002: Flirting With the Middle Man

prompt: middles

“Why do you think I do these things for you, Hyoyeon?”

Hyukjae leans against the wall outside her door, arms crossed over his chest, a small grin dancing its way onto his lips. The blonde looks up at him in sincere puzzlement, and it’s almost as if she’s trying to fight a similar smile sneaking a path onto her own. She glances back towards her apartment in quiet admiration, watching the rows of workers march out in ordered lines, holding thick stacks of red roses in their arms.

When she glances back to him, she’s grinning. Her eyes are curved into those endearing little half-moons he secretly loved, and she’s shaking her head lightly, exasperated with his overly extravagant actions. She tilts her head at him. “Why do you?”

Because I’m in love with you, his conscience seems to fill in the blanks for him, but he doesn’t dare to say the words out loud. He couldn’t just drop a bomb like that, he couldn’t. Not to an engaged woman. Not to someone who was going to married in two weeks.

Instead, he just mumbles, “Why do I?” He’s not sure if she catches it or not, but either way, it catches her attention. She leans her head against his arm, and her hair feels almost unrealistically soft, like smooth silk. He wonders if she knows how much she tortures him on a daily basis, or how much of a masochist he was slowly becoming. He can still hear the smile in her voice when she speaks.

“I think you’re crazy, to be honest. Who else would fill my whole apartment up with flowers? I almost drowned the moment I stepped in the front door, Hyukjae.” She murmurs in bemusement, and he can feel her rest one hand over his elbow. He likes to convince himself that it’s because she doesn’t want him to leave, even if his house is just across the street. “How much did you spend on all of this?”

“It’d ruin the charm of the act if I told you now, wouldn’t it?” he chuckles.

In truth, he spent a lot on the occasion. But he wouldn’t tell her that, because she would overreact, and he really, really didn’t mind it at all. He loved seeing her happy. He took pride in the moments that he was able to make her smile, rather than simply standing by as she trudged through the week with that disheartening mask of lifeless fatigue, that dead visage that seemed to hang over her features in the constant. She was never happy, these days. Always stuck in the middle of tedious work and her collapsing love life. He wanted to change that, any second he could.

“You sure are something, Lee Hyukjae.”

“Not as something as you are, Kim Hyoyeon.”

The blonde pulls away from him with a ludicrous snort, landing a playful smack on his right shoulder. She grins at him, disbelieving. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

A lot of things don’t make sense when I’m with you. Like why he was trying so hard to impress the fiancée of his next door neighbor. Like how he was inconspicuously trying to make her fall in love with him, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. Like how he only came over when he wasn’t home, or on a business trip. Why do I do these things to myself?

“So where is he, right now?” Hyukjae asks, idly watching the small specks of white drift from the sky. He glances at her when she doesn’t respond, and his heart almost twists at the newfound expression on her face. She looks broken; like a crushed marionette doll. He curses himself for asking. He knew he shouldn’t have, he knew—the simple question always seemed to have a way of ultimately ruining her, tearing her happiness apart from the inside out. But he had to know.

“He should be in Busan, by now…Business trip again.”

“Have you talked to him, lately?”

A bitter smile finds its way to her lips, and she looks up at him, morose, quiet and forlorn. She shakes her head gently, and he’s painfully reminded of how out of sorts she’d become in the past year, how drastically herself as whole had changed. The look in her eyes had dimmed. She was like a discarded shell of her former self, and it was all because of him. She'd be so much happier with me.

“Not much, Hyukjae. Every time I call him, it seems like he’s in the middle of something.”

Hyukjae nods slowly. He doesn't dare to look at her, because he knows she despises that doleful stare of pity, and that's simply all he can feel for her, in this moment. He pities her because she doesn't deserve what she ended up with. He clears his throat decisively, before the silence becomes too heavy. 

“Well, that’s his loss.” He lifts his back off the wall freely, one hand still lurking in his pocket. He turns and holds the other one out to her in his signature mock-gentlemanly façade, giving her a cheesy grin. “Because I’d say we’re about to be in the middle of a nice, warm cup of hot chocolate. What do you say, Miss Kim?”

The blonde looks from his outstretched hand to his eyes tentatively, and he doesn’t miss the small bump that rises in , disappearing in a heartbeat. She stares at him as if she’s still trying her hardest to figure him out, why is he trying so hard for an engaged woman?, the question seems to flutter across her features. She likely didn’t understand him in the least bit, and perhaps, on certain occasions, she really did think of him as crazy. But among her many appeals, he believed the most charming was that she persistently kept coming back for more, on different and curious incidents, because she wanted to figure him out. Hyukjae can’t help but be enlightened to think; maybe she'd find her answer by the end of the night.

A grin cracks through her confounded mask.

“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Lee,” she places her hand in his, stepping off the wall. “It is his loss.” 

A/N: i'm dying from all the fluffiness omg. am i cheesing you guys out yet?