, that child has a very heavy sleep, once asleep, he doesn't wake up unless he's hungry and he does it at quite specific times - Jaebum is proud to have set schedules since he was a newborn, he never had too many problems to make him sleep full nights and it was very rare those times when he woke up in the middle of the night crying.

 

He thinks that also has a lot to do with Youngjae, after all his boyfriend also slept like a bear in winter, but Jinyoung says that he’s so obsessive and organized with his own schedules that he infected Yejun already.

 

He leaves the baby on the crib carefully, Yejun moves and Jaebum starts to pray so he doesn’t wake up and shushes him in a low voice, gently caresses his face and once he makes sure he’s still asleep, he leaves the room with slow and quiet steps, just in case.

 

When he closes the room’s door, Nora gets tangled up in his feet and meows, Jaebum knows that she also wants to eat now and apologizes for forgetting to feed her when he prepared the first bottle, scratching behind her ears.

 

He feeds the kitten first and then starts cooking breakfast for them. Normally he would eat the same thing as Yejun cause he has no time to do anything else, but today he decides to cook Bibimbap and leaves some rice for the baby, which he’ll give him along with some scrambled eggs and pieces of ham. He has to go to the supermarket these days and makes a mental note that he’ll have to write on his phone because most likely he’s going to forget it.

 

And like a perfect little clock Yejun wakes up just when he has breakfast ready, he hears him calling him from the room and rushes to go for him, because either he’ll start crying, or he’ll try to get off the cradle by himself and he doesn’t want neither of that happening.

 

"Papa!"

 

"Hey there," he greets him and smiles when the baby starts making grabby hands for him to hug him, "Did you sleep well?"

 

The baby puts his arms around his neck, starting to talk about things that Jaebum still doesn’t understand but he smiles and makes surprised sounds from time to time so that his son keeps talking to him, and it isn’t until he’s sitting and with the food in front of him that he finally quiets down because his mouth is busy with his breakfast.

 

Yejun tries to eat alone though he’s only able to take the spoon as a flag and eat with his hands, so Jaebum watches him as he rushes to eat, laughs with him when he drops the food he manages to grab with the spoon, and then feeds him himself at the end, when he realizes is more fun to throw the food away than to put it in his mouth.

 

When they’re finishing, he receives a message that he knows is from Jinyoung and gives it a quick read, 'I'm going over’ says the text and he looks at his baby who is destroying a piece of banana between his little hands and smearing it on the table.

 

"Don't do that Junnie," he tells without reprimanding him, picks up the dishes, cleanses his hands carefully, while the boy has already babbled a million other things but this time, when he finishes cleaning the muddy and thrown in the floor food, asks him to sit still for a second because he has something to say.

 

"Today Jinyoungie is coming to see you, do you want to play with him?"

 

The baby shouts something weird that in his well-trained ears sounds like something like 'Nioni' and jumps, moving his little feet in the air.

 

“I have to go do something today, and you'll stay with him meanwhile, okay? I promise it’ll only be a little while.”

 

Yejun keeps screaming happily, hitting the table with his hands. To Jaebum's advantage, the baby has never had some very severe dad attachment and can leave him alone with Jinyoung and Mark or his grandparents with no fear that he’ll feel sad or throw a tantrum all day long while he’s gone.

 

“Meow meow!” The baby suddenly shouts when he sees his kitten walking through the kitchen and points to her, starting to move in his chair like crazy, he probably wants to follow her.

 

"Do you want to play with Nora?" Jaebum asks with no need to hear the answer and hugs his son, takes him to the living room that besides the couch and a small table in a corner, is completely furniture free.

 

When he recently moved with Yejun just 4 months ago to that apartment, he decided to leave it like that so that the boy could crawl freely and, when the time came, walk without Jaebum being anxious for fear about him hitting his head with something.

 

Right now, the baby already can stand up holding on things and Jaebum prefers to leave the living with nothing that could potentially poke his eye or something, maybe it’s an over reaction, but it doesn’t really matter.

 

He leaves the baby on the floor covered with a soft foami mat in the living room, brings the container with some of his toys and puts the playlist with Yejun's favorite music before going to the kitchen to wash the dishes and then he hurries to get dressed to be ready before his friend arrives.

 

Jinyoung takes longer than he imagines and when the bell rings, Jaebum has already finished dressing Yejun too, both are sitting in the room, playing with cubes though it was basically the baby screaming and throwing them away and Jaebum recovering them to repeat everything again.

 

“I liked the other apartment better,” Jinyoung complains when he opens the door, pushing him aside to put out his shoes and go straight to Yejun, “It was closer.”

 

Jaebum rolls his eyes, "We weren't going to raise Yejun in our college flat."

 

He avoids adding an ‘evidently’, just because Jinyoung can't hear him anymore. But it’s obvious, how he was going to raise a baby in a 4x4 flat, with only one room, a bathroom, a mini kitchen and a living room that served as a dining room too.

 

It had never been the plan to stay there anyway, and as soon as he had money enough to give the first payment of this new apartment he didn’t think twice, it’s more central, much closer to his workplace and especially much more bigger - it has a living large enough for Yejun to have plenty of room to play, the kitchen and dining room have it’s own space, it has 3 rooms, which allows him to have a studio at home, even the bathroom is a thousand times larger than the old apartment one - in a nutshell, this apartment was totally familiar, there wasn’t a single reason to have stayed in that mini students house, even if that meant living further away from Jinyoung.

 

"Thank you for taking care of him today, my parents were busy and Youngjae's parents went back to Mokpo, before..." Jaebum sighs and Jinyoung who is currently holding Nora so the baby can pet her, shrugs his shoulders.

 

"It’s okay, I've told you a million times I love staying with him."

 

Jaebum nods, approaches to his son and hugs him goodbye, “Be good, okay? I’ll be back soon."

 

Jinyoung rolls his eyes, "Please don't, leave us alone for once."

 

"There’s milk ready in the fridge, you just have to heat it," The other says, ignoring the comment, "And if I don't come back before his snack time, there is..."

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know where the food and diapers are. Get out of here.”

 

"I’ll try to…"

 

“It seems like this is the first time you leave him in my very much capable hands, we'll be fine,” Jinyoung interrupts him, taking the boy from his arms and pushing him to the door, “We're going to have a lot of fun, right? Say goodbye to dad, bye bye dad.”

 

Yejun smiles and opens and closes his fists in farewell, Jaebum knows that he’ll be fine, obviously he trusts Jinyoung but this day he especially feels some resistance to walking away but because of the way Jinyoung pushes him he knows that his friend has already read him as open book and will not allow him to stay at home, not today.

 

“Okay, fine, I'm leaving. Goodbye baby.” He makes the same gesture the baby’s making and turns around, but Jinyoung stops him just before leaving.

 

"Jaebum."

 

The aforementioned looks at him and Jinyoung smiles sadly, “Say hello from me. Tell him I love him and we miss him.”

 

Jaebum feels a lump in his throat and he can barely keep his eyes from getting watery, "I will," is the only thing he says before he leaves.

 

*       *        *        *

 

Jaebum walks through the hospital automatically, as if it were his second home - maybe it is, he knows it as well as anyone who has spent at least a couple of hours there, every day for 10 months in a row, without missing a single one, he knows the halls, the guards, the lady in the cafeteria.

 

When he arrives at the floor where Youngjae's room is, he greets the head nurse of that floor that is on the counter with a new nurse, he still doesn't know her name, she has only a week there but he still comes to talk to them.

 

"Where did you leave Yejunnie?" The head nurse asks as soon as he approaches, he smiles kindly and hands them a chocolates box, sometimes he gives them some detail for taking such good care of Youngjae and in gratitude for letting him stay after the visits hours, when he can’t leave work early enough.

 

"He stayed home today."

 

The two nurses smile but before they can say anything else, the phone rings and the older one turns to answer, the nurse in practice looks at him and bites her lower lip ashamed and points to the bouquet of flowers in his hand.

 

"They're pretty," she says, "What patient are you here for?"

 

“Choi Youngjae, in the 219.” He replies, he’s not surprised by the nurse's reaction - she opens his eyes and it feels a certain pity evident in them when she realizes that he’s visiting the patient in a coma that they’ll disconnect soon.

 

"Is he your friend? Surely he would like the flowers very much.”

 

Jaebum just smiles again, pointing to the hall to indicate that he’s leaving but she stops him just before.

 

"My shift ends in an hour, would you like to... go dinner or just go out somewhere?" She asks, blushing and looking down, Jaebum is surprised that she has been so forward.

 

In these months there, several nurses have tried to flirt with him but soon they learned not to disturb him, when they learned that it was his boyfriend and his son's father who was in bed. She sure doesn't know the story yet, apparently.

 

"I'm sorry, I'm engaged," he replies trying to be nice, but now he just wants to get out of there and see Youngjae, "I'll see you around, later."

 

When he walks down the hall to his boyfriend's room, he hears the head nurse almost scoldingly telling her how she can’t do that, informing him that his fiancé is in fact the boy in bed and that they also had a child together - it wasn’t the best idea to ask him out and less at that time.

 

Actually, Jaebum doesn't usually care if any of them ask him out even if the answer has always been no, but right now Youngjae's whole topic has him too sensitive and in a bad mood and just thinking about seeing someone else makes him sick - It feels a bit pathetic, to tell the truth.

 

Youngjae's room no longer feels like a hospital room. At first, spending time there was painful, uncomfortable, he hated everything there - the colors, the doctors, the smell. Now it was an almost pleasant place where he could spend time with Youngjae, it had become an almost cozy place, almost, because it was still very painful.

 

"Hi baby," he greets almost in a whisper, no one can hear him more than Youngjae, but he has always felt that it’s more personal like that, a talk that concerns only the two of them, "I brought you this."

 

He leaves the bouquet of flowers on the bedside table and sits on the bed next to him taking his hand, it’s cold. He takes a deep breath but can’t get rid of the lump in his throat and stays silent for a moment just watching his expressionless face to start talking without his voice cracking.

 

"Jinyoung says hello, says he loves you and..."

 

He squeezes his eyes tightly, he doesn't want to start crying, he's tired of crying and he's sure Youngjae wouldn't like it either. The problem is today, it should be a happy day, but it’s not, there are too many things happening to be happy.

 

He blinks several times and clears his throat before continuing, “He's taking care of Yejun, forgive me for not bringing him to see you. Last week he was a bit sick, but don't worry, he's fine now. I promise to bring him tomorrow, yeah? I would like you to see him, he has grown so much and he’s so pretty, Jae, is beautiful and he’s really smart too. Has I told you that a few days ago he tried to stand by grabbing the leg of a chair? He slipped and almost fell, but Nora got behind him and he managed to hold on. I thought he would crush her.” he tells, and laughs softly.

 

“Nora loves him very much, she takes care of him as if he were one of her kittens. It makes me jealous, she loves him more than me. And he already has a new record in food throwing, today he managed to send a piece of ham right to the counter. You would have a lot of fun with him Jae, he's so funny, you would be very proud of him…”

 

And then the tears start to run down his cheeks, without him being able to avoid it. All he wants is for him to be with them and to see their baby growing up and doing weird things, and to sing to him before he sleeps and be able to hug him at night and actually talk to him - the thing here is, there's no time anymore.

 

"I'm not ready to let you go..." he says between soft gasps and looks up, his eyes clouded with tears, extends an arm to caress his hair, the skin of his face that still retains a little color in it, he wants to imagine him as he was before, with round and pink cheeks, but in his mind only a lifeless image he doesn’t want to see, appears.

 

"Your parents have already made a decision, Jae." He informs him after he could stop the tears and wipes his face, then holds Youngjae's hands in his again.

 

“Doctors don't think… they don't think something will change. It's been almost a year and your parents agreed that it's time to let you go. Don't get them wrong, it's a very difficult decision for them too, they know that I don't want to do it, they would also like to see you playing around with Yejun at some point but... they don't think you're happy connected to a machine, they say you're stuck here against your will. They just want you to go where you can be free and happy. I want that too baby, but I can't let you go like this, I don't want to leave you. I'm not ready yet."

 

The tears come back and he speaks with difficulty, the soft spasms that shakes his body stops him from breathing with ease, “Is it selfish? It's bad if I want you to stay even like this a little bit longer? Because I know you're still here, you still exist with me. I can still talk to you, and touch you and see you. Is it wrong to still have hope that you’ll find your way back? I don't want to be selfish, I don't want you to stay if you're sad here but... How could I let you go without doing anything but seeing? Jae, I feel like right now.”

 

He spends a while in silence, with his eyes fixed on the window and his hands plays a little with Youngjae's fingers, people who pass by outside wouldn’t see anything out of place but if they pay attention enough, they’ll see the hipids that contract his back, but they’re so soft that one barely can notice, and Jaebum tries hard for nobody to notice he’s crying, he forces himself to stop.

 

And once he calms down, he looks back at him and smiles, no matter all the weight he has lost or the color that is missing from his lips or cheeks, in his eyes he is still beautiful, his heart twists because he’s dying to see his eyes shining for him again.

 

“They told me I had to start saying goodbye, you know, to make it less difficult in two weeks. When your parents come back from Mokpo they’ll do it. But I don't want to say goodbye yet, baby. It's okay? Can you forgive me and let me be a little more selfish?” He inhales deeply, and makes an effort to make his voice sound happier, “Do you know what day it is today? 7 years ago I had the balls to ask you to be my boyfriend.”

 

And when he laughs, this time is more real and genuine, Youngjae was 15 and just entered high school, Jaebum was two years older but he was definitely more stupid, barely greeting him in the singing workshop they shared and couldn’t keep his coolness for more than 1 minute being close to him.

 

Actually it was something else that he owed Jinyoung, if it hadn't been for him he probably would never have asked him out, because originally it was Jinyoung who actually asked Youngjae out.

 

He still remembers Jinyoung's looks when he talked about Youngjae, at first it was almost tender, then he just rolled his eyes and when he got tired of Jaebum doing absolutely nothing about his little crush, Jinyoung approached Youngjae and invited him to have lunch with them.

 

They became friends, at least Jaebum didn't act like a fool around him anymore, but he didn't do much more than discover that he liked him more and more every day and when Jinyoung got fed up again, he asked him to go to the movies - Youngjae accepted, he thought it would be some friends thing and nothing else.

 

That day Jinyoung didn’t showed up and Jaebum took the opportunity to mention that he liked to hang out with him like that, just the two of them as on a date, date. Youngjae said he liked it too, and Jaebum remembers that he almost jumps in excitement when he said he would like to go out with him again, just the two of them.

 

They went out several more times and when he finally filled up with courage, he asked him to be his boyfriend officially. He planned a lot of cheesy things and was thinking of giving him a bunch of roses, or chocolates or giant balloons or making him a banner and taking him to dinner to an expensive place - don't judge him he was 17. But he knew deep down that none of that was his style, nor that of Youngjae to tell the truth, he also didn't even have money to buy all what he wanted to do.

 

In the end, it came out better than he expected. He bought pizza and they had dinner on the roof of Jaebum's house. He gave him only one flower that he ripped out from the garden of his grandmother's house and wrote him a song - the first song in his life he wrote completely, it was 3 and a half minutes of his voice accompanied by a guitar, and words full of sentimentality and confessions.

 

“Youngjae, I like you a lot and I want you to be my boyfriend! Only if you want. You want?"

 

He told him as soon as the recording was over, and he clearly remembers how he blushed furiously, he wanted to run away and hide somewhere where Youngjae couldn't see him the way he saw him at that moment, his eyes wide open and confused. For a second he feared he would say no.

 

"Okay." he said after hours in silence. It was about 10 seconds maximum, but for Jaebum it was slow and tortuous.

 

"Okay?"

 

And then Youngjae smiled, "Yeah, I want to."

 

Jaebum laughs again, it feels good to have a bit of those moments in spite of everything. “I really thought you would say no and that I had screwed it up. Thank you for staying with me for so long.” He leans a little to kiss his hand, “Happy 7th year, baby. You deserved more than I could give you, and you gave me more than I deserve. There are still many things I want to do with you, we deserved more time together. I wish we had more.”

 

And he realizes that his words no longer have hope in them, it’s as if without realizing he has already resigned himself to losing him, to say goodbye even though it’s exactly what he doesn’t want to.

 

“Sorry, forget that last part. We have much more to come, I promise. I'm going to have hope until the last moment… could you…” his voice breaks again and he feels suddenly pathetic, he doesn't know what he's doing anymore. "Please, Jae. Could you fight a little more? Come back to me."

 

He sighs deeply and gets up, puts water in the vase and puts the flowers he took on the table in front of the bed. So when he wakes up it’ll be the first thing he’ll see. And then he sits on the bed again, takes his hand and tells him about unimportant things, about Yejun and his latest crawling adventure, about Jinyoung and Mark - they are thinking about moving in together finally. About Jackson, Bambam and Yugyeom and how the nurses had to take them out that last time they went to visit him because they were making too much noise and they are still not allowed to visit again.

 

He also sings a couple of songs he’s working on, and then he’s silent, he says nothing for a long time but it feels good like this, he has never needed too many words with Youngjae when they understand each other perfectly.

 

When it’s time to go, he gets up reluctantly from the bed, he doesn’t want to leave him but he has to return to Yejun, he will come back tomorrow anyway.

 

"I love you," he says in a whisper, kisses his forehead and walks away with a feeling of heaviness in his chest that suffocates him a little. A feeling he has had since he’s in bed and that it will never leave now.

 

*       *        *        *

 

He receives the call from the hospital while he’s in a meeting and he can’t answer, at first he doesn’t think it’s urgent - it’s probably the papers they have to sign about Youngjae, that or the family psychologist who is taking the case. In either case, they should call Mr. and Mrs. Choi, the hospital calls three times and they stop but almost an hour later it’s Youngjae's parents who call him, over and over again, without stopping and it's there when he starts to worry, what if it’s something really urgent? And if they decided to change forward the date and he’s not there?

 

He apologizes to his team and goes out into the hall to answer the call from Youngjae's mother who is just calling for the 5th time.

 

"Hello? Mrs. Choi?”

 

"Jaebum, honey, are you busy?" Says the voice on the other side of the line, it sounds strange, Jaebum can deduce that she has been crying and he feels how his heart is dropping to his feet.

 

"Has something happened with Youngjae?" He asks, he hears the fear begin to appear in his own voice.

 

"You need to come to the hospital as soon as possible."

 

"Is there... is something wrong with him?"

 

“There's something,” replies the lady and Jaebum can hear a soft sob, “Don't worry, okay? I talked to your mother and she stayed with Junnie. Nothing happens, just come here.”

 

How could he not worry?

 

As soon as he hangs up, he enters the boardroom only to tell them that there’s an emergency and he needs to leave, and runs to his car, tomorrow he’ll explain everything calmly but now he just wants to be there for whatever is happening.

 

He arrives at the hospital in record time, the last time he drove this fast is when the baby was going to be born but now the feeling is completely different, he feels that with each step his soul escapes a bit from his body.

 

He runs through the halls without caring about people who look at him badly, do not even waste time taking the elevator, or stop to greet anyone this time, he just runs until he reaches Youngjae's floor but stop dead when he sees a fist of doctors and nurses gathered outside Youngjae's room - which is an exaggeration, it can’t be more than five, and Mr. and Mrs. Choi are talking very seriously with his boyfriend's doctor.

 

Youngjae's mother sees him first and approaches him, hugs him tightly but Jaebum feels his heart in his mouth, he doesn’t even know how to react to anything and begins to bombard her with questions, but the lady smiles and hugs him again, she whispers that everything is fine and then looks him in the eye.

 

"Youngjae is fine, dear." She says with a small smile and Jaebum doesn't understand anything.

 

"But then what... why I had to... the doctors..." he babbles nonsense, without the air that he hasn’t recovered yet of his sprint from the parking lot there, and Mrs. Choi tries to calm him down, gently pats his shoulders and embraces him again but he won't be calm until someone tells him what's going on.

 

"Is he fine? What happened?” He asks again and he’s already desperate.

 

“He woke up, Jaebum. Youngjae woke up.”

 

---

 

Medical miracles, wooooo

 

Okay I'm tired and I need to sleep, I'll check this thing tomorrow morning 

 

Shoutout to mariemaknae23 who told me what a baby does xD

 

I just can't finish this thing it seems, but I thing next one is the last one. 

 

Hope you liked it!