[Fic] Breakwater - 1/2
Title: Breakwater
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi
Words: 15,027
Warning: scenes of near-drowning, imagery of drowning
Genre: AU, fantasy, little mermaid!AU
Summary: To gain an entrance in the world of humans, Zhou Mi makes a bargain which allows him to walk on land, and draws him closer to a human prince and to danger.
Written for qmidayeveryday.
***
The water rose, foamy at the lip, like clear green glass that fell to circle Kyuhyun’s ankles and pull. It was like a caress, a seduction, urging him to take one more step, feel the sand give beneath his feet. The water stroked against his thighs, up his hips, his ribs. He struggled to keep walking as the water rose to his shoulders, the force of it lifting him, weightless, uncontrolled.
His eyes opened wide at the grip on both ankles, warm, burning. It yanked him down, and as he gasped, water rushed into his mouth, his nose. He gurgled, gasped, and the water burned, choked him. The green around him throbbed, turned red like blood as he clawed and kicked, trying to reach that calm foam glinting just out of reach. The pain was gone. Around him, a creature swam, it’s tail long and fins gleaming. He reached to touch, and strained to be saved.
When he drowned, he drowned in blood, he inhaled the water, and sank deeper. Deeper.
***
It was for traveling dignitaries, a small gathering though the sound of it was loud enough. Men laughing, talking over each other, eager to get the ears of those more important, of a prince, or perhaps even a king. Zhou Mi was neither of those, not in the mix of people he was in. His clothes were new, perfectly so. He neither stood out nor blended in, which was the way he liked it. He carried letters from other countries, carried safely in his bag as he had traveled overland or by sea, and they were his entrée into society. He was an unknown face, but he had been welcomed, as several others had. And he watched, because that was what he did, the clasping of hands, the conversations, the way that every look and word was shrewd.
But they were not just there to talk, and Zhou Mi was not there to see minor lordlings make connections over food and wine. They were human, as was he, or at least to them he appeared so. To look at him, they could not have guessed that his natural state had scales and trailing fins. He had studied humans like them for years, perfected his walk, learned their customs. He had worked his way up from interactions at taverns, to meetings with kings. Though the food itself was so much better than many such meetings Zhou Mi attended.
There were tiny little dumplings filled with, at his quiet question, duck. Others were filled with the most delicate crab, sweet vegetables. Zhou Mi didn’t mean to stare as a man in particular stopped at the table and reached for one of the duck dumplings. After the first was being chewed, the man reached for another, and just after that one was in his mouth, another. He almost caught Zhou Mi staring, too, Zhou Mi’s eyes darting down to the delightfully colorful, though macabre, display of cavorting dead fish. It wasn’t meant to be eaten, but admired, and Zhou Mi nearly sighed at the waste before he glanced up one more time. It was the crest of the royal family on the man’s sleeve, though his clothes were no more opulent than anyone else’s, and the subtle crown he wore. Not a servant or a guest. The youngest son with the angel voice, Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi presumed, since he was not the crown prince. That prince Zhou Mi had already met, already on his way to being a skilled politician. He’d been greeted by princes in the past, ones that were bored, ones that treated him like a fly that had invaded their space, but he’d been greeted with a good amount of welcome.
The young prince stared over the head of the man who bowed to him, another dumpling in his hand. Zhou Mi didn’t hear what was said, though the greeter walked away as though not entirely satisfied with the exchange.
And the prince ate his dumpling and disappeared back among the people.
It left Zhou Mi wondering, though he did not seek the prince out. Second born. People were willing to speak of him. A happy child, a man who knew his place as second born, one who would never have been king. He had upstart ideas, and no subtle way of speaking of them from what Zhou Mi surmised. A prince that had been too coddled, too open to speaking his mind.
It was a luxury, that much Zhou Mi knew. They looked down on Kyuhyun for his openness, for his disinterest in playing the political game, but he imagined Kyuhyun’s brother envied his ability to slip away, to be who he was. Neither imperfect, nor perfect, but simply himself.
Even with his letters handed off, Zhou Mi found himself wondering.
***
Kyuhyun’s brother had been born at low tide, and he at high, and that was what people pointed out as the difference between them. Perhaps all of his father’s tact had been given to his firstborn, and Kyuhyun did not begrudge that, because without it, there was only misery for a king, or ruling with anger and fear. The problem was, when Kyuhyun saw that someone was being treated unfairly, when something moved him to anger, it had not come easily to control himself. He had trod on toes, and caused jaws to tighten when he spoke his mind. It wasn’t that people didn’t agree, his mother said, after sitting him down alone. She was the only one who could without ruffling his feathers further, but even then. He shamed people sometimes, but it was warranted. If they were complaining and letting their people go hungry, he couldn’t still his tongue. They were certainly not hurting for food to put in their own mouths. There was a place for him at the palace, but it was not in meetings of diplomacy most times. Some people liked him, some people understood him, but most didn’t ever really receive the chance.
But he had an outlet, a boat he’d had since he was 16. His brother had received one at that age, his father, his grandfather. It was solitude and daring, a measure of freedom, imagining exploring, leaving, doing at the things he imagined in his life. Those chances were something he hadn’t yet earned.
And wasn’t likely to, if he couldn’t get his own boat secured to the dock.
The boat that had begun to drift from the dock was his little sloop, pretty, even with her sails furled. She wasn’t large, but she slipped back in the protected alcove’s tide easily enough. Pretty, but also a pain in Kyuhyun’s ass, and Kyuhyun cursed - more at himself than at the boat as he pulled off his boots. It served him right to have his boat get away, trouble enough when he should have been paying attention instead of holding imaginary angry arguments with people who would never dare to truly argue back.
“Got away from you, did she?” a man said, and Kyuhyun gave him a scowl in return for his trouble when he turned to the see who was walking further onto the dock. A stranger, or at least someone Kyuhyun had not met himself. He knew the face, from a glance or two but no more. Ambassador, but a name he didn’t remember.
“I know how to tie up a boat,” Kyuhyun said, and tried to save his dignity.
And so it would seem, from the pretty knot in the line. It was just too bad the temporary knot he’d tied had been so feeble, and he had not in any way been anticipating an afternoon swim. Apparently his hesitation showed, as the man began stepping out of his boots and shedding his jacket.
“I haven’t had my swim yet today,” he said, and seemed to be teasing Kyuhyun. It made him flush, indignation, and speculation about whether he even knew who Kyuhyun was. But then there was a lot of naked torso and a man jumping into the water feet first and taking some strong pulls against the lapping water to reach the trailing line.
Kyuhyun watched, because there was nothing else to do as the boat was towed back alongside the dock boards, and Kyuhyun caught the waterlogged line. It was lucky it hadn’t been any further, or any bigger. He did as he should have done the first time, tying the boat secure.
“You rescue boats, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Zhou Mi,” he was told, wet hair being smoothed back from his forehead.
“Is this something you do, rescuing boats for people?”
Zhou Mi laughed, a sound that rose and lingered. “It’s usually more about the people than the boats for me. You don’t come across handsome princes in distress every day.”
He was going to dispute just how much distress he was in, except for the fact that Zhou Mi was pulling himself back onto the dock. Two hands on the dark dock boards that pressed to propel himself up. Kyuhyun saw those hands, but he also saw the broad shoulders, the shimmer of water as it sluiced down Zhou Mi’s chest. It got to a point where Kyuhyun was almost expecting that skin to continue down past his ribs, the narrowing of his waist to his hips. But the dark of his trousers were there, and Kyuhyun blew out a slow breath. He realized he should have offered a hand to help Zhou Mi up the rest of the way, but Zhou Mi was standing before he could even half put the thought into action. So he spoke instead.
“I suppose distress isn’t too bad, if it gets someone else to soil their clothes and not me.”
Zhou Mi bent down to retrieve his shirt and jacket. “These clothes have seen worse, no doubt. Nothing like a midday swim.”
There was humor in Zhou Mi’s eyes as he shrugged into his shirt. It was half as though he believed his words, half as though he was making fun again, something that Kyuhyun appreciated but wasn’t accustomed to. The white of the shirt soaked up the water, clinging to Zhou Mi’s skin, and Kyuhyun regretted as Zhou Mi shrugged into his jacket as well.
“You have a fondness for duck,” Zhou Mi said, tilting his head. “And you lose boats. You’re a very interesting man, Your Highness.”
“For the man who rescued my boat, it should be just Kyuhyun,” he said, and held out a hand. Gratitude.
“Just Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi repeated softly, and laughed again as Kyuhyun scoffed at him.
“Ambassador Zhou,” Kyuhyun said, finally remembering the introductions doled out by his mother. Kyuhyun had not been forced to meet all of them, but he had put a name to each face at the very least. It was strange to think he was paraded out as decoration, while ambassadors and those of rank talked. It all felt a bit slimy. “Ambassador of…?”
“An ambassador to your mother, to be sure. Outside of the castle, just Zhou Mi. And I hail from a small territory near the eastern sea,” Zhou Mi said. “A place few have been. It is smaller than this, but rich in resources. It is good to make connections to others, because it is isolated there. Few have left.”
“And since you have, do you wish to return?”
Water squeezed up out of the wet sand as they walked along it, and Zhou Mi made a thoughtful sound.
“It will always be a home to me, but there is too much to experience, to learn. I don’t know that I could go back and be content.”
Kyuhyun had not even left the castle for more than a day or two and he wondered if it would be the same, if he left that it would make it impossible for him to settle again. It should have made him afraid, but it only made him more curious to know all he could experience. He would live with the consequences, as long as he knew they would not be so severe.
“You are lucky to have been able to leave,” Kyuhyun mused. “My father would sooner make me ambassador to a rock in the sea than he would send me to someone’s court and expect positive things.”
“The rock would no doubt be more interesting,” Zhou Mi said. Kyuhyun nearly choked on his own inhale, and Zhou Mi’s laugh rang out. “No, I don’t mean to say all courts are stuffy and boring. There can be a lot of intrigue and political positioning. I find most people are there because they want something, or they want to know something. Both can be about the same.”
“Which is it for you?” Kyuhyun asked, and stopped with Zhou Mi in the shelter of a rock where the wind was not so quick but the sun could work on drying out the wet of Zhou Mi’s clothes. Kyuhyun wavered between looking to the sea, or to Zhou Mi, and wondered if the willingness to dive into an ocean was enough to cause a curiosity of what was inside of Zhou Mi’s head.
“I want to know everything,” Zhou Mi said, and though he did not laugh, the humor of it was in his voice. “It is a chance for connections, for invitations. It is how I found my way here, to a castle I had not heard of by the sea.”
And to a prince, though Zhou Mi did not say it. That was when Kyuhyun looked out, when Zhou Mi had turned his eyes toward Kyuhyun. Rather than stare back, make himself feel even more awkward, he studied a white sea bird picking at a clump of weeds.
“We have more fish than people,” Kyuhyun admitted. It was no secret that he was revealing. “But we straddle the entrance to the river, so those inland and those that want to trade inland wish to become very friendly.”
“Then you see many travelers.”
They did. Many who wanted to trade, or to pass through, or to forge a connection. Few stayed. Zhou Mi would not, moving on to another kingdom to accomplish his tasks. Kyuhyun could not creep into their carriages or the holds of their ships, not until he’d been given leave to. He had to believe his father would give him leave to explore, to learn. Kyuhyun had not ruined that much trust with him.
“There are many,” Kyuhyun agreed. “Did you come by ship or land?”
“By land, though the roads between are not what one would wish. An ambassador Lee, I was traveling with. When he goes, I will follow. He is more established,” Zhou Mi said, and it was a confiding glance. “He is allowed entrance when some are not.”
“And you gather information and memories of places you will not see again,” Kyuhyun said.
“I don’t leave never to return. There is a kind of joy in returning to a place, seeing if the memories formed there were true, if they can be good again. I will wonder if the ocean is as nice and brisk as I recall here, and-“ Zhou Mi did a decent job of avoiding Kyuhyun’s hand “- if princes still absently let their boats wander without them.”
“Perhaps I should have let myself wander with it. Left a note, sailed away.”
“I tried that, when I was younger,” Zhou Mi said. “I was back within a day. Sometimes it’s necessary to do what we must. Sometimes, the time that is right will show itself to us. You will have your time.”
“You have ears, so you know what people say of me.”
He did not delude himself to that. If Zhou Mi was humoring him to see if he could experience that wild prince from the rumors, then Kyuhyun wasn’t sure what he was expecting.
“I know what some people think,” Zhou Mi said. “And some of what they have made you think. But whether they agree with you or your thoughts, or your manners, there is no person in any kingdom who will please everyone. The people who think less of you have no reason to care, and those who do, I suspect want the best for you. You will find a place, whether it is here or elsewhere, and you will find people who appreciate you for the way you are. That’s what I believe.”
So yes, then Zhou Mi had heard. And instead of deciding that Kyuhyun was useless, he was instead trying to give him some measure of support. It was support he had heard, because Zhou Mi spoke truth in that there had always been a few souls who seemed to understand him. It did well to remember it, but he knew he would never be his brother.
“I want to change things,” Kyuhyun said fiercely. “Not as a king, but to change things for the better, to see lives improved, the kingdom safe. I want my father’s ear, and to sail for days on end and to see every corner of the land to see how to accomplish things.”
He wanted to throw out that he doubted himself, that he wondered if he could not tie up his own boat.
“We’re never sure what we can do until we try, and even if we fail when we knew we can succeed. And there are endless possibilities to fix things.”
“I’ll find a way,” Kyuhyun said.
Zhou Mi nodded once, acceptance. “Then I really will have to return to see it.”
Somehow that gratified him, that there was even the smallest portion of belief from a near stranger, one who went leaping into water to help out a prince.
***
Zhou Mi could see Kyuhyun’s surprise written on his face, but not more than the first time, or the second. The first time, it had been another function, Kyuhyun’s frowns almost radiating off of himself as though he dared anyone to come to speak to him. When Zhou Mi planted himself in front of Kyuhyun, it seemed like Kyuhyun was ready to shoo him off.
“Zh- Ambassador Zhou!”
“Your Highness,” Zhou Mi had said, smiling with his eyes. In that setting, they were their titles alone. But it had been Kyuhyun’s surprise, his eagerness to know where Zhou Mi had been, what he had seen, what news he brought, that had truly made Zhou Mi glad he had returned. It had only been several months, the warmth of late summer turning to the cold though not truly frigid end of fall. Would he be at his boat in the morning? Oh, indeed.
Zhou Mi lingered at the dock out of sight, waiting as Kyuhyun got the little boat ready to sail. Kyuhyun sang as he worked, something old and sad, but still jaunty in its way. He had not known that there was that voice inside of Kyuhyun’s attempt at a cool exterior. He regretted it, as he walked out, that Kyuhyun stopped as soon as he heard footfalls against the boards.
“Finally up?” Kyuhyun asked, and Zhou Mi laughed, coming even with him.
“I would have come earlier if I had known you would be singing.” And he scoffed right back when Kyuhyun did as well. “If you weren’t a prince, you could have made pretty coin at a tavern somewhere with a gift like that.”
“Perhaps that’s what I’ll do, then,” Kyuhyun said. “I’ll travel all the seas in my little boat, and sing for my supper in the harbor towns. It’d be an adventure.”
“It sounds like a worthwhile adventure. Permission to come aboard?”
“Of course. Come aboard, and we’ll sing up the wind, or call a mermaid or two.”
And Zhou Mi nearly fell onto the boat.
There were no strange occurrences, for which he was grateful, though Kyuhyun did sing a little more when prodded, some kind of bawdy sea shanty that had Zhou Mi laughing and clapping along.
“My mother doesn’t know I know that,” Kyuhyun said, grinning, and turning with the wind.
It was a short journey, but the boat was true, allowing Kyuhyun to show him the complexities of the little harbor before the tide turned. And, no surprise to them both, Kyuhyun had tied the boat up exactly as he should have.
“I would have had to drag you in and dump you in a warm bath if you’d gone in after the boat again. It’s too cold for anything to be in the water right now.”
Not anything. Many things, perhaps. The thought of Kyuhyun trying to warm him up had made him chuckle, but it was the thought behind it that made him smile. Kyuhyun cared. He was stubborn, and perhaps spoke at times before he had thought better of it, but he was also kind. He would have taken care of Zhou Mi, even if he’d left Zhou Mi to slog back in his still-damp clothes months earlier. Zhou Mi had been too intrigued to truly notice. The third time they had met, Zhou Mi had come over a mountain pass only a week previous, and had no desire to be near any sharp wind. Kyuhyun came to him, no doubt wan in the warmest clothes he owned in room he’d been provided in the outer castle. Kyuhyun arrived bearing tea, and soup, sitting with Zhou Mi some long hours and not requiring Zhou Mi to speak with his rasping voice though Zhou Mi had tried to tell him some of where he had just come from. He had always been heading toward the ocean, but when he had been struck by fever, he had been glad that there had only been one castle within a day’s ride.
“Do they worry I will pass my illness on to you?”
Kyuhyun had snorted. “If there is one thing I have learned, it is that when I say I am doing something, and I stand by my decision, no one argues. Not even my mother. Perhaps she wonders that a prince would attend to a lowly ambassador, but the thought of my being friendly with someone who could temper me? It would be worth a cough, I suppose.”
Zhou Mi just grunted, not sure that it was in any way worth it, and not wanting Kyuhyun to experience what he was. But he was warm, and he slept on and off, waking for more tea, and for Kyuhyun to soothe him right back to sleep with a passage from a book he was excited about, or the lull of his humming.
“You are very sick, or I am not very fascinating,” Kyuhyun teased, when he had returned with porridge.
“I have never known someone so fascinating,” Zhou Mi said, and he blamed it on his illness that he would speak so plainly. Though there were so many ways to interpret it, he did not want Kyuhyun thinking it was in any way other than that of one friend to another. One of lower birth, to that of higher. Sometimes when he saw Kyuhyun, he thought he saw his answer, what he had spent a long year seeking, and he wondered if he had the ability to see it through, if the answer was so easily found. His agreement was to harm none, but that did not mean that something of value would not be lost. He had not returned the first time because of it. But by the time he was on his feet again, after several days of shivering under blankets, he had begun to realize that to consider Kyuhyun for his question was not only choice, but had become nearly obligation.
“What is most important to you?” Zhou Mi asked, staring at the ring on one of Kyuhyun’s fingers and wishing that it would be as simple as that.
But Kyuhyun’s answer was quick, no thought, and no hesitation. “My crown,” Kyuhyun said.
As the symbol of his place in his family, of his place being able to help. The young man Zhou Mi had met, who had been unsure of his place even while knowing what he wanted to do within it, had begun to truly grow into the man he needed to become. His crown was his guarantee that one day he could accomplish much, even if it took some time. That crown was not on Kyuhyun’s head in his sick room, not as it had been the first time that Zhou Mi had seen him. He knew the look of it, the subtle gleam of gold, dark stones, the shapes the sea brought to him. A polished piece of drift wood. It was understated, but very much royal. It spoke of the place as much as it did of the person who wore it.
It had been designed by his grandfather, for Kyuhyun. Each member of his family had chosen a stone, an element, and it was their love and welcoming of Kyuhyun that was written into the very being of the crown. There were very few things that had that much meaning imbued into them, from their very creation.
There were times like those, when he was sick, that he missed the cradle of the water, fought against the dry heat with lungs that knew only that. To inhale in the water with those lungs was to die, and to try meant changing. And he’d sworn he would not, not until his quest was done, because that meant he knew it was worth it, that what he fought for was what he truly wanted.
He would get to stand on two legs, live his life on land as he chose. Whether that meant he wanted to call a plot of land his own and farm, or travel from fortress to castle, on land and sea. It was his life, and his own father had called him selfish for daring to want more, something different, something far away from the shelter of the ocean and a life that had such a clear and pre-defined end.
Perhaps that was what he saw in Kyuhyun, because perhaps Kyuhyun could not change his form, but he was not bound to his place in life without the ability to change it, or at least to mold it.
“They will think I smuggle for you or something worse,” Zhou Mi teased, at least feeling half himself. And before Kyuhyun could even ask what Zhou Mi could have been convinced to smuggle, Zhou Mi pulled out a packet. “I did bring these for you though. Apparently they’re a specialty, a sweet from the high mountains.”
The laugh tickled and threatened to make his throat ache when Kyuhyun stuck a whole piece in his mouth and proceeded to try and not make a face.
“Spit it out,” Zhou Mi gasped. “I didn’t try it. Is it that bad?”
Kyuhyun almost shuddered as he spit the candy back into the packet.
“Ugh. Um. Ooh. It tastes like. Pine sap mixed with dirt and honey and a hint of rancid grease.”
Zhou Mi’s stomach hurt from trying to hitch back the laugh that was mixed with his guilt. “I’m so sorry. I know not to bring you any more of that. Next time, I’ll try it first.”
“Be glad you didn’t,” Kyuhyun said. “But thank you, for thinking of me?”
Kyuhyun looked down, a gesture that was as cute as it was unexpected. Perhaps Kyuhyun did not know why Zhou Mi would have thought of him. He had passed many places without thought of a gift, but there in the high reach, he had known his next destination would be the sea - and by extension Kyuhyun, if he was still there. It had been impulse, one he did truly regret despite the gift not being to Kyuhyun’s tastes. It had been a gift in its own right, Kyuhyun’s company when he was at his most ill.
They watched the sweets burn, and Zhou Mi tested his throat.
“It is barely a village, where that comes from, more like a collection of houses. The people who live there must be exceptionally hardy and wanting to live away from most people. They tend to the road to keep it passable, and they feed and house travelers on their way without regard to compensation.”
“It sounds lonely, and yet it must be something that they enjoy?”
Zhou Mi nodded, remembering the families that had gathered, the stories traded as though those were the currency for the venison soup he had eaten. “I would say they have found their place.”
It felt warm, warmer than Zhou Mi could imagine sitting there. And Kyuhyun showed him a measure of his own place as well.
“We’ve been working,” Kyuhyun said almost absently, twisting the ring on his finger and frowning. “Boats pay a tax to pass through upriver when they carry food or items for sale. In lean times, I would lessen it on food, so that the captains would not need to pass that along to the people. But how would we know? When they arrived, they could charge in full, or more. They could only line their pockets.”
“But you would have given them the chance to do good. How would you change it?”
“My father suspects, as though people would pretend to go hungry to get a better price. If we had regulators, not even spies, we could keep them from coming up the river if they charged more. He thinks that if we took too hard a line, they would start taking products overland. Can you imagine trying to keep wagons full of water trying to move fish and products?”
“The greedy will find a way. But it is an interesting prospect,” Zhou Mi said, considering it, as he shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “If they had contracts, you could regulate them, at least if they were selling within your lands.”
“That would be something it would be nice to even try. The castle can more easily absorb the cost. But because I am second born, and because I am- Because I could not implement it, my father won’t listen.”
“And your brother?”
“He says he’s still learning. He chooses carefully what to push to my father. I’ve never learned that. But I will think on this contract, perhaps create an example, write out rules so that they can read it. I wonder how they would listen if it was not from me.”
“You will find a way to make them see,” Zhou Mi encouraged him.
“Perhaps. It is something worth working towards. Perhaps, by the time you return..?”
Zhou Mi smiled, and nodded. Kyuhyun asked, without truly asking. But he did not have to ask himself if he would be back, to watch that thoughtful look cross Kyuhyun’s face.
To see if Kyuhyun was an answer he had been seeking to a bargain he had made, a bargain that loomed closer.
***
Kyuhyun woke, pulling wet cloth away from his throat, nearly scratching himself raw as he gasped, and choked. His eyes were streaming, his throat aching, but he breathed. He couldn’t taste the salt water, couldn’t feel the burn in his lungs as they strained and then filled with cold. He rose from his bed, soaked in sweat, and found his covers had been scattered as though he’d been thrashing. It made him shudder. It had felt all too real, though he had never truly drowned, just accidentally inhaling water. That had hurt enough. Around him, tiny pebbles had sank, pink, blue, white and red, and when he had screamed, all he had heard was silence. Pebbles Zhou Mi had brought him on his last visit, swearing they would taste better than what he had brought before. Though he’d been appalled when Kyuhyun had pretended to try and eat one. He wondered what that meant, that they sank with him.
But again, there had been that creature circling, a tail just out of reach as though it would drag him to the surface, take him back to air and home. He discarded his shirt, drenched in sweat, and curled on his side in bed, closing his eyes and searching for the distant sound of the waves and knowing it could not reach him there.
***
They left their boots behind, wading at first with caution - or at least Zhou Mi did - and then with daring. Kyuhyun was the first one to plunge in up to his knees, shouting as the cold ocean water splashed up onto his thighs. Zhou Mi had been back in town for less than three hours when he had found Kyuhyun, and he had felt it an accident, almost - his only purpose had been to get to the ocean, to feel it properly after months of being inland with only the river and streams to speak to him. It had been the first time in so long that he had nearly been sick with missing the ocean, and he’d pretended to sleep the majority of the carriage ride wondering if his time grew nearer, if he could keep exploring as freely as he had.
He wondered if it meant that he no longer wanted to.
His smile had nearly caught fire when he saw Kyuhyun winding up the edge of the sand, his boots in one hand as the water wended to him and back. He stood, and he waited, until Kyuhyun glanced up, and glanced up a second time, and it was a different kind of sickness to see Kyuhyun’s smile, the way he splashed along the last thirty feet between them.
“Ambassador Zhou,” Kyuhyun said, executing a pretty bow as he grin had no formality in it. “You’re back.”
As though the pretty town by the sea was where Zhou Mi returned to, instead of continually passing through it on his way to other places.
“Your Highness,” Zhou Mi said, and played along.
“Take off your boots,” Kyuhyun demanded, moving so he could brush Zhou Mi’s shoulder with his own as he pointed down the beach. “It’s finally warm enough to do this without worrying about losing toes.”
He used Kyuhyun to lean against as he pulled off his boots, his socks. They left them and their jackets in a pile near the rocks, moving from dry, shifting sand to wet and solid, and to the water.
“Where did you come from this time? When did you arrive?” Kyuhyun asked, plowing through the water and forcing Zhou Mi to move or get even wetter.
“I arrived earlier this morning, and we had traveled to all the towns along the river,” Zhou Mi said.
“By carriage?” Kyuhyun sneered.
“Sadly for my back,” Zhou Mi joked, and shouted, leaping, just before Kyuhyun plunged his hands into the water and flung a plume toward him.
“Those clothes won’t be ruined by a little water, surely,” Kyuhyun said, panting as he approached like some awkward human-imagined sea monster.
The monsters that truly lived there, no human could conceive of.
“And if I walk into the castle complex looking like I fell into the water again?”
It wasn’t as though he cared, though Kyuhyun seemed to take that as a challenge, chasing Zhou Mi up and down in the shallow water, getting him wetter than a few splashes ever could have. Not to mention the ocean itself chasing them up the beach with a particularly enthusiastic wave that splashed Zhou Mi up over his hips. Kyuhyun was gasping, wet to his shoulders and shaking his fist at the sea in betrayal, and all Zhou Mi could do was sink onto his knees and laugh until all the pent up sickness, the worry, the waiting, was carried out by the water that swirled around him. And Kyuhyun didn’t even take advantage of his weakened state, merely flicking water at Zhou Mi’s head and kneeling beside him. Kyuhyun filled his palm with sand and they both watched as the water swirled it away.
“I wonder where things end up, when they go into the ocean,” Kyuhyun said, watching bubbles and flotsam glide past.
“So many places. They follow currents and waves. They don’t have any sails, but the ocean has no true destination,” Zhou Mi said. “Other beaches in places we cannot imagine, with sands of different colors, warm the year through, and waters so clear you can see deep down into it.”
Volcanoes that rumbled, and storms that swirled. There was so much to be seen, so much Zhou Mi had heard of the ocean itself that he had not seen. He could not see his future or his past in the water he cupped, but that did not keep him from looking, or from startling when he looked up to see Kyuhyun staring at him.
“Do you think there are really places like that out there?”
“Yes. I’ve heard of them from people who have seen them. I wonder how those that saw them believe it.”
“You speak of the ocean like it’s a friend,” Kyuhyun said. “It’s nice to hear because to you it would be more than escape.”
It was not escape. Home, maybe. A home he had loved, but a home he had wanted to be free of. He wondered what Kyuhyun would look like in those warm beaches, hair dark against white sand. He wondered if Kyuhyun would be happy there, away from his family, his duties. Perhaps for a short while. Perhaps.
“One day, maybe I can show you one of those places, or maybe you can find your way there somehow,” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun hummed thoughtfully, mounding up sand for the water to rush against.
“Maybe you should sing for it. To protect it? Or maybe destroy it?” Zhou Mi asked, adding his own gloppy handful of sand to Kyuhyun’s little mountain.
Kyuhyun let out a sound not unlike a bullfrog, and they both sputtered with laughter as the water raced up around the pile of sand and their own legs.
“Do you sing often?” Zhou Mi asked, as fascinated by the rich tone he’d heard before Kyuhyun had been joking as he had been the first time.
“Oh, I do,” Kyuhyun said, his lips twisting. “If my parents can’t trust me to talk, they know I can sing. I haven’t for many, mostly the very important, but I know people know me for that as well.”
“At least your parents know what a gift you have.”
“They would have traded my voice for a slower tongue, I think,” Kyuhyun said.
No. No, he didn’t think so. They could have broken Kyuhyun in so many ways but they hadn’t. Yes, he knew his place, and yes, he knew the opinions of others, but he was not locked away, sent away, and Zhou Mi held himself back to keep from covering Kyuhyun’s wrist to somehow pass along his belief simply through touch.
“But that would be like asking the ocean to give up the tide. You would not be the same person, a person precious to them.”
Kyuhyun stared at him for a moment, blinking, processing. “So you’re saying instead of working for changes I want, I could have instead been born only wanting to, I don’t know, raise sheep.”
“They would have been well-tended sheep?” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun shook his head.
“You are a strange person.”
“You should know by now,” Zhou Mi teased, shivering, suddenly warmer in the water than out of it. And a sign that they should go.
He shoved at Kyuhyun with a hand as he tried to stand, because Kyuhyun was laughing at him, the water weighing down his clothes and making it hard for him to get up. It felt strange to be back in the air again, and not surrounded by the water, and he felt the weight of his limbs as he followed Kyuhyun back to the dark sand, and walked with him toward their abandoned boots. They’d gone further than he’d realized, chasing each other down the beach like children. Kyuhyun’s cheeks were red from the wind, and for a moment, just a moment, he considered reaching to grasp Kyuhyun’s cold hand.
Zhou Mi reached for his jacket instead, swallowing hard, and brought back to himself as he heard the crinkling of paper. It was a smaller packet, a bit sticky on the outside but the candy in it was still good.
“Oh. I brought something with me. A different kind of sweet,” Zhou Mi said, and waited until Kyuhyun took it. “Personally approved.”
Though Kyuhyun looked skeptical, he still stuck a corner of one of the white candies in his mouth. After a moment, Kyuhyun nodded.
“Yes, much better than the other one.”
“How many good ones will it take you to trust me?”
And it was a legitimate question, because it seemed that Kyuhyun was cautious every time he opened a gift, including the one of rocks though Zhou Mi had been up front about that. It was as though Zhou Mi was going to tell him it was rocks, but it was really going to be something that was going to reach out and bite him. The rocks were less disgusting, too, and he couldn’t have said why the little stones had reminded him of Kyuhyun. Something to make Kyuhyun laugh, perhaps.
“So you can sneak me in something disgusting again?”
“I didn’t say that,” Zhou Mi protested, and laughed when Kyuhyun drew himself all up. “No, truly. I wouldn’t want you to have a reason to regret my return.”
“I wouldn’t, even if you had the worst taste in candy,” Kyuhyun said, rolling his eyes. “Do you meet with anyone tonight?”
“No, why?” Zhou Mi said, and considered pulling on his jacket. He didn’t want it to get wet. And just as he’d finally decided, Kyuhyun started walking back along the path up the same way that Zhou Mi had come down.
“I’ll send for you later, after you’ve had time to rest from your journey,” Kyuhyun said.
And that was a pronouncement like a prince, and Zhou Mi laughed to himself, pleased, and liked to have drowned himself in the warm bath in his little room as soon it was drawn.
***
Part Two
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi
Words: 15,027
Warning: scenes of near-drowning, imagery of drowning
Genre: AU, fantasy, little mermaid!AU
Summary: To gain an entrance in the world of humans, Zhou Mi makes a bargain which allows him to walk on land, and draws him closer to a human prince and to danger.
Written for qmidayeveryday.
***
The water rose, foamy at the lip, like clear green glass that fell to circle Kyuhyun’s ankles and pull. It was like a caress, a seduction, urging him to take one more step, feel the sand give beneath his feet. The water stroked against his thighs, up his hips, his ribs. He struggled to keep walking as the water rose to his shoulders, the force of it lifting him, weightless, uncontrolled.
His eyes opened wide at the grip on both ankles, warm, burning. It yanked him down, and as he gasped, water rushed into his mouth, his nose. He gurgled, gasped, and the water burned, choked him. The green around him throbbed, turned red like blood as he clawed and kicked, trying to reach that calm foam glinting just out of reach. The pain was gone. Around him, a creature swam, it’s tail long and fins gleaming. He reached to touch, and strained to be saved.
When he drowned, he drowned in blood, he inhaled the water, and sank deeper. Deeper.
***
It was for traveling dignitaries, a small gathering though the sound of it was loud enough. Men laughing, talking over each other, eager to get the ears of those more important, of a prince, or perhaps even a king. Zhou Mi was neither of those, not in the mix of people he was in. His clothes were new, perfectly so. He neither stood out nor blended in, which was the way he liked it. He carried letters from other countries, carried safely in his bag as he had traveled overland or by sea, and they were his entrée into society. He was an unknown face, but he had been welcomed, as several others had. And he watched, because that was what he did, the clasping of hands, the conversations, the way that every look and word was shrewd.
But they were not just there to talk, and Zhou Mi was not there to see minor lordlings make connections over food and wine. They were human, as was he, or at least to them he appeared so. To look at him, they could not have guessed that his natural state had scales and trailing fins. He had studied humans like them for years, perfected his walk, learned their customs. He had worked his way up from interactions at taverns, to meetings with kings. Though the food itself was so much better than many such meetings Zhou Mi attended.
There were tiny little dumplings filled with, at his quiet question, duck. Others were filled with the most delicate crab, sweet vegetables. Zhou Mi didn’t mean to stare as a man in particular stopped at the table and reached for one of the duck dumplings. After the first was being chewed, the man reached for another, and just after that one was in his mouth, another. He almost caught Zhou Mi staring, too, Zhou Mi’s eyes darting down to the delightfully colorful, though macabre, display of cavorting dead fish. It wasn’t meant to be eaten, but admired, and Zhou Mi nearly sighed at the waste before he glanced up one more time. It was the crest of the royal family on the man’s sleeve, though his clothes were no more opulent than anyone else’s, and the subtle crown he wore. Not a servant or a guest. The youngest son with the angel voice, Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi presumed, since he was not the crown prince. That prince Zhou Mi had already met, already on his way to being a skilled politician. He’d been greeted by princes in the past, ones that were bored, ones that treated him like a fly that had invaded their space, but he’d been greeted with a good amount of welcome.
The young prince stared over the head of the man who bowed to him, another dumpling in his hand. Zhou Mi didn’t hear what was said, though the greeter walked away as though not entirely satisfied with the exchange.
And the prince ate his dumpling and disappeared back among the people.
It left Zhou Mi wondering, though he did not seek the prince out. Second born. People were willing to speak of him. A happy child, a man who knew his place as second born, one who would never have been king. He had upstart ideas, and no subtle way of speaking of them from what Zhou Mi surmised. A prince that had been too coddled, too open to speaking his mind.
It was a luxury, that much Zhou Mi knew. They looked down on Kyuhyun for his openness, for his disinterest in playing the political game, but he imagined Kyuhyun’s brother envied his ability to slip away, to be who he was. Neither imperfect, nor perfect, but simply himself.
Even with his letters handed off, Zhou Mi found himself wondering.
***
Kyuhyun’s brother had been born at low tide, and he at high, and that was what people pointed out as the difference between them. Perhaps all of his father’s tact had been given to his firstborn, and Kyuhyun did not begrudge that, because without it, there was only misery for a king, or ruling with anger and fear. The problem was, when Kyuhyun saw that someone was being treated unfairly, when something moved him to anger, it had not come easily to control himself. He had trod on toes, and caused jaws to tighten when he spoke his mind. It wasn’t that people didn’t agree, his mother said, after sitting him down alone. She was the only one who could without ruffling his feathers further, but even then. He shamed people sometimes, but it was warranted. If they were complaining and letting their people go hungry, he couldn’t still his tongue. They were certainly not hurting for food to put in their own mouths. There was a place for him at the palace, but it was not in meetings of diplomacy most times. Some people liked him, some people understood him, but most didn’t ever really receive the chance.
But he had an outlet, a boat he’d had since he was 16. His brother had received one at that age, his father, his grandfather. It was solitude and daring, a measure of freedom, imagining exploring, leaving, doing at the things he imagined in his life. Those chances were something he hadn’t yet earned.
And wasn’t likely to, if he couldn’t get his own boat secured to the dock.
The boat that had begun to drift from the dock was his little sloop, pretty, even with her sails furled. She wasn’t large, but she slipped back in the protected alcove’s tide easily enough. Pretty, but also a pain in Kyuhyun’s ass, and Kyuhyun cursed - more at himself than at the boat as he pulled off his boots. It served him right to have his boat get away, trouble enough when he should have been paying attention instead of holding imaginary angry arguments with people who would never dare to truly argue back.
“Got away from you, did she?” a man said, and Kyuhyun gave him a scowl in return for his trouble when he turned to the see who was walking further onto the dock. A stranger, or at least someone Kyuhyun had not met himself. He knew the face, from a glance or two but no more. Ambassador, but a name he didn’t remember.
“I know how to tie up a boat,” Kyuhyun said, and tried to save his dignity.
And so it would seem, from the pretty knot in the line. It was just too bad the temporary knot he’d tied had been so feeble, and he had not in any way been anticipating an afternoon swim. Apparently his hesitation showed, as the man began stepping out of his boots and shedding his jacket.
“I haven’t had my swim yet today,” he said, and seemed to be teasing Kyuhyun. It made him flush, indignation, and speculation about whether he even knew who Kyuhyun was. But then there was a lot of naked torso and a man jumping into the water feet first and taking some strong pulls against the lapping water to reach the trailing line.
Kyuhyun watched, because there was nothing else to do as the boat was towed back alongside the dock boards, and Kyuhyun caught the waterlogged line. It was lucky it hadn’t been any further, or any bigger. He did as he should have done the first time, tying the boat secure.
“You rescue boats, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Zhou Mi,” he was told, wet hair being smoothed back from his forehead.
“Is this something you do, rescuing boats for people?”
Zhou Mi laughed, a sound that rose and lingered. “It’s usually more about the people than the boats for me. You don’t come across handsome princes in distress every day.”
He was going to dispute just how much distress he was in, except for the fact that Zhou Mi was pulling himself back onto the dock. Two hands on the dark dock boards that pressed to propel himself up. Kyuhyun saw those hands, but he also saw the broad shoulders, the shimmer of water as it sluiced down Zhou Mi’s chest. It got to a point where Kyuhyun was almost expecting that skin to continue down past his ribs, the narrowing of his waist to his hips. But the dark of his trousers were there, and Kyuhyun blew out a slow breath. He realized he should have offered a hand to help Zhou Mi up the rest of the way, but Zhou Mi was standing before he could even half put the thought into action. So he spoke instead.
“I suppose distress isn’t too bad, if it gets someone else to soil their clothes and not me.”
Zhou Mi bent down to retrieve his shirt and jacket. “These clothes have seen worse, no doubt. Nothing like a midday swim.”
There was humor in Zhou Mi’s eyes as he shrugged into his shirt. It was half as though he believed his words, half as though he was making fun again, something that Kyuhyun appreciated but wasn’t accustomed to. The white of the shirt soaked up the water, clinging to Zhou Mi’s skin, and Kyuhyun regretted as Zhou Mi shrugged into his jacket as well.
“You have a fondness for duck,” Zhou Mi said, tilting his head. “And you lose boats. You’re a very interesting man, Your Highness.”
“For the man who rescued my boat, it should be just Kyuhyun,” he said, and held out a hand. Gratitude.
“Just Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi repeated softly, and laughed again as Kyuhyun scoffed at him.
“Ambassador Zhou,” Kyuhyun said, finally remembering the introductions doled out by his mother. Kyuhyun had not been forced to meet all of them, but he had put a name to each face at the very least. It was strange to think he was paraded out as decoration, while ambassadors and those of rank talked. It all felt a bit slimy. “Ambassador of…?”
“An ambassador to your mother, to be sure. Outside of the castle, just Zhou Mi. And I hail from a small territory near the eastern sea,” Zhou Mi said. “A place few have been. It is smaller than this, but rich in resources. It is good to make connections to others, because it is isolated there. Few have left.”
“And since you have, do you wish to return?”
Water squeezed up out of the wet sand as they walked along it, and Zhou Mi made a thoughtful sound.
“It will always be a home to me, but there is too much to experience, to learn. I don’t know that I could go back and be content.”
Kyuhyun had not even left the castle for more than a day or two and he wondered if it would be the same, if he left that it would make it impossible for him to settle again. It should have made him afraid, but it only made him more curious to know all he could experience. He would live with the consequences, as long as he knew they would not be so severe.
“You are lucky to have been able to leave,” Kyuhyun mused. “My father would sooner make me ambassador to a rock in the sea than he would send me to someone’s court and expect positive things.”
“The rock would no doubt be more interesting,” Zhou Mi said. Kyuhyun nearly choked on his own inhale, and Zhou Mi’s laugh rang out. “No, I don’t mean to say all courts are stuffy and boring. There can be a lot of intrigue and political positioning. I find most people are there because they want something, or they want to know something. Both can be about the same.”
“Which is it for you?” Kyuhyun asked, and stopped with Zhou Mi in the shelter of a rock where the wind was not so quick but the sun could work on drying out the wet of Zhou Mi’s clothes. Kyuhyun wavered between looking to the sea, or to Zhou Mi, and wondered if the willingness to dive into an ocean was enough to cause a curiosity of what was inside of Zhou Mi’s head.
“I want to know everything,” Zhou Mi said, and though he did not laugh, the humor of it was in his voice. “It is a chance for connections, for invitations. It is how I found my way here, to a castle I had not heard of by the sea.”
And to a prince, though Zhou Mi did not say it. That was when Kyuhyun looked out, when Zhou Mi had turned his eyes toward Kyuhyun. Rather than stare back, make himself feel even more awkward, he studied a white sea bird picking at a clump of weeds.
“We have more fish than people,” Kyuhyun admitted. It was no secret that he was revealing. “But we straddle the entrance to the river, so those inland and those that want to trade inland wish to become very friendly.”
“Then you see many travelers.”
They did. Many who wanted to trade, or to pass through, or to forge a connection. Few stayed. Zhou Mi would not, moving on to another kingdom to accomplish his tasks. Kyuhyun could not creep into their carriages or the holds of their ships, not until he’d been given leave to. He had to believe his father would give him leave to explore, to learn. Kyuhyun had not ruined that much trust with him.
“There are many,” Kyuhyun agreed. “Did you come by ship or land?”
“By land, though the roads between are not what one would wish. An ambassador Lee, I was traveling with. When he goes, I will follow. He is more established,” Zhou Mi said, and it was a confiding glance. “He is allowed entrance when some are not.”
“And you gather information and memories of places you will not see again,” Kyuhyun said.
“I don’t leave never to return. There is a kind of joy in returning to a place, seeing if the memories formed there were true, if they can be good again. I will wonder if the ocean is as nice and brisk as I recall here, and-“ Zhou Mi did a decent job of avoiding Kyuhyun’s hand “- if princes still absently let their boats wander without them.”
“Perhaps I should have let myself wander with it. Left a note, sailed away.”
“I tried that, when I was younger,” Zhou Mi said. “I was back within a day. Sometimes it’s necessary to do what we must. Sometimes, the time that is right will show itself to us. You will have your time.”
“You have ears, so you know what people say of me.”
He did not delude himself to that. If Zhou Mi was humoring him to see if he could experience that wild prince from the rumors, then Kyuhyun wasn’t sure what he was expecting.
“I know what some people think,” Zhou Mi said. “And some of what they have made you think. But whether they agree with you or your thoughts, or your manners, there is no person in any kingdom who will please everyone. The people who think less of you have no reason to care, and those who do, I suspect want the best for you. You will find a place, whether it is here or elsewhere, and you will find people who appreciate you for the way you are. That’s what I believe.”
So yes, then Zhou Mi had heard. And instead of deciding that Kyuhyun was useless, he was instead trying to give him some measure of support. It was support he had heard, because Zhou Mi spoke truth in that there had always been a few souls who seemed to understand him. It did well to remember it, but he knew he would never be his brother.
“I want to change things,” Kyuhyun said fiercely. “Not as a king, but to change things for the better, to see lives improved, the kingdom safe. I want my father’s ear, and to sail for days on end and to see every corner of the land to see how to accomplish things.”
He wanted to throw out that he doubted himself, that he wondered if he could not tie up his own boat.
“We’re never sure what we can do until we try, and even if we fail when we knew we can succeed. And there are endless possibilities to fix things.”
“I’ll find a way,” Kyuhyun said.
Zhou Mi nodded once, acceptance. “Then I really will have to return to see it.”
Somehow that gratified him, that there was even the smallest portion of belief from a near stranger, one who went leaping into water to help out a prince.
***
Zhou Mi could see Kyuhyun’s surprise written on his face, but not more than the first time, or the second. The first time, it had been another function, Kyuhyun’s frowns almost radiating off of himself as though he dared anyone to come to speak to him. When Zhou Mi planted himself in front of Kyuhyun, it seemed like Kyuhyun was ready to shoo him off.
“Zh- Ambassador Zhou!”
“Your Highness,” Zhou Mi had said, smiling with his eyes. In that setting, they were their titles alone. But it had been Kyuhyun’s surprise, his eagerness to know where Zhou Mi had been, what he had seen, what news he brought, that had truly made Zhou Mi glad he had returned. It had only been several months, the warmth of late summer turning to the cold though not truly frigid end of fall. Would he be at his boat in the morning? Oh, indeed.
Zhou Mi lingered at the dock out of sight, waiting as Kyuhyun got the little boat ready to sail. Kyuhyun sang as he worked, something old and sad, but still jaunty in its way. He had not known that there was that voice inside of Kyuhyun’s attempt at a cool exterior. He regretted it, as he walked out, that Kyuhyun stopped as soon as he heard footfalls against the boards.
“Finally up?” Kyuhyun asked, and Zhou Mi laughed, coming even with him.
“I would have come earlier if I had known you would be singing.” And he scoffed right back when Kyuhyun did as well. “If you weren’t a prince, you could have made pretty coin at a tavern somewhere with a gift like that.”
“Perhaps that’s what I’ll do, then,” Kyuhyun said. “I’ll travel all the seas in my little boat, and sing for my supper in the harbor towns. It’d be an adventure.”
“It sounds like a worthwhile adventure. Permission to come aboard?”
“Of course. Come aboard, and we’ll sing up the wind, or call a mermaid or two.”
And Zhou Mi nearly fell onto the boat.
There were no strange occurrences, for which he was grateful, though Kyuhyun did sing a little more when prodded, some kind of bawdy sea shanty that had Zhou Mi laughing and clapping along.
“My mother doesn’t know I know that,” Kyuhyun said, grinning, and turning with the wind.
It was a short journey, but the boat was true, allowing Kyuhyun to show him the complexities of the little harbor before the tide turned. And, no surprise to them both, Kyuhyun had tied the boat up exactly as he should have.
“I would have had to drag you in and dump you in a warm bath if you’d gone in after the boat again. It’s too cold for anything to be in the water right now.”
Not anything. Many things, perhaps. The thought of Kyuhyun trying to warm him up had made him chuckle, but it was the thought behind it that made him smile. Kyuhyun cared. He was stubborn, and perhaps spoke at times before he had thought better of it, but he was also kind. He would have taken care of Zhou Mi, even if he’d left Zhou Mi to slog back in his still-damp clothes months earlier. Zhou Mi had been too intrigued to truly notice. The third time they had met, Zhou Mi had come over a mountain pass only a week previous, and had no desire to be near any sharp wind. Kyuhyun came to him, no doubt wan in the warmest clothes he owned in room he’d been provided in the outer castle. Kyuhyun arrived bearing tea, and soup, sitting with Zhou Mi some long hours and not requiring Zhou Mi to speak with his rasping voice though Zhou Mi had tried to tell him some of where he had just come from. He had always been heading toward the ocean, but when he had been struck by fever, he had been glad that there had only been one castle within a day’s ride.
“Do they worry I will pass my illness on to you?”
Kyuhyun had snorted. “If there is one thing I have learned, it is that when I say I am doing something, and I stand by my decision, no one argues. Not even my mother. Perhaps she wonders that a prince would attend to a lowly ambassador, but the thought of my being friendly with someone who could temper me? It would be worth a cough, I suppose.”
Zhou Mi just grunted, not sure that it was in any way worth it, and not wanting Kyuhyun to experience what he was. But he was warm, and he slept on and off, waking for more tea, and for Kyuhyun to soothe him right back to sleep with a passage from a book he was excited about, or the lull of his humming.
“You are very sick, or I am not very fascinating,” Kyuhyun teased, when he had returned with porridge.
“I have never known someone so fascinating,” Zhou Mi said, and he blamed it on his illness that he would speak so plainly. Though there were so many ways to interpret it, he did not want Kyuhyun thinking it was in any way other than that of one friend to another. One of lower birth, to that of higher. Sometimes when he saw Kyuhyun, he thought he saw his answer, what he had spent a long year seeking, and he wondered if he had the ability to see it through, if the answer was so easily found. His agreement was to harm none, but that did not mean that something of value would not be lost. He had not returned the first time because of it. But by the time he was on his feet again, after several days of shivering under blankets, he had begun to realize that to consider Kyuhyun for his question was not only choice, but had become nearly obligation.
“What is most important to you?” Zhou Mi asked, staring at the ring on one of Kyuhyun’s fingers and wishing that it would be as simple as that.
But Kyuhyun’s answer was quick, no thought, and no hesitation. “My crown,” Kyuhyun said.
As the symbol of his place in his family, of his place being able to help. The young man Zhou Mi had met, who had been unsure of his place even while knowing what he wanted to do within it, had begun to truly grow into the man he needed to become. His crown was his guarantee that one day he could accomplish much, even if it took some time. That crown was not on Kyuhyun’s head in his sick room, not as it had been the first time that Zhou Mi had seen him. He knew the look of it, the subtle gleam of gold, dark stones, the shapes the sea brought to him. A polished piece of drift wood. It was understated, but very much royal. It spoke of the place as much as it did of the person who wore it.
It had been designed by his grandfather, for Kyuhyun. Each member of his family had chosen a stone, an element, and it was their love and welcoming of Kyuhyun that was written into the very being of the crown. There were very few things that had that much meaning imbued into them, from their very creation.
There were times like those, when he was sick, that he missed the cradle of the water, fought against the dry heat with lungs that knew only that. To inhale in the water with those lungs was to die, and to try meant changing. And he’d sworn he would not, not until his quest was done, because that meant he knew it was worth it, that what he fought for was what he truly wanted.
He would get to stand on two legs, live his life on land as he chose. Whether that meant he wanted to call a plot of land his own and farm, or travel from fortress to castle, on land and sea. It was his life, and his own father had called him selfish for daring to want more, something different, something far away from the shelter of the ocean and a life that had such a clear and pre-defined end.
Perhaps that was what he saw in Kyuhyun, because perhaps Kyuhyun could not change his form, but he was not bound to his place in life without the ability to change it, or at least to mold it.
“They will think I smuggle for you or something worse,” Zhou Mi teased, at least feeling half himself. And before Kyuhyun could even ask what Zhou Mi could have been convinced to smuggle, Zhou Mi pulled out a packet. “I did bring these for you though. Apparently they’re a specialty, a sweet from the high mountains.”
The laugh tickled and threatened to make his throat ache when Kyuhyun stuck a whole piece in his mouth and proceeded to try and not make a face.
“Spit it out,” Zhou Mi gasped. “I didn’t try it. Is it that bad?”
Kyuhyun almost shuddered as he spit the candy back into the packet.
“Ugh. Um. Ooh. It tastes like. Pine sap mixed with dirt and honey and a hint of rancid grease.”
Zhou Mi’s stomach hurt from trying to hitch back the laugh that was mixed with his guilt. “I’m so sorry. I know not to bring you any more of that. Next time, I’ll try it first.”
“Be glad you didn’t,” Kyuhyun said. “But thank you, for thinking of me?”
Kyuhyun looked down, a gesture that was as cute as it was unexpected. Perhaps Kyuhyun did not know why Zhou Mi would have thought of him. He had passed many places without thought of a gift, but there in the high reach, he had known his next destination would be the sea - and by extension Kyuhyun, if he was still there. It had been impulse, one he did truly regret despite the gift not being to Kyuhyun’s tastes. It had been a gift in its own right, Kyuhyun’s company when he was at his most ill.
They watched the sweets burn, and Zhou Mi tested his throat.
“It is barely a village, where that comes from, more like a collection of houses. The people who live there must be exceptionally hardy and wanting to live away from most people. They tend to the road to keep it passable, and they feed and house travelers on their way without regard to compensation.”
“It sounds lonely, and yet it must be something that they enjoy?”
Zhou Mi nodded, remembering the families that had gathered, the stories traded as though those were the currency for the venison soup he had eaten. “I would say they have found their place.”
It felt warm, warmer than Zhou Mi could imagine sitting there. And Kyuhyun showed him a measure of his own place as well.
“We’ve been working,” Kyuhyun said almost absently, twisting the ring on his finger and frowning. “Boats pay a tax to pass through upriver when they carry food or items for sale. In lean times, I would lessen it on food, so that the captains would not need to pass that along to the people. But how would we know? When they arrived, they could charge in full, or more. They could only line their pockets.”
“But you would have given them the chance to do good. How would you change it?”
“My father suspects, as though people would pretend to go hungry to get a better price. If we had regulators, not even spies, we could keep them from coming up the river if they charged more. He thinks that if we took too hard a line, they would start taking products overland. Can you imagine trying to keep wagons full of water trying to move fish and products?”
“The greedy will find a way. But it is an interesting prospect,” Zhou Mi said, considering it, as he shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “If they had contracts, you could regulate them, at least if they were selling within your lands.”
“That would be something it would be nice to even try. The castle can more easily absorb the cost. But because I am second born, and because I am- Because I could not implement it, my father won’t listen.”
“And your brother?”
“He says he’s still learning. He chooses carefully what to push to my father. I’ve never learned that. But I will think on this contract, perhaps create an example, write out rules so that they can read it. I wonder how they would listen if it was not from me.”
“You will find a way to make them see,” Zhou Mi encouraged him.
“Perhaps. It is something worth working towards. Perhaps, by the time you return..?”
Zhou Mi smiled, and nodded. Kyuhyun asked, without truly asking. But he did not have to ask himself if he would be back, to watch that thoughtful look cross Kyuhyun’s face.
To see if Kyuhyun was an answer he had been seeking to a bargain he had made, a bargain that loomed closer.
***
Kyuhyun woke, pulling wet cloth away from his throat, nearly scratching himself raw as he gasped, and choked. His eyes were streaming, his throat aching, but he breathed. He couldn’t taste the salt water, couldn’t feel the burn in his lungs as they strained and then filled with cold. He rose from his bed, soaked in sweat, and found his covers had been scattered as though he’d been thrashing. It made him shudder. It had felt all too real, though he had never truly drowned, just accidentally inhaling water. That had hurt enough. Around him, tiny pebbles had sank, pink, blue, white and red, and when he had screamed, all he had heard was silence. Pebbles Zhou Mi had brought him on his last visit, swearing they would taste better than what he had brought before. Though he’d been appalled when Kyuhyun had pretended to try and eat one. He wondered what that meant, that they sank with him.
But again, there had been that creature circling, a tail just out of reach as though it would drag him to the surface, take him back to air and home. He discarded his shirt, drenched in sweat, and curled on his side in bed, closing his eyes and searching for the distant sound of the waves and knowing it could not reach him there.
***
They left their boots behind, wading at first with caution - or at least Zhou Mi did - and then with daring. Kyuhyun was the first one to plunge in up to his knees, shouting as the cold ocean water splashed up onto his thighs. Zhou Mi had been back in town for less than three hours when he had found Kyuhyun, and he had felt it an accident, almost - his only purpose had been to get to the ocean, to feel it properly after months of being inland with only the river and streams to speak to him. It had been the first time in so long that he had nearly been sick with missing the ocean, and he’d pretended to sleep the majority of the carriage ride wondering if his time grew nearer, if he could keep exploring as freely as he had.
He wondered if it meant that he no longer wanted to.
His smile had nearly caught fire when he saw Kyuhyun winding up the edge of the sand, his boots in one hand as the water wended to him and back. He stood, and he waited, until Kyuhyun glanced up, and glanced up a second time, and it was a different kind of sickness to see Kyuhyun’s smile, the way he splashed along the last thirty feet between them.
“Ambassador Zhou,” Kyuhyun said, executing a pretty bow as he grin had no formality in it. “You’re back.”
As though the pretty town by the sea was where Zhou Mi returned to, instead of continually passing through it on his way to other places.
“Your Highness,” Zhou Mi said, and played along.
“Take off your boots,” Kyuhyun demanded, moving so he could brush Zhou Mi’s shoulder with his own as he pointed down the beach. “It’s finally warm enough to do this without worrying about losing toes.”
He used Kyuhyun to lean against as he pulled off his boots, his socks. They left them and their jackets in a pile near the rocks, moving from dry, shifting sand to wet and solid, and to the water.
“Where did you come from this time? When did you arrive?” Kyuhyun asked, plowing through the water and forcing Zhou Mi to move or get even wetter.
“I arrived earlier this morning, and we had traveled to all the towns along the river,” Zhou Mi said.
“By carriage?” Kyuhyun sneered.
“Sadly for my back,” Zhou Mi joked, and shouted, leaping, just before Kyuhyun plunged his hands into the water and flung a plume toward him.
“Those clothes won’t be ruined by a little water, surely,” Kyuhyun said, panting as he approached like some awkward human-imagined sea monster.
The monsters that truly lived there, no human could conceive of.
“And if I walk into the castle complex looking like I fell into the water again?”
It wasn’t as though he cared, though Kyuhyun seemed to take that as a challenge, chasing Zhou Mi up and down in the shallow water, getting him wetter than a few splashes ever could have. Not to mention the ocean itself chasing them up the beach with a particularly enthusiastic wave that splashed Zhou Mi up over his hips. Kyuhyun was gasping, wet to his shoulders and shaking his fist at the sea in betrayal, and all Zhou Mi could do was sink onto his knees and laugh until all the pent up sickness, the worry, the waiting, was carried out by the water that swirled around him. And Kyuhyun didn’t even take advantage of his weakened state, merely flicking water at Zhou Mi’s head and kneeling beside him. Kyuhyun filled his palm with sand and they both watched as the water swirled it away.
“I wonder where things end up, when they go into the ocean,” Kyuhyun said, watching bubbles and flotsam glide past.
“So many places. They follow currents and waves. They don’t have any sails, but the ocean has no true destination,” Zhou Mi said. “Other beaches in places we cannot imagine, with sands of different colors, warm the year through, and waters so clear you can see deep down into it.”
Volcanoes that rumbled, and storms that swirled. There was so much to be seen, so much Zhou Mi had heard of the ocean itself that he had not seen. He could not see his future or his past in the water he cupped, but that did not keep him from looking, or from startling when he looked up to see Kyuhyun staring at him.
“Do you think there are really places like that out there?”
“Yes. I’ve heard of them from people who have seen them. I wonder how those that saw them believe it.”
“You speak of the ocean like it’s a friend,” Kyuhyun said. “It’s nice to hear because to you it would be more than escape.”
It was not escape. Home, maybe. A home he had loved, but a home he had wanted to be free of. He wondered what Kyuhyun would look like in those warm beaches, hair dark against white sand. He wondered if Kyuhyun would be happy there, away from his family, his duties. Perhaps for a short while. Perhaps.
“One day, maybe I can show you one of those places, or maybe you can find your way there somehow,” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun hummed thoughtfully, mounding up sand for the water to rush against.
“Maybe you should sing for it. To protect it? Or maybe destroy it?” Zhou Mi asked, adding his own gloppy handful of sand to Kyuhyun’s little mountain.
Kyuhyun let out a sound not unlike a bullfrog, and they both sputtered with laughter as the water raced up around the pile of sand and their own legs.
“Do you sing often?” Zhou Mi asked, as fascinated by the rich tone he’d heard before Kyuhyun had been joking as he had been the first time.
“Oh, I do,” Kyuhyun said, his lips twisting. “If my parents can’t trust me to talk, they know I can sing. I haven’t for many, mostly the very important, but I know people know me for that as well.”
“At least your parents know what a gift you have.”
“They would have traded my voice for a slower tongue, I think,” Kyuhyun said.
No. No, he didn’t think so. They could have broken Kyuhyun in so many ways but they hadn’t. Yes, he knew his place, and yes, he knew the opinions of others, but he was not locked away, sent away, and Zhou Mi held himself back to keep from covering Kyuhyun’s wrist to somehow pass along his belief simply through touch.
“But that would be like asking the ocean to give up the tide. You would not be the same person, a person precious to them.”
Kyuhyun stared at him for a moment, blinking, processing. “So you’re saying instead of working for changes I want, I could have instead been born only wanting to, I don’t know, raise sheep.”
“They would have been well-tended sheep?” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun shook his head.
“You are a strange person.”
“You should know by now,” Zhou Mi teased, shivering, suddenly warmer in the water than out of it. And a sign that they should go.
He shoved at Kyuhyun with a hand as he tried to stand, because Kyuhyun was laughing at him, the water weighing down his clothes and making it hard for him to get up. It felt strange to be back in the air again, and not surrounded by the water, and he felt the weight of his limbs as he followed Kyuhyun back to the dark sand, and walked with him toward their abandoned boots. They’d gone further than he’d realized, chasing each other down the beach like children. Kyuhyun’s cheeks were red from the wind, and for a moment, just a moment, he considered reaching to grasp Kyuhyun’s cold hand.
Zhou Mi reached for his jacket instead, swallowing hard, and brought back to himself as he heard the crinkling of paper. It was a smaller packet, a bit sticky on the outside but the candy in it was still good.
“Oh. I brought something with me. A different kind of sweet,” Zhou Mi said, and waited until Kyuhyun took it. “Personally approved.”
Though Kyuhyun looked skeptical, he still stuck a corner of one of the white candies in his mouth. After a moment, Kyuhyun nodded.
“Yes, much better than the other one.”
“How many good ones will it take you to trust me?”
And it was a legitimate question, because it seemed that Kyuhyun was cautious every time he opened a gift, including the one of rocks though Zhou Mi had been up front about that. It was as though Zhou Mi was going to tell him it was rocks, but it was really going to be something that was going to reach out and bite him. The rocks were less disgusting, too, and he couldn’t have said why the little stones had reminded him of Kyuhyun. Something to make Kyuhyun laugh, perhaps.
“So you can sneak me in something disgusting again?”
“I didn’t say that,” Zhou Mi protested, and laughed when Kyuhyun drew himself all up. “No, truly. I wouldn’t want you to have a reason to regret my return.”
“I wouldn’t, even if you had the worst taste in candy,” Kyuhyun said, rolling his eyes. “Do you meet with anyone tonight?”
“No, why?” Zhou Mi said, and considered pulling on his jacket. He didn’t want it to get wet. And just as he’d finally decided, Kyuhyun started walking back along the path up the same way that Zhou Mi had come down.
“I’ll send for you later, after you’ve had time to rest from your journey,” Kyuhyun said.
And that was a pronouncement like a prince, and Zhou Mi laughed to himself, pleased, and liked to have drowned himself in the warm bath in his little room as soon it was drawn.
***
Part Two