It had been an offhand comment, one ill thought through - or, rather, not thought through at all. He hadn't expected Mingyu to say anything about his parents, had hardly remembered he even mentioned them. So when Mingyu clung to him with a clearly growing anxiety, it brought Fox up short. He blinked, raising a hand to gently thread through Mingyu's hair in an attempt to sooth him.

But then Mingyu spoke and Fox felt an answer heat to his cheeks, a warm flush in his breast. He wanted to argue, immediately. No one gifted something like that to him. He was just stealing time, stealing Mingyu's light for as long as he was allowed, basking in it until the inevitable day it would be taken from him. But the fragile tremor in Mingyu's voice brought him up short. Told him, for once in his life, not to voice the things on his mind.

Instead, he just breathed, and then pressed a careful, soft kiss to Mingyu's hair.

"You already are mine," he murmured. "Whether she gave you to me or not, I'd have stolen you from the sky either way."