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It’s nearing the end of summer vacation, and Kyuhyun figures he has it made. Dad’s been out of town for business for at least a month, which means that Kyuhyun can do pretty much whatever he wants until his father comes back. Dad trusts him (one of the many benefits of being the child of an only parent), and, anyway, it isn’t like Kyuhyun wants to throw massive parties or anything. Kyuhyun does, after all, hate ninety percent of the population for either a) not understanding his humor, or b) being an idiot.
Unfortunately, right as Kyuhyun is settling down to play his favorite and most violent video game, he hears the front door unlock, and a bustle of activity as his father, an older woman, and a boy about his age enter the house.
Dad grins, and announces proudly, “Son, I’d like you to meet your new mother and brother.”
Kyuhyun’s eyes widen, and he chokes on the gum he’d been chewing.
He quickly recovers, fixes his most fastidious glare upon what he supposes is his new family, and says, “Actually, I’d rather not.” With that, he walks to his room and slams the door closed.
Kyuhyun has a lot of practice being a brat. He is, after all, an only child, and more specifically, an only child who, until this day, has been doted upon by his loving, if slightly absent-minded, father.
So he spends the rest of the week in his room playing video games on one of his older gaming systems, only leaving to grab a quick bite from the kitchen when the room started spinning on him.
At the start of the second week, however, he realizes with a start that his new brother is apparently living in the room next to his, the one with the connecting bathroom, and he's been patiently sitting on the toilet, waiting for Kyuhyun to open the door. "Hi," he waves. "I thought we could get to know each other."
When his “brother” enters the room, the first the he does is take a careful examination of Kyuhyun’s things. “You’re much more organized than I expected,” he says, that same smile on his face. Kyuhyun’s not sure why, but he doesn’t really like that smile. He thinks it almost seems insincere, but tries to push the thought out of his mind.
Kyuhyun decides it’s not worth a response.
They stand in silence a few moments longer before the other boy clears his throat and announces, “Uh, well. I’m Zhou Mi. I don’t think we were ever properly introduced.”
Kyuhyun doesn’t respond again.
Zhou Mi sighs, and suddenly the smile disappears. As it’s replaced with a hardened glare, Kyuhyun realizes he had been right—the smile had been insincere, almost like some sort of trained response. Zhou Mi’s eyes narrowed, and he placed a firm hand on Kyuhyun’s shoulder. “I don’t care if you hate me,” he says, voice much deeper than before, “but you will love my mother. She deserves happiness.”
The grip on his shoulder soon turns into a push towards the door of Kyuhyun’s room. Kyuhyun furrows his brows and turns to make some sort of retort to Zhou Mi, but when he catches sight of Zhou Mi’s face, his mouth clamps shut. There’s something about it that makes him unable to say anything.
“My mother will enjoy her life here, and you will make sure of that. Do you understand?” Zhou Mi’s grip on Kyuhyun tightens.
“Yes,” he squeaks.
Suddenly, the fake smile—which Kyuhyun has a feeling fools most people, but Kyuhyun isn’t most people—returns to Zhou Mi’s face, and he releases Kyuhyun’s shoulder. “Good. Then let’s say hello to our parents, shall we?”
Kyuhyun hates to admit it, but he does actually like his new stepmother. He would even venture to say that he could love her, because she was sweet and nice and everything one could ask for from a mother, and besides, it was obvious his dad loved her. Furthermore, she didn’t try to replace the mother Kyuhyun had never had—she just wanted to provide things like dinner and dividing up the household chores, and left the mothering stuff to Kyuhyun’s dad, as things had always been.
So really, it wasn’t the marriage that bothered him anymore.
It was Zhou Mi.
Zhou Mi—someone Kyuhyun couldn’t tell was being sincere or not. He knew that around Zhou Mi’s mother, the other boy would do anything. He smiled without any reservations, and liked to laugh.
But when it was just Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun in a room, an awkward silence descended on them, and Zhou Mi’s smile took on a different nuance, which could either be classified as insincere or sinister.
Kyuhyun chooses to believe it’s simply insincere, because he doesn’t like what a sinister smile implies.
He starts to wonder if any of his friends happen to want a roommate.
He only knows one person who has their own flat, which is probably due to the fact that Kyuhyun and the majority of his friends are still in high school. Heechul, however, the tutor that helped Kyuhyun pass his high school entrance exam, moved out of his family house years ago.
“What do you mean, ‘I want a roommate’?” Heechul asks, annoyed, when Kyuhyun calls him later that week. “I don’t recall ever saying that.”
“But I know you’ve hinted at it before,” Kyuhyun says.
Heechul laughs. “Kyuhyun, you might fool everyone at your school, but don’t forget that you learned most of your tricks from the one and only me. It’s not going to work. Tell me what this is really about.”
Kyuhyun sighs and hangs up the phone without a world. He’s not sure how to say “I have a hot new stepbrother who I think is the spawn of the devil, because I’m almost positive he has no soul” without sounding more than a little paranoid.
Zhou Mi is actually a first-year college student, so Kyuhyun thinks it’s safe to assume that he will be able to escape Zhou Mi’s creepy insincere smile during the school week. College students are busy, right?
"This can't be my life," Kyuhyun grumbles, his voice barely heard because he's speaking into his desk, his head cradled in his arms. Classes have resumed, and while telling Heechul what he thinks of his new stepbrother is out of the question, there’s a certain camaraderie to be said for childhood friends.
"Surely it isn't that bad," Sungmin says encouragingly. Sungmin likes to look on the bright side of everything. He always has, even that one time when Kyuhyun broke his arm on a school trip. As Kyuhyun had screamed in pain, Sungmin had calmly suggested that he use this as an opportunity to make the girl he liked take pity on him and, perhaps, even fall for him.
Kyuhyun, however, likes to be realistic. "My dad went on a business trip to China and came back married. With a new son who is quite possibly demonic."
"But isn't it good that your father is in love again?" Ryeowook tries. He's not as good at being positive as Sungmin, and when Kyuhyun glares, Ryeowook withers a little.
"I'm stuck with an evil stepbrother now!" Kyuhyun whines. "I liked being an only child!"
And it’s just then that the unthinkable happens—Zhou Mi’s face appears in the doorway. Kyuhyun can't be sure if he overheard the conversation, because this time he has the most inscrutable expression on his face. Not insincere, not sinister... just there. “Ah, didi, you forgot your lunch,” he says.
Kyuhyun freezes in shock. “I. I. Uh. Didn’t,” he says, spluttering. “Didn’t you have to go to the university today?”
Zhou Mi smiles—placating—and shakes his head. “Classes were let out early, so I had time to drop off my cute little brother’s lunch before it was too late.”
Sungmin and Ryeowook look back and forth between Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun, and Sungmin starts to smile slyly. Kyuhyun glares, but unlike Ryeowook, Sungmin is immune to Kyuhyun’s moods.
"Thanks," Kyuhyun bites off after a long silence, and grabs the lunch. “You can leave now,” he says shortly.
The taller boy laughs. "You should call me gege, Kui Xian," he says, resting a hand on Kyuhyun's shoulder.
Kyuhyun shrugs it off, and only responds with, “You know that’s not how you pronounce my name.”
Zhou Mi smirks—and Kyuhyun notices uncomfortably that it’s another of those smiles, the ones where he’s clearly planning something—and says, “But it sounds nicer, doesn’t it? I’ll see you tonight.”
With that, he takes his leave, and Sungmin and Ryeowook turn to each other and grin—rather stupidly, in Kyuhyun’s opinion. Sungmin only smiles wider at Kyuhyun’s annoyance. “So that's your brother?" he asks. "He's kind of hot. He almost reminds me of Siwon."
Siwon has been in their classes since elementary school, and has been missing class since middle school because of modeling jobs. Kyuhyun doesn’t think Zhou Mi looks anything like him.
"He isn't hot at all," Kyuhyun says gruffly, lying through his teeth. “He’s creepy and he wants us to be some sort of weird happy family and I swear he keeps staring at me all the time and it’s really creepy and Heechul won’t let me live with him so I can’t escape it and—”
Kyuhyun is waving his arms wildly and has whacked at least two of their fellow students in the head. Sungmin grabs one of his arms and says, "Really, Kyuhyun, is it that bad having a hot older brother you aren't related to?" He and Ryeowook start to laugh, teasing him about how lucky he is to be living with eye candy like that, and Kyuhyun glares at them before settling back into his seat. He should have known better than to trust them with a serious matter like this. He ignores them the rest of the day.
See, Sungmin and Ryeowook don't think it's really a problem because they figure Kyuhyun has it made--He gets to live with a hot older guy even though he's only in high school, and his parents are totally okay with it.
But really, it's getting pretty awkward.
Zhou Mi’s smiles are becoming less calculated, and more natural, and even Kyuhyun finds himself laughing at what Zhou Mi says every once in a while.
And really, Kyuhyun is becoming convinced that Zhou Mi purposely lounges around half-naked just to make Kyuhyun really uncomfortable.
Despite Zhou Mi’s initial personality—cold and shut down—now that he sees that Kyuhyun genuinely cares about his new stepmother, Zhou Mi is now relaxed when the two of them are alone. They laugh, and play video games together sometimes, and when the parents are out on a date, Zhou Mi cooks for the two of them while Kyuhyun complains loudly about how awful Zhou Mi is at anything domestic.
It’s almost enough to make Kyuhyun forget how awkward the first month had been, but every once in a while, Kyuhyun catches Zhou Mi watching him from the corner of his eye, that same calculating smile on his face, and he remembers that he shouldn’t trust Zhou Mi further than he can throw him.
Zhou Mi is actually a full two years older than Kyuhyun, which Kyuhyun finds ridiculously unfair. Suddenly all of the household responsibilities are getting shifted to Zhou Mi, just because he's older.
And Zhou Mi, despite the hardness in his eyes and the fact that when he’s angry he looks like he’s thirty years old instead of nineteen, is completely and totally irresponsible.
He leaves the toothpaste uncapped. He forgets to put things back in the refrigerator. He forgets to clean up after he uses the kitchen. He does a million things that Kyuhyun thinks he really should know better by now.
Kyuhyun is thinking exactly that when he realizes that Zhou Mi is uncomfortably close to him while they’re cooking dinner one night. He’s adding the carrots to the pot when Zhou Mi whispers, “Don't you think you’ve got too much? You know Dad doesn’t like carrots.”
He feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and when he looks at Zhou Mi — well, he doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it isn’t there. That is, until Zhou Mi sees Kyuhyun’s expression — what did Kyuhyun look like in that moment — and Zhou Mi’s face changes, and the air between them is charged with something Kyuhyun can’t identify.
He backs away unconsciously.
And runs away.
(Not for long, of course. He still had to finish dinner. But he does take five minutes to gather his wits and return to the kitchen, which was exactly how long the soup needed to simmer anyway. So it’s fine. It’s all really fine.)
Except that it isn’t fine.
"I don't know why I ran," Kyuhyun slurs. He's at Heechul's place, because Heechul is the only person Kyuhyun knows that is legal to drink and who has no problem encouraging bad habits in minors. Heechul had been Kyuhyun's tutor in middle school, and somehow they've ended up with a brotherly sort of friendship. He wishes Heechul were his older brother instead of Zhou Mi.
He says so aloud, and lurches toward Heechul. "You wouldn't say weird Chinese things to me all the time." Kyuhyun leans back in his chair, clutching his head. "I don't understand a word he says. And he calls me Kui Xian all the time. I don't like it. My name isn't Kui Xian!"
"No," Heechul says dryly. "It's not."
Kyuhyun has a feeling Heechul is amused by his behavior, but he's in the middle of making an important point, so he ignores it and keeps talking. "Dad thinks it's cute. He gets mad if I say hyung and not gege." He crosses his arms and pouts. "It's so dumb. I never wanted a brother."
Heechul begins examining his nails. "Does Zhou Mi have any friends that you know of?"
Kyuhyun thinks for a few minutes--which is really hard, and Kyuhyun hadn't thought he'd drunk that much--and then says, "I think he's been talking to that Donghae kid." Donghae is a senior in high school, like Kyuhyun, but he takes a lot of college courses. Kyuhyun suspects that's how he met Zhou Mi.
"Just make sure he becomes really good friends with Donghae or someone else, and he'll probably stop pestering you so much."
Kyuhyun isn't sure how he's supposed to manage this, and figures he'll just think about it later. When he's sober.
One week later, Kyuhyun isn't sure how to get Zhou Mi off his back, but he is ready to try anything because Kyuhyun is starting to feel like he spends every waking moment with Zhou Mi hanging around (or on) him.
He knocks on the door to Donghae's house. Donghae comes to the door in pajamas that are slightly too large and falling off him. He scratches at his stomach absent-mindedly. "What is it," he says, and Kyuhyun is pretty sure he just woke up. It's well past three in the afternoon. Kyuhyun grunts. He doesn't understand lazy people.
"Hi, I'm Cho Kyuhyun and--"
Donghae's eyes fly open. "OH MY GOD," he screams. "YOU'RE ZHOU MI'S CUTE NEW BROTHER, AREN'T YOU."
Donghae's arms fly around Kyuhyun's shoulder and drag him inside before he can protest. "I, uh," he flounders awkwardly, because this wasn't part of the plan at all. "I am, but you see, the point is--"
"I can't believe you came over here! I'm so glad you want to be friends!" Kyuhyun isn't sure how any of his behavior has hinted at a desire to be friends with an idiot like this, but right as he's about to say this, Donghae says, "You like video games, right? I just got this new game for the Wii U but no one wants to play it with me. Let's play it together!"
Kyuhyun spends a few agonizing minutes trying to convince himself to leave, but in the end, he can't resist the pull of playing Wii U. His father has been refusing to buy him one. He says if he were to get Kyuhyun one, Kyuhyun would never go outside. Kyuhyun thinks that's ridiculous, but when he ends up spending over five hours with a perfect stranger doing nothing but video games, he thinks that maybe his father has a point.
Kyuhyun and Donghae end up being pretty good friends, though Kyuhyun's not sure why. He chalks it up to the fact that Donghae owns a Wii U, XBox One, PS4, and every other gaming system known to man. The two of them have even started splitting the cost for new games they want.
Of course, becoming friends with Donghae has kind of ruined his whole plan for getting rid of Zhou Mi, because as Donghae is one of Zhou Mi's closest school friends, that means Zhou Mi is often invited to Donghae's house on the same days Kyuhyun is.
Things often go like this: Kyuhyun angrily notices Donghae and Zhou Mi waiting for him at the school gate, they go back to Donghae's and Kyuhyun and Donghae play games while Zhou Mi cooks dinner, they spend about an hour talking before heading home--talking that consists of Donghae and Zhou Mi talking to everyone and Kyuhyun pointedly ignoring anything Zhou Mi says, which only leads Donghae to gush about what a great relationship the two have.
Kyuhyun thinks Donghae must be blind.
When a new freshman transfers into the school, Kyuhyun is told to show him around. He's not sure why the school thinks this is a good job for him, considering he'd made the last transfer student cry for a week over how badly Kyuhyun had treated him.
"Hi," the kid says, shuffling his feet awkwardly. "I'm Henry."
"Whatever," Kyuhyun snaps. "That's the library over there, okay? There's a map of the school somewhere inside. Have fun."
Kyuhyun invites Sungmin and Ryeowook over to the house after months of them begging to see the new decorations his stepmother has instated. He thinks what they really want is to be able to pester Kyuhyun in front of Zhou Mi.
When Kyuhyun opens the door, he hears Zhou Mi's familiar voice speaking in Chinese, and one he doesn't recognize responding to him.
Kyuhyun enters the kitchen and finds the new transfer student--what was his name again?--with Zhou Mi, apparently learning how to cook something. Something Chinese, Kyuhyun thinks with disdain. He clears his throat.
Henry drops the wooden spoon he's holding, and then starts apologizing profusely in broken Korean because it's splattered sauce all over the tile. Kyuhyun rolls his eyes. "Whatever," he grumbles. "Have fun, you two. Sungmin and Ryeowook and I are going to--"
"Oh my god!" Sungmin squeals. "You are too adorable!" he says, running up to Henry and pinching his cheeks.
"Hey, isn't that the transfer student you were supposed to show around?" Ryeowook asks. Kyuhyun grunts, which Ryeowook knows is a reluctant affirmation. "Kyuhyun," Ryeowook chastises. "Did you really leave this kid to fend for himself? He can barely speak Korean!"
Kyuhyun glares at Ryeowook. "That's not my fault, is it?"
Ryeowook sighs, holds a hand to his head and says, "You're a jerk, you know that, right? I'm going to help Zhou Mi do your job. Join us when you stop being an asshole."
Kyuhyun's not a huge fan of Chemistry, mainly because it's taught by Just-Call-Me-Hankyung, a recent university graduate. This should make him an awesome teacher, but unfortunately, Just-Call-Me-Hankyung's Korean is nearly incomprehensible.
Luckily, if you catch Hankyung outside of a class room setting and ask him to repeat things a lot, the lecture material starts to make sense. When Kyuhyun takes Henry to meet with Hankyung after class, the two of them start speaking to each other in Chinese — Hankyung’s with a fluency Kyuhyun could never have imagined, and Henry speaking brokenly, but excited all the same. It’s annoying, Kyuhyun thinks, especially when Kyuhyun is trying to be nice and helpful and all he gets for it is being left out of the conversation. But then he realizes with surprise that it’s infinitely less annoying than watching Zhou Mi and Henry interact.
A growing sense of dread pools in his stomach, and before he can identify the cause, he shifts the focus of the conversation back to school, back to Korean, and pushes those feelings down deep inside.
Maybe if he never thinks about it, everything will go away.
That’s the wrong attitude to have, of course. It doesn’t go away. Henry spends more and more time with Zhou Mi, and as his Chinese gets better, even invites Hankyung to come over.
With a start, Kyuhyun realizes that Henry has enacted exactly the kind of plan he’d had in mind by befriending Donghae. So why wasn’t he happier about it?
As the three of them chatter in Chinese, he has no choice but to grumpily consider his feelings. Sure, it freaked him out when Zhou Mi looked at him with that calculating expression, but in a way that just made him nervous now, like he was waiting for something to happen. And when Zhou Mi smiled, it melted his insides, and again, he felt that anticipation of wanting something… more.
Oh God. He’d fallen in love with his stepbrother.
No, no no no no no, he thought, panic rising in his throat, followed closely by the taste of bile. He couldn’t destroy his father’s happiness like this. He had to do something.
So he did the only thing he could think of — steadfastly avoided Zhou Mi’s presence.
Which only took a week before Zhou Mi corners him leaving their shared bathroom. Mom and Dad were out of the house, on date night.
“Eep!” Kyuhyun squeaks.
Zhou Mi presses one hand each against the wall above Kyuhyun’s shoulders, staring down at him. His dark eyes search Kyuhyun’s. “Why are you avoiding me, didi?”
Kyuhyun gulps. It was worse when Zhou Mi called him didi, which meant little brother, because then it just made him feel guilty. He decides to lie through his teeth. “I’m not avoiding you.”
He can’t bring himself to call Zhou Mi gege.
Zhou Mi hangs his head. “I don’t understand. We were getting along. I thought we were finally going to be brothers.”
Kyuhyun wishes he hadn’t said that. He can’t stop the pained expression on his face.
Zhou Mi laughs, the kind of self-deprecating laugh that breaks your heart. “I guess I was hoping too much that you could like me. I guess I didn’t make a great first impression.”
“No!” Kyuhyun shouts, just as Zhou Mi is lifting himself away from the wall.
Zhou Mi waits for him to finish the sentence, and Kyuhyun realizes he didn’t have a plan for this.
“I mean, um, I like you just fine.”
“Then why are you avoiding me?”
He can tell Zhou Mi isn’t going to let this go. “I mean, you’re, uh, we don’t look alike, and we didn’t grow up together, so, I mean, it’s —”
Zhou Mi grins, the smile that means he’s up to something. Kyuhyun can feel the flush in his face only getting worse.
“Kui Xian,” Zhou Mi says, the words rolling off his tongue so slowly it feels like a gentle caress. Kyuhyun swallows deeply, afraid of what would come next. “Are you in love with me?”
He runs.
Not very far, of course, because they live in the same house and they have a connecting bathroom. Kyuhyun only has enough time to slam the entrance to his bedroom shut before Zhou Mi enters from the bathroom door.
“The funny thing is, Kui Xian, I don’t think of you as a brother either. I only called you didi to remind myself to behave. But after seeing that expression just now, all bets are off.”
Kyuhyun’s brain takes a few moments to catch up. “Wait, what?”
Zhou Mi is hovering over him after only a few giant strides. The man is so tall. “It means we may need to apologize to our parents.” And with one quick movement, Zhou Mi has pulled Kyuhyun to press against his chest, his arm planted firmly at Kyuhyun’s waist, while the other curls in Kyuhyun’s hair. Kyuhyun doesn’t even register the kiss until Zhou Mi’s tongue is pushing at his mouth, urging his lips to open.
Kyuhyun kisses back, the desire that has been building all this time finally released into the charged air between them.
He doesn’t care. He’ll apologize to his parents a million times before he lets go of this feeling.