Sunhwa chews her lip, watching as her dad inspects two separate cartons of flavoured milk, then sighs and chucks them both in. With both of her brothers coming home for the weekend, they're stocking up on essentials: ie, buying enough junk food to satisfy two needy young men.

“Dad?” She tries, her voice small and quiet.

“Hmm?” He grunts, tutting loudly when he crouches next to the milk shelves, only to find they're out of semi-skimmed six-pinters.

She loses her courage. He's not interested, and this really isn't the right place to have this discussion. They can do it another time.

Of course, that's what she tells herself every time.

“Nothing.” She shrugs, forcing a smile on her face. Jongdae peers at her over his glasses, rolling his eyes at her teenage eccentricities. Nothing surprises him anymore, not after Shang, and especially not after Jongseok.

“Right...” He says, letting the pause settle in between them. He knows his daughter well enough to be aware that there's something she's not saying. “Is there something you wanted to say?” He probes, suspicious.

Oh god, she's not been doing drugs, has she? He waited until he was at least legal, for Christ sakes, oh , he's not ready for this, she's the baby –

“No, no,” she shakes her head, still gnawing at her lip. He blinks. Sometimes he wishes he was as oblivious as Yixing can be. It would make things that much easier.

“Okay.” He doesn't push it further – he's not stupid. You try to get a teenager to admit to something, and they won't, just for the sheer pleasure of pissing an adult off. “Well, that's your brothers sorted,” he looks down at the trolley, full of every kind of snack known to man, sighing, “What would you like?” He asks, expression softening as he grins, eyes twinkling mischievously. “I won't tell bàba,” he winks.

She smirks. “That's what you said when we went to McDonald's before we came here.” They grin conspiratorially at one another, father and daughter united in a shared love of food full of unhealthy chemicals.

Jongdae waves a hand. “What your father doesn't know won't hurt him.” He's never understood Yixing's obsession with keeping the children away from unhealthy food. It's always done wonders for him when used as bribery.

Sunhwa goes back to gnawing her lip, the guilt a cold lump in her gut. She doesn't like keeping things from her parents – she's always been fairly honest, if only because she's terrible at lying (she has an awful habit of laughing when anything bad happens). And it's not like she's actively trying to keep it from them, it's just she has no idea how to go about explaining it, and it really should be the easiest thing in the world and it's just not.

“Dad, I like girls,” she blurts out without thinking. For a moment, she thinks she's just imagined saying it because, really? In the middle of a supermarket?

Jongdae hides a grin, snorting. “I know that, baby,” he tells her, leaning on the trolley as he pushes it towards the cereal aisle.

She stands in the middle of the cold aisle, mouth open, goosebumps prickling on her arm and a blush on her cheeks, before he turns, and says: “Well, aren't you coming, darling?”

Quickly, she stumbles after him, a little thrown. “B-but,” she stutters, still red in the face. “W-when? How?” Neither he nor her other father have ever given her any hint they even suspected.

He comes to an abrupt stop in front of the Cheerios. “Oh, baby,” he shakes his head, reaching for her face. She was always small for her age, but as she hit her growth spurt, she grew past his shoulders. He brushes some of her hair away from her face; as ever, it's long, but still shorter than Shang's. “You're our daughter. We just knew.” He shrugs. “And we didn't want to force it out of you. We knew you'd tell us eventually.”

“But still,” she mutters grumpily, robbed of her big reveal, “you could have been a little more, I don't know, dramatic about it.”

Jongdae – never one to be quiet about something – just gives her a flat look. “What did you want? Me to cast you out, screaming 'no daughter of mine will ever like people of the same !'” He laughs. “I think that would be a slightly hypocritical of me, now, wouldn't it, sweetheart?”

She makes a disgruntled noise, but doesn't disagree, content merely to pout. “I just...I was worried, I – ” she flounders, unable to put her (in hindsight, ridiculous) fears into words. “It was burning up and I didn't know how to say it,” mumbles, shamefaced.

Her father drops a box of cereal into their trolley, before he crushes her into one of his rib-cracking hugs. “D-dad,” she splutters, “can't breathe.” She makes no move to get herself out of the hug, however; she may never admit it, but she still loves being hugged by her daddy.

“You silly little girl,” he says fondly, tapping the end of her nose. “For someone so smart, you can be really dumb sometimes.”

“Hey!” She growls, “what kind of father are you?” She in a deep breath, about to start one of her brother's patented rants about how saying things like that is basically child abuse, but is cut off when Jongdae dangles a box of Weetos in her face.

Her eyes widen. Ooh. Chocolate cereal. “One who knows you well,” Jongdae says dryly.

She glares at him, but crumples at the thought of her favourite cereal, something she has been denied the past few weeks as her other father goes on yet another health binge. “Deal,” she grumbles.

Stupid father, knowing her weaknesses. 

Hello, anyone still reading this fic. I hope you've been having a good time. I've only just got my laptop back, after it...had an accident, and I work nearly everyday...