[fic] across staves, 1/2
Title: Across Staves
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi
Genre: Romance
Rating: R
Notes: grisclair posted plot bunnies, and I stole one of them. /o\
Word Count: 13,500
Summary: Rockstar!AU. It wasn’t Zhou Mi’s fault that he always ended up fucking that one guy backstage after every show for the last two months. No, really.
There has to be something that makes him come back again and again.
The adrenaline is still running thick in Zhou Mi’s veins when he slams the younger man against the wall of the dressing room. The chatter of staff just outside the door makes every touch more electrifying, every gasp and press of lips against skin hot. This isn’t the first this has happened, but Zhou Mi never tires of it, oddly enough.
“We need to be-”
“Quick, I know,” Kyuhyun finishes for him, sounding breathless. “You say that every time.”
“Yeah, well, because it’s true.”
“Wouldn’t it be hotter if someone walked in on us? Sungmin, maybe?” Zhou Mi’s lips are sealed when Kyuhyun kisses him, just the taste of him making goose bumps rise on his arms. Zhou Mi sighs against his mouth and melts into his body, letting instinct take over, just desires and needs and delicious, delicious friction.
It isn’t even twenty minutes later when they’re zipping up their pants, and Kyuhyun is out the door.
-
They’re grabbing another typical late night snack after their concert, Sungmin and Henry stuffing their faces with so much food that they might burst. Victoria blows on her noodles before every bite, making sure her area of the table remains clean while her male bandmates destroy everything else.
Zhou Mi’s hands are still shaking a little from the leftover adrenaline that the sex brought.
“Are you alright?” Victoria asks him, her soft voice curling around the consonants of Mandarin.
“Yeah,” he returns in the same language. “Why?”
“Nothing,” she replies airily, glancing at his untouched food. “You should eat something before you snap in two. You’re a walking toothpick.” She tells him this every time they eat, so Zhou Mi is unconcerned, but her tone is laced with suspicion. Victoria has always been the uncomfortably perceptive member of their band, even though Zhou Mi hasn’t told anyone that he’s been fucking Kyuhyun for the past-what, three weeks?
He glances at Sungmin, who has slowed down his eating pace, staring off into space as he chews his food. He can’t really remember if he’s said anything of substance to him today, unless “Did you take my VitaminWater?” counts as something of substance.
It’s been about…four weeks since Zhou Mi and Sungmin broke up.
He feels Victoria watching him when he suddenly begins shoveling food into his mouth to distract himself from his watery eyes, but luckily enough, she doesn’t say anything.
-
Although Zhou Mi isn’t one to support sleeping with strangers in order to get over breakups, Kyuhyun presented himself at the perfect time.
From what Zhou Mi gathered, Kyuhyun is a fan-a very avid fan, clearly, since he’s been at the front row of every show since Seoul, seemingly flying from city to city, country to country with them. Zhou Mi is unsure of where he even gets the money, but he has to admit, it’s always nice to see a familiar face in the crowd, front and center every time.
It wasn’t until Nanjing that they actually came face to face, though. Zhou Mi had just finished up at the hotel’s sauna and was heading back to his room when he was cornered in the hallway.
“What happened tonight?” Kyuhyun had asked. “You sucked.”
Zhou Mi had blinked, staring at him in bewilderment. “Excuse me?”
“Look, people pay you to see you on stage, so the least you could do is mask the heartbreak written all over your face. What is it, did your girlfriend dump you?”
“That’s none of your business,” he’d answered carefully. “We have a fan signing event next week-you can see me then, but I’m really tired right now, so would you mind?” Having broken up with your boyfriend but still being forced to see him every day wasn’t good for his health.
“Look, I just-” Kyuhyun ran a hand through his hair, just a mess of curls on his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Kyuhyun.”
Zhou Mi literally felt the exhaustion seeping into his bones. He really didn’t need this right now. “It’s nice to meet you, Kyuhyun. I’m Zhou Mi.”
“Yeah, I know. Just-hang in there, alright? Whatever it is, it’ll get better.” The other man shuffled on his feet awkwardly, the words coming out sounding weird. But Zhou Mi appreciated the thought anyway, and he nodded, smiling.
“Thanks. I’ll try to look at the brighter side of things.”
Three days later, in Beijing, he saw Kyuhyun at his hotel again. A stalker fan? he had wondered, but he didn’t think much of it-they’ve had several those in the past years, and Kyuhyun was no different.
(Except for the part where he was, of course. Kyuhyun was always a little different from everyone else.)
Two days later, and they were in Incheon, back in Korea. It was then that their mouths fit together desperately, limbs tangling and lips mapping skin, quiet whimpers kept secret within the four walls of the empty dressing room.
-
“Mi!” Sungmin’s voice pulls him from his fuzzy sleep. “Mi, wake up.”
Zhou Mi groans, rolling over and nearly falling off the couch that he’s sleeping on. They all slept in the studio last night, after deeming it too late to return to their respective homes. “What time is it,” he mutters, eyes squinting as he adjusts his surroundings.
“Almost nine, c’mon, Victoria wants to have an early rehearsal.”
“I don’t-ugh, what. Why.” He groggily sits up and accidentally steps on Henry, who’s sleeping on the floor.
“I don’t know.” Sungmin is stretching, the cracks in his back audible as the muscles shift underneath his shirt. “She was probably just bored while waiting for us to wake up.”
Zhou Mi averts his eyes and heads straight to the bathroom. He doesn’t need this first thing in the morning.
(“I don’t know, you’re just kind of…around all the time, I guess. It gets a little suffocating.”)
When Victoria checks up on them half an hour later, looking stunning even though she slept in those clothes, Sungmin and Zhou Mi are both ready and waiting. Henry is still sleepy-eyed but has managed to sit up with legs spread like a child and blindly grab his guitar, and they’re plugging in amps and getting ready, even if Victoria expresses her distaste at Henry not even washing his face beforehand.
It’s cloudy in Seoul, which is pretty typical weather. Seoul is kind of like Zhou Mi’s second home-when he’s not in Wuhan, he’s here. Zhou Mi loves this city almost as much as he loves his hometown-the fast-paced atmosphere, the different culture. There’s some sort of satisfaction in being able to speak his lilted Korean and be understood-so no matter how gloomy this place is, Zhou Mi is always happy to be here.
(“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you anymore-because I do, Mi, please don’t think that I don’t-but I never have time to myself. I can’t breathe.”)
“You okay, Mi? What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I don’t know, maybe I haven’t warmed up enough yet. Sorry. Can we start from the refrain again?”
(“In the future? I really don’t know…”)
“Henry, you’re a little out of tune.”
(“We’ve been together for almost two years and although I like it, I don’t know if we’re going to get anywhere…”)
“Sungmin, turn up your amp?”
(“I want to get somewhere in life, Mi.”)
The music around him stops. “Mi-you missed your entrance.”
He blinks. “Oh, my bad.” He smiles weakly. “Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Let’s go again?”
(“I’m sorry.”)
-
Zhou Mi usually doesn’t see Kyuhyun unless it’s after a show, because they don’t have each other’s contact information.
So what is Kyuhyun doing…?
“Even if you continue insisting that you’re not a stalker fan, I’m going to have a difficult time believing it,” Zhou Mi tells him. “How did you know I live here?”
“There have been speculations online.” Kyuhyun shrugs. “I occasionally check those places when I know you’re in Seoul for a period of time.” He pauses. “I’m not a stalker fan, okay?”
“You’re crazy,” Zhou Mi mutters. “I’d invite you in, but that doesn’t really feel right. Is there a reason why you’re here?”
“I, um…” Kyuhyun shifts on his feet. “Kind of, yeah. Would you mind coming back to my place, though?”
A small seedling of doubt is planted in Zhou Mi’s stomach. Physically, he’s been the closest to Kyuhyun any two people could possibly be, but they hardly know a thing about each other. (Well, Kyuhyun might know things about him. But to Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun is a mystery, other than the fact that he’s awesome in bed.) For Kyuhyun to invite him to his home feels like they’re stepping over the lines that they’ve set up-sex, and only sex.
Unless they’re going to have sex back at his place, which Zhou Mi has absolutely nothing against.
So he agrees, and leaves the apartment building with Kyuhyun and getting into his car.
“I have this friend,” Kyuhyun tells him as they begin to drive. “And I kind of hinted to him about-y’know, us.”
“…Ah.” He clears his throat. “You do realize that if this gets out, I’m in big trouble, right?”
“Relax. It won’t get out.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you really cared about the consequences of sleeping with me, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.” Kyuhyun’s voice is smooth, cold and calculating and impartial-completely different from the way he sounds during sex. Zhou Mi swallows-he really doesn’t know Kyuhyun. Not at all.
After a short period of silence, he asks, “Why me? Why not Sungmin or Henry?”
Kyuhyun glances at him momentarily out of the corner of his eye. “Why me? Why not some other random dude in the crowd?”
Good question, actually. Zhou Mi doesn’t answer it.
Maybe because Kyuhyun presented himself at the right time, easy and willing? Zhou Mi isn’t the type to use sex to get over heartbreak, but Kyuhyun was right there, with soft lips and empty eyes-his body language literally promised sex with no strings attached, and…he’s just so different from Sungmin. At least when Zhou Mi’s with Kyuhyun, he’s not swept up in a whirlwind of emotions.
He’s trying to get over Sungmin. He really is. Some days are better than others. He’s getting there.
(But then, some days are just as bad as the first one.)
Zhou Mi has never dealt with heartbreak well.
He isn’t sure what to expect when Kyuhyun opens the door to his apartment, but smelly is not one of them. It generally looks tidy, but after he slips out of his shoes and follows Kyuhyun into the kitchen, he sees empty take-out boxes strewn everywhere, dishes in the sink waiting to be washed-luckily enough, Kyuhyun just grabs his laptop from the table and redirects Zhou Mi to the living room, which is significantly less dizzying with odd odors.
“The friend that I told about you,” Kyuhyun says. “He’s, uh, an ass a lot of the time. And he likes to film things on his phone.”
“Okay?” Zhou Mi uncertainly sinks onto the couch beside him.
“He took this video of me a while back,” the other man explains as he turns on his laptop. “I wasn’t going to let it see the light of day, but he threatened to out us to the world if I didn’t show you.”
“Funny,” he comments, “I didn’t think you were the type of person to heed to other people’s threats.”
Kyuhyun laughs dryly. “You don’t know my friend.” He clicks around on his laptop before shifting it so Zhou Mi can see the screen clearly, and begins playing the video.
For the first minute or so, Zhou Mi watches, unfazed. The video is just of Kyuhyun at a karaoke bar, singing one of his band’s more popular songs-but about halfway through, Zhou Mi blinks, straightening up and staring at the real Kyuhyun.
“Your singing-” He looks back at the video. “You’re really good.”
“Really?” Kyuhyun asks, even though it sounds like he already knows the answer. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Wow, where did you learn to sing like that?” Zhou Mi watches in awe as the Kyuhyun in the video belts out a high note, his voice lifting until he matches the pitch perfectly. There’s always a sort of satisfaction to hear someone hit a note spot on when you think that they can’t-it just kind of slips into place and-
Kyuhyun’s so good that he’s forgotten how to breathe for a moment.
When the song in the video ends and someone, who Zhou Mi assumes to be Kyuhyun’s friend, starts yelling something, Kyuhyun shuts his laptop and clears his throat. “Yeah.”
“…Wow,” he says after a flabbergasted moment. “I think you should replace me in our band.”
“Can’t. Too much screaming will damage my throat.”
“It’s not screaming.”
“Yeah, well.” Kyuhyun fidgets a little, and Zhou Mi finds it incredibly endearing-the person who immediately saw right through his façade after he broke up with Sungmin is suddenly the flustered one. “That’s all I wanted to show you. You can forget about it, though.”
Zhou Mi looks around the living room; the area is sparse in terms of decorations, but there are clear signs that Kyuhyun lives here. There are a few pieces of outerwear strewn on the backs of chairs, different gaming systems and a mess of wires around the television-apart from the laptop that Kyuhyun just set aside, there is also a MacBook sitting on the coffee table.
“You never told me what you do for a living,” he says to Kyuhyun. “What do you do?”
“I’m unemployed,” Kyuhyun answers. “Still in school.”
“Oh. Then…shouldn’t you be studying instead of always coming to our shows?”
There’s a slight edge to Kyuhyun’s voice that makes Zhou Mi feel unwanted. “I can handle it-I have a 3.8 GPA.” He clears his throat. “But anyway, yeah, you probably don’t want to discuss my life-”
“I do!” Zhou Mi insists. Kyuhyun doesn’t quite fall into the category of a friend, but he’s definitely someone who’s made some sort of impact on his life. “Why don’t you think I do?”
Kyuhyun shrugs. “Let’s do what we’re best at.”
“Which is what?”
“I think you know.” His hand creeps up Zhou Mi’s thigh, and Zhou Mi shivers, goosebumps rising on his skin. Kyuhyun’s mouth meets his before he has a chance to respond, and Zhou Mi moulds himself so he fits right against him, soft curves and warm skin. Kyuhyun has always been comforting in the oddest of ways.
“I think getting to know you is just as exciting,” he says breathlessly when Kyuhyun’s fingers fumble with the zipper of his jeans.
“Wrong.” Kyuhyun nips at his collarbone. “This is better.”
-
The sound of tuning instruments and amps are all that Zhou Mi hears ten minutes before their show starts. Victoria is fluttering around, checking up on each of them, since she plays the drums and doesn’t need to tune.
“You ready?” she asks as she approaches him, reaching out to smooth down his collar of his leather jacket. He nods. “You drank water?” He nods again. “…What’s this?”
“What’s what?” He follows her gaze, but what she’s looking at is out of his line of sight.
“That on your neck-is that a hickey?”
He chokes on himself. “I, uh-no? …Maybe?”
“Mi!”
“It was just-it just happened, okay? Won’t happen again, I promise.” He pulls away from her and readjusts his collar. “It was a one time thing.”
Victoria’s eyes are wide with worry. “This isn’t like you,” she says, in a way that has guilt stabbing Zhou Mi right in the gut. “What’s wrong? Is everything alright?” She pauses. “Is this about Sungmin?”
“No,” he says immediately. “Well, yes. Maybe.” But it also has to do with Kyuhyun too, right? If it was all about Sungmin, then Zhou Mi would’ve picked up whoever he found in the crowd who was staring extra longingly at him. But every time, it was Kyuhyun-it has only ever been Kyuhyun. Zhou Mi shrinks a little under Victoria’s scrutiny, feeling tiny even though he has at least a head on her. “I’m okay, I promise.”
Her expression clearly says that she doesn’t believe them, but they’re being queued by the staff to get in line and shut up because the show is about to start in five minutes. Zhou Mi stands at the front of the line, with Henry behind him, then Sungmin, then Victoria. They listen to the chants of the crowd, the vibrations of the opening band shaking the floorboards underneath their feet; the excitement begins to bubble in his veins, even though he’s had this show and gone through this setlist so many times that it’s been engraved permanently in his mind. No show is quite the same-every venue is different, every crowd has its own quirks.
Henry is fixing the strap of his guitar when the opening band finishes and returns backstage, sweaty and grinning. A staff member holds his hand up, counting down until it’s their turn to run on stage-and in the moments before they do, Zhou Mi can only think of Kyuhyun’s face, in the very front row.
-
“There’s a-” Zhou Mi looks around to make sure none of the staff whizzing around are paying attention. “Hickey on my neck! I thought we discussed this!”
“Did we?” Kyuhyun asks innocently. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m going to-ugh.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Okay, Kyuhyun, go home. I’m tired.”
“But you’re sexy, all sweaty and tousled like that.” A faint smirk plays at Kyuhyun’s lips. “I love it when you look like this.”
Zhou Mi sighs, but before he can try kicking Kyuhyun out again, someone calls out to him from the other end of the hall. “Mi! Why haven’t you changed yet?” He glances over his shoulder to see Sungmin in the distance, and his heart suddenly twists painfully.
“I’ll be right there!” He turns back to Kyuhyun. “Sorry, but I’m just really tired today, okay? And we were just at it earlier today-” He stops mid-sentence, distracted by a suddenly onslaught of emotions. “Sorry.”
“Wait.” Kyuhyun grabs Zhou Mi’s wrist, his fingers easily wrapping all the way around. “Sungmin. Were you and Sungmin a thing?”
“What? Uh, yeah-no!” He can’t answer with a clear head right now-the excitement of the show is still pumping in his veins, and sometimes that causes strong feelings to occur when he looks at Sungmin. Now is one of those times-they don’t happen as often anymore, but they do still happen.
“So that night-the first time we talked, were you upset because of him?”
Zhou Mi tries to pay attention to Kyuhyun-he blinks and the image of the man before him focuses, eyes wide and features on edge. “Yes,” he answers. “We broke up not long before then.”
“Oh.” Kyuhyun nods slowly. “I see.”
“Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s just-no, it’s nothing.” He shakes his head. “I just thought-I don’t know.”
“Thought what?”
“Nothing.” Kyuhyun’s voice is shaking imperceptibly; he’s gone a little paler than he usually is, and he’s avoiding Zhou Mi’s eyes. “It’s okay, you’re tired tonight, I get it. Get some rest, okay?” He gives Zhou Mi a strained smile before turning on his heels and walking away, steps hurried and faltering.
Zhou Mi wants to call him back to ask him what’s wrong, but the doubt of whether he wants to know holds him back.
-
“Who was that?” Sungmin asks him a few minutes later when Zhou Mi returns to the dressing room, shedding off his jacket and rolling his shoulders to get out a few kinks.
“No one,” he answers without looking at him. “Where’s Henry?”
“He went out to buy snacks.” Silence falls on them after that as Zhou Mi strips himself of his clothes with slowed movements. He’s used to this silence now-it’s been there ever since their relationship ended. It’s suffocating. “You were great tonight, by the way. You kind of scared us for a while with our last rehearsal.”
“Like I said, I was just tired.” And he still is tired. He knows breakups are hard, but they’re even harder when the wounds are constantly being prodded. If he didn’t have to see Sungmin every day, Zhou Mi’s sure that he would be well on his way to being happy again. He goes through the movements, wiping off his thick layers of makeup, pulling on his t-shirt and jeans, hanging up his stage clothes up so the staff can send them in to clean later. He really is tired-he didn’t realize how exhausted he is until now.
Once he finally has everything in order, he slumps into a chair, waiting for Henry to return with the snacks. Victoria should be coming soon, too, from her own dressing room.
“You used to smile a lot more,” Sungmin says offhandedly from the other side of the room. “You were always the life of the room.”
“I still smile,” Zhou Mi says, tugging at a loose string of his shirt. He needs to go shopping again soon.
“But not as much, you know? Are you still upset about…y’know, us?”
“Upset is a little bit of an understatement,” he grumbles, too quiet for Sungmin to catch. He looks up at the man across the room, and sees Sungmin staring at him, waiting for a response. “We were together for two years, Sungmin. I want to be away from you to deal with a breakup of two years and I can’t even do that. How do you think I feel?” Sungmin doesn’t answer him, and Zhou Mi exhales heavily, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. He doesn’t want to hear anything or see anything right now.
Henry and Victoria come in not long later with snacks and drinks. Zhou Mi flips on his smile almost effortlessly as he helps distribute things, starting up a conversation with Victoria.
He can’t shake off the feeling of Sungmin watching him all the while, or Kyuhyun’s expression earlier, just before he left.
-
Kyuhyun is at the next show in Busan, in the front row as usual. He’s always been a quiet fan, standing there and watching while everyone else screams and jumps, but he never misses a single show. Zhou Mi feels the sweat at the back of his neck from the heat of the lights, his heart beating in sync with Victoria’s rhythm.
Performing makes everything go away-being on stage, singing his heart out-this is where nothing else matters. The world could be falling apart around him, but could still be put on hold as long as he’s here.
The ringing of Henry’s final notes echo as Zhou Mi shakes his sweaty hair out of his eyes, the crowd’s screams deafening. He yells into the microphone to rile them up even more, and Henry’s notes die out, Victoria giving one last smash on her cymbals.
“Thank you, Busan!” he screams. His throat feels like it’s about to give out. “You’ve been a great crowd tonight!” He steps back from the microphone, waving. Henry and Sungmin are unplugging their instruments, and Victoria is already on her feet, waving enthusiastically as well. In a few short minutes, they’re backstage, out of the hot glare of the stage lights.
Henry whistles. “Good show, guys.” Everyone is already stripping out of their jackets, fanning the perspiration on their faces. Zhou Mi quickly slips away from them and heads out to the hallway that connects the stage and pit, which is usually used for fans with backstage passes. That’s usually where he meets Kyuhyun after every show. He waits there for ten minutes, watching security and other staff move back and forth, but Kyuhyun doesn’t come.
Zhou Mi frowns. Perhaps he’s busy today?
He waits for ten minutes more, but when Kyuhyun still hasn’t arrived, he sighs and returns to the dressing room, where Henry and Sungmin go through their routine of asking him where he was.
Kyuhyun doesn’t show up after the next show either. Or the next one. Or the one after that. He’s always there, though-Zhou Mi sees him every time, in the front row, mouthing the words to every single song, standing sturdy in the sea of moving and sweaty bodies. They even make eye contact several times during the performance, but when Zhou Mi waits for him afterwards, he never shows.
By the fifth show in Daegu, Zhou Mi’s confused and frustrated to the point where he would call Kyuhyun and demand an explanation, if only he had his number. He stalks into the dressing room, shutting the door a little harder than usual, not even sparing Sungmin or Henry a glance.
What was Kyuhyun thinking about the last time they met? What had caused his voice to waver? In their few months of knowing each other, Zhou Mi had never seen him like that before.
“What do you guys want to eat later?” Sungmin asks him and Henry. “It’s my turn to pay.”
“Barbecue!” Henry shouts gleefully. “Black bean noodles!”
“Mi? What about you?”
“Whatever,” Zhou Mi answers. “I’m not really that hungry.”
“Are you okay, hyung? It doesn’t look like you’ve been well lately.” Henry sidles up to him, pressing the back of his hand to Zhou Mi’s forehead. Zhou Mi pulls away and glares, if not a little affectionately.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He’s tired, yeah. Confused and worried about Kyuhyun, yeah. But unwell, he is not. “Black bean noodles, you said? I’m down with that.” Henry frowns but leaves him alone after that. “Hey, have you guys seen my socks?”
A little later, when they’re full from the black bean noodles, Zhou Mi joins Victoria on a couch in the lobby of their hotel.
“Can’t sleep?” Victoria asks.
“More like don’t want to. You don’t know what it’s like to room with two other guys.”
She laughs quietly, giving him a little push. “You’re right, I don’t. No privacy, I assume.”
“None at all.” They sit in the kind of silence that only friends of several years can share, both of them in their own thoughts. Victoria has always been the kind of person that Zhou Mi isn’t afraid to be himself around-she’s oddly comfortable, and always finds a way to be weirder than you so you don’t feel out of place. Victoria is an old friend-one that he can speak his mother tongue with. He calls her by her Chinese name whenever he can, when Sungmin and Henry aren’t around.
“Hey.” She suddenly perks up. “Do you want me to teach you how to play the drums?”
Zhou Mi blinks. “Why this, all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs, grinning. “If we’re going to sit here staring off into space, we might as well do something productive!” She grabs him by the wrist, tugging him out the main doors of the hotel. “I snagged the keys to the van.”
He gapes. “Song Qian!”
“I do it all the time! C’mon, let’s go.”
Sungmin and Henry can carry their instruments around, but Victoria’s drum set spends most of its time in the back of their van. Together, they move the set to a secluded patio beside the hotel. Zhou Mi thinks this is ridiculous and even a little embarrassing, but Victoria explains the different parts of the drum set to him with genuine enthusiasm.
“I really can’t play,” he continues to insist when she shoves the drumsticks into his hands, pushing him down into the stool.
“Do it!” she barks. “Bass, snare, snare, snare. Bass, snare, snare, snare. Steady, Mi, it’s not as if you don’t know how to hold a beat!”
“Stop screaming at me!” He accidentally smashes the the cymbals in his defensive flailing, which only causes Victoria to shriek even louder. “You can’t expect me to be as good as you the first time I try!” His arms fall limp when she stands behind him and grabs each of his wrists, helping him along with what to hit, reciting steadily in his ear so he knows when to hit the bass drum with his foot.
This is Victoria-unrelenting rhythm, just like a heartbeat-here when you pay attention, here when you don’t. Never once resting, always here to help-Zhou Mi squirms underneath her touch, and she releases him, both of them laughing until their stomachs hurt.
“I miss seeing you smile like that,” she tells him once they finally calm down. “It’s been a while.”
“Has it?” he hums.
“I’m not blind, you know. You think I haven’t noticed that you aren’t as happy anymore?”
Am I really that obvious, Zhou Mi wonders to himself. “I’m happy,” he reassures her, even though it doesn’t really have that effect on himself.
“How long have we been friends for, Mi?” Victoria asks, sounding exasperated. “I’m offended if you think I don’t know you. You’re not happy.”
“I’m just…tired. Really.”
“Mm.” She stretches herself on the bench of the patio, lying down and pillowing her head with her arms. “After this tour, let’s take a break.”
“From what? The band?”
“Yeah! A long one, too-I don’t mean those one week vacations that we have only because we’ll tear each other’s throats out if we don’t get some time alone, but a real break-maybe a year off, I don’t know. So we can do other things.”
Zhou Mi laughs. “You dream too big. Financially, it’d be a lot more difficult that way than it is to just stay together.”
“Yeah, but you need it.” She sighs, a little wistfully, like a glimpse of a dream that they can barely see. “We all need it.” When he doesn’t answer and taps on the snare with his fingertips instead, she stands up and wraps her arms around his shoulders from behind, the warmth of her cheek against his hair. “Let’s talk to Sungmin and Henry about it tomorrow.”
Imperceptibly, he tilts his head into her touch. “Okay.”
-
After Mokpo, they have one week resting in Seoul before they’re off for a few final shows. Henry and Sungmin have agreed to taking a break after this: Sungmin says that he’s always wanted to dedicate some time to learning languages, and Henry would like to expand more in his music style and compose different things. Zhou Mi’s glad that they’ve agreed, because he isn’t sure how long he would last if they didn’t.
On Monday, he lazes the day away. He sleeps until noon, and then browses several online catalogues, ordering the things he thinks look nice. On Tuesday, Henry drags him and the others out to the studio to get their opinions on his newest song. Wednesday, though-Wednesday is when the nightmare strikes.
Zhou Mi loses his voice.
He’s in the studio alone in the morning, singing some of the band’s old songs. He runs MR after MR, just singing, listening to his voice echo in his headphones. Naturally, it strains his voice-he goes through several bottles of water every concert, and half of the time, he honestly isn’t sure if he’s singing or screaming. He likes it, though-he likes the way his throat goes raw, likes the way his head throbs-he likes being so worked up that sweat forms on his forehead, because it’s proof that he’s actually putting in an effort.
And of course, it’s in the stupidest way possible that he loses his voice. Right before the tour wraps up, too.
His voice cracks first, before it goes hoarse altogether. He tries singing for a few measures more, until he feels embarrassed hearing the screeching cat resonating in his headphones, even though no one else is around to witness it.
What just happened to my voice? He tries speaking. “Hello? Hello-” He jumps at his own voice. It’s gone down an octave with sporadic voice cracks. Uh oh.
“Henry?” He says into the phone the next minute.
“Hyung? Is that you?”
“What does the caller ID say, idiot?”
“What happened to your voice?!”
“I think…” Zhou Mi clears his throat. “I think I lost it.” (Clearing his throat doesn’t help.)
“Oh. Uh…” There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “Well-aw, shit, man, what if it doesn’t come back before the next show? You’ve never lost your voice before!”
“How long are voices usually gone for?”
“I don’t know…”
“Could you let Victoria and Sungmin know? I don’t want them to hear how I sound. Thanks, Henry.” Zhou Mi hangs up and sighs, slumping into a chair. Now he can’t sing either, so what exactly is he supposed to do?
-
September’s wind makes Zhou Mi pull his scarf tighter around himself as he walks from the studio to a restaurant that he always visits when he’s in Seoul. The ambience is nice and the prices are decent-it’s a good place to spend time by yourself and think.
After a lunch of ginseng chicken soup, his fingers having warmed up but his throat not much better, if the look on the waitress’s face was any indication when he said goodbye. He takes the subway back to his apartment to…to do what? What is there to do, exactly, when he can’t even talk and not sound like a dying cat?
His answer is waiting at his front door.
“We need to exchange numbers,” Kyuhyun deadpans. “So I don’t have to wait at your door whenever I want to see you.”
“We’re not in any position to exchange numbers,” Zhou Mi replies, startled-his voice going up and down more than a roller coaster as well. Kyuhyun looks taken aback.
“What happened to you? Did someone cut up your vocal chords?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Kyuhyun looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Let me in.” Zhou Mi doesn’t have much of a reason to deny his request, so he does-Kyuhyun stalks inside with hardly any manners, kicks off his shoes, and goes straight to the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Zhou Mi shuffles in after him, his toes warm in his fuzzy bunny slippers.
“Don’t talk, please. My ears hurt.” Kyuhyun rummages through the kitchen, boiling some water, getting cups.
“You can cook?”
“Nope. But I can at least make some honey tea.” Zhou Mi tilts his head in speculation, flinching as two mugs clink together dangerously when Kyuhyun grabs them both with one hand. Tea, huh? He didn’t take Kyuhyun to be the type of person to make tea for others. He watches as Kyuhyun fumbles around with the teabags and nearly spills the hot water everywhere, a small smile on his lips all the while. Kyuhyun’s kind of cute like this.
He carefully takes the tea that Kyuhyun offers him. “What brought this on?”
“Your awful voice.” Kyuhyun sips at his own tea. “What happens if you still sound like this by the next show?”
Zhou Mi laughs. “That’s all you guys care about concerning my voice, isn’t it? No one asks if I’m okay, but instead, what’s going to happen if I can’t sing for the next show? Some friends you guys are.”
“I wasn’t aware that I’m your friend?” Kyuhyun peeks at him over the rim of his mug, eyes large and deceptively innocent.
“You’re my friend,” Zhou Mi replies after a moment’s hesitation. If friends mean bonding over sex after every show, then yeah.
“Oh. Then…are you alright? Does your throat hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt.” Zhou Mi shifts uncomfortably on his feet at the question that is so commonplace, but coming from Kyuhyun, sounds awkward and intimate. “It just disappeared this morning when I was singing; I don’t know what happened.”
“Ah.” Kyuhyun sighs. “Let’s do something that doesn’t require you to talk. It really is painful to hear you.”
“Why are you here, anyway?” There are things that Zhou Mi wants to ask him. Where have you been? What upset you last time? Did you have a change of heart, since you’re here now?
“What, I can’t visit you?” he says brusquely. “Do you have any movies?”
“Only Chinese ones.”
“Zhen de ma?” Before Zhou Mi can register that Kyuhyun just responded to him in Mandarin, the younger man has already wandered into the living room to search through his movie collection.
He follows him, his tea clutched tightly in his hand. “You speak Chinese?”
“Yi dian dian.” A little bit. “What, you thought I followed you all over China for your tour and didn’t at least pick something up?”
“Wow.” Zhou Mi is impressed. “Who would’ve thought.”
“Now stop talking, please.” Kyuhyun pops a DVD in, turns up the volume, and shuts the blinds so the room is darker. Zhou Mi settles onto the couch with a cushion in his lap. He’s still confused about why Kyuhyun’s here, since they’re not having sex, but he doesn’t mind, he supposes-it’s not like Kyuhyun’s annoying, or anything. And he even made him tea. What a nice guy.
They spend the next hour or so watching the movie with Chinese subtitles, because it doesn’t have Korean subtitles. Once in a while, Kyuhyun will make a remark in Chinese, and Zhou Mi will respond in Chinese as well-but his fluency combined with his ruined voice makes it difficult for Kyuhyun to understand.
Zhou Mi’s phone rings during the climax of the movie, and he fishes it out of his pocket. The caller ID says it’s Sungmin. He contemplates not picking up, but he’ll probably get hell for it later, so he does. “Hello?”
“Mi? Wow, Henry wasn’t kidding when he said you lost your voice.”
“D’you think I’d kid about something like that?”
“Who is it,” Kyuhyun says dispassionately. “You’re ruining the movie.”
“You don’t even know what’s happening,” Zhou Mi snaps back. “What’s up?” he says, returning to Sungmin.
Sungmin sounds surprised. “Are you with someone right now?”
“Uh, yeah. A friend.” Who would Zhou Mi rather be watching the movie with right now, Kyuhyun or Sungmin? He isn’t sure. Or is he? He glances over at Kyuhyun, whose attention isn’t on him-his eyes are on the television screen, but it doesn’t look like he’s paying attention to that either. The mug in his hands is empty, and his eyelids may even be drooping a little from sleepiness. The movie must be dull for him, since he doesn’t even understand what’s going on. “Why did you call?”
“I was just checking up on you, since you’ve never lost your voice before.” At this, Sungmin’s tone softens. “I was worried.” Zhou Mi’s heart flutters in its usual infuriating manner whenever Sungmin does something affectionate.
“Well,” he replies, a little shortly, “I’m fine. Thanks. I’ll see you soon.” He hangs up before Sungmin gets a chance to respond, and tosses his phone to the side.
“Who was that?” Kyuhyun asks again.
Zhou Mi cautions, “Sungmin.” No one outside of the band knows that he and Sungmin had a relationship other than Kyuhyun.
“What did he want?” the younger man grumbles.
“Nothing.” Zhou Mi shakes his head. He watches Kyuhyun for a moment, admiring his side profile. Kyuhyun has a very proportional and attractive face-and on top of that, it’s a little on the round side, so Zhou Mi finds it cute. That’s probably why he didn’t refuse the first time Kyuhyun came onto him. Such a beautiful face-is the person underneath it just as beautiful? “He was just checking up on me.”
“How nice.”
Zhou Mi wonders what it’s like to hold his hand. “Kui Xian,” he says, trying out Kyuhyun’s Chinese name. He likes it.
Kyuhyun wrinkles his nose, turning his head to face him. “Gui Xian,” he corrects. Cheeky, but cute. Zhou Mi can’t help but smile as he takes Kyuhyun’s cup from his hands and places it on the coffee table. “What?”
“I just…” The smile is still on Zhou Mi’s lips when he reaches out, fingers touching Kyuhyun’s cheek. Kyuhyun freezes. “I don’t know.” He leans in and kisses him, sighing against the warmth and comfort of his lips. The movie continues to play on the television, but neither of them are paying attention to it anymore. Zhou Mi shifts closer, tilting his head so he can kiss Kyuhyun deeper, and-
Kyuhyun pulls away with a sharp intake of breath, cheeks flushed. “What are you doing?”
“Uh, kissing you?” Zhou Mi’s voice cracks. He cringes. Definitely a moment ruiner.
“Why?”
“Why?” He laughs at the incredulity of the question. “We’ve never had a why before, so why do we need to have one now?” Kyuhyun doesn’t answer that question. Zhou Mi straightens up. “Is something the matter, Kui Xian?”
“Gui Xian,” Kyuhyun corrects. “And no. Nothing.”
“Do you not…you know? With me anymore?”
It takes him longer to answer this one. “No,” he replies, slowly.
“Then-”
“Hyung,” Kyuhyun says, and it’s the first time he’s ever called Zhou Mi that. Butterflies flutter around excitedly in his stomach. “Stop talking. Seriously. You sound disgusting.”
“…Sorry,” he says meekly.
Kyuhyun sighs. “Come here.” Zhou Mi moves closer again, and Kyuhyun kisses him this time, lips soft, movements slow. Without the adrenaline from a show, or the rush that they usually have backstage, they move languidly. Kyuhyun moves until he’s kneeling in front of Zhou Mi between his legs, and his fingers creep under Zhou Mi’s shirt, all the while, their mouths still connected. Zhou Mi can do nothing but shiver when Kyuhyun’s hold fingers teasingly pinch his nipples, which are now hard.
This time with Kyuhyun is different. Usually, Kyuhyun is heat, fast movements, go go go. This time-still heat, but maybe a different kind of heat? Just all-encompassing warmth, every movement as though carefully considered. Kyuhyun holds Zhou Mi’s hips steady as he swallows him, slowly working him down his throat. Zhou Mi can’t not moan at that, even if his voice is gross and unsexy, because the feel of Kyuhyun’s throat is irresistible. His fingers thread through Kyuhyun’s hair as Kyuhyun’s head bobs, every swipe of his tongue precise, at the perfect pressure, tantalizing Zhou Mi in a way he didn’t know Kyuhyun was capable of.
“S-Stop, Kyuhyun,” he gasps, trying to tug Kyuhyun off. “I’m going to come if you don’t stop.” Kyuhyun hums in acknowledgement, his throat vibrating around his cock. Zhou Mi moans. “I’m s-serious-” But Kyuhyun doesn’t stop-he doesn’t speed up and he doesn’t slow down, but continues at the same pace as before, bringing what might possibly be the best orgasm of Zhou Mi’s life. Kyuhyun has to hold his hips still to keep him from bucking into his mouth even more, and he takes all of Zhou Mi-swallows everything, throat working around him until Zhou Mi is completely spent, chest heaving and body twitching from the aftershocks. Kyuhyun lets his cock slip from his mouth, licking his lips that are forming into a faint smirk. Zhou Mi can only stare down at him dazedly.
“I’m good, right?” There’s smugness in Kyuhyun’s voice, and he deserves at least that much, Zhou Mi thinks.
“Yeah, you’re good,” he agrees, pulling Kyuhyun up and kissing him, slow and deep and sensual. It makes his head swim. “Now. My turn.”
part two <3
Pairing: Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi
Genre: Romance
Rating: R
Notes: grisclair posted plot bunnies, and I stole one of them. /o\
Word Count: 13,500
Summary: Rockstar!AU. It wasn’t Zhou Mi’s fault that he always ended up fucking that one guy backstage after every show for the last two months. No, really.
There has to be something that makes him come back again and again.
The adrenaline is still running thick in Zhou Mi’s veins when he slams the younger man against the wall of the dressing room. The chatter of staff just outside the door makes every touch more electrifying, every gasp and press of lips against skin hot. This isn’t the first this has happened, but Zhou Mi never tires of it, oddly enough.
“We need to be-”
“Quick, I know,” Kyuhyun finishes for him, sounding breathless. “You say that every time.”
“Yeah, well, because it’s true.”
“Wouldn’t it be hotter if someone walked in on us? Sungmin, maybe?” Zhou Mi’s lips are sealed when Kyuhyun kisses him, just the taste of him making goose bumps rise on his arms. Zhou Mi sighs against his mouth and melts into his body, letting instinct take over, just desires and needs and delicious, delicious friction.
It isn’t even twenty minutes later when they’re zipping up their pants, and Kyuhyun is out the door.
-
They’re grabbing another typical late night snack after their concert, Sungmin and Henry stuffing their faces with so much food that they might burst. Victoria blows on her noodles before every bite, making sure her area of the table remains clean while her male bandmates destroy everything else.
Zhou Mi’s hands are still shaking a little from the leftover adrenaline that the sex brought.
“Are you alright?” Victoria asks him, her soft voice curling around the consonants of Mandarin.
“Yeah,” he returns in the same language. “Why?”
“Nothing,” she replies airily, glancing at his untouched food. “You should eat something before you snap in two. You’re a walking toothpick.” She tells him this every time they eat, so Zhou Mi is unconcerned, but her tone is laced with suspicion. Victoria has always been the uncomfortably perceptive member of their band, even though Zhou Mi hasn’t told anyone that he’s been fucking Kyuhyun for the past-what, three weeks?
He glances at Sungmin, who has slowed down his eating pace, staring off into space as he chews his food. He can’t really remember if he’s said anything of substance to him today, unless “Did you take my VitaminWater?” counts as something of substance.
It’s been about…four weeks since Zhou Mi and Sungmin broke up.
He feels Victoria watching him when he suddenly begins shoveling food into his mouth to distract himself from his watery eyes, but luckily enough, she doesn’t say anything.
-
Although Zhou Mi isn’t one to support sleeping with strangers in order to get over breakups, Kyuhyun presented himself at the perfect time.
From what Zhou Mi gathered, Kyuhyun is a fan-a very avid fan, clearly, since he’s been at the front row of every show since Seoul, seemingly flying from city to city, country to country with them. Zhou Mi is unsure of where he even gets the money, but he has to admit, it’s always nice to see a familiar face in the crowd, front and center every time.
It wasn’t until Nanjing that they actually came face to face, though. Zhou Mi had just finished up at the hotel’s sauna and was heading back to his room when he was cornered in the hallway.
“What happened tonight?” Kyuhyun had asked. “You sucked.”
Zhou Mi had blinked, staring at him in bewilderment. “Excuse me?”
“Look, people pay you to see you on stage, so the least you could do is mask the heartbreak written all over your face. What is it, did your girlfriend dump you?”
“That’s none of your business,” he’d answered carefully. “We have a fan signing event next week-you can see me then, but I’m really tired right now, so would you mind?” Having broken up with your boyfriend but still being forced to see him every day wasn’t good for his health.
“Look, I just-” Kyuhyun ran a hand through his hair, just a mess of curls on his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Kyuhyun.”
Zhou Mi literally felt the exhaustion seeping into his bones. He really didn’t need this right now. “It’s nice to meet you, Kyuhyun. I’m Zhou Mi.”
“Yeah, I know. Just-hang in there, alright? Whatever it is, it’ll get better.” The other man shuffled on his feet awkwardly, the words coming out sounding weird. But Zhou Mi appreciated the thought anyway, and he nodded, smiling.
“Thanks. I’ll try to look at the brighter side of things.”
Three days later, in Beijing, he saw Kyuhyun at his hotel again. A stalker fan? he had wondered, but he didn’t think much of it-they’ve had several those in the past years, and Kyuhyun was no different.
(Except for the part where he was, of course. Kyuhyun was always a little different from everyone else.)
Two days later, and they were in Incheon, back in Korea. It was then that their mouths fit together desperately, limbs tangling and lips mapping skin, quiet whimpers kept secret within the four walls of the empty dressing room.
-
“Mi!” Sungmin’s voice pulls him from his fuzzy sleep. “Mi, wake up.”
Zhou Mi groans, rolling over and nearly falling off the couch that he’s sleeping on. They all slept in the studio last night, after deeming it too late to return to their respective homes. “What time is it,” he mutters, eyes squinting as he adjusts his surroundings.
“Almost nine, c’mon, Victoria wants to have an early rehearsal.”
“I don’t-ugh, what. Why.” He groggily sits up and accidentally steps on Henry, who’s sleeping on the floor.
“I don’t know.” Sungmin is stretching, the cracks in his back audible as the muscles shift underneath his shirt. “She was probably just bored while waiting for us to wake up.”
Zhou Mi averts his eyes and heads straight to the bathroom. He doesn’t need this first thing in the morning.
(“I don’t know, you’re just kind of…around all the time, I guess. It gets a little suffocating.”)
When Victoria checks up on them half an hour later, looking stunning even though she slept in those clothes, Sungmin and Zhou Mi are both ready and waiting. Henry is still sleepy-eyed but has managed to sit up with legs spread like a child and blindly grab his guitar, and they’re plugging in amps and getting ready, even if Victoria expresses her distaste at Henry not even washing his face beforehand.
It’s cloudy in Seoul, which is pretty typical weather. Seoul is kind of like Zhou Mi’s second home-when he’s not in Wuhan, he’s here. Zhou Mi loves this city almost as much as he loves his hometown-the fast-paced atmosphere, the different culture. There’s some sort of satisfaction in being able to speak his lilted Korean and be understood-so no matter how gloomy this place is, Zhou Mi is always happy to be here.
(“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you anymore-because I do, Mi, please don’t think that I don’t-but I never have time to myself. I can’t breathe.”)
“You okay, Mi? What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I don’t know, maybe I haven’t warmed up enough yet. Sorry. Can we start from the refrain again?”
(“In the future? I really don’t know…”)
“Henry, you’re a little out of tune.”
(“We’ve been together for almost two years and although I like it, I don’t know if we’re going to get anywhere…”)
“Sungmin, turn up your amp?”
(“I want to get somewhere in life, Mi.”)
The music around him stops. “Mi-you missed your entrance.”
He blinks. “Oh, my bad.” He smiles weakly. “Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Let’s go again?”
(“I’m sorry.”)
-
Zhou Mi usually doesn’t see Kyuhyun unless it’s after a show, because they don’t have each other’s contact information.
So what is Kyuhyun doing…?
“Even if you continue insisting that you’re not a stalker fan, I’m going to have a difficult time believing it,” Zhou Mi tells him. “How did you know I live here?”
“There have been speculations online.” Kyuhyun shrugs. “I occasionally check those places when I know you’re in Seoul for a period of time.” He pauses. “I’m not a stalker fan, okay?”
“You’re crazy,” Zhou Mi mutters. “I’d invite you in, but that doesn’t really feel right. Is there a reason why you’re here?”
“I, um…” Kyuhyun shifts on his feet. “Kind of, yeah. Would you mind coming back to my place, though?”
A small seedling of doubt is planted in Zhou Mi’s stomach. Physically, he’s been the closest to Kyuhyun any two people could possibly be, but they hardly know a thing about each other. (Well, Kyuhyun might know things about him. But to Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun is a mystery, other than the fact that he’s awesome in bed.) For Kyuhyun to invite him to his home feels like they’re stepping over the lines that they’ve set up-sex, and only sex.
Unless they’re going to have sex back at his place, which Zhou Mi has absolutely nothing against.
So he agrees, and leaves the apartment building with Kyuhyun and getting into his car.
“I have this friend,” Kyuhyun tells him as they begin to drive. “And I kind of hinted to him about-y’know, us.”
“…Ah.” He clears his throat. “You do realize that if this gets out, I’m in big trouble, right?”
“Relax. It won’t get out.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you really cared about the consequences of sleeping with me, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.” Kyuhyun’s voice is smooth, cold and calculating and impartial-completely different from the way he sounds during sex. Zhou Mi swallows-he really doesn’t know Kyuhyun. Not at all.
After a short period of silence, he asks, “Why me? Why not Sungmin or Henry?”
Kyuhyun glances at him momentarily out of the corner of his eye. “Why me? Why not some other random dude in the crowd?”
Good question, actually. Zhou Mi doesn’t answer it.
Maybe because Kyuhyun presented himself at the right time, easy and willing? Zhou Mi isn’t the type to use sex to get over heartbreak, but Kyuhyun was right there, with soft lips and empty eyes-his body language literally promised sex with no strings attached, and…he’s just so different from Sungmin. At least when Zhou Mi’s with Kyuhyun, he’s not swept up in a whirlwind of emotions.
He’s trying to get over Sungmin. He really is. Some days are better than others. He’s getting there.
(But then, some days are just as bad as the first one.)
Zhou Mi has never dealt with heartbreak well.
He isn’t sure what to expect when Kyuhyun opens the door to his apartment, but smelly is not one of them. It generally looks tidy, but after he slips out of his shoes and follows Kyuhyun into the kitchen, he sees empty take-out boxes strewn everywhere, dishes in the sink waiting to be washed-luckily enough, Kyuhyun just grabs his laptop from the table and redirects Zhou Mi to the living room, which is significantly less dizzying with odd odors.
“The friend that I told about you,” Kyuhyun says. “He’s, uh, an ass a lot of the time. And he likes to film things on his phone.”
“Okay?” Zhou Mi uncertainly sinks onto the couch beside him.
“He took this video of me a while back,” the other man explains as he turns on his laptop. “I wasn’t going to let it see the light of day, but he threatened to out us to the world if I didn’t show you.”
“Funny,” he comments, “I didn’t think you were the type of person to heed to other people’s threats.”
Kyuhyun laughs dryly. “You don’t know my friend.” He clicks around on his laptop before shifting it so Zhou Mi can see the screen clearly, and begins playing the video.
For the first minute or so, Zhou Mi watches, unfazed. The video is just of Kyuhyun at a karaoke bar, singing one of his band’s more popular songs-but about halfway through, Zhou Mi blinks, straightening up and staring at the real Kyuhyun.
“Your singing-” He looks back at the video. “You’re really good.”
“Really?” Kyuhyun asks, even though it sounds like he already knows the answer. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Wow, where did you learn to sing like that?” Zhou Mi watches in awe as the Kyuhyun in the video belts out a high note, his voice lifting until he matches the pitch perfectly. There’s always a sort of satisfaction to hear someone hit a note spot on when you think that they can’t-it just kind of slips into place and-
Kyuhyun’s so good that he’s forgotten how to breathe for a moment.
When the song in the video ends and someone, who Zhou Mi assumes to be Kyuhyun’s friend, starts yelling something, Kyuhyun shuts his laptop and clears his throat. “Yeah.”
“…Wow,” he says after a flabbergasted moment. “I think you should replace me in our band.”
“Can’t. Too much screaming will damage my throat.”
“It’s not screaming.”
“Yeah, well.” Kyuhyun fidgets a little, and Zhou Mi finds it incredibly endearing-the person who immediately saw right through his façade after he broke up with Sungmin is suddenly the flustered one. “That’s all I wanted to show you. You can forget about it, though.”
Zhou Mi looks around the living room; the area is sparse in terms of decorations, but there are clear signs that Kyuhyun lives here. There are a few pieces of outerwear strewn on the backs of chairs, different gaming systems and a mess of wires around the television-apart from the laptop that Kyuhyun just set aside, there is also a MacBook sitting on the coffee table.
“You never told me what you do for a living,” he says to Kyuhyun. “What do you do?”
“I’m unemployed,” Kyuhyun answers. “Still in school.”
“Oh. Then…shouldn’t you be studying instead of always coming to our shows?”
There’s a slight edge to Kyuhyun’s voice that makes Zhou Mi feel unwanted. “I can handle it-I have a 3.8 GPA.” He clears his throat. “But anyway, yeah, you probably don’t want to discuss my life-”
“I do!” Zhou Mi insists. Kyuhyun doesn’t quite fall into the category of a friend, but he’s definitely someone who’s made some sort of impact on his life. “Why don’t you think I do?”
Kyuhyun shrugs. “Let’s do what we’re best at.”
“Which is what?”
“I think you know.” His hand creeps up Zhou Mi’s thigh, and Zhou Mi shivers, goosebumps rising on his skin. Kyuhyun’s mouth meets his before he has a chance to respond, and Zhou Mi moulds himself so he fits right against him, soft curves and warm skin. Kyuhyun has always been comforting in the oddest of ways.
“I think getting to know you is just as exciting,” he says breathlessly when Kyuhyun’s fingers fumble with the zipper of his jeans.
“Wrong.” Kyuhyun nips at his collarbone. “This is better.”
-
The sound of tuning instruments and amps are all that Zhou Mi hears ten minutes before their show starts. Victoria is fluttering around, checking up on each of them, since she plays the drums and doesn’t need to tune.
“You ready?” she asks as she approaches him, reaching out to smooth down his collar of his leather jacket. He nods. “You drank water?” He nods again. “…What’s this?”
“What’s what?” He follows her gaze, but what she’s looking at is out of his line of sight.
“That on your neck-is that a hickey?”
He chokes on himself. “I, uh-no? …Maybe?”
“Mi!”
“It was just-it just happened, okay? Won’t happen again, I promise.” He pulls away from her and readjusts his collar. “It was a one time thing.”
Victoria’s eyes are wide with worry. “This isn’t like you,” she says, in a way that has guilt stabbing Zhou Mi right in the gut. “What’s wrong? Is everything alright?” She pauses. “Is this about Sungmin?”
“No,” he says immediately. “Well, yes. Maybe.” But it also has to do with Kyuhyun too, right? If it was all about Sungmin, then Zhou Mi would’ve picked up whoever he found in the crowd who was staring extra longingly at him. But every time, it was Kyuhyun-it has only ever been Kyuhyun. Zhou Mi shrinks a little under Victoria’s scrutiny, feeling tiny even though he has at least a head on her. “I’m okay, I promise.”
Her expression clearly says that she doesn’t believe them, but they’re being queued by the staff to get in line and shut up because the show is about to start in five minutes. Zhou Mi stands at the front of the line, with Henry behind him, then Sungmin, then Victoria. They listen to the chants of the crowd, the vibrations of the opening band shaking the floorboards underneath their feet; the excitement begins to bubble in his veins, even though he’s had this show and gone through this setlist so many times that it’s been engraved permanently in his mind. No show is quite the same-every venue is different, every crowd has its own quirks.
Henry is fixing the strap of his guitar when the opening band finishes and returns backstage, sweaty and grinning. A staff member holds his hand up, counting down until it’s their turn to run on stage-and in the moments before they do, Zhou Mi can only think of Kyuhyun’s face, in the very front row.
-
“There’s a-” Zhou Mi looks around to make sure none of the staff whizzing around are paying attention. “Hickey on my neck! I thought we discussed this!”
“Did we?” Kyuhyun asks innocently. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m going to-ugh.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Okay, Kyuhyun, go home. I’m tired.”
“But you’re sexy, all sweaty and tousled like that.” A faint smirk plays at Kyuhyun’s lips. “I love it when you look like this.”
Zhou Mi sighs, but before he can try kicking Kyuhyun out again, someone calls out to him from the other end of the hall. “Mi! Why haven’t you changed yet?” He glances over his shoulder to see Sungmin in the distance, and his heart suddenly twists painfully.
“I’ll be right there!” He turns back to Kyuhyun. “Sorry, but I’m just really tired today, okay? And we were just at it earlier today-” He stops mid-sentence, distracted by a suddenly onslaught of emotions. “Sorry.”
“Wait.” Kyuhyun grabs Zhou Mi’s wrist, his fingers easily wrapping all the way around. “Sungmin. Were you and Sungmin a thing?”
“What? Uh, yeah-no!” He can’t answer with a clear head right now-the excitement of the show is still pumping in his veins, and sometimes that causes strong feelings to occur when he looks at Sungmin. Now is one of those times-they don’t happen as often anymore, but they do still happen.
“So that night-the first time we talked, were you upset because of him?”
Zhou Mi tries to pay attention to Kyuhyun-he blinks and the image of the man before him focuses, eyes wide and features on edge. “Yes,” he answers. “We broke up not long before then.”
“Oh.” Kyuhyun nods slowly. “I see.”
“Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s just-no, it’s nothing.” He shakes his head. “I just thought-I don’t know.”
“Thought what?”
“Nothing.” Kyuhyun’s voice is shaking imperceptibly; he’s gone a little paler than he usually is, and he’s avoiding Zhou Mi’s eyes. “It’s okay, you’re tired tonight, I get it. Get some rest, okay?” He gives Zhou Mi a strained smile before turning on his heels and walking away, steps hurried and faltering.
Zhou Mi wants to call him back to ask him what’s wrong, but the doubt of whether he wants to know holds him back.
-
“Who was that?” Sungmin asks him a few minutes later when Zhou Mi returns to the dressing room, shedding off his jacket and rolling his shoulders to get out a few kinks.
“No one,” he answers without looking at him. “Where’s Henry?”
“He went out to buy snacks.” Silence falls on them after that as Zhou Mi strips himself of his clothes with slowed movements. He’s used to this silence now-it’s been there ever since their relationship ended. It’s suffocating. “You were great tonight, by the way. You kind of scared us for a while with our last rehearsal.”
“Like I said, I was just tired.” And he still is tired. He knows breakups are hard, but they’re even harder when the wounds are constantly being prodded. If he didn’t have to see Sungmin every day, Zhou Mi’s sure that he would be well on his way to being happy again. He goes through the movements, wiping off his thick layers of makeup, pulling on his t-shirt and jeans, hanging up his stage clothes up so the staff can send them in to clean later. He really is tired-he didn’t realize how exhausted he is until now.
Once he finally has everything in order, he slumps into a chair, waiting for Henry to return with the snacks. Victoria should be coming soon, too, from her own dressing room.
“You used to smile a lot more,” Sungmin says offhandedly from the other side of the room. “You were always the life of the room.”
“I still smile,” Zhou Mi says, tugging at a loose string of his shirt. He needs to go shopping again soon.
“But not as much, you know? Are you still upset about…y’know, us?”
“Upset is a little bit of an understatement,” he grumbles, too quiet for Sungmin to catch. He looks up at the man across the room, and sees Sungmin staring at him, waiting for a response. “We were together for two years, Sungmin. I want to be away from you to deal with a breakup of two years and I can’t even do that. How do you think I feel?” Sungmin doesn’t answer him, and Zhou Mi exhales heavily, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. He doesn’t want to hear anything or see anything right now.
Henry and Victoria come in not long later with snacks and drinks. Zhou Mi flips on his smile almost effortlessly as he helps distribute things, starting up a conversation with Victoria.
He can’t shake off the feeling of Sungmin watching him all the while, or Kyuhyun’s expression earlier, just before he left.
-
Kyuhyun is at the next show in Busan, in the front row as usual. He’s always been a quiet fan, standing there and watching while everyone else screams and jumps, but he never misses a single show. Zhou Mi feels the sweat at the back of his neck from the heat of the lights, his heart beating in sync with Victoria’s rhythm.
Performing makes everything go away-being on stage, singing his heart out-this is where nothing else matters. The world could be falling apart around him, but could still be put on hold as long as he’s here.
The ringing of Henry’s final notes echo as Zhou Mi shakes his sweaty hair out of his eyes, the crowd’s screams deafening. He yells into the microphone to rile them up even more, and Henry’s notes die out, Victoria giving one last smash on her cymbals.
“Thank you, Busan!” he screams. His throat feels like it’s about to give out. “You’ve been a great crowd tonight!” He steps back from the microphone, waving. Henry and Sungmin are unplugging their instruments, and Victoria is already on her feet, waving enthusiastically as well. In a few short minutes, they’re backstage, out of the hot glare of the stage lights.
Henry whistles. “Good show, guys.” Everyone is already stripping out of their jackets, fanning the perspiration on their faces. Zhou Mi quickly slips away from them and heads out to the hallway that connects the stage and pit, which is usually used for fans with backstage passes. That’s usually where he meets Kyuhyun after every show. He waits there for ten minutes, watching security and other staff move back and forth, but Kyuhyun doesn’t come.
Zhou Mi frowns. Perhaps he’s busy today?
He waits for ten minutes more, but when Kyuhyun still hasn’t arrived, he sighs and returns to the dressing room, where Henry and Sungmin go through their routine of asking him where he was.
Kyuhyun doesn’t show up after the next show either. Or the next one. Or the one after that. He’s always there, though-Zhou Mi sees him every time, in the front row, mouthing the words to every single song, standing sturdy in the sea of moving and sweaty bodies. They even make eye contact several times during the performance, but when Zhou Mi waits for him afterwards, he never shows.
By the fifth show in Daegu, Zhou Mi’s confused and frustrated to the point where he would call Kyuhyun and demand an explanation, if only he had his number. He stalks into the dressing room, shutting the door a little harder than usual, not even sparing Sungmin or Henry a glance.
What was Kyuhyun thinking about the last time they met? What had caused his voice to waver? In their few months of knowing each other, Zhou Mi had never seen him like that before.
“What do you guys want to eat later?” Sungmin asks him and Henry. “It’s my turn to pay.”
“Barbecue!” Henry shouts gleefully. “Black bean noodles!”
“Mi? What about you?”
“Whatever,” Zhou Mi answers. “I’m not really that hungry.”
“Are you okay, hyung? It doesn’t look like you’ve been well lately.” Henry sidles up to him, pressing the back of his hand to Zhou Mi’s forehead. Zhou Mi pulls away and glares, if not a little affectionately.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He’s tired, yeah. Confused and worried about Kyuhyun, yeah. But unwell, he is not. “Black bean noodles, you said? I’m down with that.” Henry frowns but leaves him alone after that. “Hey, have you guys seen my socks?”
A little later, when they’re full from the black bean noodles, Zhou Mi joins Victoria on a couch in the lobby of their hotel.
“Can’t sleep?” Victoria asks.
“More like don’t want to. You don’t know what it’s like to room with two other guys.”
She laughs quietly, giving him a little push. “You’re right, I don’t. No privacy, I assume.”
“None at all.” They sit in the kind of silence that only friends of several years can share, both of them in their own thoughts. Victoria has always been the kind of person that Zhou Mi isn’t afraid to be himself around-she’s oddly comfortable, and always finds a way to be weirder than you so you don’t feel out of place. Victoria is an old friend-one that he can speak his mother tongue with. He calls her by her Chinese name whenever he can, when Sungmin and Henry aren’t around.
“Hey.” She suddenly perks up. “Do you want me to teach you how to play the drums?”
Zhou Mi blinks. “Why this, all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs, grinning. “If we’re going to sit here staring off into space, we might as well do something productive!” She grabs him by the wrist, tugging him out the main doors of the hotel. “I snagged the keys to the van.”
He gapes. “Song Qian!”
“I do it all the time! C’mon, let’s go.”
Sungmin and Henry can carry their instruments around, but Victoria’s drum set spends most of its time in the back of their van. Together, they move the set to a secluded patio beside the hotel. Zhou Mi thinks this is ridiculous and even a little embarrassing, but Victoria explains the different parts of the drum set to him with genuine enthusiasm.
“I really can’t play,” he continues to insist when she shoves the drumsticks into his hands, pushing him down into the stool.
“Do it!” she barks. “Bass, snare, snare, snare. Bass, snare, snare, snare. Steady, Mi, it’s not as if you don’t know how to hold a beat!”
“Stop screaming at me!” He accidentally smashes the the cymbals in his defensive flailing, which only causes Victoria to shriek even louder. “You can’t expect me to be as good as you the first time I try!” His arms fall limp when she stands behind him and grabs each of his wrists, helping him along with what to hit, reciting steadily in his ear so he knows when to hit the bass drum with his foot.
This is Victoria-unrelenting rhythm, just like a heartbeat-here when you pay attention, here when you don’t. Never once resting, always here to help-Zhou Mi squirms underneath her touch, and she releases him, both of them laughing until their stomachs hurt.
“I miss seeing you smile like that,” she tells him once they finally calm down. “It’s been a while.”
“Has it?” he hums.
“I’m not blind, you know. You think I haven’t noticed that you aren’t as happy anymore?”
Am I really that obvious, Zhou Mi wonders to himself. “I’m happy,” he reassures her, even though it doesn’t really have that effect on himself.
“How long have we been friends for, Mi?” Victoria asks, sounding exasperated. “I’m offended if you think I don’t know you. You’re not happy.”
“I’m just…tired. Really.”
“Mm.” She stretches herself on the bench of the patio, lying down and pillowing her head with her arms. “After this tour, let’s take a break.”
“From what? The band?”
“Yeah! A long one, too-I don’t mean those one week vacations that we have only because we’ll tear each other’s throats out if we don’t get some time alone, but a real break-maybe a year off, I don’t know. So we can do other things.”
Zhou Mi laughs. “You dream too big. Financially, it’d be a lot more difficult that way than it is to just stay together.”
“Yeah, but you need it.” She sighs, a little wistfully, like a glimpse of a dream that they can barely see. “We all need it.” When he doesn’t answer and taps on the snare with his fingertips instead, she stands up and wraps her arms around his shoulders from behind, the warmth of her cheek against his hair. “Let’s talk to Sungmin and Henry about it tomorrow.”
Imperceptibly, he tilts his head into her touch. “Okay.”
-
After Mokpo, they have one week resting in Seoul before they’re off for a few final shows. Henry and Sungmin have agreed to taking a break after this: Sungmin says that he’s always wanted to dedicate some time to learning languages, and Henry would like to expand more in his music style and compose different things. Zhou Mi’s glad that they’ve agreed, because he isn’t sure how long he would last if they didn’t.
On Monday, he lazes the day away. He sleeps until noon, and then browses several online catalogues, ordering the things he thinks look nice. On Tuesday, Henry drags him and the others out to the studio to get their opinions on his newest song. Wednesday, though-Wednesday is when the nightmare strikes.
Zhou Mi loses his voice.
He’s in the studio alone in the morning, singing some of the band’s old songs. He runs MR after MR, just singing, listening to his voice echo in his headphones. Naturally, it strains his voice-he goes through several bottles of water every concert, and half of the time, he honestly isn’t sure if he’s singing or screaming. He likes it, though-he likes the way his throat goes raw, likes the way his head throbs-he likes being so worked up that sweat forms on his forehead, because it’s proof that he’s actually putting in an effort.
And of course, it’s in the stupidest way possible that he loses his voice. Right before the tour wraps up, too.
His voice cracks first, before it goes hoarse altogether. He tries singing for a few measures more, until he feels embarrassed hearing the screeching cat resonating in his headphones, even though no one else is around to witness it.
What just happened to my voice? He tries speaking. “Hello? Hello-” He jumps at his own voice. It’s gone down an octave with sporadic voice cracks. Uh oh.
“Henry?” He says into the phone the next minute.
“Hyung? Is that you?”
“What does the caller ID say, idiot?”
“What happened to your voice?!”
“I think…” Zhou Mi clears his throat. “I think I lost it.” (Clearing his throat doesn’t help.)
“Oh. Uh…” There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “Well-aw, shit, man, what if it doesn’t come back before the next show? You’ve never lost your voice before!”
“How long are voices usually gone for?”
“I don’t know…”
“Could you let Victoria and Sungmin know? I don’t want them to hear how I sound. Thanks, Henry.” Zhou Mi hangs up and sighs, slumping into a chair. Now he can’t sing either, so what exactly is he supposed to do?
-
September’s wind makes Zhou Mi pull his scarf tighter around himself as he walks from the studio to a restaurant that he always visits when he’s in Seoul. The ambience is nice and the prices are decent-it’s a good place to spend time by yourself and think.
After a lunch of ginseng chicken soup, his fingers having warmed up but his throat not much better, if the look on the waitress’s face was any indication when he said goodbye. He takes the subway back to his apartment to…to do what? What is there to do, exactly, when he can’t even talk and not sound like a dying cat?
His answer is waiting at his front door.
“We need to exchange numbers,” Kyuhyun deadpans. “So I don’t have to wait at your door whenever I want to see you.”
“We’re not in any position to exchange numbers,” Zhou Mi replies, startled-his voice going up and down more than a roller coaster as well. Kyuhyun looks taken aback.
“What happened to you? Did someone cut up your vocal chords?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Kyuhyun looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Let me in.” Zhou Mi doesn’t have much of a reason to deny his request, so he does-Kyuhyun stalks inside with hardly any manners, kicks off his shoes, and goes straight to the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Zhou Mi shuffles in after him, his toes warm in his fuzzy bunny slippers.
“Don’t talk, please. My ears hurt.” Kyuhyun rummages through the kitchen, boiling some water, getting cups.
“You can cook?”
“Nope. But I can at least make some honey tea.” Zhou Mi tilts his head in speculation, flinching as two mugs clink together dangerously when Kyuhyun grabs them both with one hand. Tea, huh? He didn’t take Kyuhyun to be the type of person to make tea for others. He watches as Kyuhyun fumbles around with the teabags and nearly spills the hot water everywhere, a small smile on his lips all the while. Kyuhyun’s kind of cute like this.
He carefully takes the tea that Kyuhyun offers him. “What brought this on?”
“Your awful voice.” Kyuhyun sips at his own tea. “What happens if you still sound like this by the next show?”
Zhou Mi laughs. “That’s all you guys care about concerning my voice, isn’t it? No one asks if I’m okay, but instead, what’s going to happen if I can’t sing for the next show? Some friends you guys are.”
“I wasn’t aware that I’m your friend?” Kyuhyun peeks at him over the rim of his mug, eyes large and deceptively innocent.
“You’re my friend,” Zhou Mi replies after a moment’s hesitation. If friends mean bonding over sex after every show, then yeah.
“Oh. Then…are you alright? Does your throat hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt.” Zhou Mi shifts uncomfortably on his feet at the question that is so commonplace, but coming from Kyuhyun, sounds awkward and intimate. “It just disappeared this morning when I was singing; I don’t know what happened.”
“Ah.” Kyuhyun sighs. “Let’s do something that doesn’t require you to talk. It really is painful to hear you.”
“Why are you here, anyway?” There are things that Zhou Mi wants to ask him. Where have you been? What upset you last time? Did you have a change of heart, since you’re here now?
“What, I can’t visit you?” he says brusquely. “Do you have any movies?”
“Only Chinese ones.”
“Zhen de ma?” Before Zhou Mi can register that Kyuhyun just responded to him in Mandarin, the younger man has already wandered into the living room to search through his movie collection.
He follows him, his tea clutched tightly in his hand. “You speak Chinese?”
“Yi dian dian.” A little bit. “What, you thought I followed you all over China for your tour and didn’t at least pick something up?”
“Wow.” Zhou Mi is impressed. “Who would’ve thought.”
“Now stop talking, please.” Kyuhyun pops a DVD in, turns up the volume, and shuts the blinds so the room is darker. Zhou Mi settles onto the couch with a cushion in his lap. He’s still confused about why Kyuhyun’s here, since they’re not having sex, but he doesn’t mind, he supposes-it’s not like Kyuhyun’s annoying, or anything. And he even made him tea. What a nice guy.
They spend the next hour or so watching the movie with Chinese subtitles, because it doesn’t have Korean subtitles. Once in a while, Kyuhyun will make a remark in Chinese, and Zhou Mi will respond in Chinese as well-but his fluency combined with his ruined voice makes it difficult for Kyuhyun to understand.
Zhou Mi’s phone rings during the climax of the movie, and he fishes it out of his pocket. The caller ID says it’s Sungmin. He contemplates not picking up, but he’ll probably get hell for it later, so he does. “Hello?”
“Mi? Wow, Henry wasn’t kidding when he said you lost your voice.”
“D’you think I’d kid about something like that?”
“Who is it,” Kyuhyun says dispassionately. “You’re ruining the movie.”
“You don’t even know what’s happening,” Zhou Mi snaps back. “What’s up?” he says, returning to Sungmin.
Sungmin sounds surprised. “Are you with someone right now?”
“Uh, yeah. A friend.” Who would Zhou Mi rather be watching the movie with right now, Kyuhyun or Sungmin? He isn’t sure. Or is he? He glances over at Kyuhyun, whose attention isn’t on him-his eyes are on the television screen, but it doesn’t look like he’s paying attention to that either. The mug in his hands is empty, and his eyelids may even be drooping a little from sleepiness. The movie must be dull for him, since he doesn’t even understand what’s going on. “Why did you call?”
“I was just checking up on you, since you’ve never lost your voice before.” At this, Sungmin’s tone softens. “I was worried.” Zhou Mi’s heart flutters in its usual infuriating manner whenever Sungmin does something affectionate.
“Well,” he replies, a little shortly, “I’m fine. Thanks. I’ll see you soon.” He hangs up before Sungmin gets a chance to respond, and tosses his phone to the side.
“Who was that?” Kyuhyun asks again.
Zhou Mi cautions, “Sungmin.” No one outside of the band knows that he and Sungmin had a relationship other than Kyuhyun.
“What did he want?” the younger man grumbles.
“Nothing.” Zhou Mi shakes his head. He watches Kyuhyun for a moment, admiring his side profile. Kyuhyun has a very proportional and attractive face-and on top of that, it’s a little on the round side, so Zhou Mi finds it cute. That’s probably why he didn’t refuse the first time Kyuhyun came onto him. Such a beautiful face-is the person underneath it just as beautiful? “He was just checking up on me.”
“How nice.”
Zhou Mi wonders what it’s like to hold his hand. “Kui Xian,” he says, trying out Kyuhyun’s Chinese name. He likes it.
Kyuhyun wrinkles his nose, turning his head to face him. “Gui Xian,” he corrects. Cheeky, but cute. Zhou Mi can’t help but smile as he takes Kyuhyun’s cup from his hands and places it on the coffee table. “What?”
“I just…” The smile is still on Zhou Mi’s lips when he reaches out, fingers touching Kyuhyun’s cheek. Kyuhyun freezes. “I don’t know.” He leans in and kisses him, sighing against the warmth and comfort of his lips. The movie continues to play on the television, but neither of them are paying attention to it anymore. Zhou Mi shifts closer, tilting his head so he can kiss Kyuhyun deeper, and-
Kyuhyun pulls away with a sharp intake of breath, cheeks flushed. “What are you doing?”
“Uh, kissing you?” Zhou Mi’s voice cracks. He cringes. Definitely a moment ruiner.
“Why?”
“Why?” He laughs at the incredulity of the question. “We’ve never had a why before, so why do we need to have one now?” Kyuhyun doesn’t answer that question. Zhou Mi straightens up. “Is something the matter, Kui Xian?”
“Gui Xian,” Kyuhyun corrects. “And no. Nothing.”
“Do you not…you know? With me anymore?”
It takes him longer to answer this one. “No,” he replies, slowly.
“Then-”
“Hyung,” Kyuhyun says, and it’s the first time he’s ever called Zhou Mi that. Butterflies flutter around excitedly in his stomach. “Stop talking. Seriously. You sound disgusting.”
“…Sorry,” he says meekly.
Kyuhyun sighs. “Come here.” Zhou Mi moves closer again, and Kyuhyun kisses him this time, lips soft, movements slow. Without the adrenaline from a show, or the rush that they usually have backstage, they move languidly. Kyuhyun moves until he’s kneeling in front of Zhou Mi between his legs, and his fingers creep under Zhou Mi’s shirt, all the while, their mouths still connected. Zhou Mi can do nothing but shiver when Kyuhyun’s hold fingers teasingly pinch his nipples, which are now hard.
This time with Kyuhyun is different. Usually, Kyuhyun is heat, fast movements, go go go. This time-still heat, but maybe a different kind of heat? Just all-encompassing warmth, every movement as though carefully considered. Kyuhyun holds Zhou Mi’s hips steady as he swallows him, slowly working him down his throat. Zhou Mi can’t not moan at that, even if his voice is gross and unsexy, because the feel of Kyuhyun’s throat is irresistible. His fingers thread through Kyuhyun’s hair as Kyuhyun’s head bobs, every swipe of his tongue precise, at the perfect pressure, tantalizing Zhou Mi in a way he didn’t know Kyuhyun was capable of.
“S-Stop, Kyuhyun,” he gasps, trying to tug Kyuhyun off. “I’m going to come if you don’t stop.” Kyuhyun hums in acknowledgement, his throat vibrating around his cock. Zhou Mi moans. “I’m s-serious-” But Kyuhyun doesn’t stop-he doesn’t speed up and he doesn’t slow down, but continues at the same pace as before, bringing what might possibly be the best orgasm of Zhou Mi’s life. Kyuhyun has to hold his hips still to keep him from bucking into his mouth even more, and he takes all of Zhou Mi-swallows everything, throat working around him until Zhou Mi is completely spent, chest heaving and body twitching from the aftershocks. Kyuhyun lets his cock slip from his mouth, licking his lips that are forming into a faint smirk. Zhou Mi can only stare down at him dazedly.
“I’m good, right?” There’s smugness in Kyuhyun’s voice, and he deserves at least that much, Zhou Mi thinks.
“Yeah, you’re good,” he agrees, pulling Kyuhyun up and kissing him, slow and deep and sensual. It makes his head swim. “Now. My turn.”
part two <3