Chapter Text
Back in 2027
It started with a baby. As so many of their worst and best decisions did.
They weren’t ready. They weren’t even close. They had just barely stopped pretending not to love each other. And then the hospital dropped a child into their hands.
Literally.
His name wasn’t Min-jae yet. He was just “Infant Male, Unknown,” wrapped in a trauma blanket and tucked between two IV poles in Trauma Bay 4, after his mother collapsed in the waiting room and didn’t wake up.
No ID. No contacts. No emergency file. Just a tiny bracelet on a too-small wrist and a half-written note that was later stained beyond recognition in a nurse’s coat
pocket.
They were supposed to transfer him to pediatrics.
But pediatrics was full.
They were supposed to wait for Social Services.
But Social Services didn’t answer until the next morning.
So when the baby screamed sharp, aching, lungs too big for his tiny chest Jaewon picked him up and made it worse. Rocked him side to side, cooed, jostled, cursed.
“He hates me,” Jaewon muttered, panic in his voice. “He actually hates me.”
“You’re holding him wrong,” Kang-hyuk said, deadpan, like they weren’t mid-shift with three codes already logged.
“Oh, you’re an expert now?” Jaewon snapped, eyes wild.
Kang-hyuk took the baby.
The crying stopped.
Immediately.
Jaewon’s mouth dropped open in betrayal.
Kang-hyuk did not smile. But he did look down at the red, tear-slick face now blinking up at him like he was something familiar.
“Shit,” Jaewon whispered. “He imprinted.”
That was supposed to be it.
Just one night.
Just a temporary assignment from the void of bureaucracy and chaos.
But the mother didn’t wake up. And no next-of-kin stepped forward. And the paperwork stalled, and someone needed to feed him, and someone needed to hold him through the night, and apparently someone meant them.
Kang-hyuk filled out the first temporary foster form with neat, precise handwriting. Jaewon signed it with a scrawl, muttering something about bad ideas and emotional blackmail.
And just like that, they had a child.
The first week was hell.
Min-jae (not yet named) refused every brand of formula except one that cost almost 40,000 won a can. He screamed every time Jaewon changed his diaper. He bit Kang-hyuk’s finger during a 3AM bottle session and didn’t even look sorry.
The hospital lent them a collapsible crib. Kang-hyuk assembled it like it was a field surgery.
Jaewon tripped over it three times.
They argued about everything. Nap schedules. Bottle temperatures. Who was supposed to do the 2AM feeding. Whether lullabies were scientifically effective or emotionally manipulative. Whether a baby should be allowed to sleep curled between two trauma surgeons on a hospital cot during night shifts (he did).
But Min-jae
Min-jae laughed in his sleep. Gripped Jaewon’s finger with fierce, tiny hands. Pressed his face into Kang-hyuk’s neck and sighed, like he knew what safety felt like, even before he had words for it.
And they were already so far gone.
They named him Min-jae after two weeks.
Kang-hyuk said it without thinking, just a soft murmur one night while folding too-small onesies Jaewon had accidentally ordered in bulk.
“It suits him,” he said, almost to himself.
Jaewon looked up. “What?”
“That name,” Kang-hyuk said. “Min-jae.”
Jaewon blinked.
The baby gurgled from his blanket pile.
“Min-jae,” Jaewon echoed slowly, as if testing it on his tongue. “Yeah. He looks like one.”
So they filed the name change.
And made it official.
The first time Min-jae got sick, Jaewon almost lost his mind.
It was just a fever. Teething, most likely. But the way he shivered, the whimper in his throat, the heat radiating off his little body Jaewon couldn’t take it.
He sat beside the crib all night, wiping Min-jae’s forehead with a cool cloth, whispering terrible knock-knock jokes, and softly begging him to stay strong.
Kang-hyuk didn’t sleep, either. He didn’t pace. He didn’t beg. He just kept checking vitals, watching breathing, hovering like a ghost.
They both jumped at every cough.
Min-jae recovered in two days.
It took his dads four days to stop hovering.
Their apartment changed.
Quietly.
The clean, clinical minimalism gave way to chaos in color. Picture books piled on the coffee table. Sippy cups stacked beside IV charts. Stuffed dinosaurs stuffed between hospital coats and laundry baskets.
Kang-hyuk installed safety gates with military precision. Jaewon tripped over all of them.
Min-jae loved to sit in Kang-hyuk’s lap and press the buttons on his tablet until it froze. He loved to ride Jaewon’s shoulders like a conquering general, shrieking joyfully through the apartment halls at 7AM.
They bought blackout curtains for naps. Replaced all sharp corners. Burned dinner twice and ate takeout five nights a week.
They never stopped being exhausted.
But they laughed more. Softly. Like they didn’t expect to.
The first time Jaewon heard Min-jae cry out “Daddy!” in the middle of a nightmare, he didn’t even think. He ran.
Tripped over the hallway rug, slammed into the doorframe, landed on the floor but still reached the crib before the second cry.
Min-jae was already awake, blinking in the dark.
Jaewon pulled him close.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re so safe.”
Min-jae tucked his face into Jaewon’s shoulder and said, “Daddy?”
Like he hadn’t already said it.
Like he hadn’t made it true a hundred nights ago, in every quiet look, every bad lullaby, every early morning bottle.
And Jaewon just held him.
So tight.
So full of love it hurt.
Kang-hyuk heard about it later and nodded like he’d known it was coming. But that night, when he tucked Min-jae into bed, he whispered something barely audible.
“Appa loves you too.”
Min-jae, half-asleep, smiled.
Kang-hyuk sat beside the bed for two hours after that, unmoving, heart too full to breathe.
They weren’t perfect parents.
They forgot picture day twice. Missed a birthday party because they both had emergency call. Jaewon swore in front of Min-jae during a toy assembly disaster. Kang-hyuk once made him do math worksheets as a “fun activity.”
But every night no matter how chaotic, how loud, how bone-deep tired they came home.
They kissed Min-jae goodnight. Read the same story for the fiftieth time. Sat beside his bed just long enough to hear his breathing settle.
And when he was finally asleep, and the lights were dim, they’d look at each other with the same quiet wonder.
“How did we end up here?” Jaewon would ask.
Kang-hyuk would never answer.
Because the answer didn’t matter anymore.
Min-jae’s first day of school began with blood.
Not his own.
Kang-hyuk had accidentally sliced his palm open on a broken cabinet hinge at 6AM, and Jaewon tried to bandage it one-handed while brushing Min-jae’s hair with the other. Min-jae was furious, because he wanted the yellow backpack, not the red one. Jaewon was furious because Kang-hyuk refused to sit down while bleeding. Kang-hyuk was silently holding a gauze pad and staring at the calendar like it had betrayed him.
It wasn’t how they imagined the day would go.
But by 7:30AM, the bandage was tight, the hair was brushed (badly), and Min-jae had the yellow backpack strapped on. He looked small and brave and much too young to be walking into a world without them.
He kept holding Jaewon’s hand until the teacher said, gently, “It’s okay to let go.”
Jaewon didn’t.
Kang-hyuk had to nudge him with his uninjured hand. Quiet, firm. “He’s ready.”
Min-jae waved at the door. Beamed like it was nothing. Like it was just another Tuesday.
Jaewon cried in the car.
Kang-hyuk didn’t say anything. Just reached over, brushed Jaewon’s knuckles with his thumb, and didn’t let go the entire ride home.
Parenthood wasn’t cinematic.
There were no dramatic revelations, no life-altering epiphanies. Just 6AM alarms, soggy cereal, mismatched socks, and last-minute science projects about volcanoes and frogs.
There were school emails with bolded subject lines. Lunches that came home uneaten. “Dad, I need a new glue stick” shouted from the hallway while Kang-hyuk was
literally trying to intubate a trauma patient on call.
There were tantrums in the grocery store.
There were feverish nights and scraped knees and “He called me a nerd!” and “I forgot my textbook!” and that one time Jaewon brought Min-jae to work and let him nap in the supply closet because daycare canceled without warning.
There were long days and longer nights. Guilt and mistakes and exhaustion that clung to the skin like sweat.
But also There was Min-jae’s laughter echoing through the apartment. There were notes in Kang-hyuk’s lunch bag that read: “I packed extra snacks because you always forget to eat, Appa.” There was Min-jae running into Jaewon’s arms at pickup like he hadn’t seen him in years. There was quiet pride in every report card, every band concert, every crumpled drawing taped to the fridge.
There were late-night couch moments Min-jae asleep between them, head on Kang-hyuk’s shoulder, legs in Jaewon’s lap, the TV still playing something neither of them were watching where Jaewon would whisper, “Is this what happiness feels like?”
And Kang-hyuk, who didn’t believe in happy endings, would hold them both a little tighter and think, Maybe it is.
The first time Min-jae got bullied, he didn’t say anything.
Not until Jaewon found the torn backpack and the bruises on his elbow.
“He said I was weird,” Min-jae muttered. “For having two dads.”
Jaewon went very still.
Kang-hyuk sat down beside Min-jae on the rug. “Do you think you’re weird?”
“No,” Min-jae said quietly.
“Then he’s wrong.”
Min-jae blinked up at him. “You don’t even sound mad.”
Kang-hyuk’s voice stayed calm, even. “People are afraid of things they don’t understand. That doesn’t mean you have to be.”
Jaewon, however, was already texting the school. Loudly.
“You’re not weird,” he told Min-jae. “You’re brilliant and kind and smarter than both of us put together. And if someone can’t see that, they can eat a thermometer.”
“Jaewon,” Kang-hyuk said, mildly.
“A digital thermometer,” Jaewon amended.
Min-jae giggled.
And that night, they all ate ice cream for dinner. Just because.
They never planned it.
But somewhere in the middle of booster shots and class plays, Kang-hyuk started coming home earlier. Jaewon started cooking more, even when it was just reheated rice and egg. Min-jae started leaving drawings on the bedroom door stick figures labeled Appa and Daddy and Me, with hearts scribbled all around them.
The apartment, once sparse and cold, was now full of small things.
Slippers by the door in three sizes. A row of toothbrushes. A crayon mural under the dining table they never bothered to clean off. Half-built Lego cities. Stacks of
coloring books. Laundry that never quite got folded. The smell of eucalyptus, coffee, and instant noodles lingering like memory.
And love.
So much love.
Not the loud kind.
But the kind that showed up in every quiet thing: in shared glances across a messy kitchen, in fever checks at 2AM, in bedtime stories interrupted by snoring, in “drive safe” texts and packed lunches and hands brushing together in the hallway.
The kind that grew like a root slow, deep, steady.
The kind that built a life.
Min-jae hit thirteen like a typhoon.
One minute, he was a polite, sweet-mouthed child who still held Jaewon’s hand in crosswalks. The next, he was all angles and eye-rolls and sarcasm with a voice that cracked mid-sentence and arms that had grown three inches overnight.
Kang-hyuk, unshaken by code blues and arterial bleeds, stared at him across the dinner table one night and said, “Who gave you attitude?”
Min-jae shrugged. “It’s hereditary.”
Jaewon spat out his water.
Their apartment became a warzone of forgotten socks, muttered comebacks, half-done homework, and music that played too loud through the bathroom door. They argued about curfews. About grades. About whether Jaewon’s fried rice was “mid.”
“Mid?” Jaewon shrieked. “MID?!”
Kang-hyuk just sipped his tea. “He’s testing boundaries.”
“He’s testing my patience.”
“He’s thirteen.”
“He’s possessed.”
But then,
Then there were other nights.
Quiet ones. Soft ones. Like after Min-jae came home late from school, clutching his shoulder with tears barely held back.
“It’s nothing,” he said, too fast.
“Let me see,” Kang-hyuk said.
He didn’t ask twice. He just knelt in the hallway and gently pushed up the sleeve. The bruise was deep, purple blooming ugly across skin that shouldn’t have known that kind of hurt.
Kang-hyuk’s hands went still.
Jaewon said nothing at all. He just walked to the kitchen and called the school with a voice so flat it could cut glass.
Min-jae stood still while Kang-hyuk iced the bruise. His lip trembled.
“I didn’t fight back,” he whispered.
“You didn’t have to,” Kang-hyuk said. “You came home.”
And that night, they didn’t make him talk. They didn’t push.
They just watched a movie on the couch, all three piled under a worn blanket, and Kang-hyuk handed Min-jae his own hoodie without a word.
Min-jae didn’t give it back for a week.
Kang-hyuk and Jaewon didn’t talk about marriage for a long time.
Not because they didn’t want to. But because their life had grown so slowly into something beautiful that they hadn’t realized it was already permanent.
They argued like husbands. Worried like husbands. Sat on the bathroom floor together at 3AM during Min-jae’s flu and passed tissues like a prayer.
Kang-hyuk did Min-jae’s laundry. Jaewon taught him how to throw a punch (then promptly forbade him from ever using it). They had Min-jae’s teachers on speed dial.
They baked a disastrous cake for his sixteenth birthday and ate it anyway.
So when Jaewon, standing barefoot in the kitchen with flour on his cheek, turned to Kang-hyuk and said, casually, “Should we get married, or is this just some kind of lifelong roommates-with-a-kid situation?”
Kang-hyuk blinked. Then nodded.
“Okay,” he said, like they were planning groceries.
Min-jae found out by accident through an email invitation Agnes accidentally CC’d him on.
He ran into the living room, holding up his phone. “Are you two getting married?!”
Jaewon looked up from a pile of laundry. “We’ve been married for like ten years.”
“But legally ”
Kang-hyuk shrugged. “Formality.”
Min-jae blinked.
Jaewon nudged him. “You want to be best man?”
Min-jae stared at both of them.
Then broke into the widest, most ridiculous grin either of them had ever seen.
“Only if I get to give a speech.”
Jaewon immediately said no. Kang-hyuk immediately agreed.
Min-jae gave the speech anyway.
It involved three embarrassing stories, a slide show Nurse Agnes absolutely should not have helped him make, and a closing line that made Jaewon cry into his cake.
“I don’t remember the moment they chose me. But I remember every moment they stayed.”
The years passed like pages.
Min-jae finished high school. Left home. Came back. Left again. Came back again.
He didn’t always call. Sometimes he disappeared into exams and internships and rotations that lasted far too long. Sometimes Kang-hyuk would glance at the apartment hallway and just know it would be too quiet tonight. Sometimes Jaewon would stare at a photo on the wall and mutter, “He’s probably surviving on caffeine and spite. Just like you.”
They never said it but they missed him like breathing.
And then
There were nights when the door clicked open at 11PM and Min-jae would walk in, exhausted and grinning, saying “Hi” like he’d never left.
They’d feed him reheated rice and sit up too late telling stories. Laughing. Listening. Quiet.
And it was enough.
It was always enough.
In 2049, Min-jae came home with a new white coat and a new scar on his chin and said, “I think I want to specialize in pediatrics.”
Jaewon blinked.
Kang-hyuk smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
“I want to be what you were for me,” Min-jae said. “Someone who showed up.”
They didn’t answer.
They didn’t need to.
Jaewon pulled him into a hug, too tight, too long.
Kang-hyuk rested a hand on his back and said, so quietly, “You already are.”
Now, in 2050, the house is quieter.
Min-jae doesn’t live here anymore.
But there are still cups in the cupboard that only he used. A dent in the couch where he always sat. A hoodie that still hangs on the hook by the door, too small for him now, but no one dares to move it.
Jaewon walks slower now. Kang-hyuk glares less.
They still argue. Still fall asleep on the couch mid-movie. Still forget to defrost dinner. Still look at each other like they’re remembering something only they lived
through.
Sometimes, at night, when the world is quiet and the rooms are dim, Kang-hyuk will say, “Do you ever think we weren’t meant to have this?”
And Jaewon sleepy, warm, always half-honest will reply, “I think fate got bored of waiting and gave it to us anyway.”
And Kang-hyuk, who used to flinch at the word love, now just nods. And stays.
And keeps staying.
Because home wasn’t a place.
It wasn’t even a person.
It was a series of small decisions.
A thousand tiny kindnesses.
A choice, made over and over again, to show up.
To come back.
To keep holding on.
And they did.
Every day.
They still do.
2050 | Evening | Baek-Yang Residence
The kitchen was warm.
Dim light spilled over the counters, soft and flickering, like the room itself was sighing into sleep. There was music playing faintly from the hallway speaker something old and crackly and half-familiar. Someone had forgotten to turn it off.
Kang-hyuk was drying dishes. Jaewon was folding leftover dumpling wrappers into absurd shapes one looked vaguely like a turtle; another resembled a scalpel.
They were talking about nothing in particular.
Min-jae stood in the doorway and just… looked.
He hadn’t meant to freeze. But something in his chest wouldn’t let him move.
Because they looked exactly the same. Older, yes. Softer. But the same.
Kang-hyuk still tilted his head in that precise, thoughtful way. Jaewon still talked with his whole body, like every word had elbows. They still bickered like the world would fall apart if they ever agreed completely. They still laughed in that quiet, shared rhythm as if their hearts had synced years ago and never untangled.
They were here. They were alive. They were happy.
And they didn’t remember.
Not the time loops. Not the rooftop. Not the glowing medallion or the way Min-jae had disappeared from their arms in 2025 like smoke. They remembered his childhood, his bad report cards, the frog he kept in the bathtub. But not the way he'd gotten there. Not the fact that, once upon a time, he had made this.
That he had brought them together.
Min-jae’s throat burned.
He walked toward them.
Neither of them looked up right away Kang-hyuk was frowning at a chipped mug, Jaewon was laughing at his own terrible origami.
So Min-jae did something he hadn’t done in years.
He hugged them.
Both. At once.
Without a word.
His arms circled around their shoulders from behind, his face tucked between Jaewon’s hoodie and Kang-hyuk’s soft cotton shirt, and he just held on.
Tight.
Like he needed to remember how they felt. Like he was terrified they might vanish. Like he still wasn't sure if this was real.
They both froze.
Jaewon stiffened immediately, eyes wide. “Min-jae?”
Kang-hyuk’s hands paused on the towel, still damp.
“Are you okay?” Jaewon asked, turning slightly, trying to look at his face. “Did something happen? Did someone say something to you at work? Are you sick? Is this a fever hug?”
Min-jae didn’t answer.
He just squeezed tighter.
“Min-jae,” Kang-hyuk said, softer. “Tell us what’s wrong.”
But Min-jae didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
He just stood there, arms locked around the two people who raised him, who bickered over burn cream and dumplings, who slept on opposite ends of the couch but always woke up tangled, who didn’t remember that he had traveled through time to give them each other
But who still, somehow, chose each other anyway.
Min-jae’s voice was thick when he finally spoke.
“I just ” He stopped. Swallowed. “Nothing’s wrong. I just… needed to.”
That wasn’t the whole truth.
But it was enough.
Kang-hyuk looked over at Jaewon, something unreadable in his expression. A question they didn’t know how to ask.
And then he said, very gently, “Let’s just enjoy the moment.”
Jaewon blinked. “Huh?”
“This,” Kang-hyuk said, quietly. “Whatever it is. Let’s not ruin it by asking too many questions.”
Jaewon was silent for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
And said nothing more.
Min-jae didn’t let go for another minute. Maybe two. Maybe forever, in his heart.
When he finally did, his eyes were red, but he smiled. A little shaky. A little messy. But real.
And Jaewon who still didn’t understand what had just happened ruffled his hair and muttered, “You’re such a weird kid.”
Min-jae just laughed.
Because he wasn’t a kid anymore.
But right now, in this moment, in this kitchen with the music still playing and the air still warm and the two men who made him feel like the past had always been worth it
He felt safe again.
And that was all that mattered.