Entry #20
Title: inescapable
Pairing: QMi / AU, er, drama?
Rating: PG
Summary: Kyuhyun meets someone who challenges his beliefs.
Kyuhyun has the best voice to come out of Taul V in three decades, and everyone has known he would be headed off-planet since his voice finally settled in its adult register. Taul V is hardly a backwater, but its chief export is soya protein, not top-50 chart hits. It's a waste, his parents (his teachers, his neighbors) say, to keep such promising talent stifled in a prosaic farming society. So, he applies to Albireo, the Albireo, on the recommendation of a vocal coach.
He is mildly surprised when a transsat call arrives a week later, for him. He's in.
The journey, when the time comes, isn't easy. It's his first time away from home for more than a night or two, and Kyuhyun is fully aware that he may not set foot on his home ground again for years, if ever. He's unaccustomed to sub-grav, clumsy as he grips the safety bars along the ship's corridors, trying not to bristle when crewmembers or seasoned travelers bound lightly past, and the trip itself isn't long enough to give him his ship-legs before they arrive.
The Albireo Prime Academy of the Performing Arts isn't even located respectably planetside like a proper institution, but in a sprawling complex of dull metallic tubes, domes, and docking bays his eye can't begin to make sense of, a demented child's tinker-toy construction blown up to garish proportions and then set adrift to revolve slowly in space. The academy has the population of a small city, he's heard, between students, faculty, and all the various personnel associated with keeping it functional. It makes Kyuhyun's skin crawl, just a little, to think how fragile and exposed it all is, with deadly vacuum all around.
He watches the bay loom ahead as the tiny shuttle leaves the ship's belly. Mere minutes later, a docking arm locks on with a faint thud that quivers through the skin of the shuttle, and the hatch opens with a hiss.
His room assignment, when he receives it, places him in one of the tiny, utilitarian rooms lining Circuit 6, apparently devoted entirely to the newly-arrived. It's little larger than a closet he had, back on Taul, and he has a roommate (he discovers when he pulls back a curtain to reveal two cramped bunks). The toilets and showers are communal, shared by the nearest quadrant of the circuit, and some prankster has just sabotaged the filtration system, resulting in a foul odor that hangs around the corridor outside as his guide apathetically explains through a makeshift mask.
His roommate is a tiny boy with sharp cheekbones, downcast eyes, and a permanently bashful demeanor, from one of the moons of Epseri Beta, or some such. Ryeowook, his name is, and that's all Kyuhyun gets out of him for the first week, aside from whispered requests, is-it-alright-if-I-turn-out-the-light and may-I-leave-the-door-shut. He skims the datanet about that system, then, half-curious and half-frustrated, and learns that Ryeowook has probably never gone without a veil before in his life, but the dress codes of the Academy prohibit face-obscuring clothing. The poor boy also (incidentally) can warble into ranges Kyuhyun's never known a male voice could achieve. He learns that in his first group vocal session, standing next to Ryeowook in the uncomfortable huddle of first-term scholars by virtue of having come from the same place at the same time.
Training, here, is more grueling than anything back home. Part of Kyuhyun loves it, loves the challenge, love-hates having instructors who are levels above him in skill and technique and sheer ability and can make him feel inadequate for the first time in his life. Part of him hates the never-ending grind of it all, hates the sameness of every gray corridor and the sunless, diffuse light that bathes them twelve hours a day, like clockwork. He misses standing and feeling the wind on his face and his own solid weight planted on the ground, instead of this constant feeling of being about to drift away. He misses honest-to-goodness real food that grew in the ground, not a vat, and has familiar flavors. He doesn't pack up and leave, although every week or so, whispers ripple down the circuit about so-and-so cracking and abandoning their study, and once in awhile he hears Ryeowook sobbing into his pillow, late at night when he should be resting but is scanning the datanet with a touch of insomnia.
It's nearly one year, Standard, before he has the chance to attend a musical recital by some of the older scholars for the very first time. Free time, it seems, is very nearly considered a sin, and rarely to be found at convenient hours.
The auditorium dome is a larger space than he realized, and Ryeowook gasps at his elbow when they slip through the entrance and suddenly the ceiling arches overhead, in more open space than most of them have witnessed since their arrival. The center of the dome is filled with a towering cylinder of water, held in place by some sort of force field, and Kyuhyun wonders at its acoustic purpose until the floor at the base of it spirals open and the first performer glides upwards into view, a Ceta exchange scholar. It's not his first time seeing an alien--Albireo is open to a wide range of lifeforms and musical traditions, but humans make up the vast majority and certain limitations on atmospheric quality, dietary needs, and vocal range tend to mean that he only shares classes and meals with those like himself.
The Ceta female opens on a basso profundo note, carried from water to open air via specialized speakers, that rattles his very bones and leaves him wide-eyed, and she spends the next half-hour performing an excerpt from one of their traditional heroic ballads on a single breath. When the lights dim at the end of her recital, Kyuhyun's entire body is still tingling from the sub-harmonics. The water is gone, drained away in a soundless rush before the lights return, and a couple of instrumentalists follow; a zimbi drummer, an amplified kitarist (whose subliminal-laced composition eases the audience back down from the Ceta's lingering buzz). The vocalist who follows has a distinctive, raw rasp in his tone, if a somewhat stiff stage presence, and favors a style of ornamentation that Kyuhyun isn't partial to, but has Ryeowook nearly leaning forward out of his seat with shining eyes.
The rest, in retrospect, Kyuhyun enjoys but finds largely forgettable, until the final performer of the night appears, a tall man cloaked in a strange shroud from neck to toes but smiling with almost blinding intensity and a hint of self-deprecation. His voice, when he begins to sing, is clear and ringing, projecting to fill the space with a seemingly effortless reach. "Who is that," he turns to ask Ryeowook the moment the last note fades to silence and the lights drop, but his question is drowned out in the expected applause. Ryeowook would have no better way of knowing than himself, of course. The Academy never publishes the name of a scholar on a program. In theory, it's supposed to ensure each is judged by their performance of the night, not by their reputation. They underestimate gossip and the avid thrill people get from doing something they aren't supposed to, Kyuhyun thinks.
He catches Ryeowook's elbow, as they're being swept out the door by the dispersal of the audience, leans over and whispers in his ear. "Let's wait for them." He's developed a pretty good map in his head of Albireon Prime's warren of tubes and where they connect, and he knows where the backstage access to this dome comes out. Ryeowook turns and gives him a wide-eyed, vaguely frightened look, but it's not a 'no'.
They hurry down a side-corridor, work their way in a semicircle around the dome until they come to another passage radiating outward from it. Kyuhyun recognizes the drummer, already past them and retreating down the hall. Ryeowook's favorite is next, and as he's walking past with little more than a glance at the two younger scholars, Ryeowook's breath hitches and he drops into one of the deep, almost servile bows of his ingrained youth.
The performer's face runs through a gamut of mild surprise-confusion-embarrassment in the next second, as his steps halt. "Hey, you don't have to do that, please..." He crouches down, to peer into Ryeowook's face curiously (probably violating about six of the boy's customs, for all Kyuhyun knows), and makes like he's going to reach for his shoulder.
It's apparently enough to snap Ryeowook out of his daze, and he flinches backwards, even lifting his head to reveal a flush. "I really enjoyed your p-piece." It's perhaps the clearest Kyuhyun's ever heard him speak, and pitched above a whisper for once. And really, Kyuhyun would listen further, but it's then that the flautist brushes past and he looks up to spot a tall figure approaching, recognizes the luminous smile directed at a scholar beside him. Up close, he's even taller, topping Kyuhyun by half a head or more, strung out into the ethereal slenderness of someone born and raised in very low gravities, but that's not what sends the chill down his spine.
The cloak that shrouded his figure is gone, now, and where arms should be, there are only misshapen mockeries; forearm proportions all wrong and grotesquely elongated fingers folded back along them with what looks like skin in a flap between. Only the thumbs and forefingers of each mutated 'hand' appear relatively normal, and even they look warped and wrong set at the wrist-joint of a wing, like that. The scholar (and his beautiful voice) isn't human at all, but isn't alien, just a product of genemod technology, a parody of natural development declared illegal over 50 years ago in every civilized colony.
The winged aberration nears them, pace slowing as he--it--flicks a puzzled glance between the tongue-tied Ryeowook and the scholar still crouching to converse with him. Dark eyes settle on Kyuhyun, and he can't help flattening himself a fraction into the wall. The too-bright smile flickers, dims just a little, and wings fold tighter, edging past and continuing down the corridor smoothly. Kyuhyun doesn't stare at his back as he goes.
Weeks pass, without sun or sky or seasons. Kyuhyun can't tell one from the next. The raw-voiced scholar shows up one day and listens in on Kyuhyun and Ryeowook's group during vocal training. Ryeowook's singing is always ethereal yet powerful, unhampered by whatever cultural mores make him so damn twitchy, but Kyuhyun thinks he tries even harder when that guy is around. Yesung, his name is. It's like dialing up Ryeowook's intensity from 100 to 120%.
He doesn't think Yesung notices anybody but Ryeowook in the room, until the day a summons pulls both Ryeowook and himself out of group practice without warning, and they're introduced to a different set of vocal coaches for more in-depth, personal training. Yesung drops by, at the end of a three hour session, and grins smugly. "I knew you guys were good. I know 'good', when I hear it."
Ryeowook has his head down, blushing furtively again, and Kyuhyun resists the urge to roll his eyes and lock the two in a room together. "Thanks. We appreciate the vote of confidence." He elbows the shorter boy, who is still trying to disappear at his side, and gets a noise best described as a squeak in return.
"I trained with the Rising Gods' lead singer, you know. Before he burnt out 'lining benders." Yesung rambles on, possibly just to hear the sound of his own voice. Kyuhyun isn't sure. "Now, of course, he probably couldn't recognize his own mother if she danced in front of him." His gaze falls on Kyuhyun, then, sharpening. "Friend of mine heard you sing, the other day. He wants to meet you. We could all have dinner, sometime."
Kyuhyun furrows his brow, skeptical, but Ryeowook pipes up (of all the times to do it) before he can politely excuse himself. "W-we would love to, thank you."
In fact, Kyuhyun can think of few things he wants to do less than play chaperone to the budding awkwardness of those two dancing around each other, but Yesung is smiling and nodding, the deal sealed, with no room for graceful protest.
The commercial sector of Albireo Prime is dwarfed by the Academy proper, but the tiny cafes and shops there do provide occasional respite from mind-numbing routine. Kyuhyun feels mildly out of place in something other than his gray scholar's uniform, now, and tugs on his sweater uncomfortably. Ryeowook, however, is head-to-toe in draping black, a silk-like weave he doesn't recognize, and a semi-opaque veil covers all of his face save for bright, startlingly-outlined eyes. He looks immeasurably more comfortable, now, standing straight and even smiling softly, behind the cloth. Kyuhyun tries to imagine being forced to wear nothing but his underwear within the Academy bounds every day for the past year, and can't.
They make their way along the curving corridor, the rim of the wheel that makes up this sector, between lifts that shoot upwards along the 'spokes' to cross the circuit entirely, and past vendors offering samples. Yesung is standing outside of a small restaurant and the shape beside him is too tall, too angular to be quite human, even with wings folded discreetly beneath a long cloak. When Yesung raises a hand in friendly greeting, the gene-warped creature beside him turns with that same luminous smile and canted eyes dark with interest.
Kyuhyun nearly stops in his tracks, but Ryeowook tucks gloved fingers into the crook of his arm and propels him onward with more force than he realized the frail-looking boy possesses.
"Kyuhyun, Ryeowook--" Yesung's eyes are all for the veiled boy as he speaks, "--this is Zhou Mi."
"Pleased to meet both of you at last," Zhou Mi inclines his head in greeting, gaze lingering on Kyuhyun's face the longest. His spoken Standard carries a melodic accent Kyuhyun doesn't remember hearing when he sang. "Such interesting people, to meet in this place, don't you think? Think of the vast expanse between our homes, and yet here we are, about to share a fine meal together."
Kyuhyun finds himself ushered onto a high stool, facing Zhou Mi across the cramped table, with Ryeowook at his elbow. He frowns at his empty glass and tries not to accidentally bump knees in the close quarters as Ryeowook leans across to pour each of them a measure of wine.
"So, Kyuhyun, where are you from?" Zhou Mi watches him avidly, 'hands' peeking out the front of his cloak to tap the very tips of his forefingers against the edge of the table, shifting to keep his wings folded along his sides.
"Taul system." He answers, but it's grudging. "Fifth planet."
"Oh!" The man across from him brightens, apparently undeterred. "I've heard of it. Never been, though, I hear a tourist visa is a nightmare to get."
Kyuhyun eyes his warped fingers, as they drum the tabletop, and replies flatly. "There are a lot of import restrictions. It's a breadbasket. They can't risk... modded stock getting loose, you know." It's deliberate, even a little vicious. He can feel Ryeowook looking askance at him, and Zhou Mi's eyes flash with the recognition of it.
He doesn't, however, expect Zhou Mi to laugh, tone playfully light. "Well, I can see the danger I might pose to the industry. Can you imagine, if I accidentally crossbred? Whole fields full of tubers that fly, what a nightmare. Your dinner might start talking back." He lifts his drink carefully between thumb and forefinger, clinking it against the rim of Kyuhyun's when he fails to follow suit, and arches his brows in mock-seriousness. "To the preservation of vegetable purity."
Yesung chuckles and joins the toast; Ryeowook merely kicks Kyuhyun in the ankle until he takes a sip, scowling.
"By the way," Zhou Mi leans forward a little, voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. "Your sweater, that rich deep cathaberry shade, is that a native dye? It's a marvelous color on you."
Kyuhyun actually blushes, and curses his surprise for the reaction. "I... don't know." He's caught somewhere between anger (how dare this freak poke fun at him) and shifting confusion. Zhou Mi looks so damn sincere about it, for all the triumphant curl of his lips and the sparkle in his eyes.
Ryeowook refills their drinks, casting an openly curious glance in the tall man's direction. "What about you, Zhou Mi?"
"Ah," he says, leaning back with the satisfied air of a storyteller who knows he has an audience, "my grandparents, rest their souls, were expressly designed for crewing the deep-space construction rigs."
Designed, Kyuhyun thinks, like a tool. A travesty against nature.
"The recession was so terrible, at the time, so some families were opting to have the procedure done before conceiving... A means to ensure their children would have guaranteed work open to them, you know." Zhou Mi smiles again, with a wry twist. "In nullgrav, given a pressurized atmosphere, we are far more agile than even the most seasoned veteran of a servo-suit, and if accidents happened... well, accidents happened. And then the new laws were passed about genemodding, but those didn't entirely address the matter of those who already existed, did they?"
"Bureaucracy," Yesung interjects, "so rarely does."
"At any rate, perhaps we will die out in a couple more generations, or perhaps we won't, who can say? I never found construction work particularly fulfilling, myself, so off I went to see the universe, and this is where it led me." Zhou Mi raises his glass again, and this time, Kyuhyun mirrors the action, sullenly, with everybody else.
The food, he must admit, is delicious.
"What is Taul V like?" As Ryeowook and Yesung seem largely absorbed in their own hushed exchange, Zhou Mi's entire conversational focus has been on Kyuhyun, since they began to eat.
Kyuhyun is not quite rude enough to ignore him entirely, as much as he tells himself he would like to. "It's... a planet. It's like any planet, I guess."
"Isn't it higher than one standard gravity, there? I've never been able to spend much time planet-side. About six hours at one gee, and I feel like I've been wrung out and left to die." Zhou Mi's wings twitch, fractionally, in distaste. "Was it difficult for you to adjust to Albireo Prime? You must be quite strong."
"Oh, he is," Ryeowook adds in, suddenly, and Yesung angles an appraising glance across the table.
Kyuhyun has never thought of himself as particularly strong. On Taul V, he was ordinary in every regard save his voice; here, he only stands out by virtue of being rather solidly built in contrast to the slender spaceborn, and if he seems stronger, it's only because things weigh less in the lower gravity most of the station is kept at. "I'm not. Not really."
It makes him edgy when he can't decide if Zhou Mi is laughing at him or not. It makes him edgy when Zhou Mi looks at him, open and unashamed. And that is the thing that Zhou Mi won't stop doing.
When his trainer informs him that she wants the two of them to perform a duet, Kyuhyun tries to refuse. At least, he opens his mouth and starts to protest, but then his coach levels such a flat look at him that he thinks better of the idea, bites his cheek, and nods.
"Also," she says, prodding at his diaphragm with a frown, "you're going soft, lately. I'm scheduling you for some time in the gyms, you've been spaceside too long, your body isn't accustomed to this environment."
Her point is proven when he hikes out to one of the wheels that's been spun up to slightly above standard grav, closer to his homeworld, and within a few minutes, feels like lying down flat on the floor and whimpering. He struggles on with it, though, working himself into a sweat and exercising a little longer every visit, until even he notices the improvement in his vocal tone and has lost some of the idle softness around his jawline and neck.
Kyuhyun is passing one of the nullgrav modules on his way to the showers, there, moving himself hand-over-hand along the weightless tunnel that connects them, when he notices activity inside. Several people are exercising within, flinging themselves in slow, controlled arcs from bar to bar within the open space, but Zhou Mi is there, also, and Kyuhyun has never seen his wings spread, before. He hesitates, hanging in the entrance and watching, just a little longer.
Zhou Mi's wings--his mutated, elongated phalanges and the pale, fragile-looking membrane between--are controlling every second of his flight, drawing in to send him into a lazy twist to avoid one bar, then flaring wide and beating rapidly until he can arrow across the interior of the open space. For a moment, Kyuhyun thinks he's been spotted; he ducks back, into the corridor, and freezes there.
There is no accented cry of greeting, no sign of recognition.
He hurries onward to the showers, red-faced and irritated with himself.
He's still inside when he hears the next cubicle turn on, then a snatch of a familiar tune being hummed. It's the duet they've been working on; Zhou Mi is there, one wall away. Kyuhyun hides in the shower and waits for him to leave.
That is his plan, at least, until he hears Zhou Mi's passage out of the main room arrested by several voices.
"Out of the way, modfreak." There is a grunt and the squeak of skin sliding on tile; a heavy sound like a body just hit the wall. It's mingled horror and perhaps a spark of guilt that draws Kyuhyun out of his cubicle, towel slung hastily around his waist, to... what, intervene? He isn't sure.
The others, a small group of dancers, are leaving the room already, talking and laughing lowly amongst themselves without a glance backward. Zhou Mi is clambering awkwardly to one knee by the wall, straightening and flexing his wing where it buckled under him. The skin around his eyes is a little tighter than usual, with discomfort.
"Are you... alright?" Kyuhyun shuffles a step nearer, unsure what to do.
"It's fine," Zhou Mi says, forcing a facsimile of his usual smile. He lowers his head for a moment, after, finger curling where his wing-joint is braced against the wall.
Kyuhyun almost takes the offered escape, but something holds him back. Finally, he extends a hand, stiff and hesitant. "Let me help you up, at least."
Zhou Mi looks up at him again, some difficult-to-read emotion swirling in his exotically tilted eyes, then reaches gingerly for his outstretched hand, thumb and forefinger circling his wrist in a light clasp as he brings his weight to bear and takes the assist to his feet.
His weight is negligible, the sensation of wing membrane brushing Kyuhyun's fingers alien, but not sickening. Not the way Kyuhyun expected.
Zhou Mi straightens to his full, impossibly slender height, and it's the closest Kyuhyun has ever been to him. It puts him on eye level with his generous, wide mouth, soft lips and a hint of tongue darting out to moisten them. He drops his gaze, self-consciously aware, only to find sharp collarbones dipping into parsecs of bare skin, a towel precariously clinging to narrow hips, and legs that go on forever. It's unfair, he thinks, that anyone is so fucking inhumanly beautiful.
Zhou Mi's wing makes a sudden fold, diving to rescue his towel, and the motion inadvertently brushes the back of his finger across Kyuhyun's stomach. His cheekbones are stained red, when he backs up a step. "Thank you," he says, and hurries out of the room, leaving Kyuhyun standing there motionless.
It's impossible to ignore Zhou Mi in the same way, after that. They practice together for hours, for weeks on end, at the bequest of his vocal coach, Kyuhyun's velvet baritone melding with the soaring tenor. He notices the quirk in the corner of his mouth, flashes of teeth, glimpses of the long line of his neck. Sometimes, he catches himself staring, wondering if he feels as fragile as he looks, wondering what his wings would feel like, to touch, openly and consciously.
"Why don't you tell him?" Ryeowook asks, watching him round-eyed from the upper bunk.
"What? Tell who?" Kyuhyun flushes at the mere suggestion, scowling and folding his arms over his chest.
Ryeowook only makes a disappointed sort of cluck in his throat, and settles back. "Show him, if you're afraid to say it. He really likes you, too."
"I'm not--I don't.." Kyuhyun trails off, lamely, and rolls up in his blanket.
Their recital goes smoothly. It's Kyuhyun's first, and his nerves start bubbling in his stomach shortly before they are to take the stage, but Zhou Mi looks over at him and smiles, bright and confident, and the sensation evaporates in a slightly giddy little glow.
The glow only deepens during the afterparty, thanks to the brimming glasses of violet Isoyaian champagne people keep handing him. Zhou Mi is as tall and slender as ever, striking in all-black and charmingly flushed. His lips are reddened and his eyes smokily dark, for the stage, and Kyuhyun can't bear it.
"Come here," he says gruffly, and pulls Zhou Mi toward the wall, where he drags a damp serviette across his lower lip, white cloth coming away smeared with coral. He watches in mild, muffled consternation as his own thumb reaches out to repeat the motion, tracking over the soft curve of his lip entirely of its own accord. Zhou Mi makes a tiny sound, eyes wide, and then Kyuhyun finds that mouth hot and seeking against his own, wings shrouding him as Zhou Mi's long fingers tangle in his hair.
Kyuhyun isn't sure how they get from the reception room into a darkened corridor outside, but Zhou Mi's body feels amazing between his own and the wall, and his hands slide down to grip slender hips, slide up to explore the sharp angles of his neck and jaw. They kiss like that, slow and messy and demanding, for seconds that stretch into minutes, melt and ignite.
He wakes up, some time later, in a strange room, marginally more spacious than his own. He has a pounding headache, a terrible taste in his mouth, and a warm weight sprawled across his body. Zhou Mi's hair tickles his nose (he suffers an inane moment of realization that he's never seen the top of his head before), and he coughs, groaning. What did he do last night?
His pants are still on, thank the benevolent whims of the universe. So are Zhou Mi's, although he can't make any claims about the whereabouts of anything else he was wearing. Zhou Mi has the sharpest hipbones in the world, and one of his hands is resting on one quite comfortably. "Hey..." he mutters, and gives the older scholar a little jostle. His wings are warm and soft, half-spread across them both.
Zhou Mi finally rouses enough to lift his head, eyes widening in surprise and wings tensing. Kyuhyun could say any one of a number of things, right then and there, he knows, and Zhou Mi would never lay a hand on him again. He could end it before it's even begun. But there's something vulnerable in Zhou Mi's eyes, so clear in front of him.
"...I need to brush my teeth," he says, finally, and he can feel the way Zhou Mi's tension relaxes in a sigh. "Do you, uh, have a spare?"
"I'll find you something," Zhou Mi bites his lip, then smiles, a slow and fragile thing. "It's two doors down."
"Thanks."
Pairing: QMi / AU, er, drama?
Rating: PG
Summary: Kyuhyun meets someone who challenges his beliefs.
Kyuhyun has the best voice to come out of Taul V in three decades, and everyone has known he would be headed off-planet since his voice finally settled in its adult register. Taul V is hardly a backwater, but its chief export is soya protein, not top-50 chart hits. It's a waste, his parents (his teachers, his neighbors) say, to keep such promising talent stifled in a prosaic farming society. So, he applies to Albireo, the Albireo, on the recommendation of a vocal coach.
He is mildly surprised when a transsat call arrives a week later, for him. He's in.
The journey, when the time comes, isn't easy. It's his first time away from home for more than a night or two, and Kyuhyun is fully aware that he may not set foot on his home ground again for years, if ever. He's unaccustomed to sub-grav, clumsy as he grips the safety bars along the ship's corridors, trying not to bristle when crewmembers or seasoned travelers bound lightly past, and the trip itself isn't long enough to give him his ship-legs before they arrive.
The Albireo Prime Academy of the Performing Arts isn't even located respectably planetside like a proper institution, but in a sprawling complex of dull metallic tubes, domes, and docking bays his eye can't begin to make sense of, a demented child's tinker-toy construction blown up to garish proportions and then set adrift to revolve slowly in space. The academy has the population of a small city, he's heard, between students, faculty, and all the various personnel associated with keeping it functional. It makes Kyuhyun's skin crawl, just a little, to think how fragile and exposed it all is, with deadly vacuum all around.
He watches the bay loom ahead as the tiny shuttle leaves the ship's belly. Mere minutes later, a docking arm locks on with a faint thud that quivers through the skin of the shuttle, and the hatch opens with a hiss.
His room assignment, when he receives it, places him in one of the tiny, utilitarian rooms lining Circuit 6, apparently devoted entirely to the newly-arrived. It's little larger than a closet he had, back on Taul, and he has a roommate (he discovers when he pulls back a curtain to reveal two cramped bunks). The toilets and showers are communal, shared by the nearest quadrant of the circuit, and some prankster has just sabotaged the filtration system, resulting in a foul odor that hangs around the corridor outside as his guide apathetically explains through a makeshift mask.
His roommate is a tiny boy with sharp cheekbones, downcast eyes, and a permanently bashful demeanor, from one of the moons of Epseri Beta, or some such. Ryeowook, his name is, and that's all Kyuhyun gets out of him for the first week, aside from whispered requests, is-it-alright-if-I-turn-out-the-light and may-I-leave-the-door-shut. He skims the datanet about that system, then, half-curious and half-frustrated, and learns that Ryeowook has probably never gone without a veil before in his life, but the dress codes of the Academy prohibit face-obscuring clothing. The poor boy also (incidentally) can warble into ranges Kyuhyun's never known a male voice could achieve. He learns that in his first group vocal session, standing next to Ryeowook in the uncomfortable huddle of first-term scholars by virtue of having come from the same place at the same time.
Training, here, is more grueling than anything back home. Part of Kyuhyun loves it, loves the challenge, love-hates having instructors who are levels above him in skill and technique and sheer ability and can make him feel inadequate for the first time in his life. Part of him hates the never-ending grind of it all, hates the sameness of every gray corridor and the sunless, diffuse light that bathes them twelve hours a day, like clockwork. He misses standing and feeling the wind on his face and his own solid weight planted on the ground, instead of this constant feeling of being about to drift away. He misses honest-to-goodness real food that grew in the ground, not a vat, and has familiar flavors. He doesn't pack up and leave, although every week or so, whispers ripple down the circuit about so-and-so cracking and abandoning their study, and once in awhile he hears Ryeowook sobbing into his pillow, late at night when he should be resting but is scanning the datanet with a touch of insomnia.
It's nearly one year, Standard, before he has the chance to attend a musical recital by some of the older scholars for the very first time. Free time, it seems, is very nearly considered a sin, and rarely to be found at convenient hours.
The auditorium dome is a larger space than he realized, and Ryeowook gasps at his elbow when they slip through the entrance and suddenly the ceiling arches overhead, in more open space than most of them have witnessed since their arrival. The center of the dome is filled with a towering cylinder of water, held in place by some sort of force field, and Kyuhyun wonders at its acoustic purpose until the floor at the base of it spirals open and the first performer glides upwards into view, a Ceta exchange scholar. It's not his first time seeing an alien--Albireo is open to a wide range of lifeforms and musical traditions, but humans make up the vast majority and certain limitations on atmospheric quality, dietary needs, and vocal range tend to mean that he only shares classes and meals with those like himself.
The Ceta female opens on a basso profundo note, carried from water to open air via specialized speakers, that rattles his very bones and leaves him wide-eyed, and she spends the next half-hour performing an excerpt from one of their traditional heroic ballads on a single breath. When the lights dim at the end of her recital, Kyuhyun's entire body is still tingling from the sub-harmonics. The water is gone, drained away in a soundless rush before the lights return, and a couple of instrumentalists follow; a zimbi drummer, an amplified kitarist (whose subliminal-laced composition eases the audience back down from the Ceta's lingering buzz). The vocalist who follows has a distinctive, raw rasp in his tone, if a somewhat stiff stage presence, and favors a style of ornamentation that Kyuhyun isn't partial to, but has Ryeowook nearly leaning forward out of his seat with shining eyes.
The rest, in retrospect, Kyuhyun enjoys but finds largely forgettable, until the final performer of the night appears, a tall man cloaked in a strange shroud from neck to toes but smiling with almost blinding intensity and a hint of self-deprecation. His voice, when he begins to sing, is clear and ringing, projecting to fill the space with a seemingly effortless reach. "Who is that," he turns to ask Ryeowook the moment the last note fades to silence and the lights drop, but his question is drowned out in the expected applause. Ryeowook would have no better way of knowing than himself, of course. The Academy never publishes the name of a scholar on a program. In theory, it's supposed to ensure each is judged by their performance of the night, not by their reputation. They underestimate gossip and the avid thrill people get from doing something they aren't supposed to, Kyuhyun thinks.
He catches Ryeowook's elbow, as they're being swept out the door by the dispersal of the audience, leans over and whispers in his ear. "Let's wait for them." He's developed a pretty good map in his head of Albireon Prime's warren of tubes and where they connect, and he knows where the backstage access to this dome comes out. Ryeowook turns and gives him a wide-eyed, vaguely frightened look, but it's not a 'no'.
They hurry down a side-corridor, work their way in a semicircle around the dome until they come to another passage radiating outward from it. Kyuhyun recognizes the drummer, already past them and retreating down the hall. Ryeowook's favorite is next, and as he's walking past with little more than a glance at the two younger scholars, Ryeowook's breath hitches and he drops into one of the deep, almost servile bows of his ingrained youth.
The performer's face runs through a gamut of mild surprise-confusion-embarrassment in the next second, as his steps halt. "Hey, you don't have to do that, please..." He crouches down, to peer into Ryeowook's face curiously (probably violating about six of the boy's customs, for all Kyuhyun knows), and makes like he's going to reach for his shoulder.
It's apparently enough to snap Ryeowook out of his daze, and he flinches backwards, even lifting his head to reveal a flush. "I really enjoyed your p-piece." It's perhaps the clearest Kyuhyun's ever heard him speak, and pitched above a whisper for once. And really, Kyuhyun would listen further, but it's then that the flautist brushes past and he looks up to spot a tall figure approaching, recognizes the luminous smile directed at a scholar beside him. Up close, he's even taller, topping Kyuhyun by half a head or more, strung out into the ethereal slenderness of someone born and raised in very low gravities, but that's not what sends the chill down his spine.
The cloak that shrouded his figure is gone, now, and where arms should be, there are only misshapen mockeries; forearm proportions all wrong and grotesquely elongated fingers folded back along them with what looks like skin in a flap between. Only the thumbs and forefingers of each mutated 'hand' appear relatively normal, and even they look warped and wrong set at the wrist-joint of a wing, like that. The scholar (and his beautiful voice) isn't human at all, but isn't alien, just a product of genemod technology, a parody of natural development declared illegal over 50 years ago in every civilized colony.
The winged aberration nears them, pace slowing as he--it--flicks a puzzled glance between the tongue-tied Ryeowook and the scholar still crouching to converse with him. Dark eyes settle on Kyuhyun, and he can't help flattening himself a fraction into the wall. The too-bright smile flickers, dims just a little, and wings fold tighter, edging past and continuing down the corridor smoothly. Kyuhyun doesn't stare at his back as he goes.
Weeks pass, without sun or sky or seasons. Kyuhyun can't tell one from the next. The raw-voiced scholar shows up one day and listens in on Kyuhyun and Ryeowook's group during vocal training. Ryeowook's singing is always ethereal yet powerful, unhampered by whatever cultural mores make him so damn twitchy, but Kyuhyun thinks he tries even harder when that guy is around. Yesung, his name is. It's like dialing up Ryeowook's intensity from 100 to 120%.
He doesn't think Yesung notices anybody but Ryeowook in the room, until the day a summons pulls both Ryeowook and himself out of group practice without warning, and they're introduced to a different set of vocal coaches for more in-depth, personal training. Yesung drops by, at the end of a three hour session, and grins smugly. "I knew you guys were good. I know 'good', when I hear it."
Ryeowook has his head down, blushing furtively again, and Kyuhyun resists the urge to roll his eyes and lock the two in a room together. "Thanks. We appreciate the vote of confidence." He elbows the shorter boy, who is still trying to disappear at his side, and gets a noise best described as a squeak in return.
"I trained with the Rising Gods' lead singer, you know. Before he burnt out 'lining benders." Yesung rambles on, possibly just to hear the sound of his own voice. Kyuhyun isn't sure. "Now, of course, he probably couldn't recognize his own mother if she danced in front of him." His gaze falls on Kyuhyun, then, sharpening. "Friend of mine heard you sing, the other day. He wants to meet you. We could all have dinner, sometime."
Kyuhyun furrows his brow, skeptical, but Ryeowook pipes up (of all the times to do it) before he can politely excuse himself. "W-we would love to, thank you."
In fact, Kyuhyun can think of few things he wants to do less than play chaperone to the budding awkwardness of those two dancing around each other, but Yesung is smiling and nodding, the deal sealed, with no room for graceful protest.
The commercial sector of Albireo Prime is dwarfed by the Academy proper, but the tiny cafes and shops there do provide occasional respite from mind-numbing routine. Kyuhyun feels mildly out of place in something other than his gray scholar's uniform, now, and tugs on his sweater uncomfortably. Ryeowook, however, is head-to-toe in draping black, a silk-like weave he doesn't recognize, and a semi-opaque veil covers all of his face save for bright, startlingly-outlined eyes. He looks immeasurably more comfortable, now, standing straight and even smiling softly, behind the cloth. Kyuhyun tries to imagine being forced to wear nothing but his underwear within the Academy bounds every day for the past year, and can't.
They make their way along the curving corridor, the rim of the wheel that makes up this sector, between lifts that shoot upwards along the 'spokes' to cross the circuit entirely, and past vendors offering samples. Yesung is standing outside of a small restaurant and the shape beside him is too tall, too angular to be quite human, even with wings folded discreetly beneath a long cloak. When Yesung raises a hand in friendly greeting, the gene-warped creature beside him turns with that same luminous smile and canted eyes dark with interest.
Kyuhyun nearly stops in his tracks, but Ryeowook tucks gloved fingers into the crook of his arm and propels him onward with more force than he realized the frail-looking boy possesses.
"Kyuhyun, Ryeowook--" Yesung's eyes are all for the veiled boy as he speaks, "--this is Zhou Mi."
"Pleased to meet both of you at last," Zhou Mi inclines his head in greeting, gaze lingering on Kyuhyun's face the longest. His spoken Standard carries a melodic accent Kyuhyun doesn't remember hearing when he sang. "Such interesting people, to meet in this place, don't you think? Think of the vast expanse between our homes, and yet here we are, about to share a fine meal together."
Kyuhyun finds himself ushered onto a high stool, facing Zhou Mi across the cramped table, with Ryeowook at his elbow. He frowns at his empty glass and tries not to accidentally bump knees in the close quarters as Ryeowook leans across to pour each of them a measure of wine.
"So, Kyuhyun, where are you from?" Zhou Mi watches him avidly, 'hands' peeking out the front of his cloak to tap the very tips of his forefingers against the edge of the table, shifting to keep his wings folded along his sides.
"Taul system." He answers, but it's grudging. "Fifth planet."
"Oh!" The man across from him brightens, apparently undeterred. "I've heard of it. Never been, though, I hear a tourist visa is a nightmare to get."
Kyuhyun eyes his warped fingers, as they drum the tabletop, and replies flatly. "There are a lot of import restrictions. It's a breadbasket. They can't risk... modded stock getting loose, you know." It's deliberate, even a little vicious. He can feel Ryeowook looking askance at him, and Zhou Mi's eyes flash with the recognition of it.
He doesn't, however, expect Zhou Mi to laugh, tone playfully light. "Well, I can see the danger I might pose to the industry. Can you imagine, if I accidentally crossbred? Whole fields full of tubers that fly, what a nightmare. Your dinner might start talking back." He lifts his drink carefully between thumb and forefinger, clinking it against the rim of Kyuhyun's when he fails to follow suit, and arches his brows in mock-seriousness. "To the preservation of vegetable purity."
Yesung chuckles and joins the toast; Ryeowook merely kicks Kyuhyun in the ankle until he takes a sip, scowling.
"By the way," Zhou Mi leans forward a little, voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. "Your sweater, that rich deep cathaberry shade, is that a native dye? It's a marvelous color on you."
Kyuhyun actually blushes, and curses his surprise for the reaction. "I... don't know." He's caught somewhere between anger (how dare this freak poke fun at him) and shifting confusion. Zhou Mi looks so damn sincere about it, for all the triumphant curl of his lips and the sparkle in his eyes.
Ryeowook refills their drinks, casting an openly curious glance in the tall man's direction. "What about you, Zhou Mi?"
"Ah," he says, leaning back with the satisfied air of a storyteller who knows he has an audience, "my grandparents, rest their souls, were expressly designed for crewing the deep-space construction rigs."
Designed, Kyuhyun thinks, like a tool. A travesty against nature.
"The recession was so terrible, at the time, so some families were opting to have the procedure done before conceiving... A means to ensure their children would have guaranteed work open to them, you know." Zhou Mi smiles again, with a wry twist. "In nullgrav, given a pressurized atmosphere, we are far more agile than even the most seasoned veteran of a servo-suit, and if accidents happened... well, accidents happened. And then the new laws were passed about genemodding, but those didn't entirely address the matter of those who already existed, did they?"
"Bureaucracy," Yesung interjects, "so rarely does."
"At any rate, perhaps we will die out in a couple more generations, or perhaps we won't, who can say? I never found construction work particularly fulfilling, myself, so off I went to see the universe, and this is where it led me." Zhou Mi raises his glass again, and this time, Kyuhyun mirrors the action, sullenly, with everybody else.
The food, he must admit, is delicious.
"What is Taul V like?" As Ryeowook and Yesung seem largely absorbed in their own hushed exchange, Zhou Mi's entire conversational focus has been on Kyuhyun, since they began to eat.
Kyuhyun is not quite rude enough to ignore him entirely, as much as he tells himself he would like to. "It's... a planet. It's like any planet, I guess."
"Isn't it higher than one standard gravity, there? I've never been able to spend much time planet-side. About six hours at one gee, and I feel like I've been wrung out and left to die." Zhou Mi's wings twitch, fractionally, in distaste. "Was it difficult for you to adjust to Albireo Prime? You must be quite strong."
"Oh, he is," Ryeowook adds in, suddenly, and Yesung angles an appraising glance across the table.
Kyuhyun has never thought of himself as particularly strong. On Taul V, he was ordinary in every regard save his voice; here, he only stands out by virtue of being rather solidly built in contrast to the slender spaceborn, and if he seems stronger, it's only because things weigh less in the lower gravity most of the station is kept at. "I'm not. Not really."
It makes him edgy when he can't decide if Zhou Mi is laughing at him or not. It makes him edgy when Zhou Mi looks at him, open and unashamed. And that is the thing that Zhou Mi won't stop doing.
When his trainer informs him that she wants the two of them to perform a duet, Kyuhyun tries to refuse. At least, he opens his mouth and starts to protest, but then his coach levels such a flat look at him that he thinks better of the idea, bites his cheek, and nods.
"Also," she says, prodding at his diaphragm with a frown, "you're going soft, lately. I'm scheduling you for some time in the gyms, you've been spaceside too long, your body isn't accustomed to this environment."
Her point is proven when he hikes out to one of the wheels that's been spun up to slightly above standard grav, closer to his homeworld, and within a few minutes, feels like lying down flat on the floor and whimpering. He struggles on with it, though, working himself into a sweat and exercising a little longer every visit, until even he notices the improvement in his vocal tone and has lost some of the idle softness around his jawline and neck.
Kyuhyun is passing one of the nullgrav modules on his way to the showers, there, moving himself hand-over-hand along the weightless tunnel that connects them, when he notices activity inside. Several people are exercising within, flinging themselves in slow, controlled arcs from bar to bar within the open space, but Zhou Mi is there, also, and Kyuhyun has never seen his wings spread, before. He hesitates, hanging in the entrance and watching, just a little longer.
Zhou Mi's wings--his mutated, elongated phalanges and the pale, fragile-looking membrane between--are controlling every second of his flight, drawing in to send him into a lazy twist to avoid one bar, then flaring wide and beating rapidly until he can arrow across the interior of the open space. For a moment, Kyuhyun thinks he's been spotted; he ducks back, into the corridor, and freezes there.
There is no accented cry of greeting, no sign of recognition.
He hurries onward to the showers, red-faced and irritated with himself.
He's still inside when he hears the next cubicle turn on, then a snatch of a familiar tune being hummed. It's the duet they've been working on; Zhou Mi is there, one wall away. Kyuhyun hides in the shower and waits for him to leave.
That is his plan, at least, until he hears Zhou Mi's passage out of the main room arrested by several voices.
"Out of the way, modfreak." There is a grunt and the squeak of skin sliding on tile; a heavy sound like a body just hit the wall. It's mingled horror and perhaps a spark of guilt that draws Kyuhyun out of his cubicle, towel slung hastily around his waist, to... what, intervene? He isn't sure.
The others, a small group of dancers, are leaving the room already, talking and laughing lowly amongst themselves without a glance backward. Zhou Mi is clambering awkwardly to one knee by the wall, straightening and flexing his wing where it buckled under him. The skin around his eyes is a little tighter than usual, with discomfort.
"Are you... alright?" Kyuhyun shuffles a step nearer, unsure what to do.
"It's fine," Zhou Mi says, forcing a facsimile of his usual smile. He lowers his head for a moment, after, finger curling where his wing-joint is braced against the wall.
Kyuhyun almost takes the offered escape, but something holds him back. Finally, he extends a hand, stiff and hesitant. "Let me help you up, at least."
Zhou Mi looks up at him again, some difficult-to-read emotion swirling in his exotically tilted eyes, then reaches gingerly for his outstretched hand, thumb and forefinger circling his wrist in a light clasp as he brings his weight to bear and takes the assist to his feet.
His weight is negligible, the sensation of wing membrane brushing Kyuhyun's fingers alien, but not sickening. Not the way Kyuhyun expected.
Zhou Mi straightens to his full, impossibly slender height, and it's the closest Kyuhyun has ever been to him. It puts him on eye level with his generous, wide mouth, soft lips and a hint of tongue darting out to moisten them. He drops his gaze, self-consciously aware, only to find sharp collarbones dipping into parsecs of bare skin, a towel precariously clinging to narrow hips, and legs that go on forever. It's unfair, he thinks, that anyone is so fucking inhumanly beautiful.
Zhou Mi's wing makes a sudden fold, diving to rescue his towel, and the motion inadvertently brushes the back of his finger across Kyuhyun's stomach. His cheekbones are stained red, when he backs up a step. "Thank you," he says, and hurries out of the room, leaving Kyuhyun standing there motionless.
It's impossible to ignore Zhou Mi in the same way, after that. They practice together for hours, for weeks on end, at the bequest of his vocal coach, Kyuhyun's velvet baritone melding with the soaring tenor. He notices the quirk in the corner of his mouth, flashes of teeth, glimpses of the long line of his neck. Sometimes, he catches himself staring, wondering if he feels as fragile as he looks, wondering what his wings would feel like, to touch, openly and consciously.
"Why don't you tell him?" Ryeowook asks, watching him round-eyed from the upper bunk.
"What? Tell who?" Kyuhyun flushes at the mere suggestion, scowling and folding his arms over his chest.
Ryeowook only makes a disappointed sort of cluck in his throat, and settles back. "Show him, if you're afraid to say it. He really likes you, too."
"I'm not--I don't.." Kyuhyun trails off, lamely, and rolls up in his blanket.
Their recital goes smoothly. It's Kyuhyun's first, and his nerves start bubbling in his stomach shortly before they are to take the stage, but Zhou Mi looks over at him and smiles, bright and confident, and the sensation evaporates in a slightly giddy little glow.
The glow only deepens during the afterparty, thanks to the brimming glasses of violet Isoyaian champagne people keep handing him. Zhou Mi is as tall and slender as ever, striking in all-black and charmingly flushed. His lips are reddened and his eyes smokily dark, for the stage, and Kyuhyun can't bear it.
"Come here," he says gruffly, and pulls Zhou Mi toward the wall, where he drags a damp serviette across his lower lip, white cloth coming away smeared with coral. He watches in mild, muffled consternation as his own thumb reaches out to repeat the motion, tracking over the soft curve of his lip entirely of its own accord. Zhou Mi makes a tiny sound, eyes wide, and then Kyuhyun finds that mouth hot and seeking against his own, wings shrouding him as Zhou Mi's long fingers tangle in his hair.
Kyuhyun isn't sure how they get from the reception room into a darkened corridor outside, but Zhou Mi's body feels amazing between his own and the wall, and his hands slide down to grip slender hips, slide up to explore the sharp angles of his neck and jaw. They kiss like that, slow and messy and demanding, for seconds that stretch into minutes, melt and ignite.
He wakes up, some time later, in a strange room, marginally more spacious than his own. He has a pounding headache, a terrible taste in his mouth, and a warm weight sprawled across his body. Zhou Mi's hair tickles his nose (he suffers an inane moment of realization that he's never seen the top of his head before), and he coughs, groaning. What did he do last night?
His pants are still on, thank the benevolent whims of the universe. So are Zhou Mi's, although he can't make any claims about the whereabouts of anything else he was wearing. Zhou Mi has the sharpest hipbones in the world, and one of his hands is resting on one quite comfortably. "Hey..." he mutters, and gives the older scholar a little jostle. His wings are warm and soft, half-spread across them both.
Zhou Mi finally rouses enough to lift his head, eyes widening in surprise and wings tensing. Kyuhyun could say any one of a number of things, right then and there, he knows, and Zhou Mi would never lay a hand on him again. He could end it before it's even begun. But there's something vulnerable in Zhou Mi's eyes, so clear in front of him.
"...I need to brush my teeth," he says, finally, and he can feel the way Zhou Mi's tension relaxes in a sigh. "Do you, uh, have a spare?"
"I'll find you something," Zhou Mi bites his lip, then smiles, a slow and fragile thing. "It's two doors down."
"Thanks."