Kyuhyun 

Kyuhyun had pulled his pillow up over his face and had started sobbing, well dry sobbing; he was really just making noises and flailing his body back and forth across his bedspread. Ara would have called it a temper tantrum, but Kyuhyun was much too dignified for that. At least that’s what he told her when she walked in to his room (without knocking, by the way) and gave him a look that said ‘stop being such a baby.’ He pouted and sat up before glaring angrily at her.

“I know” he said in defeat.

twitched into a grin and she sat down on the side of the bed and draped an arm lazily around his shoulder.

“Siwon is a really great guy” she said slowly with the expression of a worn-out mother.

He sighed out and tried to tug away from her arm, but she tightened her grip.

“Don’t you think I know that?” he asked almost offended at her earlier statement. “Why do you think I’m in here?

“Because you are silly and quite frankly, a little stupid. You should be out there talking with him and getting to know him. Heaven-forbid him actually getting to know the real you.” she added sarcastically. “Quit sulking.”

He looked at her and turned his mouth into a harsh line before responding. “This was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be here.  I don’t know what I was thinking. He doesn’t like me, and even if he did, which he doesn’t, he’s out of my league and he’s way too good for me anyways.” Almost too quietly for her to hear he added “he should just date you. Seems to like you more than he does me.”

“OWW! WHAT WAS THAT FOR!?!” Kyuhyun screamed as Ara smacked him (not that hard, okay… so it was pretty hard) upside the back of his head.

“Yah!” She yelled back, “you know what that was for.”

She jumped up off the bed and pulled him harshly by the arm to his door. Not unlike the tantrum he was too dignified to throw, Kyuhyun resisted all the way and even resorted to sitting on the floor and becoming dead weight. Angry Ara was even stronger than bubbly, happy Ara though and she finally succeeded in pushing him right out the door, and to Kyuhyun’s dismay, right into Siwon.

He hit the older boy’s solid frame hard and the force of the impact caused them both to tumble to the floor. Before he could make sense of what was happening he was sprawled on top of Siwon who had fallen onto his back near the living room couch. He was red in the face and looked out of breath. Kyuhyun tried to scramble quickly off of the older boy, and managed to push himself into a sitting position next to him when Siwon burst into a deep rolling laugh.

Kyuhyun’s eyes shot wide open and he helped Siwon sit up. Holy , what if I gave him a concussion? he thought worriedly as he tried to straighten himself out.

“S-sorry” Siwon choked out between laughs.

“Are you okay? God I’m such an idiot, are you alright? Did you hit your head? Do I need to-“

“No, no I’m fine it’s just-” Siwon started laughing again and clutched his stomach, not able to get out a sentence before he collapsed into another fit of hysteria.

At the relief that the older boy was at least coherent, Kyuhyun smiled and started to giggle nervously while still staring at a disheveled Siwon.

“Déjà vu,” Siwon said finally catching his breath.

“Huh?” Kyuhyun asked with a grin still on his face, despite his confusion.

“Well.” Siwon said before trying to grab his breath again, “It’s like I’m meeting you for the first time all over again. Well, almost the same thing. If I was as cheesy as people like to say I am I’d say that we need to quit meeting like this. Well, I guess I just did…”

Kyuhyun let out a loud, relieved laugh and shook his head, “Yeah, except I yelled at you and asked you if you were blind?”

“Oh I remember” the older boy replied between staggered breathes. “I didn’t need to see your face to know what you looked like when I finally got around to picking up my cane.”

“I’m almost glad you didn’t” Kyuhyun said smiling.

They sat there laughing and recatching their breath for a bit longer before Kyunhyun realized Siwon’s hand was resting on his upper arm and that Ara was staring at him with an expression he wasn’t sure he really wanted to understand. It looked like a mixture of amusement and pure abject horror.

He cleared his throat and got onto his feet pulling Siwon up with him.

“Sorry, about that” he said again.

His face had turned a darker red than he thought was humanly possible and the laces on his shoes became extremely fascinating.

“No, it’s all good” Siwon replied, patting him gently on the arm and showing off his dimples with a deep smile.

His smile faltered a bit as he leaned in a little closer to Kyuhyun, causing the younger boy’s breath to hitch.

“Um, are we good then? I mean us, before, are we okay?” he asked quietly

His breath ghosted over Kyuhyun’s cheek and sent a tingling sensation down his spine.

“Yeah, yeah, um we’re fine” Kyuhyun replied hastily while trying to remember how to breathe properly.

Siwon’s smile widened as he said, “Your sister said she needed help with the dinner. So, where to?” He held his hand out, barely far enough from his body for Kyuhyun to be sure that’s what he was doing, but he figured, screw it, you only live once, and wrapped his fingers around the older boy’s once again.

When Siwon just kept smiling, Kyuhyun thought maybe even a little bit brighter than before, he walked them into the kitchen with a smile just as big on his own face. And he pretended not to notice Ara’s obvious happy flailing in the corner of the living room.

***

When Jessica and her date came back to the apartment with enough bags of chips and bottles of soda to feed a small army, Kyuhyun and Siwon were standing over the kitchen counter making hamburger patties. If it weren’t for Jessica’s loud ‘eh hem’ he wouldn’t have even noticed them. The way that Siwon’s hands kept accidentally bumping into his, and the laughing and joking and playful teasing were almost enough to turn him into a giddy thirteen year old girl, which of course he wasn’t. At all…

His mood fell a little when he looked up and Jessica smiled at him.

“Oh hey Jess” he said dryly

“Well, try not to be too excited to see me.” She replied with dripping sarcasm.

He smiled despite himself and rolled his eyes with a scoff as he picked up more meat for another hamburger.

“I didn’t get a chance to introduce you to Changmin at the elevator” she said pointing towards no-I-still-don’t-cares-who-he-is. He was tall, very tall and he had a smirk that looked like it was permanently set on his lips. Kyuhyun did not like this Changmin. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was extremely good looking (okay, maybe a little bit), or that he took his eyes off of Kyuhyun and looked at Jess like she was a piece of tasty meat (okay, maybe a lot, he really did love her deep down. She was the sister he never wanted after all.)

“Well, nice to meet you” he said faking a smile.

“Yeah sure, whatever, so how did you and my boy Siwon meet?” he asked as he placed a hand on Jessica’s lower back causing Kyuhyun’s fake smile to disappear.

He looked over to Siwon and asked if they knew each other. They both took turns explaining that they’d gone to the same high school and had seen each other around even though they hadn’t hung out much. No wonder, Kyuhyun thought. Of course he didn’t want to be seen holding some random guy’s hand in front of an old school buddy.

“You can put the food out on the balcony by the barbeque” Kyuhyun said after they had finished talking. “Ara’s already out there getting ready to cook the burgers.”

He finished up his last hamburger patty in silence with Siwon doing the same at his side. He let out a sigh as he placed it on the nearby plate and turned to get the one Siwon had just finished. He forgot again for a short moment about Siwon’s blindness when he looked over to see Siwon seemingly staring directly into his eyes.

“Listen, I feel like I need to apologize in advance for him” the older boy said as Kyuhyun turned his attention back to the meat patties in front of him. “For lack of a better word, he’s a jerk. Okay, so there are plenty of better words, but I probably shouldn’t say any of them.” The right side of his lip curled into a lopsided grin and he turned to finish his last patty.

“We weren’t really friends in high school. In fact I didn’t really have friends in high school… not really” he continued, “but that’s not the point” he added quickly. Kyuhyun noticed the way Siwon bit his lower lip and shuffled his feet before talking again. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m like that.” He said quietly, still looking towards the meat in his hands. “Like him… cause I’m not. Like him I mean.”

“I know” Kyuhyun said quietly.

He couldn’t stop the smile from creeping onto his face or the blush that tipped his ears.

“Here.” Kyuhyun quickly changed subject and held out the plate of patties and guided Siwon’s hand to the plate.

He walked Siwon to the sink and told him to wash his hands and that he’d be right back after giving them to Ara. He practically ran out to the balcony, smiling the whole way and nearly dropped the plate next to Ara before running back in. She grabbed his arm before he got back into to the door though and pulled him over to the grill.

“You yelled at him and asked him if he was blind?” She hissed into his ear when she was sure that Jess and Changmin were deep in conversation.

He turned red and gave her a half smile

“Maybe…” he said more in the form of a question than an answer.

“Unbelievable” she replied with half open.“It’s a wonder he’s here at all. You are one lucky-

“Yeah, yeah, I know” he said embarrassed, cutting her off before she could say anything else.

He gave her cheek a quick peck and ran back into the house where Siwon was standing and smiling with his hands in his pockets. He could definitely get used to this. Tall, dark and handsome. Standing right there in his kitchen, waiting for him.

He walked through the door and grabbed Siwon’s hand to take him out to the patio. Siwon followed and squeezed his hand tightly.

“Smells good” he said as they walked through the sliding door.

“Well thank you” Ara replied graciously.

Kyuhyun and Ara had bought their apartment because it was spacious enough for the two of them to live there together comfortably. It was cheap enough that they could pay the rent and still afford food as long as they both kept jobs. It was close to Ara’s work and close enough to where they had both gone to high school that it really was a god-send after their parents had passed away. However, the reason that they finally settled on that specific two-room apartment was the patio. It cost a little extra, but they couldn’t imagine a place without one.

Every Sunday as far back as Kyuhyun could remember, his parents would gather Ara and him in their arms and drag them out to the backyard patio. Sometimes it was a get together with neighbors, but most often it was just a simple family barbeque. They all sat down at a small set of white patio furniture that their mother had hand-painted with foliage up the sides. It was always peaceful, fun, and perfect.

Kyuhyun thought of his mother’s loving eyes and his father’s boisterous laugh as he pulled out one of the white, painted chairs for Siwon to sit on and he took a seat next to him and smiled.

***

It was a nice barbeque. The food was great, there was plenty to eat, and for the most part the company and the conversation were pleasant. The only parts that weren’t pleasant were the parts when Changmin opened his mouth and decided to say something. Kyuhyun lost count of how many rude things he had said during the meal. At one point he even looked at Jessica and smiled, trying to communicate that she was too good for him. He figured she probably didn’t take it that way as evidence by the way her eyebrows rose to her hairline and she choked on her burger a bit. Oh well, he thought. I tried… Maybe I’ll tell her later. 

Every time Changmin said something less than pleasant, Ara’s face scrunched up and if he wasn’t so annoyed it probably would have made him laugh. He knew she was just trying to be nice to her best friend’s new ‘boyfriend.’ Siwon tried to tell him to back off a few times, but it only seemed to make things worse. He would turn on Siwon with a blind joke or some inside humor that only he and Siwon seemed to understand. The way Siwon physically backed away from those insults made Kyuhyun’s skin crawl.

 Just when they were all finishing up with dinner and Kyuhyun was helping Ara clean off the grill Changmin turned to Jess and gave her his plate, smacked her , and said jokingly, “Be a good woman and clean up for your man.”

It was by far one of the tamer things he had said throughout the evening. He was clearly a misogynist and had made ist comments all night. Kyuhyun made the excuse that he would never see Changmin again and that he should just get through the night without causing a problem. Jess didn’t even seem all that offended, but for some reason, that comment finally made him snap.

“Excuse me?” he said angrily, turning from the grill towards Changmin.

Jessica blushed and ducked away before Changmin replied.

“What. I wasn’t talking to you, was I?” he said with a smirk.

“No, you were talking to my friend, and nobody talks to my friends that way.” He said with a little more bravery than he felt.

Changmin chuckled and walked towards him. Kyuhyun tried not to flinch and he suddenly remembered why it was that he hadn’t said anything before then. I don’t know how to fight, he thought suddenly panicked at the way Changmin was advancing towards him. What in the hell am I doing?

“Alright, that’s enough Shim” Siwon said standing up near Kyuhyun. “He’s right, now just apologize and let’s be done.”

“Oh shut up Choi.” Changmin said, still moving towards Kyuhyun. “God, now I remember why we weren’t friends in high school. You’re such a stiff.”

Siwon reached out to where Kyuhyun was standing and tried to stand in front of him which Kyuhyun found a little silly seeing as Siwon was blind. At least if there was a fight Kyuhyun could see Changmin’s punches, and hopefully dodge them too. He let Siwon push him aside anyways though. He wasn’t one to complain if a knight in shining armor decided to keep him from being pummeled on his own patio.

Changmin laughed, but something about the way Siwon was looking at him must have phased him because he turned to Jessica and held out his hand.

“Let’s go babe,” he ordered.

Ara squeezed Jessica’s shoulder briefly as if to say, it’s alright if you want to go with him, I still love you, be careful, and thanks for coming all at the same time. Kyuhyun even managed a small smile to try to convey the same message. She was practically family and he figured after virtually defending her honor and all, it was the least he could do to placate her embarrassment.

“No, I think I’ll just stay here” Jessica finally squeaked while avoiding eye contact with him.

He looked a little shocked but he just turned and walked through Kyuhyun and Siwon, bumping both of their shoulders on his way past. Kyuhyun breathed out a small sigh of relief and relaxed a little the closer Changmin got to the door.

When he finally reached out for the doorknob he turned and looked Jessica up and down before getting in a final word.

“Not like I’m missing much” he said snidely with a twisted smile on his face.

And then all hell broke loose.

Once again, I LOVE Changmin. It may be a bit cliche, but I needed a jerk for my story. Maybe I should have picked someone I don't like... I mean, how could this be the face of a jerk? :)

   Thanks for all of your comments! I'm glad you're liking the story! Keep them coming. I hope you enjoy this chapter :D