[Fic] The Life I Live - 7/7
Title: The Life I Live
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R overall
Pairings: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Genre: AU, fantasy, angst, romance
Summary: He woke in a world that wasn't his own, to the eyes of a tiger. What he found in an idyll forest was uncertainty, trust, and the most elusive emotion of all...
Fic Archive
Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four * Part Five * Part Six * Part Seven
Sequel: The Air I Breathe (SiHan, QMi)
***
Kyuhyun sneezed, coming startled out of sleep with his cheek against the hard edge of his mattress.
His mattress. With the alarm clock screaming inches from his head, and his pillows laying haphazardly on the floor. He bolted upright. He was back. He was in his apartment. In his world. His technology...
Zhou Mi. He sagged, the wind blown out of him. All he remembered was the tree...throwing the little wooden tiger...
The tiger! The tiger had take him there, had brought him back. If it had come back with him, then maybe, just maybe... He tore apart the bed, shaking pillows, pulling the frame away from the wall and checking for cracks in the floor.
He sat back against the bed frame. Nothing. No tiger, no nothing. Like it had been some kind of dream.
If it had been a dream then his imagination deserved some kind of fucking reward. He had heard it described like a hole was cut out of you, like there was a limb missing, like there was some sort of altered sense of reality. He felt all of that in varying degrees, but it didn’t say exactly, not finitely, just how he was feeling.
He let the yearning propel him upright. If he stayed in this apartment he would go insane. The alarm meant there was work, and at work there was distraction. Maybe he could think there.
If no one could tell he was missing a piece of himself, then all the better.
***
His work routine fell into place as easily as it ever had, as though he had never been away. And perhaps he hadn’t. No one stared at him as though he had been missing for weeks without explanation. His boss had given him a pleasant if condescending hello.
By mid-morning he had started to seriously question his sanity.
“Hey, Kyuhyun!” a coworker called as he passed by with copies he’d just made. “You’re looking fit! How’d you get that tan? You been spending time outdoors?”
He mumbled some kind of ‘yeah, sure’ and raced for the nearest restroom, staring at himself in the mirror. He was a bit more tan... His hair was a little longer than he liked to let it get. He looked fit and healthy. A heck of a lot more so than his desk-sitting, video game-playing lifestyle would suggest. Fit and also...empty.
Then he wasn’t crazy? But no time had passed?
He was embroiled in that thought as he walked quickly back down the hallway toward his office. If that was the case, then maybe, just maybe he could find a way back. Find a way to save Zhou Mi...
As he walked, a man went rushing past him in the same direction, brushing his shirt sleeve with a quiet, “Sorry.”
“Sure,” he murmured.
He made it a solid five steps before he froze. And then the wall was all that was holding him as he sagged toward it, taking in the lines of the man’s shoulders, the length of his legs in the trim black slacks.
An avalanche of binders and loose papers crashed or fluttered to the floor ahead of him, and the arms that had been carrying them were hanging loose as though suddenly powerless.
Kyuhyun's breathing stopped as the man turned, first a foot, his hips, a shoulder...
That face.
Zhou Mi’s face.
He was sure he was staring like some sort of lunatic, bug eyed, awed, disbelieving. Hoping against every shred of hope.
The man took a tentative, jerky step toward him, and then another, until long strides brought him close.
The hair was shorter, a short, attractive style. His skin, not so tanned, but still beautiful.
But his eyes, dark and focused, wide and questioning... Those eyes he knew.
He reached, hardly knowing how...
The ringed finger closed over his hand, and even as heat shot up his arm, a frown crossed the handsome face in front of him.
“Kui Xian...?”
Kyuhyun stopped breathing. He swore he did. “What?”
“I’m sorry, I’m being stupid, that just popped into my head...” the man apologized, though he looked unconvinced. “Did I bump into you too hard?”
“Zhou Mi?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes widened. “Yes...That’s my name. I just started here today. Do you work in my department?”
“No. But I knew.”
There was surprise, and perhaps excitement in Zhou Mi’s eyes at that. “And your name is...”
“Kyuhyun. To you...”
“Kui Xian.”
“Yes. You didn’t wake up here wrapped in a tiger skin, did you?”
Zhou Mi’s grin was quick, infectious. “My mother might have appreciated that.”
They stood in silence, fingers tight around each other’s before Zhou Mi ventured one more tentative question.
“Do you mate for life, Kui Xian?”
He breathed in, the scent of toner ink and trees mingling inside him, the feel of Zhou Mi’s hair between his fingers, the tiger pelt beneath them.
Their eyes met, and he saw a curious oldness there, something he had missed, a coy sort of knowing curling in the corners of Zhou Mi’s eyes and the tilt of his mouth.
His breath sighed out of him, and he knew.
“Only with you.”
***
How they finished the work day he had never known. The time seemed to be fluid, Zhou Mi in a job he had just begun and unable to get away, even for lunch. He had helped Zhou Mi collect all of the papers that had been dropped, even taking the time to snap an almost blurred cell phone picture of the other man. On Zhou Mi’s face was a mixture of surprise and amusement, as he had quickly taken a picture of Kyuhyun as well.
Kyuhyun set that picture immediately as his wallpaper, retreating to his cubicle with hasty promises. He worked with his eyes on his paperwork and his keyboard, and most of his focus on that picture. He wasn’t crazy. In the other room, Zhou Mi was sitting, smiling, breathing.
He confessed, he had taken at least two or three unnecessary trips to the other office, expression anxious and eyes flirting. Zhou Mi fluttered his eyelashes, head tilting as he bit his lip, and it was all Kyuhyun could do not to attack him then and there.
He was shaking too hard to drive by the time work ended, and could only give Zhou Mi directions to his apartment. Zhou Mi’s hand was very light, very discreet, in the small of his back as they rode the elevator up his building. Kyuhyun tried to wish the other people in the car out of existence.
But they exited into the empty hallway alone, the close of the doors almost a sigh of relief behind them.
“Which way, Kui Xian?” Zhou Mi asked, weaving their fingers together.
Mutely, he pointed to the left, and stared at their joined hands as Zhou Mi guided them.
Getting his key into the lock was harder than scaling any cliff, jittery as the door opened and Zhou Mi closed it behind them.
“Kui Xian, you found me,” Zhou Mi whispered against his cheek.
He pulled back for a moment to stare at Zhou Mi’s mouth. Not yet, his mind said. Not yet...
“We found each other,” he said, and found the strength to pull Zhou Mi into the bedroom. The bedroom where he had first dreamed...
They spent what seemed like hours exploring each other’s bodies. With hands and lips they journeyed, relearning every inch of skin. It was far from sexual, and then again, not so far after all.
It was only after they finished that they kissed, sinking into it with moans almost too soft to hear as they remapped the paths of body to heart. If there were tears, they were quickly brushed away, replaced by smiles and whispers.
As Zhou Mi trembled in pleasure, above him, inside him, it was up to him to bring his own release. Zhou Mi’s pleasure had not spread into him. It was not as mystical as it had been. And yet...if there had been one thing he would have accepted change in, it was that. They were normal, human...and together. Zhou Mi was embarrassed, as though he had failed somehow, and Kyuhyun laughed at him, kissing it away.
“Promise me I’m not crazy,” Kyuhyun said from where he had sprawled over Zhou Mi.
“I love you, Kui Xian,” Zhou Mi said softly, cupping Kyuhyun’s cheek with one hand. He was assuring Kyuhyun that no, he wasn’t crazy. It was real. So real. He wasn’t hallucinating, or projecting.
He leaned down, pressing his lips to Zhou Mi’s. “I love you, too. You...You aren’t going away again?”
Zhou Mi pressed gentle kisses against his face. “We found each other. I’m here with you. I don’t remember everything, not yet... But I know you’re the only one who could have brought me here. Because of that, I have my parents, my grandparents. And you...”
They slept on Kyuhyun’s old bed instead of a tiger skin, covered by a thin quilt. It was the drone of the air conditioner and not the sound of insects that serenaded them.
But it was Zhou Mi’s breathing that he heard, the steady thump of his heart under Kyuhyun’s palm, and Zhou Mi’s arm around him.
And it was paradise.
***
One Month Later
***
“We’re going to find the perfect mate for a forest spirit at a...dance club?”
“Stop being so judgmental,” Zhou Mi chided. “People get dragged to do all sorts of things. And look, it's even called "Jungle!" And dancing is good for the body, too, you know.”
“But not for my embarrassment. We’re not actually going to have to dance, are we?”
Zhou Mi waggled his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you, with me?”
“Absolutely. Let’s mambo when we get home.”
“Kui Xian...”
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes at the exasperation. “Yeah, I love you, too.”
“Let’s get home quick, then.”
Kyuhyun poked him as they passed the bouncers. “Focus.”
They paused halfway to the dance floor on the pretense of looking around.
“Do you see him?” Kyuhyun asked.
“I do.”
“Where?”
“Don’t look!” Zhou Mi squawked. “Why don’t you go out onto the dance floor for a little while.”
“What? Why?”
He stared out at the relatively sparsely populated floor. Still the people that were out there were plenty. Sucking up oxygen.
“Please.”
Zhou Mi had a plan, he reasoned. He wasn’t actually trying to torture.
“Okay. But it’s not my fault if someone tries to molest me and you get arrested for murder.”
“So long as you don’t molest anyone,” Zhou Mi shouted after him.
He slid between bodies, not sure how far Zhou Mi wanted him to get. He was doing more eyeballing Zhou Mi, who looked rather delicious in his tight black outfit, than he was focusing on moving his body.
“Watch it,” someone whined as he nearly stepped on their foot.
He watched as Zhou Mi shed his jacket, shoving it into the hands of a stranger and stalking onto the dance floor, his eyes fixed on Kyuhyun’s as he moved through the people. Stalking him, through a crowd instead of trees, closer... But it was Kyuhyun who pounced, his mouth open and seeking, arms tight around Zhou Mi’s neck as they writhed together to the beat of the music. When the kiss ended they were gasping, and he moved his reddened mouth to the bare skin of Zhou Mi’s shoulder, staring defiantly at anyone who dared to look.
Mine, back off.
“You can dance?” Kyuhyun asked as they left the dance floor.
Zhou Mi’s grin was immediate. “Why do you make that sound so unexpected?”
They made their way back to Zhou Mi’s coat, where the man who had gotten it shoved at him was still standing.
“Hey, thanks,” Zhou Mi said, turning on the power of his most beguiling smile.
“Sure, no problem. I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”
“You got dragged here, too, huh?” Zhou Mi asked, sending Kyuhyun a mournful look that at any other time would have made him start laughing.
“Yeah,” the man said.
He was definitely handsome, Kyuhyun thought. Nearly as tall as Zhou Mi, but more solidly built. Definitely someone who was friends with a gym.
They chatted about the club, their jobs, friends. The man seemed genuinely friendly and eager to talk to anyone that saved him from the club scene. And of course he couldn’t have missed the way that Zhou Mi’s arm stayed around Kyuhyun.
“How’d you two meet?” the man asked.
“Oh, we bumped into each other at work,” Zhou Mi said vaguely.
“We knew each other before that,” Kyuhyun clarified, and smirked. “He was a real tiger.”
Zhou Mi nipped his ear for that, but grinned.
“Hey, as thanks for holding my coat, do you want...” Zhou Mi rummaged in his jacket pocket. “I’ve been trying to get these to good homes.”
On Zhou Mi’s palm rested three wooden animals.
The man stretched out his hand hesitantly, as though Zhou Mi were trying to offer him a weapon or drugs of some kind. Kyuhyun held his breath as the man’s long fingers closed around one figure rather decisively. Another big cat.
“What is it?” the man asked, squinting at the little shape.
“Black jaguar,” Zhou Mi said, propping his chin on Kyuhyun’s shoulder.
The man grinned, revealing deep and attractive dimples. “That’s amazing. I just dreamed about... Sorry. Thanks! I’ll take good care of it.”
“I hope so,” Zhou Mi said, a bit too earnestly for Kyuhyun’s taste.
“We should go,” he murmured back at Zhou Mi. Definitely should go before either of them could say something they shouldn’t.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Zhou Mi asked. “I’m Zhou Mi.”
“Siwon,” the man said as he smiled at the little wooden figure in his palm.
Kyuhyun could feel the thrill of excitement in Zhou Mi.
It wouldn’t be long before another one was coming home.
***
Author: Coley Merrin
Rating: R overall
Pairings: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Genre: AU, fantasy, angst, romance
Summary: He woke in a world that wasn't his own, to the eyes of a tiger. What he found in an idyll forest was uncertainty, trust, and the most elusive emotion of all...
Fic Archive
Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four * Part Five * Part Six * Part Seven
Sequel: The Air I Breathe (SiHan, QMi)
***
Kyuhyun sneezed, coming startled out of sleep with his cheek against the hard edge of his mattress.
His mattress. With the alarm clock screaming inches from his head, and his pillows laying haphazardly on the floor. He bolted upright. He was back. He was in his apartment. In his world. His technology...
Zhou Mi. He sagged, the wind blown out of him. All he remembered was the tree...throwing the little wooden tiger...
The tiger! The tiger had take him there, had brought him back. If it had come back with him, then maybe, just maybe... He tore apart the bed, shaking pillows, pulling the frame away from the wall and checking for cracks in the floor.
He sat back against the bed frame. Nothing. No tiger, no nothing. Like it had been some kind of dream.
If it had been a dream then his imagination deserved some kind of fucking reward. He had heard it described like a hole was cut out of you, like there was a limb missing, like there was some sort of altered sense of reality. He felt all of that in varying degrees, but it didn’t say exactly, not finitely, just how he was feeling.
He let the yearning propel him upright. If he stayed in this apartment he would go insane. The alarm meant there was work, and at work there was distraction. Maybe he could think there.
If no one could tell he was missing a piece of himself, then all the better.
***
His work routine fell into place as easily as it ever had, as though he had never been away. And perhaps he hadn’t. No one stared at him as though he had been missing for weeks without explanation. His boss had given him a pleasant if condescending hello.
By mid-morning he had started to seriously question his sanity.
“Hey, Kyuhyun!” a coworker called as he passed by with copies he’d just made. “You’re looking fit! How’d you get that tan? You been spending time outdoors?”
He mumbled some kind of ‘yeah, sure’ and raced for the nearest restroom, staring at himself in the mirror. He was a bit more tan... His hair was a little longer than he liked to let it get. He looked fit and healthy. A heck of a lot more so than his desk-sitting, video game-playing lifestyle would suggest. Fit and also...empty.
Then he wasn’t crazy? But no time had passed?
He was embroiled in that thought as he walked quickly back down the hallway toward his office. If that was the case, then maybe, just maybe he could find a way back. Find a way to save Zhou Mi...
As he walked, a man went rushing past him in the same direction, brushing his shirt sleeve with a quiet, “Sorry.”
“Sure,” he murmured.
He made it a solid five steps before he froze. And then the wall was all that was holding him as he sagged toward it, taking in the lines of the man’s shoulders, the length of his legs in the trim black slacks.
An avalanche of binders and loose papers crashed or fluttered to the floor ahead of him, and the arms that had been carrying them were hanging loose as though suddenly powerless.
Kyuhyun's breathing stopped as the man turned, first a foot, his hips, a shoulder...
That face.
Zhou Mi’s face.
He was sure he was staring like some sort of lunatic, bug eyed, awed, disbelieving. Hoping against every shred of hope.
The man took a tentative, jerky step toward him, and then another, until long strides brought him close.
The hair was shorter, a short, attractive style. His skin, not so tanned, but still beautiful.
But his eyes, dark and focused, wide and questioning... Those eyes he knew.
He reached, hardly knowing how...
The ringed finger closed over his hand, and even as heat shot up his arm, a frown crossed the handsome face in front of him.
“Kui Xian...?”
Kyuhyun stopped breathing. He swore he did. “What?”
“I’m sorry, I’m being stupid, that just popped into my head...” the man apologized, though he looked unconvinced. “Did I bump into you too hard?”
“Zhou Mi?”
Zhou Mi’s eyes widened. “Yes...That’s my name. I just started here today. Do you work in my department?”
“No. But I knew.”
There was surprise, and perhaps excitement in Zhou Mi’s eyes at that. “And your name is...”
“Kyuhyun. To you...”
“Kui Xian.”
“Yes. You didn’t wake up here wrapped in a tiger skin, did you?”
Zhou Mi’s grin was quick, infectious. “My mother might have appreciated that.”
They stood in silence, fingers tight around each other’s before Zhou Mi ventured one more tentative question.
“Do you mate for life, Kui Xian?”
He breathed in, the scent of toner ink and trees mingling inside him, the feel of Zhou Mi’s hair between his fingers, the tiger pelt beneath them.
Their eyes met, and he saw a curious oldness there, something he had missed, a coy sort of knowing curling in the corners of Zhou Mi’s eyes and the tilt of his mouth.
His breath sighed out of him, and he knew.
“Only with you.”
***
How they finished the work day he had never known. The time seemed to be fluid, Zhou Mi in a job he had just begun and unable to get away, even for lunch. He had helped Zhou Mi collect all of the papers that had been dropped, even taking the time to snap an almost blurred cell phone picture of the other man. On Zhou Mi’s face was a mixture of surprise and amusement, as he had quickly taken a picture of Kyuhyun as well.
Kyuhyun set that picture immediately as his wallpaper, retreating to his cubicle with hasty promises. He worked with his eyes on his paperwork and his keyboard, and most of his focus on that picture. He wasn’t crazy. In the other room, Zhou Mi was sitting, smiling, breathing.
He confessed, he had taken at least two or three unnecessary trips to the other office, expression anxious and eyes flirting. Zhou Mi fluttered his eyelashes, head tilting as he bit his lip, and it was all Kyuhyun could do not to attack him then and there.
He was shaking too hard to drive by the time work ended, and could only give Zhou Mi directions to his apartment. Zhou Mi’s hand was very light, very discreet, in the small of his back as they rode the elevator up his building. Kyuhyun tried to wish the other people in the car out of existence.
But they exited into the empty hallway alone, the close of the doors almost a sigh of relief behind them.
“Which way, Kui Xian?” Zhou Mi asked, weaving their fingers together.
Mutely, he pointed to the left, and stared at their joined hands as Zhou Mi guided them.
Getting his key into the lock was harder than scaling any cliff, jittery as the door opened and Zhou Mi closed it behind them.
“Kui Xian, you found me,” Zhou Mi whispered against his cheek.
He pulled back for a moment to stare at Zhou Mi’s mouth. Not yet, his mind said. Not yet...
“We found each other,” he said, and found the strength to pull Zhou Mi into the bedroom. The bedroom where he had first dreamed...
They spent what seemed like hours exploring each other’s bodies. With hands and lips they journeyed, relearning every inch of skin. It was far from sexual, and then again, not so far after all.
It was only after they finished that they kissed, sinking into it with moans almost too soft to hear as they remapped the paths of body to heart. If there were tears, they were quickly brushed away, replaced by smiles and whispers.
As Zhou Mi trembled in pleasure, above him, inside him, it was up to him to bring his own release. Zhou Mi’s pleasure had not spread into him. It was not as mystical as it had been. And yet...if there had been one thing he would have accepted change in, it was that. They were normal, human...and together. Zhou Mi was embarrassed, as though he had failed somehow, and Kyuhyun laughed at him, kissing it away.
“Promise me I’m not crazy,” Kyuhyun said from where he had sprawled over Zhou Mi.
“I love you, Kui Xian,” Zhou Mi said softly, cupping Kyuhyun’s cheek with one hand. He was assuring Kyuhyun that no, he wasn’t crazy. It was real. So real. He wasn’t hallucinating, or projecting.
He leaned down, pressing his lips to Zhou Mi’s. “I love you, too. You...You aren’t going away again?”
Zhou Mi pressed gentle kisses against his face. “We found each other. I’m here with you. I don’t remember everything, not yet... But I know you’re the only one who could have brought me here. Because of that, I have my parents, my grandparents. And you...”
They slept on Kyuhyun’s old bed instead of a tiger skin, covered by a thin quilt. It was the drone of the air conditioner and not the sound of insects that serenaded them.
But it was Zhou Mi’s breathing that he heard, the steady thump of his heart under Kyuhyun’s palm, and Zhou Mi’s arm around him.
And it was paradise.
***
One Month Later
***
“We’re going to find the perfect mate for a forest spirit at a...dance club?”
“Stop being so judgmental,” Zhou Mi chided. “People get dragged to do all sorts of things. And look, it's even called "Jungle!" And dancing is good for the body, too, you know.”
“But not for my embarrassment. We’re not actually going to have to dance, are we?”
Zhou Mi waggled his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you, with me?”
“Absolutely. Let’s mambo when we get home.”
“Kui Xian...”
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes at the exasperation. “Yeah, I love you, too.”
“Let’s get home quick, then.”
Kyuhyun poked him as they passed the bouncers. “Focus.”
They paused halfway to the dance floor on the pretense of looking around.
“Do you see him?” Kyuhyun asked.
“I do.”
“Where?”
“Don’t look!” Zhou Mi squawked. “Why don’t you go out onto the dance floor for a little while.”
“What? Why?”
He stared out at the relatively sparsely populated floor. Still the people that were out there were plenty. Sucking up oxygen.
“Please.”
Zhou Mi had a plan, he reasoned. He wasn’t actually trying to torture.
“Okay. But it’s not my fault if someone tries to molest me and you get arrested for murder.”
“So long as you don’t molest anyone,” Zhou Mi shouted after him.
He slid between bodies, not sure how far Zhou Mi wanted him to get. He was doing more eyeballing Zhou Mi, who looked rather delicious in his tight black outfit, than he was focusing on moving his body.
“Watch it,” someone whined as he nearly stepped on their foot.
He watched as Zhou Mi shed his jacket, shoving it into the hands of a stranger and stalking onto the dance floor, his eyes fixed on Kyuhyun’s as he moved through the people. Stalking him, through a crowd instead of trees, closer... But it was Kyuhyun who pounced, his mouth open and seeking, arms tight around Zhou Mi’s neck as they writhed together to the beat of the music. When the kiss ended they were gasping, and he moved his reddened mouth to the bare skin of Zhou Mi’s shoulder, staring defiantly at anyone who dared to look.
Mine, back off.
“You can dance?” Kyuhyun asked as they left the dance floor.
Zhou Mi’s grin was immediate. “Why do you make that sound so unexpected?”
They made their way back to Zhou Mi’s coat, where the man who had gotten it shoved at him was still standing.
“Hey, thanks,” Zhou Mi said, turning on the power of his most beguiling smile.
“Sure, no problem. I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”
“You got dragged here, too, huh?” Zhou Mi asked, sending Kyuhyun a mournful look that at any other time would have made him start laughing.
“Yeah,” the man said.
He was definitely handsome, Kyuhyun thought. Nearly as tall as Zhou Mi, but more solidly built. Definitely someone who was friends with a gym.
They chatted about the club, their jobs, friends. The man seemed genuinely friendly and eager to talk to anyone that saved him from the club scene. And of course he couldn’t have missed the way that Zhou Mi’s arm stayed around Kyuhyun.
“How’d you two meet?” the man asked.
“Oh, we bumped into each other at work,” Zhou Mi said vaguely.
“We knew each other before that,” Kyuhyun clarified, and smirked. “He was a real tiger.”
Zhou Mi nipped his ear for that, but grinned.
“Hey, as thanks for holding my coat, do you want...” Zhou Mi rummaged in his jacket pocket. “I’ve been trying to get these to good homes.”
On Zhou Mi’s palm rested three wooden animals.
The man stretched out his hand hesitantly, as though Zhou Mi were trying to offer him a weapon or drugs of some kind. Kyuhyun held his breath as the man’s long fingers closed around one figure rather decisively. Another big cat.
“What is it?” the man asked, squinting at the little shape.
“Black jaguar,” Zhou Mi said, propping his chin on Kyuhyun’s shoulder.
The man grinned, revealing deep and attractive dimples. “That’s amazing. I just dreamed about... Sorry. Thanks! I’ll take good care of it.”
“I hope so,” Zhou Mi said, a bit too earnestly for Kyuhyun’s taste.
“We should go,” he murmured back at Zhou Mi. Definitely should go before either of them could say something they shouldn’t.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Zhou Mi asked. “I’m Zhou Mi.”
“Siwon,” the man said as he smiled at the little wooden figure in his palm.
Kyuhyun could feel the thrill of excitement in Zhou Mi.
It wouldn’t be long before another one was coming home.
***