No colors [2/9]
Title : No colors
Chapter : 2/9
Author : holyshishus
Fandom : Super Junior
Pairing : KyuMin, SiChul, mentions of HeeMin
Genre : angst, romance
Rating : NC-17
Warnings : naughty words, possibly sex
Disclaimer : I don't own them.
Summary : He loved and then betrayed him for his own selfish desires.
A/N : Chapter two, sorry for being late.
Previous chapters : { 1 }
===
Kyuhyun crunched his eyelids shut as he cranked up the volume on his ipod until the music was blaring out at the highest decibal his headphones could handle, hiding his head under his pillow; anything, anything to get that pounding out of his head, out of his mind. He couldn't hear it but he could feel it, he could feel it in the walls and the floor and in his body as the bed on the other side of the wall was rammed mercilessly against the wall over and over again. Why couldn't they go to Sungmin's apartment? Why did they have to do it here, where Sungmin knew fully well that he could hear and imagine every single thing that was going on in that bedroom?
A year of this. A year of this, of every night deafening himself in an attempt to block out the sounds of the two in the room one over, a year of imagining what they were doing, of fantasizing about it, of satisfying himself thinking about Sungmin's moaning and what Sungmin's face would look like, all alone in the middle of the night long after Sungmin had left. Sungmin never stayed. Never once, in a whole year. A year of sleepless nights, one hell of a hard year.
He ripped the headphones off his ears and cast them to the floor. He would just leave. He'd done that before. Not like his absense would be noticed. A chorus of moaning and low talking assaulted his ears, two distinctly different voices; Sungmin's and Heechul's. This had to be, what, their third time already that night? Kyuhyun threw his covers away with a disgusted huff, searching for pants and socks on his less-than-tidy bedroom floor, giving his alarm clock a distracted glance. It was late, very late. He'd have to find a bar.
It was hard to believe it had really been a year of this... a year of Sungmin's "fling". A year in which they'd hardly spoken more than two words to each other aside from what was required to work together. A whole goddamn year. Why was Kyuhyun still waiting, still hoping that Sungmin would tire of this meaningless relationship and come crawling back to him? Admittedly, Sungmin had lasted much longer than Kyuhyun would have expected. But Kyuhyun could still outlast him. If it was a game of patience, Kyuhyun could go on forever.
He pulled on a pair of jeans from somewhere under his bed and slid them on listlessly, trying to ignore the fact that he was hard just from listening to them, just from picturing himself like that with Sungmin. The cold outside would take care of that. Alcohol would take care of that. He kicked through the basket of clothes at the end of his bed for a pair of socks. The volume and intensity of the sounds reaching him through the walls were increasing; they had to be almost done by now. He had to get out. Hell, the bartender was probably already expecting him. He was practically a regular at the little place a few blocks down, like all the other pathetic, lovesick losers out drowning their sorrows with brandy at 11 p.m. He was one of them already.
Sungmin's voice broke through his thoughts, long and low and loud, and Kyuhyun had to bite his tongue to stop himself from whimpering out loud. That should be him doing that to Sungmin. Then Sungmin said something in a quiet, deep tone, something Kyuhyun couldn't distinguish. The pounding stopped.
Kyuhyun paused, sock halfway up his foot. They weren't finished; they couldn't be. It didn't sound like it. He listened hard, and he could hear Heechul's voice in response to whatever Sungmin had said, but he didn't sound sexy and bedded. He sounded angry and offended. There was a short, muffled conversation, and Kyuhyun wished he hadn't abused his eardrums with the loud music so many nights or he would have been able to understand what they were saying. Then a creaking sound, someone getting off the bed. Something had happened. What had happened? Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. There was no sound coming from the other room; only a deafening silence.
"I think you should leave." That was Heechul, loud and clearly frustrated about something, he was only loud when he was frustrated. Kyuhyun could hear that clearly, and he wondered if they even realized he was still there, or cared. He pulled the sock off his foot and tossed it to the floor, and then went to his door, debating with himself whether or not to open it and see what was happening. Curiousity versus conscience; truly a battle for the ages. In the end he pulled the door open, and at the very same time the door across the hall snapped open, and Sungmin emerged from it, red-faced and undeniably flustered-looking, although not in a way that suggested sex; more in a way that suggested anger and embarassment, above all. They were face-to-face for a few moments, eyes locked on, and Sungmin was looking at him in that way... that made Kyuhyun almost feel like they were best friends again, like they had been a long time before.
"What's going on?" He asked cautiously, the question not directed at Sungmin, but more to somewhere in the air above his head, where it lingered for a long minute, unanswered. Sungmin looked as thought he wanted to cry; Kyuhyun almost wished he would, so that he could pull him into his arms and comfort him and win him back. But the game wasn't about that. Sungmin wouldn't cry, and Kyuhyun wouldn't comfort him.
Sungmin turned away, clutching his jacket in his arms as he stumbled down the hallway towards the front door. Leaving. Really leaving. Kyuhyun watched him, head bowed and hunched-up shoulders signifying defeat as he shoved his feet into his untied shoes and escaped out the door, closing it gingerly behind himself. Still Kyuhyun stared at the spot where he'd just been standing, completely confused.
"Go to bed, Kyuhyun!" Heechul snarled, appearing in the doorway, and Kyuhyun got one glimpse of his big red eyes and the unabashed, pure anger on his face before the door was slammed with unnecessary force in his face.
An exruciatingly loud, reverbrating siren was wailing into Kyuhyun's ear; by instinct, he threw his arm out, knocking the screeching object on his bedside table to the floor, and the noise wound down slowly, making an abused sort of whine before it finally died. Kyuhyun groaned. That damn alarm clock. You'd think it would know better than to go off every morning, because every morning it got the same treatment. True, his anger was probably misplaced on the object, which had never done anything besides what it was programmed to do, which was to wake him up when he overslept, which he frequently did. And whose fault was it that he got so little sleep? Certainly not the clock's.
He unstuck his eyelids, every motion he made feeling exaggerated as if his limbs had been filled with concrete while slept, and peered down at the faded red numbers winking up at him from the appliance on the floor. It read 8:13; he had slept through thirteen minutes of the alarm wailing into his ear? Not that it wasn't unlikely, with the little amount of sleep he usually managed to catch, but usually after the first minute or two his flatmate would have been in there kicking the damn thing around; Heechul hated that clock as much as Kyuhyun himself did. Not to mention that Heechul was an extremely punctual person; thirteen minutes' oversleep would normally have been a death penalty for Kyuhyun.
His head throbbed unpleasantly, each tiny creaking of the bed as he rolled himself into a sitting position turned into a banshee's scream in his head. Had he been drinking last night? Likely. Very likely. Where else would he have gone in the black middle of the night to escape the happy fucking couple in the next room over, raping his eardrums with their moaning and groaning every night? Except... they hadn't, had they? Kyuhyun had to think for a few minutes before he could recall what he'd done the night before. He hadn't gone out. He hadn't gotten that far...
They had a fight. Some kind of fight. Kyuhyun wondered what it was about... after all, in a relationship where there was only sex, what was there to argue about so seriously? What could make Sungmin, of all people, leave in tears? Kyuhyun rose too quickly off the bed, and leaned heavily against the wall as his eyes spun in their sockets. Not a hangover, this was just a stress sickness. Far too little sleep and far too much drama. He opened his eyes and the floor was still miles away; his stomach heaved, and he ran to the bathroom.
The lights were already on and they were blindingly bright, and Heechul was standing at the counter, brushing his teeth with lifeless, unenthusiastic motions. He watched as Kyuhyun sank to his knees with bone-bruising force in front of the toilet, but it had been days since he'd consumed any real food. He only pressed his forehead against the mercifully cool tiles, hands splayed across the icy grid, delicate clumps of hair sticking to the back of his neck.
"Had a little too much to drink last night, did you?" Heechul asked, his words barbed with misplaced vindictiveness, Kyuhyun knew. He wasn't mad at Kyuhyun. He was mad at Sungmin. But Sungmin wasn't there.
"I didn't go out last night." Kyuhyun reminded him, voice raw as though he'd swallowed steel wool. Everything was pain.
"Are you sick?" Heechul asked, as if the question really needed to be asked, running water over his toothbrush and then stowing it in the drawer.
"Think so." Kyuhyun replied. The cold of the tiles was soothing away the jackhammer pounding away at his brain, melting the sharp edges of pain away until only the dull, constant ache, the ghost of the headache, was left. Now Kyuhyun was free to focus on the pain in his bruised knees, the sharp stabbing at his gut. Heechul sighed pityingly, although he sounded like he couldn't care less. Kyuhyun almost wanted to remind him whose fault it was he was getting no sleep.
"Good, I didn't want to go in today, anyway." Heechul shrugged, scratching the back of his neck as he wet a washcloth with cold water and passed it down to Kyuhyun. "I'll go call Leeteuk."
Kyuhyun nodded his approval, pressing the cold cloth to his eyes. He heard Heechul leave, grateful that the other man had just enough mercy left in him to shut off the lights as he passed, which lessened the incessant grating in Kyuhyun's skull considerably. He sucked on the corner of the washcloth, cool water soothing to his throat. It was bound to happen sooner or later, anyway, with such an unhealthy lifestyle as he'd been leading the past few months. He hauled himself up off the floor and made his way back into the bedroom.
He could hear Heechul on the phone in the next room, words indistinct. Everything sounded the same, his breathing and the hum of the vent in the corner of the room and the bed's objective moan as he fell onto it. The dizziness was gone but the pain still remained, pain always remained. He pulled his shirt over his head and shivered against the cold air.
"Kyuhyun." He looked up, eyes unfocused as something was shoved in his face. Oh, it was the phone, connected to Heechul's arm, which was connected to Heechul, who was scowling unpleasantly down at him. "Teuki wants to talk to you."
"Um... hello?" He answered, holding the object near his ear. His hands were sticky. Why would Leeteuk need to talk to him?
"Are you alright?" The tone in Leeteuk's voice sounded worried. "What's going on?"
"I'm... I'm just not feeling... very well." Kyuhyun said. He sounded it, too. Leeteuk would never make him get out of bed sounding like that. "I'm sorry, I... I don't think I can..."
There was a moment's pause. "You sound like hell."
You think I sound bad, you oughta see what I look like. Kyuhyun gave a little groan. He didn't dare look in a mirror, but he knew what he looked like when he was sick, and it wasn't a sight for the faint of heart. If Leeteuk saw him in such a state he would have him admitted to a hospital. "Thanks."
"I wonder if there's something going around." Leeteuk mused. Kyuhyun didn't really care; sleep was the only thing he was interested in at the moment. "Sungmin called in today, too."
"Is that so." Not surprising, but at that point Kyuhyun couldn't care less about Sungmin's state of being. He rubbed his eyes with hot hands, contemplating if it would be worth it to just hang up the phone. He'd get hell for it later, but at least he wouldn't be sick as well. Heechul was still standing beside the bed, watching him in an almost scrutinizing way. The expression of someone thinking hard about things best left alone. There was a big question on his face, but Kyuhyun didn't know what it was.
"Will you be alright there by yourself, then?"
"Yes." Maybe not the truth. Maybe Leeteuk would believe him. "Heechul's here."
He didn't expect Heechul would take that kindly, as if he expected to be taken care of, but Heechul's expression didn't change. Kyuhyun squirmed uneasily under his gaze, and reached over the side of the bed for a tee-shirt to protect his skin from the scorching unmeaning in Heechul's eyes.
He handed the phone back to Heechul, who snatched it away from him with furiosity. "Why would I have been lying?" He said, in response to something Leeteuk had said on the other end of the line. "You're so paranoid, honestly." Such a predictable conversation. Kyuhyun didn't even have to hear Leeteuk's side of it to know what they were talking about. "I just had a bad night, that's all. Okay. Okay, bye."
"Kyuhyun..." Heechul turned, placing the phone delicately on the table by the bed, the question in his eyes rising to the surface. "Are you really okay? You don't look well at all..."
"Well, there's this funny thing about me, you see... When I'm unwell, I tend to look unwell..." Kyuhyun answered. "I'm not like some people who can just be fabulous at any hour of the day..."
Heechul's eyes narrowed in an ominous way, in that you're not fooling me way, and he pulled the corner of his bottom lip into his mouth. "Lift up your shirt."
"What? No. Why?" Words spilled out of Kyuhyun's mouth in a confused slur, an angry way. Couldn't he just go to sleep now? What was Heechul up to? "St... stop, get off!" He protested uselessly, twisting his torso away from Heechul's cold hands with their long fingers, fingers that had touched Sungmin all over in such an intimate way. He should have been stronger than Heechul; he used to be. He used to be. Now he was being overpowered by this man so easily. He used to be strong.
"God, you look sickly, Kyuhyun." Heechul's fingers were icicles against his ribcage, prodding his bone and flesh with a sort of morbid curiousity, like a child who'd found a small dead animal in his play area. Grotesque, compelling. Was that all he was? "Have you been not eating?"
"I eat," Kyuhyun started, but he didn't continue because he couldn't remember if it was true or not.
"You're unhealthy." Heechul said, the statement laced all over with finality. "No wonder you're ill."
"I'm going to sleep. I'm tired." Heechul would never fall for that excuse. Not Heechul, the man with a mile-wide stubborn streak. Not his friend Heechul.
Kyuhyun lay down in the bed and pulled the blankets over his head, sealing himself off under layers of scratchy fabric. Heechul was still standing out there, he knew. He would always be standing out there. In the way. A nuisance. Just in his way. Heechul had stood between him and Sungmin, now stood between him and his peace. It wasn't right to think of him that way, to think of someone whom he had once been so close to as such an... an enemy. Or a rival. Someone not to be trusted.
"Kyuhyun, we used to be best friends." There was a gentle pressure on the edge of the bed behind Kyuhyun's back, and he could picture Heechul kneeling there, arms folded in front of his face, hiding the pout of a five-year-old. "What the hell happened?"
You tell me, Kyuhyun thought. Only silence. The air inside the blanket was stale and hot, and he folded a little arch in the sheets, letting a rush of cold outside air enter his space. "You've changed a lot, you know? The past few months..." Kyuhyun shivered. So Heechul had noticed. Goosebumps erupted on his skin, and he pushed the edge of the blankets flat against the mattress, securing himself inside again. "I think I know why..."
"Do you?" Kyuhyun asked, mouth against the pillow. The words traveled through layers of cotton and linen and shot, muffled, into the cold air, to be left hanging there for Heechul to take hold of if he wished. Kyuhyun didn't expect a real answer, anyway. He might as well have been a corpse, buried under so many feet of dirt and cement, his questions spoken only to the worms. He pressed his face into the pillow, harsh fabric against his cheeks.
The pressure on the mattress lifted, and Kyuhyun heard the sound of bare feet plodding across the carpet. A sigh. A thousand words in a breath. "You want some food or something?"
"No." Kyuhyun croaked. There were tears coming on, and his eyes began to spin again, black and grey tones of his blankets melting together and seeping into his eyelids. Such a pathetic person. He never deserved Sungmin, no, and he didn't deserve a friend like Heechul. Was he doing this out of guilt, or just naivete? Heechul, a grown man with the pout of a spoiled toddler. Caring for the best friend he'd betrayed, not even knowing.
Kyuhyun could remember a time when they did everything together, young highscool boys; there was no Sungmin then, there was only Kyuhyun and Heechul. He could remember the wish he made, scrawled onto a rectangle of paper and tied to a tree branch at a festival. He had wished for winning the audition for SM. You can't untie any of the papers, or that person's wish won't come true, Heechul had told him, delicately affixing his own wish to the tree, smiling way that Kyuhyun rarely saw him do anymore. But after he had left, Kyuhyun had gone back and untied his classmates' papers, wanting to know what they said.
How many wishes were destroyed that day, he wondered? How many I wish for true loves, how many disappointed faces were there? I wish to always be best friends with Kyuhyun. Well, Kyuhyun had gotten in SM, in same group with Heechul and other 11 boys. Sungmin too. Pressing his fingers into his eye sockets, painful, until spots erupted under his eyelids, he wished now that he hadn't.
Two pairs of eyes watched the coffee maker as little jasper beads dripped down, one by one, with excruciating slowness for its spectators, the steady stream of plinks cutting the uneasy silence apart like a knife. There was Heechul, wrapped defensively in a thick bathrobe with his arms crossed protectively across his chest. There was also Sungmin with an uncomfortable pout, eyes steadily trained towards the window. Between them, coffee dripped, and this thing hung in the air, sordid and unspoken, heavy and oppresive like thunder.
"So, where's..." Sungmin made the first effort to break the silence, trailing off in the midst of his sentance as the name on his lips faded. The coffee continued to percolate, and Heechul heaved a sigh.
"Sleeping, in the other room." He answered, nodding his head towards the door down the hall, on the other side of which lay Kyuhyun. "Sick, or something."
"Uh-huh." Sungmin nodded. He made a strange expression, as though he were simply relieved that Kyuhyun wasn't around to hear whatever he had come over to say - but then, it could have been something else.
"Worried?" Heechul asked.
"Heechul, I'm sorry-"
"Are you, now." He pulled the coffee pot out from under the appliance and reached for a mug off the shelf above his head. "Funny, because you weren't sorry last night, were you-"
"Don't say that." Sungmin interrupted, a flush rising in his cheeks in embarassment, or possibly anger. His protests were halted by the unmasked fury he saw dancing under the surface of Heechul's eyes, that look that meant I'm in charge of this conversation, you just keep your mouth shut. Heechul set his coffee mug down on the counter violently, his every move furiously exaggerated, dictated by anger.
"Well then, what do I say? What's the protocal for this?" He poured the dark liquid into the mug, and took a drink straight up. "What am I supposed to say when my boyfriend yells out someone else's name while we're having sex, hmm?" Yanked the refrigerator door open, splashed cream into his coffee, no time to measure. Sungmin could only stand by in the wake of his anger, a little wooden beach shack watching the hurricane come towards it, impending doom only moments away. "And Kyuhyun, for god's sake. Not just anyone, but my fucking roommate, my fucking best friend, Sungmin. Forgive me if I don't know exactly what I should be doing right now."
"Listen, I'm sorry." Sungmin tried again, crunching his eyes shut as if in pain.
"I know you are, now. How come you didn't say a damn thing last night?" Heechul stirred his drink vindictively, smashing the little spoon against the ceramic sides of the mug almost hard enough to chip. "You could have said anything. You could have said you were stressed out and you were thinking about something else, and I would have believed you. You could have said you were just worried about him because he's been acting so fucking strange lately, and I would have believed you. But no." His motions paused, and for a moment he simply stared down into his coffee, expression melting into a sort of sadness, a sort of disappointment. "You had to be in love with him. With... with him."
"I'm sorry. I really, really am, hyung." Sungmin replied, turning the point of his focus down to his clasped hands, white knuckles. "I know I should have told you..."
"Why? How long has it been?" Heechul asked. "Has it been a long time?" He turned around to face Sungmin, but their eyes wouldn't lock. No answer, only silence, but the truth was there, on Sungmin's face, in dark eyes covered by a veil of lashes. "The whole time?"
Sungmin swallowed, his throat seemed to have collapsed. The quiet stretched into eons between them. "The whole time, Sungmin?" Heechul repeated in disbelief, the mug of still-steaming coffee abandoned and forgotten now. "Oh, that's wonderful. Here I was, actually in love with you, how stupid of me. The entire time, you were thinking of someone else. Why'd you even bother to say yes when I asked you out, anyway? You couldn't have him, but I was second best, is that it?"
"It wasn't like that."
"Oh, sure it was." Heechul laughed, a mirthless sound, full of bitter spite. "Oh, god, I was just the replacement. I was the stand-in. I was the next best thing to him, wasn't I?"
"Could you please let me talk, Heechul." Sungmin interrupted, folding his arms over his chest as if in attempt to protect himself from the sting of Heechul's anger. "I'm sorry, I truly am, but... I did tell you, I told you at the beginning of all this, it wasn't supposed to be serious..."
"Yeah, I know." Heechul sighed, all of his rage seeming to melt away, leaving only a hollow and depressed expression on his face. "I guess this is all my fault then, for being stupid enough to fall in love with you, for thinking you might change your mind..."
"Stop that, hyung." Sungmin stepped forward, arms extended, and stood that way for a long moment, before he took Heechul into his arms, cheek pressed flat against the taller man's spine, ignoring the way Heechul's body tensed under his touch. "I know this is all my fault. It was really stupid..."
Words suspended in midair for minutes, eternities, and Sungmin closed his eyes against the fuzzy fabric of Heechul's bathrobe, hoping they would be accepted. The tension released from Heechul’s body, and he sagged a little, a puff of breath that could have been a sigh emerging from his lips. "Sungmin... please let me go."
"What do we do, hyung?" Sungmin asked, rejecting Heechul's simple request for the time being, tightening his hold on the other man's slim stomach. "I mean... we've got to work together, and it's not going to work out if you can't forgive me... I still want to be friends. You're so wonderful, Heechul."
"I'm not sure." Heechul replied with unease clear in his tone. "I just... think I need to think about all this for a while." He pulled himself out of Sungmin's hold, rubbing his eyes wearily. He looked deflated, empty, as though this talk with Sungmin had drained the last of his energy resources. "I just need to get away from you and... and him."
"Where are you going?" Sungmin asked, but his question went unanswered as Heechul strode past him and out of the kitchen, discarding his robe onto the couch in favor of a black jacket, sliding his feet into a pair of tennis shoes near the front door. "Hyung, don't leave... I can't - I already feel terrible..."
"Well, good. You should." Heechul didn't spare him a last glance, throwing his hair over his shoulder as he snatched a set of keys off a small hook in the wall. He left without another word, shutting the door quietly behind him with a grace that few people could manage when so angry. And for a long while, Sungmin stood in his place in the kitchen, watching the spot where Heechul had gone, as if he would just appear there, just come right back through the door and be the Heechul that he used to be before Sungmin messed him up. But he wouldn't. Not while Sungmin was there, not while Kyuhyun was there. Not ever? Sungmin hung his head, eyes glittering.
To be continued...
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Sorry I'm late. I wanted to post earlier, but I just felt pretty sick these days, i don't know what I had, but I'm also pretty depressed. As depressed as this fic can be, so I was in mood for writing this chapter today.
Totally needing your comments to know if this chapter turned out good or not. ^^
COMMENTS ARE LOVED AND NEEDED <3
Chapter : 2/9
Author : holyshishus
Fandom : Super Junior
Pairing : KyuMin, SiChul, mentions of HeeMin
Genre : angst, romance
Rating : NC-17
Warnings : naughty words, possibly sex
Disclaimer : I don't own them.
Summary : He loved and then betrayed him for his own selfish desires.
A/N : Chapter two, sorry for being late.
Previous chapters : { 1 }
===
Kyuhyun crunched his eyelids shut as he cranked up the volume on his ipod until the music was blaring out at the highest decibal his headphones could handle, hiding his head under his pillow; anything, anything to get that pounding out of his head, out of his mind. He couldn't hear it but he could feel it, he could feel it in the walls and the floor and in his body as the bed on the other side of the wall was rammed mercilessly against the wall over and over again. Why couldn't they go to Sungmin's apartment? Why did they have to do it here, where Sungmin knew fully well that he could hear and imagine every single thing that was going on in that bedroom?
A year of this. A year of this, of every night deafening himself in an attempt to block out the sounds of the two in the room one over, a year of imagining what they were doing, of fantasizing about it, of satisfying himself thinking about Sungmin's moaning and what Sungmin's face would look like, all alone in the middle of the night long after Sungmin had left. Sungmin never stayed. Never once, in a whole year. A year of sleepless nights, one hell of a hard year.
He ripped the headphones off his ears and cast them to the floor. He would just leave. He'd done that before. Not like his absense would be noticed. A chorus of moaning and low talking assaulted his ears, two distinctly different voices; Sungmin's and Heechul's. This had to be, what, their third time already that night? Kyuhyun threw his covers away with a disgusted huff, searching for pants and socks on his less-than-tidy bedroom floor, giving his alarm clock a distracted glance. It was late, very late. He'd have to find a bar.
It was hard to believe it had really been a year of this... a year of Sungmin's "fling". A year in which they'd hardly spoken more than two words to each other aside from what was required to work together. A whole goddamn year. Why was Kyuhyun still waiting, still hoping that Sungmin would tire of this meaningless relationship and come crawling back to him? Admittedly, Sungmin had lasted much longer than Kyuhyun would have expected. But Kyuhyun could still outlast him. If it was a game of patience, Kyuhyun could go on forever.
He pulled on a pair of jeans from somewhere under his bed and slid them on listlessly, trying to ignore the fact that he was hard just from listening to them, just from picturing himself like that with Sungmin. The cold outside would take care of that. Alcohol would take care of that. He kicked through the basket of clothes at the end of his bed for a pair of socks. The volume and intensity of the sounds reaching him through the walls were increasing; they had to be almost done by now. He had to get out. Hell, the bartender was probably already expecting him. He was practically a regular at the little place a few blocks down, like all the other pathetic, lovesick losers out drowning their sorrows with brandy at 11 p.m. He was one of them already.
Sungmin's voice broke through his thoughts, long and low and loud, and Kyuhyun had to bite his tongue to stop himself from whimpering out loud. That should be him doing that to Sungmin. Then Sungmin said something in a quiet, deep tone, something Kyuhyun couldn't distinguish. The pounding stopped.
Kyuhyun paused, sock halfway up his foot. They weren't finished; they couldn't be. It didn't sound like it. He listened hard, and he could hear Heechul's voice in response to whatever Sungmin had said, but he didn't sound sexy and bedded. He sounded angry and offended. There was a short, muffled conversation, and Kyuhyun wished he hadn't abused his eardrums with the loud music so many nights or he would have been able to understand what they were saying. Then a creaking sound, someone getting off the bed. Something had happened. What had happened? Whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. There was no sound coming from the other room; only a deafening silence.
"I think you should leave." That was Heechul, loud and clearly frustrated about something, he was only loud when he was frustrated. Kyuhyun could hear that clearly, and he wondered if they even realized he was still there, or cared. He pulled the sock off his foot and tossed it to the floor, and then went to his door, debating with himself whether or not to open it and see what was happening. Curiousity versus conscience; truly a battle for the ages. In the end he pulled the door open, and at the very same time the door across the hall snapped open, and Sungmin emerged from it, red-faced and undeniably flustered-looking, although not in a way that suggested sex; more in a way that suggested anger and embarassment, above all. They were face-to-face for a few moments, eyes locked on, and Sungmin was looking at him in that way... that made Kyuhyun almost feel like they were best friends again, like they had been a long time before.
"What's going on?" He asked cautiously, the question not directed at Sungmin, but more to somewhere in the air above his head, where it lingered for a long minute, unanswered. Sungmin looked as thought he wanted to cry; Kyuhyun almost wished he would, so that he could pull him into his arms and comfort him and win him back. But the game wasn't about that. Sungmin wouldn't cry, and Kyuhyun wouldn't comfort him.
Sungmin turned away, clutching his jacket in his arms as he stumbled down the hallway towards the front door. Leaving. Really leaving. Kyuhyun watched him, head bowed and hunched-up shoulders signifying defeat as he shoved his feet into his untied shoes and escaped out the door, closing it gingerly behind himself. Still Kyuhyun stared at the spot where he'd just been standing, completely confused.
"Go to bed, Kyuhyun!" Heechul snarled, appearing in the doorway, and Kyuhyun got one glimpse of his big red eyes and the unabashed, pure anger on his face before the door was slammed with unnecessary force in his face.
An exruciatingly loud, reverbrating siren was wailing into Kyuhyun's ear; by instinct, he threw his arm out, knocking the screeching object on his bedside table to the floor, and the noise wound down slowly, making an abused sort of whine before it finally died. Kyuhyun groaned. That damn alarm clock. You'd think it would know better than to go off every morning, because every morning it got the same treatment. True, his anger was probably misplaced on the object, which had never done anything besides what it was programmed to do, which was to wake him up when he overslept, which he frequently did. And whose fault was it that he got so little sleep? Certainly not the clock's.
He unstuck his eyelids, every motion he made feeling exaggerated as if his limbs had been filled with concrete while slept, and peered down at the faded red numbers winking up at him from the appliance on the floor. It read 8:13; he had slept through thirteen minutes of the alarm wailing into his ear? Not that it wasn't unlikely, with the little amount of sleep he usually managed to catch, but usually after the first minute or two his flatmate would have been in there kicking the damn thing around; Heechul hated that clock as much as Kyuhyun himself did. Not to mention that Heechul was an extremely punctual person; thirteen minutes' oversleep would normally have been a death penalty for Kyuhyun.
His head throbbed unpleasantly, each tiny creaking of the bed as he rolled himself into a sitting position turned into a banshee's scream in his head. Had he been drinking last night? Likely. Very likely. Where else would he have gone in the black middle of the night to escape the happy fucking couple in the next room over, raping his eardrums with their moaning and groaning every night? Except... they hadn't, had they? Kyuhyun had to think for a few minutes before he could recall what he'd done the night before. He hadn't gone out. He hadn't gotten that far...
They had a fight. Some kind of fight. Kyuhyun wondered what it was about... after all, in a relationship where there was only sex, what was there to argue about so seriously? What could make Sungmin, of all people, leave in tears? Kyuhyun rose too quickly off the bed, and leaned heavily against the wall as his eyes spun in their sockets. Not a hangover, this was just a stress sickness. Far too little sleep and far too much drama. He opened his eyes and the floor was still miles away; his stomach heaved, and he ran to the bathroom.
The lights were already on and they were blindingly bright, and Heechul was standing at the counter, brushing his teeth with lifeless, unenthusiastic motions. He watched as Kyuhyun sank to his knees with bone-bruising force in front of the toilet, but it had been days since he'd consumed any real food. He only pressed his forehead against the mercifully cool tiles, hands splayed across the icy grid, delicate clumps of hair sticking to the back of his neck.
"Had a little too much to drink last night, did you?" Heechul asked, his words barbed with misplaced vindictiveness, Kyuhyun knew. He wasn't mad at Kyuhyun. He was mad at Sungmin. But Sungmin wasn't there.
"I didn't go out last night." Kyuhyun reminded him, voice raw as though he'd swallowed steel wool. Everything was pain.
"Are you sick?" Heechul asked, as if the question really needed to be asked, running water over his toothbrush and then stowing it in the drawer.
"Think so." Kyuhyun replied. The cold of the tiles was soothing away the jackhammer pounding away at his brain, melting the sharp edges of pain away until only the dull, constant ache, the ghost of the headache, was left. Now Kyuhyun was free to focus on the pain in his bruised knees, the sharp stabbing at his gut. Heechul sighed pityingly, although he sounded like he couldn't care less. Kyuhyun almost wanted to remind him whose fault it was he was getting no sleep.
"Good, I didn't want to go in today, anyway." Heechul shrugged, scratching the back of his neck as he wet a washcloth with cold water and passed it down to Kyuhyun. "I'll go call Leeteuk."
Kyuhyun nodded his approval, pressing the cold cloth to his eyes. He heard Heechul leave, grateful that the other man had just enough mercy left in him to shut off the lights as he passed, which lessened the incessant grating in Kyuhyun's skull considerably. He sucked on the corner of the washcloth, cool water soothing to his throat. It was bound to happen sooner or later, anyway, with such an unhealthy lifestyle as he'd been leading the past few months. He hauled himself up off the floor and made his way back into the bedroom.
He could hear Heechul on the phone in the next room, words indistinct. Everything sounded the same, his breathing and the hum of the vent in the corner of the room and the bed's objective moan as he fell onto it. The dizziness was gone but the pain still remained, pain always remained. He pulled his shirt over his head and shivered against the cold air.
"Kyuhyun." He looked up, eyes unfocused as something was shoved in his face. Oh, it was the phone, connected to Heechul's arm, which was connected to Heechul, who was scowling unpleasantly down at him. "Teuki wants to talk to you."
"Um... hello?" He answered, holding the object near his ear. His hands were sticky. Why would Leeteuk need to talk to him?
"Are you alright?" The tone in Leeteuk's voice sounded worried. "What's going on?"
"I'm... I'm just not feeling... very well." Kyuhyun said. He sounded it, too. Leeteuk would never make him get out of bed sounding like that. "I'm sorry, I... I don't think I can..."
There was a moment's pause. "You sound like hell."
You think I sound bad, you oughta see what I look like. Kyuhyun gave a little groan. He didn't dare look in a mirror, but he knew what he looked like when he was sick, and it wasn't a sight for the faint of heart. If Leeteuk saw him in such a state he would have him admitted to a hospital. "Thanks."
"I wonder if there's something going around." Leeteuk mused. Kyuhyun didn't really care; sleep was the only thing he was interested in at the moment. "Sungmin called in today, too."
"Is that so." Not surprising, but at that point Kyuhyun couldn't care less about Sungmin's state of being. He rubbed his eyes with hot hands, contemplating if it would be worth it to just hang up the phone. He'd get hell for it later, but at least he wouldn't be sick as well. Heechul was still standing beside the bed, watching him in an almost scrutinizing way. The expression of someone thinking hard about things best left alone. There was a big question on his face, but Kyuhyun didn't know what it was.
"Will you be alright there by yourself, then?"
"Yes." Maybe not the truth. Maybe Leeteuk would believe him. "Heechul's here."
He didn't expect Heechul would take that kindly, as if he expected to be taken care of, but Heechul's expression didn't change. Kyuhyun squirmed uneasily under his gaze, and reached over the side of the bed for a tee-shirt to protect his skin from the scorching unmeaning in Heechul's eyes.
He handed the phone back to Heechul, who snatched it away from him with furiosity. "Why would I have been lying?" He said, in response to something Leeteuk had said on the other end of the line. "You're so paranoid, honestly." Such a predictable conversation. Kyuhyun didn't even have to hear Leeteuk's side of it to know what they were talking about. "I just had a bad night, that's all. Okay. Okay, bye."
"Kyuhyun..." Heechul turned, placing the phone delicately on the table by the bed, the question in his eyes rising to the surface. "Are you really okay? You don't look well at all..."
"Well, there's this funny thing about me, you see... When I'm unwell, I tend to look unwell..." Kyuhyun answered. "I'm not like some people who can just be fabulous at any hour of the day..."
Heechul's eyes narrowed in an ominous way, in that you're not fooling me way, and he pulled the corner of his bottom lip into his mouth. "Lift up your shirt."
"What? No. Why?" Words spilled out of Kyuhyun's mouth in a confused slur, an angry way. Couldn't he just go to sleep now? What was Heechul up to? "St... stop, get off!" He protested uselessly, twisting his torso away from Heechul's cold hands with their long fingers, fingers that had touched Sungmin all over in such an intimate way. He should have been stronger than Heechul; he used to be. He used to be. Now he was being overpowered by this man so easily. He used to be strong.
"God, you look sickly, Kyuhyun." Heechul's fingers were icicles against his ribcage, prodding his bone and flesh with a sort of morbid curiousity, like a child who'd found a small dead animal in his play area. Grotesque, compelling. Was that all he was? "Have you been not eating?"
"I eat," Kyuhyun started, but he didn't continue because he couldn't remember if it was true or not.
"You're unhealthy." Heechul said, the statement laced all over with finality. "No wonder you're ill."
"I'm going to sleep. I'm tired." Heechul would never fall for that excuse. Not Heechul, the man with a mile-wide stubborn streak. Not his friend Heechul.
Kyuhyun lay down in the bed and pulled the blankets over his head, sealing himself off under layers of scratchy fabric. Heechul was still standing out there, he knew. He would always be standing out there. In the way. A nuisance. Just in his way. Heechul had stood between him and Sungmin, now stood between him and his peace. It wasn't right to think of him that way, to think of someone whom he had once been so close to as such an... an enemy. Or a rival. Someone not to be trusted.
"Kyuhyun, we used to be best friends." There was a gentle pressure on the edge of the bed behind Kyuhyun's back, and he could picture Heechul kneeling there, arms folded in front of his face, hiding the pout of a five-year-old. "What the hell happened?"
You tell me, Kyuhyun thought. Only silence. The air inside the blanket was stale and hot, and he folded a little arch in the sheets, letting a rush of cold outside air enter his space. "You've changed a lot, you know? The past few months..." Kyuhyun shivered. So Heechul had noticed. Goosebumps erupted on his skin, and he pushed the edge of the blankets flat against the mattress, securing himself inside again. "I think I know why..."
"Do you?" Kyuhyun asked, mouth against the pillow. The words traveled through layers of cotton and linen and shot, muffled, into the cold air, to be left hanging there for Heechul to take hold of if he wished. Kyuhyun didn't expect a real answer, anyway. He might as well have been a corpse, buried under so many feet of dirt and cement, his questions spoken only to the worms. He pressed his face into the pillow, harsh fabric against his cheeks.
The pressure on the mattress lifted, and Kyuhyun heard the sound of bare feet plodding across the carpet. A sigh. A thousand words in a breath. "You want some food or something?"
"No." Kyuhyun croaked. There were tears coming on, and his eyes began to spin again, black and grey tones of his blankets melting together and seeping into his eyelids. Such a pathetic person. He never deserved Sungmin, no, and he didn't deserve a friend like Heechul. Was he doing this out of guilt, or just naivete? Heechul, a grown man with the pout of a spoiled toddler. Caring for the best friend he'd betrayed, not even knowing.
Kyuhyun could remember a time when they did everything together, young highscool boys; there was no Sungmin then, there was only Kyuhyun and Heechul. He could remember the wish he made, scrawled onto a rectangle of paper and tied to a tree branch at a festival. He had wished for winning the audition for SM. You can't untie any of the papers, or that person's wish won't come true, Heechul had told him, delicately affixing his own wish to the tree, smiling way that Kyuhyun rarely saw him do anymore. But after he had left, Kyuhyun had gone back and untied his classmates' papers, wanting to know what they said.
How many wishes were destroyed that day, he wondered? How many I wish for true loves, how many disappointed faces were there? I wish to always be best friends with Kyuhyun. Well, Kyuhyun had gotten in SM, in same group with Heechul and other 11 boys. Sungmin too. Pressing his fingers into his eye sockets, painful, until spots erupted under his eyelids, he wished now that he hadn't.
Two pairs of eyes watched the coffee maker as little jasper beads dripped down, one by one, with excruciating slowness for its spectators, the steady stream of plinks cutting the uneasy silence apart like a knife. There was Heechul, wrapped defensively in a thick bathrobe with his arms crossed protectively across his chest. There was also Sungmin with an uncomfortable pout, eyes steadily trained towards the window. Between them, coffee dripped, and this thing hung in the air, sordid and unspoken, heavy and oppresive like thunder.
"So, where's..." Sungmin made the first effort to break the silence, trailing off in the midst of his sentance as the name on his lips faded. The coffee continued to percolate, and Heechul heaved a sigh.
"Sleeping, in the other room." He answered, nodding his head towards the door down the hall, on the other side of which lay Kyuhyun. "Sick, or something."
"Uh-huh." Sungmin nodded. He made a strange expression, as though he were simply relieved that Kyuhyun wasn't around to hear whatever he had come over to say - but then, it could have been something else.
"Worried?" Heechul asked.
"Heechul, I'm sorry-"
"Are you, now." He pulled the coffee pot out from under the appliance and reached for a mug off the shelf above his head. "Funny, because you weren't sorry last night, were you-"
"Don't say that." Sungmin interrupted, a flush rising in his cheeks in embarassment, or possibly anger. His protests were halted by the unmasked fury he saw dancing under the surface of Heechul's eyes, that look that meant I'm in charge of this conversation, you just keep your mouth shut. Heechul set his coffee mug down on the counter violently, his every move furiously exaggerated, dictated by anger.
"Well then, what do I say? What's the protocal for this?" He poured the dark liquid into the mug, and took a drink straight up. "What am I supposed to say when my boyfriend yells out someone else's name while we're having sex, hmm?" Yanked the refrigerator door open, splashed cream into his coffee, no time to measure. Sungmin could only stand by in the wake of his anger, a little wooden beach shack watching the hurricane come towards it, impending doom only moments away. "And Kyuhyun, for god's sake. Not just anyone, but my fucking roommate, my fucking best friend, Sungmin. Forgive me if I don't know exactly what I should be doing right now."
"Listen, I'm sorry." Sungmin tried again, crunching his eyes shut as if in pain.
"I know you are, now. How come you didn't say a damn thing last night?" Heechul stirred his drink vindictively, smashing the little spoon against the ceramic sides of the mug almost hard enough to chip. "You could have said anything. You could have said you were stressed out and you were thinking about something else, and I would have believed you. You could have said you were just worried about him because he's been acting so fucking strange lately, and I would have believed you. But no." His motions paused, and for a moment he simply stared down into his coffee, expression melting into a sort of sadness, a sort of disappointment. "You had to be in love with him. With... with him."
"I'm sorry. I really, really am, hyung." Sungmin replied, turning the point of his focus down to his clasped hands, white knuckles. "I know I should have told you..."
"Why? How long has it been?" Heechul asked. "Has it been a long time?" He turned around to face Sungmin, but their eyes wouldn't lock. No answer, only silence, but the truth was there, on Sungmin's face, in dark eyes covered by a veil of lashes. "The whole time?"
Sungmin swallowed, his throat seemed to have collapsed. The quiet stretched into eons between them. "The whole time, Sungmin?" Heechul repeated in disbelief, the mug of still-steaming coffee abandoned and forgotten now. "Oh, that's wonderful. Here I was, actually in love with you, how stupid of me. The entire time, you were thinking of someone else. Why'd you even bother to say yes when I asked you out, anyway? You couldn't have him, but I was second best, is that it?"
"It wasn't like that."
"Oh, sure it was." Heechul laughed, a mirthless sound, full of bitter spite. "Oh, god, I was just the replacement. I was the stand-in. I was the next best thing to him, wasn't I?"
"Could you please let me talk, Heechul." Sungmin interrupted, folding his arms over his chest as if in attempt to protect himself from the sting of Heechul's anger. "I'm sorry, I truly am, but... I did tell you, I told you at the beginning of all this, it wasn't supposed to be serious..."
"Yeah, I know." Heechul sighed, all of his rage seeming to melt away, leaving only a hollow and depressed expression on his face. "I guess this is all my fault then, for being stupid enough to fall in love with you, for thinking you might change your mind..."
"Stop that, hyung." Sungmin stepped forward, arms extended, and stood that way for a long moment, before he took Heechul into his arms, cheek pressed flat against the taller man's spine, ignoring the way Heechul's body tensed under his touch. "I know this is all my fault. It was really stupid..."
Words suspended in midair for minutes, eternities, and Sungmin closed his eyes against the fuzzy fabric of Heechul's bathrobe, hoping they would be accepted. The tension released from Heechul’s body, and he sagged a little, a puff of breath that could have been a sigh emerging from his lips. "Sungmin... please let me go."
"What do we do, hyung?" Sungmin asked, rejecting Heechul's simple request for the time being, tightening his hold on the other man's slim stomach. "I mean... we've got to work together, and it's not going to work out if you can't forgive me... I still want to be friends. You're so wonderful, Heechul."
"I'm not sure." Heechul replied with unease clear in his tone. "I just... think I need to think about all this for a while." He pulled himself out of Sungmin's hold, rubbing his eyes wearily. He looked deflated, empty, as though this talk with Sungmin had drained the last of his energy resources. "I just need to get away from you and... and him."
"Where are you going?" Sungmin asked, but his question went unanswered as Heechul strode past him and out of the kitchen, discarding his robe onto the couch in favor of a black jacket, sliding his feet into a pair of tennis shoes near the front door. "Hyung, don't leave... I can't - I already feel terrible..."
"Well, good. You should." Heechul didn't spare him a last glance, throwing his hair over his shoulder as he snatched a set of keys off a small hook in the wall. He left without another word, shutting the door quietly behind him with a grace that few people could manage when so angry. And for a long while, Sungmin stood in his place in the kitchen, watching the spot where Heechul had gone, as if he would just appear there, just come right back through the door and be the Heechul that he used to be before Sungmin messed him up. But he wouldn't. Not while Sungmin was there, not while Kyuhyun was there. Not ever? Sungmin hung his head, eyes glittering.
To be continued...
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Sorry I'm late. I wanted to post earlier, but I just felt pretty sick these days, i don't know what I had, but I'm also pretty depressed. As depressed as this fic can be, so I was in mood for writing this chapter today.
Totally needing your comments to know if this chapter turned out good or not. ^^
COMMENTS ARE LOVED AND NEEDED <3