C h a p t e r  2 1

"Kyuhyun."

The maknae looked up from his bowl, a last noddle disappearing in his mouth with a loud slurp. "Huh?"

Eunhyuk took his time to swallow down a piece of meat and reached his hand out for his drink, his gaze dropping to the table. "Can you tell me what happened outside the hospital?" he hesitantly asked. "I mean… what does the media say about Donghae and me, what's with our fans? And… what did SM do, did they fire us already? Can you please just… tell me everything?"

He looked up to see Kyuhyun gaping at him. "You want me to tell you everything? Are you crazy, hyung?! I want to spend Christmas at home!"

"Sum it up then. Just tell me the important parts."

The other sighed and leant back on his chair, arms crossed and clearly exhausted before saying a single word about it. "Why do you want to know this all of a sudden?" he whined.

Now it was Eunhyuk's turn to sigh; he let his chopsticks drop down and leant back as well. "It's because of Donghae. I talked with Dr. Yoon today; he said they plan to discharge him soon when it continues to work well."

Kyuhyun lifted his eye brows. "Really?"

"Yeah… He's been really cooperative during the last week, Mrs. Jung praised him for that. He could be discharged by the end of next month."

"But isn’t this a bit early? Don’t get me wrong, I mean… it's not like he's cured, hyung."

"I know, but he seems to be kind of stable at the moment. It gets better every day, so they think next months or the beginning of December is a good goal. His therapy will be continued for probably months but there's no need to stay in the hospital for that. He can visit Mrs. Jung or she visits him – and to come to hospital once a day to get his methadone shouldn’t be a problem either." He turned the glass standing on the table slightly in his hand. "There's always someone at the dorm so he won't be alone and they don’t watch him that much at the hospital anymore, only during the nights. He won't be allowed to walk around without someone accompanying him and we'll probably have to lock the main door for some time until we trust him enough so that he won't go out to buy… stuff, but… They can't let him stay forever, we have to try it and see how far we can go."

Kyuhyun hummed. "And on top of that Siwon-hyung would like to have some privacy in his apartment again."

The raven head grimaced, thinking about how he still hadn't returned to the dorm yet. "Right."

The other stretched himself with an unmotivated moan, making some of the other customers at the small restaurant they were in shooting glances at them. But it wasn’t like one of them cared.

Eunhyuk hadn't been lying when telling Kyuhyun about Donghae being very cooperative during the last week and even before that. After his breakdown the brunet had done everything to make them understand that he was feeling better, that they could trust him and that he wasn’t as weak as he thought of himself. He even had asked the doctors to reduce the dose of his methadone and had started to send the nurse away after waking up from a nightmare. He told them everything they wanted to know, didn’t make any exceptions anymore and had promised his mother to think about going to the police after returning home someday.         
In fact, he did everything he hadn't done the weeks before and it seemed like he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it. They had never talked about his breakdown but Eunhyuk knew that the fear of him leaving Donghae was the reason for all of this; the brunet didn’t want to give him any reason to leave him, he didn’t want him to be disappointed. It was like he tried to be perfect again – but this time he also tried it for himself.

"So… you want to know what happened outside the hospital to prepare him?" Kyuhyun asked, arms crossed again. Eunhyuk nodded.

"We haven’t talked with him about his discharge yet and the doctors think that it would be the best if I'm the one telling him about it. And… I think he will be afraid and I have to know what's going on so I can soothe him. Or try to, at least."

Kyuhyun breathed a heavy sigh. "Well, the important thing first: it didn’t change that much as you can see. There's no one coming to our table and tries to stab you or something. There are people watching us but it has always been like this, maybe they are more curious now but that's it. It was in the media, yes. People know it know, also yes. But did anybody treat you different until now?"

Eunhyuk shook his head. "No. But I haven’t met that many people since then. Only the nurses and doctors at the hospital-"

"And they know it, too. What am I saying, as good as everybody knows it. But do you really think that people would come to you and tell you that they hate you or something? Sure, some people will give you dirty looks and some will say what they think. But as far as I can see those are only a few, maybe a bit more online because they don’t have to show their faces there. What I think is that most people don’t care enough about it to do something if they think it's wrong. Some don’t like it, some don’t care and some support you. But I think the last group is big enough, so you don’t have to worry."

"Really?" Eunhyuk asked, disbelief audible in his voice. "Who's supporting us then?"

"Our fans, of course. I heard there were some that couldn’t deal with it, but before you start thinking stupid things: the rest of our elf – and that's by far the bigger part of them – supports you to no end. You've seen them in front of the hospital, right? They have been there every day, they have been in front of our dorm and SM, made protest and there were and are really big things going on online. This whole thing only made the connection between them and us stronger, if you ask me. You shouldn’t care about the ones that turned their backs on us; they probably never were elfs because they don’t understand the meaning behind it."

The elder hummed without really knowing what to say as Kyuhyun grabbed his drink, taking a sip. He was glad the other continued speaking right after putting it back on the table.

"There are a lot of other idols and celebrities that said that they wish you only the best and that it's time for Korea to wake up and realize that a relationship like yours should normal nowadays like it is in other countries. The media thinks like this, too – at least a part of it. Most of them blame the magazine that published the video online and SM for how they treated you without really looking at their own faults. That Donghae-hyung is still in the hospital kind of made them have sympathy for you even though there are magazines and websites that still think that it's a big sin and all that . I think the fear for Donghae-hyung's life pushed your uality to the back a bit, some don’t write much about it. Some even decided to ignore that little fact, but hey: that's also some kind of support, isn’t it?"

Eunhyuk nodded with a tiny smile on his lips. His eyes found the table and were glued to one of the empty bowls as he started to bite his lip. "What did SM do?"

"Well… That's a good question. They're… kind of…"

"Did they fire us?"

Kyuhyun shook his head. "No, I don’t think so."

The other looked up, surprised. "What?"

"They didn’t say something like this to us and they didn’t say it officially either. In fact, they didn’t say that much to begin with, only cancelled all of our activities and told us to not give any interviews. What they did though was to sue that magazine that published the video; seems like those people gave the chamber maid money to hide that camera in your room. Oh, and they gave a press conference some time ago."

"What did they say?"

"They said that they didn’t know about the addiction of course, tried to defend SM and everything. But they also said that they did all of this to protect you and asked the media to not ask any questions before Donghae-hyung feels better. I don’t know if they really mean it, could be that they only do this to look good in the public eye. Their reputation, you know?"

Eunhyuk hummed silently and nodded his head. That was what he had expected and he wasn’t even surprised that they had done all those things to them and still called it 'protecting'. "But do you think it's safe for me to come back to the dorm now? I don’t want to see one of them there right on the first day."

"Don’t worry. They haven’t been at our dorm except for that one single time when they told us about not giving interviews and so on. And that told us someone I don’t even know, I haven’t seen our managers for weeks now. And I don’t think they would come there when you come back; at least not during the first couple of days."

The elder nodded again and took a sip from his drink, turning the glass in his hand after putting it back down on the table. "So, all in all… It isn’t as bad as we thought it would be, right?" he asked carefully.

Kyuhyun chuckled with a grin. "So far… Nobody knows what happens when hyung and you are both back at the dorm; I guess SM will tell us then what is about to happen to Super Junior and all. And about the media… It's kind of blurry right now, nothing really good and nothing really bad. Seems like we just have to wait and see what happens."

Eunhyuk hummed; he wasn’t really relieved but he thought that he could take away a bit of Donghae's fear to leave the hospital. However, thinking about SM still made his stomach drop and that wasn’t something he needed to hide.

"I think we should get back soon", Kyuhyun said after looking at his watch. "It's almost five o'clock and we should get Jongwoon-hyung out of the ward before visiting hours end. Otherwise they might think he's one of their patients and keep him there if we aren’t on time."

"There's… one last thing", Eunhyuk started hesitantly. Kyuhyun sent him a curious look.

"What is it?"

"I think I need your help."

"For what?"

"I planned something for Donghae… It's a surprise actually. I want to do it this Thursday."

"Thursday…" Kyuhyun thought for a moment before lifting up a brow. "But that is-"

"I know. I think doing this could help him to get rid of these bad thoughts he has, but I can't do it on my own. Do you think you can help me?"

Kyuhyun shrugged. "Sure. But under one condition."

Eunhyuk looked at him expectantly and the younger casually nodded towards the empty dishes on the table.

"You pay."

***

The first thing Eunhyuk heard as he stepped into Donghae's room three days later was Kangin's booming laughter and as he entered the room more he saw the elder sitting beside Donghae, laughing and slapping his own leg while trying really hard to breathe. The brunet sitting beside him wasn’t smiling or anything; but he seemed really relaxed and serene – and that was the closest he came to a smile.

"What's so funny?" Eunhyuk asked, a small smile tugging on his lips because he couldn’t stand seeing the elder laughing so hard. The other two raised their eyes to him and Kangin started to laugh even more while Donghae quickly stood up to hug him; Eunhyuk gave the other a little peck on the cheek.

"Hyung just remembered something really funny", the youngest among them said.

"Was it about me?"

"No!" Kangin managed to say while almost chocking. "No, it wasn’t!"

Eunhyuk narrowed his eyes. "This can't be about me, right?"

Kangin shook his head and stood up to pat both Donghae and Eunhyuk's backs, left the room with a mischievous smile on his lips and was still chuckling as the door fell shut. The raven head shrugged and smiled before he pressed his lips against Donghae's a few times, pecking him tenderly.

"How are you?" he asked. Donghae nodded, arms still crossed in the other's nape.

"I'm fine. But the others were really strange today."

"How come?"

"They all seemed very happy and kept laughing the whole time. But when I asked them if something happened they always said it was nothing. Even umma was like this."

Eunhyuk chuckled, knowing the reason for their behavior very well. But he wouldn’t tell it – not yet, at least. "