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It is said that the people we love the most are often the ones we end up hurting the most. And what's also true is that we most often end up the most hurt by the people we love the most. It's a lose-lose.
And right now, Tawan felt like the biggest loser in the universe. A knife through his heart would have hurt less, because at least death would put an end to the misery he himself had caused.
I hate you. Aran's words rang through his head, taking over all other senses.
Tawan felt like his ears were stuffed with cotton. Panic seized him like a tsunami drowning a man at sea, the feeling cold and suffocating. He didn't know when he started begging, when the bitterness of his prickling possessiveness and jealousy burnt into ashes of profound horror and a chilling dread.
The notion of Aran, his literal lifeline, leaving him was a punishment worse than being thrown in hell. It was the only thing Tawan ever feared.
Aran was crying, his beautiful eyes glittering with grief that traced a damp path down his flushed cheeks. Tawan couldn’t help but think that Aran still looked breathtaking; he was about to very literally take away Tawan's reason to breathe if he left.
“Take your things and leave!” Aran had slammed the box of legos that he'd so carefully kept, the pieces holding witness to some of the sweetest memories between him and Tawan, down on the table. “Don't show me your face.”
Even Aran knew he was lying. He was fighting himself, had been for god knows how long, fighting against every instinct and desire to collapse into Tawan's arms. Telling him to leave was like tearing out his beating heart and stepping on it.
But Tawan had hurt him so bad. Not physically, never that. But he'd accused him of the one thing Aran would never imagine doing.
Weren't you going to suck lips?
Something in Aran had snapped, and he'd slapped Tawan. That was the one and only time the younger had done anything like that, ever hurt Tawan on purpose, but the shit the man spewed without thinking had earned him that.
The accusation had been a slap to Aran's face, a bucket of ice poured on his head. Peach was his brother, his phi, his family more than those sharing his blood had been.
To have that sacredness violated was a blow Aran couldn't handle. It wasn't just his relationship with Peach that was humiliated, but so was his love for Tawan felt that was questioned. It broke Aran.
The sting on his cheek had been nothing to Tawan. He knew he deserved it. The real agony had been far worse. It was the light in Aran’s eyes going out, his heartbreak translated on the minute expressions that Tawan had spent time memorising till it was engraved in him. And it was the knowledge that he had been the one to cause it.
Aran had called it quits then. Called it over between them and Tawan had collapsed in the sofa, his world shattered around him. But this was far from over.
“Aran!” Tawan called after the younger, stumbling onto shaky feet and following him. “Please, listen to me, wait!”
“Aran!” Tawan’s voice cracked this time, raw with desperation. The slam of the bedroom door was a sound more final than any judge’s gavel. It was a period at the end of their story, written in steel.
He reached the door in three strides, his hand flattening against the cool wood. He didn’t dare turn the knob. That would be a violation, another entry without permission. Instead, he leaned his forehead against it, the solid barrier feeling like a physical manifestation of the chasm he had carved between them.
“Aran, please,” he begged, his voice a hoarse whisper meant only for the man on the other side. “Just listen. You don’t have to open the door. You don’t have to see me. Just… hear me.”
Silence. A silence so absolute and punishing it felt like a vacuum, sucking the air from his lungs. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, his back against it, unaware of mirroring Aran’s position on the other side.
He pressed his palm flat against the wood, as if he could transmit the chaos inside him through the grain.
"I was wrong," he began, the words tasting like ash and truth. “You can hate me, Aran, and I’ll deserve it. But I saw red when I saw you… saw you so close to someone that, that wasn’t me.”
His voice was a raw scrape against the quiet of the hallway.
“It’s not an excuse. It’s a sickness. And I… I let it speak for me. I let it accuse you of something, something that I know wasn’t even true even when I’d said it, that would shatter my own soul if it were true.”
He shifted, his shoulder pressing against the door as if he could absorb some sense of the man just inches away.
“The thought of you with someone else… it doesn’t just hurt, Aran. It unravels me. It makes me someone I don’t recognize, someone cruel and stupid and blind. But that person… he’s not stronger than my love for you. He can’t be. I won’t let him be anymore.”
He pressed his hand harder against the door, as if trying to reach through it with will alone.
"My heart... it doesn't beat right when it's not with you," he whispered, the confession pulled from the deepest, most secret part of himself. "And when I saw you with him... it felt like it stopped. Not from anger. From fear. A fear so big it turned into something ugly. Something that hurt you."
He drew a shaky breath, his next words barely audible. "The thought of losing you to anyone... it makes me feel like I'm already dead. I know that's sick. I know that's not love. It's a sickness. And I swear, I will get it treated. I will cut it out of me. I will do whatever it takes to make sure you never look at me and see that monster again."
A sob finally escaped him, rough and broken. "You are the only home I've ever known. Please. Don't make me homeless."
On the other side of the door, Aran squeezed his eyes shut, a fresh wave of tears spilling over. He heard the raw, unfiltered agony in Tawan's voice. It was the sound of a man being skinned alive, tendon by tendon. And it mirrored the pain inside his own chest so perfectly it was unbearable.
He hated him. And God, he hated himself for making him feel this way. For making the love of his life sound so shattered. For making him the cause of that shattering.
Slowly, his hand trembling, Aran reached out. His fingertips brushed the cool wood of the door, mirroring Tawan's position on the other side. He didn't speak. He couldn't. His throat was sealed shut by a dam of grief and longing. But he leaned his forehead against the wood, a silent, invisible point of contact.
“Aran…” Tawan spoke again, voice even softer, barely audible that Aran had to still himself to make out the next bit. “I hate that I have no rights to you… I hate that at the end of the day I’m no one to you, not… not really. And, and seeing someone that does, is able to look out for you in front of others without thinking twice, without… without causing you to think twice, it hurts. It hurts, because I want to do that, too.” Tawan’s voice broke completely on the last word, dissolving into a wet, ragged inhale.
“I want to be the one you lean on,” he forced out, the words thick with tears. “Not the one you hide from. I want to be your shelter, not your storm. I want to be… yours. Officially. In every way that matters. If you’ll still have me.”
The silence stretched, thin and fragile. Tawan waited, every nerve ending raw and exposed, braced for the final rejection.
But it never came.
Instead he heard a sound.
A soft, hesitant click.
Tawan’s breath caught hearing the doorknob turn, but the door remained closed. But it was unlocked, an olive branch offered from the other side. It was an invitation. Tawan still sat there unmoving, too overwhelmed, too scared.
After what felt like an eternity, the door creaked, and Aran stepped out. His cheeks were red, eyes bloodshot and puffy, lips bitten. He was the exact imagery of wreckage, and it was another knife to Tawan’s heart to know he’d caused this. He was the one who rendered this sunshine of a person into broken bits, and he hated himself more every moment.
Aran didn’t speak, only glanced at Tawan before sitting beside him on the floor with a subtle wince, the expression gone in an instant, and no one would have caught it otherwise. But Tawan did, as always, because he had every little thing of the younger memorised better than his own name.
“Are you in pain?” he asked worriedly.
Aran huffed out something close to a laugh, the sound too choked to decipher. It held no humour. “Are you asking me that?”
Tawan sucked in a sharp breath, the implication clear and like a stab to his chest but he took it without complaint, knowing it was well deserved. “You winced.”
Aran didn’t answer, only leaned back against the door and stared into nothing. His arms were wrapped around himself, gaze detached from everything. Tawan watched him with the ache in his own chest being a physical, gnawing thing. The silence wasn't the punishing void from before the door opened; it was a shared, exhausted space. Aran was here. He was here. That was everything.
He followed Aran's lead, leaning his own head back against the wall beside the door. He didn't touch. He didn't speak. He just existed beside him like a quiet penitent presence.
Minutes stretched, marked only by the slow, steadying rhythm of their breathing. Finally, Tawan spoke, his voice so low it was almost a vibration in the air between them.
"I'll start tomorrow," he said, not looking at Aran, but staring at the opposite wall as if reading a decree written there. "Therapy. Anger management. Whatever it takes. I'll get a referral. I'll go every day if I have to."
He swallowed, the next words harder. "And... I'll stay away from the shoots, any of them. Not just Arseni. Until you tell me it's okay. Until they tell me it's okay." He meant Peach. He meant Thee. The names didn't need to be spoken. They hung in the air, spectres of the trust he had shattered.
Aran's breath hitched, just slightly. He didn't turn his head.
"I don't want you to lose your work," Aran whispered, the first words he'd spoken since stepping out. They were hoarse, scraped raw.
"It's not my work if it costs me you," Tawan replied, the answer immediate and absolute. "It's nothing. I’m nothing if not with you, I never was."
Another stretch of silence. Then, Aran's arms tightened around himself. "I'm tired," he murmured, the words barely a sigh.
"Let me make you some tea," Tawan said, starting to push himself up. Aran lifted his gaze up for a second, just looking at him as if in contemplation. Tawan offered some sort of comfort still, even if the younger kicked him out now, he’d deserve it. "The ginger one. And then... you should rest. I'll go. I'll sleep on the couch, or I can leave if you—"
“I’m pregnant.”
The two words sliced through the room, a hard punch to the gut, severing the tentative peace, dropping it like a stone into deep, still water. All the air vanished.
Tawan froze halfway to standing, the air in his lungs knocked out of him, body locked in a crouch. Every muscle tensed. For a moment, he was certain he’d misheard. The ringing in his ears from his own panic had conjured it. But the absolute stillness of Aran beside him, the way he’d said it, as if stating the weather and not a life changing fact, hammered the truth into his pounding head.
Slowly, painfully slowly, Tawan lowered himself back to the floor. He turned his head to look at Aran, who was still staring blankly ahead, a single tear tracing a path down his cheekbone.
Time fractured. The hallway, the door, the entire apartment ceased to exist. There was only Aran on the floor, a vessel of quiet devastation and miraculous, terrifying creation. And there was Tawan, shattered beside him, understanding with horrific, blinding clarity the true magnitude of what the fuck he had done. He hadn’t broken Aran’s heart only, he’d made the love of his life feel abandoned in the most vulnerable state he could be in, all due to his own psychopathic paranoia. How did one redeem that? Tawan had no fucking clue.
The new wave of remorse crashing over him was bitter as rose up his throat, making it hard to breathe. He needed to get help, and he needed it now. If he was even going to begin to make amends, if Aran let him– which frankly speaking, at this point even Tawan doubted he deserved the chance– then he needed to be safe to be around.
Slowly, moving as if through deep water, Tawan sank fully back to the floor. Not beside Aran, but in front of him, turning to face him fully. He didn't reach out. He simply knelt there, his own vision blurring.
"Aran," he breathed, the name a prayer and a plea. His voice was shattered glass. "How... are you...?"
He couldn't finish. The questions were too vast. How far along? Are you well? Are you scared? How could I not have seen?
Aran finally moved, just his head, tilting it to look at Tawan kneeling before him. “Twelve weeks.” The tear was joined by another. "Yours, I swear" he whispered, as if answering the unspoken question, even though it wasn’t even something Tawan could have considered asking. But Aran didn’t know that, and the things that had transpired between them recently just broke him too much. "I've known for four. I... I wanted to tell you. I was waiting for... for a good moment. A moment where you looked at me like you used to, not like I was something you had to keep in a cage."
Each word was a lash, deserved and devastating.
Twelve weeks.
Almost three months, and Tawan had no fucking idea.
Four weeks since Aran knew, and Tawan still had no fucking idea. And he himself was responsible for this, because he hadn’t been reliable enough to be with Aran, hadn’t given Aran the safety to run to him the moment he knew. He’d forced him to deal with it alone, all because he couldn’t keep his demons in check.
He’d already failed the first step of being a partner and a father.
"I love them already," Aran confessed, his voice breaking on the admission. He looked down at his own arms, still wrapped around himself. "So much it hurts. Because they're a part of you. And I still love you. Even now. I can’t stop it."
The confession was a sucker punch to Tawan’s already ruined heart. Aran loved the baby because it was a part of him. Aran loved him, still, even now, in the ashes of his own making.
That love was the only reason Tawan was still breathing. It was also the heaviest weight he would ever carry.
“You shouldn’t,” Tawan whispered, the words a raw scrape of self-loathing. “You should hate me. You should throw me out and never let me near you again. It’s what I deserve.” He bowed his head, his shoulders shaking with the effort to contain the tidal wave of grief and shame. “But I am so… so pathetically grateful that you don’t.”
He lifted his gaze, his eyes bloodshot and desperate. “And I am so, so sorry. Not just for what I said tonight. For every second of the last four weeks, the last twelve weeks, that you felt alone. For the, for every moment that I made you feel alone. That you were scared. That you carried this… this miracle,” his voice cracked on the word, “and I wasn’t there to hold your hand. I was too busy being a monster.”
He dared to move then, just a shift. He lifted his hands, palms down, and placed them on the floor between them. It was like an offering, a surrender. “I am going to get help. Not tomorrow. Tonight. I will find someone, call someone, I don’t care what time it is. I will fix this sickness in me. I will carve it out with my own hands if I have to.”
His eyes never left Aran’s. “But I need to know… what do you need from me right now? Not for forever. Just for this moment. Do you need me to go to the pharmacy? To make you food? Do you need me to leave this apartment so you can breathe? Do you need me to call P’Peach?” He swallowed hard, forcing the next words out, the hardest concession of all. “Do you need me to… to step back entirely? To just provide, from a distance, whatever you and the baby need, without being in your space?”
He laid every option at Aran’s feet, relinquishing all control, all claim, for the first time in his life. His fate, his chance at redemption, his entire future happiness was now a fragile, trembling thing held in Aran’s pale, tired hands.
“Tell me what to do,” Tawan pleaded, his voice breaking into a whisper. “And I will do it. Without question. Just tell me how to start making this right.”
Throughout it all, Aran had only endured. He’d been watching his life get wrecked in a storm, and he’d been watching it from the sidelines. But right now, the control was in his hands. He could ask Tawan to leave, to never bother him again. He could use Tawan’s own words against him and rid him off his life forever. It was simple.
Except, it wasn’t. It never was for Aran when it came to Tawan. The older was a drug that he couldn’t get enough of, an addict needing a fix. Yet, it was something sacred, despite the suffering. No one loved Aran like Tawan did, and he knew that Tawan would destroy himself if Aran so much as said the word.
Aran just stared at Tawan’s hunched shoulders, and his bloodshot eyes which he was pretty sure mirrored his own. He saw the pieces of the man he loved scattered on the floor around them, mixing with his broken shards.
It was maybe the worst call he’d made in life. It was maybe the most disappointing to anyone else. Maybe he was being too easy, and maybe it made him the most stupid man on earth. But when it came to Tawan, he was none the wiser.
P’Peach would be so disappointed in him, maybe. But then again, he would probably be the only one to ever understand when he’ll know. That was a bridge to cross for later. Right now, Aran was exhausted; of fighting Tawan, of fighting his feelings, of fighting his changing hormones and tired body.
He’d made his call.
“Can you stay?”
The two words were a whisper, so soft they were almost lost in the space between them. But Tawan heard them. He felt them. They didn't sound like an invitation; they sounded like a surrender. A white flag raised from the battlefield of Aran's own heart.
It was the last thing Tawan expected. The one thing he didn't dare hope for.
For a second, he couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. He just stared, his mind trying to catch up, to parse the sheer, staggering grace of it.
Stay.
Not get out.
Not leave me alone.
Stay.
The silence hurt Aran in a way, and he inhaled sharply, the sharp burn in his chest making him realise he’d been holding it. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? I’m still asking you to stay after everything?” He made a sound similar to a chuckle, but it was too hoarse to make out. “I’m such a fool, you know, Tawan? We aren’t even… we aren’t even dating,” he laughed bitterly, “You never asked, I never said anything. I just offered you myself… my heart, and, and my body, and… I was so scared when I found out, but I was so happy, and I already fell in love with this little miracle…” Aran was crying now, fully sobbing. “I love our baby… this feels like the only token of love I was allowed to keep of you without breaking my heart, Tawan… and I want so badly to love them with you… I don’t want to do this alone. But I feel like I have no rights to even ask that from you, because we never even made clear what we are to one another…”
Each sob from Aran was a physical blow to Tawan’s chest, carving out deeper hollows of shame. He listened, his own tears falling silently, as Aran laid bare the tragic, beautiful absurdity of their situation. The unspoken contract, the unclaimed titles, the boundless love given without the simple, foundational question being asked.
We aren’t even dating.
The truth of it was a merciless spotlight, exposing the fragile, selfish architecture of what Tawan had built. He’d taken ownership of Aran’s heart without ever formally accepting the stewardship of it. He’d claimed his body without claiming his future. He’d made Aran feel like he had no rights to the father of his own child.
The injustice of it, all his own making, was a poison Tawan could taste.
Aran’s words, a torrent of grief and longing, hit Tawan like a physical blow. He listened, his own heart cracking open wider with every shattered confession. When Aran began to sob in earnest, a sound of pure, desolate heartbreak, something in Tawan snapped, not into anger, but into a fierce, protective anguish.
“Shhh, shhh, no, no, darling, don’t,” Tawan whispered, his voice trembling with the force of his emotion. His hands, which had been clenched at his sides, twitched violently with the need to reach out, to pull Aran into his arms and absorb every tremor. But he locked every muscle in place. He hadn’t earned that. Not yet. He couldn’t– wouldn’t– take what he hadn’t been given explicit permission to have.
So he sat there, a statue of tortured restraint, his eyes swimming as he watched Aran fall apart. “You are not a fool,” he said, his voice thick. “You are the bravest, most loving person I have ever known. The fool is me. The coward is me.”
He took a shuddering breath, forcing himself to meet Aran’s tear-filled gaze. “I never asked… because I was terrified. Terrified that if I gave you the choice, you would see me clearly and walk away. So I just… took. I claimed you in every way I could without giving you the words, because I thought if I didn’t say it, it couldn’t be refused. And it is pathetic, I know, and I am so sorry, Aran” The admission was humiliating, but it was the truth. “But you have every right. You have more rights over me than I have ever had over you. You own me, Aran. Every broken, fucked up piece. You have since the beginning.”
He saw the flicker in Aran’s eyes, a softening amidst the pain, and it gave him the courage to continue, his voice dropping to a raw, broken whisper. “I know I don’t deserve to ask for anything now. I have no right. But… I’m begging for a chance. A chance to prove I can be the man you deserve. A chance to earn, to earn the right… to one day ask you, properly, on my knees, if you’ll be mine. Officially. In every way.”
He swallowed hard, a fresh tear slipping free. “Please… just wait for me that long. Even though I have no right to ask you to wait. Please.”
It was the most vulnerable plea of his life. It wasn’t a demand, nor a presumption. It was a humble, shattered request for the opportunity to become worthy.
Aran looked at him, at the battle for control playing out in Tawan’s tense frame, at the raw earnestness in his eyes. His own heart, so heavy with grief, warmed a fraction. How could he ever refuse this man anything when he looked at him like that? When he laid himself bare like this?
“I believe you,” Aran whispered, the words quiet but clear. “I believe you.”
Tawan let out a shaky breath, as if he’d been granted a stay of execution. “And the baby…,” he began, his voice cracking. “A token of our love… God, Aran, thank you for seeing it that way. Thank you for not seeing it as a chain or a mistake. But you have to know… you are not just the keeper of a token. You are the source. You are my love. All of it. This isn’t… I’m not doing this, saying this, because you’re pregnant. I’m saying it because it’s the truth, and I’ve been too much of a coward to say it right. You are it for me. That will never change.”
“I know,” Aran said softly, a fragile certainty in his tone. “I believe that, too.”
A heavy, but softer silence descended. The storm of confessions had passed, leaving them both wrecked but tethered by new, fragile understandings.
After a few moments, Aran shifted, weariness seeming to settle into his bones. “Tawan?” he called, the words almost inaudible. Tawan was immediately on alert, “Yes, my love?”
Aran hesitated for a second, a little shell shocked at the broken rasp of a response, before exhaustion won over him, “I’m tired.”
“Of course,” Tawan said immediately, his voice shifting into a careful, practical tone. “What do you need? I’ll get you water, a blanket—”
“Can you…” Aran interrupted softly, his eyes fixed on his own hands. He hesitated again, then looked up, his gaze meeting Tawan’s with a vulnerability that stole the air from Tawan’s lungs. “Can you hold me? Just… until I fall asleep?”
For a moment, Tawan was certain he’d misheard. Then, the meaning slammed into him, and a wave of emotion so powerful it was dizzying crashed over him. His vision blurred instantly, the tears falling in earnest and he really couldn’t care less about wiping them away, a choked sound escaping his throat. It was the one thing he wanted most in the world, the one thing he thought he’d lost the privilege to ever do again.
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, a rapid, jerky motion, tears spilling freely down his cheeks. Moving with infinite care, as if approaching a startled bird, he shifted closer. He opened his arms, a silent, trembling question.
This time, Aran didn’t hesitate. He leaned into the offered space, letting his weight settle against Tawan’s chest. The moment Tawan’s arms closed around him— gently, so gently, with a reverence usually reserved for holy things— a shuddering sigh escaped Aran, his body finally relaxing a fraction of its terrible tension.
Tawan held him, one hand cradling Aran’s head, the other splayed protectively over his back. He pressed his lips to Aran’s hair like sealing a vow. He held him, feeling the steady beat of Aran’s heart, and the new, profound sense of a second, tiny heartbeat he was now sworn to protect.
“I don’t want to… do this alone, Tawan,” Aran muttered against his chest, breaking the silence.
Tawan’s hold around him tightened just the littlest bit, careful not to hurt him. His heart clenched again, painfully, making it hard to breathe. He didn’t deserve this yet, didn’t deserve to hold something so precious, so fragile, when he could destroy it with a single wrong move, when he’d gotten so close to ruining it. But here Aran was, willingly, letting him be here. This was a privilege Tawan swore he’d prove worthy of. “You won’t have to, Ran. I’m so sorry, I am so sorry.”
Then, Aran titled his head up a little, eyes glossy, cheeks damp, twisting Tawan’s heart. He lifted a trembling hand to gently cup Tawan’s face, wiping away the onslaught of seemingly never-ending tears of the older. “Please, get better, Tawan.”
Tawan could hear his heart absolutely shattering, the sound ringing in his ears drowning out all other noise, a choked sob escaping him as he buried his face against the younger’s hair. Aran’s fingers came to tangle in his hair, the touch soothing his frayed nerves.
The way Aran had said those words… with such conviction, with the amount of faith Tawan knew he didn’t deserve yet… He would do better even if he died trying.
They stayed like that for a long time, a heap of tangled limbs on the floor. Tawan held Aran like his lifeline until the younger’s shaky breaths calmed into proper ones. They stayed tangled until Tawan’s own tears were dried tracks of salt on his cheeks. It was Tawan who pulled away first, the uncomfortableness of their position dawning onto him. It surely couldn’t be any more comfortable for Aran than it was for him, so he gently moved away.
Aran startled at the movement, a hint of panic flaring behind his expression as Tawan pulled away from the embrace. But Tawan, seeing that, immediately shushed him, “Hey, let’s move you to the bed, okay? Is it okay if I lift you up?”
Aran nodded slowly, still a little out of it, and bone dead exhausted. He’d expected Tawan to help him stand up, or help him walk to the bed. But he let out a little gasp of surprise as the older slid an arm behind his knees and lifted him bridal style. He didn’t say anything, just left himself under the older’s care. Tawan placed him really carefully on the mattress, then disappeared into the hallway for a bit, coming back with a refill of water. He poured him a glass, setting the bottle on the bedside table. Aran drank it gratefully, his raw throat finding some relief from the insistent dull sting.
As Tawan set the glass back after Aran was done, the younger held onto his wrist. Tawan froze, his whole being focused on the point of contact. Aran's fingers were cool against his skin, the grip not strong, but deliberate.
"Don't... don't go," Aran whispered, his eyes heavy lidded but holding a thread of quiet anxiety. "Please?"
Tawan’s heart, which had been a clenched fist of remorse, softened into something aching and tender. He turned his hand slowly, so their palms met, and laced his fingers with Aran's. "I'm not going anywhere," he promised, his voice low and steady. "I'll stay right here.”
Tawan moved to slide to the floor beside the bed, his mind already settling into the posture of a penitent guardian. But a soft tug on his hand stopped him.
Aran was shaking his head, his sleep heavy eyes insistent. With a quiet, shuffling movement, he scooted over on the mattress, making space for him. The invitation was silent, but undeniable.
Come here.
Tawan’s breath caught. He stood frozen for a second, caught between the desire to obey Aran’s unspoken wish and the fear of overstepping this fragile new boundary. Aran looked at him, his eyes tired but clear, and gave another small, encouraging tug.
Slowly, as if stepping onto sacred ground, Tawan sat on the edge of the bed. Aran immediately curled into his side, his head finding its familiar place against Tawan’s waist, his body seeking the warmth he’d been denied in his anger and grief. A shuddering sigh of pure relief escaped him.
Tawan could have wept. This—the simple, trusting weight of Aran against him—was a gift beyond measure. Carefully, as if handling something made of moonlight and spun glass, he lifted his arm and draped it around Aran, his hand settling on the dip of his waist. His other hand came up, fingers trembling slightly as they carded through Aran’s soft hair, his touch infinitely gentle.
For a long moment, they just breathed together in the quiet dark. Then, Aran moved again. He found Tawan’s hand where it rested on his waist and carefully, deliberately, lifted it. He brought it down, pressing Tawan’s palm flat against his own lower stomach.
The fabric of Aran’s shirt was soft, the skin beneath still perfectly flat, holding its miraculous secret close. There was nothing to feel. Not yet.
But Tawan froze as if struck. The air left his lungs in a shaky, silent rush. His entire world narrowed to the point of contact beneath his palm. Here. Our child is here. A life they’d created, a future they’d almost shattered, a love made tangible.
Tears welled up again, hot and unstoppable, blurring his vision. He didn’t move his hand. He didn’t dare. He just let it rest there, a pledge, a shield, a silent greeting.
Aran, feeling the slight tremble in Tawan’s arm around him, nestled closer. He covered Tawan’s hand with his own, pressing it more firmly against himself, a silent message of shared guardianship. Then, with a final, contented sigh, he relaxed completely, sleep finally pulling him under for good.
Tawan stayed awake long after Aran had settled, engraving this picture of love into his heart for times to come. He’d get better, he had to. For the sake of this, the potential future promised to them, and the chance to love Aran as his.
For Aran. For their unborn baby. For himself.
To make up for the past, to hold the present, and to protect the future.
He’ll find a therapist. He’ll take all the help. This future was his holy grail for putting in the work. He’ll do all of it.
He’ll love them well, and he’ll love them right.