Apartment 18
APARTMENT 18;; PG-13
idk what I was trying to achieve w/this forgive me if it's everywhere -_- my fetish for love triangles runs deep sigh
HYORI
In an order to sell a product you've got to believe in it. If you don't, isn't that wrong of one to sell it? The problem becomes that borderline of rights or wrongs - and she - she doesn't know if something wrong could ever belong with the rights.
There's an inkling in her steps that hint that she might be making the regrettable (wrong) choice but her heart's always been intuitive, overtly so and she opens the door with a breeze, stands her ground with an over-enthused smile.
"Hyunjoong!" her leap around his waist is so forceful it catches him off guard and he takes a couple of steps back, taking her with him. Hyunjoong's always been an introvert around Hyori but he's even more so now and she doesn't miss his eyes looking in every direction but hers and the pats on her back that can barely constitute as a hug. For someone who always had the upper hand and had him wrapped around her finger, Hyori's at a loss on how to react. She steps back, crosses her arms and then slacks them again.
"So..." she starts and never finishes.
HYUNJOONG
Hyunjoong never talks, only gets acquainted with the strange painting adjacent from the door.
It's a marveling piece, a man buried inside the stomach of a greying, aging man with an intense beard for an appendage. Hyunjoong's right under-eye sack squints a bit as he concentrates and his mouth sort of furls into a half-pout.
But Hyori is the queen of right now, never been one for patience and he used to know that so well about her - so she tugs at his forearm and leads him into her lavishly clean living room - the place he used to come by so often he'd left an imprint on his favorite cushion. He flinches once when she first touches his skin and flinches again when she lets go and he sees him, sitting on the couch in his once-upon-a-time reserved spot. Hyunjoong's heart falls more than he wants it to.
"This is really happening, huh?" he non-reacts, watches his former best friend debate whether to get up or not and greet him or to just sit back and act nonchalant. Seunghyun settles on a cowardly done half-bow and Hyunjoong stifles a chortle.
Hyori's somehow back in front of his face, eyes begging him to look into them once and if he looks down further he can shrewdly see the mount of her bosom. Which now exclusively belongs to that person on that couch when the arrangement was for them to share all along.
"He'll take good care of me, please understand." her voice is dry and wanting and it makes every nerve in his body wake up. All he really desires is to touch her just once, just like he used to be able to, when she wasn't property. She starts to frown, wraps her arms around his unhealthily slim waist possessively. "We've made a pact to stop drinking and smoking together."
"You should join us." Seunghyun stands up for a moment, cautious.
"Strange, I thought I used to." Hyunjoong's words come out more bitter than intended, his words spitting into the air, never falling like the daggers they are.
"I'm getting better now, I promise," she clings on - he can feel her heavy eyelashes flutter near his chest and she can hear his twenty times-abnormal heartbeats. The funny thing is he knows she's not lying - there's more color to her cheeks and she's not as cold to the touch. But he can't look at her, refuses to emote, so he stares at Seunghyun again, his sharp cheekbones jutting in the air, eyes unreadable.
"I want you to be my best man. You are the only one." Hyunjoong catches a slight quiver in Seunghyun's lips when he speaks.
"Don't you think thats a little inappropriate? Awkward, even?"
"Only the three of us know."
"That's one too many."
"Hyungjoongie-
"Noona, no." he breaks out of her hold before she can continue on (skin prickles and fabric tugs), before they can keep his life on pause any further.
He just wants to press play - the fastforward button, even.
"Make sure she's alright." he incoherently mumbles to Seunghyun, makes his way out, ignores the ball on the floor of a slumped and wrecked hyori.
"I am. I will."
We used to take care of her together.
The last thing he sees before the closes the door is T.O.P. not Seunghyun, bending over her crumpled form ready to take her into his hold.
He raids his pockets when he's outside, his fingers shaking when he finally lights his last cigarette and brings it to his anxious lips. The sun's brighter than it's supposed to be.
The first time they start their unique ménage à trois isn't as unusual as history manifests. Hyunjoong thinks the puzzle of introducing his best friend and his favorite noona comes rather easy, almost an inevitable but obvious fate. They chatter and bump their fists excitedly; Seunghyun more interested to see Hyori in a non-working zone, something which Daesung had never given him the privilege of doing, Hyunjoong excited to brag his way around her place like a expertise townie.
"I've kissed her before, you know." Hyunjoong hits him hard with the back of his palm, harder with his jealousy as they ring the buzzer to her apartment building.
"Well I've seen her naked before."
"Seeing your noona from the same company naked in a dressing room doesn't count."
Somehow things feel quite easy inside her apartment. She makes them kimchi pancakae for their souls, and fried vegetables for their stomachs, so savory their mouths still drip hours later when they sprawl in her living room, shades shut while they watch some classic movie that falls into their laps. It feels so natural that it's not hard for Hyunjoong to ignore that lingering glance his best friend gives to Hyori when she hands him a piping hot cup of java, a glance that Hyunjoong knows all too well isn't just that one of an involuntary crush. They end the hours drink after drink, pouring secrets that could equate to the world's most dangerous tell all.
They wake up in a massive pile with sleepy smiles, the unspoken linger of pretending not to remember what was said the night before. Hyori cooks them breakfast and ruffles their hair before they rush out the door, attend to real life.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
The spice of life -
Things become messy when they travel to another room in the apartment - the one Hyunjoong was never allowed to go in when he was "young." But he's older now, his face settles over the years, his chin is less smooth, his eyes spell experience. Hyori takes his hand, a wobbly step or two and leads him to the land of exclusivity. His eyelids droop with weight but he resists them, hears Seunghyun drunkenly shuffle step around deeply somewhere on the other side of the room. His head hits a pillow and he feels warmth around from both sides and Hyunjoong doesn't feel the bit least lonely.
But sometimes when he turns his head for a second too long, Seunghyun sneaks an extra kiss on Hyori's temple, Hyori's shoulder, Hyori's forehead, Hyori's hand, Hyori's lips. It gets harder and harder to pretend like he doesn't notice the bliss exuding on her face and filling the room.
He tries to pretend that he has something to do with it.
T.O.P.
Seunghyun knows that one plus one does not equal three. He learns this well when he's four and he actually pays attention to what those older people with fuzzy hair and bad breath teach him. He practices counting on the car ride home, crayons rolling carelessly in his lap - but when he looks at his fingers he sees a division of three parts; not two. It's baffling but he goes with it, he doesn't want to end up being stupid like his sister.
Seunghyun has the epiphany that Hyunjoong is his best friend at the age of nineteen when he calls him up randomly at 4 a.m. and tells him his recurring nightmare about his favorite toy robot, Gugu coming to life and eating him, intenstines first. Hyunjoong listens in silence and never hangs up, and sends him a new robot in the mail within the week. 'This one's better.' It's fluffy and green and it has a sparling eye smile that screams familiar mischievousness.
Seunghyun sends him an identifical one a week later, in the shade of blue with the same eye smile.
There's an unspoken rule between males that you never date each other's exes, crushes, woman in the family. It's in the unwritten male code - Seungri tries to write it all down after Seunghyun explains it to him one night until Seunghyun explains it further - "You don't write it, you just do it."
She's a gem, they both know it. She's full of life and full of passion, she's overwhelmingly happy when they visit - even the times when she's already drunk (maybe especially).
Hyunjoong is a Hyori encyclopedia and he tells Seunghyun everything about Hyori that he doesn't know. She's not scared of the dark but she's scared of the minutes that twilight falls. She's been engaged twice but broke them off because Hyunjoong advised her the guys were bastards and he was right - he always was when it came to her well being - she's sick of making music but she's afraid the world will forget her; she loves to cook but not for herself, she owns one hundred and thirty hats, and twelve elliptical machines locked in a storage room somewhere in the left side of the city, and she's scared to be alone - just like they are. But they've always had each other to fall back on - so maybe she could take refuge with them?
It never crosses Seunghyun's mind to say no.
It's a different story when Hyori tells him all these things and more after they become friends. Hyunjoong always sits back and smiles - he doesn't tire of learning things about this woman. Seunghyun soaks it all in eagerly, years behind to play catch up.
Eventually he catches up. And when he does, he eats the secrets that come in his direction and land in his stomach -his own secret that he remembers more than he says and more than he should.
1. He always remembers his alcohol intake. 2. He always remembers their alcohol intake. 3. He's always the last one to fall asleep. 4. Hyunjoong's sloppy jokes embed in his brain, Hyori's haughty laughs stay in the spine of his back, he finds it hard to forget those nights when he and Hyunjoong tag teamed, the moments when Hyori claws at Hyunjoong's backside begging him for more as he smiles from the sidelines; but it's even harder to forget those moments when it was just him and her, her hair through his hands, her screams inside of him, her sweat sliding with his, her eyes never drifting from his. 5. He can recall Hyunjoong's drunken stupor and confessions when Hyori passes out (she was aways first, always so content) telling Mr. T..O.P that she's the one, she's the one for him, age difference be damned, queen of pop meaning nothing - she's the girl he's supposed to be with.
"I wanna marry her-" he slurs, he always slurs even though he thinks he's the best at drinking, "but she's in love with you."
"No she's not - " Seunghyun mumbles, fights to say.
"Yeah she is. She doesn't want me - even when I fuck her she still sees me as the little brother, some incestuous dongsaeng she's corrupting but you- you're the man - big man Tabi-" Hyunjoong points his finger in the air drawing each syllable, "T.O.P!"
"Stop it."
"She's gonna choose you - she doesn't want me."
And he always passes out before he can say anything more. Seunghyun ends up putting his best friend and their girlfriend in bed, covering the blankets, wiping their hair. He doesn't mean to fall in love with her too. He never did.
(Sometimes Seunghyun wishes the basis of their relationships didn't revolve around alcohol. So he drinks until he can reach their level, forgets he's a bottomless pit.)
HYORI
Hyori waits in her ivory dress, her veil pulled low to mask any tears that may fall down. She waits until they can't wait any longer.
It's just that she's lived for so long, lived for herself, lived for her cats, lived for her career. Hyori doesn't want to do anything by herself anymore. She's tired of being empty.
She can't bring herself to look Seunghyun full in the eye at the end of the aisle, guilt swallows her whole and carries itself in her pinched jaw. Seunghyun knows and doesn't look at her either, his palms sweaty, eyebrows burrowed. There's no best man behind him and the claps sound empty when they kiss in holy matrimony.
Hyunjoong never shows up.
Hyori starts to drink again three weeks after their honeymoon, wails of Hyunjoong's name haunting them both in their sleep. Seunghyun tries to pick up the fragments caught on the carpet and take care of her like he promised but it's never enough.
Somewhere in Seoul, Hyunjoong is sitting alone with his tiny blue robot named Hyori.
idk what I was trying to achieve w/this forgive me if it's everywhere -_- my fetish for love triangles runs deep sigh
HYORI
In an order to sell a product you've got to believe in it. If you don't, isn't that wrong of one to sell it? The problem becomes that borderline of rights or wrongs - and she - she doesn't know if something wrong could ever belong with the rights.
There's an inkling in her steps that hint that she might be making the regrettable (wrong) choice but her heart's always been intuitive, overtly so and she opens the door with a breeze, stands her ground with an over-enthused smile.
"Hyunjoong!" her leap around his waist is so forceful it catches him off guard and he takes a couple of steps back, taking her with him. Hyunjoong's always been an introvert around Hyori but he's even more so now and she doesn't miss his eyes looking in every direction but hers and the pats on her back that can barely constitute as a hug. For someone who always had the upper hand and had him wrapped around her finger, Hyori's at a loss on how to react. She steps back, crosses her arms and then slacks them again.
"So..." she starts and never finishes.
HYUNJOONG
Hyunjoong never talks, only gets acquainted with the strange painting adjacent from the door.
It's a marveling piece, a man buried inside the stomach of a greying, aging man with an intense beard for an appendage. Hyunjoong's right under-eye sack squints a bit as he concentrates and his mouth sort of furls into a half-pout.
But Hyori is the queen of right now, never been one for patience and he used to know that so well about her - so she tugs at his forearm and leads him into her lavishly clean living room - the place he used to come by so often he'd left an imprint on his favorite cushion. He flinches once when she first touches his skin and flinches again when she lets go and he sees him, sitting on the couch in his once-upon-a-time reserved spot. Hyunjoong's heart falls more than he wants it to.
"This is really happening, huh?" he non-reacts, watches his former best friend debate whether to get up or not and greet him or to just sit back and act nonchalant. Seunghyun settles on a cowardly done half-bow and Hyunjoong stifles a chortle.
Hyori's somehow back in front of his face, eyes begging him to look into them once and if he looks down further he can shrewdly see the mount of her bosom. Which now exclusively belongs to that person on that couch when the arrangement was for them to share all along.
"He'll take good care of me, please understand." her voice is dry and wanting and it makes every nerve in his body wake up. All he really desires is to touch her just once, just like he used to be able to, when she wasn't property. She starts to frown, wraps her arms around his unhealthily slim waist possessively. "We've made a pact to stop drinking and smoking together."
"You should join us." Seunghyun stands up for a moment, cautious.
"Strange, I thought I used to." Hyunjoong's words come out more bitter than intended, his words spitting into the air, never falling like the daggers they are.
"I'm getting better now, I promise," she clings on - he can feel her heavy eyelashes flutter near his chest and she can hear his twenty times-abnormal heartbeats. The funny thing is he knows she's not lying - there's more color to her cheeks and she's not as cold to the touch. But he can't look at her, refuses to emote, so he stares at Seunghyun again, his sharp cheekbones jutting in the air, eyes unreadable.
"I want you to be my best man. You are the only one." Hyunjoong catches a slight quiver in Seunghyun's lips when he speaks.
"Don't you think thats a little inappropriate? Awkward, even?"
"Only the three of us know."
"That's one too many."
"Hyungjoongie-
"Noona, no." he breaks out of her hold before she can continue on (skin prickles and fabric tugs), before they can keep his life on pause any further.
He just wants to press play - the fastforward button, even.
"Make sure she's alright." he incoherently mumbles to Seunghyun, makes his way out, ignores the ball on the floor of a slumped and wrecked hyori.
"I am. I will."
We used to take care of her together.
The last thing he sees before the closes the door is T.O.P. not Seunghyun, bending over her crumpled form ready to take her into his hold.
He raids his pockets when he's outside, his fingers shaking when he finally lights his last cigarette and brings it to his anxious lips. The sun's brighter than it's supposed to be.
The first time they start their unique ménage à trois isn't as unusual as history manifests. Hyunjoong thinks the puzzle of introducing his best friend and his favorite noona comes rather easy, almost an inevitable but obvious fate. They chatter and bump their fists excitedly; Seunghyun more interested to see Hyori in a non-working zone, something which Daesung had never given him the privilege of doing, Hyunjoong excited to brag his way around her place like a expertise townie.
"I've kissed her before, you know." Hyunjoong hits him hard with the back of his palm, harder with his jealousy as they ring the buzzer to her apartment building.
"Well I've seen her naked before."
"Seeing your noona from the same company naked in a dressing room doesn't count."
Somehow things feel quite easy inside her apartment. She makes them kimchi pancakae for their souls, and fried vegetables for their stomachs, so savory their mouths still drip hours later when they sprawl in her living room, shades shut while they watch some classic movie that falls into their laps. It feels so natural that it's not hard for Hyunjoong to ignore that lingering glance his best friend gives to Hyori when she hands him a piping hot cup of java, a glance that Hyunjoong knows all too well isn't just that one of an involuntary crush. They end the hours drink after drink, pouring secrets that could equate to the world's most dangerous tell all.
They wake up in a massive pile with sleepy smiles, the unspoken linger of pretending not to remember what was said the night before. Hyori cooks them breakfast and ruffles their hair before they rush out the door, attend to real life.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
The spice of life -
Things become messy when they travel to another room in the apartment - the one Hyunjoong was never allowed to go in when he was "young." But he's older now, his face settles over the years, his chin is less smooth, his eyes spell experience. Hyori takes his hand, a wobbly step or two and leads him to the land of exclusivity. His eyelids droop with weight but he resists them, hears Seunghyun drunkenly shuffle step around deeply somewhere on the other side of the room. His head hits a pillow and he feels warmth around from both sides and Hyunjoong doesn't feel the bit least lonely.
But sometimes when he turns his head for a second too long, Seunghyun sneaks an extra kiss on Hyori's temple, Hyori's shoulder, Hyori's forehead, Hyori's hand, Hyori's lips. It gets harder and harder to pretend like he doesn't notice the bliss exuding on her face and filling the room.
He tries to pretend that he has something to do with it.
T.O.P.
Seunghyun knows that one plus one does not equal three. He learns this well when he's four and he actually pays attention to what those older people with fuzzy hair and bad breath teach him. He practices counting on the car ride home, crayons rolling carelessly in his lap - but when he looks at his fingers he sees a division of three parts; not two. It's baffling but he goes with it, he doesn't want to end up being stupid like his sister.
Seunghyun has the epiphany that Hyunjoong is his best friend at the age of nineteen when he calls him up randomly at 4 a.m. and tells him his recurring nightmare about his favorite toy robot, Gugu coming to life and eating him, intenstines first. Hyunjoong listens in silence and never hangs up, and sends him a new robot in the mail within the week. 'This one's better.' It's fluffy and green and it has a sparling eye smile that screams familiar mischievousness.
Seunghyun sends him an identifical one a week later, in the shade of blue with the same eye smile.
There's an unspoken rule between males that you never date each other's exes, crushes, woman in the family. It's in the unwritten male code - Seungri tries to write it all down after Seunghyun explains it to him one night until Seunghyun explains it further - "You don't write it, you just do it."
She's a gem, they both know it. She's full of life and full of passion, she's overwhelmingly happy when they visit - even the times when she's already drunk (maybe especially).
Hyunjoong is a Hyori encyclopedia and he tells Seunghyun everything about Hyori that he doesn't know. She's not scared of the dark but she's scared of the minutes that twilight falls. She's been engaged twice but broke them off because Hyunjoong advised her the guys were bastards and he was right - he always was when it came to her well being - she's sick of making music but she's afraid the world will forget her; she loves to cook but not for herself, she owns one hundred and thirty hats, and twelve elliptical machines locked in a storage room somewhere in the left side of the city, and she's scared to be alone - just like they are. But they've always had each other to fall back on - so maybe she could take refuge with them?
It never crosses Seunghyun's mind to say no.
It's a different story when Hyori tells him all these things and more after they become friends. Hyunjoong always sits back and smiles - he doesn't tire of learning things about this woman. Seunghyun soaks it all in eagerly, years behind to play catch up.
Eventually he catches up. And when he does, he eats the secrets that come in his direction and land in his stomach -his own secret that he remembers more than he says and more than he should.
1. He always remembers his alcohol intake. 2. He always remembers their alcohol intake. 3. He's always the last one to fall asleep. 4. Hyunjoong's sloppy jokes embed in his brain, Hyori's haughty laughs stay in the spine of his back, he finds it hard to forget those nights when he and Hyunjoong tag teamed, the moments when Hyori claws at Hyunjoong's backside begging him for more as he smiles from the sidelines; but it's even harder to forget those moments when it was just him and her, her hair through his hands, her screams inside of him, her sweat sliding with his, her eyes never drifting from his. 5. He can recall Hyunjoong's drunken stupor and confessions when Hyori passes out (she was aways first, always so content) telling Mr. T..O.P that she's the one, she's the one for him, age difference be damned, queen of pop meaning nothing - she's the girl he's supposed to be with.
"I wanna marry her-" he slurs, he always slurs even though he thinks he's the best at drinking, "but she's in love with you."
"No she's not - " Seunghyun mumbles, fights to say.
"Yeah she is. She doesn't want me - even when I fuck her she still sees me as the little brother, some incestuous dongsaeng she's corrupting but you- you're the man - big man Tabi-" Hyunjoong points his finger in the air drawing each syllable, "T.O.P!"
"Stop it."
"She's gonna choose you - she doesn't want me."
And he always passes out before he can say anything more. Seunghyun ends up putting his best friend and their girlfriend in bed, covering the blankets, wiping their hair. He doesn't mean to fall in love with her too. He never did.
(Sometimes Seunghyun wishes the basis of their relationships didn't revolve around alcohol. So he drinks until he can reach their level, forgets he's a bottomless pit.)
HYORI
Hyori waits in her ivory dress, her veil pulled low to mask any tears that may fall down. She waits until they can't wait any longer.
It's just that she's lived for so long, lived for herself, lived for her cats, lived for her career. Hyori doesn't want to do anything by herself anymore. She's tired of being empty.
She can't bring herself to look Seunghyun full in the eye at the end of the aisle, guilt swallows her whole and carries itself in her pinched jaw. Seunghyun knows and doesn't look at her either, his palms sweaty, eyebrows burrowed. There's no best man behind him and the claps sound empty when they kiss in holy matrimony.
Hyunjoong never shows up.
Hyori starts to drink again three weeks after their honeymoon, wails of Hyunjoong's name haunting them both in their sleep. Seunghyun tries to pick up the fragments caught on the carpet and take care of her like he promised but it's never enough.
Somewhere in Seoul, Hyunjoong is sitting alone with his tiny blue robot named Hyori.