the brother's best friend trope | lee heeseung

seven

walking into your home alone after sunoo turned down his own street was walking into a different atmosphere than you expected. sunghoon was sitting on the couch with an annoyed look on his face, while your mother was beside him rubbing his back and your father was standing by the tv trying to support his son from afar.

"uh, hey guys?" you announced yourself awkwardly, not sure of what you had just walked into.

"hi, sweetie." your mom forced a smile.

"is everything okay?" you asked the three of them.

"yeah! heeseung's not coming." sunghoon mumbled a response without looking away from the wall in front of him.

"what? why?" you asked, your heart racing with disappointment and fear. was he not coming because of you? did he think it would be too uncomfortable to be in the same room with you again?

"because he thinks it'd be too stressful on his grades, so he wants to stay to study more." sunghoon grunted before standing up, "i'm going to my room." your parents and you watched your older brother storm up the stairs into his bedroom. he was obviously upset that he still wouldn't be seeing his best friend after months.

"are you okay about it?" your mother asked, worried for you as well.

"what? yeah, i'm fine. why would i care if heeseung came home or not?" you asked quickly, hoping that they weren't onto you about having a crush on heeseung.

"oh, i thought you were close with him too, no? he was over all the time before he went to college." your mother replied with a look of confusion on her face about the speed of your response.

"eh, well, i still have jake and jay and my real brother, right?" you forced a laugh out, hoping that it wasn't obvious you were trying to hide something.

"yeah, right." your parents nodded, shrugging before heading to the kitchen together to prepare dinner.

you let out a sigh of relief once they left the room with no further questions, but that didn't relieve the anxiety of heeseung not returning. as you head back to your room you do figure that it would be weird without having heeseung around for winter break. it was almost tradition to have him and the other boys sleeping over for two weeks straight. you wonder what they would do this break? would it just be the three of them?

before you push open your door something inside of you stops and glances over at sunghoon's closed door. you ponder about what he's feeling inside. he's never been good with showing his emotions, not even to your parents. when he got hurt as a little boy he would hide it until your parents would notice blood seeping through his pants from falling off his bike and scraping his entire leg right open. he still insisted he was fine when they took him to the doctors and said he needed stitches.

you sighed and walked over to his bedroom, hesitating once before knocking on his door.

"what?" you heard him grunt out.

"can i come in?" you called out to him.

a beat of silence passed and you thought he was just ignoring you at this point, "sure."

you pushed open his door to find him sitting on his bed in the dark, only the screen of his tv was on and it was on mute. "what is it? i'm tired." you fought the urge to roll your eyes at him blaming his sadness on fatigue. you walked over to his bed and sat down beside him.

"you know i think you're a good older brother, right? you've always looked out for me, and made sure i was safe. you spent your christmas allowance on me when we were younger so you could buy me a present."

sunghoon left his window open a crack, making his room a bit chilly as the sound of someone's car starting outside ruins the silence between you two. you knew that sunghoon always wanted to take care of you, and now you feel like it's your turn to take care of him. though, you feel nothing like your older brother.

in his senior year, you never thought that you would have to take care of your older brother in a way that he takes care of his little sister. but you never know what sunghoon is going through. he keeps things to himself when he gets to the point where he feels like breaking down he stays silent. the only person he's ever trusted was heeseung.

"you always seem so happy when you're with your friends, truly, and i swear i've never seen so many people stop what they were doing just to listen to someone speak- but you do that to people."

you use to be jealous of sunghoon about it. how did he get to be so popular while you were just the school's runt? how did he get to have girls falling at his feet and guys begging to be his friend? you loved sunoo, but sometimes you wished that you had a friend group to hang out with other than sunoo and sunghoon's friends that weren't allowed to even look at you.

"and you know i worry about you at the same time. i know how introverted you are and how hard you try to be so outgoing at school so people will still like you. that's so much stress on a person mentally. and still, at home, i try to be a good sister for you but i feel like i'm no good at that, so i'm glad you've found a brother within heeseung. so i'm sorry that heeseung isn't coming back for winter break, that must really fucking hurt, hoon. but i love you, and i'm trying to be a good sister now, and i want to change our sibling relationship for the better."

you don't realize that you've started crying until sunghoon wraps his arm around you and pulls you into his side. that's when you notice he's started crying too. you think at that moment that you've never seen your brother cry before. you've never shared this much of a brother-sister moment before. it feels like the two of you are just little kids again, trying to figure out this world before the world figures it out for you instead. an expression of relief washes over sunghoon's face as you both take in the peaceful silence between you too.

when sunghoon speaks it's quiet, but you know he means it with his whole body and soul, "i wouldn't trade having you as a little sister for the world. heeseung's my friend, never my sibling."

-

after winter break, your relationship with sunghoon seemed to change drastically, and for the better. he no longer had this over-protectiveness of you. it was like you had aged from 5 years old to 17 years old in a week.

this winter break was definitely the weirdest one, but the best one. sunghoon invited you to hang out with jay, jake, and him, even allowing for sunoo to join, too. you all played video games, made gingerbread houses, and freaked out your parents by how strangely you two were getting along.