Chapter Thirteen #2
As the day gets late, Hongjoong suggests we all go out for dinner.
We end up at an expensive traditional restaurant, the kind with private rooms and floor seating and staff who bow deeply and address Hongjoong by name.
I have to make a real effort not to wince or let out an undignified sound as I lower myself onto the floor cushion, the large plug shifting inside me with the change in position and pressing against my prostate hard enough to make my cock twitch in my pants, my hole throbbing around the intrusion, the built-up cum turning my stomach and making the thought of eating almost unbearable.
Hongjoong puts a hand possessively on the back of my neck as we settle in, heavy and claiming, his fingers curling around the nape where the bond mark sits just below, and I hunch automatically under the pressure but don’t dare push him off.
I don’t feel hungry. My body is too full and too uncomfortable for appetite, the persistent cramp in my lower belly making even the smell of the food laid out before us turn my stomach slightly.
I pick at my rice with my chopsticks, moving grains around without lifting them to my mouth, pushing a piece of meat from one side of my plate to the other.
“Eat,” Hongjoong says without looking at me, his voice a low growl that carries the unmistakable edge of a command.
I force myself to lift my chopsticks and chew and swallow, the food sitting like lead in my already overfull stomach.
Hongjoong and Sungyoon talk animatedly over the spread of dishes, Sungyoon telling Hongjoong about his soccer team and his classes and his friends, Hongjoong listening, remembering names and details Sungyoon mentioned earlier in the day.
I try to join in once, asking Sungyoon how he likes the food, and he doesn’t even glance at me, just keeps talking to Hongjoong like I didn’t speak.
I try again a few minutes later, commenting on something Sungyoon said about his math teacher, and this time he gives me a flat monosyllable without turning his head.
The third time I open my mouth, offering to order him the dessert I know he likes, Sungyoon’s eyes slide past me like I’m a piece of furniture, and he asks Hongjoong if they have the chocolate bingsu here instead.
I stop trying after that. I keep my head down for the rest of the meal, chopsticks moving mechanically between my plate and my mouth, chewing and swallowing food I can’t taste while the two of them laugh and talk across the table, their voices bright and overlapping, filling the private room with a warmth that doesn’t extend to where I’m sitting.
The plug aches inside me and the bond mark throbs on my neck and I eat because I was told to eat and I stay quiet because no one wants to hear me speak, and I think this is what I deserve, all of it, every bit of it.
That knowledge doesn’t make it hurt any less.
When we get back to the apartment Sungyoon kicks off his shoes and drops onto the living room couch with the dogs, Alto immediately draping her long silky body across his lap while Rennard circles twice and settles at his feet, and Hongjoong follows him in, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it over the back of a chair as he asks Sungyoon if he wants to watch something.
I hear Sungyoon say yeah, and then the sound of the television clicking on, and I stand in the hallway for a moment with my shoes still on, listening to the two of them settle in together, Sungyoon’s voice bright and talkative as he scrolls through options, Hongjoong’s warm and engaged as he vetoes something and suggests something else, both of them laughing at whatever comes up on the screen.
I take my shoes off quietly and pad down the hall toward the bedroom without announcing myself.
Neither of them calls after me or seems to notice I’ve gone, their conversation continuing uninterrupted behind me, Sungyoon launching into a story about something one of his friends did that has Hongjoong cracking up, the sound of it carrying through the apartment, filling the space with a life and warmth that follows me all the way to the bedroom door but doesn’t come through it when I close it behind me.
I sit on the edge of the bed. The plug shifts as I lower myself down, and I wince, adjusting my weight to one hip, pressing a hand against my cramping belly.
My body is exhausted deeper than muscle fatigue, a bone-deep weariness that makes even sitting upright feel like an effort, and the persistent ache between my legs and in my lower back pulses.
I can still hear them talking through the wall, muffled now but audible, Sungyoon’s voice rising with excitement about something and Hongjoong responding with that easy engaged tone he uses with the boy, the one that’s all interest and attention and none of the cold distance he reserves for me.
I sit there and I wait. I don’t undress or lie down or reach for my phone.
I just sit with my hands in my lap and listen to the sounds of my son and his father getting to know each other in the next room.
I try to feel happy about it because I am happy about it, genuinely, even as the loneliness of being shut out of it settles into my soul.
It’s a long time before I hear the television shut off and Hongjoong’s voice telling Sungyoon to get some sleep, that they’ll pick up where they left off tomorrow.
Sungyoon says goodnight and I hear his bedroom door close, and then footsteps in the hall, and then the master bedroom door opens and Hongjoong steps inside and pushes it shut behind him with a soft click.
He looks at me sitting on the edge of the bed in the same spot I’ve been in for the last hour and a half, still fully dressed, hands folded between my knees.
His expression is hard to read in the dim light from the bedside lamp, between tired and guarded.
He doesn’t move toward me right away, just stands by the door and watches me the way he’s been watching me for days, like he’s trying to decide what to do with me.
“Sungyoon hates me,” I say quietly, sounding small, rougher around the edges.
Hongjoong exhales through his nose and crosses his arms. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s brooding. It’s what teenagers do.”
I shake my head, looking down at my hands. “I don’t blame him. I’d be angry too if I were in his position.”
“So then why did you do it?” Hongjoong asks, though the question isn’t casual.
He pushes off the door and takes a step closer, his brow creasing as he looks down at me.
“That’s what I still don’t understand, Jae.
What made you run? What made you think you had to stay away from me and raise our son alone? ”
My teeth find my lower lip, and I bite down, the sharp sting grounding me as something comes apart inside me that I’ve been holding sealed shut since I was nineteen.
I’ve rehearsed this conversation a thousand times in my head over the years, imagined every possible version of it, and none of them prepared me for how hard it is to actually open my mouth and let the words out.
“The morning after graduation,” I start, my voice wavers so I stop and swallow and try again.
“I went to get us food from the vending machines. When I came back you were already up, walking down the hallway toward me.” I can see it so clearly even now, Hongjoong’s wild hair and his unbuckled belt and the confusion on his face, the way he looked right at me and didn’t know.
“You told me you thought you’d done something stupid.
That you were worried you might have bonded an omega during your rut, that you couldn’t remember anything.
” I pause, my fingers twisting together in my lap.
“And then you laughed. You said you were relieved nothing happened, that your parents would kill you if you’d made a mistake like that on graduation night. ”
Hongjoong is very still across from me. I can feel his eyes on the top of my head, but I can’t look up.
“In that moment, I decided you didn’t want what happened between us,” I say, it sounds flat and distant even to my own ears, like I’m reciting something I memorized a long time ago.
“That it was a mistake you were glad to have avoided. That if I told you the truth, that it was me, that you’d bonded me, you would look at me with that same relief and tell me it was fine, that we could figure out how to undo it, and I couldn’t—” My throat closes and I have to breathe through it, blinking hard.
“I couldn’t make myself face the possibility of telling you and having you reject me.
So I buried it and walked away. And then later when I found out I was pregnant, it was even worse, because by then the fear wasn’t just about me anymore.
If you knew about the baby and didn’t want either of us, I wouldn’t have survived it. ”
The silence that follows is so heavy I can hear the hum of the apartment’s ventilation system and the faint tick of Hongjoong’s watch.
“Yoonjae.” Hongjoong’s voice is strained, tight and rough like something is being wrung out of him. “I said that because I was afraid I’d bonded an omega that wasn’t you.”
I look up. He’s staring at me with an expression that’s half fury and half anguish, his jaw working, his hands balled into fists at his sides.
“You were the only one I wanted,” he says, clear and certain.
“I woke up on that floor and the first thing I felt was the bond pull and I panicked, because I thought I’d ruined everything by bonding some random omega during a blackout when the only person I ever wanted to bond was standing right in front of me. ”
I have to close my eyes against the sting of them, the sheer waste of it, all those years of silence built on a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up in thirty seconds if either of us had just been brave enough to say what we meant.