“Ouch!” Kyuhyun hissed in pain when his fingers touched the grey mug Hangeng handed him.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

The younger glared at his friend. “Not funny, hyung.”

They were sitting in Hangeng’s living room, alone. Well, Hangeng was sitting, Kyuhyun kept standing up and walking around the room only to sit down again a couple of seconds later. When the psychiatrist voiced out his worry that he was going to tread a permanent path on his floor, Kyuhyun groaned, sat back down and stayed this way, his head leaning onto the backrest lifelessly, although Hangeng could see that the anxiety eating up his friend didn’t disappear at all.

In times like this, tea is the best friend of a human.

“Calm down, it’s going to be okay.”

Kyuhyun looked up from his tea. “How can you know that? We know nothing about this guy! What if he—”

“Kyuhyun-ah,” the Chinese cut him off with a professional, soothing voice. “It’s okay. They’re friends. They’re just catching up, like friends do, it’s normal. You would do the same if you didn’t see your friends for a long time.”

The image of Minho and Donghae’s annoying faces appeared in front of Kyuhyun’s eyes and he shook his head. “They’re not my friends,” he answered mechanically. Then he stood up and re-started his never ending walk around the room. “But they’ve been in there for too long!”

“…It’s been barely ten minutes.”

“Lots can happen during ten minutes,” Kyuhyun said stubbornly. “I’m going to get him.”

“No, you’re not,” Hangeng’s hand on his shoulder successfully prevented him from making more than two steps towards the door. “Sit down.”

“But—“

The psychiatrist sighed and Kyuhyun could tell he was getting tired of his behavior. Not like Kyuhyun couldn’t understand him, he would have kicked himself in the face long ago, had he been in Hangeng’s shoes, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to know what was happening in that room, he needed to know that. He needed to make sure his angel was fine, that the Heechul-guy didn’t take advantage of Sungmin’s drunken state, because Kyuhyun could more than easily imagine the latter being held up by the stranger, his body pressed to the wall and the elder roaming his hands through Min’s clothes-…

Kyuhyun’s cheeks flushed red. God, call it protectiveness or jealousy, he didn’t want to even think about it. He couldn’t go on like this. Throwing a tentative look at his hyung, he made a decision.

“Fine, you’re right.”

“Thank you,” Hangeng sounded relieved.

“The tea is delicious by the way,” Kyuhyun beamed and looked around. “The only thing better than a tea would be a tea with some cookies… Where do you keep biscuits?” He asked innocently.

Hangeng raised his eyebrows. “Biscuits? Kitchen, second cabinet on the left. Wait, I’ll go and…”

“No, it’s fine, I’ll get them. Do you want anything?” The younger threw in his hyung’s direction, one leg already in the hall.

“I’m good, thanks,” Hangeng answered, but the only response he got was the whoosh of the door closing.

Kyuhyun tiptoed to the room upstairs as quietly as he could manage given the circumstances and his natural lack of patience. Biscuits were the last thing on his mind when he finally found himself pressing his ear to the wooden surface of the door.

“Damn,” he cursed, hearing nothing but silence. “ing anti-theft security…”

“Lee Sungmin!” The shout made Kyuhyun glue his body to the wall in alarm, until he realized where it came from and almost gave himself a punch because, geez, he had nothing to fear here, he was the host in this house. Well, almost. “You listen to me!”

“No!” Sungmin’s annoyed voice shouted back, making Kyuhyun’s eyebrows go up in surprise. He didn’t know Sungmin could be so… “Why should I!” …assertive.

“I’m your hyung!” The voice which Kyuhyun already associated with Heechul’s didn’t sound pleased at all.

“And I’m your dongsaeng…!”

“MY POINT EXACTLY!!!” Okay, scratch his last thought. ‘Not pleased’ was some serious understatement here. The guy sounded pissed beyond belief… He must not have been used to others ignoring his orders.

“Shouldn’t you help me, then?!” Sungmin was still shouting, but Kyuhyun could hear the barely audible tremor in his question.

There was a moment of quiet and Kyuhyun wondered if it was his cue to leave now, because while the encounter didn’t sound like a big trouble to his angel, it certainly didn’t sound like a friendly one either. Maybe they needed some privacy after all.

Before he could convince his own body to move, Sungmin’s voice rang once again.

“Or at least, let me do what I came here to do.” It wasn’t a shout anymore, but since every single of Kyuhyun’s senses seemed to be focused on what was happening on the other side, the barrier of the door proved to be no longer that big of a problem.

“I want to help you,” Heechul insisted in response. “That’s why you should come with me, Minnie.”

Kyuhyun frowned. ‘Minnie’?

There was a small thump, as if one of them stomped his foot. “I will. But only after I’m done, hyung,” said Sungmin stubbornly.

Heechul moaned with frustration and Kyuhyun suddenly imagined the other pulling at his perfectly styled hair. “What you’re trying to do is impossible, don’t you get it!”

“No it’s not! I’ll do it, so you better stay out of my way, hyung, or I’m telling Jaejoong!”

“Oh, you wouldn’t dare you little sneaky—”

He never found out how exactly Heechul intended to insult his angel, because the door suddenly burst open, hitting him pretty hard in the process, and the exact opposite of the Sungmin he knew stomped into the hall.

Kyuhyun gulped. Wow. Assertive Sungmin was hot. No! he scolded himself mentally, bad Kyuhyun, bad! Stop thinking like that!

“Oh, Kyu,” Sungmin brought his usual smile to his face as he saw his ward, but the bitterness didn’t quite leave his voice as he said, “Heechul hyung was just leaving.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said Heechul arrogantly and had it not been for the grave atmosphere surrounding the place, Kyuhyun would have laughed at the face Sungmin pulled upon hearing the statement. He didn’t feel like laughing at all though, when the next words left Heechul’s mouth. “Hannie, dear!” Heechul called in the direction of the stairs, “Do you think you could lend me one of your rooms here?”

‘HANNIE’? Kyuhyun’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Hannie…? Minnie…? This guy seemed to have some serious problem with shortening people’s names and Kyuhyun promised himself that if this Heechul ever, ever dared to call him ‘Kyunnie’, he would completely ignore the relationship between him and Sungmin, and seriously damage his hair. (He didn’t exactly know why, but he supposed that kind of punishment would be the worst for the guy… Instinct, maybe?)

Despite being completely consumed in planning a painful death awaiting Heechul if he ever crossed a line, Kyuhyun couldn’t miss the quiet “You’d fit perfectly with the rest of the residents here, hyung,” coming from Sungmin’s pouty lips, and this time he didn’t try to stop the chuckle of amusement.

Heechul seemed to have heard it as well, but he didn’t grace them with any reaction other than raising his chin with self-confidence bordering on arrogance and walking to the stairs. Kyuhyun could already tell he disliked the guy, and so far they spent only few minutes in each other’s presence. He could also tell the feeling was very much mutual, though for what reason, it was a complete mystery to him.

Kyuhyun shifted irritably in his seat when he felt, for gods know which time, the vibrations of his cellphone going off. He didn’t bother to take it out from his pocket, perfectly certain of who the caller was. Well, not that it was a particularly hard guess to make; it could only be four people at this time, but Hangeng was somewhere in the house and why would he call if he could just shout, and his sister was probably somewhere in Africa, where he was fairly sure she could not make a call from, not really. That left his friends, and let’s face it, whichever of them both it was, Kyuhyun was in no mood to talk to them.

He didn’t feel like listening to Donghae’s rambling about how he had just missed a Dinner Tuesday – a tradition they had come up with (and saying ‘they’ we all know it means ‘Donghae’) when Ahra had decided that the wild world is calling for her, therefore leaving her brother alone in a big house with a big kitchen and, in Minho’s words, ‘no knowledge what so ever of how to use it’ (although Kyuhyun could have argued on that, had he been bothered enough and not tempted with actual mum cooked meals) – and how he had missed the glorious whatever-it-was that his mother had cooked and baked for tonight and that he’d better be up and ready to tell him his excuse early tomorrow, and that despite it being a springtime, the weather was still rather chilly, so he should wear this and that and not forget about that and some other thing, and honestly, Kyuhyun could swear Donghae knew how to be worse than his own mother sometimes, and that he had to be doing it deliberately, just to piss him off, no matter how much the older would deny such a thing.

The alternative, in form of a tall eighteen-year-old babbling about the new football game and how it was yet another victory for his team, was not so appealing to Kyuhyun as well. Up to now he still hadn’t worked out why Minho would bother telling him all this anyway, it’s not like Kyuhyun had ever expressed any, even the slightest kind of indication that he enjoyed watching bunch of overgrown guys with bow legs running in circles after a leather ball.

All things considered, he had no intention of picking up his phone. He was much more interested in what was happening right in front of him – though one couldn’t exactly call it an exciting scene. No, actually, it was far from that.

TBC

...*peeks out from the mouse hole shyly*... ehm. anybody there? just popped in to say I still love each and every one of you if you're reading this, or checking if it's updated from time to time ^^ ...*goes back to the hole before somebody realizes what happened*...

~ love, puppy <3