different;

Sungmin learns, as time passes them by, that everything around starts having a slight sense of Kyuhyun. There's something in the yellow sunlight that grazes the dark-tipped grass in summer, a certain gentleness in the way the lampposts shine on the alleys at the beginning of night.  Learns, in fact, that everything has had it long before, ever since the day they've met, except he's thick- headed when it comes to such things and he doesn't observe what he should if it doesn't hit him straight in the eye. 

Still, he thinks of himself as a lucky one because summer is lukewarm this year and the sun is kind to their skin in the morning.

They make love on the tiles of Kyuhyun's bathroom, quiet and lazy, and Kyuhyun whispers to him in his ear that he's beautiful. There's a sadness stirring up his voice as he says that but Sungmin rolls them over and kisses him on his both cheeks, on his nose, on his lips, in a way so tender that he feels Kyuhyun shivering beneath him. He feels him giving up, in a way he's never knew Kyuhyun could, and, as Kyuhyun melts in his arms and gives in, finally, to the sensation of surrendering, Sungmin kisses him again. Thinks he's never loved someone as much as he loves Kyuhyun, because it feels like Kyuhyun has been there since day one, staring in straight in the eye without the shy gaze from today. He feels the want in Kyuhyun's s when he tries to stay straight, head falling backwards. 

He comes fast and Kyuhyun pulls him down and they kiss hard as their foreheads bump.

They sit in Kyuhyun's bedroom after that, the one from his parents' old house, plastered with eye-catching posters of blond girls with long legs and in a corner Sungmin thinks he sees a picture of a band. 

He lays slumped on the bed, blanket covering the lower half of his body, and he looks at the way Kyuhyun eats an apple.

"Why aren't you exhausted?" Sungmin asks. He kinda envies Kyuhyun for his good stamina because he can go on for hours, whether is for or other intricate thing he usually does, simply because he's never been a tough one(and it's hard, at his age, to learn how to be tough again). Still, he thinks to himself as the damn heat creeps up his neck, that he should ask Kyuhyun for an advice if he wants to keep up with him.

Kyuhyun looks up from the magazine he's reading, "Why should I?"

"Well..." Sungmin pauses.

A moment of silence and then,

"Oh!"

It would be easy to pretend that this discussion's never begun when Kyuhyun looks back at his magazine, bitting from the apple. He looks like he doesn't care anyway, so Sungmin indulges himself in the warmth of the blanket as his body dips deeper into the mattress. The sunlight is yellow and endearing today; he could, in the tunes of the radio that's playing low in the background, to fall asleep.

Something warm touches his hand and he looks to his right at Kyuhyun staring at him from the edge of the bed, arm under his chin. His hair is messy and his eyes hold a vivid glim; Sungmin's noticed for a while now that, when Kyuhyun keeps his eyes that small and the sparkle still manages to shine through the cracks, he isn't up for good things. 

"You've never done it before, have you?" Kyuhyun says. He pauses and looks at Sungmin that gulps his own words. The heat makes his cheeks burning red when he recalls Kyuhyun taking off his clothes, and he'd really want to disappear.

He makes up his mind and turns on the other side, pulling the blanket up to his nose. It's hard to breath like that but maybe, just maybe, Kyuhyun will go away.

"So that means..." Kyuhyun pauses," that I am..."

Sungmin rolls his eyes. "Oh, God, just- just stop thinking, will you?"

Kyuhyun grins widely when he turns back around, blanket wrapped around his body, and manages to get up from the bed to put some clothes on. It's not the way Kyuhyun speaks afterwards that makes Sungmin's world shatter from its foundation.

"I'd  be happy, if I were your first. But I'm happy with the second place also."

There's a feeling hidden in the curl of his lips, something Sungmin can't read that well, something full of affection and grief and sweetness wanting to linger out of him, but Kyuhyun keeps his mouth secure. Lets out nothing. 

Sungmin falls to the ground the next second and leaves the blanket next to his feet, on the floor. Kyuhyun's neck is warm and he doesn't want to let it go, his arms don't, and there's something about Kyuhyun's eyes today that makes him look truly endearing. Sungmin trails the strings of invisible tears on his cheeks, turns his face to kiss him on the black bags under his eyes. 

"I'll keep your warm food, if you come over tonight," Sungmin tells him.

It had taken them a lot more time than he anticipated in the beginning, but, as Kyuhyun pushes him on the floor and kisses his neck, Sungmin remains unmoved for good moments, stunned by the intensity of this sensation. Of this feeling of having Kyuhyun. 

He looks up at Kyuhyun's face lightened by the game of lights streaming through the curtains,"Let's sleep now," he says.

*

Soooyoung's father throws a party the following night for a profitable bussiness they've concluded. Kyuhyun receives an invitation. For some reason, and Sooyoung makes sure to make them both feel bad for the rest of the night, Sungmin is also there.

She looks oddly irritated when Kyuhyun leaves her in the middle of the room surrounded by all those strangers just to go to the bathroom with Sungmin.

"He's not a small kid, Kyuhyun," she tells him, pulling at the sleeve of his blouse. "He can find it alone."

"Let's not make a big fuss out of this, okay? I'm not here because I want to," Kyuhyun explains.

Sooyoung opens and she looks like she's on the point of screaming at him, but she looks around and sees she's not alone, there are people watching. Kyuhyun is still there.

She releases him the moment he starts pulling away, and asks, hesitating a little, if he cares about her at all. The fact that he doesn't give her an answer right away makes her eyes shine. In all that hustle, it's impossible for her to hear him speak again.

"This is not the place to talk about this okay?" He sighs. "Let's not."

She looks at him from under her long eyelashes, curled and dark. He wonders if he loves her, wonders if he ever had.

He guesses at some point that yes, he has had, otherwise he cannot explain the dull pain hitting his chest as the first tear falls. The gaze falters now, stays still with no intention and Kyuhyun realizes that he's lost her, one beat at a time. He's felt that for her but he doesn't anymore, and he can't tell from where to take that feeling back again. Even just to make her happy. In the hours between the tepid air of summer and the heavy rain at the beginning of winter, he stared at her for a last time and then he let go. The rope was hard to keep between cold hands, the friction burning even with that rain pouring over their heads like crazy. 

He takes her in his arms by the time she starts crying for real. At first, she tries shrugging him off her skinny bones, stubbornly pushing at his chest to let her go. He doesn't though.

Thinks that if he keeps her like that for two more minutes, they will go back, be the same. He closes his eyes and tries visualising her smile, the small cracks in the palm of her right hand, slightly deeper than in the left one. But when he looks better, all he sees is Sungmin.

He puts his mouth over her ear, blowing hot air unconsciously in there. He'd tell her that it's not her fault, it's just that he doesn't feel the same as before and maybe they can be friends. But he doesn't. He can't. Because for a moment there, she was everything he could ever ask for.

The sound of glass shattering fills the silence. They part, and Sooyoung looks to her left at the waiter's impatient hands trying to gather the pieces.

There is a murmur through the room as Kyuhyun walks past some people and disappears behind a grey wall.

*

Sungmin rests his forehead on Kyuhyun's shoulder later. The bathroom is white and obnoxious, and it looks like behind those four walls there's no world at all. 

"I don't want you to break up with her because of me," he tells Kyuhyun as he coughs into his hand. The artificial light isn't kind to his eyes tonight , keeps them dry enough to sting. 

"I won't break up with her," Kyuhyun says.

"Good."

He recalls the feeling of fingers opening, stretching, intertwining. 

After that, there's never any underwear Sungmin wears so that Kyuhyun would take off, but the shy lips and the pale skin make Kyuhyun forget about such details. Whispers to Sungmin that he's becoming rougher lately, he dares a bit more and that he enjoys this side of him. Sungmin doesn't think in those moments, not when Kyuhyun breaths so slow against his ear that it drives him nuts. 

Sometimes the slap of flesh against flesh makes him keep his eyes open, looking straight into Kyuhyun's as he goes down on him and kisses the skin around his s. He never moans the first time Kyuhyun does that, bites his lips instead until blood comes out, but he doesn't care. Not when Kyuhyun's leans over and kisses him. Pushes him deeper into the mattress, carefully matching his palms against Sungmin's to keep the balance as the sheets rub on Sungmin's back and in the morning he wakes up with stratches on his skin.

Still, there are those moments when, long after he's rolled in expensive sheets, Sooyoung calls. Taking in long breaths because she doesn't want Sungmin to hear her cry, she talks to him. Asks him why is Kyuhyun so changed. Asks him if he still loves her, as if Sungmin reads minds or something like that.

"He hasn't told me, but I know he wants us to break up," she says.

There isn't enough time for Sungmin to tell her that she's not right. Or maybe there are not enough lies anymore, and he imagines Sooyoung furrowing her eyebrows when there lacks the answer though she's never asked anything.

"You talk to him, Sungmin, a lot. You see him often than I do."

At that, Sungmin's heart skips a bit. Does she know something, does she suspects anything?

"Have you seen him with another girl lately?"

"I..." Sungmin pauses. "I haven't."

They don't say nothing more. She hungs up after that, sorrow drowning down her voice at the last goodbye.

Sometimes, rarely (really), Sungmin wonders if this is the way things should be. If this is how falling apart looks for someone who hasn't had enough strength to keep on holding on, to let the rope slide through long fingers and cut the flesh instead of leaving it there, suspended. If it's a part of growing up, caught somewhere between the dull sadness of leaving childhood behind and the mandatory responsibility of having a family, children, a small house surrounded by a white wood fence.

He wonders if Sooyoung was Kyuhyun's growing up, the essential, the part of him he's forgotten in the chilly air of a late autumn.

*

They get caught when Kyuhyun kisses him once in a clear morning of July and they didn't assure before that there was no one around. Sungmin pushes him away, startled, as his hands starts trembling. The warm breeze rustling through the leafs holds the chilly impression of winter melting away.

"This is not what you think," he tries to explain, grabbing the boy by the hand. "Hyukjae. Please, Hyukjae. This isn't what--" it looks like, he almost continues, but he catches Kyuhyun staring at them with the end of his eye and he bites on his tongue. It is what it looks like. They were really kissing. And he can tell, judging by the look Hyukjae throws at them, that maybe he's disgusted.

Hyukjae lowers his eyes and lets out a sigh before turning around to face the school.

"You shouldn't do it in here. They have video cameras, you know..."

He starts walking away, but Sungmin grabs his hand again. Holds it harder. Hyukjae doesn't tell him to let him go even if he is visibly stirred up; Sungmin does it though when he notices the shadow of embarassment written all over his face. 

"I... I didn't know you were..." Hyukjae pauses. He reddens, and Sungmin almost apologizes to him, or more to the memory of Hyukjae as a boy with skinny legs running together with him to catch the ice cream man; there's a sense of disappointment in Hyukjae's eyes when he turns to face Sungmin again, but it doesn't look like disappointment at all. More like sadness. And Sungmin doesn't know how to cope with that.

"You weren't supposed to know," Sungmin tells him while holding him by his shoulders. "I'll understand if you don't want to speak with me anymore, I will, but please, Hyukjae," he pauses. He looks closer at him. It's not quite warm outside, the sun doesn't peek through the clouds fully.

"Don't tell to anybody what you saw. Please. For the sake of our friendship."

None of them say that there isn't any friendship anymore. They've forgotten about it when Hyukjae's decided to leave the country and follow his dreams in different cities, different worlds; still, when Sungmin hugs him, for the first time in years, there's nothing that changed at him. The bones are as prominent as always, his hair smells of coke, the sneakers are spotless.

They sit in silence for good moments. They part only when Kyuhyun touches the small of his back to let him know that he'll go to his classes.

"But it's a sin, hyung," Hyukjae finally says. Drawing in deep lungfuls of air, he tells Sungmin tha they should sit on a bench.

"The priest tells us this. This kind of relationship isn't good, for body or for soul, likewise."

Sungmin doesn't really understand how can something as beautiful as love can be considered a sin, thrown in the same dirty hole as murder, depravity, theft. He can't. Because for three minutes each day, he's there, a soul burning brighter than the sun when Kyuhyun leans in to kiss his mouth. That gentleness can never be brushed away by the wind, nor some words will make it vanish. Is there, in him, part of his being, and Hyukjae can't understand such thing.

"So what? God will send me to hell?" Sungmin asks him, nothing too serious.

"It's not about God, hyung. It's about the world we live in. Just think about it a little," he says, taking one of Sungmin's hands, " What if your grandma will find out? Or worse, what if somebody in school finds out, then what? Your entire life will be over in a second and you won't even realize it."

"It's not their business how I choose to live my life."

"You'll care," Hyukjae says, seemingly confident, but his voice crack and he coughs.

Sungmin looks at him as he pulls the hand back. "What do you know about this, Hyukjae? Stop talking if you have no idea..."

"Because I've been there, hyung. And I've done that," Hyukjae says.