Namjoon sighed. He'd just been promoted to Day Manager, which meant he was working day shifts instead of night shifts, but after years of his backwards schedule, it was hard to adjust his sleep routine. Which meant, alternatively, that he was barely sleeping when he was supposed to and was often caught napping when he wasn't supposed to.

"Namidiot," Mark snapped, smacking him lightly on the back of the head, and Namjoon flinched, sitting up straight immediately.

"How can I help you?" he answered automatically, and Mark rolled his eyes before Namjoon slumped back over.

"You could help me by being awake," he said before sighing in empathy. Mark had switched to day shifts a few years ago, and he understood the transition process. "You should start drinking coffee."

"I can't afford an addiction," Namjoon groaned as he rolled his head, wincing as he heard his neck crack. That's what he got for sleeping on the counter. "I have bills to pay, kids to finance, and I have to buy Lisa something every now and then as an apology gift for not acknowledging our relationship officially in front of my kids."

Mark laughed. "What's wrong with telling them? They're old enough now, Namjoon. They realize that you aren't going to run back to your ex-wife, and I'm sure they'll understand if you told them you wanted someone new in your life. Besides, it's not like they don't know. Yugyeom and Jungkook are already conspiring about their future cousinhood."

Namjoon sighed. "It's...complicated. I just...Announcing it will make it real, you know?"

"Will make what real?"

"Everything. Their mom isn't coming back-"

"They've known that for a while, Namjoon."

"Well...it just...it feels too soon."

"Too soon since what?" Mark asked, lightly annoyed as he leaned on the counter. He still thought Lisa deserved someone better, or at least someone less dense when it came to things like this.

"Well, since their mom got split custody. Our family is already strained. I don't want to shake things up even more by adding Lisa into the picture."

"She's already in the picture, Namjoon," Mark said.

"But I'm afraid that it'll make Jimin, Hobi, and Yoongi upset," Namjoon admitted. "Like if I admit that Lisa and I are dating seriously...maybe they would think that we're making a neat little family without them. And that isn't true, not at all, but...But since we're considering buying a new house...It's just a lot of change all at once, Mark."

"Yeah, but they're not really your kids anymore," Mark said, and Namjoon frowned, sitting up straight.

"Excuse me?"

Mark took a step back, holding his hands up defensively. "I don't mean to be rude about it, Namjoon, but you see them two or three days a week. They live with their mom and her husband. They have their own family. You're still a part of it, sure, but you're a small part. What you do barely affects them anymore."

Namjoon wanted to yell something at Mark, but he couldn't find the words. "That's...that's not true."

"I'm sorry that it sounds harsh, Namjoon, but that's how split custody works. You getting them on the weekends is a privilege, and they probably only allowed it because they didn't want to completely separate the triplets. At least this way, they see each other on Fridays and in school. But, Namjoon, you have to realize that your decisions don't affect them, not really."

Namjoon looked at Mark with troubled eyes. "Mark, I told them that we were thinking of selling the house, and they were absolutely devastated. Even Yoongi. Especially Yoongi. It's all they have left, Mark, you have to see that...it's where they grew up..."

Mark nodded. "I know. I get it, Namjoon. But everyone's got to grow up sometime, right?"

Mark patted his shoulder apologetically before walking away and resuming his duties, leaving Namjoon to think over everything they'd said.

Yeah, but they're not really your kids anymore. 

Namjoon hesitated. Was that true? He'd always thought of them as solely his, that he was loaning them out, but that he'd get them back eventually. Had they really been cut from his life?

His missed the days where it had been the seven of them. He enjoyed Lisa's company, but she and he had started getting involved not long before the custody battle, and everything had been messy back then.

He missed the time they all went to the aquarium.

He wondered if his ex-wife had taken them to an aquarium. He wondered if they'd enjoyed it.

He wondered if she'd tried to give Jimin new memories to replace the old ones. He wondered if she'd gone on adventures with them. He wondered if they were happy with her.

They never talked about her in front of him. They didn't talk about what it was like living with her. Namjoon could have brought it up, but he was afraid to ask. Afraid that they'd accepted her. Afraid that they'd accepted the whole situation.

Afraid that they didn't need him anymore.

***

Namjoon got off work early and found himself rooting through the attic later that day, trying to find old pictures of the seven of them, but instead, he found an unlabeled box in the corner. He peeled off the tape and opened the flaps before reaching into the box and pulling out the picture on top.

Then the second picture, and the third, and the fourth.

Eventually, Namjoon was surrounded by pictures. Pictures of the eight of them: Namjoon, Jin, Yoongi, Hobi, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook, and his wife of the time, now the woman who had three of his children.

He looked at the earliest picture and arranged them chronologically.

He tried to find the picture that contained The Sign, although he wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for.

What did unhappiness look like? Was it a frown? A sideways glance? Not looking at the camera? Hair blowing in front of the eyes?

Namjoon wanted to see physical proof of the second in time in which things had gone from a happy family to a family waiting to fragment.

But that was the thing. He couldn't tell. The scariest part of it was that they looked happy together in all of them.

Except the last one, he noticed as he reached and brought it closer to his eyes.

She wasn't facing the camera. Instead, she was facing him. He was holding Jungkook on his hip while Yoongi slept on his back, and he was grinning like he was the luckiest man in the world. And she, she was just looking at him as though wondering what that felt like, to feel lucky, to feel loved.

To this day, Namjoon couldn't decide where to split the blame. Was it his fault for letting his marriage dissolve and corrode into nothing? Or was it hers for fulfilling her needs elsewhere when he couldn't fulfill them for her? Was it both of their faults?

Namjoon sighed, and he was startled by the sound of footsteps.

"Whatcha looking at?" Lisa asked, bending down to look at the photo in his hands. "You look so young in that picture," she said softly.

"I felt young," Namjoon said. "I felt young and hopeful and naive."

"Hopeful for what?"

"My family," he admitted honestly. "I thought that we were just beginning, that we had a whole life ahead of us of adventure and memories and experiences."

"You still do," Lisa countered, gently taking the photo from his hands and lying it back in the box. "Just not with her."

"But what about with my kids?"

"What about them, Joon?"

"They're split between two houses," Namjoon said, his voice rich with sorrow. "Mark said - Mark said they're not even my kids anymore, they're hers."

"Mark's an idiot," Lisa said. "Trust me. I grew up with him. They're still yours, Namjoon. I know that, they know that, she knows that."

"But they're going to grow up and leave," he said, his heart aching at the thought. "These are the years that they're supposed to be arguing with me about their curfew and slamming their door when I tell them that it's still 10 o'clock and listening to inappropriate music and getting a tattoo without telling me and getting piercings in places I would never allow and all of that, Lisa, but they aren't doing, or maybe they are with their mom and I don't even know about it because they don't live with me. And when they finish high school, they'll go off to college somewhere even farther away, and after college, they'll get jobs all across the country, and we'll never be as close as we are now, let alone as close as we used to be, and I'm scared, Lisa."

Lisa nodded and rubbed his back, although it was hard not to laugh at the idea of Jimin getting a tattoo on his ass. "I know it's hard, Joon. But they love you, right? And they love each other. They won't let themselves fall apart and become strangers."

Namjoon exhaled. "I hope not, Lisa. I really hope not."

"We just have to make the most of this time," she said. "And maybe we can figure out a way to get custody back."

"But Jin will be off to college by that time," he said, staring at the youngest photo with just him, his wife, and Jin. "It won't be all of us anymore. It won't ever be all of us again."

Lisa sighed before massaging Namjoon's neck. "We just have to do our best, okay?"

"I don't want them to grow up," Namjoon whispered, and she leaned her weight onto his back, wrapping her arms loosely around his neck.

"I know," she whispered back.

sorry for not clarifying the reference in the previous chapter; some of you commented about judas, who betrayed jesus, but in the context, yoongi mention judah, the brother that sold joseph into slavery. i know most of you were trying to be helpful by telling everyone i meant judas, but no, i really meant judah.

for those of you unfamiliar with the christian faith, the story is basically the same as the musical "joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat" so if you've seen that, you have a good idea of what went down

i'll add this explanation to the end of last chapter as well.