Kyuhyun’s first reaction was to laugh hysterically, in that panicky-sort of way because he had no idea how to really react to the fact that Yesung – that idol that so many people admired and worshipped – owned a bottle of antidepressants.

          He must be jumping to conclusions, Kyuhyun decided. Because what he was thinking must not be true.

          It couldn’t be.

          But Kyuhyun couldn’t deny the facts when Kim Jongwoon printed in neat black letters on the white label of the bottle was practically glaring at him. Jongwoon was Yesung’s real name, as Wikipedia confirmed.

          That was why he was sitting down on the couch for over an hour, just waiting for Yesung to come home. The TV was on, and he did his best to distract himself with his favorite anime show. The click of the door opening made him jump several feet in the air.

          “Hi,” Yesung said with a tilted head upon entering the abode. He looked tired; even his smile couldn’t cover up the exhausted lines on the edge of his eyes. Kyuhyun didn’t say anything. He just kind of stared at him like a dead robot.

          Yesung didn’t notice the tiny white bottle of pills on the table in front of Kyuhyun. Hanging his scarf on the clothes rack, Yesung quietly slipped into his room. Kyuhyun waited.

          Yesung walked out of his room slowly, with a confused and tense expression on his face.

          “My room looks different,” he said.

          “I was putting your laundry in your room when I spilled coffee and it spilled everywhere and then I had to clean it up and that’s why it looks different,” Kyuhyun said in a rush. He didn’t like the way it came out sounding like such a lame excuse.

          “Oh, that’s okay then – ”

          There was an awful silence as Yesung finally noticed that there was something on the table when it should’ve been in his room.

          “And I found this,” Kyuhyun said a little too late.

          What an awkward derp, he thought angrily at himself.

          So there they stood, in a kind of face-off where the air was so thick that Kyuhyun swore he could stick a balloon in the middle and it would pop. For once, Yesung seemed to be caught so off-guard that he was no longer straining to smile. Instead, there was a suffocating kind of look on his face.

          “Are you going tell anyone?” Yesung finally asked quietly.

          “No. They don’t have the right to know,” Kyuhyun said.

          Yesung looked surprised, blinking quickly and then bent his head down. Kyuhyun caught the start of a small, real smile on his face before it disappeared as quickly as it came. His roommate (it was getting harder and harder to remember that the man in front of him was a beloved idol when they were alone together) reached for the bottle and picked it up, stuffing it into his pocket.

          Kyuhyun lied back on the sofa as Yesung walked back to the door of his room.

          “Chinese takeout or Thai tonight?” Kyuhyun called out.

          “Chinese,” Yesung said. His voice seemed slightly deeper when that mask of his was ripped up and trampled on.

          “Okay,” Kyuhyun said, lazily reaching for the phone without getting up.

          Yesung had his hand poised on the doorknob when he turned back to Kyuhyun. His dark chocolate eyes held Kyuhyun’s captive for a stretched-out moment of time.

          “Thank you,” Yesung said, and then disappeared into the vicinity of his room.

          Kyuhyun had a feeling that the thanks wasn’t for ordering takeout but for something else entirely.

          “You’re welcome,” he murmured into the empty space in front of him.

          Four weeks later, Kyuhyun found himself rudely assaulted by his current cell phone ring tone (T-ara’s Roly Poly). He tapped at his phone’s green button.

          “Boa, you just interrupted my precious plotting of world domination with Pikachu,” He said into it, knowing only one person would call at this ungodly hour – which was precisely three o’clock in the morning.

          “Um,” the person on the other side of the phone said, whose voice was too low-pitched to be Boa’s. Kyuhyun took the phone away from his face and stared at the screen. It was a private number.

          Okay, never mind. Apparently people who were not Boa did call him at this weird time.

          “Yesung?” Kyuhyun asked incredulously into his phone. “Why are you calling me when you could just walk into my room?”

          “I’m standing outside our door,” Yesung said.

          “What – wait I thought you came home ages ago.” Kyuhyun stood up, and stumbled quickly to the door. He unlocked the door and opened it, seeing Yesung with mussed-up blond hair staring right back at him.

          “I forgot the keys,” Yesung said.

          “It’s not natural to be out so late.” Kyuhyun couldn’t keep an amused smile from his voice though, because it was just typical that Yesung forgot the keys. Again.

          “Work.” Yesung yawned, making Kyuhyun yawn as a chain effect.

          “Aren’t they supposed to give you more of a break because you’re going to school?” Kyuhyun rubbed at his eyes, watching as Yesung hung up his jacket.

          “Eh. Just tying up some loose ends.”

          Bone-tired from talking to his mouse-pokemon for half an hour, Kyuhyun leaned against the wall while Yesung stuck his head into the refrigerator to look for milk. He had a weird addiction to milk with Oreos. They interacted a lot more now, especially after that… revelation that day. Kyuhyun inwardly theorized that it was because it was like they shared a secret now, so it banded them together somehow.

          Or maybe Yesung felt safer being himself around Kyuhyun now that he knew his deepest and darkest secret.

          When Kyuhyun phrased it like that in his head, he made all this sound like a cliché thriller movie. He started chuckling at that thought. The blond man in the kitchen dunking an Oreo into the milk didn’t even react because he was fast getting used to the strangeness of living with Cho Kyuhyun.

          Yesung the idol and Yesung the human were completely different people. The first one was smiley, to the point of making Kyuhyun feel like his skin was crawling from the creepiness of it all, while the one he was starting to know was prone to laugh at things that weren’t even funny (such as Kyuhyun’s jokes, because his jokes could make an animal curl up in horror) and had the weirdest habits. He was also moody at times, withdrawing into himself and often his room to the point that Kyuhyun had to barge into his room to make sure that he was okay and all – and force him to eat something edible for goodness sakes. Kyuhyun was still not sure how to handle it when Yesung would look at him with those blank and tired eyes, before those eyes were covered with a veneer of that fake-smile again. Yesung always fake-smiled when he tried to pretend that he was okay.

          Kyuhyun knew he wasn’t okay.

          He had asked once if Yesung was taking his pills daily.

          Yesung had just paused and took off his headphones, which were connected to the piano. “I hate doing it. I only take them during a bad period,” he just said.

          Despite the anxiety of not knowing what to do if that bad period ever came, Kyuhyun still found that he was rapidly getting used to living with Yesung; he got used to Yesung occupying his breathing space and his stuff crowding half of the bathroom cabinet. He also had another small, tiny, thought that he kept close to his chest – which struck him right after they happened to be watching a horribly cheesy movie that they both happened to like. Yesung had smiled at something snide that Kyuhyun said and Kyuhyun had not been able to process what happened in the rest of the movie because his mind was full of buzzing and colors. Because, okay, that smile wasn’t the fake-smile he was used to seeing. It was a smile that quirked up the side of Yesung’s face and made his eyes looked terribly mismatched but made his eyes kind of bright and shiny. Kyuhyun might have stopped inhaling for a second in shock when it was directed at him. Because, it was not cool that Yesung’s real smile was almost heart-stopping. He now kind of dreaded each time he saw the appearance of that smile – which only happened when they were alone.

          And there it was again, that infuriating yet bright awkward smile on Yesung’s face as he munched on that Oreo like it was nectar from Heaven.

          Kyuhyun fumed silently.

          That smile should be outlawed.

          “I take it that work went well today,” Kyuhyun drawled out.

          “Mhhm,” Yesung said, then stuck his head into the kitchen cabinet this time. “You need to buy more Oreos, Kyukyu.”

          “That’s because you keep eating them,” Kyuhyun complained, and then he almost gave himself whiplash as he turned to gape openly at the man in front him, who was still stuffing Oreos in his mouth. “What did you just call me?”

          “Kyukyu. It sounds so much better than your real name.” Yesung his fingers after the last cookie was finished.

          Kyuhyun spluttered.

          “If you let me call you that, you can call me by my real name.” Yesung waved a clean finger in Kyuhyun’s direction.

          “I do not see how that’s a fair trade.” Kyuhyun’s ears were red with indignation.

          “I only let my friends and my family call me by my real name.” Yesung looked almost amused as Kyuhyun softened up a little.

          “Fine. Jongwoon.”

          “You made it sound like you were saying poop instead.”

          Kyuhyun sighed almost sadly. “I can’t believe your fans don’t know how immature you really are.”

          Yesung – hmm, well, Jongwoon – laughed, a warm, rich sound filling the atmosphere. Kyuhyun couldn’t help but smile, his teeth digging into his bottom lip almost painfully because he was trying to keep the smile from getting too wide.

Wow. Sorry for taking more time than usual to update this!