[oneshot] across the universe
Title: across the universe
Pairing: baekhyun/chanyeol
Rating: nc17
Genre: au, sci-fi, slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing, sex, tentacles, mpreg, mild violence
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: honestly, baekhyun likes kids, but he also considers them one of nature's most effective forms of STD. sequel to the tentacle porn. for yeolie, for exoforsichuan. 4,411 words.
Half a year after Chanyeol's big revelation, they take a job in the Orion Arm of the galaxy. It's pretty typical stuff, cargo transport from the Owl Nebula to the Butterfly Cluster, nothing they haven't done a hundred times over-except the minute the ship starts weaving through the asteroid cloud around BM Scorpii, Baekhyun's stuck clutching the toilet bowl. Chanyeol takes over steering the ship to dock while Baekhyun systematically hacks up the contents of his stomach.
It doesn't go away even after they've landed. Chanyeol comes back from the meet-up with supplies and a new set of fans for the engines, props the bathroom door open, and asks, "Motion sickness?"
"I don't think so," Baekhyun wheezes. "Doesn't make sense." He wipes his mouth with his knuckles and staggers upright, leans into the hand that Chanyeol extends toward his shoulder.
"Maybe it was that horrible takeout sushi we had on the way here," Chanyeol suggests, helping him into the cabin.
Baekhyun frowns. He curls up in bed and accepts the ibuprofen Chanyeol pulls out of the first aid kit. "Why aren't you sick, then?"
"Good question," Chanyeol says. "Tentacle immunity?"
Baekhyun laughs, quiet and throaty. Chanyeol, in a moment of spontaneous affection, tucks the covers over his shoulders. Two breaths later, he's fast asleep.
There's no Federation-sanctioned hospital in the Butterfly Cluster, but there are several on Ptolemy. Chanyeol flies them to the closest one and the doctors there run a couple of routine tests, which lead to more tests, which culminate in-
"Let me be clear," Baekhyun says, threading a hand through his hair in agitation as the last peppy nurse steps out with a packet of his blood. "When we started this, pregnancy wasn't really something I thought I'd ever have to deal with."
At this point, Chanyeol's said sorry so many times that it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Still: "Sorry," he murmurs, clutching at the handle of Baekhyun's gurney. "I didn't-I didn't know it was a possibility."
Baekhyun stares down at the sheet covering his legs. There are a bunch of pamphlets spread out over the thin nylon: How to Take Care of Your Baby Bump, and Maintaining Your Health Through Gestation, Space Travel Edition, and, helpfully, Male Pregnancy: It's More Common Than You Think! The situation hasn't had time to sink in yet. "I guess putting condoms on every single one of your tentacles would've been too much of a hassle." He rubs a hand over his stomach. It doesn't seem any poofier than usual-but what does he know? He isn't an obstetrician. When Baekhyun raises his head, Chanyeol's looking at him, gaze unreadable. "What the hell are we going to do?"
"It doesn't have to be a bad thing," Chanyeol starts. He licks the corner of his mouth-a nervous tic. "This could be good."
"How do you figure?" Baekhyun returns, incredulous. "Chanyeol, normal people wait until they have a roof over their heads and steady jobs before they think about having children. We have-we have a nice collection of empty fast food containers piling up in the corner of our living room. The ship is a flying death trap on a good day. I don't even have regular health insurance. And you want to bring life into the world?"
Chanyeol shrugs it all off. He looks far too calm, given the circumstances. "So our kid will start traveling early. We can make it work."
Baekhyun narrows his eyes. "I don't think you understand."
"Help me understand."
He pushes past a rising wave of nausea and waves a hand in the air between them. "We are not in any position to raise a kid." He slumps against the pillows. "I'm not ready. We aren't prepared for this at all."
Chanyeol leans closer, eyes wide and earnest. "Who is, really? Listen, Baekhyun, if we were going to wait until we thought we were ready, we'd be dead before it happened."
"Oh, that's really heartening. Thanks for the pep talk." Baekhyun presses his hands to his face and closes his eyes for a minute. It helps a bit, with the nausea and the sharp lance of panic arcing through his chest. "You know, I always thought we could maybe, like, adopt or something. Not this."
There's a long pause on Chanyeol's side of the gurney. "So you've thought about it before," he says at last, and he already sounds like he's won. Baekhyun's not sure when it turned into a competition.
"Yes," he mutters, "yes, I've thought about it before, not seriously, but-it's not that I don't like kids, okay? I'm fantastic with kids. They love me. I just-" He trails off uncertainly, exhaling slowly into his palms. "I can fly a ship through anything, but I don't know how to do this."
Chanyeol's fingers close gently around his wrist. "Hey. We'll be fine. Great, even."
"Easy for you to say," Baekhyun grumbles. "You aren't the one who has to carry this thing to term. How long is term, anyway?"
When he looks up again, Chanyeol's mouth is flapping like he's a fish out of water. "Um," he says. "I'll have to ask my mom. She'd know." His face flushes pink. The ring around Baekhyun's wrist tightens.
Baekhyun swallows thickly. He straightens up, head swimming. "We're really doing this, huh?"
"Only if you want to," Chanyeol echoes. His teeth worry at his lower lip, breath held like he's balanced on a tightrope.
Baekhyun knows the feeling. He rubs a hand against his abdomen and relaxes a little. Chanyeol's probably right. There never is a perfect time to have a kid. These things just happen. Their situation is less than ideal, but plenty of people have had children in conditions far worse than theirs. Have been for centuries. Millennia. Life has a curious way of rooting itself out, a leafy tendril breaking through the final layer of topsoil and unfurling triumphantly in the sun.
At least they have the ship.
"I'm scared as shit," he says.
"Yeah," Chanyeol replies. "Me too."
Once Baekhyun's stocked up on anti-nausea pills, there really isn't that much of a difference between being pregnant and being not. A week out from the Ptolemy Cluster, his stomach begins to swell. And maybe he nearly comes when Chanyeol bends over him in bed and sucks one of his nipples into his mouth. That's about it.
The gestation period, according to a very informative video call with Chanyeol's mother, is something like twelve to fourteen weeks. "Oh, good," Baekhyun says, relieved. He sends her his most charming smile. Doing the meet the parents thing after getting knocked up seems a little backward, but nothing about this is normal. Mrs. Park is incredibly chill about everything, which helps. "I won't have to do three trimesters?"
Chanyeol's brow furrows. "That's pretty short, isn't it?"
"He isn't giving birth to a live child," his mom says. "The egg comes first, of course."
Of course. A suffocating silence descends in the cockpit. For a moment Baekhyun gets these horrible flashbacks to grade school, before he started hapkido lessons and learned how to kick people's asses to Mars, when the older kids would shove him around and call him, among other things, chicken. Then: "You're kidding, right?" Baekhyun says faintly. He turns to Chanyeol, frozen stiff in the copilot chair, and slugs him in the arm. "Please tell me she's kidding. I can't believe you conned me into-"
"Don't worry, Baekhyun, it's not as bad as it sounds," she interrupts, serene. "And you'll want to take notes on this next part. Incubation conditions are important."
In between all the harried preparations, installing a crib that will handle zero g and dealing with Baekhyun's serious samgyupsal cravings (turns out Chanyeol isn't half bad at cooking from scratch, Baekhyun knew there was a reason he liked him), they still have to eke out some sort of living. Baekhyun's just starting to show through his clothing when he runs afoul of a couple of thugs on Sirius A.
The package of the day, shiny new nunchucks with a twelve-meter reach, is for Tao, whose Federation Standard has gotten a lot better since the last time Baekhyun saw him. He still slips into rapid-fire Mandarin when overexcited, though, and it takes him three tries to thrust a lumpy bag into Baekhyun's arms and say, "Drop this off at Yixing's when you get the chance," in a language that he actually understands.
Baekhyun gives it a little shake. "What's in it?"
"Latest cannabis prototype," he says flippantly. "Lifted it off a trafficker I roughed up last week. Thought Yixing would be interested." He peers closer at Baekhyun, eyes narrow. "There's something different about you, hyung."
"Yeah?" Baekhyun says, raising a brow. "Tell me about it."
"It's like a-glow, or something," Tao says. "You look healthier?"
Baekhyun snorts. "I'd invite you to the baby shower, but I don't think we'll be having one." He watches Tao literally light up with glee as the implications sink in, and shakes his head as Tao glances at his PADD. "At least wait till I go before you start firing off texts." He waves the bag for Yixing. "You know we don't usually take orders on the fly."
Tao fervently folds one of Baekhyun's hands between his own. "I'll make it worth your while, I promise."
The tip Tao gives him for the extra haul is enough to pay for the next five months of fuel, so Baekhyun can't complain too much. It's when he steps back out of Tao's apartment building that things get tricky. The drug industry in Canis Major isn't very forgiving, especially not if their newest product is about to spread to one of its top competitors. The two menacing lizards blocking his way back to the airstrip have probably been dispatched to get rid of him and take back what's theirs.
Baekhyun hadn't anticipated how tiring running with extra baggage would be. He darts out into the busy street at a brisk jog, abdomen cramping as he weaves between pedestrians. A particle beam whizzes past his shoulder and Baekhyun hits the ground at a roll, gravel scraping his knees. In the distance, he can see the EXO idling on one of the launch pads, helm peeking out.
He waits until the stampeding crowd's dispersed enough before turning around and pulling the bulky plasma rifle out of his bag. The lizard with awful greasy hair manages to dodge out of the way in time, but the other one's head explodes like a ripe cantaloupe on impact. "Nice try," Baekhyun crows, and darts back up the sidewalk.
His communicator crackles when he's two blocks out. "What the hell is going on down there?" comes Chanyeol's voice, feedback breaking it up.
"Get ready to go," Baekhyun says, pounding across the pavement. "Trouble coming."
There's a burning sensation in his chest every time he breathes in. The belly of the ship opens up for him as he closes in. He sprints up the cargo ramp and turns as the ship trembles for take off, fires off one more round before letting himself drop, legs like jelly beneath him.
It takes him a while to catch his breath. They blaze out of the atmosphere at warp factor seven. Baekhyun pitches back against the metal gridwork and listens to the cool, impersonal voice of the ship's radar call out a steadily dropping stream of pursuers. Baekhyun presses his palms flat against the floor and waits for the rumbling to subside.
As soon as they're out of reach the ship spits Chanyeol out onto the lower deck. His face swims into view, pale and pinched. "You should've called for backup," he snaps, and the hand that brushes against Baekhyun's shoulder comes away wet with blood.
"I'm-"
"What would've happened if that phaser blast had grazed your stomach instead?"
Baekhyun winces and sits up. "What do you want me to say? That I'll be more careful? We're smugglers, Chanyeol. Danger and bodily harm are part of the job description. I don't know what else to tell you."
Chanyeol presses his mouth into a thin line and savagely opens the first-aid kit. He rips the collar of Baekhyun's shirt open and scrubs at the wound with alcohol, perhaps a little rougher than he could've been. Baekhyun inhales through his teeth and tries to stay still as Chanyeol dresses the cut.
When he's done, Baekhyun flexes his arm and swallows. "Where are we now?"
"I set course to Betelgeuse," Chanyeol says, collapsing next to him, hair hanging in his face. "I'll take care of the delivery."
Baekhyun glances at him. "That's really chivalrous of you, but unnecessary."
"Just let me do this, okay?" Chanyeol deflates. "It's only temporary. At least until you-the baby-"
Whatever's in Baekhyun's stomach gives a firm lurch. He makes a quiet noise of surprise and Chanyeol raises his head, bemused. Baekhyun runs a sheepish hand over the bare skin of his stomach as the kid kicks again. Chanyeol's hand reaches over to join it, warm and rough. Baekhyun opens his mouth, feels the rhythmic thump of the baby's heel against his palm, and says, grudgingly, "Okay."
He spends the next month waddling around the ship, sore in places he didn't realize it was possible to be sore. Historically, there's not a lot of sightseeing involved in smuggling. They're usually either on too tight a schedule or pissing too many people off with their presence to linger, but being trapped inside when he's used to being out and about isn't fun, especially when all Chanyeol wants to talk about when he gets back is, "Mozart or Beethoven?"
"I'm not forcing my baby to listen to that drivel," Baekhyun says primly, scrolling through music on his PADD. "I choose Liszt. A real artist."
"Fighting words," Chanyeol says, but he's grinning as the first runs of Un Sospiro filter in through the PA system. He bows from the waist and tugs Baekhyun up by the wrist without preamble. Baekhyun forgets the ache in his ankles as Chanyeol dips him sloppily, if only because his bare feet trod on Baekhyun's nine times out of ten as they whirl around the living room.
"You suck at dancing," Baekhyun says, already winded.
"Shut up. It's romantic." Chanyeol dips him again and they fall over neatly onto the couch, Baekhyun caged in between his arms. After a beat of quiet staring, Chanyeol leans down to plant an open-mouthed kiss on his neck.
Baekhyun wrinkles his nose. "Don't start something you won't finish."
Chanyeol hums against the bob of his Adam's apple. Baekhyun shivers. "You know me better than that."
One nice thing about this is Baekhyun doesn't actually have to buy maternity wear. He can just steal from Chanyeol's closet instead. Not like he didn't do it all the time before, but now he has a legitimate excuse since none of his clothing will fit anymore.
Baekhyun lifts his arms and Chanyeol's shirt slides off him easy. "Next stop you're doing laundry," Chanyeol mumbles against his throat.
"You'd put a pregnant dude through all that?" Baekhyun whines. "Cruel." A beat later, he chokes on his tongue. One of Chanyeol's hands has wound its way past the waistband of his appropriated boxers to settle around Baekhyun's dick.
Chanyeol huffs. "Fine. Rain check, then."
Baekhyun gestures down at the round swell of his belly. "You're going to be working this off for a long time, so I wouldn't hold my breath."
"Less talk," Chanyeol says decisively, scooting back on his haunches. "More-" The hand around Baekhyun's cock tightens and Baekhyun throws his head back, face burning, hips rising to thrust into it.
A warm tongue licks at one of his nipples and Baekhyun's fingers sink into Chanyeol's hair, pull taut. His skin tingles at every point of contact, Chanyeol's lips roaming across his chest until Baekhyun's shuddering so hard he's almost vibrating. His legs lock behind Chanyeol's thighs, heels digging into the backs of his knees, torso arching up to meet Chanyeol's mouth and his hands.
Chanyeol squeezes tighter, the ring of his thumb and forefinger dragging up and down the length of his erection. Baekhyun wails, a series of cracking no, no, no's tumbling out of his mouth. His hands don't know whether to push Chanyeol away or tug him in closer. Chanyeol laughs into the curve of his stomach. "You're so lovely," he says, and the unwavering conviction in his voice makes Baekhyun believe it.
"Don't be gross," he groans, and spills in Chanyeol's palm.
Because the universe is conspiring against him, they're nowhere near a medical facility when the first contractions come. Baekhyun sweats through all his layers of bedding and then some before Chanyeol manages to get a hold of his doctor friend on video chat, this tiny owlish dude who takes one look at Baekhyun through the camera and says, "You're going to need a lot more pillows."
"Sorry we're meeting like this," Baekhyun bites out, trying to smile. Dr. Do Kyungsoo isn't very big on distracting small talk, but it's just as well. Baekhyun barely remembers anything apart from the all-consuming pain. His dad had kidney stones once, and described the sensation as trying to pee out a watermelon. Baekhyun imagines this must be the same, except all he has as anesthetic is something really dubious Yixing had gifted him with when they swung by his place to deliver Tao's package.
When he's lucid enough for speech again, Kyungsoo's signed off from the call and Chanyeol's sitting by the bed holding his hand.
"Hey," Baekhyun croaks, voice breaking. "How long was I out?"
"Depends on what you mean by out," Chanyeol says solemnly. "You said some very hurtful things about my tentacles."
"I can't even feel the lower half of my body right now, Chanyeol," he growls. "Next time you can have the kid. See how you like it."
Chanyeol's mom had called it an egg but the opaque shell of the thing is soft like gelatin after they've cleared all the slime away. Every now and then it pulses, white to green, a ripple across the surface the only indication that it's alive. "What am I supposed to do?" Baekhyun says, staring down at where Chanyeol's wrapped it in blankets in the crib. "Sit on it? Roost? Fry it in a pan?"
"Technically, she just said keep it warm," Chanyeol reminds him. "Tropical temperatures. We have climate control for that."
"Oh, great," Baekhyun says, very dry. "Our own personal rainforest." He reaches a tentative hand out to touch the smooth exterior and the surface warms in response, a little heartbeat tapping against his skin. "Now what?"
Chanyeol tucks his chin over the railing, eyes luminous in the low light. "Now we wait."
Some nights, after they've docked for the evening, Baekhyun will wake up and see Chanyeol reading to the crib. He gets through all of Baekhyun's old delivery logs, censoring out the tasteful swearing, before moving on to the boring user manuals that came with the ship. Baekhyun's pretty sure he hears the egg snore a couple of times, but keeps it to himself.
"Have you thought of names?" Chanyeol asks him, when they're slogging through the ice on Hoth to drop contraband heat packs off at the nearest Federation outpost. "We should talk about that, right? I like Beenzino for a boy. It sounds regal."
"I can see now that we aren't going to agree," Baekhyun says breezily. "I really fucking hope we don't have a boy."
"It could work for a girl, too!"
On the way out of orbit, the ship meets some nasty turbulence. Baekhyun straps the egg against his chest and struggles to maneuver them out of the mess. It's not until they get out of the Delta star system that conditions stabilize, but when Baekhyun leans back in his chair and looks down, there's a fine fissure in the shell.
"Oh, fuck," he says. He puts the ship on autopilot with shaking hands and picks his way to the cabin, where Chanyeol's passed out in bed. "Yo, Chanyeol. Wake up."
Chanyeol rubs the sleep out of his eyes and blinks at him. "What's wrong?"
"You'll want to see this," Baekhyun says.
They sit cross-legged on the bed together to watch the egg hatch. The fissure widens into a crack, which spreads out across the shell. At some point, Baekhyun dozes off. It honestly does take forever, and according to the rules, they aren't supposed to help. It's something like butterflies batting their way out of a cocoon. If you're coming out of an egg, you have to do it yourself.
Once both arms are out in the open, Chanyeol nudges Baekhyun awake. The kid's skin looks pink and healthy. It takes another hour for her to clear away the rest of the shell. A shriveled umbilical cord's attached to the inside of the last piece. Chanyeol snips it away with the scissors in the first-aid kit and carries her to the bathroom to wash her off.
Baekhyun can't stop staring. Even in the water her skin stays pink, except for the two tiny green tentacle arms that are attached to her shoulders. The frizzy tumble of hair on her head is a fiery red. She's bigger than a normal kid would be right after birth. More aware of her surroundings, too. When Baekhyun sticks a finger in front of her face, a hand and a tentacle reach out to grab at it.
He tosses Chanyeol a severe look. "We're not naming her Beenzino." Chanyeol presses a hand to his chest and looks wounded, muttering something that sounds like it was just a joke, Jesus. Baekhyun dries the baby off and gathers her up in his arms. "Hey, babygirl," he coos, and she grins up at him. She's already got teeth. "What do you want to be called?"
They end up calling her Baby for two-going-on-three weeks because they can't decide on a name. "I'm glad she got your ears," Chanyeol says, bent over the crib to feed her bits of fruit.
"I like your ears," Baekhyun says, mouth curling. "They're really nice to grab onto when I-"
"Don't listen to him, baby Beenzino," Chanyeol cuts in. He drops the pineapple in his haste to clap his hands around her head.
Baekhyun tickles her cheek and laughs. "If she starts answering to that I'm going to castrate you."
Baekhyun's favorite place in the galaxy is a tiny beach planet orbiting an unnamed red dwarf near Earth's solar system. Jongdae owns the deeds to the place and hasn't found anyone suitable to sell it to. He doesn't want it commercialized, though people have offered him a lot of money. It's prime resort real estate. Perfect weather, perfect size. See, the sun comes up sixteen times each Federation day, dawn every ninety minutes. A new day in less time it takes to fly from there to Earth and back. It's the first place Baekhyun takes them, Chanyeol and their kid, her toes and other appendages wiggling in the sand, and in the light of the rising sun, they finally agree to call her Haru.
"Oh my God," Jongdae says, delighted, as he runs out across the lawn to meet them. "A teenybopper! I can't believe you caved in to plebeian domesticity. Have you picked out new curtains yet?"
"Careful," Baekhyun says, handing her over. "This was a labor of love, or whatever. Say hi to Uncle Jongdae." Haru extends one of her tentacles shyly.
Jongdae shakes it. "So who had the kid?"
Baekhyun folds his arms and raises his eyebrows.
Jongdae sends him a sad look. "I'm truly disappointed that I didn't get to see you in all your pregnant magnificence."
"You didn't miss out on much," Chanyeol says, and squawks when Baekhyun aims a punch at his solar plexus. "Just kidding! I have pictures if you want to see them." Baekhyun jabs him again, with his elbow this time, and follows Jongdae into the house.
Haru starts crawling on Titan, which they find out the second morning after they've arrived, when she uses her tentacles to flip herself out of her crib and follows Baekhyun to the breakfast table. She's making incomprehensible noises by then, two months out of the shell, and squirts ink at Chanyeol when he remarks, offhand, "It'd be nice if she learned how to change her own diapers herself."
The red hair fades into a deep brown the same month Baekhyun sheds the last of his baby weight. Half a year out, Haru sits up in bed, dark eyes shining, and calls Baekhyun Dad for the first time. "Did you learn this fast when you were a kid?" Baekhyun asks Chanyeol later that afternoon.
His mother, when they visit Tau Ceti to see Chanyeol's parents in the flesh, tells him all the precocious-child-Chanyeol stories that Baekhyun's ever needed to know.
Life with a child on the ship isn't so different than life without. They wake up more often with Haru tucked in between them in bed, and Baekhyun has to be a little more discerning about the jobs they take, lest the entire EXO go up in flames from a riot on Tarsus III. The food in the kitchen is a lot healthier, now, because a baby tentacle alien can't subsist on instant noodles alone. Baekhyun's still getting used to regular vegetables popping up in his day-to-day cuisine.
But it's nice to have something to come back to. On a good day, he trudges up the ramp and Chanyeol and Haru are both sweaty and oil-streaked from where Chanyeol's been trying to teach her about the inner workings of a spaceship engine, Haru half asleep on his shoulder, a tiny wrench clenched in her hand. She's smart, but not that smart. Not yet. Chanyeol will turn to grin at him and ask, "Aren't you happy you agreed?"
And Baekhyun will have nothing to say but yes.
fin
Pairing: baekhyun/chanyeol
Rating: nc17
Genre: au, sci-fi, slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing, sex, tentacles, mpreg, mild violence
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: honestly, baekhyun likes kids, but he also considers them one of nature's most effective forms of STD. sequel to the tentacle porn. for yeolie, for exoforsichuan. 4,411 words.
Half a year after Chanyeol's big revelation, they take a job in the Orion Arm of the galaxy. It's pretty typical stuff, cargo transport from the Owl Nebula to the Butterfly Cluster, nothing they haven't done a hundred times over-except the minute the ship starts weaving through the asteroid cloud around BM Scorpii, Baekhyun's stuck clutching the toilet bowl. Chanyeol takes over steering the ship to dock while Baekhyun systematically hacks up the contents of his stomach.
It doesn't go away even after they've landed. Chanyeol comes back from the meet-up with supplies and a new set of fans for the engines, props the bathroom door open, and asks, "Motion sickness?"
"I don't think so," Baekhyun wheezes. "Doesn't make sense." He wipes his mouth with his knuckles and staggers upright, leans into the hand that Chanyeol extends toward his shoulder.
"Maybe it was that horrible takeout sushi we had on the way here," Chanyeol suggests, helping him into the cabin.
Baekhyun frowns. He curls up in bed and accepts the ibuprofen Chanyeol pulls out of the first aid kit. "Why aren't you sick, then?"
"Good question," Chanyeol says. "Tentacle immunity?"
Baekhyun laughs, quiet and throaty. Chanyeol, in a moment of spontaneous affection, tucks the covers over his shoulders. Two breaths later, he's fast asleep.
There's no Federation-sanctioned hospital in the Butterfly Cluster, but there are several on Ptolemy. Chanyeol flies them to the closest one and the doctors there run a couple of routine tests, which lead to more tests, which culminate in-
"Let me be clear," Baekhyun says, threading a hand through his hair in agitation as the last peppy nurse steps out with a packet of his blood. "When we started this, pregnancy wasn't really something I thought I'd ever have to deal with."
At this point, Chanyeol's said sorry so many times that it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Still: "Sorry," he murmurs, clutching at the handle of Baekhyun's gurney. "I didn't-I didn't know it was a possibility."
Baekhyun stares down at the sheet covering his legs. There are a bunch of pamphlets spread out over the thin nylon: How to Take Care of Your Baby Bump, and Maintaining Your Health Through Gestation, Space Travel Edition, and, helpfully, Male Pregnancy: It's More Common Than You Think! The situation hasn't had time to sink in yet. "I guess putting condoms on every single one of your tentacles would've been too much of a hassle." He rubs a hand over his stomach. It doesn't seem any poofier than usual-but what does he know? He isn't an obstetrician. When Baekhyun raises his head, Chanyeol's looking at him, gaze unreadable. "What the hell are we going to do?"
"It doesn't have to be a bad thing," Chanyeol starts. He licks the corner of his mouth-a nervous tic. "This could be good."
"How do you figure?" Baekhyun returns, incredulous. "Chanyeol, normal people wait until they have a roof over their heads and steady jobs before they think about having children. We have-we have a nice collection of empty fast food containers piling up in the corner of our living room. The ship is a flying death trap on a good day. I don't even have regular health insurance. And you want to bring life into the world?"
Chanyeol shrugs it all off. He looks far too calm, given the circumstances. "So our kid will start traveling early. We can make it work."
Baekhyun narrows his eyes. "I don't think you understand."
"Help me understand."
He pushes past a rising wave of nausea and waves a hand in the air between them. "We are not in any position to raise a kid." He slumps against the pillows. "I'm not ready. We aren't prepared for this at all."
Chanyeol leans closer, eyes wide and earnest. "Who is, really? Listen, Baekhyun, if we were going to wait until we thought we were ready, we'd be dead before it happened."
"Oh, that's really heartening. Thanks for the pep talk." Baekhyun presses his hands to his face and closes his eyes for a minute. It helps a bit, with the nausea and the sharp lance of panic arcing through his chest. "You know, I always thought we could maybe, like, adopt or something. Not this."
There's a long pause on Chanyeol's side of the gurney. "So you've thought about it before," he says at last, and he already sounds like he's won. Baekhyun's not sure when it turned into a competition.
"Yes," he mutters, "yes, I've thought about it before, not seriously, but-it's not that I don't like kids, okay? I'm fantastic with kids. They love me. I just-" He trails off uncertainly, exhaling slowly into his palms. "I can fly a ship through anything, but I don't know how to do this."
Chanyeol's fingers close gently around his wrist. "Hey. We'll be fine. Great, even."
"Easy for you to say," Baekhyun grumbles. "You aren't the one who has to carry this thing to term. How long is term, anyway?"
When he looks up again, Chanyeol's mouth is flapping like he's a fish out of water. "Um," he says. "I'll have to ask my mom. She'd know." His face flushes pink. The ring around Baekhyun's wrist tightens.
Baekhyun swallows thickly. He straightens up, head swimming. "We're really doing this, huh?"
"Only if you want to," Chanyeol echoes. His teeth worry at his lower lip, breath held like he's balanced on a tightrope.
Baekhyun knows the feeling. He rubs a hand against his abdomen and relaxes a little. Chanyeol's probably right. There never is a perfect time to have a kid. These things just happen. Their situation is less than ideal, but plenty of people have had children in conditions far worse than theirs. Have been for centuries. Millennia. Life has a curious way of rooting itself out, a leafy tendril breaking through the final layer of topsoil and unfurling triumphantly in the sun.
At least they have the ship.
"I'm scared as shit," he says.
"Yeah," Chanyeol replies. "Me too."
Once Baekhyun's stocked up on anti-nausea pills, there really isn't that much of a difference between being pregnant and being not. A week out from the Ptolemy Cluster, his stomach begins to swell. And maybe he nearly comes when Chanyeol bends over him in bed and sucks one of his nipples into his mouth. That's about it.
The gestation period, according to a very informative video call with Chanyeol's mother, is something like twelve to fourteen weeks. "Oh, good," Baekhyun says, relieved. He sends her his most charming smile. Doing the meet the parents thing after getting knocked up seems a little backward, but nothing about this is normal. Mrs. Park is incredibly chill about everything, which helps. "I won't have to do three trimesters?"
Chanyeol's brow furrows. "That's pretty short, isn't it?"
"He isn't giving birth to a live child," his mom says. "The egg comes first, of course."
Of course. A suffocating silence descends in the cockpit. For a moment Baekhyun gets these horrible flashbacks to grade school, before he started hapkido lessons and learned how to kick people's asses to Mars, when the older kids would shove him around and call him, among other things, chicken. Then: "You're kidding, right?" Baekhyun says faintly. He turns to Chanyeol, frozen stiff in the copilot chair, and slugs him in the arm. "Please tell me she's kidding. I can't believe you conned me into-"
"Don't worry, Baekhyun, it's not as bad as it sounds," she interrupts, serene. "And you'll want to take notes on this next part. Incubation conditions are important."
In between all the harried preparations, installing a crib that will handle zero g and dealing with Baekhyun's serious samgyupsal cravings (turns out Chanyeol isn't half bad at cooking from scratch, Baekhyun knew there was a reason he liked him), they still have to eke out some sort of living. Baekhyun's just starting to show through his clothing when he runs afoul of a couple of thugs on Sirius A.
The package of the day, shiny new nunchucks with a twelve-meter reach, is for Tao, whose Federation Standard has gotten a lot better since the last time Baekhyun saw him. He still slips into rapid-fire Mandarin when overexcited, though, and it takes him three tries to thrust a lumpy bag into Baekhyun's arms and say, "Drop this off at Yixing's when you get the chance," in a language that he actually understands.
Baekhyun gives it a little shake. "What's in it?"
"Latest cannabis prototype," he says flippantly. "Lifted it off a trafficker I roughed up last week. Thought Yixing would be interested." He peers closer at Baekhyun, eyes narrow. "There's something different about you, hyung."
"Yeah?" Baekhyun says, raising a brow. "Tell me about it."
"It's like a-glow, or something," Tao says. "You look healthier?"
Baekhyun snorts. "I'd invite you to the baby shower, but I don't think we'll be having one." He watches Tao literally light up with glee as the implications sink in, and shakes his head as Tao glances at his PADD. "At least wait till I go before you start firing off texts." He waves the bag for Yixing. "You know we don't usually take orders on the fly."
Tao fervently folds one of Baekhyun's hands between his own. "I'll make it worth your while, I promise."
The tip Tao gives him for the extra haul is enough to pay for the next five months of fuel, so Baekhyun can't complain too much. It's when he steps back out of Tao's apartment building that things get tricky. The drug industry in Canis Major isn't very forgiving, especially not if their newest product is about to spread to one of its top competitors. The two menacing lizards blocking his way back to the airstrip have probably been dispatched to get rid of him and take back what's theirs.
Baekhyun hadn't anticipated how tiring running with extra baggage would be. He darts out into the busy street at a brisk jog, abdomen cramping as he weaves between pedestrians. A particle beam whizzes past his shoulder and Baekhyun hits the ground at a roll, gravel scraping his knees. In the distance, he can see the EXO idling on one of the launch pads, helm peeking out.
He waits until the stampeding crowd's dispersed enough before turning around and pulling the bulky plasma rifle out of his bag. The lizard with awful greasy hair manages to dodge out of the way in time, but the other one's head explodes like a ripe cantaloupe on impact. "Nice try," Baekhyun crows, and darts back up the sidewalk.
His communicator crackles when he's two blocks out. "What the hell is going on down there?" comes Chanyeol's voice, feedback breaking it up.
"Get ready to go," Baekhyun says, pounding across the pavement. "Trouble coming."
There's a burning sensation in his chest every time he breathes in. The belly of the ship opens up for him as he closes in. He sprints up the cargo ramp and turns as the ship trembles for take off, fires off one more round before letting himself drop, legs like jelly beneath him.
It takes him a while to catch his breath. They blaze out of the atmosphere at warp factor seven. Baekhyun pitches back against the metal gridwork and listens to the cool, impersonal voice of the ship's radar call out a steadily dropping stream of pursuers. Baekhyun presses his palms flat against the floor and waits for the rumbling to subside.
As soon as they're out of reach the ship spits Chanyeol out onto the lower deck. His face swims into view, pale and pinched. "You should've called for backup," he snaps, and the hand that brushes against Baekhyun's shoulder comes away wet with blood.
"I'm-"
"What would've happened if that phaser blast had grazed your stomach instead?"
Baekhyun winces and sits up. "What do you want me to say? That I'll be more careful? We're smugglers, Chanyeol. Danger and bodily harm are part of the job description. I don't know what else to tell you."
Chanyeol presses his mouth into a thin line and savagely opens the first-aid kit. He rips the collar of Baekhyun's shirt open and scrubs at the wound with alcohol, perhaps a little rougher than he could've been. Baekhyun inhales through his teeth and tries to stay still as Chanyeol dresses the cut.
When he's done, Baekhyun flexes his arm and swallows. "Where are we now?"
"I set course to Betelgeuse," Chanyeol says, collapsing next to him, hair hanging in his face. "I'll take care of the delivery."
Baekhyun glances at him. "That's really chivalrous of you, but unnecessary."
"Just let me do this, okay?" Chanyeol deflates. "It's only temporary. At least until you-the baby-"
Whatever's in Baekhyun's stomach gives a firm lurch. He makes a quiet noise of surprise and Chanyeol raises his head, bemused. Baekhyun runs a sheepish hand over the bare skin of his stomach as the kid kicks again. Chanyeol's hand reaches over to join it, warm and rough. Baekhyun opens his mouth, feels the rhythmic thump of the baby's heel against his palm, and says, grudgingly, "Okay."
He spends the next month waddling around the ship, sore in places he didn't realize it was possible to be sore. Historically, there's not a lot of sightseeing involved in smuggling. They're usually either on too tight a schedule or pissing too many people off with their presence to linger, but being trapped inside when he's used to being out and about isn't fun, especially when all Chanyeol wants to talk about when he gets back is, "Mozart or Beethoven?"
"I'm not forcing my baby to listen to that drivel," Baekhyun says primly, scrolling through music on his PADD. "I choose Liszt. A real artist."
"Fighting words," Chanyeol says, but he's grinning as the first runs of Un Sospiro filter in through the PA system. He bows from the waist and tugs Baekhyun up by the wrist without preamble. Baekhyun forgets the ache in his ankles as Chanyeol dips him sloppily, if only because his bare feet trod on Baekhyun's nine times out of ten as they whirl around the living room.
"You suck at dancing," Baekhyun says, already winded.
"Shut up. It's romantic." Chanyeol dips him again and they fall over neatly onto the couch, Baekhyun caged in between his arms. After a beat of quiet staring, Chanyeol leans down to plant an open-mouthed kiss on his neck.
Baekhyun wrinkles his nose. "Don't start something you won't finish."
Chanyeol hums against the bob of his Adam's apple. Baekhyun shivers. "You know me better than that."
One nice thing about this is Baekhyun doesn't actually have to buy maternity wear. He can just steal from Chanyeol's closet instead. Not like he didn't do it all the time before, but now he has a legitimate excuse since none of his clothing will fit anymore.
Baekhyun lifts his arms and Chanyeol's shirt slides off him easy. "Next stop you're doing laundry," Chanyeol mumbles against his throat.
"You'd put a pregnant dude through all that?" Baekhyun whines. "Cruel." A beat later, he chokes on his tongue. One of Chanyeol's hands has wound its way past the waistband of his appropriated boxers to settle around Baekhyun's dick.
Chanyeol huffs. "Fine. Rain check, then."
Baekhyun gestures down at the round swell of his belly. "You're going to be working this off for a long time, so I wouldn't hold my breath."
"Less talk," Chanyeol says decisively, scooting back on his haunches. "More-" The hand around Baekhyun's cock tightens and Baekhyun throws his head back, face burning, hips rising to thrust into it.
A warm tongue licks at one of his nipples and Baekhyun's fingers sink into Chanyeol's hair, pull taut. His skin tingles at every point of contact, Chanyeol's lips roaming across his chest until Baekhyun's shuddering so hard he's almost vibrating. His legs lock behind Chanyeol's thighs, heels digging into the backs of his knees, torso arching up to meet Chanyeol's mouth and his hands.
Chanyeol squeezes tighter, the ring of his thumb and forefinger dragging up and down the length of his erection. Baekhyun wails, a series of cracking no, no, no's tumbling out of his mouth. His hands don't know whether to push Chanyeol away or tug him in closer. Chanyeol laughs into the curve of his stomach. "You're so lovely," he says, and the unwavering conviction in his voice makes Baekhyun believe it.
"Don't be gross," he groans, and spills in Chanyeol's palm.
Because the universe is conspiring against him, they're nowhere near a medical facility when the first contractions come. Baekhyun sweats through all his layers of bedding and then some before Chanyeol manages to get a hold of his doctor friend on video chat, this tiny owlish dude who takes one look at Baekhyun through the camera and says, "You're going to need a lot more pillows."
"Sorry we're meeting like this," Baekhyun bites out, trying to smile. Dr. Do Kyungsoo isn't very big on distracting small talk, but it's just as well. Baekhyun barely remembers anything apart from the all-consuming pain. His dad had kidney stones once, and described the sensation as trying to pee out a watermelon. Baekhyun imagines this must be the same, except all he has as anesthetic is something really dubious Yixing had gifted him with when they swung by his place to deliver Tao's package.
When he's lucid enough for speech again, Kyungsoo's signed off from the call and Chanyeol's sitting by the bed holding his hand.
"Hey," Baekhyun croaks, voice breaking. "How long was I out?"
"Depends on what you mean by out," Chanyeol says solemnly. "You said some very hurtful things about my tentacles."
"I can't even feel the lower half of my body right now, Chanyeol," he growls. "Next time you can have the kid. See how you like it."
Chanyeol's mom had called it an egg but the opaque shell of the thing is soft like gelatin after they've cleared all the slime away. Every now and then it pulses, white to green, a ripple across the surface the only indication that it's alive. "What am I supposed to do?" Baekhyun says, staring down at where Chanyeol's wrapped it in blankets in the crib. "Sit on it? Roost? Fry it in a pan?"
"Technically, she just said keep it warm," Chanyeol reminds him. "Tropical temperatures. We have climate control for that."
"Oh, great," Baekhyun says, very dry. "Our own personal rainforest." He reaches a tentative hand out to touch the smooth exterior and the surface warms in response, a little heartbeat tapping against his skin. "Now what?"
Chanyeol tucks his chin over the railing, eyes luminous in the low light. "Now we wait."
Some nights, after they've docked for the evening, Baekhyun will wake up and see Chanyeol reading to the crib. He gets through all of Baekhyun's old delivery logs, censoring out the tasteful swearing, before moving on to the boring user manuals that came with the ship. Baekhyun's pretty sure he hears the egg snore a couple of times, but keeps it to himself.
"Have you thought of names?" Chanyeol asks him, when they're slogging through the ice on Hoth to drop contraband heat packs off at the nearest Federation outpost. "We should talk about that, right? I like Beenzino for a boy. It sounds regal."
"I can see now that we aren't going to agree," Baekhyun says breezily. "I really fucking hope we don't have a boy."
"It could work for a girl, too!"
On the way out of orbit, the ship meets some nasty turbulence. Baekhyun straps the egg against his chest and struggles to maneuver them out of the mess. It's not until they get out of the Delta star system that conditions stabilize, but when Baekhyun leans back in his chair and looks down, there's a fine fissure in the shell.
"Oh, fuck," he says. He puts the ship on autopilot with shaking hands and picks his way to the cabin, where Chanyeol's passed out in bed. "Yo, Chanyeol. Wake up."
Chanyeol rubs the sleep out of his eyes and blinks at him. "What's wrong?"
"You'll want to see this," Baekhyun says.
They sit cross-legged on the bed together to watch the egg hatch. The fissure widens into a crack, which spreads out across the shell. At some point, Baekhyun dozes off. It honestly does take forever, and according to the rules, they aren't supposed to help. It's something like butterflies batting their way out of a cocoon. If you're coming out of an egg, you have to do it yourself.
Once both arms are out in the open, Chanyeol nudges Baekhyun awake. The kid's skin looks pink and healthy. It takes another hour for her to clear away the rest of the shell. A shriveled umbilical cord's attached to the inside of the last piece. Chanyeol snips it away with the scissors in the first-aid kit and carries her to the bathroom to wash her off.
Baekhyun can't stop staring. Even in the water her skin stays pink, except for the two tiny green tentacle arms that are attached to her shoulders. The frizzy tumble of hair on her head is a fiery red. She's bigger than a normal kid would be right after birth. More aware of her surroundings, too. When Baekhyun sticks a finger in front of her face, a hand and a tentacle reach out to grab at it.
He tosses Chanyeol a severe look. "We're not naming her Beenzino." Chanyeol presses a hand to his chest and looks wounded, muttering something that sounds like it was just a joke, Jesus. Baekhyun dries the baby off and gathers her up in his arms. "Hey, babygirl," he coos, and she grins up at him. She's already got teeth. "What do you want to be called?"
They end up calling her Baby for two-going-on-three weeks because they can't decide on a name. "I'm glad she got your ears," Chanyeol says, bent over the crib to feed her bits of fruit.
"I like your ears," Baekhyun says, mouth curling. "They're really nice to grab onto when I-"
"Don't listen to him, baby Beenzino," Chanyeol cuts in. He drops the pineapple in his haste to clap his hands around her head.
Baekhyun tickles her cheek and laughs. "If she starts answering to that I'm going to castrate you."
Baekhyun's favorite place in the galaxy is a tiny beach planet orbiting an unnamed red dwarf near Earth's solar system. Jongdae owns the deeds to the place and hasn't found anyone suitable to sell it to. He doesn't want it commercialized, though people have offered him a lot of money. It's prime resort real estate. Perfect weather, perfect size. See, the sun comes up sixteen times each Federation day, dawn every ninety minutes. A new day in less time it takes to fly from there to Earth and back. It's the first place Baekhyun takes them, Chanyeol and their kid, her toes and other appendages wiggling in the sand, and in the light of the rising sun, they finally agree to call her Haru.
"Oh my God," Jongdae says, delighted, as he runs out across the lawn to meet them. "A teenybopper! I can't believe you caved in to plebeian domesticity. Have you picked out new curtains yet?"
"Careful," Baekhyun says, handing her over. "This was a labor of love, or whatever. Say hi to Uncle Jongdae." Haru extends one of her tentacles shyly.
Jongdae shakes it. "So who had the kid?"
Baekhyun folds his arms and raises his eyebrows.
Jongdae sends him a sad look. "I'm truly disappointed that I didn't get to see you in all your pregnant magnificence."
"You didn't miss out on much," Chanyeol says, and squawks when Baekhyun aims a punch at his solar plexus. "Just kidding! I have pictures if you want to see them." Baekhyun jabs him again, with his elbow this time, and follows Jongdae into the house.
Haru starts crawling on Titan, which they find out the second morning after they've arrived, when she uses her tentacles to flip herself out of her crib and follows Baekhyun to the breakfast table. She's making incomprehensible noises by then, two months out of the shell, and squirts ink at Chanyeol when he remarks, offhand, "It'd be nice if she learned how to change her own diapers herself."
The red hair fades into a deep brown the same month Baekhyun sheds the last of his baby weight. Half a year out, Haru sits up in bed, dark eyes shining, and calls Baekhyun Dad for the first time. "Did you learn this fast when you were a kid?" Baekhyun asks Chanyeol later that afternoon.
His mother, when they visit Tau Ceti to see Chanyeol's parents in the flesh, tells him all the precocious-child-Chanyeol stories that Baekhyun's ever needed to know.
Life with a child on the ship isn't so different than life without. They wake up more often with Haru tucked in between them in bed, and Baekhyun has to be a little more discerning about the jobs they take, lest the entire EXO go up in flames from a riot on Tarsus III. The food in the kitchen is a lot healthier, now, because a baby tentacle alien can't subsist on instant noodles alone. Baekhyun's still getting used to regular vegetables popping up in his day-to-day cuisine.
But it's nice to have something to come back to. On a good day, he trudges up the ramp and Chanyeol and Haru are both sweaty and oil-streaked from where Chanyeol's been trying to teach her about the inner workings of a spaceship engine, Haru half asleep on his shoulder, a tiny wrench clenched in her hand. She's smart, but not that smart. Not yet. Chanyeol will turn to grin at him and ask, "Aren't you happy you agreed?"
And Baekhyun will have nothing to say but yes.
fin