Kyuhyun rubbed his eyes sleepily as he stumbled to the dorm upstairs to beg for breakfast. Okay not beg, it was just that Ryeowook lived upstairs now and if he wanted hot food that didn't come out of the microwave he would have to drag himself two flights of stairs up, one thirty second elevator ride if he was lucky, and get to the table in time before his rice and soup cooled down. He yawned and pawed around on the wall that he was confident held the door knob tiredly.

'Ahem,' Siwon leaned on, Kyuhyun peered blearily, what appeared to be the door. 'You are currently molesting the common corridor wall.'

'Good morning hyung,' Kyuhyun yawned again before slowly shuffling in Siwon's direction. 'You're here early today.'

Siwon shrugged. 'I wanted to eat with you guys for a change, something new. Thought I could hang around in the dorm awhile later.'

Kyuhyun nodded dazedly as he followed his nose, it leading him straight to the kitchen where the rest of the band had already settled in. Aiming straight for the last empty seat, he dropped unglamorously into it and grunted his thanks when Ryeowook slid a bowl of steaming rice in front of him. He reached out for the pair of clean chopsticks, grabbed some kimchi and stuffed it into his mouth hungrily before taking the time to nods his good mornings to the other people around the table. By this time, Siwon had just made it into the dining room and he greeted everyone cheerfully, the kitchen resounding with happy choruses and smiling faces. Kyuhyun rolled his eyes and continued eating. Nothing else but food mattered.

There weren't enough chairs but Siwon made Ryeowook sit before heaping his own bowl full of ingredients and casually leaning against the wall, leaning down from time to time as he chatted with Donghae and Sungmin. 

'Aigoo how do you look like you're shooting a CF so early in the morning?' Heechul reached up to pinch Siwon's full cheeks as he cooed. 'So handsome.'

Someone cleared their throat and Kyuhyun nearly spat out his mushrooms when Heechul trilled, 'Seasoning!'

He spun around so fast in his chair he thought he was going to crick his neck. Kyuhyun hadn't seen Zhou Mi since that night. How long had it been? Two weeks? Three, maybe longer he wasn't sure it all blurred together in a series of unanswered calls.

'Hey guys,' Zhou Mi called in his awkward Korean and the rest answered him. Donghae put a comforting hand on Sungmin's knee and the latter smiled back reassuringly at him.

'What are you doing here?' Kyuhyun asked abruptly. Heechul actually hissed at him but he waved the feminine man off.

Zhou Mi wrinkled his nose. 'I actually came to talk to Heechul hyung, if you must know.'

Kyuhyun pushed away from the table and grabbed Zhou Mi's wrist before dragging him off to the living room to talk, or yell, whichever was needed. 

Sungmin slowly relaxed his clenched fists under the table, nodding at all the worried faces around him, before picking up his chopsticks to spear away the last piece of kimchi from Shindong, the whole table chortling at his crestfallen face. Sungmin hummed triumphantly, forcibly turning his thoughts away from what just happened and stealing the last sips of strawberry milk from under Eunhyuk's nose, to more catcalls and yells.

-

'What is wrong with you?' Zhou Mi snapped as he shook off Kyuhyun's arm once they had sufficient distance between them and the kitchen room, not bothering to keep his voice down since they were further away now.

'What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you! Why haven't you returned any of my calls?'

'I think you've mistaken us for something much closer than we really are Kui Xian,' Zhou Mi remarked dryly as he tried to side step Kyuhyun to get back to the kitchen.

' that,' Kyuhyun reached out to grab Zhou Mi again but the taller man shrugged him off and folded his arms, staring him down. 'What was that in the taxi then? What am I?'

'It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. We are friends Kui Xian,' Zhou Mi said coldly before softening a little and taking his hand, patting it gently. 'That's all I feel for you.'

Kyuhyun froze where he was, not really listening as Zhou Mi looked at him, with something akin to an apology and regret in his eyes.

'Why did you kiss me then?'

'It was a test,' Zhou Mi worried his lip with his teeth. 'That was my fault but it just proved to me that I can never see you as anything more than a friend Kui Xian. I'm sorry.'

Zhou Mi patted his hand one more time and left the living room, slipping back into the kitchen to find Heechul again.

Kyuhyun found that he couldn't move. That he didn't want to move. He wanted to run out of the apartment and never come back to face the shame that was coursing through him right now. 

But then he found his feet taking him to Leeteuk's room.

-

Which was where Leeteuk found him an hour later after breakfast, not even hungry with only a piece of kimchi and a quarter of a bowl of rice in his stomach. He was sprawled out over Leeteuk's bed, his hand curling and uncurling incessantly in the bed sheets already wrinkled from his touch.

'As disapproving as I am about all your actions these past few months, I still care about you so tell me what's wrong.' Leeteuk grabbed his pillow off his bed, hugged it and plopped himself on the floor besides Kyuhyun's knees.

'Zhou Mi doesn't like me,' Kyuhyun mumbled, rolling over to prop his head up on his arms as he stared at Leeteuk, waiting for some divine advice to be dispensed to him.

Leeteuk lifted an eyebrow. 'And this is news because?'

'Because he kissed me,' Kyuhyun exploded. 'I mean, he was drunk and everything but I thought you being drunk is supposed to let out your innermost feelings or something, and now he tells me that he didn't feel anything at all and the kiss just proved it. I feel like a moron.'

'You are a moron,' Kangin called out as he walked past the open door, before backtracking and shutting the door at Leeteuk's glance.

Kyuhyun snarled and Leeteuk patted his knee comfortingly. 'Well, like they always said, better to have loved and lost right?'

'That's not very helpful,' Kyuhyun stared.

'You can't have everything go your way, Kyuhyun-ah,' Leeteuk sighed at another growl from Kyuhyun. 'Were things going Sungmin's way when you dumped him?' Kyuhyun made a faint garbled noise at the parallels drawn but Leeteuk pushed on. 'And now things aren't going your way. You are not the centre of the universe, contrary to what you think Kyuhyun. It's just the way of the world, you can't force people to like you or do whatever you want them to do. We just make do with what we have.'

This was not at all welcome to the sting that Kyuhyun was still nursing from Zhou Mi's reaction. He had expected coddling and cooing that everything was going to be okay, not be told to it up because life really . Kyuhyun pushed off the bed with a huff and left the room, Leeteuk shaking his head as he did so. He sighed, but then looked up and smiled when Kangin poked his head in. 

'Anything the matter?'

'No everything's fine,' Leeteuk dimpled as he held out his arms. 'Kyuhyun just has a lot of growing up to do.'

Kangin settled himself on the ground next to Leeteuk, pulling him close to his side. 'Same as what I told Sungmin. Remember when we used to think he was the most mature of the lot? What happened to him?'

They thought for awhile before chorusing promptly, 'Starcraft!'

They grinned at each other and Leeteuk put his head comfortably on Kangin's shoulder. 

Sometimes, the kids just had to sort things out for themselves.

-

Kyuhyun stormed into his room and threw himself on the bed, only registering that Sungmin was in the room as well when he heard the faint sounds of a pen scratching across paper.

'Do you have anywhere else to be right now? I kinda want to be alone,' he mumbled into his comforter.

Sungmin raised an eyebrow, so much like Leeteuk that Kyuhyun wanted to throw pillows at the both of them. 'This is my room too, you know.'

'And I am respectfully asking you to get out. Like, now.'

'You can't tell me what to do! I'm older than you are.'

'Act like it then.'

'I'm not just going to lie down and take what you throw at me!'

'Sure you can. I broke up with you didn't I?'

The pen hit Kyuhyun's head with a resounding thwack and he sat up furiously, realising that Sungmin was in a similar angry stance over on his side of the room.

'You say that like it's nothing to you,' Sungmin ground out.

Kyuhyun blinked. It was sort of nothing to him. He didn't think much of it when he did it. It had just seemed like the logical thing to do at the time when he felt like he was suffocating. 'It was just a break up, people go through it all the time.'

'It's emotional. And emotions are important. You're always so high and mighty and you think you're above everybody else. Even the hyungs. I can tell you know. It's the way you look at us sometimes, like you think we're idiots,' Sungmin fisted his hands by his sides, knowing well that if he didn't get some control over himself he was going to seriously wound Kyuhyun. 'Well you need to fix that attitude of yours mister and I, for one can't wait until it happens to you as well so you know what it feels like.'

Kyuhyun in his breath sharply, finding that for once in his life, he had nothing in his arsenal to retort at Sungmin. His brain worked furiously but he couldn't think of anything, because deep in some recess of his mind, he knew Sungmin was right. Now that he had been rejected by Zhou Mi, what was he doing? He was moping around, crying over it to Leeteuk, acting for all the world like a spoilt 13 year old who just got dumped by her boyfriend, actions that he had once scorned Sungmin for.

His mouth open and closed a couple of times as Sungmin stared him down, waiting for some sort of reaction. 

When there was none, Sungmin simply scoffed at him and walked out of the room, calling to Eunhyuk if he wanted to get some ice cream.

Kyuhyun was still speechless.

-

When Sungmin came home later that night, after a day of shopping and food hunting with the two other Lee brothers, he stopped at the threshold of his room. He had never been so reluctant to enter his own room, not even back when Kyuhyun had first broken up with him.

He had texted Leeteuk asking him what was the brat's problem and he realised that Zhou Mi had rejected Kyuhyun. He wasn't surprised at the amount of vindictiveness he felt at Kyuhyun's rejection. It did explain the whole issue they had in the bedroom earlier though. Which brought him back to the present.

Sungmin still didn't want to enter the room.

The sadness he could handle. Now he was just plain angry that Kyuhyun thought his own emotions and his own superiors were superior to everyone else in the world. The snarky brat that nobody could defeat in a battle of sharp tongues was acting like a pampered little girl denied ice cream. Sungmin snorted at the image and swallowed down his anger, channelling it all to a deeper part of his mind that he kept under lock and key, the place that he had started storing thoughts ever since Kyuhyun had broken up with him.

He pushed open the door quietly and gathered up his things to take a quick shower. Seeing Kyuhyun stir in his bed out of the corner of his eye, he quickly scurried back out and escaped to the bathroom to be alone with his thoughts. Sungmin turned up the heat, anticipating a long relaxing shower under the warm water. 

Sungmin clenched his fist somewhere between lathering up his hair and using his facial cleanser. If he wanted to get over Kyuhyun completely (He was about 95% there, he reasoned. Heechul had laughed and said less than 50% but he had rolled his eyes), he would have to do some serious compartmentalizing when he was around Kyuhyun.

The mind could enforce but the heart just wouldn't obey, he sighed as he toweled his hair dry. Poking his own chest at the approximate position he was sure his heart was at, he closed his eyes.

'Be still. Behave,' he whispered.

He fanned his fingers out and covered the patch of skin, almost wishing he could just turn his heart on and off just like that. 'Be happy.'

Yawning as he pulled his nightwear over his head, he padded back to his room, all ready to slip under the covers and sleep the day's troubles away. Just as he rested his towel over the hook on his wardrobe, he heard the tiniest sniff from Kyuhyun's side of the room. Thinking that he might have imagined it, Sungmin turned around and continued what he was doing.

After patting moisturiser onto his face and his hands, Sungmin yawned again, finally trudging over to his bed to sleep.

Sungmin turned around when this time he heard another small but definitely audible sniff.

'You're still up?' He began cautiously.

'None of your business,' Kyuhyun's voice came up muffled and thick.

'Are you sick?' Angry as he was with Kyuhyun, Sungmin couldn't help that small part of him that yearned for the man. And it still hurt if the man hurt. As much as Heechul told him to it up and move on, Sungmin wasn't like that. He couldn't let go so easily and he still berated himself for caring so much. Maybe Heechul was right on the percentage thing, he made a mental note to never tell that man that.

'No.'

'Liar. You sound like you have tissues so far up your nose they'd be going up to your brain soon.'

With no reply forthcoming from the other side of the room, Sungmin simply shook his head and prepared to climb into bed. A small but plaintive 'Hyung' stopped him in his tracks and he padded across the room to peer at the mass of blankets currently huddled at the corner of his bed.

'Yes?'

'Could you just pat me a little, like you used to, and tell me it's going to be okay?'

Sungmin opened his mouth indignantly but Kyuhyun hurried on, 'I know, I have no right to be asking this of you. I'm sorry,' he ended in hushed tones.

His resolve crumbled a little at the sadness in Kyuhyun's tone and he pulled at his hair frustratedly, hopping around a little on the spot. Sungmin almost laughed at himself, at how ridiculous he must look at the moment. Deciding that nobody would have to know about his moment of weakness and he was in no such way using this opportunity to touch Kyuhyun again, he sighed and knelt by the bed.

Slowly running his fingers through Kyuhyun's thick locks, he hummed soothingly, smiling as Kyuhyun's breathing began to even out. 'It's going to be okay you know, it's like a part of life. Everybody experiences heartbreak at some point,' he bit down hard on his own lip as he finished that sentence, trying to keep the tremor from entering his voice.

Kyuhyun didn't even notice that Sungmin knew about it without him mentioning it. 'Does it get better?'

'Sometimes it does, sometimes it never goes away.'

'I'm sorry hyung, I think I've said it before but I'm going to just say it again. If - if that helps.'

'It doesn't,' Sungmin laughed softly. 'Not really. But like you said, we can be friends. So I guess it does help in the end, just a little bit.'

Kyuhyun smiled in the darkness, oddly comforted by Sungmin's presence while Sungmin his hair softly and watched him fall asleep, his mended heart slowly cracking at the edges again.