⋆. 𐙚˚࿔ daddy 𝜗𝜚˚⋆
part 9 | series masterlist summary: he’s new to the neighborhood, moving into the house directly across from yours in the quiet little cul-de-sac. you don’t know much about him. only that he works on cars in his garage, mows his lawn shirtless like he’s trying to ruin your life, and always looks a little too tired. it’s not until a little girl appears in his driveway one afternoon that you realize the handsome mechanic across the street comes with a tiny family attached. pairing: girldad!bangchan x reader warnings: unprotected sex (learn from them), fingering, oral (f!receiving), praise, mentions of emergency contraceptives, emotional vulnerability, anxiety symptoms, anymore warnings and im spoiling genre: fluff, smut, angst cw/tags: soundtrack: is this love - XG, sugar - brockhampton * ✩˚word count: 11.8k ˚✩ *
Two months had a funny way of disappearing when every day seemed to end covered in dirt.
The nursery became your entire world for a while. Every morning began with coffee and a checklist that somehow grew longer overnight, and every evening ended with another layer of dust on your clothes and another project crossed off the board. Some days felt enormous. Others felt like you spent twelve hours accomplishing nothing more than choosing paint colors or waiting for concrete to cure.
Still, when you looked back, it was impossible to ignore how much had changed.
The greenhouse was the first thing people noticed now. Sunlight poured through clean glass instead of cracked, cloudy panels, filling the space with warmth that had been missing for years.
New benches stretched beneath the windows, already crowded with herbs and seedlings waiting for spring customers. Outside, the pathways no longer disappeared beneath weeds. Fresh stone wound through flower beds bursting with color, and the trees Chan had surprised you with had already begun settling into the landscape as though they’d always belonged there.
They were still your favorite part. Every time you drove into the lot, your eyes found them first, and every time, you smiled.
Sometimes you even caught yourself stopping in the middle of the property for no reason other than to look.
It still didn’t quite feel real.
You remembered the first time you’d unlocked the front door, wondering if you’d made the biggest mistake of your life. Back then, all you could see were broken windows, peeling paint, and years of neglect.
Now, you saw possibility.
You saw customers wandering through the greenhouse with coffee in their hands. Children crouching beside flower beds to watch butterflies. Someone picking out the perfect houseplant for a first apartment. You saw birthdays, Mother’s Days, busy Saturdays in the spring, and quiet Tuesday mornings spent watering hanging baskets before the doors opened.
For the first time, the dream in your head had somewhere to live besides your imagination. It lived here.
And somehow, every corner of it carried traces of the people who had helped you build it.
The contractor who refused to charge you for an extra day’s work after hearing what you were trying to create. The greenhouse owner who had insisted you take twice as many starter plants as you’d ordered. The row of flowering shrubs gifted by a neighboring nursery owner after hearing about your opening. The landscaping crew that somehow worked faster whenever Jia wandered over asking questions.
Chan’s coworkers, who had shown up on more than one Saturday with coffee in one hand and work gloves in the other after claiming they were “just stopping by.”
Even now, you could still picture it.
The greenhouse benches Hyunjin and Changbin somehow assembled backwards before taking them apart and pretending it had all been part of the plan.
The irrigation lines Minho insisted on checking himself because, according to him, “I’d rather spend one afternoon fixing it than listen to Christopher complain about watering plants all summer.”
Somewhere along the way, it had stopped feeling like your project. Not because it wasn't yours anymore, but because so many people had quietly decided they wanted to see it succeed.
By the time the calendar finally landed on the date circled in thick green marker, there was almost nothing left to do.
Just open the doors.
𐙚
The next morning felt strangely….quiet.
Not because there wasn’t anything left to do. There usually was. But for the first time in months, the checklist taped to the refrigerator held more crossed-out boxes than empty ones.
You had barely finished your coffee when a knock echoed through Chan’s house. Before either of you could answer it, Jia was already halfway to the front door, “I got it!”
Chan chuckled from where he stood rinsing out his mug. “Bug--"
The front door flew open before Chan had a chance to remind Jia to check who was outside. "Uncle Bin!”
Changbin barely managed to brace himself before she launched into his arms. He caught her with an exaggerated grunt, taking two dramatic steps backward. "Good morning to you too."
"I missed you."
"I can tell." He adjusted her on his hip, pretending to wince. "Did somebody get heavier?"
"I got taller."
"Right." He nodded solemnly. "That's definitely what I meant."
Hyunjin walked in behind them carrying a small backpack covered in cartoon dinosaurs while Minho followed with a paper bag balanced under one arm and three takeout coffees in the other. "I brought breakfast," Minho announced, setting the bag on the kitchen counter.
Chan raised an eyebrow. "Bribery?"
"Absolutely."
"So what's the catch?"
"There isn't one."
Changbin snorted, "there's definitely one."
Hyunjin wandered into the kitchen like he'd been there a hundred times before, opening cabinets until he found a stack of plates without asking. "We're kidnapping your child."
Chan looked up from his coffee.
"You're....what?"
"For the day," Hyunjin clarified.
Jia gasped loud enough to gain everyone's attention. "A field trip?"
Changbin looked down at her. "Do you want it to be?"
She nodded so enthusiastically you thought she might fall over. "Yes!"
Minho slid one of the coffees toward you before answering the question Chan hadn't asked yet. "You've got enough on your plate today."
"The nursery," Hyunjin added.
"The soft opening," Changbin continued.
"And if the two of you spend the whole day worrying about whether Jia's bored, you'll never actually enjoy any of it," Minho finished.
You exchanged a glance with Chan. They weren't wrong. Chan leaned back against the counter, folding his arms. "So what's the plan?"
Changbin grinned. "That's classified."
"You don't have a plan."
Hyunjin looked over at Changbin with a raised eyebrow. "We should probably come up with one first."
"I was thinking arcade."
"I was thinking the zoo."
"I was thinking," Minho cut in, taking a sip of his coffee, "we let the only person whose opinion matters decide."
Three pairs of eyes turned toward Jia.
She blinked up at them for a second, giving the question the kind of serious consideration only a four-year-old could.
"Can we get nuggets?"
Minho nodded without hesitation. "That can be arranged."
"The first stop," Changbin agreed solemnly placing her back on her feet.
Jia threw both hands into the air. "Best day ever!" She squealed before darting back toward her room, “I have to get Dwaekki!”
A quiet laugh rippled through the kitchen as you looked at her confused, “Dwaekki?”
“The pig-rabbit,” Chan clarified.
You nodded like that answered everything, “Of course.”
It didn't take that long.
She came barreling back around the corner with Dwaekki tucked securely beneath one arm, a tiny backpack bouncing against her shoulders and a water bottle swinging wildly from one hand.
Somewhere between her bedroom and the kitchen she'd also managed to untie one of her sneakers. "I'm ready!"
Chan's eyes dropped immediately to her feet. "No, you're not."
She frowned. "I am."
He pointed, "your shoe."
Jia looked down, tilting her head as though seeing it for the first time. "It's fine."
"It is definitely not fine."
With a dramatic sigh that belonged on someone at least three decades older, she lifted her foot toward him. Without a word, Chan crouched in front of her.
The conversation around the kitchen drifted on while his fingers worked the laces back into place, tightening the knot with the practiced ease of someone who had done it hundreds of times before. Jia rested one hand against his shoulder to steady herself, already more interested in telling Changbin about the snacks she planned to pack than the fact that her father was fixing the problem she'd declared wasn't a problem.
When he finished, Chan gave the toe of her sneaker a light tap. "There."
She smiled brightly. "Thanks, Daddy."
"We'll have her back tonight," Changbin said as he stood, reaching for Jia's backpack.
Hyunjin slung her dinosaur bag over his own shoulder. "Our goal is to wear her out enough that she falls asleep before you even hear how much sugar we gave her."
"You are not giving her sugar," Chan replied.
Hyunjin looked offended. "I didn't say how much."
Jia had already reached the front door before stopping so suddenly that Changbin nearly walked into the back of her. She spun around and hurried back across the room, throwing her arms around your waist without a second thought. "Good luck today."
The words caught you off guard. You smiled, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear before returning the hug. "Thank you, sweetheart."
She gave Chan an equally enthusiastic hug, accepted his kiss to the top of her head, then slipped her hand into Changbin's like it was the most natural thing in the world.
A moment later, the front door closed behind them, and their voices faded into the driveway. The laughter outside lingered for another few seconds before the sound of an engine faded down the street. Then the house settled into a silence neither of you had heard in what felt like weeks.
For the first time in what seemed like months, there wasn't a contractor waiting for a phone call, a grocery run to squeeze in before daycare pickup, or a four-year-old racing down the hallway with a brand-new emergency.
You smiled to yourself as you looked toward the kitchen. "I don't think we've been alone in this house for more than twenty minutes these last two months."
"I don't think we have either," Chan admitted, watching you over the rim of his coffee mug.
The quiet lasted another beat before habit took over. You carried your empty mug toward the sink, already mentally sorting through the rest of the morning.
There were still a few things you wanted to check at the nursery before the soft opening. A couple of displays needed straightening. You wanted to water the hanging baskets one last time. Maybe wipe down the front counter again, even though you'd already done it yesterday.
You had just reached the sink when gentle fingers wrapped around your wrist. "You don't have to do that."
You looked over your shoulder. "The dishes?"
"The dishes." His mouth curved into a smile. "The nursery too."
You laughed quietly. "Christopher..."
"The soft opening isn't until this afternoon."
"I know."
"The nursery survived two months of construction." He stepped closer, still holding your hand as his smile grew a little more playful. "It even survived Hyunjin trying to use power tools."
"Barely."
"Barely," he agreed. "I think it'll survive another hour."
You wanted to argue. You really did. Instead, you found yourself smiling. "I hate how reasonable that sounds."
"I know."
"You planned this."
"I absolutely planned this."
Before you could protest again, he gently tugged you away from the sink. You followed with a dramatic sigh that fooled absolutely no one, letting him guide you back toward the couch while he reached for the throw blanket draped over the armrest.
"There."
"You've been waiting to do this all morning, haven't you?"
"Since they walked through the front door."
You laughed, shaking your head as you settled against the cushions. He tucked the blanket over both of you before slipping an arm around your shoulders, and almost instinctively you curled into his side, resting your head against him.
The television flickered to life with the low hum of a cooking show neither of you had any intention of watching. It became little more than background noise, blending with the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the house settling around you.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Chan's fingers found yours beneath the blanket, absentmindedly intertwining with them before his thumb began tracing slow, lazy circles across the back of your hand.
His coffee sat forgotten on the table, cooling by the minute, while the warmth of his body and the weight of his arm around you made it increasingly difficult to remember why you'd been so determined to leave in the first place.
Every now and then, one of you would break the silence only to let it settle again just as naturally. "I still can't believe Changbin and Hyunjin built those greenhouse benches backwards."
Chan let out a quiet laugh, the sound vibrating gently beneath your cheek. "They were so confident."
"They argued with the instructions."
"They argued with me too."
You smiled into his shoulder, picturing the two of them stubbornly insisting they knew better until Minho had quietly turned the instruction manual around and pointed out they were working off the wrong side.
"They're never living that down."
"They know that."
The conversation faded as easily as it had begun, replaced by another stretch of comfortable silence. It wasn't the awkward kind that begged to be filled. It was the kind that came from spending enough time with someone that simply existing beside them felt like conversation all on its own.
After a while, Chan tipped his head back against the couch and let out a slow breath. "I think..." His voice was softer this time, thoughtful. "...this is the first morning in weeks I haven't had somewhere to be."
You tilted your head to look at him. "It feels weird."
"A little."
"But..." A smile tugged at your lips. "Good weird."
His eyes met yours, warm enough to make your chest tighten, "yeah."
Neither of you rushed to say anything else. Sunlight stretched a little farther across the living room floor while the hosts on the television excitedly debated a recipe neither of you had been listening to. Chan's gaze wandered around the room before settling back on you, his smile returning almost unconsciously.
"I could get used to this."
Your eyebrows lifted. "This?"
He nodded, his fingers giving yours a gentle squeeze. "Coffee getting cold. You stealing my sweatshirts."
You glanced down at the oversized hoodie hanging off one shoulder and smiled. "I've noticed they don't make it back to your closet."
"I noticed too."
A quiet laugh passed between you. "The house being this peaceful every once in a while," he continued. "Knowing Jia's probably having the best day of her life with the guys."
You pictured Changbin letting her pick the music in the car, Hyunjin inevitably convincing someone to buy her an unnecessary stuffed animal, and Minho pretending he hadn't been the one to suggest ice cream before lunch. "They're absolutely spoiling her."
"They absolutely are."
"But..." you murmured, nestling a little closer against him, "...she deserves it."
"So do you."
The words were so matter-of-fact that they caught you off guard. You looked up just as he looked down. Somewhere along the conversation, the space between you had disappeared. His free hand came up to brush a loose strand of hair away from your face, his fingertips lingering against your cheek with familiar tenderness.
"What?" you asked quietly.
He smiled. "Nothing."
"You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one where you're thinking too much."
A laugh escaped him. "I wasn't thinking."
"No?"
"I was just looking at you."
You rolled your eyes, though the smile pulling at your mouth ruined any attempt at sounding unconvinced, "that's worse."
"I disagree."
"You would."
"I would."
You leaned forward, intending to steal a quick kiss before settling back against him, but the moment your lips brushed his, his hand slid naturally to your waist, keeping you close as he kissed you again.
It was slow, lazy. The kind of kiss that came from finally realizing there was nowhere else you needed to be. When you finally pulled back, your foreheads rested together, neither of you bothering to move very far.
"We've got the house to ourselves," he murmured, his voice low enough that you felt it more than heard it.
A laugh slipped from your lips. "Is that your way of asking?"
A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Maybe."
You pretended to consider it for a moment before your fingers slipped into the hair at the nape of his neck. "I suppose I could clear my schedule."
"I was hoping you would."
His smile softened as he kissed you again, lingering just a little longer this time, and the morning continued exactly the way neither of you had realized you'd been needing for weeks.
The blanket became an obstacle within minutes. Your knee caught the armrest when he shifted to get closer, and his elbow pressed against something hard behind your back that you were fairly certain was the remote. A quiet, breathless laugh broke the space between kisses.
"I keep knocking into things," he murmured against your jaw, the low rumble of his voice doing something to your composure that the morning had been building toward for hours.
"It's a couch. It's not built for—"
"Bedroom." He was already pulling you up, one hand sliding from your waist to your wrist, guiding you to your feet while the blanket gathered in a heap on the cushions behind you.
You let him. You let him lead you down the hall in silence that felt less like walking and more like falling forward. The house was still quiet around you, sun-drenched and normal, and then the bedroom door clicked shut and none of it felt normal at all.
He didn't wait. The moment you were inside, Chan's mouth was on yours again, harder this time than the slow lazy kiss on the couch. His hands found the hem of his your hoodie, tugging it up and over your head in one fluid motion, and when his palms slid against your bare skin they were warm and slightly calloused, the heat they left behind made your breath catch. You matched him, your fingers working at the buttons of his shirt until they gave way and you could lift it off.
"We should—" your voice caught as he pressed you back onto the mattress, and his knee settled between your thighs.
"I know. I know we should." His forehead rested against yours, both of you breathing hard. "The drawer, right there."
His hand reached past your hip for the nightstand, and you watched his fingers hover over the small drawer. The box was in there. You knew it was there. You'd put it there yourself after the last time you were irresponsible in bed. The next morning both of you had stood in the pharmacy aisle looking a little dazed and a little ashamed. The drawer was three feet away. Five seconds of walking, maybe.
Then Chan pulled back from the drawer and looked at you, and the look in his eyes was so full of wanting, so grounded in weeks of missed mornings and stolen hoodies and being far too careful with everything else in your lives, that the drawer might as well have been on the other side of the house.
"Five seconds," you breathed.
"Give me ten," he whispered. His mouth found yours again, and the ten seconds evaporated.
He came down over you fully this time, he straddled you with his weight pressing you deep into the mattress. His hands left your waist and slid up, palms flat against the bed on either side of your head, and for a moment he just looked down at you, breathing, the soft morning light catching the dampness at his hairline and the sheer, unguarded wanting in his expression.
One of his hands cradled your face; his thumb on your cheekbone, palm cupping your jaw. His eyes stayed on yours as you softly breathed against each other.
Neither of you moved. Five seconds passed. Then ten. The silence stretched past the point where comfort lived and into something ache-close to uncomfortable, the kind of quiet that makes you notice everything: the weight of his knee between your thighs, the damp warmth where his thumb pressed against your cheek, the way his pupils blew wide as he studied your face like he was still memorizing it.
You searched his eyes and found what you'd been careful not to look for. Not just wanting. Wanting in a way that settled deep and unmistakable, the raw, starving sort that comes from being denied something every single day for months.
He looked at you the way you'd looked at him every morning across the kitchen, every slow hand on the small of your back, every kiss at the front door that had lasted two seconds longer than either of you would admit to. He was finally, finally done admitting to it.
His thumb moved over your cheekbone. Once. A small, tender thing that had no business being in a bedroom that felt like it was about to catch fire. "You have no idea," he whispered. Almost to himself, almost apologetic. Like he'd just confessed something he wasn't entirely certain he could take back.
Neither of you moved for what felt like a full minute. Then the house was still around you, the morning was still gold against the curtains, and the drawer was still three feet away, empty and utterly, finally, irrelevant.
Then he kissed you.
It wasn't urgent. It was devastating. Whatever restraint he'd been carrying for three months cracked open and what came out of it wasn't speed, it was thoroughness, the kind that comes from someone who's been denied so long they intend to be late to every second.
His hand left your cheek and slid down to the strap of your bra, his thumb hooked under the lace, lifting it just an inch away from your skin so he could look at the swell of your breast under the thin cotton of his tank top. He didn't look away. He let the silence stretch again, and the morning light was doing something to the curve of you that made his breathing hitch in a way that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with awe.
"I have watched you across the table so many times," he said, barely above a whisper, "three months of watching you do the smallest things while trying to remember to breathe, and I think—" He cut himself off, frustrated, and pressed his forehead to the hollow of your throat instead, taking in the scent of your skin like a man rediscovering air. "I think I've been starved. That's the only word for it."
Your palm found the thin fabric of his tank top where it hugged his chest, and even through the cotton you could feel the cannon-thud of his heart against your hand, racing in a way that told you the polite, careful Chan who'd been careful with every word was already gone.
He let the tank top come up and over his head in one pull and dropped it somewhere on the floor. When his bare chest finally met yours, warm and solid and finally there, you let out a sound you didn't recognize and his arms wrapped around you, pulling you flush, dragging you up into his body like he was trying to close a gap that had been open for ninety days too many.
His lips closed over your nipple through the lace, the pressure slow and intentional. A soft gasp left you, heavy with need, and his mouth followed the curve of your breast downward. One hand stayed anchored on your stomach, fingers spread wide as if to keep you from slipping away.
"You're so beautiful," he breathed against the skin just above your navel. "It hurts how much I want to remember every inch of you, and it still isn't enough."
His fingers found the clasp at the front of your bra and released it, the lace parting to bare your skin. Only then did his hand drift lower, thumb tracing the inside of your thigh in a deliberate upward drag that lit every nerve along the way.
He hesitated there, palm hovering just above the gathering heat, his eyes lifting to meet yours with raw vulnerability. You answered by arching into his touch, hooking both legs around his waist to draw him down, making it clear you were the one guiding him closer.
When you pulled him down, he came the rest of the way and settled between your thighs with a heaviness that settled deep in your bones. He didn't move immediately. His weight was crushing and careful all at once, and for a long breath he just pressed his forehead to your stomach, and you could feel him finally, finally, letting go of whatever had been keeping his shoulders tight and his jaw locked since the drawer.
Then his hands began their slow, deliberate descent.
The same palms that had been on your face and your ribs and the small of your back slid lower, past the lace that now lay open and forgotten at your hips, and his fingers spread wide across your stomach before settling at the waistband of what was left. His touch wasn't tentative. It was thorough. Every place his fingertips moved it was as if he was running a checklist, confirming that you were real, that this was real.
When his fingers found your pussy, already warm and already slick and already aching, his breath hitched against your thigh and he let out something low in his chest, a sound you'd never heard from him before, part relief and part something rawer.
He eased two inside you, slow, testing the heat, and his thumb found exactly where you needed him, circling with firm pressure. When you arched off the mattress with his name on your lips he finally moved down.
His mouth followed without hesitation. There was no teasing, no patience, no waiting for you to catch up. He settled between your thighs and his hands slid up to hold your hips steady, anchoring you against him as his tongue dragged long and slow from your entrance upward, utterly certain, like a man finally tasting something he'd been dreaming of for a hundred nights.
He licked again, deeper this time, parting your folds and pressing the flat of his tongue against your clit before sucking gently, then harder, drawing the sensitive bud between his lips.
You threw your head back and the headboard caught you, the sound that came out of your throat wrecked and unguarded. His fingers worked inside you at the same deliberate pace his mouth moved against you, curling to stroke that spot that made your thighs tremble while his tongue flicked and lapped without pause.
He was deep and hungry and thorough, giving you every inch of what he'd been storing up, and you could feel with every slow drag of his tongue that he had no intention of being anywhere else for a long time. His grip on your hips tightened as you rocked against his face, his low groans vibrating through you each time you clenched around his fingers.
His fingers curled deeper inside your pussy with each thrust, stroking that sensitive spot relentlessly while his tongue circled your clit in firm, wet laps that left you gasping. He sucked harder, drawing the swollen bud between his lips and flicking it with quick, precise strokes of his tongue, the vibrations from his groans sending sparks through your core. Your thighs quivered around his head as you ground against his mouth, chasing the building pressure that coiled tighter with every deliberate movement.
You felt his free hand slide up your side, cupping your breast and pinching the nipple between his fingers, rolling it in time with the rhythm of his tongue and hand below. The dual sensations made your back arch sharply off the bed, a broken moan tearing from your throat as heat flooded your body. He didn't let up, pressing his face closer, his tongue flattening to lap broadly over your folds before plunging back to focus on your clit with hungry insistence.
Your walls clenched around his fingers, slick coating his knuckles as he pumped them faster now, matching the urgency in your hips. Every lick and suck pulled you closer to the edge, his breath hot and ragged against your skin, his grip unyielding as he held you open for his mouth. The raw hunger in his actions built steadily, driving you toward release with no sign of slowing.
Then he stopped.
Not a clean break. His fingers stayed inside you, curling gently against the walls he'd just been working, but he pulled his mouth back. The absence of him was immediate and devastating. His palms slid from your thighs to your hips and held them steady, anchoring you, and he let the silence land between you for a single, deliberate breath.
"You've been running yourself ragged for this place," he murmured against your skin, not looking down at you but instead meeting your eyes, and something in how he said it made your breath catch for a different reason than the pleasure did. "I see you. The late nights at the greenhouse, the stained clothes, the way you skip lunch when you're ordering planters. I know how hard you've been working."
His thumb traced a slow, grounded line along the top of your hip bone. He was worshipping you with the same careful attention he gave everything he loved, and that was what did it.
"Let me," he said, almost a request. "Just let me do this. You don't have to do anything right now."
And the terrifying thing, the thing that made your stomach drop in a way that had nothing to do with sex, hit you right there, under his hands, while his mouth found the soft skin of your inner thigh again. His weight was careful. His touch was steadying. He was taking care of you.
Not in a way that was transactional or conditional. In a way that assumed you had been carrying everything by yourself for so long that someone finally picking up a piece of the load felt like a threat to the entire structure of who you'd decided to be.
This, him like this, with his mouth warm against your thigh and his hands steadying your hips, was the thing that frightened you. Because you had plans for yourself that didn't leave room for anyone spoiling you like this. The nursery was your armor. The soft launch was your proof that you could build something entirely on your own, and right now you were on the verge of letting someone gentle ask you to set all of it down.
And the terrifying part, the part that made your legs tremble in a way that had nothing to do with pleasure, was that you wanted it more than you wanted the nursery. More than you wanted the launch. More than anything you'd been carefully building, alone and against your own instincts for months, you wanted to let him finish you off exactly like this. In this bed, in this morning light.
You did not know what that wanting would cost you.
As you surrendered to that terrifying want, he felt the shift in you. He didn't rush to capitalize on it; instead, he leaned into the vulnerability, his fingers inside you beginning to move again with a slow, agonizing precision. He didn't just pump; he curled his fingers, hooking them against your G-spot with a steady, rhythmic pressure that made your toes curl into the sheets.
"That's it," he whispered, his voice a low, grounding rumble that vibrated through your hips. "Just let go. Give it all to me."
He began to increase the pace, but it was a measured escalation. Every time you felt yourself tipping over the edge, every time your breath hitched into a sob of anticipation, he would subtly slow down, teasing the peak, stretching the tension until it felt like a physical wire pulled taut inside your belly. He was sculpting your pleasure, refusing to let you snap too quickly.
His other hand moved to your clit, his thumb circling the swollen nub with a firm, consistent friction that mirrored the depth of his fingers. He was working you from both sides, creating a symphony of sensation that left you gasping, your head tossing back against the pillows.
"You're so tight for me," he praised, his voice thick with a reverence that bordered on the religious. "So beautiful. I've thought about this every single day for ninety days. Every hour. I'm not going anywhere."
The praise acted like fuel, stripping away the last of your defenses. You arched your back, your hips bucking instinctively against his hand, begging for the release he was so carefully withholding. He let you climb, pushing you higher and higher, his fingers sliding deep and fast, slick with your own heat, while his thumb maintained that relentless, driving pressure.
He watched your face, tracking every flicker of your eyelids and every tremble of your lips. He wanted to see the exact moment your independence broke and your desire took over.
"Almost there," he murmured, his touch becoming more insistent, more demanding, but still meticulously controlled. "Right there. Just a little more."
He increased the speed one last time, his fingers hammering into you with a focused intensity, his thumb grinding against you in a way that finally pushed you past the point of no return. He didn't let you just fall; he held you there, riding the crest of the wave with you, ensuring that when the orgasm finally hit, it wasn't a quick flash, but a slow, crashing tide that rolled through your entire body.
Your walls clamped down on his fingers in a violent, rhythmic series of contractions. You cried out, the sound raw and unfiltered, as the release tore through you in heavy, pulsing waves. He didn't pull away. He stayed deep inside you, his fingers absorbing every spasm, his thumb continuing to stroke you gently even as you shook, anchoring you to the bed and to him until the very last tremor faded into the morning light.
He didn't let you drift too far into the afterglow. As your breathing began to level out, he shifted, his weight pressing you back into the mattress. He didn't pull his fingers out immediately; instead, he used them to stretch you, prepping you one last time, his eyes locked on yours with a hunger that had transitioned from reverence to a raw, pulsing need.
When he finally slid into you, he did it with the same agonizing deliberation he had used with his hands. He entered you in one slow, seamless glide, filling you completely. You gasped, your legs wrapping instinctively around his waist to pull him deeper, but he paused the moment he hit the hilt. He stayed there, buried deep, letting you feel every inch of his thickness, letting the sensation settle into your bones.
"I've wanted this for so long," he groaned, his forehead resting against yours.
He began to move, but the pace remained steady, almost hypnotic. He wasn't just fucking you; he was savoring you. Each thrust was deep and purposeful, his hips grinding against yours with a slow, crushing pressure that made you whimper. He took his time, exploring every angle, shifting his weight to hit the spot that made your toes curl, his movements rhythmic and grounding. He was still worshipping you, treating your body like a sanctuary, his voice a constant stream of low, guttural praise in your ear.
"You feel incredible around me," he murmured, his teeth grazing the shell of your ear. "So warm. So tight. I could stay inside you all morning."
He kept his eyes on yours, watching the pleasure wash over you with something almost devotional. You let your eyes close, your hands sliding up his arms to grip his shoulders, pulling him closer even though there was no room left between you. His mouth found the junction of your neck and shoulder and stayed there, his breath scalding against your skin.
"Look at me," he commanded softly. When you opened your eyes, he was smiling at you, a slow, private thing, the kind of smile that belonged only to moments nobody else was supposed to see. "You're so beautiful when you come apart for me."
The praise should have been grounding. Instead, it made your stomach tighten with a different kind of want. You were tired of being careful. Tired of the careful dance, the careful boundaries, the careful drawer three feet away. You wanted him to ruin you.
Your legs tightened around his waist and you arched off the mattress, pushing him deeper. "Then don't take your time," you breathed. "Chan. Now."
He laughed, low and breathless against your neck. "Whatever you want, baby. Anything you want."
He shifted with that same smooth deliberation, pulling out of you just enough for you to feel the sudden cold of the air, then guiding you onto your hands and knees. He didn't look away once. He watched you move, watched the line of your spine arch as you settled onto your forearms, and his jaw went tight in a way you recognized immediately.
When he entered you from behind, he didn't come in slow this time. One deep, demanding thrust that buried him to the hilt, and your forehead hit the mattress as a sound tore out of you that you didn't recognize.
"Oh god, yes," he groaned, his hands clamping onto your hips and pulling you back against him hard. His pace was nothing like the measured, devotional tempo of missionary. This was frantic. This was raw. This was the hunger of ninety days compressed into a single morning.
"You're taking it so good," he gasped, his voice cracking on the words. "So wet, so perfect around me. Fuck, look at you back here." He let his free hand slide down to your hip and knead the soft flesh there, his thumb pressing hard enough to leave a mark. "I want to leave a mark on every inch of you. I want everyone to know you're mine."
The praise was still there, but the reverence had thinned into desperation. You could feel it in the way his thrusts deepened, seeking something he couldn't quite articulate. In how his voice broke every few seconds. In the way he kept muttering your name like a prayer he was starting to lose faith in.
"Chan," you breathed, your fingers digging into the mattress. The pace was climbing, relentless, each hit of his hips against yours sounding like a wet slap in the quiet room. "Chan, slow down."
He didn't. He couldn't. "I can't." His breath was ragged now, coming in short desperate bursts. "I can't—I've waited—I'm going to—"
"Before you—" You tried to wedge a hand between your hip and his, the word "condom" stuck halfway out of your mouth, but it died there. His hand caught yours and held it against his hip, pinning you in place.
"You're so fucking good for me," he groaned, and this time there was nothing carefully controlled about his voice. Nothing worshipped or reverent. Just a man losing the fight he'd been fighting since he met you. "Stay right there. Don't move. Just—"
His hips slammed harder and faster, the rhythm breaking entirely into something animal, stripped of deliberation or technique. His other hand found your hair and pulled your head back, forcing you to look at him over your shoulder, and his face was a mess of concentration and need. His pupils were blown wide, and something beneath the surface of his expression made your heart stop in a way that had nothing to do with pleasure.
He was going to finish. And you knew, from the weight of him and the desperate speed of his hips, that the moment he did, there would be nothing between him and everything he was about to give you.
"Chan." You tried again, voice cracking. "The drawer. The—"
"I know," he rasped, his teeth bared in a grimace that was half-pain and half-ecstasy. "I know, I know, I know. Just—"
He couldn't finish the sentence. His body bucked against yours in one final, violent thrust and you went with him, riding the wave of his release while your own walls clamped down around him in tight pulsing contractions that dragged both of you over the edge at the same time. You collapsed forward onto your forearms, face pressed into the pillow, as his weight settled over your back and you both shook with the aftermath of something that felt too big to contain.
For thirty seconds, neither of you spoke. Only breathing filled the room, ragged and uneven, the morning light shifting slowly across the sheets. You shifted against him, the wetness of his release sliding against your thighs, and for a long moment the only thing that registered was heat. Warmth where it shouldn't be. Warmth spreading outward across the sheets, and you stared at it like you'd never seen fluid before.
Because you had.
You looked at the nightstand. Then back at him, still pressed against your spine with the slow, heavy breathing of a man coming down from something huge. Neither of you had reached for a condom. In the last ten minutes, the desperate, all-consuming need to be inside each other had been so loud that everything else, everything smart and everything planned and everything careful, had simply stopped existing.
Panic didn't arrive all at once. It arrived in layers.
First was the simple biology of it. The math was quick and cruel. The soft launch was today. You could see your inventory list in your head already, the three-tier display rack still in its box, the two dozen monstera seedlings waiting for their final acclimation, the handwritten signs you'd spent all week cutting. Each one was a thing you'd built with your own hands, built to be yours alone. A pregnancy would rewrite every one of those lists. There was no math that accounted for it.
Then came Chan. His daughter, Jia, who was four years old and called him "Daddy" with the uncomplicated certainty of a child who had never once doubted her world. He had raised her. He had done it alone, navigating the wreckage of a breakup, the exhaustion of toddler-sized loneliness, the impossible work of keeping a four-year-old's world intact while your own was falling apart. He knew what a child cost. He knew better than anyone, which meant this moment carried a weight that was mine and hers.
You pushed off from him and reached for the nightstand drawer.
It slid open with a familiar rattle. Your hand went in first, blind, fingers sweeping across the back panel where the blister pack lived. Empty. You tried again, pressing deeper into the corner, praying that you'd simply misremembered, that one was tucked behind the tissues, or you'd replenished it sooner than you thought.
Your fingers found foil. You pulled it out and stared down at it. Two small indentations, both empty, the pill holes already popped and useless.
You had to beat the window. The only thing standing between this morning and a life you hadn't consented to, hadn't planned for, hadn't even let yourself consider, was a box of pills that didn't exist. "Chan," you said. Quiet. Sharp enough to pierce through whatever afterglow was still clinging to him.
He was already still. Already focused. Already awake in that specific way that belonged to the moment a man realizes exactly how far he's just fallen. "Yeah," he said. One syllable. Thick with it.
You set the empty blister pack on the mattress beside your hip. The foil crinkled in the quiet room, and the sound felt unnervingly loud.
"We have to go to the pharmacy," you said. Then, because the words were still coming too fast and your chest felt too tight, the next sentence broke free before you could catch it. "The soft launch is in six hours. I still have to label the monstera tags and the irrigation fittings aren't even unboxed yet, and—"
You pressed your palm flat against your sternum, trying to talk yourself down, which was clearly not working. "And that's not even the biggest thing in that sentence, Chan. I can't—I started this nursery alone. The point of all of this was— "
Your voice cracked on the word "this," and you dropped your hand. The panic was doing the thing it always did when you tried to compartmentalize it; it turned your thoughts into a traffic jam of unrelated emergencies, each one a wall you couldn't drive through.
You expected him to scramble. You half-wanted him to, because then you wouldn't have to be the one still attached to the math of how messed up this was.
Instead, his hand settled on the back of your neck, slow and warm, his thumb finding the small pressure point behind your ear that he'd discovered sometime in the last three months. His palm settled there like it had always belonged. The gesture pulled your head back just far enough to make you stop breathing for a second and look at him.
"Hey." His voice was steady, low, the same register he used with Jia when she was having a meltdown in the grocery store aisle. "Look at me. Breathe first. Everything else second."
You breathed. Once. Twice. Your ribs ached.
"The pharmacy is twelve minutes away," he said. No panic in his voice, just logistics, the way his brain always went when something broke. "I'll go. Right now. You stay here, shower, put on your launch clothes. The monstera tags can wait an hour. The fittings can wait an hour."
"Chan, I can drive you—"
"No." He pressed his thumb again, grounding you. "You're not driving anywhere with your hands shaking like that. You're not flushing three months of hard work down the drain trying to do everything at once. You shower. I get the pills. We both get ready, and we show up this afternoon looking like the people who built something worth opening."
He leaned forward and kissed your forehead, the pressure brief but intentional, as if he were welding a point together for you to hold onto. "We have time," he said. "The window is seventy-two hours. We're inside it."
You wanted to argue. You wanted to say that "we" was the part that frightened you, that seventy-two hours felt like a countdown, that your soft launch was the most important thing you'd ever done and you were going to throw it away for a pharmacy run. But his hand stayed on your neck, steady, and for the first time since you'd pulled that empty blister pack out of the drawer, your breath actually went all the way in.
"Twelve minutes," you whispered.
"Twelve minutes," he confirmed. He was off the bed before you'd even agreed.
--
The sound of the shower running filled the small gap between them, a thin curtain of white noise that Chan used to his advantage. He was dressed and gone within four minutes; he'd found clothes in a pair on the floor, shoes by the door, keys on the counter. No hesitation, and no second-guessing the morning's other logistics.
The door clicked shut. Twelve minutes, he'd said. Plus whatever it took to find the right aisle and a pharmacist who'd give him what he needed without asking questions. Twelve minutes turned into twenty. Then twenty-five.
You stood in the shower until the water went from warm to cold and your skin pruned, then pulled on the olive linen top and dark jeans you'd chosen three days ago for this exact afternoon. The monstera tags sat on the kitchen island. The irrigation fittings stood in their unopened box beside the front door. The nursery was waiting for someone who had been steady and certain.
Twenty-two minutes after he left, the front door opened. Chan was already at the kitchen island before you fully got your shoes on, the pharmacist-approved box sitting beside his keys like it had never even been a problem.
He handed it to you without ceremony.
"There's a second one," he said. "In case—" He stopped. The sentence didn't finish.
"Thank you," you responded softly.
You took the box from his hand but didn't open it. You held it between your thumbs like it might give you an answer if you waited long enough, which it wouldn't. The foil glinted under the kitchen lights. Seventy-two hours. If you took this now, if you just did the thing that would lower the temperature by one degree, the odds shifted back in your favor. The nursery stayed on track. Jia stayed upstairs. Everything stayed where you'd carefully placed it.
But something in your chest pulled against it. The desire to just...to just let the morning exist as it had been, before. Because taking this meant admitting that the morning you'd just shared had consequences, that Chan's weight on top of you had left something behind that neither of you could take back by simply closing the drawer. Taking the pill was a statement. This doesn't count. And even as you'd known that wasn't true since the moment the blister pack came up empty, you still couldn't bring yourself to make the gesture official.
Your thumb traced the edge of the box. Glass of water, unpoured. Inventory list on the counter. Launch at two.
"Take it," Chan said. Soft, but not unkind. He'd been watching your hands. "Right now, while the math is still simple."
The math wasn't simple. You and you both knew that. But he was right. The math got harder every minute you stood there not drinking water.
You tore the foil. One pill. You tipped it into your palm, a tiny white thing that felt absurdly small for the gravity of what it represented. You swallowed it with a sip of lukewarm water and set the box on the counter between you, exactly where it could be reached.
You set the box on the counter between you, exactly where it could be reached.
Neither of you spoke for a while. The house had gone strangely still. The shower had stopped running, and somewhere upstairs, the faint hum of the air conditioner was the only sound filling the space between you. You found yourself staring at the countertop because looking at Chan felt like it might pull everything back to the surface again.
He didn't push. Instead, he reached for your hand, his fingers slipping between yours, warm and familiar, and you let him hold it.
"I know that didn't fix everything," he said quietly.
You looked at him.
"But we're okay?"
You thought about it. The panic was still there, only quieter now. The pill had been taken. The immediate problem had been handled, but the thoughts underneath it hadn't disappeared just because you'd swallowed something.
"We're okay," you said eventually.
His thumb moved slowly over your knuckles. "Okay."
Your eyes drifted toward the clock. Three hours. "We really do have to go."
"I know."
You pulled your hand from his only long enough to reach for your bag. The movement felt strangely ordinary after everything that had happened, and maybe that was what you needed. Something simple. Something you knew how to do. Your eyes landed on the stack of monstera tags waiting on the kitchen island. "I still have to finish those."
"We'll do them there."
"The irrigation fittings."
"I'll handle those."
You looked back at him. "You don't have to."
"I know." There was no argument in his voice. Just the quiet certainty that he was coming with you.
You nodded, and for a moment neither of you moved. Then Chan stepped closer, his hand settling at your waist as he leaned down and pressed a slow kiss against your forehead. He lingered there for just a second before pulling away. "One thing at a time," he murmured.
You swallowed and nodded. "One thing at a time."
His eyes flicked toward the hallway before he looked back at you. "I need to shower."
You nodded, finally letting out a small breath that almost resembled a laugh. "Probably."
He disappeared down the hall, and you gathered the things you'd need for the nursery while the water started running upstairs. By the time he came back, his hair was still damp and he'd changed into the clothes he'd set aside for the soft opening. You were waiting by the door with your bag over your shoulder, checking the time on your phone.
"Ready?"
You looked at him. "Ready enough."
He nodded, and the two of you headed out.
The drive to the nursery passed without much conversation. The morning had left both of you quieter than usual, and neither seemed interested in forcing yourselves out of it. Your hand rested in the space between the seats, and at one point Chan reached over and covered it with his own. You let him.
By the time the nursery came into view, the sun was already high enough to throw long bands of light through the greenhouse glass.
You sat there for another moment, taking in the nursery through the windshield. The sign was finally in place above the entrance, the windows were clean, the freshly laid stone curved through the flower beds, and the trees Chan had surprised you with stood along the property where there had once been nothing but overgrown grass. In three hours, people would walk through those doors. You'd spent months imagining what that moment would feel like, and now that it was actually here, you weren't sure you'd ever be ready for it.
Chan glanced over at you. "Ready?"
You let out a slow breath. "Not even a little."
"Me neither."
That made you look at him. "You're nervous?"
"Of course." His eyes returned to the nursery, his expression softening as he took in everything you'd built. "I know how much this means to you."
Something in your chest tightened at that. You reached across the console and squeezed his hand, holding it for another second before finally opening your door.
The rest of the morning disappeared into preparation. There were still things to finish, but the work felt different now. It wasn't the frantic kind of work you'd grown used to over the last two months, where every completed task seemed to uncover three more. This was the final stretch, the small details that made the difference between a construction site and an actual business.
You moved through the greenhouse with your checklist in hand, checking displays, pricing plants, arranging the last of the hanging baskets, and making sure everything looked the way you'd pictured it. Chan moved around you, handling the remaining repairs and setup without needing to be asked, occasionally calling you over when he wanted your opinion on something.
Every so often, you caught sight of him across the property. He'd become so woven into the rhythm of the nursery that it was almost strange to remember there had been a time when he hadn't been here. He carried boxes, adjusted displays, checked the things you'd forgotten to check, and somehow always seemed to know when you needed another pair of hands before you had to ask for them.
By noon, the nursery had finally settled into itself. The tables were full, the pathways were clear, the signs were up, and sunlight poured through the greenhouse glass, catching on rows of green leaves and bright flowers. You stood just inside the entrance, looking over everything, and for the first time since you'd bought the property, there was nothing left on your list that couldn't wait.
You were still staring when Chan came up beside you, his shoulder brushing yours. He looked out over the nursery for a moment before turning toward you. "You did it."
You shook your head, looking around at the place that had once been little more than an abandoned shell. "We did."
His hand found yours, fingers threading through yours as the two of you stood there together, watching the sunlight move across the floor. For once, there was nothing left to fix.
All you had to do was open the doors.
𐙚
Four days after the soft opening, the nursery had been busy enough since then that you hadn't had much time to think.
At least, that was what you kept telling yourself.
There was always something to do. A shipment to check in, a display that needed rearranging, a customer who had been standing in the same aisle for ten minutes trying to decide between two nearly identical pothos. You'd discovered that opening the nursery hadn't made the work disappear. It had simply changed the kind of work waiting for you.
And normally, you loved it.
That morning, though, you found yourself standing behind the register with a receipt in your hand, staring at the date printed across the top without actually reading it.
Four days.
You blinked and folded the receipt in half before sliding it into the drawer.
"Everything okay?"
You looked up to find one of the customers watching you. "Yeah." You smiled quickly. "Sorry. Long morning."
She smiled back and returned her attention to the plant she'd been carrying, and you turned toward the register again.
Four days since Chan finished inside you.
Four days since you stood in his kitchen with a tiny white pill in your palm and tried to convince yourself that taking it meant you could stop thinking about what happened.
It hadn't worked, you hadn't told Chan that though.
Not because you didn't trust him. If anything, that was the problem. You knew exactly how he'd react. He'd sit with you, he'd listen, he'd tell you that whatever happened, you weren't dealing with it alone.
You'd believed him, but that wouldn't make the waiting any easier. Your hand drifted absently toward your stomach before you caught yourself and dropped it. "Get it together," you murmured under your breath.
"Excuse me?"
You looked up. An older woman stood on the other side of the counter, holding a small ceramic pot with a trailing plant spilling over the edge.
"Sorry," you said, straightening. "What can I help you with?"
She smiled and lifted the plant slightly. "I was wondering if this would survive in a bathroom."
You glanced at the leaves, immediately slipping back into familiar territory. "Does the bathroom have a window?"
"Small one."
"Then probably, but I'd keep it somewhere it can still get indirect light. If it's completely dark most of the day, it'll start complaining."
The woman laughed. "Plants complain?"
"Constantly."
That earned another laugh, and soon you were walking her toward the appropriate section, explaining the difference between a few varieties while she asked questions. By the time she made her choice, the receipt from earlier had completely left your mind.
Until you walked back to the register. Your gaze landed on the calendar hanging beside the office door.
You stopped.
Your period was supposed to start soon. You knew that. You also knew the emergency contraceptive could affect the timing, which should have made the whole thing easier to dismiss. Instead, it gave your brain another variable to obsess over.
You looked away, "absolutely not." You picked up your clipboard and turned toward the greenhouse.
The rest of the morning passed in pieces. You helped a couple choose plants for their new apartment, unpacked a shipment of ceramic pots, answered three separate questions about soil, and spent nearly twenty minutes trying to convince a little girl that she couldn't take home every flower she'd seen.
By lunch, your back ached pleasantly from being on your feet.
You stood in the greenhouse with a watering hose in one hand, watching the water darken the soil around a row of flowering plants. Sunlight filtered through the glass overhead, warm against your skin, and for a moment everything felt exactly as it should.
This was what you'd wanted.
The nursery was open. People were coming through the doors, you had done it. So why did your stomach still feel like it was waiting for something?
You turned off the water.
Your phone buzzed in your back pocket. You pulled it out expecting another contractor or supplier, but Chan's name appeared across the screen instead.
Channie ♡: How's my favorite nursery owner?
A smile tugged at your mouth before you could stop it.
You: Busy Channie ♡ : That's not an answer You: ......busy and tired Channie ♡ : Did you eat?
You rolled your eyes.
You: Yessss dad Channie ♡ : Wrong title baby
You smiled despite yourself.
You: Boyfriend Channie ♡ : Better
The warmth that spread through your chest had nothing to do with the greenhouse.
You could picture his expression perfectly. The conversation was ordinary. So ordinary that it should have been easy to let it pull you back into the rest of your day.
Instead, your eyes drifted toward the calendar again, your smile faded.
You locked your phone and slipped it back into your pocket. The nursery was busy. Your relationship was good. The soft opening had gone better than you could have imagined.
Everything was moving forward. You just couldn't shake the feeling that you were standing still, waiting for an answer.
By the time you closed that afternoon, you'd managed to keep yourself occupied enough not to think about it for another few hours.
Then you drove home.
And the second the engine went quiet in your driveway, the thought was waiting for you again.
𐙚
The test was still in your hand when you realized you'd been standing in the bathroom for nearly five minutes.
You hadn't even meant to buy it that morning. You'd told yourself you were only stopping at the pharmacy for a few things you needed for the nursery, but you'd passed the aisle, seen the boxes, and felt that familiar knot tighten in your stomach. Your period was late. Not by much, but enough that you'd stopped trusting every explanation you'd given yourself over the last few days.
So you'd bought one. Then you'd gone home, waited, and taken it.
Now the little plastic stick sat between your fingers, the result staring back at you with a certainty that made your stomach drop.
Positive.
You looked at it again, as though staring long enough might make the second line disappear. It didn't. Your other hand came up to cover your mouth, and you leaned back against the bathroom counter, suddenly aware of how loudly your heart was beating.
"No."
The word barely made it past your lips. Because that was the problem—you couldn't even tell yourself you didn't want a baby. You couldn't get that far.
Your eyes dropped back to the test. There had been a time when the thought of having a child with Chan would have felt impossibly distant, something that belonged to a future neither of you had bothered putting a date on. You'd talked about it. He'd told you he could picture a life with you in it. You'd even laughed together about what your children might be like.
But talking about someday was different from standing barefoot on a bathroom floor with proof that someday might already be here.
Your eyes burned. You thought about the nursery. The opening had been everything you'd wanted. The flowers, the customers, the sunlight pouring through the greenhouse, the little moments that had made all those months of work worth it. You'd finally built something that belonged entirely to you. And now there was this—something that could change everything before you'd even had the chance to enjoy what you'd built.
Your gaze drifted toward the bathroom door. Chan.
You could picture his face if you told him. Not anger. Never that. Surprise, certainly. Maybe fear. Then that steady, practical part of him would take over, the same way it had when you'd called him from the nursery, overwhelmed by contractors and permits and everything you couldn't figure out alone.
He would be there. You knew he would.
And somehow, that made your eyes fill even more. Because you weren't afraid of him. You were afraid of what this meant.
Your thumb rubbed absently over the edge of the test before you looked toward the trash can. You'd already thrown the box away. The receipt was somewhere at the bottom of your bag. There was no reason to keep the test. And yet you couldn't make yourself let go of it.
Your phone buzzed on the counter. You flinched. For one horrible second, you thought it might be Chan.
It wasn't. Just a notification from the nursery.
You stared at the screen before setting it facedown. The world outside the bathroom continued as if nothing had happened. Cars passed somewhere beyond the house. Someone's dog barked down the street. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.
Everything was exactly where it had been an hour ago. Except you weren't.
You looked down at the test one more time. Positive. Your chest tightened as the word settled into something heavier than ink. You finally lowered yourself onto the closed toilet lid, still holding it in your hand, and for the first time you let yourself think the sentence you'd been too afraid to finish.
"I'm pregnant."
--
By the time the nursery opened its doors that morning, you'd convinced yourself the test was behind you for now.
There were too many people to think about anything else.
Chan was carrying a tray of plants through the greenhouse when you caught him from behind, pointing toward the empty section of shelving you'd been trying to fill for the last twenty minutes. "Those go over there."
He looked toward where you were pointing. "These?"
"No, the other ones."
He glanced down at the plants in his arms, then back at you. "Very specific."
"You know what I mean."
"I do." He carried them over anyway.
The nursery had taken on a life of its own. Customers wandered between the displays, sunlight poured through the greenhouse, and every few minutes someone stopped you to ask a question.
You were supposed to be tagging pots, but Chan kept finding reasons to pass by, and every time he did, some part of you noticed. His hand brushed yours when he reached for a pot, his shoulder bumped against yours in the narrow aisle, and more than once you caught his eyes lingering on you when he thought you weren't looking.
Eventually, you looked up and caught him staring from across the greenhouse. "What?"
He smiled, completely unbothered. "Nothing."
"You've been staring at me for five minutes."
"Maybe I like looking at my girlfriend."
You tried to hide your smile by looking back down at the tag in your hand. "Go move your plants."
"Bossy."
"Chan."
He laughed, but he disappeared around the corner with the tray in his arms.
Ten minutes later, you found out exactly where he'd gone.
The storage room was quiet with the nursery doors closed for the afternoon lull, and you'd barely turned around before his hands settled at your waist. You glanced toward the door, lowering your voice instinctively. "You know, if someone sees us—"
"They won't."
"You don't know that."
"I checked."
The ridiculous confidence in his answer made you laugh, and he used the moment to pull you closer. His mouth found yours before you could say anything else, the kiss starting soft and lazy before deepening into something warmer. Your hands caught against the front of his shirt while his arm settled around your back, and for a few seconds the nursery outside might as well have disappeared.
When he finally pulled back, he kept you close, his forehead resting against yours. "You've been distracted today."
You swallowed, trying to keep your expression neutral. "Have I?"
"A little."
His thumb moved slowly against your waist, the touch familiar enough to make your chest tighten. "You okay?"
The question caught somewhere deeper than you wanted it to.
You could have told him then. You could have admitted you'd been counting days, that your period still hadn't come, that you'd bought a test that morning and had been carrying the knowledge around with you ever since.
Instead, you smiled and leaned in to kiss him again, "I'm fine."
Chan paused when you pulled away, studying your face for another second. He didn't look entirely convinced, but he didn't push. He only brushed his thumb once more against your side before letting you go.
You straightened your shirt and reached for the nearest stack of tags, pretending the interruption hadn't affected you.
But it had, and somehow, knowing that you'd just kissed him while carrying a secret you hadn't even figured out how to name made the guilt settle a little heavier in your chest.
You tagged another row of pots. Then you helped a woman pick out fiddle-leaf figs and smiled through three questions about drainage. The nursery was full, loud, and perfect, and every laugh that went off near Chan's voice made the secret press a little tighter against your ribs.
You excuse yourself to the back corridor, past the supply shelf and the irrigation controls, to a bathroom you've never used. The door has a sign on it you can't read from this distance. You shut it behind you and the noise of the nursery drops to a hum through the wall.
You pulled the test from the pocket where you'd stashed it before leaving this morning.
Positive.
Your hand tightened around it. You thought about the nursery. The opening. The customers. The plants lining the greenhouse. The life you'd spent months building with your own hands.
Then you thought about Chan.
You thought about the way he'd looked at you that morning when you were panicking. About how quickly he'd gotten dressed and left for the pharmacy, about the way he'd held your hand while you took the pill, and about how he'd never once made you feel like you were facing any of it alone. Your eyes burned as you looked down at the test one last time.
You walked to the trash can and lifted the lid, holding the test over it for a moment before finally letting it fall. It landed softly against the liner, almost anticlimactically, and you lowered the lid after it. Your hand stayed there.
You could tape the bag shut, take it outside, and let the whole thing disappear into the ordinary machinery of garbage collection and morning routines. You could make it something that had happened and was already over.
Or you could leave it.
Your fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the lid.
From somewhere beyond the bathroom came the sound of Jia laughing, followed a second later by Chan's voice, warm and familiar, before her laughter broke through again. You closed your eyes.
There was something almost cruel about hearing them now, because that sound was the life you'd already grown attached to. The life you'd never planned for, never expected, and somehow still found yourself imagining when you weren't careful.
You opened your eyes and looked down at the trash can. Your hand was still resting on the lid, unable to decide whether you wanted to close it completely and throw the test away, or leave it open for whoever came next.
masterlist | last
a/n: its 1am....I was out being grown apologies LMAO as always dont rush the cook
@itsraininghyunebuckets , @armynstay, @thereaderinyourmind , @nougatjade , @river121798, @hunnybunny05 , @babydollyriri , @ddearina , @ebnabi, @darlingjunnie , @bamsopoong02 , @straystar-8 , @hyunjinxxs , @amaranth-writing, @gwinamlvr @peachluffe @amarecerasus, @monbrigh , @bangct @changbinniescurlyhair, @babythisisourcinema , @marley1773, @cchapssaltteok , @moonychn, @susu6944 , @whoschanandwhydoyallwannabanghim , @canthavetoomuchchaos , @alienoddityfrompluto , @rockstarkkami, @nebugalaxy , @pedropacals0l0s, @charchartumb-lr, @akilovescake , @moon-1307, @certifiedbahnger, @blueberrieseungmin , @murisakimine , @fanaticstay , @my-leo-obsessions, @barbie-girl84 , @lonelydarknessblog, @channie-juseyo , @fanficwriter5 , @gwinamlvr , @sproite, @angeldust296 @jasmine87906 @ready2readnwrite @darlingjunnie @lamentingweaver
OMG OMG OMG
