[Fic] The World I Know - 1/8
Title: The World I Know
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R overall (language, sexual situations)
Pairings: Kibum/Donghae, Tablo/Eunhyuk, Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Genre: AU. Angst/smut/fluff, Romance.
Summary: As the forest world’s protective barriers fail, the two remaining animal spirits must protect the men who have come to save them, or face certain death. And the spirit of the tiger is forced return to the forest, or risk losing his mate forever.
This is the third and final in a series after The Life I Live (QMi) and The Air I Breathe (SiHan, QMi) Both installments can be found here in my writing archive.
***
Part One * Part Two
***
He dreamed of water. Rushing, thrashing. Falling. His dream self swallowed the explosion of alarm, dropping to his knees on the stone as the river raced on either side, plunging down, nearly beyond his feet, down and down, to a place he could no longer see. It was as though if he breathed, the boulder he was on would go plunging over the edge. Centimeter by centimeter, he turned his head from side to side, gauging the distance to the shore. On both sides, uncrossable distances. If he leaped, he fell. If he swam, he would be immediately swept over.
His whole body jolted as a head popped up over the edge of the stone. Not a human, but a seal. It’s flippers edged up onto the rock, and Kibum shuddered in fear.
“Get off!” he shouted. “If you move it, it could fall…”
The seal regarded him curiously, laying its sleek head down on the rock, staring up at Kibum with soft brown eyes, nudging at his fingers. As though it wanted him to pet it. He pried his hand up, edging onto the seal’s throat, the wet of the pelt, the warmth of life beneath it.
“Nice seal… Just don’t move. Hey!”
The bulk of the seal’s body rose out of the water, sliding aside Kibum’s. The seal’s head nudged under Kibum’s arm. And it took a moment, but he finally understood. The seal was trying to help him… It was on shaky knees that he stood, getting a two-armed hold on the wet neck, and sliding onto the seal’s back. The seal snorted, as though it had been wondering what Kibum was waiting for.
He had just enough time to draw a breath before the heavy body lunged, plunging into the water….
Down, and down….
***
It wasn’t the weird dream that had Kibum feeling ill at ease. Or maybe, that was part of it. He had had a casting call early that morning, in and out in the tiny time period of five hours. Which meant he was starving by the time he turned into the little bookstore, wanting a book and a snack more than anything he’d ever really wanted in life in fact. The dream he’d been able to put out of his head as sort of a random nightmare. Even though he supposed it had ended well for all of the fear he’d felt during it. It had been oddly realistic. All his feelings, the sensations. Waking up gasping for air and trying to get out of the constricting water.
He didn’t let himself dwell on it during the morning, and when he took a pull of the impeccably brewed coffee he bought to go with his book and sandwich, the day started looking even better.
Until the man sat down across from him. It wasn’t like he radiated friendship and welcome, but the man who sat there smiling certainly did. For a second he thought he was going to be offered something, one of those smooth salesmen that made him feel like he was getting greasy fingers poked into his ears.
But all the man had done was offer him a tiny wooden seal. Not longer than any of his fingers, it was carved of some soft wood, the rings of it making the seal almost seem to ripple, as though it was under water. It caused a strange almost warmth to flush down his neck.
And taking the wolf had been an offhand gesture. They were roommates by chance, Kibum gone for odd hours taking classes and what acting jobs he could find, and Tablo playing piano in clubs and working toward one of his big breaks, a record for his hard work at doing whatever he did with classical piano. They knew each other about enough for that. He could probably pick the guy out on the street if he had to.
But this Zhou Mi looked ridiculously pleased to have given him both the wooden figures.
He had the ridiculous thought that they might be laced with drugs or…
But he was suspicious by nature.
Still, after he had deposited the wolf on Tablo’s desk, going about his nightly routines, he picked up the seal. Ungainly on land, but graceful in the water, it seemed a strange choice. Maybe he ought to have kept the wolf instead.
But when he slept, the seal was in his hand.
***
Tablo
***
He dreamed of earth, rich and nearly dank, and surrounding him. The wall he touched was damp, dirt grinding into his palms, into the pads of his fingers. Fine, silty earth. It was some kind of hole, he realized. Or maybe a den. The light beyond him was slightly above, and he could just make out tree roots. Underground, then. Yes. Beneath the surface. He crawled because he could not stand, slid upward on the dark earth until he could see. And all the air that was in him, froze.
He traced his eyes up the line of the wolf’s throat, fur rustling as the eerie howl rose at the boiling sky. There was no moon. It was a lonely call. It waited for an answer. Three times it was repeated, the call of the wolf. And the wolf turned, head low. And so still. Golden eyes met his, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
The wolf walked near, the fur of its side nearly brushing his face and he realized that the den in which he lay was its home. With eyes closed, he waited, the storm beginning, lightning crashing, the rain wetting his head, and the warm brush of a tongue against his ear, bidding him to shelter...
***
He stumbled into the apartment late, after a long night of performing. He sniffed his sleeve and wrinkled his nose. It smelled just as bad as he feared. One more performance in a seedy club. One more, and he was free. Oh he thrived on the performance, the attention. But sitting at the piano night after night, knowing, waiting for that shot to do something bigger, something more… But the time to sit and think and create, that was precious as well.
Plus he liked to think he regained some of his hearing, though that was probably wishful thinking.
He frowned as he came to his little computer desk, at the folded paper he saw there. A note from his quiet and sometimes absent roommate. “Found this.” was all the paper said. And there was dust on it. Dust from the small brown wolf beneath it. The wood was hard, revealing the shape of the animal, the limber legs and sweeping tail. He brought his fingers to his nose, breathing in the earthy scent that had been transferred there when he touched it. A wolf. Like his dream.
It was kind of a cryptic note for such a strange little gift, but he wasn’t ungrateful. They shared an apartment and little else, and seemed to prefer it that way, in fact. Tablo wasn’t particularly solitary by nature, liking to be around conversation and friends. Maybe it was some kind of sign he should make an overture and maybe figure out who it was he was living with. Actor Kibum, who apparently knew he liked wolves. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Kibum’s favorite animal was.
He wasn’t sure why the wolf appealed so much. It wasn’t solitary. And though canine, it was a little more dangerous than domestic dogs, a little less tamed. So there was danger and community in one. Which seemed like a good enough explanation to him.
Maybe it would be a good luck charm through the grueling, finger-aching studio hours. Laying down tracks for a cd he’d been waiting years to find a producer for.
He smiled down at the wolf in his hand as he leaned back against his bed frame. He was finding all he had been hoping for…
***
Tablo moaned, startled when the sound bounced back at him. His face was wet, and it stank, like musty, rotted wood. His first thought was that the apartment had sprung a leak, that something was rotting. But unless he had fallen out of bed, there was no way he was next to a wall. And it didn’t smell like home… The air was chilled. Had someone broken in, kidnapped him? Some crazy fan? Did he have fans?
“What the hell is this?” he heard from behind him, and moved. Kibum. Kibum was there, too? In his room?
He bumped his head on a protrusion, cursing, and finally saw where Kibum was. Half sitting in his boxers and shirt, he looked just as confused and out of place as Tablo felt.
“Is this a tree?” Kibum asked, lifting a hand to the wet wood that curved all around them. “I haven’t seen a tree this big outside of California…”
“I don’t know. What happened? I was going to sleep, and then woke up here? Did you see anything, hear anything?”
“No… I passed out about two o’clock… Maybe this is a dream…”
He was fairly positive that if it were a dream of his own making there would be no Kibum, and a lot more sex. Not that Kibum wasn’t attractive to a point, but he had his type. And they clearly weren’t each other’s.
“If you’re dreaming, so am I,” Tablo pointed out, resigned.
“Maybe we should stay here, then,” Kibum suggested. “In case help is coming.”
“Or in case whoever took us comes back?”
Kibum cleared his through. “Okay. You have a point. Maybe there’s something we recognize. Find a phone or something.”
Something told Tablo that they weren’t going to be seeing anything familiar, and as they ducked, approaching the low opening, he realized he was right. There was no pavement, no sidewalk, no buildings. Just trees and hanging foliage, and debris littering the ground. They were in some kind of forest, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it at all. He wasn’t exactly nature boy, and he didn’t even know where he would have to go, in any part of the world, to find a place that looked like what they were staring at.
“I think, unless you’ve got your cell phone stashed in your clothes, we’re out of luck there,” Tablo said, as Kibum hissed out a breath.
“This is clearly a dream. There’s no way…”
They both jumped as a shriek sounded above them. It echoed around them, into the cavernous tree behind them, and out into the expanse of trees.
“What the hell was that?”
The sky was dark above them, but even through that they could see the huge shape that darted over their heads. A body crashed into his, and he just barely saw Kibum fall as a second man attacked, rolling them as air whooshed by them. Whatever they had seen up in the trees, it was below now.
A word was shouted in his ear, hands pulling him upright, pushing at him. And though he didn’t understand it, in any language, it meant RUN!
And he ran, snags of branches catching at his pajama pants, the sound of the others running with him. Kibum was somewhere ahead of him, he knew that for a fact. He nearly hit a tree face first as he was pushed down, a shriek loud enough to make his head ache sounding directly above them. Whoever had come upon them, they were trying to save their lives… From whatever it was that followed, screaming at them. He didn’t get the chance to stand, confusion milling as something heavy dropped beside him. He felt the flutter of oily feathers against his arm and realized that it was a bird… A bird taller than he was while he sat, one that could fly despite that, one that smelled of death, rotting and rank, as though the air itself was slimy with its scent.
From behind it…a growl. A wolf.
Hands jerked him upright, and for the first time he caught sight of the other man who had joined them. Blinking quickly as though he had hit his head. But he couldn’t see the man’s face… Just faint white gleams where eyes should be.
“Hurry!” Kibum shouted at him, and the faceless man tugged more insistently at him.
Behind them, the wolf fought the bird, and they ran.
***
“What the hell is this place?” Tablo breathed as they paused finally, panting for air beside a swift river. “This is no dream.”
The stinging scratches from their run told him that.
“I figured that out,” Kibum pointed out a bit harshly. “But I don’t know. Maybe it’s drugs. Or…”
“You really think so? There was a wolf back there, like that carving you gave me.”
“I don’t know. What does it have to do with some stupid carving?”
He just had a strange feeling, was all. A wolf that stood nearly half as tall as he was, snarling. Tablo had barely been able to take his eyes away as the bird threatened and the wolf stalked. And it was strange, in sort of a call of the wild sort of way. But other things couldn’t be explained away so easily.
“And this guy,” Tablo said, gesturing at the man who stood near them, like some sort of sentinel. “We can’t even see his face. How screwed up is that?”
Kibum frowned at him. “What do you mean? I can see his face just fine.”
“All I see is a blur, like his face is smudged.”
“That’s weird.”
Weirder still when the faceless man tugged Tablo into the river, Kibum tense on the side. No amount of jerking of his arm got him out of the grip, either. The water was chilly, but thankfully not freezing. Still, he wanted to go yelping to the side. He hadn’t even been good with extremes.
“There’s no way I’m getting in there,” Kibum protested. Though no one was making him try.
“It’s cold. You don’t want to,” Tablo said. And didn’t have time to shout as he was dunked into it, clothes and all. “What the… What…”
Water streamed over his face, off of his clothes. The faceless man gestured as though he wanted him to wash somehow. He went through the motions, but he shivered as the cold soaked into his skin.
He wasn’t sad to get rid of the wet pajamas, but what the man handed him as a replacement barely counted as underwear. Still, he wasn’t going to complain. Without the wet, he was warmer. Kibum had fallen into an uneasy sleep, jerking awake every so often as though he expected danger. And considering what they had seen, he supposed they should.
He woke sometime later, a hand on his shoulder, and he peered at the hazy image. He was tired enough, unsure enough, that the hand in his spoke of safety, and he followed, stumbling through the trees. A soothing voice crooned at him, warmed him as he laid down. A warm body lay beside him, heating him, and he heard only the sound of their breathing, and the rustle of leaves, before he slept.
***
Tablo woke to a cool nose pressing randomly along his cheek. His temple. Some kind of warm and wet at the corner of his eye. Canine breath. Had the neighbor’s dog gotten into the apartment? Or had he...
His eyes slid open, gaze raking up the slender face of the wolf and his hand froze from where it had lifted to give the errant dog a pat. This was no dog. Bigger, in fact, than any wolf he had imagined. He hadn’t actually been near a wolf. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t know what one looked like. The wolf yawned, long tongue curling as it sat beside him, considering him curiously. The trees... The trees. He remembered the man with no face, and being led here. He was 95% naked, and there was dirt and trees and it was the strangest thing he’d ever felt in his life.
He blinked, trying to clear his eyes as he realized that the wolf had some kind of pouch around its neck. Faceless men, wolves with jewelry. All of it made perfect sense.
“Did you get lost out here, too?” he asked, resisting the urge to ruffle the errant tuft of fur on the wolf’s head.
He got a cocked head and a rather doggy look of confusion at that. And laughed. Yes. He was talking to a wolf. If he extended his hand, he might not have it any more. He knew there were some wicked teeth in that mouth.
The wolf laid down beside him, stretching out long, nearly his height. He stared up at the canopy. The wolf was friendly. Curious. Maybe, if he just reached out and tried to pet it, he wouldn’t get eaten.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, turning onto his side. His eyes took longer to process than his hand did, as it fell against warm, bare skin. And just inches from his own, dark eyes stared back at him. A long, slender nose. Pursed lips. A human face. A man’s face. And beneath the pale shoulder, the bright gray fur of the wolf, flat on the earth.
He drew breath, set in so many ways to spring to his feet, to shout in shock or horror that the wolf had just somehow turned into a man. But the man’s eyes closed, opening, peering at him shyly from under long eyelashes. He had never been looked at like that before. And his fright was gone. The man rose on toned, thin arms, and spoke words he didn’t understand.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, shaking his head with some regret.
The man’s lips tightened as he blew out a frustrated breath. But an idea seemed to come into his head, all long limbs and as scantily clad as Tablo was himself. His fingertips teased the wolfskin as he watched the man busy himself beside a tree. He was kind of attractive, Tablo mused. In sort of a, “I’m half naked and look more limber than a yoga master” sort of way. He could see the wolf’s keen intelligence in the eyes that focused on him, the strength in the man’s jaw. And with an extended hand, he was pulled onto his feet.
In the man’s hands was a wooden cup, and the liquid in it shimmered.
It was wet, cool, on his face. Forehead, mouth. He fought the urge to jerk away as the man’s fingers traced his mouth. Not because he didn’t want it, but because... He didn’t know why.
The moist handprint over his heart. And the pause. The meeting of their eyes, and the scanning of his body, as the man reached with a steady finger, tracing lines over his sensitive stomach.
The man said a word, and Tablo didn’t catch it. But his confusion was plain. The man gestured to Tablo’s stomach, and to himself. “Hyukjae.”
His name, Tablo realized. Hyukjae. Hyukjae with the expectant expression, as though he wanted Tablo to repeat it back. Names, he knew, were sacred. Words. He knew the power of those.
“Hyukjae,” he said softly, carefully. And received a tilt of the mouth in return.
The cup was offered to him, and he swallowed against the juice that had leaked into his mouth, cloying in the back of his throat. He considered making a joke, some kind of, you paint me, I’ll paint you, kind of thing, but he didn’t want the confusion to write over the expression on the face that he touched. The almost imperceptible flutter of eyelashes as his fingers traced the forehead beneath this silky hair. And across the trembling, full lips. Not trembling in fright, but as if he wanted to say something as well.
It was awkward, and he didn’t really understand. It was some kind of ritual, that much was obvious. For what, he didn’t know. The wolf had stayed by him as he slept. The man had kept him near. Hyukjae had written his name on him. Perhaps they were to be bound together. He let his eyes slipped down, to the flat stomach, before pressing his damp hand to Hyukjae’s chest. He cleared his throat. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. For whatever kind of dream that was anyway.
Without thought, he wrote across Hyukjae’s stomach. “Tablo,” he said.
Hyukjae stared at him blankly, even after he repeated it again. And Hyukjae touched Tablo’s chest. “Tablo?” he seemed to ask, and shook his head.
He drew a sharp breath. No, Tablo wasn’t his real name. But how would he know that?
He wrote over the lines he had traced, and said a different name. “Daniel?” he offered.
Hyukjae’s smile was swift. “Daniel,” he confirmed.
Tablo drank from a different cup that Hyukjae offered, sweet liquid that was almost a little too sweet. But under Hyukjae’s watchful eyes, he did.
“Um. Yum.” he said, trying to get it out of his mouth. And stood still as Hyukjae darted behind him. Hands slid up Tablo’s neck, into his hair, Hyukjae humming as the softness of his palms ran cleanly over his skin. His shoulder blades. His waist, the backs of his legs. It was as though Hyukjae started there because he was too shy otherwise.
He tried to imagine that they were in a dark room, a bedroom, a club. That they had found each other in a crowd, seen some want that the other could fulfill. Coming down off the stage, body sweaty from the lights, fingers sore from the piano, throat dry and tight, rubbing against that tight body, in his hair, with his...
Hyukjae’s hands pushed the cloth from his body, in his reality, and he tried to cover himself, more affected than he would have liked by his brief little fantasy. The fantasy of the man in front of him? His face flamed hot against Hyukjae’s fingers, the sweet, amused smile doing nothing to lessen his want. He licked his lips, where the pads of Hyukjae’s fingers had just left. He could almost taste his fingers there. If they backed up a foot or two, he could press their bodies together, capture that mouth, or...
Hyukjae’s hands slid shamelessly down his stomach, over his hips. Nudging away any resistance Tablo might have had with gentle fingers that sent thrills of desire straight through him. World’s longest foreplay, he decided, as Hyukjae’s hands slid across his knees. He hadn’t been sure at first it was seduction. But the pointed pleased stare as Hyukjae knelt, teased his ankles, made him sure it couldn’t be anything else. And that meant he would touch Hyukjae as well. Learn his skin. The cloth hid little, and Tablo’s eyes were sharp. The body he reached for with eager hands had warmed to his as well.
Hyukjae did not let him begin on his own, guiding his hands to his cheeks, his fingers dropping along the backs of Tablo’s arms. And Hyukjae’s eyes closing as Tablo traced his face.
The hair, the curve of his neck, the slender chest. His hips. The cloth fell, and his nostrils flared in the hollow of Hyukjae’s shoulder. He could smell him. It was something that called for silence, but Hyukjae made little sounds at the movements of Tablo’s hands, as they slid up the back of Hyukjae’s thighs, his back.
Hyukjae’s eyes were closed, his breathing hard and quick, and Tablo couldn’t stand it. The silence.
“Hyukjae.”
The dark eyes burned him, and he moved, the backs of his hands scraping on hard tree bark as he moved them, skin to skin.
There were nails digging into his shoulders as Hyukjae moaned. He wanted that mouth, wanted badly, as Hyukjae turned it from him, and settled on the offered neck instead.
“Daniel...”
He was startled as Hyukjae pushed him back, the insanity of lust cooling for a brief second before he realized that Hyukjae wasn’t stopping him. But he was pulling him down, covering his body as his head fell onto soft wolf pelt. There were thighs resting along his hips, and a slender torso hovering over his. He touched the hanging necklace, some kind of pouch, an amulet perhaps, swallowing hard as Hyukjae moved against him. Hyukjae’s hands were everywhere, his arms, his chest, teeth scraping his earlobe. And he ached. He was ready to beg for release, no matter what getting that entailed. Hyukjae allowed him to roll them, the pale skin against the fur, arms guiding, hips accepting.
“I want you,” Tablo ground out. As though it weren’t obvious. The way he strained for breath. It’d be a miracle if he lasted a bare minute, as Hyukjae growled and reached, hand closing around him slick and warm. And guiding. And that was all there is in his mind. There was no dirt beneath him, no trees. Just the feel of Hyukjae’s body beneath him, surrounding him. He was worse than a teenager, desperate for the end, with the tiny voice that shouted that it couldn’t come too soon. Fully inside he rested, gasping, Hyukjae holding him tight, not letting him move for the longest moment. And he, for that triumphant moment was all right. Until Hyukjae began to squirm, hard between them, tiny movements that at any other time would have been insignificant, but the gasps of his name from the parted lips were siren calls that the peak was too close to be ignored.
He wasn’t sure of the time. If it was one minute. Ten minutes. An hour. He forgot the desire to kiss, nearly forgot how to see, at Hyukjae’s low cry against him as the pleasure consumed them both.
***
Tablo felt like quite the king of the mountain with the half-smirking, satisfied man beneath him. Now that he had the leisure to study, the brown irises were ringed darker, giving him a peculiarly focused look. And Hyukjae’s chin arched as Tablo’s fingertips traced the parted, pouty lips. He’d been in this strange place, what… a day? And here he was, getting more action than he’d seen in the last few months.
“I don’t think they make guys like you back home,” he said. As Hyukjae just stared at him with curiosity. He kind of burned to know… The things that Hyukjae could tell him.
His king of the mountain status faded, as Hyukjae pushed him off as though he was made of marshmallow fluff. And he wondered for a brief second if that was it, sex and then it was over, moving on. He was almost working up to feeling used when an ankle hooked over his, and an arm around him, and all that warm body pressed to his.
Hyukjae murmured, incomprehensible, as Tablo clumsily got a hand up to clutch his shoulder. A sleepy, sated man. A strange world. Creepy faceless guys, and dangerous attacking birds.
No one would have blamed him if he confessed he just wanted to focus on the man. A brief flash of worry for Kibum stole through, but Hyukjae had already tumbled into sleep, and he could not keep himself from following.
***
He dreamed of the forest. Zhou Mi fought through the darkness, closing around him like heavy drapes, thick and clinging. Around him were the trees, heavy and dark in the blackness. It felt like death was coming, as though the world around him was about to burn.
Fire cleansed things. It was his element, and part of his soul, and he understood it. But he didn’t want this world, his cradle, to burn.
His breath caught as he saw Kyuhyun ahead of him. Staring back over his shoulder in the darkness, his expression coy. His dark-eyed Kui Xian. And dressed as in his earliest memories of them together, in the covering cloth that dipped low over his hips, covered and clung and made everything so, so distracting. Just watching Kyuhyun walk, the long legs, pale and...
He heard the scream of a death bird, the amused, satisfied chuckle of it that followed after.
“He’ll forget you…”
The darkness began to close in, disturbing his view of Kyuhyun. He could feel his body change, the strength, ease of his tiger self coming to him. And he ran, racing to catch up to, to find Kyuhyun. He would have shouted, and heard himself roar.
“Kui Xian... Kui Xian!”
He woke with a start, the covers heavy over him. And Kyuhyun shouting, hoarse. Moving as though he were being strangled in the bed.
“Kui Xian! Are you all right?”
He reached for the bare arm nearest him, studying Kyuhyun’s frightened face.
Kyuhyun’s shout hurt his ears, and he came within inches of a black eye as Kyuhyun struck out at him.
“What...”
Another shout, and Kyuhyun thudded onto the floor, staring at Zhou Mi with wide, angry eyes.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Kui Xian?”
Zhou Mi could see Kyuhyun’s eyes flicker in the darkness, trying to see who it was that was using that name.
“Do I know you? Why are you in my apartment?”
“It’s Zhou Mi.” He scooted closer, reaching to touch, and Kyuhyun slid back along the slick boards.
“Zhou Mi? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
It was as though time stood still, Zhou Mi drawing in a horrified breath, trying to process even the concept of the specter in front of him, a Kyuhyun who did not know him. And as he wondered how to respond, that they lived together, loved together, Kyuhyun’s head rolled back, slumping onto the floor in a dead faint.
Zhou Mi found it hard to breathe, mind whirring.
The death bird had threatened once with Kyuhyun’s own lips, that it could make Kyuhyun forget him. In the other world, the mates of the two spirits had arrived. If the bird had made good on its promise? He had heard it in his dream. And his dreams, the darkness, they had never been untrue to him. He slid onto the floor, gathering Kyuhyun’s sleep-warm body to him.
“You’ll be all right, Kui Xian,” he whispered into Kyuhyun’s neck. “I’ll make sure of it. You’ll remember me. We promised.”
Kyuhyun’s breath was deep and even, and Zhou Mi sat, curled and covered him with the blanket. There was the smallest chance that it was over, that when Kyuhyun woke again all would be normal. He’d squish Zhou Mi’s head into the blanket for worrying too much, and let Zhou Mi cuddle him until the fear was gone. Kissing Zhou Mi’s neck, because Kyuhyun knew it calmed him, and turned him on.
But the dream told him how unlikely that was. What the question was then was not how to deal with a Kyuhyun that did not remember him and what they had been through, but how to fix it. Those memories could not simply be gone forever.
Kyuhyun, his Kui Xian, was still in there. The one who dirtily whispered, reminisced, of the things they had done to each other beneath the trees (and then flatly refused to try going camping with him). And that was the only thing that was keeping his thoughts from flying away, from shaking Kyuhyun awake and demanding that he tell him all the things he wanted to hear. He smoothed some hair away from Kyuhyun’s face. Somewhere behind those closed eyes was a battle that Zhou Mi didn’t know how to help him fight. But he would find out how.
He threaded his fingers through Kyuhyun’s, and fell asleep straining to dream of something that would help him fix this.
***
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R overall (language, sexual situations)
Pairings: Kibum/Donghae, Tablo/Eunhyuk, Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Genre: AU. Angst/smut/fluff, Romance.
Summary: As the forest world’s protective barriers fail, the two remaining animal spirits must protect the men who have come to save them, or face certain death. And the spirit of the tiger is forced return to the forest, or risk losing his mate forever.
This is the third and final in a series after The Life I Live (QMi) and The Air I Breathe (SiHan, QMi) Both installments can be found here in my writing archive.
***
Part One * Part Two
***
He dreamed of water. Rushing, thrashing. Falling. His dream self swallowed the explosion of alarm, dropping to his knees on the stone as the river raced on either side, plunging down, nearly beyond his feet, down and down, to a place he could no longer see. It was as though if he breathed, the boulder he was on would go plunging over the edge. Centimeter by centimeter, he turned his head from side to side, gauging the distance to the shore. On both sides, uncrossable distances. If he leaped, he fell. If he swam, he would be immediately swept over.
His whole body jolted as a head popped up over the edge of the stone. Not a human, but a seal. It’s flippers edged up onto the rock, and Kibum shuddered in fear.
“Get off!” he shouted. “If you move it, it could fall…”
The seal regarded him curiously, laying its sleek head down on the rock, staring up at Kibum with soft brown eyes, nudging at his fingers. As though it wanted him to pet it. He pried his hand up, edging onto the seal’s throat, the wet of the pelt, the warmth of life beneath it.
“Nice seal… Just don’t move. Hey!”
The bulk of the seal’s body rose out of the water, sliding aside Kibum’s. The seal’s head nudged under Kibum’s arm. And it took a moment, but he finally understood. The seal was trying to help him… It was on shaky knees that he stood, getting a two-armed hold on the wet neck, and sliding onto the seal’s back. The seal snorted, as though it had been wondering what Kibum was waiting for.
He had just enough time to draw a breath before the heavy body lunged, plunging into the water….
Down, and down….
***
It wasn’t the weird dream that had Kibum feeling ill at ease. Or maybe, that was part of it. He had had a casting call early that morning, in and out in the tiny time period of five hours. Which meant he was starving by the time he turned into the little bookstore, wanting a book and a snack more than anything he’d ever really wanted in life in fact. The dream he’d been able to put out of his head as sort of a random nightmare. Even though he supposed it had ended well for all of the fear he’d felt during it. It had been oddly realistic. All his feelings, the sensations. Waking up gasping for air and trying to get out of the constricting water.
He didn’t let himself dwell on it during the morning, and when he took a pull of the impeccably brewed coffee he bought to go with his book and sandwich, the day started looking even better.
Until the man sat down across from him. It wasn’t like he radiated friendship and welcome, but the man who sat there smiling certainly did. For a second he thought he was going to be offered something, one of those smooth salesmen that made him feel like he was getting greasy fingers poked into his ears.
But all the man had done was offer him a tiny wooden seal. Not longer than any of his fingers, it was carved of some soft wood, the rings of it making the seal almost seem to ripple, as though it was under water. It caused a strange almost warmth to flush down his neck.
And taking the wolf had been an offhand gesture. They were roommates by chance, Kibum gone for odd hours taking classes and what acting jobs he could find, and Tablo playing piano in clubs and working toward one of his big breaks, a record for his hard work at doing whatever he did with classical piano. They knew each other about enough for that. He could probably pick the guy out on the street if he had to.
But this Zhou Mi looked ridiculously pleased to have given him both the wooden figures.
He had the ridiculous thought that they might be laced with drugs or…
But he was suspicious by nature.
Still, after he had deposited the wolf on Tablo’s desk, going about his nightly routines, he picked up the seal. Ungainly on land, but graceful in the water, it seemed a strange choice. Maybe he ought to have kept the wolf instead.
But when he slept, the seal was in his hand.
***
Tablo
***
He dreamed of earth, rich and nearly dank, and surrounding him. The wall he touched was damp, dirt grinding into his palms, into the pads of his fingers. Fine, silty earth. It was some kind of hole, he realized. Or maybe a den. The light beyond him was slightly above, and he could just make out tree roots. Underground, then. Yes. Beneath the surface. He crawled because he could not stand, slid upward on the dark earth until he could see. And all the air that was in him, froze.
He traced his eyes up the line of the wolf’s throat, fur rustling as the eerie howl rose at the boiling sky. There was no moon. It was a lonely call. It waited for an answer. Three times it was repeated, the call of the wolf. And the wolf turned, head low. And so still. Golden eyes met his, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
The wolf walked near, the fur of its side nearly brushing his face and he realized that the den in which he lay was its home. With eyes closed, he waited, the storm beginning, lightning crashing, the rain wetting his head, and the warm brush of a tongue against his ear, bidding him to shelter...
***
He stumbled into the apartment late, after a long night of performing. He sniffed his sleeve and wrinkled his nose. It smelled just as bad as he feared. One more performance in a seedy club. One more, and he was free. Oh he thrived on the performance, the attention. But sitting at the piano night after night, knowing, waiting for that shot to do something bigger, something more… But the time to sit and think and create, that was precious as well.
Plus he liked to think he regained some of his hearing, though that was probably wishful thinking.
He frowned as he came to his little computer desk, at the folded paper he saw there. A note from his quiet and sometimes absent roommate. “Found this.” was all the paper said. And there was dust on it. Dust from the small brown wolf beneath it. The wood was hard, revealing the shape of the animal, the limber legs and sweeping tail. He brought his fingers to his nose, breathing in the earthy scent that had been transferred there when he touched it. A wolf. Like his dream.
It was kind of a cryptic note for such a strange little gift, but he wasn’t ungrateful. They shared an apartment and little else, and seemed to prefer it that way, in fact. Tablo wasn’t particularly solitary by nature, liking to be around conversation and friends. Maybe it was some kind of sign he should make an overture and maybe figure out who it was he was living with. Actor Kibum, who apparently knew he liked wolves. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Kibum’s favorite animal was.
He wasn’t sure why the wolf appealed so much. It wasn’t solitary. And though canine, it was a little more dangerous than domestic dogs, a little less tamed. So there was danger and community in one. Which seemed like a good enough explanation to him.
Maybe it would be a good luck charm through the grueling, finger-aching studio hours. Laying down tracks for a cd he’d been waiting years to find a producer for.
He smiled down at the wolf in his hand as he leaned back against his bed frame. He was finding all he had been hoping for…
***
Tablo moaned, startled when the sound bounced back at him. His face was wet, and it stank, like musty, rotted wood. His first thought was that the apartment had sprung a leak, that something was rotting. But unless he had fallen out of bed, there was no way he was next to a wall. And it didn’t smell like home… The air was chilled. Had someone broken in, kidnapped him? Some crazy fan? Did he have fans?
“What the hell is this?” he heard from behind him, and moved. Kibum. Kibum was there, too? In his room?
He bumped his head on a protrusion, cursing, and finally saw where Kibum was. Half sitting in his boxers and shirt, he looked just as confused and out of place as Tablo felt.
“Is this a tree?” Kibum asked, lifting a hand to the wet wood that curved all around them. “I haven’t seen a tree this big outside of California…”
“I don’t know. What happened? I was going to sleep, and then woke up here? Did you see anything, hear anything?”
“No… I passed out about two o’clock… Maybe this is a dream…”
He was fairly positive that if it were a dream of his own making there would be no Kibum, and a lot more sex. Not that Kibum wasn’t attractive to a point, but he had his type. And they clearly weren’t each other’s.
“If you’re dreaming, so am I,” Tablo pointed out, resigned.
“Maybe we should stay here, then,” Kibum suggested. “In case help is coming.”
“Or in case whoever took us comes back?”
Kibum cleared his through. “Okay. You have a point. Maybe there’s something we recognize. Find a phone or something.”
Something told Tablo that they weren’t going to be seeing anything familiar, and as they ducked, approaching the low opening, he realized he was right. There was no pavement, no sidewalk, no buildings. Just trees and hanging foliage, and debris littering the ground. They were in some kind of forest, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it at all. He wasn’t exactly nature boy, and he didn’t even know where he would have to go, in any part of the world, to find a place that looked like what they were staring at.
“I think, unless you’ve got your cell phone stashed in your clothes, we’re out of luck there,” Tablo said, as Kibum hissed out a breath.
“This is clearly a dream. There’s no way…”
They both jumped as a shriek sounded above them. It echoed around them, into the cavernous tree behind them, and out into the expanse of trees.
“What the hell was that?”
The sky was dark above them, but even through that they could see the huge shape that darted over their heads. A body crashed into his, and he just barely saw Kibum fall as a second man attacked, rolling them as air whooshed by them. Whatever they had seen up in the trees, it was below now.
A word was shouted in his ear, hands pulling him upright, pushing at him. And though he didn’t understand it, in any language, it meant RUN!
And he ran, snags of branches catching at his pajama pants, the sound of the others running with him. Kibum was somewhere ahead of him, he knew that for a fact. He nearly hit a tree face first as he was pushed down, a shriek loud enough to make his head ache sounding directly above them. Whoever had come upon them, they were trying to save their lives… From whatever it was that followed, screaming at them. He didn’t get the chance to stand, confusion milling as something heavy dropped beside him. He felt the flutter of oily feathers against his arm and realized that it was a bird… A bird taller than he was while he sat, one that could fly despite that, one that smelled of death, rotting and rank, as though the air itself was slimy with its scent.
From behind it…a growl. A wolf.
Hands jerked him upright, and for the first time he caught sight of the other man who had joined them. Blinking quickly as though he had hit his head. But he couldn’t see the man’s face… Just faint white gleams where eyes should be.
“Hurry!” Kibum shouted at him, and the faceless man tugged more insistently at him.
Behind them, the wolf fought the bird, and they ran.
***
“What the hell is this place?” Tablo breathed as they paused finally, panting for air beside a swift river. “This is no dream.”
The stinging scratches from their run told him that.
“I figured that out,” Kibum pointed out a bit harshly. “But I don’t know. Maybe it’s drugs. Or…”
“You really think so? There was a wolf back there, like that carving you gave me.”
“I don’t know. What does it have to do with some stupid carving?”
He just had a strange feeling, was all. A wolf that stood nearly half as tall as he was, snarling. Tablo had barely been able to take his eyes away as the bird threatened and the wolf stalked. And it was strange, in sort of a call of the wild sort of way. But other things couldn’t be explained away so easily.
“And this guy,” Tablo said, gesturing at the man who stood near them, like some sort of sentinel. “We can’t even see his face. How screwed up is that?”
Kibum frowned at him. “What do you mean? I can see his face just fine.”
“All I see is a blur, like his face is smudged.”
“That’s weird.”
Weirder still when the faceless man tugged Tablo into the river, Kibum tense on the side. No amount of jerking of his arm got him out of the grip, either. The water was chilly, but thankfully not freezing. Still, he wanted to go yelping to the side. He hadn’t even been good with extremes.
“There’s no way I’m getting in there,” Kibum protested. Though no one was making him try.
“It’s cold. You don’t want to,” Tablo said. And didn’t have time to shout as he was dunked into it, clothes and all. “What the… What…”
Water streamed over his face, off of his clothes. The faceless man gestured as though he wanted him to wash somehow. He went through the motions, but he shivered as the cold soaked into his skin.
He wasn’t sad to get rid of the wet pajamas, but what the man handed him as a replacement barely counted as underwear. Still, he wasn’t going to complain. Without the wet, he was warmer. Kibum had fallen into an uneasy sleep, jerking awake every so often as though he expected danger. And considering what they had seen, he supposed they should.
He woke sometime later, a hand on his shoulder, and he peered at the hazy image. He was tired enough, unsure enough, that the hand in his spoke of safety, and he followed, stumbling through the trees. A soothing voice crooned at him, warmed him as he laid down. A warm body lay beside him, heating him, and he heard only the sound of their breathing, and the rustle of leaves, before he slept.
***
Tablo woke to a cool nose pressing randomly along his cheek. His temple. Some kind of warm and wet at the corner of his eye. Canine breath. Had the neighbor’s dog gotten into the apartment? Or had he...
His eyes slid open, gaze raking up the slender face of the wolf and his hand froze from where it had lifted to give the errant dog a pat. This was no dog. Bigger, in fact, than any wolf he had imagined. He hadn’t actually been near a wolf. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t know what one looked like. The wolf yawned, long tongue curling as it sat beside him, considering him curiously. The trees... The trees. He remembered the man with no face, and being led here. He was 95% naked, and there was dirt and trees and it was the strangest thing he’d ever felt in his life.
He blinked, trying to clear his eyes as he realized that the wolf had some kind of pouch around its neck. Faceless men, wolves with jewelry. All of it made perfect sense.
“Did you get lost out here, too?” he asked, resisting the urge to ruffle the errant tuft of fur on the wolf’s head.
He got a cocked head and a rather doggy look of confusion at that. And laughed. Yes. He was talking to a wolf. If he extended his hand, he might not have it any more. He knew there were some wicked teeth in that mouth.
The wolf laid down beside him, stretching out long, nearly his height. He stared up at the canopy. The wolf was friendly. Curious. Maybe, if he just reached out and tried to pet it, he wouldn’t get eaten.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, turning onto his side. His eyes took longer to process than his hand did, as it fell against warm, bare skin. And just inches from his own, dark eyes stared back at him. A long, slender nose. Pursed lips. A human face. A man’s face. And beneath the pale shoulder, the bright gray fur of the wolf, flat on the earth.
He drew breath, set in so many ways to spring to his feet, to shout in shock or horror that the wolf had just somehow turned into a man. But the man’s eyes closed, opening, peering at him shyly from under long eyelashes. He had never been looked at like that before. And his fright was gone. The man rose on toned, thin arms, and spoke words he didn’t understand.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, shaking his head with some regret.
The man’s lips tightened as he blew out a frustrated breath. But an idea seemed to come into his head, all long limbs and as scantily clad as Tablo was himself. His fingertips teased the wolfskin as he watched the man busy himself beside a tree. He was kind of attractive, Tablo mused. In sort of a, “I’m half naked and look more limber than a yoga master” sort of way. He could see the wolf’s keen intelligence in the eyes that focused on him, the strength in the man’s jaw. And with an extended hand, he was pulled onto his feet.
In the man’s hands was a wooden cup, and the liquid in it shimmered.
It was wet, cool, on his face. Forehead, mouth. He fought the urge to jerk away as the man’s fingers traced his mouth. Not because he didn’t want it, but because... He didn’t know why.
The moist handprint over his heart. And the pause. The meeting of their eyes, and the scanning of his body, as the man reached with a steady finger, tracing lines over his sensitive stomach.
The man said a word, and Tablo didn’t catch it. But his confusion was plain. The man gestured to Tablo’s stomach, and to himself. “Hyukjae.”
His name, Tablo realized. Hyukjae. Hyukjae with the expectant expression, as though he wanted Tablo to repeat it back. Names, he knew, were sacred. Words. He knew the power of those.
“Hyukjae,” he said softly, carefully. And received a tilt of the mouth in return.
The cup was offered to him, and he swallowed against the juice that had leaked into his mouth, cloying in the back of his throat. He considered making a joke, some kind of, you paint me, I’ll paint you, kind of thing, but he didn’t want the confusion to write over the expression on the face that he touched. The almost imperceptible flutter of eyelashes as his fingers traced the forehead beneath this silky hair. And across the trembling, full lips. Not trembling in fright, but as if he wanted to say something as well.
It was awkward, and he didn’t really understand. It was some kind of ritual, that much was obvious. For what, he didn’t know. The wolf had stayed by him as he slept. The man had kept him near. Hyukjae had written his name on him. Perhaps they were to be bound together. He let his eyes slipped down, to the flat stomach, before pressing his damp hand to Hyukjae’s chest. He cleared his throat. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. For whatever kind of dream that was anyway.
Without thought, he wrote across Hyukjae’s stomach. “Tablo,” he said.
Hyukjae stared at him blankly, even after he repeated it again. And Hyukjae touched Tablo’s chest. “Tablo?” he seemed to ask, and shook his head.
He drew a sharp breath. No, Tablo wasn’t his real name. But how would he know that?
He wrote over the lines he had traced, and said a different name. “Daniel?” he offered.
Hyukjae’s smile was swift. “Daniel,” he confirmed.
Tablo drank from a different cup that Hyukjae offered, sweet liquid that was almost a little too sweet. But under Hyukjae’s watchful eyes, he did.
“Um. Yum.” he said, trying to get it out of his mouth. And stood still as Hyukjae darted behind him. Hands slid up Tablo’s neck, into his hair, Hyukjae humming as the softness of his palms ran cleanly over his skin. His shoulder blades. His waist, the backs of his legs. It was as though Hyukjae started there because he was too shy otherwise.
He tried to imagine that they were in a dark room, a bedroom, a club. That they had found each other in a crowd, seen some want that the other could fulfill. Coming down off the stage, body sweaty from the lights, fingers sore from the piano, throat dry and tight, rubbing against that tight body, in his hair, with his...
Hyukjae’s hands pushed the cloth from his body, in his reality, and he tried to cover himself, more affected than he would have liked by his brief little fantasy. The fantasy of the man in front of him? His face flamed hot against Hyukjae’s fingers, the sweet, amused smile doing nothing to lessen his want. He licked his lips, where the pads of Hyukjae’s fingers had just left. He could almost taste his fingers there. If they backed up a foot or two, he could press their bodies together, capture that mouth, or...
Hyukjae’s hands slid shamelessly down his stomach, over his hips. Nudging away any resistance Tablo might have had with gentle fingers that sent thrills of desire straight through him. World’s longest foreplay, he decided, as Hyukjae’s hands slid across his knees. He hadn’t been sure at first it was seduction. But the pointed pleased stare as Hyukjae knelt, teased his ankles, made him sure it couldn’t be anything else. And that meant he would touch Hyukjae as well. Learn his skin. The cloth hid little, and Tablo’s eyes were sharp. The body he reached for with eager hands had warmed to his as well.
Hyukjae did not let him begin on his own, guiding his hands to his cheeks, his fingers dropping along the backs of Tablo’s arms. And Hyukjae’s eyes closing as Tablo traced his face.
The hair, the curve of his neck, the slender chest. His hips. The cloth fell, and his nostrils flared in the hollow of Hyukjae’s shoulder. He could smell him. It was something that called for silence, but Hyukjae made little sounds at the movements of Tablo’s hands, as they slid up the back of Hyukjae’s thighs, his back.
Hyukjae’s eyes were closed, his breathing hard and quick, and Tablo couldn’t stand it. The silence.
“Hyukjae.”
The dark eyes burned him, and he moved, the backs of his hands scraping on hard tree bark as he moved them, skin to skin.
There were nails digging into his shoulders as Hyukjae moaned. He wanted that mouth, wanted badly, as Hyukjae turned it from him, and settled on the offered neck instead.
“Daniel...”
He was startled as Hyukjae pushed him back, the insanity of lust cooling for a brief second before he realized that Hyukjae wasn’t stopping him. But he was pulling him down, covering his body as his head fell onto soft wolf pelt. There were thighs resting along his hips, and a slender torso hovering over his. He touched the hanging necklace, some kind of pouch, an amulet perhaps, swallowing hard as Hyukjae moved against him. Hyukjae’s hands were everywhere, his arms, his chest, teeth scraping his earlobe. And he ached. He was ready to beg for release, no matter what getting that entailed. Hyukjae allowed him to roll them, the pale skin against the fur, arms guiding, hips accepting.
“I want you,” Tablo ground out. As though it weren’t obvious. The way he strained for breath. It’d be a miracle if he lasted a bare minute, as Hyukjae growled and reached, hand closing around him slick and warm. And guiding. And that was all there is in his mind. There was no dirt beneath him, no trees. Just the feel of Hyukjae’s body beneath him, surrounding him. He was worse than a teenager, desperate for the end, with the tiny voice that shouted that it couldn’t come too soon. Fully inside he rested, gasping, Hyukjae holding him tight, not letting him move for the longest moment. And he, for that triumphant moment was all right. Until Hyukjae began to squirm, hard between them, tiny movements that at any other time would have been insignificant, but the gasps of his name from the parted lips were siren calls that the peak was too close to be ignored.
He wasn’t sure of the time. If it was one minute. Ten minutes. An hour. He forgot the desire to kiss, nearly forgot how to see, at Hyukjae’s low cry against him as the pleasure consumed them both.
***
Tablo felt like quite the king of the mountain with the half-smirking, satisfied man beneath him. Now that he had the leisure to study, the brown irises were ringed darker, giving him a peculiarly focused look. And Hyukjae’s chin arched as Tablo’s fingertips traced the parted, pouty lips. He’d been in this strange place, what… a day? And here he was, getting more action than he’d seen in the last few months.
“I don’t think they make guys like you back home,” he said. As Hyukjae just stared at him with curiosity. He kind of burned to know… The things that Hyukjae could tell him.
His king of the mountain status faded, as Hyukjae pushed him off as though he was made of marshmallow fluff. And he wondered for a brief second if that was it, sex and then it was over, moving on. He was almost working up to feeling used when an ankle hooked over his, and an arm around him, and all that warm body pressed to his.
Hyukjae murmured, incomprehensible, as Tablo clumsily got a hand up to clutch his shoulder. A sleepy, sated man. A strange world. Creepy faceless guys, and dangerous attacking birds.
No one would have blamed him if he confessed he just wanted to focus on the man. A brief flash of worry for Kibum stole through, but Hyukjae had already tumbled into sleep, and he could not keep himself from following.
***
He dreamed of the forest. Zhou Mi fought through the darkness, closing around him like heavy drapes, thick and clinging. Around him were the trees, heavy and dark in the blackness. It felt like death was coming, as though the world around him was about to burn.
Fire cleansed things. It was his element, and part of his soul, and he understood it. But he didn’t want this world, his cradle, to burn.
His breath caught as he saw Kyuhyun ahead of him. Staring back over his shoulder in the darkness, his expression coy. His dark-eyed Kui Xian. And dressed as in his earliest memories of them together, in the covering cloth that dipped low over his hips, covered and clung and made everything so, so distracting. Just watching Kyuhyun walk, the long legs, pale and...
He heard the scream of a death bird, the amused, satisfied chuckle of it that followed after.
“He’ll forget you…”
The darkness began to close in, disturbing his view of Kyuhyun. He could feel his body change, the strength, ease of his tiger self coming to him. And he ran, racing to catch up to, to find Kyuhyun. He would have shouted, and heard himself roar.
“Kui Xian... Kui Xian!”
He woke with a start, the covers heavy over him. And Kyuhyun shouting, hoarse. Moving as though he were being strangled in the bed.
“Kui Xian! Are you all right?”
He reached for the bare arm nearest him, studying Kyuhyun’s frightened face.
Kyuhyun’s shout hurt his ears, and he came within inches of a black eye as Kyuhyun struck out at him.
“What...”
Another shout, and Kyuhyun thudded onto the floor, staring at Zhou Mi with wide, angry eyes.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Kui Xian?”
Zhou Mi could see Kyuhyun’s eyes flicker in the darkness, trying to see who it was that was using that name.
“Do I know you? Why are you in my apartment?”
“It’s Zhou Mi.” He scooted closer, reaching to touch, and Kyuhyun slid back along the slick boards.
“Zhou Mi? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
It was as though time stood still, Zhou Mi drawing in a horrified breath, trying to process even the concept of the specter in front of him, a Kyuhyun who did not know him. And as he wondered how to respond, that they lived together, loved together, Kyuhyun’s head rolled back, slumping onto the floor in a dead faint.
Zhou Mi found it hard to breathe, mind whirring.
The death bird had threatened once with Kyuhyun’s own lips, that it could make Kyuhyun forget him. In the other world, the mates of the two spirits had arrived. If the bird had made good on its promise? He had heard it in his dream. And his dreams, the darkness, they had never been untrue to him. He slid onto the floor, gathering Kyuhyun’s sleep-warm body to him.
“You’ll be all right, Kui Xian,” he whispered into Kyuhyun’s neck. “I’ll make sure of it. You’ll remember me. We promised.”
Kyuhyun’s breath was deep and even, and Zhou Mi sat, curled and covered him with the blanket. There was the smallest chance that it was over, that when Kyuhyun woke again all would be normal. He’d squish Zhou Mi’s head into the blanket for worrying too much, and let Zhou Mi cuddle him until the fear was gone. Kissing Zhou Mi’s neck, because Kyuhyun knew it calmed him, and turned him on.
But the dream told him how unlikely that was. What the question was then was not how to deal with a Kyuhyun that did not remember him and what they had been through, but how to fix it. Those memories could not simply be gone forever.
Kyuhyun, his Kui Xian, was still in there. The one who dirtily whispered, reminisced, of the things they had done to each other beneath the trees (and then flatly refused to try going camping with him). And that was the only thing that was keeping his thoughts from flying away, from shaking Kyuhyun awake and demanding that he tell him all the things he wanted to hear. He smoothed some hair away from Kyuhyun’s face. Somewhere behind those closed eyes was a battle that Zhou Mi didn’t know how to help him fight. But he would find out how.
He threaded his fingers through Kyuhyun’s, and fell asleep straining to dream of something that would help him fix this.
***