[Fic] Until You - 2&3/15
Title: Until You
Author: Coley Merrin
Pairing: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Rating: R
Genre: AU, Vampires, Angst, Fluff
Warnings: Brief violence, angst, sexual situations.
Summary: Research points to a vampire bite being unbreakable, but Kyuhyun can't give up. And with Zhou Mi, he works to undo the blood bond that forced them together.
***
Chapter One * Chapter Two & Three * Chapter Four & Five
***
Over the years of Zhou Mi’s life, it was strange to think that he had met only one other vampire besides himself. He had been allowed one year of public schooling, and that had been the first time he had turned to see someone dressed exactly as he was. Protective cloth covering their sun-sensitive skin. Standing amidst crowds of perfectly normal teenagers. Just not normal themselves. They had forged a friendship that day that had lasted through all the years that followed. Two people who were different. Eunhyuk. The same, even if their home lives were different. Eunhyuk had his birth parents, and Zhou Mi had not. But Eunhyuk had moved in the middle of that year, leaving Zhou Mi alone. When he felt totally alone, he knew that there was someone out there who knew exactly what he was going through.
Before he had slept, he had locked himself in his spare room. Looking in on the sleeping Kyuhyun and dialing with trembling fingers.
The voice on the other end of the line was a comfort, and he was glad he was sitting for it.
“Zhou Mi? It’s late.”
“You’ve heard of vampires being kidnapped, forced into a bond?”
Eunhyuk exhaled, audible even through the phone. “Yes, of course. It’s been happening a long time, even if the press doesn’t care. Why?”
He made a sound, unable even to say it out loud.
“No,” Eunhyuk said. “Don’t tell me- Zhou Mi!”
“Yes. Today. He’s sleeping in my bed right now.” A man he had no idea what to do with.
“He’s okay? How’s he taking it?”
“How would any man take the fact that they get to be bitten the rest of their lives? Badly. But he’s agreed to stay, for now. Is there no way- The bond is forever, isn’t it?”
“If my parents were still alive, I’d ask them,” Eunhyuk said softly. “But that’s what they told me. That I had to be careful, and make a wise choice, because I couldn’t change my mind.”
Zhou Mi closed his eyes, his whole body sagging under the confirmation of what he’d known already. But it was different from the soft and apologetic voice of his friend. His own parents had lived to a good age, as humans. Eunhyuk’s own parents’ lives had been cut sadly short. There were no guarantees in life. He wanted to scream loudly, but had no way to do so. He had no idea what he had to do, but he couldn’t exactly do nothing.
“I wish I knew what to do for him.”
Eunhyuk chuckled. “If he’s like any other human I know, he probably knows nothing about what vampires are really like. You probably have more books on it than I do. Maybe he can learn?”
“Maybe. I have to try.”
“It’s disgusting, what they do. I’m so sorry. Do you need me to come into the city?”
“No. No, I’ll figure this out. He need to get used to me first, before we toss another vampire at him. Thank you though. I’ll call again,” Zhou Mi told him. “Don’t worry. I’ll do what I have to.”
Though he knew Eunhyuk would worry. And he worried himself, even after he’d climbed into bed with Kyuhyun. He slept little, but deep. Nightmares waking both of them at various times of night. Just breathing and trying not to disturb each other as they dealt with their own demons. But at least Zhou Mi had a plan.
Zhou Mi had torn apart his library by the time Kyuhyun had woken, wandering into the room every so often to make sure Kyuhyun wasn’t getting cold. Great stacks of books that he sifted through and discarded. He caught himself on a sneeze a couple of times, realizing he needed to be a little more vigilant on the dusting, and perhaps the book sorting in general. Because of what he was, he couldn’t work, so he ended up with a lot of time. Books were one way he filled it. But he created a small stack of the books he found. Vampire lore, vampire facts. Bookmarking pages, sections. Things he could give Kyuhyun to read, to show him. Things that might help him to understand what it was that they were going through. And for not the first time, Zhou Mi wished he had a mentor, an older vampire who could tell Kyuhyun that it all was true. That it wasn’t some figment of Zhou Mi’s imagination, and he wasn’t trying to screw around with Kyuhyun. He wished it were all a joke. It just was far from one.
Movement had him looking up, startled. Movement in his apartment was so unfamiliar to him, even when he was expecting it. It was Kyuhyun, rumpled in his clothes and patting down his hair. Staring at Zhou Mi with his little corral of books, sitting in a shaft of sunlight.
“Isn’t sunlight supposed to hurt you?” Kyuhyun said, squinting his eyes closed and open again and blinking rapidly.
“Sunlight, from outside, will hurt me. Burn me. It won’t kill me, but it does hurt. These windows are special, though. They’ve been coated, and tinted, to let in light without harming me.”
“Oh. That makes sense. What library blew up in here?”
Zhou Mi laughed, standing. “Mine did. I’ve been looking up information for you. Please, sit.”
He got the only bit of food he had in his apartment, a single apple from his borrowing food the day before, and poured Kyuhyun a cup of tea. Kyuhyun accepted both, and Zhou Mi felt pleased. At least Kyuhyun didn’t think he was going to poison him.
“These books,” Zhou Mi said, laying his hand on a stack of four, “speak of the blood bond, the mating. The aftereffects, and how it changes with time. And these others deal with vampires in general. Physiologically, I am little different than you. I am sensitive to the sun, and I can smell your blood. But I am no stronger, no better visually.”
“Little different. And the blood drinking thing. The blood bond, huh?”
If Kyuhyun believed him… He handed Kyuhyun the book, indicating the bookmark to the section on the blood bond.
“Says that whole freezing-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing fades in intensity after a while,” Kyuhyun mused. “That’s handy. Though it says it’s there to “encourage a deeper bond that will last into eternity.””
“Probably more that your body gets used to the changes being made,” Zhou Mi said, trying for logic.
“Sure, okay. But you didn’t even have to touch me for me to warm back up. Are we like magnets now? Pheromones, what?”
“I’m not sure,” Zhou Mi admitted. “Perhaps it’s evolutionary? A newly bonded pair, the human needing to be close for…protection? Or also for feeding.”
Kyuhyun hummed, and kept on reading, the half-eaten apple clutched in one hand.
“Here’s something interesting. ‘A newly bonded pair is demonstrated in the human’s ability to mark the vampire’s skin.’ What’s that mean?”
“I can’t be injured in a traditional sense. That’s another way we differ, I guess. Those men couldn’t have stabbed and killed me.”
“The immortal thing, I got that.”
But he pondered it, and wondered. He looked up at Kyuhyun.
“Look, I can’t even hurt myself,” he said, and raised his arm. He made very sure his teeth were visible when he bit down on his own arm, feeling the flesh give slightly the harder he bit. But when he let go, there was nothing. Only a sheen where his mouth had been. No wound, not even a dent. Just pristine skin.
“Whoa,” Kyuhyun said, leaning closer. “So if even you can’t make a mark, is the book saying I can mark you?”
“Try scratching my skin,” Zhou Mi suggested. Along the inside of his arm, where the skin was tender and would show more easily. If it worked.
Kyuhyun’s nails weren’t sharp, and the pressure exerted wasn’t painful. But they both stared as moments later faint pink lines appeared in the wake of Kyuhyun’s fingers. They tried it with Zhou Mi’s other arm, that time Zhou Mi trying to scratch himself. And coming up with nothing. Until Zhou Mi had several crisscrossing pink marks on his arms from Kyuhyun’s efforts, and a confused Kyuhyun in front of him.
“Maybe the reason you can mark me is because it’s your blood,” Zhou Mi said.
“That’s kind of cool. Weird, but cool. You can bite me, and I can give you hickeys. I don’t know if that’s equal or not, but-”
Zhou Mi didn’t need a cold wind to make him shiver at the image of Kyuhyun sucking a mark into his skin.
“So you can’t die, but you can tie yourself to a human. Why would someone do that? Compromise themselves?”
“It says in one of the books. Love. The pain of the thought of living one moment in this world without the other of your soul too great to bear.”
“Why not just turn the human?”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “We are born, not made. I had no more choice in my conception than you did in yours. If we fall for a human, then it is our choice to tie our lives to theirs.”
He could see Kyuhyun’s confusion in that.
“Okay. But if it’s their goal to wipe out your kind, why not just kill me?”
“You’re a man. We can’t procreate together. And now that we’re bound, I can’t with anyone else. I can’t feed from any other. They’ve accomplished their goals and set my end. And you are an innocent victim.”
“What if I don’t let you…feed? What if- Has anyone ever tried to break a blood bond? Like say, oops I cut myself and you tasted it, but…? There’s no way of backing out?“
Zhou Mi smiled, and the feeling of it was simultaneously sad and amused. It was normal for Kyuhyun to wonder, even if he could do nothing to stop it.
“If you locked me in a room alone long enough, I would die, and the bond would break,” Zhou Mi admitted. “But I don’t know of any other ways. Perhaps in these books it mentions something. It isn’t something I’ve ever researched. But your body will start to crave it. And feeding will continue to be pleasurable to you.”
“More endorphins than chocolate. Okay.” Kyuhyun stared down at the book, a frown bowing his mouth. “If you can smell blood, how did you go this long without biting someone? Wouldn’t smelling it make you hungry?”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “Until I bit you, I couldn’t smell blood at all. It wasn’t something I needed. Until you.”
***
Zhou Mi’s apartment was nice enough, aside from the avalanche of books Kyuhyun had walked out to. Things he hadn’t really noticed the day before given everything that had happened. Definitely bigger than his own, with a few big and brightly colored posters on the wall. Pretty knickknacks. Not exactly a girl’s home, but it was obvious that Zhou Mi liked cute things. Considering he was sipping water from a cup with a game character on its side. He wrinkled his nose at the mustache, and tried not to actually smile. He was waiting for Zhou Mi to shower, and wandering. There wasn’t anything that screamed vampire! about it. It was just an apartment. No weird symbols or coffins or whatever else he’d seen in random pop culture references. Though, Zhou Mi did have a lot of books about vampires. That made sense.
No pictures, though. No family photos. Perhaps they were all hidden away. Little mementos tacked to a board. Train tickets, receipts. He didn’t linger there long, figuring Zhou Mi had some right to privacy. Though curiosity kept him moving. A spare room, mostly holding boxes. A small almost-closet that held a washer and dryer. The kitchen, which was fully outfitted even if Zhou Mi didn’t eat food. There was an electric water pot, dishes. Kind of eclectic mix of dishes which told him Zhou Mi probably picked those up for their looks as well. Trying to be normal, even if he wasn’t. Or trying to be human, maybe that was more correct. Because as Zhou Mi was, was normal for him. Just different than most of the people around him.
Zhou Mi emerged, fully dressed, though barefoot, and with a towel around his neck.
“Did you get to look around?” he asked, smiling as he filled a cup with hot water.
Okay, so Zhou Mi had more or less told him to check out the place, but it still was a little awkward poking his nose around.
“Yeah, it’s nice. You have a lot of stuff.”
“I try and keep myself occupied,” Zhou Mi told him, brewing his tea.
“So you don’t eat, but you drink tea?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “It’s a pleasure. After I got my teeth, food has done nothing but give me indigestion, but tea is soothing.”
Perhaps Zhou Mi had tried eating. Again, the humanity thing. But Zhou Mi sat at the kitchen table and looked up at Kyuhyun.
“When you’re ready, we should go to register you as my- As my- Any vampire who forms a blood bond has to report it, like any marriage. Vampires can’t be employed around humans, so the government pays us a stipend to live on. This housing is furnished also. If it’s acceptable, you can move your things here. There is plenty of space.”
It was one thing to find the whole vampires-are-real kind of cool, and he did, there wasn’t any getting around that. But it was completely another to have his real life thrown into the mix. Not that getting bled by some kind of weird creature didn’t count as real life, it just was private real life. Something he could deal with on his own, without the rest of the universe getting involved. But his brain balked.
“We- We can’t acknowledge this,” he protested. “If my work finds out? They’d fire me. My coworkers? Who would want to be around me?”
As he spoke Zhou Mi’s head began to shake side to side.
“They wouldn’t be legally able to fire you. You’d be under the protection of the laws of discrimination.” Zhou Mi paused, admitting, “But they could make you want to quit.”
“What would I do then?” Kyuhyun asked, dumbfounded. Get bitten, sure. Tell everyone? Lose his whole life? Zhou Mi’s thumb rimmed his cup, frowning.
“We, because we can’t work, tend to do other things. Music, or writing. Crafts. Things that can be sold to supplement the stipend. The government doesn’t care how much. If you can’t work, I can support you.”
Well, yippee, that was something he could write home to his parents about. Moved in with a vampire, currently getting bled, and he’s putting me up. Kept for the pleasure of his blood. Really, it didn’t get much better than that.
“What do you do, then?” he asked Zhou Mi.
“I sew clothes. I have been for a few years. We can do anything as long as it doesn’t include food making of any sort. In case we try and put something in the food, I guess.”
“I guess you can’t sneak a pair of teeth into a dress. What’s your brand called? Louis Bitten?”
Zhou Mi laughed so hard at his little fake-accented designer name that the table started shaking, Zhou Mi actually reaching out to grasp his hand in his mirth. LV he was not. He could help but chuckle at his lame joke, staring at that face. A face he could be staring at, like it or not, for the next sixty or so years of his life. When Zhou Mi sobered, Zhou Mi kept his hand, squeezing almost to the point of pain.
“I thought you’d accepted that it was true. There is… There is no real way of getting around reporting it. If we don’t, there could be trouble. It’s not like we wouldn’t have known.”
“It’s not like they’d know either,” Kyuhyun pointed out.
“Not exactly. From what I know, they can find the levels of antibodies in your blood. Maybe it wouldn’t tell them the day or hour, but we couldn’t fake it just happening.”
When he thought about it rationally, which was still hard to do with the seven thousand thoughts spinning in his head, he really wanted to get the hell out of there. Call Zhou Mi insane, and just split. But Zhou Mi hadn’t written those books that they’d looked at while waiting for Kyuhyun to wake up. And there was enough that he read in there that had some of his doubts turning into maybes. Maybe there was truth to it, and they weren’t crazy. Maybe the man holding his hand wasn’t some creepy thing, who just wanted a human to use. Kyuhyun had never considered himself to be stupid or particularly gullible. For all he knew, Zhou Mi had orchestrated everything - the kidnapping, the biting. And what was he supposed to do, ask for character references? And the guy talked about marching him down to some office, and registering him like some kind of pet dog.
“Look, registering our…bond, or whatever, that’s kind of official isn’t it? You can’t just go down and be like, oops, I made a mistake, I take it back.”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “Because there is no way to reverse a blood bond, there would be no need to reverse the registration.”
“But are you sure, a thousand percent, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is no way to reverse it?”
“Besides my death?” Zhou Mi said bluntly. “It would go against everything I knew, if there was. But is there that slightest chance? I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and all,” or at least he was going with that supposition, “but this is a lot for me to just agree with. People don’t tie their lives together in a- a freaking day!”
“That’s why what was done to us was so reprehensible,” Zhou Mi said, standing and stepping close. “But there are repercussions if we don’t register. Fines, or the possibility that I could be cut off from my stipend. And because I can’t work, I might be homeless. If I knew-“
Zhou Mi’s words cut off in frustration, hand slashing through the air.
“If I knew anything that could get us out of this, and give you your life back. Give me my life back, I would be racing for it. I want this to be a choice. And I don’t have any good ones to give you. But I can promise you that I will help you look for any way that gets us out of this. And I know you have no reason to believe me, but I promise I will do everything I can for you.”
Who had the worst end of the deal? The vampire who died if Kyuhyun refused to feed him, who lost his home and living if he refused to register with him. Or Kyuhyun, who had to get bitten however many times, and was getting his life reordered, and a big, earnest-eyed vampire attached to him.
Unfortunately all the pros in going along with Zhou Mi’s plans seemed to land on Zhou Mi’s side of the benefit. But it sounded like Zhou Mi didn’t want to be tied to him, either. Of course, if it was true, and he thought about that quite hard, then if Zhou Mi lost his stipend? He would suddenly have a vampire living in his apartment. Which meant that it was in their best interest to do as they should, until such a time as -and he had to believe they could - they found a way to break the blood bond.
But he didn’t see any harm in making sure.
“If you swear you’ll help me look into the blood bond and how to break it,” Kyuhyun bargained.
“Pinky swear,” Zhou Mi said, and offered his hand.
He guessed that was good enough for him, though seriously, were they ten year-old girls? Their little fingers locked, and shook. And the deal was made.
***
Zhou Mi had to be careful, going outside. In his home, he was protected, but in direct sunlight, he wasn’t. He’d known enough burns to know how painful they were. Blisters on his skin, that didn’t heal nearly as quickly as he would like. It wouldn’t kill him, because the wounds only went skin deep. It probably wouldn’t even drive him insane if his whole body was exposed. But anyone who had a slight burn, a cut, knew the skin had too many nerve endings to want to play around with it. And it meant dressing in the only way he knew how. There had been cloth developed, that blocked out the parts of the suns rays that were especially harmful. It was thin, almost like nylon, so he could wear pieces of clothing made with it under his normal clothes. He’d lined thin gloves with it. And he wore hoodies, because having a hood on was less distracting than displaying that he wore a piece of cloth covering his entire head. He could see through it just fine, and it was flesh-colored so it didn’t look too creepy. But anyone looking at him - who knew - could instantly spot what it was. He explained it partially to Kyuhyun, wanting to get going before Kyuhyun changed his mind.
But as they started into the stairwell, he couldn’t help but point out the location and its significance.
“This is where they kidnapped me,” Zhou Mi said, pausing on the top step. “Someone said something to stop me, and the next thing I knew, I was being pushed down the stairs.”
Kyuhyun stared between him and the stairwell.
“Pushed down? What, there has to be twenty steps!”
“And my bones won’t break,” Zhou Mi said, leading Kyuhyun down those same stairs. “But I was dazed enough that they managed to tie me up.”
“And I thought having a thug grab me was bad. I mean, obviously I’d never been kidnapped before, but I thought it was some kind of mugging.”
“I knew it wasn’t.” And he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, the anger that he felt that Kyuhyun had been scared, and hurt. He would have been angry for anyone, but Kyuhyun wasn’t just anyone to him anymore. And it wasn’t as though he could keep Kyuhyun safe from everything, because he couldn’t. But there were little things, like the fact that he ignored the faint unease that was hunger, because it was more want than need at that point.
As they walked, Kyuhyun began to recognize familiar landmarks. “I live maybe a ten or fifteen minute walk from here.”
His locale had probably factored in, there was no doubt in Zhou Mi’s mind about that. “The warehouse where they took us isn’t far from here. Five blocks or so. Luckily, the police gave us a ride back here.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“No, you were out. They offered to take us to the hospital, but…” He hesitated. “I was pretty sure I knew why you were unconscious. It might not have been the wisest thing.”
“It worked out,” Kyuhyun said, shrugging. And for a moment Zhou Mi was happy, because it had been some time since he had had the freedom of walking, talking, beside someone. Even if where they were going was less than a wonderful location to him.
The Office of Vampire Affairs was a depressing place at the best of times, and on the weekend, a Sunday, even more so. Shuttled into a back corner closet of the government building, it was big enough for a desk, filing units and two people. It was one of the only offices open every day of the week, even if it was only for a few hours. He wished he knew how many vampires it served, but short of staking it out, he had no way of knowing. The next office was almost five hours away, which explained its peculiar hours. There was a woman who seemed bored with the whole deal since she was reading a novel at the desk, and some young lackey doing busywork behind her. She actually seemed a little surprised to see someone walk in, keeping ahold of her novel even when it was clear from his own outfit that Zhou Mi was a vampire and there for a reason.
“Yes?”
“We’re here to register a blood bond,” Zhou Mi said, his posture stiff.
“Was it recent? Every week can incur a charge of-“
“Yesterday,” Zhou Mi told her, and got no sort of surprise.
“Okay, then. We’ll need guarantee of a blood draw to confirm that. The registration fee is waived if you’re a registered vampire. I’ll need both your IDs.”
Kyuhyun slid his across as Zhou Mi did the same, and she scanned them into the system. She pushed a form at Kyuhyun, indicating he needed to fill out his current residence and place of work. Kyuhyun did so with a frown, and Zhou Mi watched him closely. Just because Kyuhyun was there, and doing this, didn’t mean that there was any guarantee that he accepted it still. Especially with the way Kyuhyun was peppering the woman with questions about taxes and regulations, and were there any drawbacks, or- Would it take a week, a month? If he hadn’t been worried by governmental backlash, he wouldn’t have pushed for it to happen so soon. But there was another reason. If Kyuhyun had papers in his hand telling them they were bound in the eyes of the government, then maybe it would help his mind along as well. Even if it wasn’t exactly the kind of “marriage papers” he’d have expected to be filling out in his lifetime.
She had some kind of device that pricked Kyuhyun’s finger for the test, assuring them they’d get an antibody result within a day or so. And that was it. No pomp, no circumstance. Just a sheaf of official paperwork, and their IDs handed back.
“Till death do you part,” she commented drolly, picking up her novel.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Kyuhyun demanded.
“It’s part of the marriage vows, honey,” she said, and went back to her book.
“But that didn’t sound like a joke, right?” he asked, following Zhou Mi back into the hall.
“You can’t be defensive about every little thing,” Zhou Mi told him, guiding him with a firm hand on his back. “Believe me. If you’re out with me, you’ll hear and see things. Some of it you have to let go. You’ll get some of it , too.”
He could see the rising protest on Kyuhyun’s face when Zhou Mi lifted his hand, taking a subtle lick of the finger that had been tested. It tasted of metal, and the faint hint of blood, but he could help it hurt less, heal faster.
“I forget you can do that,” Kyuhyun murmured.
He would get used to it. There weren’t many other options for it otherwise.
Their visit to the police was fruitless. No evidence at the scene, no leads to go on. Just unknown men, a double kidnapping, and a forced bond.
Also known as, they might as well get used to it because there weren’t enough resources to investigate vampire crimes. Kyuhyun was silent and stone faced through it, seeing what Zhou Mi had had to deal with in the warehouse, even. He worried for a moment that Kyuhyun would try and say something, as he had in the Vampire Affairs office. Saying anything wasn’t going to make it better, by far. The men were already unmotivated, and probably under the impression that what had been done was a good thing, even.
“It makes me sick,” Kyuhyun said, hissing it out as the walked back onto the sidewalk.
“We can only do what we can. Let’s get you something to eat, and then maybe go to your apartment. We can get clothes for you, or see what we should do next.”
It would be more comfortable for Zhou Mi at his own apartment, with his special windows, but if he had to wear his protective gear for a while to make Kyuhyun more comfortable, then he would. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t before. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just there. Kyuhyun’s stomach growled in response to Zhou Mi’s words, and he smiled wryly back at Zhou Mi. There were a lot of things that Zhou Mi couldn’t do for him. He couldn’t fix what had been done, or maybe even find who had done it.
But he could at least make sure Kyuhyun was fed.
***
***
Kyuhyun hadn’t realized just how hungry that he was until they passed a food stall, and ordered nearly enough for two meals. Zhou Mi ended up carrying part of it, while he stripped chicken into his mouth as they walked. Zhou Mi seemed a little hesitant, as though Kyuhyun was going to choke as they went, but he didn’t want to sit and eat. He’d seen the looks the stall owner had given Zhou Mi, catching random glances as people walked by them. Hyper aware. And possibly too quick to leap to judgement. Some of them were probably just curious. Maybe. Or they knew what a vampire wore. But how was it that he hadn’t? He’d lost interest after hitting his teens, and finding games.
“Do all these people know what you are?” he asked.
“Some of them,” Zhou Mi said. “When I came down to the Vampire Affairs office as an adult for the first time, I was told there used to be more vampires in this area. By the time I came along, they’d moved or died. They won’t tell me if there are others, and unless I see someone walking around like this? If there are others, maybe they only go out at night so people won’t know.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Would it make my life easier, if I were always hiding?” Zhou Mi asked as they paused at a crosswalk to wait for a light to change.
“Maybe it’d keep a few more idiots off your back.”
“Maybe it’ll teach a few that I’m not here to be feared, too.”
Zhou Mi started walking, and it took a few steps to get himself in motion in the wake of Zhou Mi’s words.
How much optimism was good before it was stupid? He probably would’ve walked around sending lasers out of his eyes if he were the subject of those curious stares.
“How much of every day do you put toward hoping that?” Kyuhyun asked, throwing some of the wrapping of his lunch into a trash can they passed.
Zhou Mi just smiled, the expression slightly shimmery behind the cloth. “Only in my dreams.”
The thought sickened him a little, and he led Zhou Mi up a flight of stairs to his own apartment. Picking up his mail, and wandering in. Nothing had changed. Obviously. It had been barely a day? His place hadn’t changed, but it seemed like he sure had. He’d gone out to get cereal, and had come back with a vampire. He took the rest of his lunch and the packet of papers from Zhou Mi and rolled his eyes a little.
Bureaucracy at work.
“It’s nice,” Zhou Mi told him, wandering to his bookshelves.
“It’s a place to keep my junk,” Kyuhyun said, and plopped down to finish eating. At best the apartment was small, definitely smaller than Zhou Mi’s. Books, his TV, his computer desk. An easy chair to curl up in, his bed, and tiny kitchen. It wasn’t much, but it was comfortable, and cheap, and close to where he worked. It wasn’t like he needed much else.
Zhou Mi let him eat in silence, which was about until his stomach caught on to the fact that he was trying to bolt two meals for the price of one and gave protest. Zhou Mi had come to sit beside him, shifting through the papers with the occasional perplexed look. He realized belatedly that he should’ve offered to pull his blinds or something, so Zhou Mi could undress a little. But it was a little late for that.
“So you said something about food before you got your teeth? What did you eat before me? Vampires aren’t some kind of air ferns, are they?”
Zhou Mi’s lips curved almost immediately. “No, not an air fern. I was able to eat some human food as a child. The teeth I use to feed with didn’t come in until I was almost twenty. After that, I couldn’t eat any vegetable matter, though tea doesn’t affect me. Animal blood, mostly, after that. My body was transitioning to get ready for a blood bond, since blood would be all I needed. Before yesterday, I lived close enough to a butcher, who could supply me with cow’s blood. But I won’t need that any more.”
No. Because now he had Kyuhyun. The thought of the cow’s blood made him almost more ill than the thought of his own. Maybe because he didn’t know how Zhou Mi ate it. Yum, a nice mug of blood? But it was interesting to him, anyway. That vampires ate normal food, or animal blood. He’d always known they hadn’t eaten humans - but for that cleverly left out blood bond - but he’d never known what else they would’ve eaten. And apparently hadn’t had the intent to go seek out that information.
He figured he could pack a bag with some clothes, some food from his kitchen. He was accepting the part where maybe he’d be staying with Zhou Mi a little while, but he definitely hadn’t gotten to being okay with staying there forever. Zhou Mi had books out his ears, so he could study if nothing else.
He nearly fell over Zhou Mi’s legs as someone pounded on the door. They considered each other for a moment. Zhou Mi was right behind him, slightly to the side and out of the line of sight as he opened the door. Too soon after being yanked off the street for many surprises to be accepted. But it was his landlord, looking nervous and impatient.
“Is it true?” the man asked. “I just got a call from the Office of Vampire Affairs that said you were…binded, blood…whatever, to some monster?”
Filling out those forms had been more than just for records, he realized. A sick chill washed over him that every contact he’d been forced to put down had been notified, like he was some plague-carrying rat let loose on society.
Zhou Mi moved, and the man’s eyes fixed on him. “Hell, it’s true. I called a truck and some movers, just in case. You can be out of here by tonight.”
Kyuhyun gaped, following the man into the hallway when he started to walk away. “Wait, are you kicking me out of my apartment? I have a lease!”
“I’ll compensate you for the rest of the month,” the man said, and kept edging away. “If the other tenants thought there was a, you know, around then I’d have trouble! The movers are on me.”
“What the hell?” he asked the empty hallway.
Zhou Mi was standing in the doorway, arms tightly crossed as though he was cold. And Kyuhyun could almost feel the apology exuding from him. He put things in motion before it could be spoken, and left Zhou Mi there folding clothes from his closet while he jogged to the nearest grocery store to beg a tower of boxes. It was hard to move if he was going to be dragging books out stack by stack. His clothes could go in garbage bags, and so could other things. Zhou Mi tried to ask him a few questions, and he just grimly pointed Zhou Mi to the next task. They’d gotten some headway, clearing out the furniture so it could be moved and stacking other things behind it. All he could do was watch as his bed was carried out by the movies, his table and chairs. Packing things from his kitchen into bags and the few boxes the movers had brought.
Zhou Mi stayed back out of the way, which was probably good given some of the looks the movers were giving him. It was when Kyuhyun finished emptying his bathroom, right down to yanking the half empty toilet paper roll off the wall because damned if he was going to leave that miser a single thing - that he really realized what was going on. Sure it didn’t mean he had to move in with Zhou Mi. If he’d really tried, maybe he could’ve found a less narrow-minded landlord. But as he moved around, making sure all he left were dust bunnies and trash, he realized it didn’t make much sense to. The landlord had clearly assumed that Kyuhyun had a place to take everything - to Zhou Mi’s government subsidized housing.
He stared at a spot on the wall that had held pictures from a vacation he’d taken for the last year, and all that was there was a nail.
“Everything gone, then?” Zhou Mi asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I didn’t even ask you if-“
“What’s mine is yours now,” Zhou Mi told him. “And when your blood test is confirmed, it’ll be legally that way. You didn’t have to ask.”
“Promise me you won’t smother me in my sleep.”
Zhou Mi laughed, and promised. And he closed the door to one life, and opened the door to another.
***
Zhou Mi stared around, sighing. His apartment was a disaster. And given the disaster that Zhou Mi had already made with the books that morning, it was an even bigger disaster. Kyuhyun’s furniture, mattress, his boxes of books, bags of clothes, bags and boxes of everything else, all being deposited without much fanfare. It was all Zhou Mi could do to buzz around and move things out of the way, and drag the occasional bag or box to their eventual destination, such as kitchen or bedroom. Kyuhyun was helping muscle things around, but he seemed to have lost his focus somewhere in the middle, and had a kind of bewildered look on his face. As if the blood bonding wasn’t enough, to have his location upended? If Kyuhyun had allowed it, he might have tried to draw him into a hug. But he wasn’t sure if Kyuhyun was even a hug type of guy. Maybe he’d see it as a come on, even, which was way far from what Zhou Mi would’ve meant it as.
But the movers eventually were through, Kyuhyun checking the truck to be sure, signing off on it. And eyeballing the vista of boxes as though it was the Great Wall that needed to be dismantled in a few hours.
“This can be tackled later,” Zhou Mi said, steering him into the bedroom. “Take a shower, and I’ll find the food you brought so you can have dinner. You can start on all that later.”
Kyuhyun stared back at the piles of his things. “Do you know what bag has my clothes in it?”
“I dragged one of them into the bedroom, and your dresser is behind the book boxes. Er. Banana boxes that have books in them.”
Kyuhyun managed to find what he needed, and while he heard the shower run, Zhou Mi found the food. Even if he didn’t eat food, even he knew how to cook ramen. So there was hot soup and tea by the time that Kyuhyun emerged, a little damp and seemingly a lot more focused.
“This part of living with someone isn’t so bad,” Kyuhyun joked, accepting the bowl and mug and ending up in a corner of the living room on the floor because all the furniture was covered with his stuff.
“You seem to know a lot about vampires,” Kyuhyun said. “But there are other things you don’t seem really clear on. Why is that?”
It was not a fact that he’d intended to keep secret. In fact, he’d thought about talking to Kyuhyun about his past at several moments throughout the day, and it had obviously just not been the right time or opportunity. But it was, then. To tell Kyuhyun of the baby who was found abandoned, well-clothed but alone. Taken to the nearest hospital where the doctors and nurses were horrified to discover that the child was no ordinary human. Not that babies had teeth of any kind anyway, and his extra vampire teeth hadn’t grown in until he was nearly twenty. But they had known. And one of the nurses, not caring if he was vampire or not, bundled him up and took him home to her surprised husband. They had been trying for a child themselves for many years, and even being what he was, Zhou Mi had seemed like a good interim option.
Though he was the only child they ever had His mother did her best to educate him about what he was. It was her love and guidance that kept him from reviling his difference. It wasn’t like there were doctors who specialized in a species that didn’t really get sick. But there were books, and he read those as soon as he learned to do so. Adoring his mother, and respecting and loving his father, and trying to be the best son he could be. Human or not. He knew full well that they hadn’t had to take him. He hadn’t wanted them to regret that choice. Even if he knew it had been hard. Shunned by some of their friends for the little boy who had to play outside covered head to toe. He’d had a few friends in neighborhood children whose parents weren’t afraid. He hadn’t grown up secluded like some kind of monster.
And he gave Kyuhyun the short version of that, giving him a window into Zhou Mi’s life.
“Do you see your parents often?” Kyuhyun asked, cupping his mug of tea.
Zhou Mi cleared his throat. Ah. That part. “My father survived my mother by several years, but… He died 20 years ago.”
Kyuhyun stared at him as though he had just said that his father was really a skunk who ate rubber for breakfast.
“Twenty… How old are you?”
“46,” Zhou Mi told him.
“So I just got blood bonded to someone who could be my father?”
Zhou Mi laughed, reaching up to touch his own neck. “I hope I don’t look like your father.”
“You don’t look older than me,” Kyuhyun said. “Do you just stop aging at a certain point?”
“More or less,” Zhou Mi said. “At least that’s what the books say.”
“So you’ll stay young while your partner ages?”
“That’s a good question.” And it was one he didn’t really know the answer to. One of those regrets he had about not growing up around any vampires at all. He had no reference to go by at all, besides what he’d found on dusty shelves and in his own continued existence. “Somewhere in these books, it should tell us.”
And instead of working on unpacking, they rearranged so there were seats, taking a stack of books each. He had pencil and paper, jotting notes, and Kyuhyun making humming noises as he read through a vampire physiology book. Every so often, a question here or there, but for the most part, silence. Companionable enough, for what it was worth. He studied Kyuhyun’s profile from under his eyelashes, the straight nose and full mouth. Was it a face he’d have paid a second glance on the street? Maybe the hair needed a slightly better cut, going just the slightest bit shaggy at the ends, but he saw a possibility for great attraction there. Considering, he thought, instead of Kyuhyun they could have kidnapped someone out of a nursing home and truly sentenced his life short. Or perhaps the bond only worked in those who were of a certain age. He sighed, and kept reading.
When he started falling asleep without effort, he got up, bustling into his - now their - bedroom, and tidying. Eyeballing what he could move so that Kyuhyun’s dresser would fit, and thinking he could either get rid of some clothes or move them to the other room so that Kyuhyun could hang things up. He finished getting ready for bed in the bathroom, wandering back out to see that Kyuhyun was still immersed in his book.
“The books will still be here tomorrow,” Zhou Mi assured him. “You should get some rest. It’s been a long day.”
“You’re not my mom or my keeper,” Kyuhyun grumbled. But when he blinked at the time, he put the piece of paper as marker in the book. “My eyes feel ready to roll out of my head.”
“Then come to bed, please.”
It filled Zhou Mi with relief, because the last thing he wanted was to engage Kyuhyun in a fight so soon. He crawled beneath the cozy blankets, hearing Kyuhyun ready himself for bed. The slight dip of the mattress, and the adjusting. The light being turned out.
“You haven’t fed since yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” Zhou Mi dismissed. “I don’t need to feed every day.”
“Well. I don’t need to eat every day, but I still do.”
He wondered if Kyuhyun could actually hear his hesitation. That Kyuhyun would offer it to him.
“You said it yourself that it doesn’t hurt me,” Kyuhyun griped. “And you probably can’t focus as well if you’re sniffing after blood you can’t get. So just do it.”
Kyuhyun nearly smashed his arm into Zhou Mi’s nose, and Zhou Mi wrapped his hand around it. Inhaling the scent of Kyuhyun’s pulsing blood, and the skin. And Kyuhyun’s willing sacrifice. Twice he’d fed from Kyuhyun, and tasted mere droplets at other times. He’d gone all his life without the need for human blood, and it was there in front of him like some kind of abundant bouquet. From Kyuhyun, who breathed quietly, trying to keep still for him. He could see himself biting that arching neck, Kyuhyun bucking beneath him at the heady pleasure of it. Delighting in the rich spill of body into body, mimicking an act he could but think to want.
He wondered if he would have found any other’s blood so perfect, that the first beading droplets sent shivers through him. Glad that he was causing Kyuhyun no pain.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and drank his fill.
***
Kyuhyun stared at the clock. The time slowly filtered into his brain.
“Is it Monday?” he asked out loud, as though the walls would answer him.
“Yes, it is,” came the disembodied, Zhou Mi-sounding voice from the bathroom.
“Shit! Shit, shit.”
If he didn’t get dressed, oh…in the next fifteen minutes and get out the door, he was going to be late for work. He all but upended the bag of clothes, trying to find the least wrinkled and folded work attire that he could. It still was all pretty awful. He didn’t acknowledge the pair of legs that pulled up beside him, opting to stand with his clothes in his arms.
“I have to go to work.”
Zhou Mi made a tsk-ing sound at the the twisted leg of the pants Kyuhyun was holding.
“Go wash up, or do what you need to do. I’ll run an iron across whatever needs it really quickly and hang them on the bathroom door.”
“I don’t have that long,” Kyuhyun warned, but allowed Zhou Mi to take everything but his underwear from him. Luckily he’d found his toothbrush the night before, so he was able to get ready without too much issue. Borrowing a little hair goop from one of the bottles on the counter. He’d almost finished, when Zhou Mi tapped on the door to tell him that the clothes were there.
Pressed, and just a little bit warm, he thought, shimmying into them. He tied his tie, and considered himself a moment in the mirror. He didn’t look any different. He didn’t think he screamed “vampire bride” or whatever the hell he was. Zhou Mi was buzzing around the disaster area that was the front room, and he saw two things right off: Zhou Mi was apparently getting ready as though Kyuhyun was going off to school, and he was actually going to get out the door on time because of it.
“I found your work bag, or what I think it is?” Zhou Mi said. “Your cell phone is in it. Oh, and I put a note in there with my cell phone number in case you need anything. Also, I put a key to the apartment in there. You didn’t have breakfast, but there was leftover ramen, so the container is in a baggie if you can heat that up at work? And a banana, too, since you had those. I don’t know what you do for lunch. Do you have money?”
He checked his wallet and confirm that.
“Yeah. I’m good. Thanks.” He took the bag from Zhou Mi’s hands, and paused wondering what the heck he was supposed to be doing then. Leave, clearly, since it wasn’t like they were going to hug and kiss and promise to miss each other until work was over. “Okay. Bye.”
“Bye,” Zhou Mi said, hanging back slightly as he stepped into his shoes and opened the door. “Have a good day.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Maybe the only part of seeing someone off that Zhou Mi knew was from his mother. As he clattered down the stairs, he realized about all Zhou Mi had missed giving him was a pat on the head. That or Zhou Mi thought he was the vampire bride. At least that thought gave him a laugh on the way down into the subway.
Of course, on the subway itself, he made way for an elderly man. And the subject of Zhou Mi’s age went floating by. Zhou Mi definitely did not look like Kyuhyun’s father or grandfather. Not that he’d spent a whole heck of a lot of time analyzing how Zhou Mi looked as a factor to, say, their life situation. But it wasn’t that hard to picture last night, Zhou Mi laughing into his hand in the light of the reading lamp, and telling him about his past. Not unattractive, and definitely not looking like he was 46. If Zhou Mi had been human and had hit on him, he’d definitely given it more than a few passing thoughts. But how stupid would it be, to mix pleasure with, well. What was currently an accidental business and life transaction. But that wasn’t what he was doing at all. Just analyzing a particularly interesting facet of their situation. Yeah, this guy almost twice his age is sucking his blood. No problem.
Author: Coley Merrin
Pairing: Zhou Mi/Kyuhyun
Rating: R
Genre: AU, Vampires, Angst, Fluff
Warnings: Brief violence, angst, sexual situations.
Summary: Research points to a vampire bite being unbreakable, but Kyuhyun can't give up. And with Zhou Mi, he works to undo the blood bond that forced them together.
***
Chapter One * Chapter Two & Three * Chapter Four & Five
***
Over the years of Zhou Mi’s life, it was strange to think that he had met only one other vampire besides himself. He had been allowed one year of public schooling, and that had been the first time he had turned to see someone dressed exactly as he was. Protective cloth covering their sun-sensitive skin. Standing amidst crowds of perfectly normal teenagers. Just not normal themselves. They had forged a friendship that day that had lasted through all the years that followed. Two people who were different. Eunhyuk. The same, even if their home lives were different. Eunhyuk had his birth parents, and Zhou Mi had not. But Eunhyuk had moved in the middle of that year, leaving Zhou Mi alone. When he felt totally alone, he knew that there was someone out there who knew exactly what he was going through.
Before he had slept, he had locked himself in his spare room. Looking in on the sleeping Kyuhyun and dialing with trembling fingers.
The voice on the other end of the line was a comfort, and he was glad he was sitting for it.
“Zhou Mi? It’s late.”
“You’ve heard of vampires being kidnapped, forced into a bond?”
Eunhyuk exhaled, audible even through the phone. “Yes, of course. It’s been happening a long time, even if the press doesn’t care. Why?”
He made a sound, unable even to say it out loud.
“No,” Eunhyuk said. “Don’t tell me- Zhou Mi!”
“Yes. Today. He’s sleeping in my bed right now.” A man he had no idea what to do with.
“He’s okay? How’s he taking it?”
“How would any man take the fact that they get to be bitten the rest of their lives? Badly. But he’s agreed to stay, for now. Is there no way- The bond is forever, isn’t it?”
“If my parents were still alive, I’d ask them,” Eunhyuk said softly. “But that’s what they told me. That I had to be careful, and make a wise choice, because I couldn’t change my mind.”
Zhou Mi closed his eyes, his whole body sagging under the confirmation of what he’d known already. But it was different from the soft and apologetic voice of his friend. His own parents had lived to a good age, as humans. Eunhyuk’s own parents’ lives had been cut sadly short. There were no guarantees in life. He wanted to scream loudly, but had no way to do so. He had no idea what he had to do, but he couldn’t exactly do nothing.
“I wish I knew what to do for him.”
Eunhyuk chuckled. “If he’s like any other human I know, he probably knows nothing about what vampires are really like. You probably have more books on it than I do. Maybe he can learn?”
“Maybe. I have to try.”
“It’s disgusting, what they do. I’m so sorry. Do you need me to come into the city?”
“No. No, I’ll figure this out. He need to get used to me first, before we toss another vampire at him. Thank you though. I’ll call again,” Zhou Mi told him. “Don’t worry. I’ll do what I have to.”
Though he knew Eunhyuk would worry. And he worried himself, even after he’d climbed into bed with Kyuhyun. He slept little, but deep. Nightmares waking both of them at various times of night. Just breathing and trying not to disturb each other as they dealt with their own demons. But at least Zhou Mi had a plan.
Zhou Mi had torn apart his library by the time Kyuhyun had woken, wandering into the room every so often to make sure Kyuhyun wasn’t getting cold. Great stacks of books that he sifted through and discarded. He caught himself on a sneeze a couple of times, realizing he needed to be a little more vigilant on the dusting, and perhaps the book sorting in general. Because of what he was, he couldn’t work, so he ended up with a lot of time. Books were one way he filled it. But he created a small stack of the books he found. Vampire lore, vampire facts. Bookmarking pages, sections. Things he could give Kyuhyun to read, to show him. Things that might help him to understand what it was that they were going through. And for not the first time, Zhou Mi wished he had a mentor, an older vampire who could tell Kyuhyun that it all was true. That it wasn’t some figment of Zhou Mi’s imagination, and he wasn’t trying to screw around with Kyuhyun. He wished it were all a joke. It just was far from one.
Movement had him looking up, startled. Movement in his apartment was so unfamiliar to him, even when he was expecting it. It was Kyuhyun, rumpled in his clothes and patting down his hair. Staring at Zhou Mi with his little corral of books, sitting in a shaft of sunlight.
“Isn’t sunlight supposed to hurt you?” Kyuhyun said, squinting his eyes closed and open again and blinking rapidly.
“Sunlight, from outside, will hurt me. Burn me. It won’t kill me, but it does hurt. These windows are special, though. They’ve been coated, and tinted, to let in light without harming me.”
“Oh. That makes sense. What library blew up in here?”
Zhou Mi laughed, standing. “Mine did. I’ve been looking up information for you. Please, sit.”
He got the only bit of food he had in his apartment, a single apple from his borrowing food the day before, and poured Kyuhyun a cup of tea. Kyuhyun accepted both, and Zhou Mi felt pleased. At least Kyuhyun didn’t think he was going to poison him.
“These books,” Zhou Mi said, laying his hand on a stack of four, “speak of the blood bond, the mating. The aftereffects, and how it changes with time. And these others deal with vampires in general. Physiologically, I am little different than you. I am sensitive to the sun, and I can smell your blood. But I am no stronger, no better visually.”
“Little different. And the blood drinking thing. The blood bond, huh?”
If Kyuhyun believed him… He handed Kyuhyun the book, indicating the bookmark to the section on the blood bond.
“Says that whole freezing-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing fades in intensity after a while,” Kyuhyun mused. “That’s handy. Though it says it’s there to “encourage a deeper bond that will last into eternity.””
“Probably more that your body gets used to the changes being made,” Zhou Mi said, trying for logic.
“Sure, okay. But you didn’t even have to touch me for me to warm back up. Are we like magnets now? Pheromones, what?”
“I’m not sure,” Zhou Mi admitted. “Perhaps it’s evolutionary? A newly bonded pair, the human needing to be close for…protection? Or also for feeding.”
Kyuhyun hummed, and kept on reading, the half-eaten apple clutched in one hand.
“Here’s something interesting. ‘A newly bonded pair is demonstrated in the human’s ability to mark the vampire’s skin.’ What’s that mean?”
“I can’t be injured in a traditional sense. That’s another way we differ, I guess. Those men couldn’t have stabbed and killed me.”
“The immortal thing, I got that.”
But he pondered it, and wondered. He looked up at Kyuhyun.
“Look, I can’t even hurt myself,” he said, and raised his arm. He made very sure his teeth were visible when he bit down on his own arm, feeling the flesh give slightly the harder he bit. But when he let go, there was nothing. Only a sheen where his mouth had been. No wound, not even a dent. Just pristine skin.
“Whoa,” Kyuhyun said, leaning closer. “So if even you can’t make a mark, is the book saying I can mark you?”
“Try scratching my skin,” Zhou Mi suggested. Along the inside of his arm, where the skin was tender and would show more easily. If it worked.
Kyuhyun’s nails weren’t sharp, and the pressure exerted wasn’t painful. But they both stared as moments later faint pink lines appeared in the wake of Kyuhyun’s fingers. They tried it with Zhou Mi’s other arm, that time Zhou Mi trying to scratch himself. And coming up with nothing. Until Zhou Mi had several crisscrossing pink marks on his arms from Kyuhyun’s efforts, and a confused Kyuhyun in front of him.
“Maybe the reason you can mark me is because it’s your blood,” Zhou Mi said.
“That’s kind of cool. Weird, but cool. You can bite me, and I can give you hickeys. I don’t know if that’s equal or not, but-”
Zhou Mi didn’t need a cold wind to make him shiver at the image of Kyuhyun sucking a mark into his skin.
“So you can’t die, but you can tie yourself to a human. Why would someone do that? Compromise themselves?”
“It says in one of the books. Love. The pain of the thought of living one moment in this world without the other of your soul too great to bear.”
“Why not just turn the human?”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “We are born, not made. I had no more choice in my conception than you did in yours. If we fall for a human, then it is our choice to tie our lives to theirs.”
He could see Kyuhyun’s confusion in that.
“Okay. But if it’s their goal to wipe out your kind, why not just kill me?”
“You’re a man. We can’t procreate together. And now that we’re bound, I can’t with anyone else. I can’t feed from any other. They’ve accomplished their goals and set my end. And you are an innocent victim.”
“What if I don’t let you…feed? What if- Has anyone ever tried to break a blood bond? Like say, oops I cut myself and you tasted it, but…? There’s no way of backing out?“
Zhou Mi smiled, and the feeling of it was simultaneously sad and amused. It was normal for Kyuhyun to wonder, even if he could do nothing to stop it.
“If you locked me in a room alone long enough, I would die, and the bond would break,” Zhou Mi admitted. “But I don’t know of any other ways. Perhaps in these books it mentions something. It isn’t something I’ve ever researched. But your body will start to crave it. And feeding will continue to be pleasurable to you.”
“More endorphins than chocolate. Okay.” Kyuhyun stared down at the book, a frown bowing his mouth. “If you can smell blood, how did you go this long without biting someone? Wouldn’t smelling it make you hungry?”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “Until I bit you, I couldn’t smell blood at all. It wasn’t something I needed. Until you.”
***
Zhou Mi’s apartment was nice enough, aside from the avalanche of books Kyuhyun had walked out to. Things he hadn’t really noticed the day before given everything that had happened. Definitely bigger than his own, with a few big and brightly colored posters on the wall. Pretty knickknacks. Not exactly a girl’s home, but it was obvious that Zhou Mi liked cute things. Considering he was sipping water from a cup with a game character on its side. He wrinkled his nose at the mustache, and tried not to actually smile. He was waiting for Zhou Mi to shower, and wandering. There wasn’t anything that screamed vampire! about it. It was just an apartment. No weird symbols or coffins or whatever else he’d seen in random pop culture references. Though, Zhou Mi did have a lot of books about vampires. That made sense.
No pictures, though. No family photos. Perhaps they were all hidden away. Little mementos tacked to a board. Train tickets, receipts. He didn’t linger there long, figuring Zhou Mi had some right to privacy. Though curiosity kept him moving. A spare room, mostly holding boxes. A small almost-closet that held a washer and dryer. The kitchen, which was fully outfitted even if Zhou Mi didn’t eat food. There was an electric water pot, dishes. Kind of eclectic mix of dishes which told him Zhou Mi probably picked those up for their looks as well. Trying to be normal, even if he wasn’t. Or trying to be human, maybe that was more correct. Because as Zhou Mi was, was normal for him. Just different than most of the people around him.
Zhou Mi emerged, fully dressed, though barefoot, and with a towel around his neck.
“Did you get to look around?” he asked, smiling as he filled a cup with hot water.
Okay, so Zhou Mi had more or less told him to check out the place, but it still was a little awkward poking his nose around.
“Yeah, it’s nice. You have a lot of stuff.”
“I try and keep myself occupied,” Zhou Mi told him, brewing his tea.
“So you don’t eat, but you drink tea?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “It’s a pleasure. After I got my teeth, food has done nothing but give me indigestion, but tea is soothing.”
Perhaps Zhou Mi had tried eating. Again, the humanity thing. But Zhou Mi sat at the kitchen table and looked up at Kyuhyun.
“When you’re ready, we should go to register you as my- As my- Any vampire who forms a blood bond has to report it, like any marriage. Vampires can’t be employed around humans, so the government pays us a stipend to live on. This housing is furnished also. If it’s acceptable, you can move your things here. There is plenty of space.”
It was one thing to find the whole vampires-are-real kind of cool, and he did, there wasn’t any getting around that. But it was completely another to have his real life thrown into the mix. Not that getting bled by some kind of weird creature didn’t count as real life, it just was private real life. Something he could deal with on his own, without the rest of the universe getting involved. But his brain balked.
“We- We can’t acknowledge this,” he protested. “If my work finds out? They’d fire me. My coworkers? Who would want to be around me?”
As he spoke Zhou Mi’s head began to shake side to side.
“They wouldn’t be legally able to fire you. You’d be under the protection of the laws of discrimination.” Zhou Mi paused, admitting, “But they could make you want to quit.”
“What would I do then?” Kyuhyun asked, dumbfounded. Get bitten, sure. Tell everyone? Lose his whole life? Zhou Mi’s thumb rimmed his cup, frowning.
“We, because we can’t work, tend to do other things. Music, or writing. Crafts. Things that can be sold to supplement the stipend. The government doesn’t care how much. If you can’t work, I can support you.”
Well, yippee, that was something he could write home to his parents about. Moved in with a vampire, currently getting bled, and he’s putting me up. Kept for the pleasure of his blood. Really, it didn’t get much better than that.
“What do you do, then?” he asked Zhou Mi.
“I sew clothes. I have been for a few years. We can do anything as long as it doesn’t include food making of any sort. In case we try and put something in the food, I guess.”
“I guess you can’t sneak a pair of teeth into a dress. What’s your brand called? Louis Bitten?”
Zhou Mi laughed so hard at his little fake-accented designer name that the table started shaking, Zhou Mi actually reaching out to grasp his hand in his mirth. LV he was not. He could help but chuckle at his lame joke, staring at that face. A face he could be staring at, like it or not, for the next sixty or so years of his life. When Zhou Mi sobered, Zhou Mi kept his hand, squeezing almost to the point of pain.
“I thought you’d accepted that it was true. There is… There is no real way of getting around reporting it. If we don’t, there could be trouble. It’s not like we wouldn’t have known.”
“It’s not like they’d know either,” Kyuhyun pointed out.
“Not exactly. From what I know, they can find the levels of antibodies in your blood. Maybe it wouldn’t tell them the day or hour, but we couldn’t fake it just happening.”
When he thought about it rationally, which was still hard to do with the seven thousand thoughts spinning in his head, he really wanted to get the hell out of there. Call Zhou Mi insane, and just split. But Zhou Mi hadn’t written those books that they’d looked at while waiting for Kyuhyun to wake up. And there was enough that he read in there that had some of his doubts turning into maybes. Maybe there was truth to it, and they weren’t crazy. Maybe the man holding his hand wasn’t some creepy thing, who just wanted a human to use. Kyuhyun had never considered himself to be stupid or particularly gullible. For all he knew, Zhou Mi had orchestrated everything - the kidnapping, the biting. And what was he supposed to do, ask for character references? And the guy talked about marching him down to some office, and registering him like some kind of pet dog.
“Look, registering our…bond, or whatever, that’s kind of official isn’t it? You can’t just go down and be like, oops, I made a mistake, I take it back.”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “Because there is no way to reverse a blood bond, there would be no need to reverse the registration.”
“But are you sure, a thousand percent, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is no way to reverse it?”
“Besides my death?” Zhou Mi said bluntly. “It would go against everything I knew, if there was. But is there that slightest chance? I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and all,” or at least he was going with that supposition, “but this is a lot for me to just agree with. People don’t tie their lives together in a- a freaking day!”
“That’s why what was done to us was so reprehensible,” Zhou Mi said, standing and stepping close. “But there are repercussions if we don’t register. Fines, or the possibility that I could be cut off from my stipend. And because I can’t work, I might be homeless. If I knew-“
Zhou Mi’s words cut off in frustration, hand slashing through the air.
“If I knew anything that could get us out of this, and give you your life back. Give me my life back, I would be racing for it. I want this to be a choice. And I don’t have any good ones to give you. But I can promise you that I will help you look for any way that gets us out of this. And I know you have no reason to believe me, but I promise I will do everything I can for you.”
Who had the worst end of the deal? The vampire who died if Kyuhyun refused to feed him, who lost his home and living if he refused to register with him. Or Kyuhyun, who had to get bitten however many times, and was getting his life reordered, and a big, earnest-eyed vampire attached to him.
Unfortunately all the pros in going along with Zhou Mi’s plans seemed to land on Zhou Mi’s side of the benefit. But it sounded like Zhou Mi didn’t want to be tied to him, either. Of course, if it was true, and he thought about that quite hard, then if Zhou Mi lost his stipend? He would suddenly have a vampire living in his apartment. Which meant that it was in their best interest to do as they should, until such a time as -and he had to believe they could - they found a way to break the blood bond.
But he didn’t see any harm in making sure.
“If you swear you’ll help me look into the blood bond and how to break it,” Kyuhyun bargained.
“Pinky swear,” Zhou Mi said, and offered his hand.
He guessed that was good enough for him, though seriously, were they ten year-old girls? Their little fingers locked, and shook. And the deal was made.
***
Zhou Mi had to be careful, going outside. In his home, he was protected, but in direct sunlight, he wasn’t. He’d known enough burns to know how painful they were. Blisters on his skin, that didn’t heal nearly as quickly as he would like. It wouldn’t kill him, because the wounds only went skin deep. It probably wouldn’t even drive him insane if his whole body was exposed. But anyone who had a slight burn, a cut, knew the skin had too many nerve endings to want to play around with it. And it meant dressing in the only way he knew how. There had been cloth developed, that blocked out the parts of the suns rays that were especially harmful. It was thin, almost like nylon, so he could wear pieces of clothing made with it under his normal clothes. He’d lined thin gloves with it. And he wore hoodies, because having a hood on was less distracting than displaying that he wore a piece of cloth covering his entire head. He could see through it just fine, and it was flesh-colored so it didn’t look too creepy. But anyone looking at him - who knew - could instantly spot what it was. He explained it partially to Kyuhyun, wanting to get going before Kyuhyun changed his mind.
But as they started into the stairwell, he couldn’t help but point out the location and its significance.
“This is where they kidnapped me,” Zhou Mi said, pausing on the top step. “Someone said something to stop me, and the next thing I knew, I was being pushed down the stairs.”
Kyuhyun stared between him and the stairwell.
“Pushed down? What, there has to be twenty steps!”
“And my bones won’t break,” Zhou Mi said, leading Kyuhyun down those same stairs. “But I was dazed enough that they managed to tie me up.”
“And I thought having a thug grab me was bad. I mean, obviously I’d never been kidnapped before, but I thought it was some kind of mugging.”
“I knew it wasn’t.” And he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, the anger that he felt that Kyuhyun had been scared, and hurt. He would have been angry for anyone, but Kyuhyun wasn’t just anyone to him anymore. And it wasn’t as though he could keep Kyuhyun safe from everything, because he couldn’t. But there were little things, like the fact that he ignored the faint unease that was hunger, because it was more want than need at that point.
As they walked, Kyuhyun began to recognize familiar landmarks. “I live maybe a ten or fifteen minute walk from here.”
His locale had probably factored in, there was no doubt in Zhou Mi’s mind about that. “The warehouse where they took us isn’t far from here. Five blocks or so. Luckily, the police gave us a ride back here.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“No, you were out. They offered to take us to the hospital, but…” He hesitated. “I was pretty sure I knew why you were unconscious. It might not have been the wisest thing.”
“It worked out,” Kyuhyun said, shrugging. And for a moment Zhou Mi was happy, because it had been some time since he had had the freedom of walking, talking, beside someone. Even if where they were going was less than a wonderful location to him.
The Office of Vampire Affairs was a depressing place at the best of times, and on the weekend, a Sunday, even more so. Shuttled into a back corner closet of the government building, it was big enough for a desk, filing units and two people. It was one of the only offices open every day of the week, even if it was only for a few hours. He wished he knew how many vampires it served, but short of staking it out, he had no way of knowing. The next office was almost five hours away, which explained its peculiar hours. There was a woman who seemed bored with the whole deal since she was reading a novel at the desk, and some young lackey doing busywork behind her. She actually seemed a little surprised to see someone walk in, keeping ahold of her novel even when it was clear from his own outfit that Zhou Mi was a vampire and there for a reason.
“Yes?”
“We’re here to register a blood bond,” Zhou Mi said, his posture stiff.
“Was it recent? Every week can incur a charge of-“
“Yesterday,” Zhou Mi told her, and got no sort of surprise.
“Okay, then. We’ll need guarantee of a blood draw to confirm that. The registration fee is waived if you’re a registered vampire. I’ll need both your IDs.”
Kyuhyun slid his across as Zhou Mi did the same, and she scanned them into the system. She pushed a form at Kyuhyun, indicating he needed to fill out his current residence and place of work. Kyuhyun did so with a frown, and Zhou Mi watched him closely. Just because Kyuhyun was there, and doing this, didn’t mean that there was any guarantee that he accepted it still. Especially with the way Kyuhyun was peppering the woman with questions about taxes and regulations, and were there any drawbacks, or- Would it take a week, a month? If he hadn’t been worried by governmental backlash, he wouldn’t have pushed for it to happen so soon. But there was another reason. If Kyuhyun had papers in his hand telling them they were bound in the eyes of the government, then maybe it would help his mind along as well. Even if it wasn’t exactly the kind of “marriage papers” he’d have expected to be filling out in his lifetime.
She had some kind of device that pricked Kyuhyun’s finger for the test, assuring them they’d get an antibody result within a day or so. And that was it. No pomp, no circumstance. Just a sheaf of official paperwork, and their IDs handed back.
“Till death do you part,” she commented drolly, picking up her novel.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Kyuhyun demanded.
“It’s part of the marriage vows, honey,” she said, and went back to her book.
“But that didn’t sound like a joke, right?” he asked, following Zhou Mi back into the hall.
“You can’t be defensive about every little thing,” Zhou Mi told him, guiding him with a firm hand on his back. “Believe me. If you’re out with me, you’ll hear and see things. Some of it you have to let go. You’ll get some of it , too.”
He could see the rising protest on Kyuhyun’s face when Zhou Mi lifted his hand, taking a subtle lick of the finger that had been tested. It tasted of metal, and the faint hint of blood, but he could help it hurt less, heal faster.
“I forget you can do that,” Kyuhyun murmured.
He would get used to it. There weren’t many other options for it otherwise.
Their visit to the police was fruitless. No evidence at the scene, no leads to go on. Just unknown men, a double kidnapping, and a forced bond.
Also known as, they might as well get used to it because there weren’t enough resources to investigate vampire crimes. Kyuhyun was silent and stone faced through it, seeing what Zhou Mi had had to deal with in the warehouse, even. He worried for a moment that Kyuhyun would try and say something, as he had in the Vampire Affairs office. Saying anything wasn’t going to make it better, by far. The men were already unmotivated, and probably under the impression that what had been done was a good thing, even.
“It makes me sick,” Kyuhyun said, hissing it out as the walked back onto the sidewalk.
“We can only do what we can. Let’s get you something to eat, and then maybe go to your apartment. We can get clothes for you, or see what we should do next.”
It would be more comfortable for Zhou Mi at his own apartment, with his special windows, but if he had to wear his protective gear for a while to make Kyuhyun more comfortable, then he would. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t before. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just there. Kyuhyun’s stomach growled in response to Zhou Mi’s words, and he smiled wryly back at Zhou Mi. There were a lot of things that Zhou Mi couldn’t do for him. He couldn’t fix what had been done, or maybe even find who had done it.
But he could at least make sure Kyuhyun was fed.
***
***
Kyuhyun hadn’t realized just how hungry that he was until they passed a food stall, and ordered nearly enough for two meals. Zhou Mi ended up carrying part of it, while he stripped chicken into his mouth as they walked. Zhou Mi seemed a little hesitant, as though Kyuhyun was going to choke as they went, but he didn’t want to sit and eat. He’d seen the looks the stall owner had given Zhou Mi, catching random glances as people walked by them. Hyper aware. And possibly too quick to leap to judgement. Some of them were probably just curious. Maybe. Or they knew what a vampire wore. But how was it that he hadn’t? He’d lost interest after hitting his teens, and finding games.
“Do all these people know what you are?” he asked.
“Some of them,” Zhou Mi said. “When I came down to the Vampire Affairs office as an adult for the first time, I was told there used to be more vampires in this area. By the time I came along, they’d moved or died. They won’t tell me if there are others, and unless I see someone walking around like this? If there are others, maybe they only go out at night so people won’t know.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Would it make my life easier, if I were always hiding?” Zhou Mi asked as they paused at a crosswalk to wait for a light to change.
“Maybe it’d keep a few more idiots off your back.”
“Maybe it’ll teach a few that I’m not here to be feared, too.”
Zhou Mi started walking, and it took a few steps to get himself in motion in the wake of Zhou Mi’s words.
How much optimism was good before it was stupid? He probably would’ve walked around sending lasers out of his eyes if he were the subject of those curious stares.
“How much of every day do you put toward hoping that?” Kyuhyun asked, throwing some of the wrapping of his lunch into a trash can they passed.
Zhou Mi just smiled, the expression slightly shimmery behind the cloth. “Only in my dreams.”
The thought sickened him a little, and he led Zhou Mi up a flight of stairs to his own apartment. Picking up his mail, and wandering in. Nothing had changed. Obviously. It had been barely a day? His place hadn’t changed, but it seemed like he sure had. He’d gone out to get cereal, and had come back with a vampire. He took the rest of his lunch and the packet of papers from Zhou Mi and rolled his eyes a little.
Bureaucracy at work.
“It’s nice,” Zhou Mi told him, wandering to his bookshelves.
“It’s a place to keep my junk,” Kyuhyun said, and plopped down to finish eating. At best the apartment was small, definitely smaller than Zhou Mi’s. Books, his TV, his computer desk. An easy chair to curl up in, his bed, and tiny kitchen. It wasn’t much, but it was comfortable, and cheap, and close to where he worked. It wasn’t like he needed much else.
Zhou Mi let him eat in silence, which was about until his stomach caught on to the fact that he was trying to bolt two meals for the price of one and gave protest. Zhou Mi had come to sit beside him, shifting through the papers with the occasional perplexed look. He realized belatedly that he should’ve offered to pull his blinds or something, so Zhou Mi could undress a little. But it was a little late for that.
“So you said something about food before you got your teeth? What did you eat before me? Vampires aren’t some kind of air ferns, are they?”
Zhou Mi’s lips curved almost immediately. “No, not an air fern. I was able to eat some human food as a child. The teeth I use to feed with didn’t come in until I was almost twenty. After that, I couldn’t eat any vegetable matter, though tea doesn’t affect me. Animal blood, mostly, after that. My body was transitioning to get ready for a blood bond, since blood would be all I needed. Before yesterday, I lived close enough to a butcher, who could supply me with cow’s blood. But I won’t need that any more.”
No. Because now he had Kyuhyun. The thought of the cow’s blood made him almost more ill than the thought of his own. Maybe because he didn’t know how Zhou Mi ate it. Yum, a nice mug of blood? But it was interesting to him, anyway. That vampires ate normal food, or animal blood. He’d always known they hadn’t eaten humans - but for that cleverly left out blood bond - but he’d never known what else they would’ve eaten. And apparently hadn’t had the intent to go seek out that information.
He figured he could pack a bag with some clothes, some food from his kitchen. He was accepting the part where maybe he’d be staying with Zhou Mi a little while, but he definitely hadn’t gotten to being okay with staying there forever. Zhou Mi had books out his ears, so he could study if nothing else.
He nearly fell over Zhou Mi’s legs as someone pounded on the door. They considered each other for a moment. Zhou Mi was right behind him, slightly to the side and out of the line of sight as he opened the door. Too soon after being yanked off the street for many surprises to be accepted. But it was his landlord, looking nervous and impatient.
“Is it true?” the man asked. “I just got a call from the Office of Vampire Affairs that said you were…binded, blood…whatever, to some monster?”
Filling out those forms had been more than just for records, he realized. A sick chill washed over him that every contact he’d been forced to put down had been notified, like he was some plague-carrying rat let loose on society.
Zhou Mi moved, and the man’s eyes fixed on him. “Hell, it’s true. I called a truck and some movers, just in case. You can be out of here by tonight.”
Kyuhyun gaped, following the man into the hallway when he started to walk away. “Wait, are you kicking me out of my apartment? I have a lease!”
“I’ll compensate you for the rest of the month,” the man said, and kept edging away. “If the other tenants thought there was a, you know, around then I’d have trouble! The movers are on me.”
“What the hell?” he asked the empty hallway.
Zhou Mi was standing in the doorway, arms tightly crossed as though he was cold. And Kyuhyun could almost feel the apology exuding from him. He put things in motion before it could be spoken, and left Zhou Mi there folding clothes from his closet while he jogged to the nearest grocery store to beg a tower of boxes. It was hard to move if he was going to be dragging books out stack by stack. His clothes could go in garbage bags, and so could other things. Zhou Mi tried to ask him a few questions, and he just grimly pointed Zhou Mi to the next task. They’d gotten some headway, clearing out the furniture so it could be moved and stacking other things behind it. All he could do was watch as his bed was carried out by the movies, his table and chairs. Packing things from his kitchen into bags and the few boxes the movers had brought.
Zhou Mi stayed back out of the way, which was probably good given some of the looks the movers were giving him. It was when Kyuhyun finished emptying his bathroom, right down to yanking the half empty toilet paper roll off the wall because damned if he was going to leave that miser a single thing - that he really realized what was going on. Sure it didn’t mean he had to move in with Zhou Mi. If he’d really tried, maybe he could’ve found a less narrow-minded landlord. But as he moved around, making sure all he left were dust bunnies and trash, he realized it didn’t make much sense to. The landlord had clearly assumed that Kyuhyun had a place to take everything - to Zhou Mi’s government subsidized housing.
He stared at a spot on the wall that had held pictures from a vacation he’d taken for the last year, and all that was there was a nail.
“Everything gone, then?” Zhou Mi asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I didn’t even ask you if-“
“What’s mine is yours now,” Zhou Mi told him. “And when your blood test is confirmed, it’ll be legally that way. You didn’t have to ask.”
“Promise me you won’t smother me in my sleep.”
Zhou Mi laughed, and promised. And he closed the door to one life, and opened the door to another.
***
Zhou Mi stared around, sighing. His apartment was a disaster. And given the disaster that Zhou Mi had already made with the books that morning, it was an even bigger disaster. Kyuhyun’s furniture, mattress, his boxes of books, bags of clothes, bags and boxes of everything else, all being deposited without much fanfare. It was all Zhou Mi could do to buzz around and move things out of the way, and drag the occasional bag or box to their eventual destination, such as kitchen or bedroom. Kyuhyun was helping muscle things around, but he seemed to have lost his focus somewhere in the middle, and had a kind of bewildered look on his face. As if the blood bonding wasn’t enough, to have his location upended? If Kyuhyun had allowed it, he might have tried to draw him into a hug. But he wasn’t sure if Kyuhyun was even a hug type of guy. Maybe he’d see it as a come on, even, which was way far from what Zhou Mi would’ve meant it as.
But the movers eventually were through, Kyuhyun checking the truck to be sure, signing off on it. And eyeballing the vista of boxes as though it was the Great Wall that needed to be dismantled in a few hours.
“This can be tackled later,” Zhou Mi said, steering him into the bedroom. “Take a shower, and I’ll find the food you brought so you can have dinner. You can start on all that later.”
Kyuhyun stared back at the piles of his things. “Do you know what bag has my clothes in it?”
“I dragged one of them into the bedroom, and your dresser is behind the book boxes. Er. Banana boxes that have books in them.”
Kyuhyun managed to find what he needed, and while he heard the shower run, Zhou Mi found the food. Even if he didn’t eat food, even he knew how to cook ramen. So there was hot soup and tea by the time that Kyuhyun emerged, a little damp and seemingly a lot more focused.
“This part of living with someone isn’t so bad,” Kyuhyun joked, accepting the bowl and mug and ending up in a corner of the living room on the floor because all the furniture was covered with his stuff.
“You seem to know a lot about vampires,” Kyuhyun said. “But there are other things you don’t seem really clear on. Why is that?”
It was not a fact that he’d intended to keep secret. In fact, he’d thought about talking to Kyuhyun about his past at several moments throughout the day, and it had obviously just not been the right time or opportunity. But it was, then. To tell Kyuhyun of the baby who was found abandoned, well-clothed but alone. Taken to the nearest hospital where the doctors and nurses were horrified to discover that the child was no ordinary human. Not that babies had teeth of any kind anyway, and his extra vampire teeth hadn’t grown in until he was nearly twenty. But they had known. And one of the nurses, not caring if he was vampire or not, bundled him up and took him home to her surprised husband. They had been trying for a child themselves for many years, and even being what he was, Zhou Mi had seemed like a good interim option.
Though he was the only child they ever had His mother did her best to educate him about what he was. It was her love and guidance that kept him from reviling his difference. It wasn’t like there were doctors who specialized in a species that didn’t really get sick. But there were books, and he read those as soon as he learned to do so. Adoring his mother, and respecting and loving his father, and trying to be the best son he could be. Human or not. He knew full well that they hadn’t had to take him. He hadn’t wanted them to regret that choice. Even if he knew it had been hard. Shunned by some of their friends for the little boy who had to play outside covered head to toe. He’d had a few friends in neighborhood children whose parents weren’t afraid. He hadn’t grown up secluded like some kind of monster.
And he gave Kyuhyun the short version of that, giving him a window into Zhou Mi’s life.
“Do you see your parents often?” Kyuhyun asked, cupping his mug of tea.
Zhou Mi cleared his throat. Ah. That part. “My father survived my mother by several years, but… He died 20 years ago.”
Kyuhyun stared at him as though he had just said that his father was really a skunk who ate rubber for breakfast.
“Twenty… How old are you?”
“46,” Zhou Mi told him.
“So I just got blood bonded to someone who could be my father?”
Zhou Mi laughed, reaching up to touch his own neck. “I hope I don’t look like your father.”
“You don’t look older than me,” Kyuhyun said. “Do you just stop aging at a certain point?”
“More or less,” Zhou Mi said. “At least that’s what the books say.”
“So you’ll stay young while your partner ages?”
“That’s a good question.” And it was one he didn’t really know the answer to. One of those regrets he had about not growing up around any vampires at all. He had no reference to go by at all, besides what he’d found on dusty shelves and in his own continued existence. “Somewhere in these books, it should tell us.”
And instead of working on unpacking, they rearranged so there were seats, taking a stack of books each. He had pencil and paper, jotting notes, and Kyuhyun making humming noises as he read through a vampire physiology book. Every so often, a question here or there, but for the most part, silence. Companionable enough, for what it was worth. He studied Kyuhyun’s profile from under his eyelashes, the straight nose and full mouth. Was it a face he’d have paid a second glance on the street? Maybe the hair needed a slightly better cut, going just the slightest bit shaggy at the ends, but he saw a possibility for great attraction there. Considering, he thought, instead of Kyuhyun they could have kidnapped someone out of a nursing home and truly sentenced his life short. Or perhaps the bond only worked in those who were of a certain age. He sighed, and kept reading.
When he started falling asleep without effort, he got up, bustling into his - now their - bedroom, and tidying. Eyeballing what he could move so that Kyuhyun’s dresser would fit, and thinking he could either get rid of some clothes or move them to the other room so that Kyuhyun could hang things up. He finished getting ready for bed in the bathroom, wandering back out to see that Kyuhyun was still immersed in his book.
“The books will still be here tomorrow,” Zhou Mi assured him. “You should get some rest. It’s been a long day.”
“You’re not my mom or my keeper,” Kyuhyun grumbled. But when he blinked at the time, he put the piece of paper as marker in the book. “My eyes feel ready to roll out of my head.”
“Then come to bed, please.”
It filled Zhou Mi with relief, because the last thing he wanted was to engage Kyuhyun in a fight so soon. He crawled beneath the cozy blankets, hearing Kyuhyun ready himself for bed. The slight dip of the mattress, and the adjusting. The light being turned out.
“You haven’t fed since yesterday.”
“It’s okay,” Zhou Mi dismissed. “I don’t need to feed every day.”
“Well. I don’t need to eat every day, but I still do.”
He wondered if Kyuhyun could actually hear his hesitation. That Kyuhyun would offer it to him.
“You said it yourself that it doesn’t hurt me,” Kyuhyun griped. “And you probably can’t focus as well if you’re sniffing after blood you can’t get. So just do it.”
Kyuhyun nearly smashed his arm into Zhou Mi’s nose, and Zhou Mi wrapped his hand around it. Inhaling the scent of Kyuhyun’s pulsing blood, and the skin. And Kyuhyun’s willing sacrifice. Twice he’d fed from Kyuhyun, and tasted mere droplets at other times. He’d gone all his life without the need for human blood, and it was there in front of him like some kind of abundant bouquet. From Kyuhyun, who breathed quietly, trying to keep still for him. He could see himself biting that arching neck, Kyuhyun bucking beneath him at the heady pleasure of it. Delighting in the rich spill of body into body, mimicking an act he could but think to want.
He wondered if he would have found any other’s blood so perfect, that the first beading droplets sent shivers through him. Glad that he was causing Kyuhyun no pain.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and drank his fill.
***
Kyuhyun stared at the clock. The time slowly filtered into his brain.
“Is it Monday?” he asked out loud, as though the walls would answer him.
“Yes, it is,” came the disembodied, Zhou Mi-sounding voice from the bathroom.
“Shit! Shit, shit.”
If he didn’t get dressed, oh…in the next fifteen minutes and get out the door, he was going to be late for work. He all but upended the bag of clothes, trying to find the least wrinkled and folded work attire that he could. It still was all pretty awful. He didn’t acknowledge the pair of legs that pulled up beside him, opting to stand with his clothes in his arms.
“I have to go to work.”
Zhou Mi made a tsk-ing sound at the the twisted leg of the pants Kyuhyun was holding.
“Go wash up, or do what you need to do. I’ll run an iron across whatever needs it really quickly and hang them on the bathroom door.”
“I don’t have that long,” Kyuhyun warned, but allowed Zhou Mi to take everything but his underwear from him. Luckily he’d found his toothbrush the night before, so he was able to get ready without too much issue. Borrowing a little hair goop from one of the bottles on the counter. He’d almost finished, when Zhou Mi tapped on the door to tell him that the clothes were there.
Pressed, and just a little bit warm, he thought, shimmying into them. He tied his tie, and considered himself a moment in the mirror. He didn’t look any different. He didn’t think he screamed “vampire bride” or whatever the hell he was. Zhou Mi was buzzing around the disaster area that was the front room, and he saw two things right off: Zhou Mi was apparently getting ready as though Kyuhyun was going off to school, and he was actually going to get out the door on time because of it.
“I found your work bag, or what I think it is?” Zhou Mi said. “Your cell phone is in it. Oh, and I put a note in there with my cell phone number in case you need anything. Also, I put a key to the apartment in there. You didn’t have breakfast, but there was leftover ramen, so the container is in a baggie if you can heat that up at work? And a banana, too, since you had those. I don’t know what you do for lunch. Do you have money?”
He checked his wallet and confirm that.
“Yeah. I’m good. Thanks.” He took the bag from Zhou Mi’s hands, and paused wondering what the heck he was supposed to be doing then. Leave, clearly, since it wasn’t like they were going to hug and kiss and promise to miss each other until work was over. “Okay. Bye.”
“Bye,” Zhou Mi said, hanging back slightly as he stepped into his shoes and opened the door. “Have a good day.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Maybe the only part of seeing someone off that Zhou Mi knew was from his mother. As he clattered down the stairs, he realized about all Zhou Mi had missed giving him was a pat on the head. That or Zhou Mi thought he was the vampire bride. At least that thought gave him a laugh on the way down into the subway.
Of course, on the subway itself, he made way for an elderly man. And the subject of Zhou Mi’s age went floating by. Zhou Mi definitely did not look like Kyuhyun’s father or grandfather. Not that he’d spent a whole heck of a lot of time analyzing how Zhou Mi looked as a factor to, say, their life situation. But it wasn’t that hard to picture last night, Zhou Mi laughing into his hand in the light of the reading lamp, and telling him about his past. Not unattractive, and definitely not looking like he was 46. If Zhou Mi had been human and had hit on him, he’d definitely given it more than a few passing thoughts. But how stupid would it be, to mix pleasure with, well. What was currently an accidental business and life transaction. But that wasn’t what he was doing at all. Just analyzing a particularly interesting facet of their situation. Yeah, this guy almost twice his age is sucking his blood. No problem.