Work Text:
Kyuhyun stares at the clock on the wall and wonders if time has actually stopped. The rational side of his brain tells him that he’s just being silly, that time always moved forward at the same pace regardless of how his brain interprets its passage, but the other side actually contemplates the possibility that time has frozen, leaving him stuck in limbo.
He hates it.
Since he enlisted six months prior, time has seemed to operate on a completely different spectrum than it did before. Before his enlistment, there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to accomplish everything he needed to. In between comebacks and recording and filming and traveling, there were often ays where he wouldn’t even have time to sleep let alone be bored. But now, he spent each day in the community welfare office wishing for the hands on the clock to move faster.
At first, he had to admit that it had been nice to slow down. He finally got the doctor’s recommended eight hours of sleep and had time to visit his grandparents, play Starcraft without interruption, and compile itineraries for his dream travel destinations, for after he was discharged of course. It had been exhilarating, finally having the time to do all the things he couldn’t do during life as one of the world’s busiest idols (though in reality, he supposed Leeteuk or Heechul held that title).
But after a few weeks, time had slowed down. Every day seemed the same as the one before, and Kyuhyun had started to drown in the monotony. He would wake up, report for duty, fulfill his day’s assignments, go home, play Starcraft, and then go to bed early in order to be fresh for another day of the exact same routine. It didn’t help that in those six months, almost all of the hyungs had returned from the army and Super Junior started preparing for their next comeback.
Without him.
Kyuhyun sighs. In the past six months, he had struggled to come to terms with being relegated to the sidelines. He had pacified himself slightly with the knowledge that all of the other members had at one time or another undergone the same thing, but even know, the bitterness of being left out, unintentionally or not, still stings.
When Changmin had been discharged, they’d had a few short days to revel in his return before reality had sunk in. Changmin had completed his mandatory two years away, and now he had to return to his idol life. Once again, without Kyuhyun.
Kyuhyun checks his wristwatch on the off chance the clock on the wall is wrong, but finds himself utterly disappointed. Part of him wants to finish the work day and return home, but he knows there’s nothing waiting for him but an empty dorm that used to be filled with hyungs, laughter, and the smell of Eunhyuk’s feet. He misses it, though he’s not entirely unhappy with the fresh scent the dorm carries these days. He supposes he shouldn’t even call it a dorm anymore. After all, it’s just him now. His own studio apartment.
Kyuhyun sighs—inwardly as to not garner the disapproval from any of the commanding officers within earshot. Currently, the hyungs are all out of the country on tour. In theory, that should make things easier as Kyuhyun doesn’t have to constantly be notified of their exploits and feel the ache of not being a part, but this time, he remembers that he won’t get to leave the country for another year and a half and feels like his wings have been clipped. On top of that, Changmin’s in Japan with Yunho, the rest of Kyuline are too busy with their own comebacks and schedules to make time for their mopey hyung, his other friends now have commitments to their own wives and now children, and to top that off, his sister and husband are back in Vienna and his parents are in Taiwan.
Loneliness is… a weird feeling, he thinks to himself as he bikes home at the end of the day. There had been times before enlistment that he had felt lonely, sure, but it had always passed somewhat quickly. This loneliness, unable to be ameliorated by anyone or so it feels, seems to have latched onto his heart and refuses to let go. It’s too bad I can’t channel this into my next album, he thinks bitterly. It is autumn after all, the first fall in three years that he hasn’t released an album. He knows he shouldn’t be complaining, that it’s his duty to serve the country that has given him so much over the years, and that he has it far better than most who enlist, but he still feels the unfairness of the whole thing.
Kyuhyun dismounts his bike at the entrance to his apartment complex and hefts it off the ground to carry through the main lobby. He rides the elevator up to the sixth floor, thoroughly reveling in his melancholy, and wheels his bike down the hall. In theory, he could park his bike out front with others from his apartment complex, but it had been a long time since Kyuhyun had left his personal belongings out in the open. He knows the bike would disappear before he even made it into the building.
He steadies the bike with one hand and keys in the passcode to the dorm with the other. The lock beeps and he hears the tumblers click as the door unlocks. He props the door open with his foot and wheels his back through the door, leaning it against the wall in the entryway as usual. He goes to exchange his shoes for slippers when he realizes his slippers are nowhere to be found. Instead, he finds a pair of shoes that are most definitely not his. Curious.
After everyone else had moved out, Kyuhyun had changed the passcode to what was now his studio apartment. Too many people knew their old code and Kyuhyun had started to resent managers and the hyungs showing up at odd hours, usually in varying states of intoxication. Only a few people had the new code, and all of them were supposedly in Japan.
Kyuhyun hears the sounds of someone cooking coming from the kitchen and walks further into the apartment to investigate. At first, he wonders if his mother has come to surprise her hardworking son with a home-cooked meal after a long day, but the shoes in the entryway most certainly do not belong to his short, female mother.
Tired from the day’s monotony and self-inflicted melancholy, Kyuhyun gives up on trying to guess and instead walks into the kitchen to find a very familiar figure grating a wedge of cheese into a bowl. A selection of ingredients are neatly lined up on the counter next to an iPad with what looks to be a recipe pulled up on the internet browser.
“You’re a bit taller than my girlfriend,” Kyuhyun calls, a smile playing on his lips.
“I’m also not imaginary,” the figure replies, looking over his shoulder with a grin.
“Nor are you in Japan,” Kyuhyun notes, dumping his backpack by the kitchen table and coming up next to Changmin.
“Came home early,” Changmin says with a shrug. “Thought I’d make you dinner.”
“Maybe I will make you my girlfriend,” Kyuhyun says with a chuckle. He leans over Changmin’s shoulder to read the title of the recipe. “Spaghetti carbonara?”
“What else?” Changmin asks.
Kyuhyun shakes his head with a smile. “But really, what are you doing here?” he asks as he pulls open the fridge for a bottle of water.
“Yunho has filming all day tomorrow so we don’t have rehearsals and I have a family thing tomorrow anyways that my mom wants me to be at. And besides, just about all of your hyungs texted me to see if I could save you from what Heechul described as ‘that bitchy way he gets when he’s been left alone for too long, like something moldy in the fridge’.”
Kyuhyun snorts, nearly inhaling water in the process. “How kind,” he grumbles, but inside he’s glowing. The hyungs really had tried to include him in their activities. Hell, Teuk even made him promise to come to their events so that he would know Kyuhyun wasn’t sitting alone in his apartment drinking himself into an oblivion. But this, this is more than that. He knows they worry about him. Ever since the accident, they’ve always doted on their youngest, but these days it doesn’t seem like he’s the youngest of anything and having people to take care of him…
Kyuhyun takes a sip of his water and tries not to show how touched he is. Instead, he leans against the counter and asks Changmin if he needs any help. Changmin shakes his head and directs Kyuhyun to pick out some wine that will go well with their pasta. Kyuhyun nods and runs off to fetch a bottle from one of the many wine fridges Changmin had given him over the years. He returns to the kitchen to uncork the wine to let it breathe, and asks Changmin about Japan.
Kyuhyun listens attentively as Changmin tells him all about returning to Japan after two years and the things that had and hadn’t changed. Somewhere between discussing the new ramen restaurant Yunho had discovered and finding out that his metro card still worked after two years of disuse, Changmin admits to Kyuhyun that his return had been harder than he had anticipated. “Honestly, I needed to come back to Korea,” he says, not looking up from the pancetta he’s searing in the pan. “I needed a break from the mental strain. I had forgotten how taxing full immersion in Japanese can be and getting back to constant activities after the strict schedules of enlistment… It’s just an adjustment that I haven’t made as quickly as I should have.”
“Have you told Yunho?” Kyuhyun asks. He sips his wine, already knowing the answer.
Changmin admits that he hasn’t, and Kyuhyun just nods. He had heard this many times before, Changmin not wanting to add to Yunho’s stress as the leader. “He’s anxious enough for the both of us. This will pass. I don’t need him feeling guilty over not being able to carry us both,” Changmin had said in the past. “He probably knows anyways,” Changmin says now.
Kyuhyun nods. It’s easy for Changmin to bullshit people who don’t know him very well. He can hide his emotions behind a facade of meticulously curated indifference, but Yunho and Kyuhyun, who both know him better than anyone else does, are quick to see through any facade Changmin tries to put up.
Kyuhyun also knows for a fact that Changmin doesn’t like to be seen as weak. He had spent the first few years of career desperately trying to prove his worth to the hyungs in DBSK as well as the executives in the company, fighting to show them that he wasn’t just some kid who got into this group on a whim, and that attitude had stuck with them all these years. Everyone who looked up to Shim ‘The Strongest’ Changmin expected to see a bastion of strength and resilience, not some discharged soldier who can’t adjust properly to civilian life. Kyuhyun wonders briefly if he’ll encounter the same difficulties, but pushes the thoughts of his mind. He’ll deal with those feelings a month before he discharges and not a day before.
Changmin plates the spaghetti and carries their dishes to the table. Kyuhyun refills their wine glasses before bringing the glasses and bottle to the table as well. They sit across from each other and dig in, their conversation lightening with each sip of wine.
“This is amazing,” Kyuhyun says through a mouthful of spaghetti. “Much better than your last batch, to be honest.”
Changmin snorts. The last batch had been forgotten about on the stove during a Starcraft campaign, and it had taken weeks for the smell of burned pancetta to finally dissipate from the apartment. This time, Changmin had made sure not to get distracted.
They finish dinner and push themselves up from the table with a chorus of groans. Kyuhyun pours the rest of the wine into their glasses before setting the bottle on the counter to be disposed of properly later. Changmin pulls on a set of rubber gloves and starts filling the sink with water to wash the dishes, and Kyuhyun pulls a towel out to start drying.
It’s oddly comforting, Kyuhyun decides. Changmin is one of, if not the person he trusts the most in the world. He still remembers their first meeting all those years ago when he realized that he had finally found someone who could understand the weird plane of existence he had found himself in. They had had too many random things in common to not be friends, and their hyungs had always commented on how uncanny their similarities are.
“What if,” Kyuhyun had said one night years before while properly intoxicated, “what if, y’know how I’ve always wanted to meet my destiny on the subway? Well what if, what if you’re my destiny, Chwang.”
There had been a chorus of oooh’s from Minho and Junmyeon but Changmin had just nodded in utter sincerity. “Maybe I am your destiny,” he’d replied.
That had sent the other two into a cacophony of giggles, but Kyuhyun had threaded his arm through Changmin’s and nestled up against his side. At that moment, it had felt good to know that he had found his destiny in life, however cheesy it had sounded when said out loud.
They finish putting away the dishes and Kyuhyun uncorks another bottle of wine.
“What are these?” Changmin asks, thumbing through the stack of travel books on the coffee table. Kyuhyun brings the wine glasses over to the living area and hands one to Changmin.
“Planning our next vacation,” Kyuhyun replies. “Where would you like to go first?”
They spend the next few hours discussing travel plans, reminiscing over old memories, and getting progressively more intoxicated as the night goes on. Once their second bottle is empty, Kyuhyun decides not to opt for a third. “Have to work tomorrow,” he says regrettably.
Changmin just nods in agreement. “My mom probably won’t like it if I show up completely hungover,” he says.
“What’s this big family thing you have tomorrow anyways?” Kyuhyun asks.
“We’re meeting Jiyeon’s boyfriend’s family for the first time since they want to get married,” Changmin replies, a note of wistfulness in his voice.
“Ah,” Kyuhyun says. He remembers doing the same thing when his own sister had gotten engaged. It hadn’t been that strange for him since Ahra was older, but first Yunho and now Changmin’s younger sisters will both be married before their older brothers.
“The costs of being an idol, I suppose,” Changmin says softly. Kyuhyun knows the pressure Changmin is under in this regard. Get married, ruin his career but please his family. Don’t get married, save his career but dishonor his family. Date around… all well and good until the fans find out.
Kyuhyun doesn’t really know what to say in response. They’ve had this discussion before too, increasingly over the years. They’ve watched their friends get married and have kids and wonder if they would ever follow that path, if they even wanted to in the first place. So instead, he gathers up the wine glasses and goes to the sink to rinse them out as to not leave a stain from the red wine. Changmin follows suit, tidying up Kyuhyun’s travel materials. He stands up from the couch and stretches, checking his watch for the time.
“You’re staying over, right?” Kyuhyun calls from the kitchen.
“Mmmhmm,” Changmin murmurs in response.
Kyuhyun reappears and they both head down the hallway to get ready for bed. It had long since been decided that they would bunk together at any sleepover they had, Kyuline or otherwise. Changmin didn’t grouse about Kyuhyun’s snoring, and Kyuhyun slept too soundly to mind the death grip Changmin inflicted on the nearest pillow, plushie, or human while he slept. Tonight is no exception, and they both crawl under the covers and set their individual alarms.
“When do you have to leave tomorrow?” Changmin asks.
“7:15,” Kyuhyun replies. “I like to leave a window in case the weather’s bad and I have to take the metro. Speaking of, how did you even get here?”
“I drove,” Changmin replies. “I can take you to work tomorrow.”
“Cool.”
They talk for a little bit longer before Changmin’s words turn into incoherent mumbles. Kyuhyun’s half asleep himself and he lets his sentence trail off into a yawn. He reaches over to turn off the light before shifting slightly to find a comfortable position. Once he settles, Changmin immediately nestles in next to him, pulling Kyuhyun close with one arm and pressing his cheek against Kyuhyun’s shoulder. It doesn’t take long before Kyuhyun feels the even rise and fall of Changmin’s chest against his side, signaling that his best friend has already fallen asleep.
And just like that, any lingering loneliness from the day dissipates and Kyuhyun leans back against his pillow feeling, for the first time in too long, wonderfully content.