Chapter Text
Life hadn’t been generous enough to grant Baekhyun his three biggest wishes: finding the love of his life, marrying young and raising a family.
It had only granted him one: Bom.
She had come into his life three years earlier, a mere five months old when she had first been put into his arms, and she had changed everything.
Now, someone else would come into both their lives to change even more. Someone who had had almost everything Baekhyun had ever wanted and had left that all behind. All in search of something greater.
Could a three-year-old child be the answer?
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“ Congratulations, she’s yours. ” were the most beautiful words Baekhyun had ever heard in his twenty-nine years on this earth.
They had been uttered by a woman who he no longer remembered, her face having been eclipsed by another, with gorgeous chocolate brown eyes and long, dark eyelashes. By a button nose and small, pink lips…the image of a tiny, baby angel.
Bom had been a dream, both literally and figuratively. She had been his wish of despair, made upon a falling star. She was the objective of his entire life, and her arrival into his arms was one he had been blissfully anticipating for what felt like way too long.
Two years after he had first started the process of adopting a child, the day had finally arrived where he got to welcome the first addition to his newly-formed family. A baby girl he would get to call his daughter.
A five-month-old baby by the name of Bom, an orphan as a consequence of a tragic plane accident that killed both her parents and the only grandparents who had still been alive.
With no other next of kin to contact, she had been given up for adoption, and that’s how she had come to Byun Baekhyun; a single, twenty-nine-year old man living on the outskirts of Seoul, working as a publisher.
A man who had long since given up on true love, but not on the dream of becoming a parent. It was the one loss he had not been able to accept, no matter how he had tried, and so at the age of twenty-seven he had taken steps to adopt. On his own.
Deep down inside he knew he was meant to be a father, more so than he was meant to be a lover. He felt this utter need and responsibility to give meaning to a child’s life, and he wanted nothing more than to have someone that could receive all the love he had to give.
It was why he had said ‘yes’ to Bom before even seeing her in the flesh. Mostly, he had agreed because of the way his heart had clenched at the harrowing story he had been told, but seeing her picture had made him even more certain of his choice.
And that’s how he had ended up becoming a father. A single parent, raising a six-month old baby all by himself. His dream, sometimes a nightmare, finally a reality.
From day one, Bom had been a happy baby that cackled and smiled, like an active young puppy who didn’t want to be held, but when she was asleep she was as soft as a cloud and as warm as the sun. Baekhyun had spent the first few days after taking her home just sitting around watching her.
Those had been both the happiest days of his life as well as his final moments of peace, he had come to realise soon after. Because raising a child all by yourself and working an almost-full-time job in order to provide for said child, was anything but easy.
In that first year Baekhyun fell asleep on the couch instead of in his bed more often than not, feeling absolutely miserable whenever his alarm would ring after a meager handful of hours in between the crying and feeding of Bom.
Still, he persisted, because in the end it was all worth it.
From being there for her first babbling of something that sounded like ‘dada’, to witnessing her very first steps, he cherished every fragment of growth. He was there for her whenever she got hurt and needed a pair of arms to protectively wrap around her. He was there when she fell ill and needed a pair of watchful eyes, tracking her temperature and making sure she’d drink enough.
Everything he did, he did for her or with her. She was his first thought in the morning, his last before going to bed, and Baekhyun felt eternally grateful to have her. Even if sometimes all he could do was cry over how hard it was.
But although bills would pile up, although he’d be running around chronically fatigued and the month would be just a day or so too long to properly make ends meet, he could never feel regretful. Never.
His daughter was the answer to every bit of pain. The one that made it both impossible to get up in the morning and at the same time the easiest task in the world. She was his world, it was her that he would rotate around day after day.
Or so he had done, until one day all of it was slowed down by a very tall, handsome man with a smile that could blind anyone within a mile radius. A stranger who literally bumped into them and then with that smile and just a few words, permanently altered their lives. Like a tiny rock that had been thrown into his orbit, crashing into him so unexpectedly and igniting a chain reaction, each more volatile than the one before.
It started as nothing, but soon became everything. A bomb exploding in slow motion, and their meeting was the moment of nothingness right as it detonated, setting the world afire in bright yellows and fiery reds and scorching, soaring heat.