[Fic] Rundown 5/8
Title: Rundown
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R
Pairings: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun (main) and small amounts of Siwon/Hankyung
Genre: AU, baseball
Warning: Sexual situations.
Summary: As Zhou Mi's dreams are put in jeopardy, Kyuhyun is forced to face everything he has tried to escape.
***
Chapter One ** Chapter Two ** Chapter Three ** Chapter Four ** Chapter Five ** Chapter Six
***
Zhou Mi’s head cocked, eyes focused on the field beneath them. There were times when his focus was laser-sharp, and when he was watching baseball, that was one of those times. They didn’t really discuss baseball any more... Since that first meeting when Kyuhyun had shot down Zhou Mi’s attempt to...persuade him toward baseball’s finer points...they hadn’t really gone back to that. Though he could see the looks at him when Zhou Mi exclaimed over some play, to see if Kyuhyun was reacting at all. He did his best not to. Not because of Zhou Mi, but because of the principle of it. The fact that his whole life had been orchestrated to this one moment. If just one thing had been different, he and Zhou Mi wouldn’t be sitting together at all.
All his life, someone called the decisions on what he would do. His father, a failed player turned baseball obsessee, had signed him up for baseball as soon as he was old enough to hold a bat. He hadn’t hated it. There was a logic to the game that appealed to him, just as Zhou Mi had tried to explain, and for a while it had actually been fun. He just hadn’t been terribly good at it, and when he had suggested quitting he had been grounded for a week. It was obvious to them all by the time he was in high school that he would never play professional ball. He wasn’t agile enough for the infield, or fast enough for the outfield, or tall enough to be a truly great pitcher. In short, he was pretty good at a few things, but not good enough to win a spot on anyone’s roster, even on a minor league level.
So his father had pushed the business track at him, and pulled him from baseball altogether. A Cho excelled, he didn’t struggle. And there was the part of his father that liked the thought of having a son with an MBA.
His father, he never knew how, got wind that he had dated a boy during college. So he was married a week after he graduated, to a girl his father had hand picked. A very tasteful family merger. The mating had been very tasteful too, because he had had no more want of her than she had of him. And he had had the double amount of niggling guilt that shouted that he knew he might never love her, and would never desire her. But she hadn’t been completely clean either. She had had a boyfriend she loved, he had come to find out later, and stayed in close contact with him. And while Kyuhyun had never doubted that Miyun was absolutely his, because it was obvious by her face... His father had taken it upon himself to order a paternity test to be sure. It was still a point of bitterness between them.
His ex-wife’s only regret was that she hadn’t presented him with a son, but in a way he had been kind of glad, because he wouldn’t have the chance to screw a little boy up the way his dad had him.
When his ex-wife had started bringing her lover into his house, he had known it was time. It was amicable. His father ran the divorce. There were all sorts of pre-nuptial agreements that protected all of them. And there hadn’t been any fight for custody, not really. She had taken Miyun for a couple of weeks, during proceedings, and by the end, Miyun had been living back with him.
He hadn’t been lying when he had told Zhou Mi that he liked him more than his father. Zhou Mi was everything his father was not. Open, passionate without being irrational. And there was the tiny point that he could see every emotion pass through Zhou Mi’s eyes. When Zhou Mi was happy, most of the world knew it. And when he looked at Kyuhyun, there was no mistaking that there was want between them. He had never been with someone that put that much... Out there.
But the strange thing, was it was as though it were impossible for him not to respond to it. That Zhou Mi could affect him so much... Lifting his mood, sending him sharply into arousal. It was like he gave control of himself away. To defend himself, he should have run. But Zhou Mi leaned in for just one more kiss. And that mouth was eagerness itself.
The last thing he should do in their positions was to start...feeling. Lust was one thing. Friendship was another. Anything beyond that... Anything beyond men who more or less appreciated each other and what they could do together in the sack was completely out of bounds.
So it didn’t really make any sense that he had responded when Zhou Mi smiled at him at the stoplight, and asked Kyuhyun to tell him about himself on the way to the house. Of course he would be curious. And he had scoffed at the wheel, giving him the cliff notes version of his daddy issues. Zhou Mi had listened in silence, long legs stretched out in front of him.
Maybe there was some part of him that envied Zhou Mi’s place, that he should be what his father had always wanted, where Kyuhyun always struggled to be even a fraction of it.
Kyuhyun had detoured to kiss Miyun goodnight, watching as she demanded the same of Zhou Mi, and led him into the bedroom.
***
Zhou Mi’s head swam with the information that Kyuhyun had shared, a glimpse into his life that Zhou Mi had never expected. Some of it, he could have guessed at. But the rest... It was like Kyuhyun only believed his father loved him, based on what he could accomplish. And that was such a sad thing that Zhou Mi couldn’t even comprehend it.
“Kyuhyun...”
Kyuhyun shook his head, seeming to realize that Zhou Mi wanted to finish the conversation, and leaned back on the settee in his bedroom instead of heading to the bed. “So I’ve failed him in just about every way. Didn’t present him a grandson. Didn’t play professional ball. Didn’t stay married. Didn’t like women. Didn’t want to be involved in his empire.”
“Kyuhyun?”
The dark eyes had sharpened after he had come out of his reminiscences. “What?”
“If those are all the things you didn’t do, or didn’t want... What is it that you do want?”
Kyuhyun frowned, staring again with some confusion as though Zhou Mi had asked a nonsensical question.
“What do I want?”
“There must be something, right? You must have dreams.”
There was silence, but Zhou Mi did not question that he had asked something relevant. Kyuhyun’s face was thoughtful, not angry, and there was a peculiar light there when they considered each other, a flame of almost child-like hope that Zhou Mi had never seen.
Kyuhyun shook his head, and chuckled. “I think I was thirteen when I told my father that I wanted to sing. I had been able to sign up for choir due to his lack of oversight one semester. They wanted to make me a soloist but I refused because I knew... Knew if he heard there would be trouble. But the teacher pushed me, and I went to my father, and he... He forced the school to fail me out of choir, and enrolled me, in the middle of the semester, into two advanced math classes. I had to make up all the work and tests, and keep up with what they were learning. I was determined to show him, and passed those classes, and all he had to say was that was what he had expected of me.”
Zhou Mi closed his eyes, remembered the almost musical moans from Kyuhyun’s throat as they merged. If his voice sounded anything, anything...
“Will you sing for me?’
At that Kyuhyun actually looked surprised. “Oh, I don’t sing for people...”
“You must sing for Miyun?”
“Well, yeah, but...”
He scooted closer, arranging himself carefully against Kyuhyun’s side. He got a careful leg up over Kyuhyun’s lap, pressing his lips to Kyuhyun’s ear. “Sing a lullaby to me, Kyuhyun.”
He thought at first he might be refused, the stiffness of Kyuhyun’s shoulders. It was such a huge thing to ask. Maybe if they had been looking at each other, it wouldn’t have happened, but slowly, ever so slowly, like an unfurling flower Kyuhyun began to sing.
It was a simple child’s lullaby, but it didn’t mask the richness of the voice singing it. And Kyuhyun’s voice only picked up strength as it went along, confidence, and Zhou Mi closed his eyes, savoring it. Perfect pitch. Perfect tone. He didn’t have to imagine other people swooning from it, because he was already.
He didn’t realize how hard he was breathing against Kyuhyun’s neck until Kyuhyun faltered. “Are you getting turned on from this?”
“You’re amazing,” Zhou Mi declared. “Absolutely fantastic. It’s criminal to hide that talent away from the world. Did he even hear how you sounded before he rejected your idea? How could he be so blind?”
“It’s old news. I’ve gotten past it.”
It all seemed so clear what he could do. Kyuhyun had been denied his dream, but no longer. He could help.
“I don’t think so.” Zhou Mi pushed up onto his feet, pulling Kyuhyun with him. “Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet. He owns high end clubs, has singers perform. He’s gotten a few top names discovered that way. I know he would love to meet you.”
“What? No... No way. There’s not a chance I could do that. That’s all behind me.”
“Because he forced it behind you! You still love it. You could do what you dreamed of!”
“I can’t, okay? I can’t.” Zhou Mi was frozen as Kyuhyun stood, yanking his shirt over his head. And within seconds, he had slid his hands into Zhou Mi’s open pants. “This is something I’d rather do a lot more.”
He went willingly, opening his mouth against Kyuhyun’s demand, and gaining a precious moan as he forcibly dragged Kyuhyun’s hips against his. He massaged his hands over the back of Kyuhyun’s boxers. Kyuhyun was like a drug, the sound and feel and scent and taste of him. Oh yes, he thought, as Kyuhyun’s head fell back revealing his damp, reddened mouth and sexy, lust-addled eyes.
“Need you,” Kyuhyun half groaned, half ordered as they worked on clothes and shedding it.
Zhou Mi was content to be distracted as he ran his hands up Kyuhyun’s bare back. But he thought they both knew the conversation was far from over.
***
It was as though he could see Zhou Mi strengthening every day, using his hand more, spirit lifting as he got closer to his goal of rejoining the team. It was something Kyuhyun could not help but focus on, even while he knew that everything would change. Still, as he drove with Zhou Mi night after night, finding new ways to please each other on Kyuhyun’s bed, and out of, he had resigned himself to not thinking too much at all.
And it was hard to think with Zhou Mi pressed against him, mouths joined for a long moment before Zhou Mi turned his attention to Kyuhyun’s neck. It was a clever bit of maneuvering that had Zhou Mi on the outside, Kyuhyun trapped against the wall. His head thudded back, feeling Zhou Mi’s weight shift. He reached, reached for purchase or...
“Ow...” Zhou Mi whimpered.
“Ow... Ow what?”
In keeping himself from crushing Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi had used his injured wrist. As Kyuhyun stared at the brace, visions of the moment of Zhou Mi’s injury flashed into him. The pain in Zhou Mi’s eyes...
“You’re taking care of it? You’re seeing the doctor, trainer? Everything’s okay?”
Zhou Mi nodded, curling his arm up against his chest and dropping his face against Kyuhyun’s neck. “Yeah, and it’s better,” he said on a puff of air.
Kyuhyun pinched the back of Zhou Mi’s shoulder. “Then be careful, idiot.”
He got a nod in response, and cool fingers slipping up under the hem of his shirt. He wriggled at the touch, and Zhou Mi chuckled.
“Hurting yourself doesn’t keep you from being horny, does it?” Kyuhyun murmured, pressing lis lips below Zhou Mi’s ear.
“I guess not. Thanks... Thanks for worrying.”
“We need you in top physical shape,” Kyuhyun informed him, taking his good hand to lead him toward the bedroom. “Sex is a little less fulfilling when one person is falling apart.”
“I thought you’ve been enjoying it,” Zhou Mi said, his voice full of doubt for Kyuhyun’s words.
“I’m just wasting time until my hunky weightlifter boyfriend comes back... His wrists are twice as big around as yours.”
Of course by the way Zhou Mi laughed at the debonair statement, he’d taken it just how Kyuhyun had intended.
They managed to off both of their shirts, before he, gently, carefully, pushed Zhou Mi back onto the bed. After that episode, he was taking no chances in hurting him.
“Kyuhyun...”
He hummed against Zhou Mi’s throat, sitting up, and lifting the injured arm, bracing it with both his hands.
Zhou Mi’s inhale was a brittle crack, as Kyuhyun sucked two of the sensitive, unused fingertips into his mouth, and then more of the long, slender fingers. He could have moaned at the sex-addled expression that twisted Zhou Mi’s face, as he let those fingers go with one last lick, before slipping his thumb inside. His tongue ran lines along the ridges and dips of Zhou Mi’s skin, his knuckles, tracing a hard line up in clear suggestion of what he’d rather be doing.
Zhou Mi’s eyes were dark, intense, his opposite hand twisted in the sheets. Kyuhyun smirked, laying the injured arm down carefully, and easing back down the bed on his knees, both hands at Zhou Mi’s belt.
“You wouldn’t let me do this for you last time. But now you will,” Kyuhyun promised, running his palm along the ridge of Zhou Mi’s confined erection.
Zhou Mi whimpered, and the pants came down. And so did Kyuhyun’s mouth.
***
Kyuhyun had made it horizontally as far as Zhou Mi’s shoulder before letting himself lose strength. It was a little humid and tacky between them, most of which he acknowledged to be his fault but Zhou Mi didn’t seem to mind. Zhou Mi was scratching little lines down his spine that made him want to purr, utterly sated and content and comfortable. Zhou Mi’s breath stirred the hair on his forehead, their hearts slowly in tune.
“There, I made it up to you,” he grunted.
“Yes... You did.”
Zhou Mi’s fingers traced his ear, which was tender and unexpected, and it roused him just enough.
“We should probably shower,” he mumbled, trying not to drool onto Zhou Mi’s chest.
“Does that have to be upright?”
The chuckle felt good, as he pushed upright, smiling down at Zhou Mi’s face. “How about this... We shower, fast... And then hot tub.”
Zhou Mi’s eyelids levered up. “Hot tub?”
The lingering kiss was an indulgence that he couldn’t deny himself. “Yeah. So get your butt out of bed. I’ll turn the heater on so it’s ready for us.”
Zhou Mi was upright and mostly naked when Kyuhyun stepped into the bathroom, with a definite case of bed head. His eyes slid over the brace on the counter, and he appreciatively followed Zhou Mi into the shower.
***
Zhou Mi stretched, his back arching against the intense pounding of the water in the small of his back.
“Wait, why haven’t we done this before?”
Kyuhyun smirked from where he was buried in water up to his armpits. “You tell me.”
Their legs were tangled companionably in the warmth, sitting a shoulder’s width apart as the water bubbled around them.
Zhou Mi studied the beer can in his hand. Kyuhyun, once he had donned swim trunks and left a pair for Zhou Mi, had gotten snacks, and drinks. They were having a regular pool party. It was probably one of the most...friendly things they had ever done together.
“Did you want another one?” Kyuhyun asked, gesturing at the can.
“Oh, one is plenty,” he said, laughing a little bit and trying not to let it dissolve into a giggle. “Any more than this and I get a little funny.”
“Funny, huh? You make people laugh? A real comedian, huh?”
“I make people laugh... Just not in the right way. I’m not a very steady drunk.”
“Yeah?”
“And I get loud, and not very good at holding back words.”
“Wow. You’re the weirdest drunk I’ve ever heard of,” Kyuhyun deadpanned.
Zhou Mi pushed a small wave of water toward Kyuhyun. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t take much to get me to that point. I get from tipsy to giddy in the space of a few swallows.”
Kyuhyun seemed to be enjoying imagining the thought. “We’ll have to test that some day.”
“I hope not.”
“Have you ever had sex while you were drunk?”
Kyuhyun’s face was blank as he studied the lip of his can, as though the question hadn’t been wildly personal.
“No... I haven’t,” Zhou Mi told him. “Never really had a chance.”
“A regular little angel.”
There was bitterness in Kyuhyun’s voice. Bitterness that came from...where?
“Have you? When you were drunk, I mean?”
Kyuhyun snorted, sloshing water from around him as he jerked with it, trailing wet fingers along his forehead. “Only while I was married.”
“To...with your wife?”
Kyuhyun nodded, taking a long pull of beer as though he were choosing his words. “Yeah. I wonder if that should’ve have been her first clue, that I got sloshed at our reception. Still, I managed to fumble through. Good thing she wasn’t a virgin, or the first time might’ve been the last. But hey, I got off, so... She was a beautiful woman, and I could see why any straight guy should’ve wanted her. I just... Didn’t. And when she found out she was pregnant, that was it for us. She was sleeping in her own room by then anyway. I was glad I didn’t have to try any more.”
“Oh. Oh, Kyuhyun.”
“All my father did for me was make me think I couldn’t succeed at anything. I did good in school, but I don’t think you can be a professional student. Sorry. Beer makes me maudlin. I guess we should both lay off the drinking.”
“No... Don’t be sorry. I’m glad to learn more about you. I know I can’t help, but I’m glad to know.”
“Then you are giddy already. I don’t know. I think... We really shouldn’t spend this much time together. It just invites... Things.”
It felt as though his breath were backed up in his lungs as he studied Kyuhyun’s face. “Do you want me to go?”
“Where would you go all pruny like that?” Kyuhyun asked. When he stood, the water sluiced from him, dripping along pale skin, into the waistband of his trunks. “We should sleep.”
They made a pile of their garbage, wandering back into the bedroom dressed in towels. Teeth were brushed, and Zhou Mi tugged on his ritual boxers, and replaced his brace. Kyuhyun, who didn’t bother dressing at all, was breathing quietly, though still awake on his side of the bed. The mattress rustled softly as Kyuhyun half turned toward Zhou Mi.
“You know, it’s kind of weird to think about, but you and I have probably had sex more times in the past couple weeks than she and I did the whole time we were married. Is that weird?”
“I don’t think it’s weird,” Zhou Mi told him honestly. Of course, what he really wanted was to lose the tiny seed of pride that he felt at those words. As though more sex meant he belonged more. Did he really even have a place, besides this one, in Kyuhyun’s bed?
With Kyuhyun as he was, it took nothing to turn, to lean, to press his lips to Kyuhyun’s in a simple, good night kiss. He wanted, desperately, to cuddle. He wanted to drag Kyuhyun in front of his father and shout, “Look! Look how unhappy you made him! And look how well he’s done, what an amazing person and father he is despite that!” He was too young, too special to carry the weight that he did. And all Zhou Mi really wanted was to lift it from him. To give something back to him. Maybe he should’ve pressed Kyuhyun while they were drinking, tried to get him to reason about the thought of singing, of reaching for what excited him.
Kyuhyun seemed most interested in not getting too close. Like tonight, intimating that they should spend less time together. And the wary looks he had begun sending the brace, as though Zhou Mi might morph into a baseball player at any moment. He willed away the heaviness in his heart that said when his brace came off, he would lose Kyuhyun with it.
***
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R
Pairings: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun (main) and small amounts of Siwon/Hankyung
Genre: AU, baseball
Warning: Sexual situations.
Summary: As Zhou Mi's dreams are put in jeopardy, Kyuhyun is forced to face everything he has tried to escape.
***
Chapter One ** Chapter Two ** Chapter Three ** Chapter Four ** Chapter Five ** Chapter Six
***
Zhou Mi’s head cocked, eyes focused on the field beneath them. There were times when his focus was laser-sharp, and when he was watching baseball, that was one of those times. They didn’t really discuss baseball any more... Since that first meeting when Kyuhyun had shot down Zhou Mi’s attempt to...persuade him toward baseball’s finer points...they hadn’t really gone back to that. Though he could see the looks at him when Zhou Mi exclaimed over some play, to see if Kyuhyun was reacting at all. He did his best not to. Not because of Zhou Mi, but because of the principle of it. The fact that his whole life had been orchestrated to this one moment. If just one thing had been different, he and Zhou Mi wouldn’t be sitting together at all.
All his life, someone called the decisions on what he would do. His father, a failed player turned baseball obsessee, had signed him up for baseball as soon as he was old enough to hold a bat. He hadn’t hated it. There was a logic to the game that appealed to him, just as Zhou Mi had tried to explain, and for a while it had actually been fun. He just hadn’t been terribly good at it, and when he had suggested quitting he had been grounded for a week. It was obvious to them all by the time he was in high school that he would never play professional ball. He wasn’t agile enough for the infield, or fast enough for the outfield, or tall enough to be a truly great pitcher. In short, he was pretty good at a few things, but not good enough to win a spot on anyone’s roster, even on a minor league level.
So his father had pushed the business track at him, and pulled him from baseball altogether. A Cho excelled, he didn’t struggle. And there was the part of his father that liked the thought of having a son with an MBA.
His father, he never knew how, got wind that he had dated a boy during college. So he was married a week after he graduated, to a girl his father had hand picked. A very tasteful family merger. The mating had been very tasteful too, because he had had no more want of her than she had of him. And he had had the double amount of niggling guilt that shouted that he knew he might never love her, and would never desire her. But she hadn’t been completely clean either. She had had a boyfriend she loved, he had come to find out later, and stayed in close contact with him. And while Kyuhyun had never doubted that Miyun was absolutely his, because it was obvious by her face... His father had taken it upon himself to order a paternity test to be sure. It was still a point of bitterness between them.
His ex-wife’s only regret was that she hadn’t presented him with a son, but in a way he had been kind of glad, because he wouldn’t have the chance to screw a little boy up the way his dad had him.
When his ex-wife had started bringing her lover into his house, he had known it was time. It was amicable. His father ran the divorce. There were all sorts of pre-nuptial agreements that protected all of them. And there hadn’t been any fight for custody, not really. She had taken Miyun for a couple of weeks, during proceedings, and by the end, Miyun had been living back with him.
He hadn’t been lying when he had told Zhou Mi that he liked him more than his father. Zhou Mi was everything his father was not. Open, passionate without being irrational. And there was the tiny point that he could see every emotion pass through Zhou Mi’s eyes. When Zhou Mi was happy, most of the world knew it. And when he looked at Kyuhyun, there was no mistaking that there was want between them. He had never been with someone that put that much... Out there.
But the strange thing, was it was as though it were impossible for him not to respond to it. That Zhou Mi could affect him so much... Lifting his mood, sending him sharply into arousal. It was like he gave control of himself away. To defend himself, he should have run. But Zhou Mi leaned in for just one more kiss. And that mouth was eagerness itself.
The last thing he should do in their positions was to start...feeling. Lust was one thing. Friendship was another. Anything beyond that... Anything beyond men who more or less appreciated each other and what they could do together in the sack was completely out of bounds.
So it didn’t really make any sense that he had responded when Zhou Mi smiled at him at the stoplight, and asked Kyuhyun to tell him about himself on the way to the house. Of course he would be curious. And he had scoffed at the wheel, giving him the cliff notes version of his daddy issues. Zhou Mi had listened in silence, long legs stretched out in front of him.
Maybe there was some part of him that envied Zhou Mi’s place, that he should be what his father had always wanted, where Kyuhyun always struggled to be even a fraction of it.
Kyuhyun had detoured to kiss Miyun goodnight, watching as she demanded the same of Zhou Mi, and led him into the bedroom.
***
Zhou Mi’s head swam with the information that Kyuhyun had shared, a glimpse into his life that Zhou Mi had never expected. Some of it, he could have guessed at. But the rest... It was like Kyuhyun only believed his father loved him, based on what he could accomplish. And that was such a sad thing that Zhou Mi couldn’t even comprehend it.
“Kyuhyun...”
Kyuhyun shook his head, seeming to realize that Zhou Mi wanted to finish the conversation, and leaned back on the settee in his bedroom instead of heading to the bed. “So I’ve failed him in just about every way. Didn’t present him a grandson. Didn’t play professional ball. Didn’t stay married. Didn’t like women. Didn’t want to be involved in his empire.”
“Kyuhyun?”
The dark eyes had sharpened after he had come out of his reminiscences. “What?”
“If those are all the things you didn’t do, or didn’t want... What is it that you do want?”
Kyuhyun frowned, staring again with some confusion as though Zhou Mi had asked a nonsensical question.
“What do I want?”
“There must be something, right? You must have dreams.”
There was silence, but Zhou Mi did not question that he had asked something relevant. Kyuhyun’s face was thoughtful, not angry, and there was a peculiar light there when they considered each other, a flame of almost child-like hope that Zhou Mi had never seen.
Kyuhyun shook his head, and chuckled. “I think I was thirteen when I told my father that I wanted to sing. I had been able to sign up for choir due to his lack of oversight one semester. They wanted to make me a soloist but I refused because I knew... Knew if he heard there would be trouble. But the teacher pushed me, and I went to my father, and he... He forced the school to fail me out of choir, and enrolled me, in the middle of the semester, into two advanced math classes. I had to make up all the work and tests, and keep up with what they were learning. I was determined to show him, and passed those classes, and all he had to say was that was what he had expected of me.”
Zhou Mi closed his eyes, remembered the almost musical moans from Kyuhyun’s throat as they merged. If his voice sounded anything, anything...
“Will you sing for me?’
At that Kyuhyun actually looked surprised. “Oh, I don’t sing for people...”
“You must sing for Miyun?”
“Well, yeah, but...”
He scooted closer, arranging himself carefully against Kyuhyun’s side. He got a careful leg up over Kyuhyun’s lap, pressing his lips to Kyuhyun’s ear. “Sing a lullaby to me, Kyuhyun.”
He thought at first he might be refused, the stiffness of Kyuhyun’s shoulders. It was such a huge thing to ask. Maybe if they had been looking at each other, it wouldn’t have happened, but slowly, ever so slowly, like an unfurling flower Kyuhyun began to sing.
It was a simple child’s lullaby, but it didn’t mask the richness of the voice singing it. And Kyuhyun’s voice only picked up strength as it went along, confidence, and Zhou Mi closed his eyes, savoring it. Perfect pitch. Perfect tone. He didn’t have to imagine other people swooning from it, because he was already.
He didn’t realize how hard he was breathing against Kyuhyun’s neck until Kyuhyun faltered. “Are you getting turned on from this?”
“You’re amazing,” Zhou Mi declared. “Absolutely fantastic. It’s criminal to hide that talent away from the world. Did he even hear how you sounded before he rejected your idea? How could he be so blind?”
“It’s old news. I’ve gotten past it.”
It all seemed so clear what he could do. Kyuhyun had been denied his dream, but no longer. He could help.
“I don’t think so.” Zhou Mi pushed up onto his feet, pulling Kyuhyun with him. “Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet. He owns high end clubs, has singers perform. He’s gotten a few top names discovered that way. I know he would love to meet you.”
“What? No... No way. There’s not a chance I could do that. That’s all behind me.”
“Because he forced it behind you! You still love it. You could do what you dreamed of!”
“I can’t, okay? I can’t.” Zhou Mi was frozen as Kyuhyun stood, yanking his shirt over his head. And within seconds, he had slid his hands into Zhou Mi’s open pants. “This is something I’d rather do a lot more.”
He went willingly, opening his mouth against Kyuhyun’s demand, and gaining a precious moan as he forcibly dragged Kyuhyun’s hips against his. He massaged his hands over the back of Kyuhyun’s boxers. Kyuhyun was like a drug, the sound and feel and scent and taste of him. Oh yes, he thought, as Kyuhyun’s head fell back revealing his damp, reddened mouth and sexy, lust-addled eyes.
“Need you,” Kyuhyun half groaned, half ordered as they worked on clothes and shedding it.
Zhou Mi was content to be distracted as he ran his hands up Kyuhyun’s bare back. But he thought they both knew the conversation was far from over.
***
It was as though he could see Zhou Mi strengthening every day, using his hand more, spirit lifting as he got closer to his goal of rejoining the team. It was something Kyuhyun could not help but focus on, even while he knew that everything would change. Still, as he drove with Zhou Mi night after night, finding new ways to please each other on Kyuhyun’s bed, and out of, he had resigned himself to not thinking too much at all.
And it was hard to think with Zhou Mi pressed against him, mouths joined for a long moment before Zhou Mi turned his attention to Kyuhyun’s neck. It was a clever bit of maneuvering that had Zhou Mi on the outside, Kyuhyun trapped against the wall. His head thudded back, feeling Zhou Mi’s weight shift. He reached, reached for purchase or...
“Ow...” Zhou Mi whimpered.
“Ow... Ow what?”
In keeping himself from crushing Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi had used his injured wrist. As Kyuhyun stared at the brace, visions of the moment of Zhou Mi’s injury flashed into him. The pain in Zhou Mi’s eyes...
“You’re taking care of it? You’re seeing the doctor, trainer? Everything’s okay?”
Zhou Mi nodded, curling his arm up against his chest and dropping his face against Kyuhyun’s neck. “Yeah, and it’s better,” he said on a puff of air.
Kyuhyun pinched the back of Zhou Mi’s shoulder. “Then be careful, idiot.”
He got a nod in response, and cool fingers slipping up under the hem of his shirt. He wriggled at the touch, and Zhou Mi chuckled.
“Hurting yourself doesn’t keep you from being horny, does it?” Kyuhyun murmured, pressing lis lips below Zhou Mi’s ear.
“I guess not. Thanks... Thanks for worrying.”
“We need you in top physical shape,” Kyuhyun informed him, taking his good hand to lead him toward the bedroom. “Sex is a little less fulfilling when one person is falling apart.”
“I thought you’ve been enjoying it,” Zhou Mi said, his voice full of doubt for Kyuhyun’s words.
“I’m just wasting time until my hunky weightlifter boyfriend comes back... His wrists are twice as big around as yours.”
Of course by the way Zhou Mi laughed at the debonair statement, he’d taken it just how Kyuhyun had intended.
They managed to off both of their shirts, before he, gently, carefully, pushed Zhou Mi back onto the bed. After that episode, he was taking no chances in hurting him.
“Kyuhyun...”
He hummed against Zhou Mi’s throat, sitting up, and lifting the injured arm, bracing it with both his hands.
Zhou Mi’s inhale was a brittle crack, as Kyuhyun sucked two of the sensitive, unused fingertips into his mouth, and then more of the long, slender fingers. He could have moaned at the sex-addled expression that twisted Zhou Mi’s face, as he let those fingers go with one last lick, before slipping his thumb inside. His tongue ran lines along the ridges and dips of Zhou Mi’s skin, his knuckles, tracing a hard line up in clear suggestion of what he’d rather be doing.
Zhou Mi’s eyes were dark, intense, his opposite hand twisted in the sheets. Kyuhyun smirked, laying the injured arm down carefully, and easing back down the bed on his knees, both hands at Zhou Mi’s belt.
“You wouldn’t let me do this for you last time. But now you will,” Kyuhyun promised, running his palm along the ridge of Zhou Mi’s confined erection.
Zhou Mi whimpered, and the pants came down. And so did Kyuhyun’s mouth.
***
Kyuhyun had made it horizontally as far as Zhou Mi’s shoulder before letting himself lose strength. It was a little humid and tacky between them, most of which he acknowledged to be his fault but Zhou Mi didn’t seem to mind. Zhou Mi was scratching little lines down his spine that made him want to purr, utterly sated and content and comfortable. Zhou Mi’s breath stirred the hair on his forehead, their hearts slowly in tune.
“There, I made it up to you,” he grunted.
“Yes... You did.”
Zhou Mi’s fingers traced his ear, which was tender and unexpected, and it roused him just enough.
“We should probably shower,” he mumbled, trying not to drool onto Zhou Mi’s chest.
“Does that have to be upright?”
The chuckle felt good, as he pushed upright, smiling down at Zhou Mi’s face. “How about this... We shower, fast... And then hot tub.”
Zhou Mi’s eyelids levered up. “Hot tub?”
The lingering kiss was an indulgence that he couldn’t deny himself. “Yeah. So get your butt out of bed. I’ll turn the heater on so it’s ready for us.”
Zhou Mi was upright and mostly naked when Kyuhyun stepped into the bathroom, with a definite case of bed head. His eyes slid over the brace on the counter, and he appreciatively followed Zhou Mi into the shower.
***
Zhou Mi stretched, his back arching against the intense pounding of the water in the small of his back.
“Wait, why haven’t we done this before?”
Kyuhyun smirked from where he was buried in water up to his armpits. “You tell me.”
Their legs were tangled companionably in the warmth, sitting a shoulder’s width apart as the water bubbled around them.
Zhou Mi studied the beer can in his hand. Kyuhyun, once he had donned swim trunks and left a pair for Zhou Mi, had gotten snacks, and drinks. They were having a regular pool party. It was probably one of the most...friendly things they had ever done together.
“Did you want another one?” Kyuhyun asked, gesturing at the can.
“Oh, one is plenty,” he said, laughing a little bit and trying not to let it dissolve into a giggle. “Any more than this and I get a little funny.”
“Funny, huh? You make people laugh? A real comedian, huh?”
“I make people laugh... Just not in the right way. I’m not a very steady drunk.”
“Yeah?”
“And I get loud, and not very good at holding back words.”
“Wow. You’re the weirdest drunk I’ve ever heard of,” Kyuhyun deadpanned.
Zhou Mi pushed a small wave of water toward Kyuhyun. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t take much to get me to that point. I get from tipsy to giddy in the space of a few swallows.”
Kyuhyun seemed to be enjoying imagining the thought. “We’ll have to test that some day.”
“I hope not.”
“Have you ever had sex while you were drunk?”
Kyuhyun’s face was blank as he studied the lip of his can, as though the question hadn’t been wildly personal.
“No... I haven’t,” Zhou Mi told him. “Never really had a chance.”
“A regular little angel.”
There was bitterness in Kyuhyun’s voice. Bitterness that came from...where?
“Have you? When you were drunk, I mean?”
Kyuhyun snorted, sloshing water from around him as he jerked with it, trailing wet fingers along his forehead. “Only while I was married.”
“To...with your wife?”
Kyuhyun nodded, taking a long pull of beer as though he were choosing his words. “Yeah. I wonder if that should’ve have been her first clue, that I got sloshed at our reception. Still, I managed to fumble through. Good thing she wasn’t a virgin, or the first time might’ve been the last. But hey, I got off, so... She was a beautiful woman, and I could see why any straight guy should’ve wanted her. I just... Didn’t. And when she found out she was pregnant, that was it for us. She was sleeping in her own room by then anyway. I was glad I didn’t have to try any more.”
“Oh. Oh, Kyuhyun.”
“All my father did for me was make me think I couldn’t succeed at anything. I did good in school, but I don’t think you can be a professional student. Sorry. Beer makes me maudlin. I guess we should both lay off the drinking.”
“No... Don’t be sorry. I’m glad to learn more about you. I know I can’t help, but I’m glad to know.”
“Then you are giddy already. I don’t know. I think... We really shouldn’t spend this much time together. It just invites... Things.”
It felt as though his breath were backed up in his lungs as he studied Kyuhyun’s face. “Do you want me to go?”
“Where would you go all pruny like that?” Kyuhyun asked. When he stood, the water sluiced from him, dripping along pale skin, into the waistband of his trunks. “We should sleep.”
They made a pile of their garbage, wandering back into the bedroom dressed in towels. Teeth were brushed, and Zhou Mi tugged on his ritual boxers, and replaced his brace. Kyuhyun, who didn’t bother dressing at all, was breathing quietly, though still awake on his side of the bed. The mattress rustled softly as Kyuhyun half turned toward Zhou Mi.
“You know, it’s kind of weird to think about, but you and I have probably had sex more times in the past couple weeks than she and I did the whole time we were married. Is that weird?”
“I don’t think it’s weird,” Zhou Mi told him honestly. Of course, what he really wanted was to lose the tiny seed of pride that he felt at those words. As though more sex meant he belonged more. Did he really even have a place, besides this one, in Kyuhyun’s bed?
With Kyuhyun as he was, it took nothing to turn, to lean, to press his lips to Kyuhyun’s in a simple, good night kiss. He wanted, desperately, to cuddle. He wanted to drag Kyuhyun in front of his father and shout, “Look! Look how unhappy you made him! And look how well he’s done, what an amazing person and father he is despite that!” He was too young, too special to carry the weight that he did. And all Zhou Mi really wanted was to lift it from him. To give something back to him. Maybe he should’ve pressed Kyuhyun while they were drinking, tried to get him to reason about the thought of singing, of reaching for what excited him.
Kyuhyun seemed most interested in not getting too close. Like tonight, intimating that they should spend less time together. And the wary looks he had begun sending the brace, as though Zhou Mi might morph into a baseball player at any moment. He willed away the heaviness in his heart that said when his brace came off, he would lose Kyuhyun with it.
***