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Ricky absolutely refuses to sit in the middle seat.
“Why not? You’re the youngest,” Hanbin pats Ricky’s back with a little too much force. “You should know how to make a little sacrifice for your hyungs.” There’s an evil glint in Hanbin’s eyes, and Hao thinks with no little amount of amusement that Sung Hanbin is meaner than people give him credit for.
“Normally, I would just sit,” Ricky grimaces. “If sitting in the middle didn’t mean I had to sit between you two. I fear for my life.”
Hanbin sucks in a breath between his teeth.
“Like, what if you guys decide you want to hold hands over my windpipe or,” Ricky lowers his voice so dramatically that Hao can barely hear him. “Even worse, what if you guys decide that you enjoy both voyeurism and car se–”
“Alright, that’s enough–” Hanbin moves to cover Ricky’s mouth.
“Don’t give me any ideas.” Hao sends an exaggerated wink the blond’s way, much to his disgust.
“Hyung, you are a disgrace to the Zhang name.” Ricky says flatly.
“I was just kidding, Ricky. We’re taking the big car today. You can ride shotgun.” Hanbin slides the back door open, gesturing for Hao to get in first.
“Thank God.” Ricky opens the front door immediately, not looking back. “I’m reclining the seat all the way, and none of you can stop me!”
“No one was going to stop you anyway, Quanrui!” Hao yells back.
The yelling is completely unnecessary. It’s mostly just to relieve stress. Bad coping mechanism, he’s explained to Gyuvin before, to a highly unimpressed stare. Hyung, I don’t even have any coping mechanism, and I know that one sucks.
Hao straps himself in, stares at the ceiling, and wonders how he got here in the first place. “I thought being an idol was supposed to be about performing.”
There’s sticky-sweet oranda in his pocket and stickers and headbands in their manager’s bag, as they drive across Yanghwa Bridge to babysit two three-year-olds for a YouTube show. He thinks about their schedule, about Studio Choom tomorrow, and vocal training the next day, and choreography practice, and Amazing Saturday after that.
“Is that a complaint?”
“Not really. I don’t mind it. It’s just…” Hao feels his fingers twitch against his own will. “Kids?”
Hanbin has somewhat of a sixth sense for his discomfort – it’s so natural when Hanbin leans in closer, head resting against Hao’s shoulder. His hair tickles at Hao’s collarbone where it’s gotten too long, and Hao can’t help but drink in the sweet smell of their shared shampoo, a familiar comfort. Hao tucks his chin over Hanbin’s head and looks over at his screen, and he's greeted with the sight of two babies that feel vaguely familiar.
“What, hyung, are you nervous?” Hanbin’s talking to him, but not looking at him, too busy trying to memorize which twin is which. “Arin,” Hanbin mumbles under his breath, tracing the lines of the baby’s face on his screen. “Ahyoon.”
“They’re not identical twins, you know.” Hao laughs, watching metropolitan Seoul fade away behind them as the van races into a quieter suburb of Gyeonggi-do.
“I just don’t want to get it wrong,” Hanbin squints at his phone one more time, before turning it off. “You didn’t answer my question.” Hanbin looks away from the phone then, laying on Hao’s lap instead. He looks pretty like this, mouth open in an inquisitive little ‘o,’ hair splayed out on Hao’s thigh in black against washed-out blue.
“No,” Hao says the word with finality, but his knee keeps shaking, taking Hanbin’s head with it. “I’m not nervous.”
“Really?” Hanbin is vibrating below him, and Hao stifles a giggle at the way it bounces his hair in tiny, fluffy arcs. “Because your leg is telling me otherwise.”
“I’m not.” Hao insists, and Hanbin laughs, a dimple crinkling at the corner of his cheek. ”I think Ricky should be, though.”
“Why am I in it?” Ricky grumbles. He doesn’t protest, though, for the most part.
“You act like an only child.”
“Well Hao, you actually are one.” Hanbin reaches up, then pokes at Hao’s nose. He wrinkles it in response, because there it is again, the dropped honorific. But he can’t quite muster the energy to point it out. For one, he’s forgotten when that became a thing, but it has, and he’s almost alarmed by how little he minds it. He knows age hierarchies are a big thing here and he should probably scold Hanbin before he gets into a habit of it, but, well, he supposes a one-year age gap isn’t a huge deal.
And besides, what’s a dropped honorific when it’s his boyfriend that’s doing the dropping?
“I’m different.” Hao sniffs. “I’ve worked with kids before on multiple occasions. I’m a teacher.”
“Yeah, a high school teacher.” Hao can’t see him, but he knows that Ricky’s rolling his eyes so hard that they might get stuck in his skull.
“Kids are kids. How different could they be?” Even as he says it, he knows he's lying.
“You’re going to eat shit,” Ricky deadpans.
“Not if you swear in front of those kids. Then you'll eat shit. Bad habits die hard, Ricky.”
“I’m sure you’ll both do great,” Hanbin says in his best leader voice. But Hao can see the way his eyes curve, the way they threaten to smile before the rest of his face does. He stifles his own laugh in his hand, and brushes over the sweep of Hanbin’s brow with the other.
And that’s that.
Zhang Hao has always seen a bright future for himself.
It involves glass windows all the way from the floor to the ceiling, maybe a puppy or two, a view of the Han River, a signed album from a GOT7 member (though preferably Jinyoung, the star of his teenage dreams), and a career as a world-class idol.
As you can see: kids were never in the picture.
It’s not like he hates them, though, in the way that seems to be fashionable these days – no, he has never wanted to dropkick a child for throwing a tantrum or punch a baby for crying on an airplane, why is that even a question?
In fact, Zhang Hao has wanted children, in the vague way that people do when they’re in their early twenties – has considered it with a wave of his hand and a comment along the lines of: “Sure, they’re cute, maybe when I’m older.”
It’s a nice thought, of course, but having children is immediately out of the question when he becomes an idol. It’s a given that he thought he’d never regret.
It’s a given that he shouldn’t regret – there’s far too much at stake, after all.
Not much of this changes when he sees the kids.
Arin and Ahyoon are probably about as charming as three-year-olds can be. They’re adorned in matching pink dresses and tiny little updos, space buns and baby hairs, and they smell like bubble baths and sweets as they run around everywhere, affectionate and energetic. They give out kisses and hugs and compliments so liberally that Hao becomes slightly concerned about their nonexistent concept of stranger danger.
“Handsome uncle!” One of the girls beams up at Hanbin. Then she waves at Hao. “Handsome uncle!”
Wow.
First of all, uncle? He didn’t think he’d be hearing that word associated with him – or Hanbin, for that matter – for another ten years at least.
And secondly, Hao knew that babies were tiny, but it’s another thing to see it for himself, how Arin and Ahyoon stand just as tall as Hanbin is when he’s sitting with his legs crisscrossed on the floor.
“What about me?” Ricky attempts to goad the other twin into complimenting him, too.
He’s met with silence, and at that, Hao tries not to laugh as Ricky rakes self-conscious fingers through his hair. It’s probably the first time in his life that Ricky’s been called anything but handsome.
They’re pulling into a lull of silence when Hanbin pulls a packet of jelly worms out of his backpack, ever-prepared. The girls’ eyes start shining immediately, and Hanbin shakes the package like he’s calling a dog to eat.
The problem begins here, when Sung Hanbin is added to the mix. Because now, Hao finds that there’s something compelling about the scene, something that draws him in to keep watching.
“I can feed you, I washed my hands!” Hanbin says, eyes crinkling at the corners where Hao can already see wrinkles forming because of all the time he spends smiling, and he’s feeding the girl sitting in front of him – Ahyoon or Arin? – jelly worms. His smile grows impossibly wider when she asks for permission to eat it, and Hao blinks, taken aback by the warmth that floods his chest.
“One for Hao hyung, too,” Ricky spoons a jelly worm into Hao’s mouth, and his eyes widen. “Oh wow, that’s good.”
“Good?” Hanbin perks up. “Hyung, ahh.” He opens his mouth as if waiting, and Hao responds in kind.
He pushes a gummy worm into Hanbin’s mouth, letting his finger linger just a moment longer on Hanbin’s lips. “Good?”
He waits, then, for the way Hanbin smiles around his food when he likes it, how he nods, the motion big and fast.
“Really good!” Hanbin beams. Hanbin has looked more beautiful than this in so many moments across Hao’s memory, but he thinks he loves him just as much, if not more now, with a tiny pink backpack slung against his back and a ridiculous green tag around his neck with a label that's misspelled his name.
“Uncle, feed me too,” Arin tugs at Hanbin’s sleeve, and it’s so obvious the way Hanbin melts, and rearranges everything to accommodate them better. Hao watches, a feeling stirring in his gut, something he tries to label as interest and nothing more as Hanbin feeds her another jelly.
“I’ve never felt more like a loser in my life.” Ricky groans, nudging at Hanbin’s knee with his foot in a tiny move of protest when Ahyoon refuses to call him a “handsome uncle” yet again, while Arin runs up to Hanbin and plants kisses on his cheeks, unbidden.
Hao gives him credit for sounding only slightly forlorn. There’s something inherently soul-crushing about little kids not liking you so much as you want them to.
But for now, he’s just enjoying the view.
Hanbin laughs, and there’s so much delight and love in it that Hao wonders how there’s any room, any time, for Hanbin to feel anything else. He recalls the feeling he had first had when he and Hanbin had first started dating – like he was drowning in affection. Everything was love, and he had soaked himself in it. There is more love, more softness, and more trust in how he sees the world now, too.
“Thank you!” Hanbin grins as Ahyoon walks up to kiss his other cheek then. He smiles harder, dimple carving itself into his cheek as a permanent fixture. “Thank you, too!”
It’s all thanks to him.
Hanbin is thorough with everything. He’s meticulous and careful in the way he pulls down the sleeve of the oranda bars for the kids to eat, the way that he lifts Arin up when she asks for a hug, the way that he pats Ahyoon on the back when she whines for attention, too.
Responsibility, Hao thinks, has never been so sexy. In a moment of insanity, he thinks he might get the appeal of the whole single dad thing. Is this what they call baby fever?
Hanbin bites into the oranda bar when Arin offers him a piece. He smiles happily around a mouthful, and Hao’s heart seizes. He tells himself that he’s had too much coffee on the way here.
The girls finish eating eventually, Hanbin pulling napkins out of nowhere to dust off their chins.
“Now!” Hao claps his hands together.
“Should we read a book?” Hanbin waves a tiny picture book in his free hand.
“Do you like books?” Hao asks.
There’s a silence, and the twins disinterestedly pick at the crumbs on their dresses.
He feels a bit out of his element – no high school student would ever dare to treat him like this – after all, he hasn’t found a single person that’s immune to his death stare. That is, until now.
“No,” a twin says unsteadily, “I mean, yes.”
Hao laughs at that, real and open. “That’s a lie,” he accuses, and she pouts, deeming the comment unworthy of a response.
Hanbin is crooning at the kids, helping them pick the puppets to put on their hands, tidying their hair and the hems of their dresses. He’s kind of (read: very much) doing most of the work, if Hao’s being honest, but Hao is nothing if not content to watch his boyfriend, something of a domestic daydream at work. He ignores Ricky’s stink-eye and the whisper of whipped that’s quiet enough that Hao can pretend that it’s an auditory hallucination and not Ricky trying his best to get on his nerves, and he just stares, watching Hanbin place puppets on their tiny fingers.
Hanbin’s hands are so much larger than the girls’, almost to the point where Hao worries that Hanbin will crush them – but every movement is so gentle that the concern fades without so much as a fizzle into the background.
“This one,” Arin hands a puppet to Ricky. “You’re the brother.”
“You’re this one,” says Ahyoon without so much as a stutter. She hands Hao a little puppet.
“Which one is that?” Hanbin asks.
There’s a funny feeling coming up into Hao’s throat then, the same thing that’d seized in his chest earlier, only it chokes him up now.
“It’s the mom.” Ahyoon blinks up at him, innocent, and Hao only smiles and takes the puppet.
“The mom,” Hao repeats dumbly. “I see.”
It affects him too much, far more than it should. He reminds himself, hey, you'd be a shit parent, stop thinking about it so hard, but he can't escape the circular nature of the thought, of, oh, I think I might want to have a baby, and then the guilt and shame that follows.
He’s still vaguely out of it when Ricky sits down with the book, begging him to help read it. “I don’t know either,” he lies, buying time for his beating heart to calm down, wills his racing imagination to slow itself and stop spinning scenarios in his mind over and over where he could be not a mom but something like one.
Hanbin takes the book instead then, and he’s so natural with the way he does it, guiding them into reading the last line on their own, giving them enough praise that they glow with it by the end of each page. Arin and Ahyoon are cute, tiny voices rising in pitch every time Hanbin flips the page, but Hao finds that the twins aren’t where his eyes end up lingering.
It’s Hanbin that he looks at, and Hao tries his best not to think beyond that, beyond Hanbin to the possibility of–
“Hao? Hao!” Hanbin’s waving in front of Hao’s eyes. He looks concerned.
“Huh? Hanbin, what is it?”
“Ge, did you zone out?” Ricky’s looking at Hao strangely, and Hanbin’s just raising an eyebrow, Ahyoon still bouncing on his knee where she sits.
“Can you read Arin this book about dinosaurs? I think she really wants you to read it.”
“Please, Uncle Zhang Hao?” She’s looking up at him with her tiny face and her tiny eyes and hands, and Hao can do nothing but smile and agree. No matter if he’s going through a life-changing crisis right now. “Of course.”
“Today, who’s here? The yellow dinosaur is holding a map…”
He’s turning the page, telling Arin, “You’re better at Korean than me!” when he catches Hanbin looking at him.
Hanbin is smiling. It’s nothing new, and it’s not the widest smile he’s worn all day, but it is the softest one yet. The corners of his lips pull down for a second, before they pull themselves back up again, as if by sheer force of will.
Hao knows how to read Hanbin by now. Hao knows exactly what Hanbin had been thinking, mostly because he had been thinking it too.
For some reason, the thoughts hit him like a traffic pileup of three consecutive ten-ton trucks.
It had been a vague, nebulous concept in his head before; something like, yeah, Hanbin would probably be good with kids. And there it is, the naked truth. Hanbin is horribly, terrifyingly good with kids, and Hao understands immediately why he had wanted to be a teacher. That’s the first thought he has, and he’s exerting somewhat of a Herculean effort to hold back the second, which is, I really, really want to see him as a father. And behind that one, there is the infinitely worse thought, the one that is currently plaguing Hao’s mind against his will.
He wants and he wants and he wants, so much that it steals the breath away from him.
Hao is not a good liar. That much, he knows. But his years in the closet have taught him how to get used to hiding things that he wants.
So he just swallows up his thoughts in a single breath, inhales, and smiles. “Who wants to play hospital?”
Hao, it seems has stopped being an interesting plaything. He walks up to where Hanbin’s sitting on the loveseat, and leans against the wall with a dramatic sigh.
“I feel like there’s something evil about me.” Hao whispers.
“What?” Hanbin laughs, and his hand finds its way onto Hao’s shoulder again.
“The kids don’t like me. I must be evil,” Hao moans, collapsing onto the couch into a heap of exhausted limbs.
And he jokes, but there’s an element of it that he can’t help but frown at when he thinks of how good Hanbin is and how he’s – well, Zhang Hao has done good things, but he doesn’t know if he’d call himself a good–
“They do,” Hanbin insists. He pokes at Hao’s head like he knows that it’s over-full of thoughts, thoughts, thoughts right now.
“They don’t.”
“They do.”
“They don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hanbin sits Hao up and wraps an arm around his shoulder in one smooth motion. He whispers right into Hao’s ear, then. “Because I like you.”
The poor audio team, Hao thinks faintly. He hopes they can’t pick that up. Otherwise, they’re going to have to do a lot of censoring. He blushes, and pushes Hanbin away. “Shut up,” he hisses, more for show than anything else.
Hanbin only laughs, and he does a lot of that all the time, but he’s doing even more of it today. He pads back to where he’s being doted on by the kids.
Somehow, Hao gets the children to warm up to him again. It takes a fair bit of humiliation on his part, and a lot of bowing and begging, literal begging, for attention.
“Please…” He coughs, laying dramatically on the couch. “I’m dying.”
“They should nominate you for a Golden Globe this year, Ge.” Ricky snorts from where he’s sitting across the room, and Hao opens one eye just to glare at him.
Finally, Ahyoon turns towards him, barreling forward with all the speed her tiny body can muster. There’s a little surge of delight, then, and he bathes in the satisfaction of getting a toddler to like, or at least tolerate your presence.
“Do you think I should change my degree?” Hao asks Hanbin in a moment of weakness when Ahyoon plants a tiny kiss on his cheek. “Maybe I should teach kindergarten instead.”
Ahyoon runs away immediately after, sitting at Ricky’s feet and asking him: “Read me a story, but only the fun kind!”
Hanbin only laughs, looking Hao right in the eye. “If it would make you happy.”
Then three-year-old Arin walks over, and sits herself in Hanbin’s lap like it’s where she belonged all along, shoving comically large rice crackers into her tiny, tiny mouth, and Hao watches it all, sees the way Hanbin’s eyes crinkle at the corners and soften impossibly.
His world almost falls away from under his feet. It doesn’t feel like these kids are his, it never has – but looking at Hanbin and Arin like this, he could imagine that they are. It is not a dizzying possibility so much as a consideration so new that he doesn’t quite know where to place it. He traces the memory of this into his mind, and tries to memorize the curve of Hanbin’s smile and the sound of his overjoyed gasp when Arin clasps her whole fist over a single finger of his.
Ricky’s reading over the book with Ahyoon when she stops him at a particular page. She’s staring hard at it enough that it piques his curiosity, and at that moment, Hao leans over to see what it is.
The illustration is paint-washed and faded out – a mother cradling her daughter in her arms, barely colored in but well-illuminated in the moonlight. There’s a melancholic quality to the image, something lonely, untouchable about it.
It seems that it triggers something in Ahyoon.
“Mom,” hiccups Ahyoon, sniffling. “Mom, I miss you.” Her lip wobbles and Ricky frowns, trying to bounce her harder to make up for it, but she bursts into a full wail then.
“Mom,” she blubbers harder, “I miss you, mom, where did you go? Mom–”
And at the sound of Ahyoon’s sniffles, Arin’s eyes start to go wet at the corners, too.
Hao feels full-blown panic bloom in his heart. He almost reaches out to hold them, when–
“Yulhee! Please come out!” The PDs snap, and the woman that Hao knows to be Ahyoon and Arin’s mother comes out of her bedroom, enveloping both of the girls in a hug that sweeps them off their feet.
And Hao is reminded once again that this is not their home, that these are stolen moments, that this may be all of what he can have of what he wants.
There is so much more to what Hao wants. This place is not his, but he still wants it, and the feeling only worsens, twisting in his stomach when he sees Sung Hanbin and the expression of furrowed concern on his brow at the babies’ cries.
The words pour through his brain like a torrent then, everything that he’d been holding in spewing out uninvited like a faucet with no filter.
I might want him to be a father with me. I think I want us to wake up to each other every day. I think I want him forever, and I want him enough that I would be okay with waking up to another set of tiny hands, too, holding onto us and asking us for a hug or what we’re going to have for breakfast.
I think I want him forever, and that’s terrifying enough to realize, but I want a family with him, too.
That’s even worse, isn’t it?
Filming has ended with no problems, they’re informed.
“So the crying wasn’t an us problem?” Hanbin sags with relief. Hao thinks it’s a little funny how he can see the tension in his shoulders bleeding out in real time.
“No, not quite. It just happens when you’re filming with kids, you know?”
“I’m Yulhee. Thank you for taking care of the kids today.”
“Minhwan.”
The couple move up to shake their hands, and Hanbin acquiesces in both Ricky and Hao’s stead.
“No, thank you for letting us on the show, and trusting us with them.”
Minhwan whispers something to her, and she kisses him on the cheek, smiling. “Don’t be silly,” she chides. “All these years with you and you think I'm going to leave you for the babysitters?”
She turns her smile onto them then. “My husband here just said that you all are very handsome." Minhwan chokes at that, but Yulhee just smiles and barrels on. "I think he’s a bit jealous, to be honest,” Yulhee tucks her hair behind her ears, the picture of demure beauty in her long skirt and loose ponytail. Minhwan wraps a protective arm around her waist, and it could be picturesque, classic, if not for Minhwan’s shock of pink hair.
Not a lot of jobs would allow pink hair, Hao thinks, and he stares for a moment longer than necessary.
“Thank you very much for the compliment,” Hao bows deeply.
“No need to be so formal.”
“Anyway, thank you again.” Hanbin smiles with a small incline of his head. “We have to get going now. We have a prerecording schedule soon.”
“Of course. Promotion periods are tough, aren't they?" Yulhee says, grin softening her already-soft features.
"Thank you again for taking care of the kids. They had so much fun.” Minhwan waves them off, perhaps too enthusiastically, and then they’re gone, with the heavy swing of the door and the whir and beep of the lock working its inner mechanisms.
Ricky, long-tired from what he called all the child shenanigans, falls asleep almost immediately in the car.
“Do you know who she is?” Hanbin says suddenly. “Yulhee, I mean.”
“She’s a celebrity, right? If her and her husband are on this program.” Hao turns to Hanbin, “Yulhee and Minhwan… do I know them from somewhere? They sound familiar. Or look familiar.” Hanbin just nods encouragingly, and Hao pauses to take stock of his knowledge of faces. “Oh my God,” Hao brings a fist to his mouth like he can eat it if he tries enough. “Are they our seniors?”
“Yeah,” Hanbin smiles. “Both in the music industry. She's from Laboum, and I – actually, you should probably know this. She got pregnant before they got married. It was a huge scandal – their image was really kind of ruined afterward.”
“But now–”
“Yeah,” Hanbin smiles. “They're on national TV.”
“Okay,” Hao says. Hanbin and family and possibilities circle through his head like a broken record.
“They have three kids. They’re only twenty-seven and thirty now. Big, happy family.”
“I see.” Hao averts his eyes.
If they can be happy – why can’t he?
It’s not fair, he thinks. And Zhang Hao has never believed in not fair, has always believed in making his own way.
He looks at Hanbin leaning against the window, the tired, zoned-out expression on his face, and there’s a twinge of worry that stings at his heart.
But then Hanbin looks back at him, and there’s a helpless smile that spreads across his face when he reaches out for Hao’s hand, too. The fear subsides every time he watches the steady rise and fall of Hanbin’s chest and the curl of Hanbin’s fingers around his own.
Suddenly, Hao can’t help but think that they can be the first.
Famous and happy? He's sure that's been done before.
But he thinks of the life that he wants in his head, thinks of how much more there is than fame and joy, because there is love, too, in this future that he dreams of. He wants and wants and wants enough to chase again, and wonders if he'll ever see his name in the headlines with the title of another "first" attached to it again.
They'll be happy. He swears it.
It is a wonder how they stay together the first year.
They argue enough that Yujin knows better than to knock on his door when he hears Shostakovich 10 coming from Hao's room, the angry blare of the bow against strings punctuating the worst of their nights.
They make up enough that Taerae moves out of their room of three and the manager has to start setting shower times, which is extremely humiliating and also entirely necessary.
They love each other, and it is not big and beautiful so much as it is difficult and so, so worth it, once they realize that all they’re really fighting for is each other.
Their contract ends before Hao asks the question.
ZEROBASEONE comes to an end, and after that, it is an endless march of solo opportunities and acting gigs and variety show appearances that run them through the wringer, bone-tired in the mornings and hobbling home at odd hours.
It should be exhausting.
But it isn’t, because ZEROBASEONE comes to an end, but Sung Hanbin and Zhang Hao never do.
They face it all together, and Hao’s friends from back home ask him How? How did it ever last this long? How did you ever bag the cool guy you gushed about during the Star Level Test and embarrassed yourself in front of him by nuzzling his fucking arm while you were supposed to be performing together?
And Hao doesn’t have any real answers to that besides I don’t know. We try to communicate, I guess. I didn’t bag him, he bagged me, excuse you. But he does know that he is better when he is with Sung Hanbin, and that loving someone this much, for this long, is something rare and infinite.
It is because of all this that Hao can say this while they are on a date in the middle of nowhere. They’re sprawled on a picnic blanket, far enough away from the light pollution of Seoul that they can see more than a couple of pinhole-stars in the sky.
“I have a question.”
Hanbin just looks up, earnest, and then Hao means to ask him if he ever wants to start a family someday, even if they can't have kids in that way, but what comes out instead is this: “I want to be with you forever.” And he thinks he's spoken wrong for a second, but he stops to reconsider, and it's true.
He wants Hanbin for the rest of time.
Hanbin just shakes his head, and then he has on that unreadable smile that comes when Hao least expects it, the one that worries him sometimes.
And Hao freezes, afraid that he's ruined everything.
Hanbin takes a deep breath and gets up. “That’s not a question.”
Then, Hanbin gets on one knee. “I have a better question for you,” Hanbin says, the smile on his face wavering but never disappearing. "One that's actually a question."
He wakes up to the press of paws against his chest first.
“Bao, stop it,” Hao internally berates Hanbin for letting the dog sleep on the bed back when he was still a tiny puppy, not the slightly overweight Shiba Inu that he is now. He sets Bao down on the ground. “Sorry, boy.”
He lays in bed for a moment, and looks out the window.
The skyline in Taipei is as foreign as it is familiar – a couple of buildings away from looking like Seoul. Still, it is beautiful, especially at sunrise, where Hao can see the whole city from the floor-to-ceiling windows of his brand-new apartment.
Hao has seen much more sunrises in the past week than he has in his whole life.
He doesn’t get out of bed for another moment, knowing he’ll have to be up soon anyway when–
Hanbin stirs next to him, grabbing at Hao’s wrist. “Baby?” His voice is nothing louder than a mumble, still rough with sleep. His bags are dark and blue, and his face is puffy. He looks like a bruised marshmallow.
There is an impossible clench of affection in his chest. Cute, he thinks.
“Zhang Hanbin. Stay in bed a while longer,” Hao smiles, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Hanbin doesn't even flinch at the mention of his new last name anymore. He's gotten used to it. Another wave of affection rushes over him, and he kisses him again, this time on the corner of his lips.
“No, you stay in bed.” Hanbin leans in for a hug when Hao straightens up, pressing his head into Hao’s stomach, and Hao laughs, moving to push him away.
“Come on, we have to get up if we want to–”
Hao lets out an involuntary yelp when he’s pressed back into the bed in a movement so quick that he hardly registers it.
“You have that variety show appearance lined up in like, three hours. I don’t have anything until noon. Go back to sleep, my love.”
Hanbin holds Hao’s hand down and moves to get back up. The ring on his finger glints in the morning sun, and there’s a muted clink when it bumps against its counterpart; a shiny, silver ring on Hanbin’s finger.
“The baby’s going to start crying soon anyway. I’ll prepare the bottle.”
Hao, looking out the window to a sprawling view of Taipei with his dog disobediently perched on his chest, thinks that his life is made up of impossible odds. He is tucked into bed, and though he hates to admit it, perhaps just as spoiled as his pet dog Bao. His daughter is waking up just a room away from him, and his husband is warming her food.
Sometimes, he has to pinch his own cheek to remind himself he’s not dreaming.
It’s not the first time Zhang Hao has experienced something that should be too good to be true if it was anyone else.
They don't let you be famous and happy.
No one lets you do anything. You have to fight for it.
There have been lawsuits and late-night breakdowns on kitchen counters and news articles and many, many people who talk.
And Zhang Hao is proud of all of that, so glad he's done it all, because he has fucking worked for this, to be gay and famous and happy and a K-pop idol and now, to have a family with the person that he loves most in the world (second maybe only to himself).
Take a moment, and picture this.
Imagine this: Yongin. You enter an auditorium packed with bodies. You can’t tell left from right. There are two boys who live and breathe for the future. It is held breath and footsteps marching upwards in unison. One wins and the other loses, and somehow it does not break them apart.
Imagine this: Seoul. It is fleeting victories and running a losing battle against time. It is the loveliest era of their lives, and the shortest. The boys who live for the future have stopped living for the future. They have begun living in the now because they are scared that nothing lasts forever. There is friendship in spades, with the 7 other boys who have been through hell and back.
Imagine this: Fujian. There are many kinds of unfamiliar seafood and better hongmicha than Hanbin has ever tasted before. A new family brings Hanbin to tears not because they are softer than anything he has known but because he is so thankful that someone he loves has had this, too.
Imagine this: Cheonan. A mother and sister and father that are as welcoming as ever give Zhang Hao another new home. Here, everything smells like coffee, freshly baked bread, and old friends.
Imagine this: Taipei. An apartment tucked away in the most idyllic corner of the city. The sidewalk is cobbled with round stones with moss growing in between each brick, the roads are lined with the best street food, and dotted with local bookstores here and there. There are cherry blossoms and vows, and in spring, he takes his last name. And a few winters later, two becomes three.
Love is hard. But it comes with a built-in family. There are many different loves that Zhang Hao has known: it is his daughter, his parents, his dog, Hanbin’s parents, too, and the 7 others in the found family that he has found himself inextricably tied up with.
But mostly, love to Zhang Hao is Zhang (née Sung) Hanbin.