Come On, Skinny Love, Just Last the Year [Kyuhyun/Sungmin]
Length: 8,356 words
Pairing: KyuMin (slight EunHae)
Genre: Angst, drama, romance
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Kyuhyun is not going to let anything stop him from loving Sungmin, even if it means hurting him in the end.
A/N: There should be a warning about what lies ahead, but it will just give away the whole plot, so I'm sorry about that. Also, I know this idea is recycled and overused and cliché, but I couldn't resist. I hope I put my own spin on it nicely OTL. Also, this was written at a time when I thought it was cool to use Korean phrases in my writing >//< This badly needs to be edited.
01.
“Cho Kyuhyun!” The nurse’s voice rings out piercingly in the near quiet of the empty waiting room, jarring the aforementioned boy from his absentminded stupor. With a gentle nudge from his mother, Kyuhyun follows the woman, her long black hair swinging behind her as she leads him and his parents down the hallway.
She leaves them in a small, hospital check up room, the off-white walls boring into Kyuhyun’s eyes and the sterile, shiny instruments upon the granite counter lining the wall making him nauseous. He has a feeling of impending doom weighing down his chest, a sensation that he can’t push away no matter how hard he tries.
The doctor finally enters the room, a clipboard pressed to her flat chest, brown hair twisted into a no nonsense bun. Her eyes are calculating and detached upon entering the room, but soften as she examines the pale, drawn teenager in front of her.
A male nurse enters only moments after, a plastic Zip-Lock full of syringes and needles in his grasp. He eyes the boy in the same, sad way, causing Kyuhyun to shift uncomfortably under their depressing gazes. They make him feel hopeless even if he doesn’t even know what’s wrong with himself.
“Well?” Kyuhyun’s father asks in his brusque way, arms crossed and foot impatiently tapping the ground. He sees the way the doctor and nurse are examining his son, and it causes his heart to flutter faster and faster against his rib cage. He can’t help but feel the same emotions as his son. His wife clings to his forearm, eyes glittering with unshed tears, because she already can predict the bad news before it has even been delivered.
“A year,” is all the doctor says before Kyuhyun is enveloped in the arms of his mother, and tears obscure his vision, and the sounds of pained sobs that aren’t his fill his ears.
02.
It’s only a week later that he meets Sungmin. A week later that he’s tired of feeling down on himself for something he can’t change. A week later that he decides that he’s going to revert back to his old mischievous, game playing ways, because something like a deadline wasn’t going to stop Cho Kyuhyun.
A week later that his life becomes all about Lee Sungmin, the soft-skinned, thin-lipped, pretty much perfect transfer student from a city outside of Seoul.
Kyuhyun never expected to fall in love at first sight, since he figured that he knew himself pretty well, and had never thought he’d be subject to the unreadable ways of love. He was also surprised that so strong a feeling had emerged when he laid eyes on a guy. But he easily decided that he didn’t care when said guy made him feel as if he was walking on air.
As cliché as meetings get, Kyuhyun bumps into him as he’s entering a classroom and Sungmin is exiting it, his bag opening and dumping all of its contents to the floor upon their collison.
“Aigo! Mianhe!” the shorter man exclaims, immediately bending down to gather up Kyuhyun’s fallen books. And Kyuhyun can’t help but gape wordlessly when the older boy hands his things back to him, expressive eyes apologetic, dark fringe covering one eye.
“Are you okay? Did I hit your head in the process of almost knocking you over?” he jokes, nudging Kyuhyun in the arm with one of his books.
Kyuhyun snaps to attention, face uncharacteristically coloring at his actions. He should have known that Sungmin would amount to something more than a random kid he bumped into just based on the fact he blushed.
Because Cho Kyuhyun never blushes.
“Mianhe,” says Kyuhyun, hurriedly taking the books from the smiling boy in front of him.
“It’s no problem at all …” he trails off, expectantly looking at the other boy, waiting for him to fill in the blank.
“Kyuhyun. Cho Kyuhyun,” he answers, face reddening again when their hands brush and he feels tingles, mentally chastising himself at that occurrence, because how storybook romance is that?
The dark haired boy laughs, his pearly white smile dazzling Kyuhyun momentarily. “Well, I’m Sungmin. Lee Sungmin. I’ll see you around, Kyu-ssi,” he says, tucking the last book into Kyuhyun’s messenger bag, patting his hand before walking away.
And Kyuhyun knows that he has gotten himself into some deep shit when he can’t resist checking out the boy’s swaying hips and round ass when he walks away.
03.
“So, do you know anything about that new student? Sungmin-ssi?” Kyuhyun asks Donghae as soon as he sees him at lunch later that day, trying not to look too enthusiastic for information.
And, he should add, failing.
Donghae arches an eyebrow. “Yeah. He’s in his 3rd year, but he was in my Calculus class,” he answers, taking a sip from his water bottle.
“You mean you were in his Calculus class, since you don’t exactly belong there,” counters Kyuhyun, eyes shining with mirth.
Donghae laughs, throwing his head back. “I can’t help that I’m good at math. But really, don’t change the subject. I want to know why you’re interested in the new boy.”
Kyuhyun’s eyes are immediately muted, averting contact with Donghae’s curious ones. “I’m not interested, just… wondering.”
The other boy looks at him wryly, trying to read his friend’s diverted face, only to laugh when he sees that two pink circles have formed on his high cheekbones.
“You’re blushing!” Donghae accuses, surprised, suppressing a laugh.
“Am not,” Kyuhyun immediately retorts, making to flee in embarrassment before his shoulders are pinned down by Hyukjae and Siwon.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you going, GameKyu?” asks Hyukjae, letting Kyuhyun go once he knows he’s not going to run, moving to sit beside a bashfully grinning Donghae.
Siwon sits next to Kyuhyun, snatching an apple slice from his tray. “Did Donghae-ah say something to offend you?” he asks in that serious, but genial voice of his, looking at Kyuhyun musingly.
Kyuhyun opens his mouth to answer, but Donghae speeds before him. “Kyuhyun-ah has a crush on the new kid.”
Siwon eyes the furiously blushing boy in alarm, while Hyukjae looks at him in surprise.
“I. Did. Not. Say. That,” grounds out Kyuhyun, eyes alight with embarrassment and anger as he glares at the now cowering Fishy.
“It sure looks like you do though, based on your defensiveness,” counters Hyukjae, and Kyuhyun can’t deny that.
04.
“Are you ever going talk to him again, Kyuhyun-ah?” asks Siwon a month later. It’s been a whole fucking month, and Kyuhyun can do nothing but stare longingly at Sungmin as he passes by their lunch table everyday, his new friends Kangin and Yesung in tow. Even Siwon, who was initially unnerved by the fact that one of his best friends liked another boy, had been pressing him to just go up to Sungmin.
“He will one day,” Donghae mystically answers for the absentminded boy, stealing a sip of Hyukjae’s strawberry milk.
“Excuse me, but that’s not yours,” spits Hyukjae, making a grab for his strawberry milk, causing Donghae to accidentally squirt it on the other’s spotlessly clean white T-Shirt.
The ensuing (play) fight that ensues distracts the others from Kyuhyun’s lack of confidence towards Sungmin, and he’s back to staring at him aimlessly, picking at his unappealing lunch disinterestedly.
05.
Kyuhyun lies down in his messily unmade king-sized bed, head propped up on one of the many pillows scattered along the headboard. A pounding headache (one of the many pounding headaches that he’s had in the last few months) has caused him to retreat to his bedroom despite the early hour of the evening, and he uses this time to think about Sungmin.
It nauseates him that he’s this hung up over a boy, and it does nothing for his masculinity. He’s Cho fucking Kyuhyun, not some lovesick girl. He knows he’s not a girl… but he can’t deny the fact that he is lovesick.
Closing his eyes in an attempt to block out the sun still streaming through his drawn curtains and filtering into his darkened room, Kyuhyun thinks of the many reasons he shouldn’t try to pursue Sungmin.
They’re both boys.
He doesn’t even know if Sungmin is gayor not.
He doesn’t even know his own sexual preference for sure.
Even if Sungmin is gay, what if doesn’t even like him?
Sungmin doesn’t deserve a sickly being such as himself, and he would be setting the other boy up for heartache by dating him.
If they did date, they’d both become social pariahs in their close-minded school.
His parents would probably kill him.
To assuage the heavy feeling on his heart, Kyuhyun tries to think of the reasons that he should tell Sungmin his feelings, and could only think of one.
It’s the only way I can be happy for these next few months.
06.
When Kyuhyun finally gets to speak to Sungmin again, it’s at a fucking party. And nothing good ever happens at parties.
Kyuhyun wants to punch himself in the face at the clichés that seem to plague him in the subject of Sungmin.
Donghae and Hyukjae drag him out of his house when his parents leave for some work event, forcing him to attend Park Jungsoo’s yearly house party, thrown every dawn of a new school term. It’s October, so the chilly weather bites at Kyuhyun’s pale, uncovered skin. Of course, they don’t know how dangerous it would be if Kyuhyun catches a cold in his weakened state, so it’s unimportant to them that he’s only dressed in a T-shirt and slightly ripped jeans as they heave him out of his warm, safe mansion home and into Donghae’s rickety car.
Kyuhyun thinks of telling them about the doctor’s diagnosis now, but figures that’d be a bit too cruel, even by the evil maknae standards he lives according to.
“AISH. You two are such assholes,” he grumbles as they proceed to drag him from the car and towards the packed house, arriving after a dangerously fast ride.
Hyukjae playfully clucks his tongue, shaking his head in mock shame. “What a way to talk to your hyungs, Kyuhyun-ah.”
“Shut up,” he mutters, wrenching his arm from Donghae’s weak grasp.
Donghae ignores Kyuhyun’s glare, and instead pats him on the back. “Sungmin-ah is here, you know? Talk to him today,” he gently insists.
Kyuhyun huffs and groans, but agrees all too easily, causing Donghae to smile in satisfaction and Hyukjae to look admiringly at the fish-like, brown-haired boy.
Stalking away from his annoying friends, Kyuhyun walks listlessly through the already drunkenly stumbling partygoers, meandering across Jungsoo’s well-attended lawn. A part of him wants to find Sungmin, but another part tells him that it’d be utterly stupid of him to attempt to hold a normal conversation in the midst of a party.
He should have listened to that side.
Kyuhyun finally locates Sungmin inside of the elaborately decorated house, stumbling just as drunkenly as many of the other kids, apparently inebriated beyond coherence. His heart plummets to see Sungmin conducting himself in this manner, the almost perfect mental image he had of the shorter man crumbling in his head.
“Kyu-ah!” he shouts upon seeing the younger man, gripping Kyuhyun’s shirt-sleeve in an attempt not to lose him in the bustling movements of the raucously dancing teenagers. “I’ve been w-wanting to speak to you!” he slurs loudly, his pull surprisingly strong in his not sober state.
The taller boy’s interest is slightly piqued, but his masochistic side has had enough with the torture, and he tries to escape Sungmin’s insistent grasp. However, the next words that leave Sungmin’s mouth stop him in his actions. “It’s all your fault that I’m in this state, y-you know. Well, and my dead-beat father’s, but mostly yours,” he yells, his voice overly loud. Thankfully, everyone around him is too drunk to realize what he’s saying, let alone to hear him over the thumping bass of the music.
His heart beating madly against his ears, Kyuhyun harshly rips his arm from Sungmin’s and drags him through the thrashing crowd of people, stopping only when they’re in a secluded hallway.
“What do you mean ‘it’s my fault’?” he spits, pushing Sungmin’s bent over body against the wall.
Sungmin doesn’t answer at first, preferring to stare at his pink oxford shoes, his chest heaving with labored breaths through his matching, slightly ragged sweater. Finally, he looks up at the angrily waiting Kyuhyun, his eyes wide and tear-filled. “My parents would murder me on the spot if they knew I liked a boy.”
Kyuhyun is sure that his heart has sunk to his stomach, his limbs shaking and his head hurting. This wasn’t the way he wanted to hear it, when Sungmin was drunk and would probably not remember ever telling him the next morning. But almost just as much as he hated that, he hated the fact that Sungmin seemed too scared to do anything about his liking of Kyuhyun because of his parents.
Catching Kyuhyun off guard, Sungmin suddenly pushes him against the adjacent wall, pinning the taller boy’s arms above his head. Springing onto the tips of his toes, he presses a rough kiss to Kyuhyun’s slightly parted lips, his tongue wasting no time in breaching them, easily dominating the younger, and Kyuhyun can feel his own tears mingling with Sungmin’s as everything he ever wanted for him and Sungmin falls to pieces right before his eyes.
07.
“He just… confessed and kissed you? And them you let him stumble away?”
“Yes, Donghae.”
Kyuhyun is sitting with his back against the headboard of his bed, his thin hands exasperatedly covering his face as he relates last night’s terrible events to a puzzled Donghae, who is sitting at the foot of his bed, twirling a pillow in his hands.
“But he likes you?”
“Yes, Donghae.”
“Babo!” Donghae suddenly shouts, hurling the silk pillow at an unsuspecting Kyuhyun’s stomach.
“What was that for?!” he sputters, violently aiming the pillow at Donghae’s face, growling when he missed.
Donghae scoffs, rolling his eyes. “He likes you! He was drunk and made a mistake. He’s probably pining for you right now.”
Kyuhyun looks at his bouncy friend disdainfully. “It’s not that simple, Donghae.”
“Yes, it is. You’re just making it more complicated than it has to be,” he laughs, playfully flicking Kyuhyun on the head.
And that was all it took for Kyuhyun to vomit up his lunch only a minute later, and for him to have to be rushed to the hospital.
08.
Donghae knows. And now so do the others.
Kyuhyun has to tell him, even if it makes his best friend, the quartet’s King of Tears, sob into Hyukjae’s shirt for more than an hour.
Even if it makes Siwon pray at the foot of Kyuhyun’s hospital bed.
Even if it makes Hyukjae momentarily hate Kyuhyun before he joins in Donghae’s insuppressible flow of tears.
“You babo! Why didn’t you tell us that you are -”
“Don’t say it, Hyukjae! Just stop. Please,” cries Donghae, and Hyukjae has to stop because of the tears overflowing from his own eyes.
“How long?” asks Siwon, hands folded in prayer.
“A year.”
Donghae bursts into more noisy sobs, his nose and cheeks red and hands shaking as he grips Hyukjae’s arm. The older of the two buries his head in Donghae’s shaggy hair, his own chest tensing as he cries, his tears dripping down his nose and into the dampening locks.
Kyuhyun can’t help but hate himself.
09.
Kyuhyun is released from the hospital when the leaves are starting to turn orange and red and yellow and fall off the trees, turning brittle and crumbling when his feet accidentally step on them. Autumn’s his favorite season, but he finds it hard to enjoy it when his head hurts every morning and it’s sometimes hard for him to even walk amongst the sea of changing trees.
It’s even harder for him to enjoy it when Sungmin presses down on his already paining head like a twenty-pound weight.
10.
“K-Kyu-ah?”
The voice, even more high-pitched than usual in its anxiety, sounds behind Kyuhyun during his lunch period as Donghae is forcing him to actually eat his lunch rather than just pick at it.
Kyuhyun turns around, the stricken look on Hyukjae and Siwon’s faces already telling him who it is behind him.
(Not that he didn’t know already based on that adorable voice.)
“Yes, Sungmin?” he can’t help but ask coldly, wincing at but ignoring the three-way kick from under the table.
Despite being pale with nerves, Sungmin stands his ground. “I was hoping to speak with you. Alone,” he says shakily, sending a cursory but apologetic glance at Kyuhyun’s concerned friends.
“Ani-”
“He would love to,” Hyukjae interrupts, snatching his strawberry milk from the table and pulling Siwon up by the elbow. Donghae follows his lead, pushing Kyuhyun’s lunch tray closer to the younger boy before leading the other two to another table.
“Babos,” he mutters to himself, then remembers Sungmin’s presence.
“Ne?” he asks impatiently, back to picking at his cold pizza.
Without invitation, Sungmin sits in front of Kyuhyun, his hands clasped in front of him. The taller boy refuses to meet his eyes, and only does so when Sungmin’s words shock him into doing it.
“I meant what I said.” His voice is still trembling, but his words are certain and sure, his dark eyes scared but unwavering from Kyuhyun’s face.
“You remembered,” he states stupidly, his mouth agape.
“Of course I do,” says Sungmin, his voice becoming steadier. “I’ve liked you since we bumped into each other. You were adorable. Even if I thought you were my hyung until Donghae told me you’re actually the maknae of your group.”
Kyuhyun began to feel lightheaded at Sungmin’s words, and didn’t even know what question to ask first, leading him to say, “You talk to Donghae?”
Sungmin smiles, laughing. “That’s the first question you ask?”
The other blushes, his lips curving upwards. It's the first time he smiled in a while, and his face already hurts from the effort.
“Donghae sits in front of me in Calculus. Same last name and all,” he answers. “I may have casually asked him about you when you were out. I was worried.” He bites his lip, drawing Kyuhyun’s attention to it. “You’re okay, right? There were tons of rumors going around, each worse than the last.”
Kyuhyun almost frowns, and he considers, for a small, infinitesimal millisecond, that maybe he should tell Sungmin that he isn't okay. But, instead, he smiles broadly and nods his head. “I’m fine.”
Sungmin’s eyes show his relief. “That’s great to hear. But… where does this leave us?”
“I’m not afraid of a relationship with you,” he answers without skipping a beat, hands itching to interlace with Sungmin’s clasped ones.
“Good,” responds Sungmin, his voice wavering again, his neck leaning forward as his hands stop Kyuhyun’s from playing with his food, only to intertwine his fingers with his. Kyuhyun can practically hear his heart ramming outside his chest, his face involuntarily leaning closer to Sungmin’s. The dead silence of the cafeteria falls on deaf ears when their lips meet in their real first kiss, their mouths moving in sync, soft and thin against slightly chapped and bow-shaped.
11.
They are the first gay couple to ever come out at their school.
As they knew would happen, they are faced with judging stares from fellow students, shoves in the hall from burly, homophobic jocks, and questioning glances from some of the teachers who find out. However, much to Kyuhyun’s chagrin and to Sungmin, the aegyo prince’s, delight, some girls think they're cute, and often fawn over them at lunch or before classes began. Their ‘coming out’ sparks the emergence of another gay couple composed of Kim Kibum, a first year in Kyuhyun’s class, and Kim Jonghyun, Sungmin’s classmate, something that makes Kyuhyun’s heart hammer happily in his chest. He’s doing some good for someone else, even if it is accidental.
The only thing that matters to Sungmin is that his parents remain ignorant of the fact that he is dating a boy.
The only thing that matters to Kyuhyun is that his friends accept and support him, and he knew from the beginning that they did.
Wait, he’s lying to himself.
There’s one other thing that Kyuhyun doesn’t ever, no matter what happens, want Sungmin to find out: that he’s dating a boy who’s terminally ill.
12.
Kyuhyun is glad to find out that Sungmin is nothing like he had expected him to be.
He’s more than even Kyuhyun’s wildest fantasies had conjured up.
He loves that Sungmin enjoys nothing more than to practice martial arts and play his guitar. He loves that Sungmin’s favorite animals are rabbits and that pink is his favorite color. He loves how soft his hair is under his fingertips, and how soft his lips are when he peppers them with kisses.
Most of all, he loves those quiet moments they spend together, just them and the silence, Sungmin’s head against his chest, his nose buried in his sweet-smelling hair.
“What do you want to be one day, Kyu-ah? Like when you’re older and out of school?” asks Sungmin one day. They’re lying in Kyuhyun’s huge backyard, their bodies only occupying a small fraction of the wide expanse of grass. The leaves that Kyuhyun loves so much are tumbling from the trees surrounding his family’s land, creating an array of brazen colors around them.
The question makes Kyuhyun’s heart race unpleasantly. “I don’t know,” he finally answers, lips brushing against the top of Sungmin’s head with every word. “I mean, I’d like to be a singer, but my dad wants me to be a lawyer.” That much is true at least, but he knows his dad would let him be a singer if it meant keeping him for a bit longer.
“A singer?” repeats Sungmin in surprise, lifting his head from Kyuhyun’s chest to look at him. “I didn’t know you could sing.” His eyebrows are both lifted, and his thin lips are pouted. “Sing for me.”
“Demanding, much?” asks Kyuhyun with a slight smile, sitting up as Sungmin moves to sit in front of him, both of them cross-legged.
Sungmin frowns, his eyes glittering. “Please, Kyu baby. Can you sing for Minnie?”
Damn him and his aegyo. “Fine,” he agrees begrudgingly. Without much thought, he begins singing the opening lines to a random song he heard on the radio, his throat producing the words on their own accord.
Saranghaetjanha uri hamkkehan manheun nal dongan.
Sungmin’s eyes widen, and he can’t help by softly sing the next line with Kyuhyun before turning silent, his eyes softening with every word his boyfriend croons.
No words can suffice when Kyuhyun’s buttery, smooth voice is silenced again, so Sungmin crawls forward and kisses him with the most passion he can muster, hands gripping Kyuhyun’s thin T-shirt, humming in the back of his throat when he feels his boyfriend’s tentative hands moving down his back to rest on the swell of his backside.
Pulling back, Sungmin is surprised to see Kyuhyun’s eyes sparkling with tears, his shock showing on his face.
“Kyu, are you okay?” he asks, visibly troubled.
Smiling through his tears, Kyuhyun nods his head, crying even harder when Sungmin began kissing the droplets away, hating himself even more for what he was doing to him.
13.
“Why can’t we go to your house today?” Kyuhyun asks one December day as he and Sungmin walk to his car, bundled up in an oversized, black parka and a knitted scarf. Snowflakes pepper his hair, and his lips are almost blue from the brisk weather. His lack of fashion sense makes Sungmin’s nose scrunch up, but its somehow endearing… mainly because he finds anything Kyu does endearing.
“Because,” is his stubborn, meaningless response, his cheeks red from the cold as he averts his eyes from Kyuhyun’s dark, probing ones.
“Come on,” sighs Kyuhyun, eyebrows creasing. “I’m the stubborn one in this relationship.”
Sungmin looks affronted. “What?! I’m definitely more stubborn than you!”
“No you’re not~” Kyuhyun sings, taking off at a run to his shiny, recently bought car, gasping for breath by the time he reaches the vehicle. Sungmin arrives only seconds later, barely out-of-breath, a crestfallen expression on his face at the sight of the car.
“This is why,” he says quietly, gesturing at the car.
Kyuhyun is visibly bewildered. “Because of my car?”
Sungmin scoffs, rolling his eyes at Kyuhyun’s all too prevalent issues with thinking. “No, babo. Because of your wealth. You’re rich as hell; I’m poor as hell. I live in a dingy apartment while you live in a fucking mansion. I-”
“Ugh, just shut up,” Kyuhyun spits angrily. “Why do you think I care about that shit?”
Sungmin gapes at Kyuhyun momentarily, shocked into silence. He’s seen Kyuhyun angry, but it’s never towards him. Sure, he’s been angry for him, like when a particularly harsh bully pushes Sungmin into the hard, metal lockers for simply being gay, but never had he been incensed with him.
Kyuhyun continues before Sungmin can figure out how to speak again. “I don’t care if you live in a fucking box. You could be homeless for all I care. But it wouldn’t matter. Because you’re Lee Sungmin, my boyfriend. And that’s all that matters.”
Wordlessly, Kyuhyun turns away and opens the car door for Sungmin before walking over to his side, turning on the ignition, and waiting. Finally regaining movement, Sungmin eyes the open door and the stationary car, his orbs slightly watery when he ultimately decides to get in.
“Told you I’m the most stubborn.”
“I hate you.”
“Sure you do, Minnie.”
14.
It’s January when Donghae approaches the currently squabbling KyuMin during a free period in school. His palms are perspiring as he wipes them fruitlessly against his jeans, and his eyes are narrowed in anxiety.
"Uh, Kyuhyun-ah? Sungmin-hyung?” he asks in an uncharacteristically shy voice, brushing his fringe from his eyes.
“Donghae!” exclaims Kyuhyun, smiling broadly at his best friend. “I didn’t know you had a free this cycle!”
“I don’t… I skipped class,” he answers sheepishly, hands moving to his pockets. “I… just wanted to talk to you two. Privately.”
Sungmin looks slightly nervous. “What, have Kyuhyunnie-ah and I been showing too much affection for each other in public? Because we can stop! Really!” he exclaims, hurriedly pushing the too close Kyuhyun away from his body.
“Yah! I will sit where I want to, thanks,” mutters Kyuhyun, sitting so that he’s practically on Sungmin’s lap, causing the older boy to blush.
“No, it’s not that!” insists Donghae, a slight smile spreading across his nervous face. “I think that’s cute, actually.”
“’Cute’, you say? I can’t see that as something a straight guy would say,” muses Kyuhyun perceptively, a hand on his chin as he examines the now fervently blushing Donghae. “Take a seat, my dear Fishy.”
After Donghae complies, Sungmin picks up from where Kyuhyun had left off. “Do you happen to have a crush on someone? Who’s not a girl?” he asks wryly, leaning forward in interest.
Too mortified to talk, Donghae nods, causing Sungmin to squeal and Kyuhyun to look curious. “Who is it?” the taller boy asks impatiently, a hand subconsciously intertwining with Sungmin’s.
Donghae, staring at his knees intently, mutters a name so quietly that neither boy hears it.
“Come again?” asks Kyuhyun, fighting the urge to chuckle.
Taking a calming, deep breath, Donghae finally forces himself to look up at his two friends, his eyes tortured and bloodshot from suppressed tears.
“Hyukjae,” he says hoarsely. “I’m in love with Hyukjae.”
“Oh, Hae,” says Kyuhyun softly before he hastens around the table to embrace his best friend as he cries into his chest. Not wanting to be left out, Sungmin grabs Donghae’s hand and strokes it, murmuring comforting words that fall on deaf ears as the other boy sobs.
“Tell him,” Kyuhyun finally insists when the tears subside into quiet hiccups, and Donghae is able to support himself. “Like you told me to tell Sungmin every day. Look at me now.” He jokingly gestures at him and the aforementioned boy, but this does nothing but make Donghae’s lip tremble and his eyes fill with tears again, because he’s thinking of Kyuhyun’s time, and how its running out.
15.
“My dad thinks you’re very handsome,” the pacing boy says matter-of-factly into the cell phone, a hand absently ruffling his already messy light brown locks.
The boy on the other line huffs impatiently, clicking his tongue. “How does that change things, Kyuhyun? More importantly, your dad has never. Seen. Me.” he says testily.
“It means that he’ll be more lenient when I say you’re my boyfriend, Minnie,” he insists, purposefully ignoring Sungmin’s second statement, plopping down in his rolling computer chair. Even though he is trying to keep his nervous fidgeting to a minimum, Kyuhyun finds it hard to stay still, his nonchalant attitude to Sungmin simply a ruse.
Because Kyuhyun really wants Sungmin to meet his parents… even if the older feels that there was no reason for him to.
“I don’t understand why you want me to meet them anyway. I’m nothing to be proud of,” he insists, and Kyuhyun knew he had defiantly crossed his arms at those words.
“You’re everything to be proud of,” says Kyuhyun in an almost deadly tone, the sudden seriousness of his voice daring Sungmin to contradict him. The younger could feel his own hands trembling with anger at one of Sungmin’s near-constant digs at his own self-worth, those self-deprecating words one of the only things that Kyuhyun hated about him.
Sungmin sniffed haughtily, and Kyuhyun could just see the way his lip is curled, a forced expression of annoyance tainting his features. In reality, he isn’t really irritated. But, in Sungmin’s mind, expressing any sort of emotion but irritation at Kyuhyun’s statement would signal that he agreed. And agreement is the last emotion he feels. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
Kyuhyun has to suppress a frustrated exhale. “Well, it does to me. Just tell me. Tell me one reason you don’t want to meet them,” his voice grows softer towards the end of his sentence, a sense of defeat dwelling within him.
The other boy is silent on the line, the only sound being the passing of cars outside of Sungmin’s inner city apartment, easily heard by Kyuhyun in his silent bedroom.
Kyuhyun can hear the sound of Sungmin licking his lips and opening them to speak, only to change his mind and sigh into the phone. “There are many reasons,” he finally answers quietly.
“Tell me at least one, then.”
Sungmin sighs into the phone for what seems to be the hundredth time, but this sigh is different from the others. It’s sad, almost defeated. Then, without warning, Sungmin begins spewing out a fountain of words, his voice breaking. “Because then it means you’ll want to meet my parents. Because then your parents will see that their son is dating a boy and not a girl, and a disappointing boy at that. Because then you’ll see what that I’m a downgrade from who you should really be dating, and break up with me. Because-”
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up,” Kyuhyun says shakily into the receiver, on the verge of angry tears. “You’re so fucking wrong that it makes me want to punch you,” Kyuhyun practically yells, his hands shaking even more, making it difficult to properly hold the phone. “You’re perfect! Why can’t you fucking see that?”
He can clearly hear Sungmin crying on the line, but doesn’t stop yelling. He doesn’t think he can.
“Talk to me when you want to believe what I’m saying. Or at least want to try to believe me,” he spits into the phone, slamming it shut only to rip it back open to call Donghae, tears streaming down his face.
16.
Kyuhyun hates that it’s a trip to the hospital that forces Sungmin to meet his parents, but knows that he had no choice in the matter.
It has been one week, two days, ten hours, 15 minutes, and… 10 seconds that Kyuhyun and Sungmin hadn’t spoke when the ‘accident’ (as Kyuhyun aptly calls it) happens. He’s walking to his car, humming “Memories” under his breath, when his legs decide to stop working, causing him to collapse, his head colliding painfully with the asphalt. His vision turns black, but he’s still conscious, his muscles twitching uncontrollably and the blood leaking from his head until finally everything goes numb.
He’s convinced that he has died when he hears his favorite voice crying into his ear, warm, small hands struggling to flip him over and heave him into his car, and a pair of soft, thin lips pressing themselves to his temple repeatedly. “Kyu-ah, please don’t leave me. I’ll meet your parents, I’ll wash your car, I’ll paint your house. Anything. Just don’t leave me.”
When Kyuhyun awakes, he remembers nothing except the fact that he blacked out and Sungmin saved him, his need to see his boyfriend pushing everything else from his mind.
“Let me through!” he hears the all-too familiar voice shouting in the hallway, before the door to his room is crashing open, and Sungmin is a blur as he sprints across the room and grabs Kyuhyun’s face, their lips meeting in a mash of passion, need, and fear. Kyuhyun can feel tears that don’t belong to him landing on his cheeks, Sungmin’s kisses going from rough and needy to gentle and caressing, their tongues exploring and tasting rather than stubbornly combating.
Pulling only slightly away from Kyuhyun’s lips, Sungmin speaks, his mouth moving against his boyfriend’s. “I love you. I couldn’t give a shit if we’ve only been dating for five months. I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you. Just… please say you love me back,” he finishes, lips downturned in his effort not to cry.
But Kyuhyun’s parents had seen the whole thing, seeing as they had followed Sungmin into the room, and his mother ahems quietly at that point, snapping Kyuhyun from his reverie as he drowns in Sungmin’s all-too-expressive eyes.
Sungmin turns red, his eyes widening in fear as they come into contact with Kyuhyun’s shocked parents.
Kyuhyun, however, laughs, breaking the silent and eerie tension in the room. “Umma, Appa… this is Lee Sungmin. My boyfriend.”
17.
“What’s wrong with you? Tell me now.”
“Nothing is wrong with me, Minnie.”
“Stop lying to my fucking face, Kyu! You’re losing weight like crazy, you’re as gaunt and pale as a fucking corpse, you vomit at least three times a day. I could go on!”
“My parents like you. Don’t you want to talk about that?”
“Kyuhyun, I swear. I’ll get it out of Donghae if you don’t tell me.”
Kyuhyun finally freezes in his attempts to divert Sungmin’s attention, both because he never calls him Kyuhyun unless he is fucking livid, and because he knows that Donghae would crack at the slightest mention of Kyuhyun’s illness. He has, after all, been sobbing uncontrollably in Kyuhyun’s hospital bedroom that whole week, visiting everyday after school with a miserable, prayerful Siwon and a teary Hyukjae, who doesn't stray from Donghae once.
“Fine,” he finally sighs, ruffling his hair with the hand not hooked up to an IV machine. “I’ll tell you.”
18.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asks Sungmin in a murderous tone, his fists clenched in his lap.
“Because I’m selfish and wanted to have you before I-”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. If you do that to me, I’ll kill you… And you’re not selfish, because even if I had known… I would have still gone out with you.” And then Sungmin is under the covers with Kyuhyun, his smaller frame clutching to the other’s lean but withering one, fingers gripping his papery hospital gown as he sobs into his shoulder. “Don’t leave me Kyu. Please don’t. I’d face my dad and come out to the whole fucking world if you stay here for me.”
“I can’t control whether I live or -”
“Shut the fuck up. Yes, you can.”
“I can’t,” Kyuhyun says weakly, feeling tears of his own well up in his eyes at Sungmin’s pain. He hates himself more than he ever has, and feels that maybe he deserves to die for putting his Sungmin through all of this.
“I mean, brain cancer? Really, Kyuhyun? You had to get brain cancer? Of all the types, you had to get the one that’s almost always incurable.” Sungmin knows he’s not making sense at this point, but he’s past caring about anything. Just the thought of losing his Kyuhyun has him unable to think straight.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I should have told you.”
“How long did you have?”
“A year.”
“How long has it been since you found out?”
Kyuhyun laughs bitterly. “Six months.”
And then they’re comforting each other, desperately trying to think of ways to get out of this shit situation that is entrapping them, knowing that there is no way out.
“Just last the rest of the year, Kyuhyun. For me. Please.”
19.
“I don’t have much time left. I can feel it,” says Kyuhyun on a dreary Saturday morning in April. It’s been a solid month, and he hasn’t been able to leave his bed because his brain seems to have forgotten how to move his legs. He still has sensation in them, definitely, but lacks the ability to even lift a toe, and it depresses him.
“Shut up,” answers Sungmin automatically, his grip on Kyuhyun’s hand becoming painfully tight.
“Is that the only word you know how to say lately? I wasn’t done speaking, by the way,” says Kyuhyun in that annoying, detached manner of his that Sungmin hated, but now loves, because he cherishes any presence of Kyuhyun’s distinct personality, knowing that it can be gone in the blink of an eye.
“Continue, then,” hedges Sungmin tightly, back stiff in the uncomfortable wooden chair that has become his friend in the last month as he constantly sits there, talking to Kyuhyun or watching his face scrunch in pain as he slept off a pounding headache.
“I want you to make love to me,” he responds seriously, his eyes unwavering from Sungmin’s. The other reddens almost instantly.
“You’re sick though. What if the pleasure makes your head explode or something?” he asks in a hushed tone, face still tinged with embarrassment.
Kyuhyun can’t help but laugh, gaunt face grinning, high cheekbones more prominent. “It won’t. I don’t want to die never having sex with you.”
“Don’t say the ‘D’ word, babo,” mumbles Sungmin irately.
“Mianhe. So, you’ll do it?” asks Kyuhyun exuberantly, his eyes shining genuinely for the first time in a month.
“Fine,” says Sungmin begrudgingly, tears springing to his eyes when Kyuhyun brings him in for a sweet, chaste kiss on the lips.
20.
Sungmin collapses next to Kyuhyun in the hospital bed after it happens, his throat sore from restrained moans and his backside slightly pained. But that doesn’t stop the fear that bubbles in his heaving chest.
“Kyuhyun, I thought I killed you! You flatlined!” says Sungmin angrily, slapping Kyuhyun’s bare chest.
“Ow! Sorry, Minnie,” he sighs, using the upper half of his body to roll over onto his side. “But that was amazing. You were amazing. And I was too, of course,” he says jokingly, his fingers threading through Sungmin’s sweaty hair. “I love you.”
Sungmin feels his frustration melt away at those three words, his heart fluttering madly in his chest. “I love you too, Kyu,” he mutters, allowing the other to pull him in for a kiss, the IV attached to Kyuhyun’s forearm preventing him from wrapping his arms around his boyfriend like he so pleased.
And they both hate it.
21.
It’s May when Kyuhyun falls into a coma.
Sungmin and Donghae are in Calculus, listlessly passing notes to each other when their principal arrives in the doorway, a crying Siwon and a pale faced, shaking Hyukjae in tow.
Sungmin practically cries at just seeing them in that state, because he knows something bad happened to Kyuhyun.
And he’s right.
Donghae predictably cries when he sees his friend unmoving in the bed, his brown hair uncharacteristically neat and his hands folded, twitching every so often. Hyukjae predictably crushes Donghae to his lean frame, repeatedly kissing his forehead, screwing his eyes shut in an attempt to be strong. Siwon predictably kneels and prays, holding Hyukjae and Donghae’s hands tightly in his own.
Sungmin just wants to curl up in a hole in the ground and never wake up.
They all blindly stare at Kyuhyun as the doctor explains his state, ‘tumor’, ‘severe memory loss’, ‘a few days’, and ‘nothing we can do, boys’ the only phrases that really jumped out at them.
“Why didn’t he want chemotherapy? Wouldn’t that have helped?” asks Siwon on the third day of their vigil by Kyu’s bedside, trying to fill the silence that followed after Kyuhyun’s mother had to be dragged bodily from the hospital room for the second time that day.
Donghae shakes his head forlornly. “He told me he didn’t want chemo. It would just kill him faster and make him lose his hair. He told me he wanted to die with hair,” he gives a watery laugh. Donghae allows Hyukjae to pull him into his warm embrace again, because that’s the only thing preventing him from spending the whole day crying.
Sungmin just sits there silently, his eyes never straying from the expressionless, deathly white face of his beloved, his heart beat sounding false in his ears, because they are discussing Kyuhyun as if he had already died. And he wants to do nothing but rip the world apart for being so unjust because he knows it’s like Kyuhyun is dead, even if he is still alive and breathing.
22.
Sungmin hates the funeral.
He hates the flowers, the mahogany coffin, the priest’s speech about someone that sounded nothing like his Kyuhyun, the countless number of people who express their condolences to him after tormenting both of them daily in school.
He stays close to Siwon and a handholding EunHae, Donghae murmuring “I told him” to Kyuhyun’s ghostly white form when they approach the coffin.
It’s about a month after the funeral that he feels some sort of closure, and even then he still wants to kill Kyuhyun for dying.
“Kyuhyun-ah wanted me to give this to you,” Mrs. Cho says when the quartet is leaving the funeral; her eyes bloodshot and hands shaky. “Watch it in a month, he said.”
Although it pains them to wait that long, they do, and a month later they’re opening the thin, square package that they received that day of the funeral.
“It’s a DVD,” states Hyukjae, twirling it between his hands.
“Give it to me,” demands Donghae, snatching it from his lover’s hands, leaning over to peck him on the lips before fetching his computer, sliding the DVD into it. Sungmin is shaking slightly, gripping Siwon’s arm in an attempt to calm down.
Kyuhyun’s smirking face pops up on the screen, fumbling with the camera until it’s focused clearly on him, his backdrop the depressing, off white hospital room walls and the plain white sheets of the bed he was confined to for last few months of his life.
Sungmin can already feel the tears welling behind his eyes, and can already clearly hear Donghae crying.
“First of all, shut the fuck up all of you. Donghae, stop crying. Minnie, let go of Siwon’s arm and don’t cry. Hyukjae, you can keep holding Donghae. Siwon… just keep being holy.”
They can’t help but laugh, because it’s so purely Kyuhyun and it pains them to admit that they almost forgot how his voice sounded and how he talked and how he had the weird habit of constantly touching his hair as he spoke.
“I know I died, and I’m really sorry about that, really. But think about how much worse it is for me! I’m leaving my amazing best friends and boyfriend down in Earth while I’m either above you partying with Jesus and Moses and all the other people Siwon constantly mentions, or down in Hell shoveling coal into a furnace. And, if Sungmin and I did what I wanted us to, I’m most definitely going to Hell.” He winks over dramatically, causing Sungmin’s face to redden at the others’ knowing glances. “Minnie, stop blushing.”
“Before I launch into any personal messages, let me say I’m sorry for fulfilling my cliché potential by making a posthumous video message, but it was the only way I could say this to you guys without ruining my cool image by crying like a child in front of you.”
“Because you’re so cool, Kyuhyun-ah,” mumbles Donghae, failing at restraining his tears.
“Donghae, yes I am fucking awesome, and STOP. CRYING. And speaking of Donghae, your message is first. Hae… you’re my best friend. I probably didn’t say this enough when I was alive, but you truly are. And I love you. A lot. You’re like a brother to me, and I hate myself for being a scared little bitch and not telling you this in real life.”
At this point, Donghae is inconsolable, and requires Siwon and Sungmin to wrap their arms around him. What’s making it worse is that Kyu is crying too, his eyes glimmering with tears as he continues on to Hyukjae and Siwon. “Hyukkie, my little anchovy. You’re the only person who I let call me GameKyu on a regular basis, so I hope you treasure that fact forever. Although Donghae is always first in my heart on the friendship scale, you’re a close second.” They can’t help but chuckle at Kyuhyun’s blunt attitude even through his tears, Donghae’s mouth uplifting slightly. “Also, treat my little fishy right. If I find out you hurt him, I’ll hunt you down and haunt you forever.”
Hyukjae places a soft kiss on Donghae’s fluffy hair, lingering as he inhales the warm scent. “I would never hurt him.” Unsurprisingly, this simply sets off another chain of sobs.
“Siwon, although your religious ways were the butt of many of my jokes, I really did appreciate you praying for me when I was sick. It… actually made me feel safe, so thank you. You’re also one of my best friends, so you and Hyukjae can fight for second place. Also, thank you for supporting me and Sungmin despite your initial views on gay couples.” Kyuhyun grinned at the camera, mimicking some of Siwon’s hand gestures and bows for their entertainment. However, his eyes softened only moments afterward.
“Minnie.” Just the sound of Kyuhyun’s dulcet voice saying his name by itself makes Sungmin’s legs feel like jelly and his heart do somersaults. And he detests it because he knew it was the last time he’d ever truly hear it.
“I’m warning you all, but this is going to be cheesy and lovey-dovey and sappy as fuck, but don’t leave. Because I want anyone who’s listening to hear this.
“Minnie… you made the last few months of my life worth living. Your cute voice, your aegyo ways, your stubbornness, your soft lips, your dark hair… everything about you, even the things that sometimes annoyed me, made my day all the more bright. You’re perfect, no matter how much you disagree with me. If I had lived to be an old, wrinkly man, it’d be your old, wrinkly face I’d want to come home to everyday. I’m never going to reach that stage, but you are. Don’t spend your life waiting for something that’s never going to come back. I’m relying on Donghae, Hyukjae, and Siwon to make sure you listen to me. Please, please, please listen to me, Minnie.
“I hope I’m not being presumptuous and thinking that you’re still sobbing over me… on second thought I hope that I am being presumptuous and you’re already dating someone else… no, I’m too selfish. I hope you wait a little bit at least,” he smiles through the tears now freely streaming down his face. “Saranghaeyo Minnie. Annyeong!” He waves at the camera, and suddenly the screen is black.
“It’s over,” whispers Sungmin, and it feels like the doctor is telling him that Kyuhyun is dead all over again.
Because he doesn’t think he could ever forget Kyu, no matter how hard he tries, because its impossible to erase the memory of the happiness his smile could evoke in him, the feeling of his chapped lips on his own delicate ones, the way Kyu always told Sungmin that he was perfect to him and that his feelings of self-hatred didn’t mean shit.
And he didn’t want to ever forget that.
Pairing: KyuMin (slight EunHae)
Genre: Angst, drama, romance
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Kyuhyun is not going to let anything stop him from loving Sungmin, even if it means hurting him in the end.
A/N: There should be a warning about what lies ahead, but it will just give away the whole plot, so I'm sorry about that. Also, I know this idea is recycled and overused and cliché, but I couldn't resist. I hope I put my own spin on it nicely OTL. Also, this was written at a time when I thought it was cool to use Korean phrases in my writing >//< This badly needs to be edited.
01.
“Cho Kyuhyun!” The nurse’s voice rings out piercingly in the near quiet of the empty waiting room, jarring the aforementioned boy from his absentminded stupor. With a gentle nudge from his mother, Kyuhyun follows the woman, her long black hair swinging behind her as she leads him and his parents down the hallway.
She leaves them in a small, hospital check up room, the off-white walls boring into Kyuhyun’s eyes and the sterile, shiny instruments upon the granite counter lining the wall making him nauseous. He has a feeling of impending doom weighing down his chest, a sensation that he can’t push away no matter how hard he tries.
The doctor finally enters the room, a clipboard pressed to her flat chest, brown hair twisted into a no nonsense bun. Her eyes are calculating and detached upon entering the room, but soften as she examines the pale, drawn teenager in front of her.
A male nurse enters only moments after, a plastic Zip-Lock full of syringes and needles in his grasp. He eyes the boy in the same, sad way, causing Kyuhyun to shift uncomfortably under their depressing gazes. They make him feel hopeless even if he doesn’t even know what’s wrong with himself.
“Well?” Kyuhyun’s father asks in his brusque way, arms crossed and foot impatiently tapping the ground. He sees the way the doctor and nurse are examining his son, and it causes his heart to flutter faster and faster against his rib cage. He can’t help but feel the same emotions as his son. His wife clings to his forearm, eyes glittering with unshed tears, because she already can predict the bad news before it has even been delivered.
“A year,” is all the doctor says before Kyuhyun is enveloped in the arms of his mother, and tears obscure his vision, and the sounds of pained sobs that aren’t his fill his ears.
02.
It’s only a week later that he meets Sungmin. A week later that he’s tired of feeling down on himself for something he can’t change. A week later that he decides that he’s going to revert back to his old mischievous, game playing ways, because something like a deadline wasn’t going to stop Cho Kyuhyun.
A week later that his life becomes all about Lee Sungmin, the soft-skinned, thin-lipped, pretty much perfect transfer student from a city outside of Seoul.
Kyuhyun never expected to fall in love at first sight, since he figured that he knew himself pretty well, and had never thought he’d be subject to the unreadable ways of love. He was also surprised that so strong a feeling had emerged when he laid eyes on a guy. But he easily decided that he didn’t care when said guy made him feel as if he was walking on air.
As cliché as meetings get, Kyuhyun bumps into him as he’s entering a classroom and Sungmin is exiting it, his bag opening and dumping all of its contents to the floor upon their collison.
“Aigo! Mianhe!” the shorter man exclaims, immediately bending down to gather up Kyuhyun’s fallen books. And Kyuhyun can’t help but gape wordlessly when the older boy hands his things back to him, expressive eyes apologetic, dark fringe covering one eye.
“Are you okay? Did I hit your head in the process of almost knocking you over?” he jokes, nudging Kyuhyun in the arm with one of his books.
Kyuhyun snaps to attention, face uncharacteristically coloring at his actions. He should have known that Sungmin would amount to something more than a random kid he bumped into just based on the fact he blushed.
Because Cho Kyuhyun never blushes.
“Mianhe,” says Kyuhyun, hurriedly taking the books from the smiling boy in front of him.
“It’s no problem at all …” he trails off, expectantly looking at the other boy, waiting for him to fill in the blank.
“Kyuhyun. Cho Kyuhyun,” he answers, face reddening again when their hands brush and he feels tingles, mentally chastising himself at that occurrence, because how storybook romance is that?
The dark haired boy laughs, his pearly white smile dazzling Kyuhyun momentarily. “Well, I’m Sungmin. Lee Sungmin. I’ll see you around, Kyu-ssi,” he says, tucking the last book into Kyuhyun’s messenger bag, patting his hand before walking away.
And Kyuhyun knows that he has gotten himself into some deep shit when he can’t resist checking out the boy’s swaying hips and round ass when he walks away.
03.
“So, do you know anything about that new student? Sungmin-ssi?” Kyuhyun asks Donghae as soon as he sees him at lunch later that day, trying not to look too enthusiastic for information.
And, he should add, failing.
Donghae arches an eyebrow. “Yeah. He’s in his 3rd year, but he was in my Calculus class,” he answers, taking a sip from his water bottle.
“You mean you were in his Calculus class, since you don’t exactly belong there,” counters Kyuhyun, eyes shining with mirth.
Donghae laughs, throwing his head back. “I can’t help that I’m good at math. But really, don’t change the subject. I want to know why you’re interested in the new boy.”
Kyuhyun’s eyes are immediately muted, averting contact with Donghae’s curious ones. “I’m not interested, just… wondering.”
The other boy looks at him wryly, trying to read his friend’s diverted face, only to laugh when he sees that two pink circles have formed on his high cheekbones.
“You’re blushing!” Donghae accuses, surprised, suppressing a laugh.
“Am not,” Kyuhyun immediately retorts, making to flee in embarrassment before his shoulders are pinned down by Hyukjae and Siwon.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you going, GameKyu?” asks Hyukjae, letting Kyuhyun go once he knows he’s not going to run, moving to sit beside a bashfully grinning Donghae.
Siwon sits next to Kyuhyun, snatching an apple slice from his tray. “Did Donghae-ah say something to offend you?” he asks in that serious, but genial voice of his, looking at Kyuhyun musingly.
Kyuhyun opens his mouth to answer, but Donghae speeds before him. “Kyuhyun-ah has a crush on the new kid.”
Siwon eyes the furiously blushing boy in alarm, while Hyukjae looks at him in surprise.
“I. Did. Not. Say. That,” grounds out Kyuhyun, eyes alight with embarrassment and anger as he glares at the now cowering Fishy.
“It sure looks like you do though, based on your defensiveness,” counters Hyukjae, and Kyuhyun can’t deny that.
04.
“Are you ever going talk to him again, Kyuhyun-ah?” asks Siwon a month later. It’s been a whole fucking month, and Kyuhyun can do nothing but stare longingly at Sungmin as he passes by their lunch table everyday, his new friends Kangin and Yesung in tow. Even Siwon, who was initially unnerved by the fact that one of his best friends liked another boy, had been pressing him to just go up to Sungmin.
“He will one day,” Donghae mystically answers for the absentminded boy, stealing a sip of Hyukjae’s strawberry milk.
“Excuse me, but that’s not yours,” spits Hyukjae, making a grab for his strawberry milk, causing Donghae to accidentally squirt it on the other’s spotlessly clean white T-Shirt.
The ensuing (play) fight that ensues distracts the others from Kyuhyun’s lack of confidence towards Sungmin, and he’s back to staring at him aimlessly, picking at his unappealing lunch disinterestedly.
05.
Kyuhyun lies down in his messily unmade king-sized bed, head propped up on one of the many pillows scattered along the headboard. A pounding headache (one of the many pounding headaches that he’s had in the last few months) has caused him to retreat to his bedroom despite the early hour of the evening, and he uses this time to think about Sungmin.
It nauseates him that he’s this hung up over a boy, and it does nothing for his masculinity. He’s Cho fucking Kyuhyun, not some lovesick girl. He knows he’s not a girl… but he can’t deny the fact that he is lovesick.
Closing his eyes in an attempt to block out the sun still streaming through his drawn curtains and filtering into his darkened room, Kyuhyun thinks of the many reasons he shouldn’t try to pursue Sungmin.
They’re both boys.
He doesn’t even know if Sungmin is gayor not.
He doesn’t even know his own sexual preference for sure.
Even if Sungmin is gay, what if doesn’t even like him?
Sungmin doesn’t deserve a sickly being such as himself, and he would be setting the other boy up for heartache by dating him.
If they did date, they’d both become social pariahs in their close-minded school.
His parents would probably kill him.
To assuage the heavy feeling on his heart, Kyuhyun tries to think of the reasons that he should tell Sungmin his feelings, and could only think of one.
It’s the only way I can be happy for these next few months.
06.
When Kyuhyun finally gets to speak to Sungmin again, it’s at a fucking party. And nothing good ever happens at parties.
Kyuhyun wants to punch himself in the face at the clichés that seem to plague him in the subject of Sungmin.
Donghae and Hyukjae drag him out of his house when his parents leave for some work event, forcing him to attend Park Jungsoo’s yearly house party, thrown every dawn of a new school term. It’s October, so the chilly weather bites at Kyuhyun’s pale, uncovered skin. Of course, they don’t know how dangerous it would be if Kyuhyun catches a cold in his weakened state, so it’s unimportant to them that he’s only dressed in a T-shirt and slightly ripped jeans as they heave him out of his warm, safe mansion home and into Donghae’s rickety car.
Kyuhyun thinks of telling them about the doctor’s diagnosis now, but figures that’d be a bit too cruel, even by the evil maknae standards he lives according to.
“AISH. You two are such assholes,” he grumbles as they proceed to drag him from the car and towards the packed house, arriving after a dangerously fast ride.
Hyukjae playfully clucks his tongue, shaking his head in mock shame. “What a way to talk to your hyungs, Kyuhyun-ah.”
“Shut up,” he mutters, wrenching his arm from Donghae’s weak grasp.
Donghae ignores Kyuhyun’s glare, and instead pats him on the back. “Sungmin-ah is here, you know? Talk to him today,” he gently insists.
Kyuhyun huffs and groans, but agrees all too easily, causing Donghae to smile in satisfaction and Hyukjae to look admiringly at the fish-like, brown-haired boy.
Stalking away from his annoying friends, Kyuhyun walks listlessly through the already drunkenly stumbling partygoers, meandering across Jungsoo’s well-attended lawn. A part of him wants to find Sungmin, but another part tells him that it’d be utterly stupid of him to attempt to hold a normal conversation in the midst of a party.
He should have listened to that side.
Kyuhyun finally locates Sungmin inside of the elaborately decorated house, stumbling just as drunkenly as many of the other kids, apparently inebriated beyond coherence. His heart plummets to see Sungmin conducting himself in this manner, the almost perfect mental image he had of the shorter man crumbling in his head.
“Kyu-ah!” he shouts upon seeing the younger man, gripping Kyuhyun’s shirt-sleeve in an attempt not to lose him in the bustling movements of the raucously dancing teenagers. “I’ve been w-wanting to speak to you!” he slurs loudly, his pull surprisingly strong in his not sober state.
The taller boy’s interest is slightly piqued, but his masochistic side has had enough with the torture, and he tries to escape Sungmin’s insistent grasp. However, the next words that leave Sungmin’s mouth stop him in his actions. “It’s all your fault that I’m in this state, y-you know. Well, and my dead-beat father’s, but mostly yours,” he yells, his voice overly loud. Thankfully, everyone around him is too drunk to realize what he’s saying, let alone to hear him over the thumping bass of the music.
His heart beating madly against his ears, Kyuhyun harshly rips his arm from Sungmin’s and drags him through the thrashing crowd of people, stopping only when they’re in a secluded hallway.
“What do you mean ‘it’s my fault’?” he spits, pushing Sungmin’s bent over body against the wall.
Sungmin doesn’t answer at first, preferring to stare at his pink oxford shoes, his chest heaving with labored breaths through his matching, slightly ragged sweater. Finally, he looks up at the angrily waiting Kyuhyun, his eyes wide and tear-filled. “My parents would murder me on the spot if they knew I liked a boy.”
Kyuhyun is sure that his heart has sunk to his stomach, his limbs shaking and his head hurting. This wasn’t the way he wanted to hear it, when Sungmin was drunk and would probably not remember ever telling him the next morning. But almost just as much as he hated that, he hated the fact that Sungmin seemed too scared to do anything about his liking of Kyuhyun because of his parents.
Catching Kyuhyun off guard, Sungmin suddenly pushes him against the adjacent wall, pinning the taller boy’s arms above his head. Springing onto the tips of his toes, he presses a rough kiss to Kyuhyun’s slightly parted lips, his tongue wasting no time in breaching them, easily dominating the younger, and Kyuhyun can feel his own tears mingling with Sungmin’s as everything he ever wanted for him and Sungmin falls to pieces right before his eyes.
07.
“He just… confessed and kissed you? And them you let him stumble away?”
“Yes, Donghae.”
Kyuhyun is sitting with his back against the headboard of his bed, his thin hands exasperatedly covering his face as he relates last night’s terrible events to a puzzled Donghae, who is sitting at the foot of his bed, twirling a pillow in his hands.
“But he likes you?”
“Yes, Donghae.”
“Babo!” Donghae suddenly shouts, hurling the silk pillow at an unsuspecting Kyuhyun’s stomach.
“What was that for?!” he sputters, violently aiming the pillow at Donghae’s face, growling when he missed.
Donghae scoffs, rolling his eyes. “He likes you! He was drunk and made a mistake. He’s probably pining for you right now.”
Kyuhyun looks at his bouncy friend disdainfully. “It’s not that simple, Donghae.”
“Yes, it is. You’re just making it more complicated than it has to be,” he laughs, playfully flicking Kyuhyun on the head.
And that was all it took for Kyuhyun to vomit up his lunch only a minute later, and for him to have to be rushed to the hospital.
08.
Donghae knows. And now so do the others.
Kyuhyun has to tell him, even if it makes his best friend, the quartet’s King of Tears, sob into Hyukjae’s shirt for more than an hour.
Even if it makes Siwon pray at the foot of Kyuhyun’s hospital bed.
Even if it makes Hyukjae momentarily hate Kyuhyun before he joins in Donghae’s insuppressible flow of tears.
“You babo! Why didn’t you tell us that you are -”
“Don’t say it, Hyukjae! Just stop. Please,” cries Donghae, and Hyukjae has to stop because of the tears overflowing from his own eyes.
“How long?” asks Siwon, hands folded in prayer.
“A year.”
Donghae bursts into more noisy sobs, his nose and cheeks red and hands shaking as he grips Hyukjae’s arm. The older of the two buries his head in Donghae’s shaggy hair, his own chest tensing as he cries, his tears dripping down his nose and into the dampening locks.
Kyuhyun can’t help but hate himself.
09.
Kyuhyun is released from the hospital when the leaves are starting to turn orange and red and yellow and fall off the trees, turning brittle and crumbling when his feet accidentally step on them. Autumn’s his favorite season, but he finds it hard to enjoy it when his head hurts every morning and it’s sometimes hard for him to even walk amongst the sea of changing trees.
It’s even harder for him to enjoy it when Sungmin presses down on his already paining head like a twenty-pound weight.
10.
“K-Kyu-ah?”
The voice, even more high-pitched than usual in its anxiety, sounds behind Kyuhyun during his lunch period as Donghae is forcing him to actually eat his lunch rather than just pick at it.
Kyuhyun turns around, the stricken look on Hyukjae and Siwon’s faces already telling him who it is behind him.
(Not that he didn’t know already based on that adorable voice.)
“Yes, Sungmin?” he can’t help but ask coldly, wincing at but ignoring the three-way kick from under the table.
Despite being pale with nerves, Sungmin stands his ground. “I was hoping to speak with you. Alone,” he says shakily, sending a cursory but apologetic glance at Kyuhyun’s concerned friends.
“Ani-”
“He would love to,” Hyukjae interrupts, snatching his strawberry milk from the table and pulling Siwon up by the elbow. Donghae follows his lead, pushing Kyuhyun’s lunch tray closer to the younger boy before leading the other two to another table.
“Babos,” he mutters to himself, then remembers Sungmin’s presence.
“Ne?” he asks impatiently, back to picking at his cold pizza.
Without invitation, Sungmin sits in front of Kyuhyun, his hands clasped in front of him. The taller boy refuses to meet his eyes, and only does so when Sungmin’s words shock him into doing it.
“I meant what I said.” His voice is still trembling, but his words are certain and sure, his dark eyes scared but unwavering from Kyuhyun’s face.
“You remembered,” he states stupidly, his mouth agape.
“Of course I do,” says Sungmin, his voice becoming steadier. “I’ve liked you since we bumped into each other. You were adorable. Even if I thought you were my hyung until Donghae told me you’re actually the maknae of your group.”
Kyuhyun began to feel lightheaded at Sungmin’s words, and didn’t even know what question to ask first, leading him to say, “You talk to Donghae?”
Sungmin smiles, laughing. “That’s the first question you ask?”
The other blushes, his lips curving upwards. It's the first time he smiled in a while, and his face already hurts from the effort.
“Donghae sits in front of me in Calculus. Same last name and all,” he answers. “I may have casually asked him about you when you were out. I was worried.” He bites his lip, drawing Kyuhyun’s attention to it. “You’re okay, right? There were tons of rumors going around, each worse than the last.”
Kyuhyun almost frowns, and he considers, for a small, infinitesimal millisecond, that maybe he should tell Sungmin that he isn't okay. But, instead, he smiles broadly and nods his head. “I’m fine.”
Sungmin’s eyes show his relief. “That’s great to hear. But… where does this leave us?”
“I’m not afraid of a relationship with you,” he answers without skipping a beat, hands itching to interlace with Sungmin’s clasped ones.
“Good,” responds Sungmin, his voice wavering again, his neck leaning forward as his hands stop Kyuhyun’s from playing with his food, only to intertwine his fingers with his. Kyuhyun can practically hear his heart ramming outside his chest, his face involuntarily leaning closer to Sungmin’s. The dead silence of the cafeteria falls on deaf ears when their lips meet in their real first kiss, their mouths moving in sync, soft and thin against slightly chapped and bow-shaped.
11.
They are the first gay couple to ever come out at their school.
As they knew would happen, they are faced with judging stares from fellow students, shoves in the hall from burly, homophobic jocks, and questioning glances from some of the teachers who find out. However, much to Kyuhyun’s chagrin and to Sungmin, the aegyo prince’s, delight, some girls think they're cute, and often fawn over them at lunch or before classes began. Their ‘coming out’ sparks the emergence of another gay couple composed of Kim Kibum, a first year in Kyuhyun’s class, and Kim Jonghyun, Sungmin’s classmate, something that makes Kyuhyun’s heart hammer happily in his chest. He’s doing some good for someone else, even if it is accidental.
The only thing that matters to Sungmin is that his parents remain ignorant of the fact that he is dating a boy.
The only thing that matters to Kyuhyun is that his friends accept and support him, and he knew from the beginning that they did.
Wait, he’s lying to himself.
There’s one other thing that Kyuhyun doesn’t ever, no matter what happens, want Sungmin to find out: that he’s dating a boy who’s terminally ill.
12.
Kyuhyun is glad to find out that Sungmin is nothing like he had expected him to be.
He’s more than even Kyuhyun’s wildest fantasies had conjured up.
He loves that Sungmin enjoys nothing more than to practice martial arts and play his guitar. He loves that Sungmin’s favorite animals are rabbits and that pink is his favorite color. He loves how soft his hair is under his fingertips, and how soft his lips are when he peppers them with kisses.
Most of all, he loves those quiet moments they spend together, just them and the silence, Sungmin’s head against his chest, his nose buried in his sweet-smelling hair.
“What do you want to be one day, Kyu-ah? Like when you’re older and out of school?” asks Sungmin one day. They’re lying in Kyuhyun’s huge backyard, their bodies only occupying a small fraction of the wide expanse of grass. The leaves that Kyuhyun loves so much are tumbling from the trees surrounding his family’s land, creating an array of brazen colors around them.
The question makes Kyuhyun’s heart race unpleasantly. “I don’t know,” he finally answers, lips brushing against the top of Sungmin’s head with every word. “I mean, I’d like to be a singer, but my dad wants me to be a lawyer.” That much is true at least, but he knows his dad would let him be a singer if it meant keeping him for a bit longer.
“A singer?” repeats Sungmin in surprise, lifting his head from Kyuhyun’s chest to look at him. “I didn’t know you could sing.” His eyebrows are both lifted, and his thin lips are pouted. “Sing for me.”
“Demanding, much?” asks Kyuhyun with a slight smile, sitting up as Sungmin moves to sit in front of him, both of them cross-legged.
Sungmin frowns, his eyes glittering. “Please, Kyu baby. Can you sing for Minnie?”
Damn him and his aegyo. “Fine,” he agrees begrudgingly. Without much thought, he begins singing the opening lines to a random song he heard on the radio, his throat producing the words on their own accord.
Saranghaetjanha uri hamkkehan manheun nal dongan.
Sungmin’s eyes widen, and he can’t help by softly sing the next line with Kyuhyun before turning silent, his eyes softening with every word his boyfriend croons.
No words can suffice when Kyuhyun’s buttery, smooth voice is silenced again, so Sungmin crawls forward and kisses him with the most passion he can muster, hands gripping Kyuhyun’s thin T-shirt, humming in the back of his throat when he feels his boyfriend’s tentative hands moving down his back to rest on the swell of his backside.
Pulling back, Sungmin is surprised to see Kyuhyun’s eyes sparkling with tears, his shock showing on his face.
“Kyu, are you okay?” he asks, visibly troubled.
Smiling through his tears, Kyuhyun nods his head, crying even harder when Sungmin began kissing the droplets away, hating himself even more for what he was doing to him.
13.
“Why can’t we go to your house today?” Kyuhyun asks one December day as he and Sungmin walk to his car, bundled up in an oversized, black parka and a knitted scarf. Snowflakes pepper his hair, and his lips are almost blue from the brisk weather. His lack of fashion sense makes Sungmin’s nose scrunch up, but its somehow endearing… mainly because he finds anything Kyu does endearing.
“Because,” is his stubborn, meaningless response, his cheeks red from the cold as he averts his eyes from Kyuhyun’s dark, probing ones.
“Come on,” sighs Kyuhyun, eyebrows creasing. “I’m the stubborn one in this relationship.”
Sungmin looks affronted. “What?! I’m definitely more stubborn than you!”
“No you’re not~” Kyuhyun sings, taking off at a run to his shiny, recently bought car, gasping for breath by the time he reaches the vehicle. Sungmin arrives only seconds later, barely out-of-breath, a crestfallen expression on his face at the sight of the car.
“This is why,” he says quietly, gesturing at the car.
Kyuhyun is visibly bewildered. “Because of my car?”
Sungmin scoffs, rolling his eyes at Kyuhyun’s all too prevalent issues with thinking. “No, babo. Because of your wealth. You’re rich as hell; I’m poor as hell. I live in a dingy apartment while you live in a fucking mansion. I-”
“Ugh, just shut up,” Kyuhyun spits angrily. “Why do you think I care about that shit?”
Sungmin gapes at Kyuhyun momentarily, shocked into silence. He’s seen Kyuhyun angry, but it’s never towards him. Sure, he’s been angry for him, like when a particularly harsh bully pushes Sungmin into the hard, metal lockers for simply being gay, but never had he been incensed with him.
Kyuhyun continues before Sungmin can figure out how to speak again. “I don’t care if you live in a fucking box. You could be homeless for all I care. But it wouldn’t matter. Because you’re Lee Sungmin, my boyfriend. And that’s all that matters.”
Wordlessly, Kyuhyun turns away and opens the car door for Sungmin before walking over to his side, turning on the ignition, and waiting. Finally regaining movement, Sungmin eyes the open door and the stationary car, his orbs slightly watery when he ultimately decides to get in.
“Told you I’m the most stubborn.”
“I hate you.”
“Sure you do, Minnie.”
14.
It’s January when Donghae approaches the currently squabbling KyuMin during a free period in school. His palms are perspiring as he wipes them fruitlessly against his jeans, and his eyes are narrowed in anxiety.
"Uh, Kyuhyun-ah? Sungmin-hyung?” he asks in an uncharacteristically shy voice, brushing his fringe from his eyes.
“Donghae!” exclaims Kyuhyun, smiling broadly at his best friend. “I didn’t know you had a free this cycle!”
“I don’t… I skipped class,” he answers sheepishly, hands moving to his pockets. “I… just wanted to talk to you two. Privately.”
Sungmin looks slightly nervous. “What, have Kyuhyunnie-ah and I been showing too much affection for each other in public? Because we can stop! Really!” he exclaims, hurriedly pushing the too close Kyuhyun away from his body.
“Yah! I will sit where I want to, thanks,” mutters Kyuhyun, sitting so that he’s practically on Sungmin’s lap, causing the older boy to blush.
“No, it’s not that!” insists Donghae, a slight smile spreading across his nervous face. “I think that’s cute, actually.”
“’Cute’, you say? I can’t see that as something a straight guy would say,” muses Kyuhyun perceptively, a hand on his chin as he examines the now fervently blushing Donghae. “Take a seat, my dear Fishy.”
After Donghae complies, Sungmin picks up from where Kyuhyun had left off. “Do you happen to have a crush on someone? Who’s not a girl?” he asks wryly, leaning forward in interest.
Too mortified to talk, Donghae nods, causing Sungmin to squeal and Kyuhyun to look curious. “Who is it?” the taller boy asks impatiently, a hand subconsciously intertwining with Sungmin’s.
Donghae, staring at his knees intently, mutters a name so quietly that neither boy hears it.
“Come again?” asks Kyuhyun, fighting the urge to chuckle.
Taking a calming, deep breath, Donghae finally forces himself to look up at his two friends, his eyes tortured and bloodshot from suppressed tears.
“Hyukjae,” he says hoarsely. “I’m in love with Hyukjae.”
“Oh, Hae,” says Kyuhyun softly before he hastens around the table to embrace his best friend as he cries into his chest. Not wanting to be left out, Sungmin grabs Donghae’s hand and strokes it, murmuring comforting words that fall on deaf ears as the other boy sobs.
“Tell him,” Kyuhyun finally insists when the tears subside into quiet hiccups, and Donghae is able to support himself. “Like you told me to tell Sungmin every day. Look at me now.” He jokingly gestures at him and the aforementioned boy, but this does nothing but make Donghae’s lip tremble and his eyes fill with tears again, because he’s thinking of Kyuhyun’s time, and how its running out.
15.
“My dad thinks you’re very handsome,” the pacing boy says matter-of-factly into the cell phone, a hand absently ruffling his already messy light brown locks.
The boy on the other line huffs impatiently, clicking his tongue. “How does that change things, Kyuhyun? More importantly, your dad has never. Seen. Me.” he says testily.
“It means that he’ll be more lenient when I say you’re my boyfriend, Minnie,” he insists, purposefully ignoring Sungmin’s second statement, plopping down in his rolling computer chair. Even though he is trying to keep his nervous fidgeting to a minimum, Kyuhyun finds it hard to stay still, his nonchalant attitude to Sungmin simply a ruse.
Because Kyuhyun really wants Sungmin to meet his parents… even if the older feels that there was no reason for him to.
“I don’t understand why you want me to meet them anyway. I’m nothing to be proud of,” he insists, and Kyuhyun knew he had defiantly crossed his arms at those words.
“You’re everything to be proud of,” says Kyuhyun in an almost deadly tone, the sudden seriousness of his voice daring Sungmin to contradict him. The younger could feel his own hands trembling with anger at one of Sungmin’s near-constant digs at his own self-worth, those self-deprecating words one of the only things that Kyuhyun hated about him.
Sungmin sniffed haughtily, and Kyuhyun could just see the way his lip is curled, a forced expression of annoyance tainting his features. In reality, he isn’t really irritated. But, in Sungmin’s mind, expressing any sort of emotion but irritation at Kyuhyun’s statement would signal that he agreed. And agreement is the last emotion he feels. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
Kyuhyun has to suppress a frustrated exhale. “Well, it does to me. Just tell me. Tell me one reason you don’t want to meet them,” his voice grows softer towards the end of his sentence, a sense of defeat dwelling within him.
The other boy is silent on the line, the only sound being the passing of cars outside of Sungmin’s inner city apartment, easily heard by Kyuhyun in his silent bedroom.
Kyuhyun can hear the sound of Sungmin licking his lips and opening them to speak, only to change his mind and sigh into the phone. “There are many reasons,” he finally answers quietly.
“Tell me at least one, then.”
Sungmin sighs into the phone for what seems to be the hundredth time, but this sigh is different from the others. It’s sad, almost defeated. Then, without warning, Sungmin begins spewing out a fountain of words, his voice breaking. “Because then it means you’ll want to meet my parents. Because then your parents will see that their son is dating a boy and not a girl, and a disappointing boy at that. Because then you’ll see what that I’m a downgrade from who you should really be dating, and break up with me. Because-”
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up,” Kyuhyun says shakily into the receiver, on the verge of angry tears. “You’re so fucking wrong that it makes me want to punch you,” Kyuhyun practically yells, his hands shaking even more, making it difficult to properly hold the phone. “You’re perfect! Why can’t you fucking see that?”
He can clearly hear Sungmin crying on the line, but doesn’t stop yelling. He doesn’t think he can.
“Talk to me when you want to believe what I’m saying. Or at least want to try to believe me,” he spits into the phone, slamming it shut only to rip it back open to call Donghae, tears streaming down his face.
16.
Kyuhyun hates that it’s a trip to the hospital that forces Sungmin to meet his parents, but knows that he had no choice in the matter.
It has been one week, two days, ten hours, 15 minutes, and… 10 seconds that Kyuhyun and Sungmin hadn’t spoke when the ‘accident’ (as Kyuhyun aptly calls it) happens. He’s walking to his car, humming “Memories” under his breath, when his legs decide to stop working, causing him to collapse, his head colliding painfully with the asphalt. His vision turns black, but he’s still conscious, his muscles twitching uncontrollably and the blood leaking from his head until finally everything goes numb.
He’s convinced that he has died when he hears his favorite voice crying into his ear, warm, small hands struggling to flip him over and heave him into his car, and a pair of soft, thin lips pressing themselves to his temple repeatedly. “Kyu-ah, please don’t leave me. I’ll meet your parents, I’ll wash your car, I’ll paint your house. Anything. Just don’t leave me.”
When Kyuhyun awakes, he remembers nothing except the fact that he blacked out and Sungmin saved him, his need to see his boyfriend pushing everything else from his mind.
“Let me through!” he hears the all-too familiar voice shouting in the hallway, before the door to his room is crashing open, and Sungmin is a blur as he sprints across the room and grabs Kyuhyun’s face, their lips meeting in a mash of passion, need, and fear. Kyuhyun can feel tears that don’t belong to him landing on his cheeks, Sungmin’s kisses going from rough and needy to gentle and caressing, their tongues exploring and tasting rather than stubbornly combating.
Pulling only slightly away from Kyuhyun’s lips, Sungmin speaks, his mouth moving against his boyfriend’s. “I love you. I couldn’t give a shit if we’ve only been dating for five months. I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you. Just… please say you love me back,” he finishes, lips downturned in his effort not to cry.
But Kyuhyun’s parents had seen the whole thing, seeing as they had followed Sungmin into the room, and his mother ahems quietly at that point, snapping Kyuhyun from his reverie as he drowns in Sungmin’s all-too-expressive eyes.
Sungmin turns red, his eyes widening in fear as they come into contact with Kyuhyun’s shocked parents.
Kyuhyun, however, laughs, breaking the silent and eerie tension in the room. “Umma, Appa… this is Lee Sungmin. My boyfriend.”
17.
“What’s wrong with you? Tell me now.”
“Nothing is wrong with me, Minnie.”
“Stop lying to my fucking face, Kyu! You’re losing weight like crazy, you’re as gaunt and pale as a fucking corpse, you vomit at least three times a day. I could go on!”
“My parents like you. Don’t you want to talk about that?”
“Kyuhyun, I swear. I’ll get it out of Donghae if you don’t tell me.”
Kyuhyun finally freezes in his attempts to divert Sungmin’s attention, both because he never calls him Kyuhyun unless he is fucking livid, and because he knows that Donghae would crack at the slightest mention of Kyuhyun’s illness. He has, after all, been sobbing uncontrollably in Kyuhyun’s hospital bedroom that whole week, visiting everyday after school with a miserable, prayerful Siwon and a teary Hyukjae, who doesn't stray from Donghae once.
“Fine,” he finally sighs, ruffling his hair with the hand not hooked up to an IV machine. “I’ll tell you.”
18.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asks Sungmin in a murderous tone, his fists clenched in his lap.
“Because I’m selfish and wanted to have you before I-”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. If you do that to me, I’ll kill you… And you’re not selfish, because even if I had known… I would have still gone out with you.” And then Sungmin is under the covers with Kyuhyun, his smaller frame clutching to the other’s lean but withering one, fingers gripping his papery hospital gown as he sobs into his shoulder. “Don’t leave me Kyu. Please don’t. I’d face my dad and come out to the whole fucking world if you stay here for me.”
“I can’t control whether I live or -”
“Shut the fuck up. Yes, you can.”
“I can’t,” Kyuhyun says weakly, feeling tears of his own well up in his eyes at Sungmin’s pain. He hates himself more than he ever has, and feels that maybe he deserves to die for putting his Sungmin through all of this.
“I mean, brain cancer? Really, Kyuhyun? You had to get brain cancer? Of all the types, you had to get the one that’s almost always incurable.” Sungmin knows he’s not making sense at this point, but he’s past caring about anything. Just the thought of losing his Kyuhyun has him unable to think straight.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I should have told you.”
“How long did you have?”
“A year.”
“How long has it been since you found out?”
Kyuhyun laughs bitterly. “Six months.”
And then they’re comforting each other, desperately trying to think of ways to get out of this shit situation that is entrapping them, knowing that there is no way out.
“Just last the rest of the year, Kyuhyun. For me. Please.”
19.
“I don’t have much time left. I can feel it,” says Kyuhyun on a dreary Saturday morning in April. It’s been a solid month, and he hasn’t been able to leave his bed because his brain seems to have forgotten how to move his legs. He still has sensation in them, definitely, but lacks the ability to even lift a toe, and it depresses him.
“Shut up,” answers Sungmin automatically, his grip on Kyuhyun’s hand becoming painfully tight.
“Is that the only word you know how to say lately? I wasn’t done speaking, by the way,” says Kyuhyun in that annoying, detached manner of his that Sungmin hated, but now loves, because he cherishes any presence of Kyuhyun’s distinct personality, knowing that it can be gone in the blink of an eye.
“Continue, then,” hedges Sungmin tightly, back stiff in the uncomfortable wooden chair that has become his friend in the last month as he constantly sits there, talking to Kyuhyun or watching his face scrunch in pain as he slept off a pounding headache.
“I want you to make love to me,” he responds seriously, his eyes unwavering from Sungmin’s. The other reddens almost instantly.
“You’re sick though. What if the pleasure makes your head explode or something?” he asks in a hushed tone, face still tinged with embarrassment.
Kyuhyun can’t help but laugh, gaunt face grinning, high cheekbones more prominent. “It won’t. I don’t want to die never having sex with you.”
“Don’t say the ‘D’ word, babo,” mumbles Sungmin irately.
“Mianhe. So, you’ll do it?” asks Kyuhyun exuberantly, his eyes shining genuinely for the first time in a month.
“Fine,” says Sungmin begrudgingly, tears springing to his eyes when Kyuhyun brings him in for a sweet, chaste kiss on the lips.
20.
Sungmin collapses next to Kyuhyun in the hospital bed after it happens, his throat sore from restrained moans and his backside slightly pained. But that doesn’t stop the fear that bubbles in his heaving chest.
“Kyuhyun, I thought I killed you! You flatlined!” says Sungmin angrily, slapping Kyuhyun’s bare chest.
“Ow! Sorry, Minnie,” he sighs, using the upper half of his body to roll over onto his side. “But that was amazing. You were amazing. And I was too, of course,” he says jokingly, his fingers threading through Sungmin’s sweaty hair. “I love you.”
Sungmin feels his frustration melt away at those three words, his heart fluttering madly in his chest. “I love you too, Kyu,” he mutters, allowing the other to pull him in for a kiss, the IV attached to Kyuhyun’s forearm preventing him from wrapping his arms around his boyfriend like he so pleased.
And they both hate it.
21.
It’s May when Kyuhyun falls into a coma.
Sungmin and Donghae are in Calculus, listlessly passing notes to each other when their principal arrives in the doorway, a crying Siwon and a pale faced, shaking Hyukjae in tow.
Sungmin practically cries at just seeing them in that state, because he knows something bad happened to Kyuhyun.
And he’s right.
Donghae predictably cries when he sees his friend unmoving in the bed, his brown hair uncharacteristically neat and his hands folded, twitching every so often. Hyukjae predictably crushes Donghae to his lean frame, repeatedly kissing his forehead, screwing his eyes shut in an attempt to be strong. Siwon predictably kneels and prays, holding Hyukjae and Donghae’s hands tightly in his own.
Sungmin just wants to curl up in a hole in the ground and never wake up.
They all blindly stare at Kyuhyun as the doctor explains his state, ‘tumor’, ‘severe memory loss’, ‘a few days’, and ‘nothing we can do, boys’ the only phrases that really jumped out at them.
“Why didn’t he want chemotherapy? Wouldn’t that have helped?” asks Siwon on the third day of their vigil by Kyu’s bedside, trying to fill the silence that followed after Kyuhyun’s mother had to be dragged bodily from the hospital room for the second time that day.
Donghae shakes his head forlornly. “He told me he didn’t want chemo. It would just kill him faster and make him lose his hair. He told me he wanted to die with hair,” he gives a watery laugh. Donghae allows Hyukjae to pull him into his warm embrace again, because that’s the only thing preventing him from spending the whole day crying.
Sungmin just sits there silently, his eyes never straying from the expressionless, deathly white face of his beloved, his heart beat sounding false in his ears, because they are discussing Kyuhyun as if he had already died. And he wants to do nothing but rip the world apart for being so unjust because he knows it’s like Kyuhyun is dead, even if he is still alive and breathing.
22.
Sungmin hates the funeral.
He hates the flowers, the mahogany coffin, the priest’s speech about someone that sounded nothing like his Kyuhyun, the countless number of people who express their condolences to him after tormenting both of them daily in school.
He stays close to Siwon and a handholding EunHae, Donghae murmuring “I told him” to Kyuhyun’s ghostly white form when they approach the coffin.
It’s about a month after the funeral that he feels some sort of closure, and even then he still wants to kill Kyuhyun for dying.
“Kyuhyun-ah wanted me to give this to you,” Mrs. Cho says when the quartet is leaving the funeral; her eyes bloodshot and hands shaky. “Watch it in a month, he said.”
Although it pains them to wait that long, they do, and a month later they’re opening the thin, square package that they received that day of the funeral.
“It’s a DVD,” states Hyukjae, twirling it between his hands.
“Give it to me,” demands Donghae, snatching it from his lover’s hands, leaning over to peck him on the lips before fetching his computer, sliding the DVD into it. Sungmin is shaking slightly, gripping Siwon’s arm in an attempt to calm down.
Kyuhyun’s smirking face pops up on the screen, fumbling with the camera until it’s focused clearly on him, his backdrop the depressing, off white hospital room walls and the plain white sheets of the bed he was confined to for last few months of his life.
Sungmin can already feel the tears welling behind his eyes, and can already clearly hear Donghae crying.
“First of all, shut the fuck up all of you. Donghae, stop crying. Minnie, let go of Siwon’s arm and don’t cry. Hyukjae, you can keep holding Donghae. Siwon… just keep being holy.”
They can’t help but laugh, because it’s so purely Kyuhyun and it pains them to admit that they almost forgot how his voice sounded and how he talked and how he had the weird habit of constantly touching his hair as he spoke.
“I know I died, and I’m really sorry about that, really. But think about how much worse it is for me! I’m leaving my amazing best friends and boyfriend down in Earth while I’m either above you partying with Jesus and Moses and all the other people Siwon constantly mentions, or down in Hell shoveling coal into a furnace. And, if Sungmin and I did what I wanted us to, I’m most definitely going to Hell.” He winks over dramatically, causing Sungmin’s face to redden at the others’ knowing glances. “Minnie, stop blushing.”
“Before I launch into any personal messages, let me say I’m sorry for fulfilling my cliché potential by making a posthumous video message, but it was the only way I could say this to you guys without ruining my cool image by crying like a child in front of you.”
“Because you’re so cool, Kyuhyun-ah,” mumbles Donghae, failing at restraining his tears.
“Donghae, yes I am fucking awesome, and STOP. CRYING. And speaking of Donghae, your message is first. Hae… you’re my best friend. I probably didn’t say this enough when I was alive, but you truly are. And I love you. A lot. You’re like a brother to me, and I hate myself for being a scared little bitch and not telling you this in real life.”
At this point, Donghae is inconsolable, and requires Siwon and Sungmin to wrap their arms around him. What’s making it worse is that Kyu is crying too, his eyes glimmering with tears as he continues on to Hyukjae and Siwon. “Hyukkie, my little anchovy. You’re the only person who I let call me GameKyu on a regular basis, so I hope you treasure that fact forever. Although Donghae is always first in my heart on the friendship scale, you’re a close second.” They can’t help but chuckle at Kyuhyun’s blunt attitude even through his tears, Donghae’s mouth uplifting slightly. “Also, treat my little fishy right. If I find out you hurt him, I’ll hunt you down and haunt you forever.”
Hyukjae places a soft kiss on Donghae’s fluffy hair, lingering as he inhales the warm scent. “I would never hurt him.” Unsurprisingly, this simply sets off another chain of sobs.
“Siwon, although your religious ways were the butt of many of my jokes, I really did appreciate you praying for me when I was sick. It… actually made me feel safe, so thank you. You’re also one of my best friends, so you and Hyukjae can fight for second place. Also, thank you for supporting me and Sungmin despite your initial views on gay couples.” Kyuhyun grinned at the camera, mimicking some of Siwon’s hand gestures and bows for their entertainment. However, his eyes softened only moments afterward.
“Minnie.” Just the sound of Kyuhyun’s dulcet voice saying his name by itself makes Sungmin’s legs feel like jelly and his heart do somersaults. And he detests it because he knew it was the last time he’d ever truly hear it.
“I’m warning you all, but this is going to be cheesy and lovey-dovey and sappy as fuck, but don’t leave. Because I want anyone who’s listening to hear this.
“Minnie… you made the last few months of my life worth living. Your cute voice, your aegyo ways, your stubbornness, your soft lips, your dark hair… everything about you, even the things that sometimes annoyed me, made my day all the more bright. You’re perfect, no matter how much you disagree with me. If I had lived to be an old, wrinkly man, it’d be your old, wrinkly face I’d want to come home to everyday. I’m never going to reach that stage, but you are. Don’t spend your life waiting for something that’s never going to come back. I’m relying on Donghae, Hyukjae, and Siwon to make sure you listen to me. Please, please, please listen to me, Minnie.
“I hope I’m not being presumptuous and thinking that you’re still sobbing over me… on second thought I hope that I am being presumptuous and you’re already dating someone else… no, I’m too selfish. I hope you wait a little bit at least,” he smiles through the tears now freely streaming down his face. “Saranghaeyo Minnie. Annyeong!” He waves at the camera, and suddenly the screen is black.
“It’s over,” whispers Sungmin, and it feels like the doctor is telling him that Kyuhyun is dead all over again.
Because he doesn’t think he could ever forget Kyu, no matter how hard he tries, because its impossible to erase the memory of the happiness his smile could evoke in him, the feeling of his chapped lips on his own delicate ones, the way Kyu always told Sungmin that he was perfect to him and that his feelings of self-hatred didn’t mean shit.
And he didn’t want to ever forget that.