[12] Hong Kong, 2009; qmi; pg
title: Hong Kong, 2009
fandom: super junior m
pairing: zhou mi/kyuhyun
rating: PG
summary: this is how a confession is birthed. it starts with a two and a half day vacation in a city where kyuhyun dreams and zhou mi answers.
notes: inspired by this post, linked from sjchina.
They were given a week off because five of their members needed to go back to Seoul for four days. In the two and a half days before they had to leave, Zhou Mi took Kyuhyun's hand and said breathlessly, "Let's go to Hong Kong."
And because it was Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun went.
It was just the two of them in a city of lights, lost in the towering shadows of skyscrapers reaching into the night and rivers of people who spoke in tongues. Kyuhyun understood less than ever, English and Cantonese flowing past him as he turned, as always, to Zhou Mi for translation. He felt like he never looked away in those two and a half days, Zhou Mi's arm around his waist or hand on his wrist, lips murmuring translations into his ear like they had practiced for a year and half.
"How do you know Cantonese again?" Kyuhyun asked as Zhou Mi steered them down the crowded streets and toward some unknown destination.
Zhou Mi's smile was quick and bright, eyes warm with memories. "I used to live here. For two years."
Two years and he could speak passably, enough to guide them through their private holiday. Two years on-and-off in China and Kyuhyun still wasn't sure he'd ever master Mandarin. There was something that felt like pride in his chest when he smiled back at Zhou Mi, who - even though he couldn't dance and couldn't cook and fled from the first sight of a spider - was amazing.
I bet you can do anything.
He didn't say the words, because they were stupid. He wasn't Zhou Mi's mother, wasn't even a childhood friend - no one who had claim on him and had the right to beam at him and his sheer, incredible talent. All Kyuhyun could do was lean into him on the subway, clutch at him when the crowd threatened to separate them, and stay at his side through this journey into a city foreign to both of them. All Kyuhyun could do was watch him, eyes trained forever on that smile, that face, and feel his heart clench up inside his chest.
"Oh! Look! Let's try this!"
He let Zhou Mi drag him into a shop where he gamely put unidentified food into his mouth and agreed that, yeah, it was delicious. Amazing. Wonderful. Everything was, in these two and a half days on their own, their phones the only connection to frantic managers and a weary leader. Two and a half days where they could be anonymous, another two figures lost in a sea of people, in a city of possibilities, pretending that they had no responsibilities except each other. Kyuhyun slept beside Zhou Mi at night and breathed in the scent of stale hotel air and Zhou Mi's expensive lotion, and he dreamed.
Just for two and half days, he dreamed, with his head on Zhou Mi's shoulder and their chests rising and falling in unison.
---
The four days in Seoul Zhou Mi spent trying to compose a letter, words vanishing in his mind as he stared at the blank sheet of paper, pen poised and ready. There were a hundred, a thousand, ways he could say it - but none of them were right. He sorted through the words and discarded them as wrong, incomplete, not what he was trying to say. In the end, he left the notebook blank on the desk and curled up in front of the TV to rewatch his favorite movie.
"What's this?" Henry asked him, finding him engrossed in the love story on screen.
"My favorite movie," Zhou Mi told him, and was shocked that Henry had never even heard of it. He made Henry sit down and watch it with him, putting the box of Kleenex between them. Henry accompanied him willingly, though silently. When Ian died, Zhou Mi was crying softly, clutching tissues and slightly embarrassed. He wondered what Henry was thinking.
Henry seemed unmoved by the movie but he still smiled at Zhou Mi. "It figures you would like something like this," he said in Mandarin and patted him on the shoulder. "You're kinda in love with the idea of love like this. Epic. All-consuming."
The last two words were said in English and Zhou Mi could only stare at him with red, watery eyes, uncomprehending. Henry shrugged helplessly, because he didn't know the words in Chinese.
Zhou Mi blew his nose and let his eyes fall back on the TV, where Sam was sobbing over Ian like she would never be whole again. He thought of the pristine notebook on his desk and the pen lying beside it, recapped without ever making contact. He thought about the way his heart ached sometimes, wanting and wistful. Henry was right. Zhou Mi didn't know what love like that was like, but he longed to know. Longed to know a love that was worth dying for, that made every agonized sob worth it.
When Kyuhyun came over late that night, he was exhausted but happy. He said hi to Henry, stole Zhou Mi's Coke, and asked him what he was writing.
"A love song," Zhou Mi told him, bent over his notebook. A love confession.
---
Two months after debut, Han Geng had already known. He had seen the way they'd been close even before debut, during album preparations and MV filming, but had thought little of it until he hadn't been able to ignore it anymore. There was being clueless and there was willful ignorance, and Han Geng had never knowingly engaged in the latter. He couldn't miss the way Kyuhyun teased Zhou Mi hardest or the way he'd always look at Zhou Mi when he spoke. He had worried, at first, as a leader, as a bandmate, as a friend. Zhou Mi was just friendly. Zhou Mi talked to him late at night in Mandarin about girls he had liked, girls he had seen his friends love. Zhou Mi told him about the kind of person he could imagine loving, and Han Geng had never once thought it might be Kyuhyun.
As a leader, a bandmate, a friend... As Kyuhyun's big brother, Han Geng had worried. He kept it to himself, a knot of silent anxiety that he carried on his shoulders with his other burdens. It wasn't his right to say anything. It wasn't anything that could be fixed by talking about it. Months passed. A year passed. And sometimes Han Geng didn't think about it, but it always lingered in the back of his mind.
Then they had gone to Hong Kong and Han Geng had known for sure.
He wouldn't stop worrying about Kyuhyun, but now he worried for Zhou Mi too. A different kind of worry that ate at his thoughts, about society, about secret-keeping.
"You look tired, ge," Zhou Mi said to him and Han Geng only shrugged and smiled half-heartedly.
"When am I not tired? I'm old, remember?" he joked. Old and tired and worried, and willing to let Zhou Mi work out the tension in his back with a firm massage. Han Geng would always worry, but it was a sign of his affection for the people he cared about. He would gladly worry for the rest of his life for them.
---
Siwon never saw it, because Siwon wasn't wired that way. He loved everyone, deeply, platonically, and he sincerely believed that everyone else loved the same way. Some bonds were deeper than others - he could be sworn brothers with no one but Han Geng - but he never looked at Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi and worried. He only laughed and cuffed Kyuhyun on the head for being smart, dropped an arm around Zhou Mi as they walked toward the van. He didn't spend as much time as Zhou Mi wishing he had known love. Even though Siwon hadn't really loved his past girlfriends, he had liked him, and he was in no rush. He believed that God would introduce the right person to his life when it was time. Zhou Mi, he sometimes thought, spent too much time wishing when he should just wait instead. Love would come, when it was time.
---
Donghae was watching Meo play with Ni Qiu when he looked up and realized. Kyuhyun was battling Henry in Wii Bowling while Zhou Mi played spectator on the couch, the puppies at his feet. His attention was diverted completely as he turned his face towards Kyuhyun's, laughing as their eyes met and Henry swung his arm and bowled another strike.
Donghae had known Kyuhyun longer than he had known Zhou Mi, and he knew Kyuhyun well.
"Beat that!" Henry announced cockily, and Kyuhyun turned away from Zhou Mi. Donghae sat back on his heels as the puppies yapped and rolled and tumbled into his lap. He looked down at them, scratching behind their ears fondly, and felt like he had seen something he wasn't supposed to.
He wasn't sure how to feel.
---
"Where did you go in Hong Kong?" Henry asked, sitting down at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice. Zhou Mi glanced up from his notebook and took a moment to reconnect with the world.
"Oh, kind of...everywhere." He was vague. His gaze drifted back to the notebook, pen tapping against the table.
"What are you writing?"
"A song," he said and Henry craned his neck to see. But Henry could hardly read Chinese characters when they were printed neatly before him, and it was a hopeless cause when they were scrawled and upside-down.
He took a drink of his juice instead. "For our next album? Are you going to write the music for it too?" Zhou Mi had been working with Ryeowook and studio composers, learning how to put together the music as well as the words for a song. He was still tentative, but if Henry knew Zhou Mi at all, he knew that Zhou Mi would work tirelessly at it until the day he finally composed an entire track by himself.
"I... I'm not sure if it'll be for the album," Zhou Mi said after a pause. He didn't meet Henry's eyes. "It's kind of a personal thing. I'm writing out my feelings."
Henry let that sink in for a moment. He was hesitant when he spoke again, unsure if he should broach the topic. He had never been one for confrontation, much less one on a lazy Sunday morning at the kitchen table of their Chinese apartment. But sometimes the timing didn't matter.
"Is it for Kyuhyun?"
Zhou Mi stared at him with wide, startled eyes: an answer in itself. Henry hadn't known, but he had guessed. One of his good friends back home had been gay. He had never dated anyone that Henry had known of, but he'd had his crushes. And Henry had seen the looks Zhou Mi had given Kyuhyun, melting and all-encompassing, in his best friend's eyes before, when she looked at her boyfriend of two years.
Henry didn't know how China or Korea took these things, but he knew where he stood. His smile caught Zhou Mi off-guard, as did his light cuff to Zhou Mi's shoulder. "Hey," he said awkwardly in Mandarin, smiling encouragingly, "good luck."
---
Ryeowook knew because Kyuhyun had confessed his confused, conflicted feelings to him earlier in the year. He knew because he was a good listener, because Kyuhyun couldn't keep everything to himself forever, and Ryeowook was always a sympathetic ear.
Ryeowook knew because he helped Zhou Mi compose a melody to go with the lyrics he had written, because Zhou Mi had come to him with a wary expression and an unsure request. He knew because he had said, yes, of course I'll help.
Love was love was love, and Ryeowook believed in it in all forms.
---
The song was titled 两天半的假期 (Two and a Half Day Vacation) and Kyuhyun remembered lights, sights, smells, and the press of a body next to him in the chilly autumn evening. Hong Kong, he said with a smile, warming with Zhou Mi's returning smile.
"I hope you like it," Zhou Mi said nervously, as his finger hovered over the play button. "It's just a demo, I mean. So it's just me singing. But...music and lyrics and everything." He stumbled over his words uncharacteristically, and Kyuhyun reached out, stroking a soothing thumb over the sharp knob of Zhou Mi's wrist. A wordless reassurance.
Zhou Mi flashed him another smile, smaller and more unsure, his eyes oblique.
He pressed play.
---
"Where's Zhou Mi?" Donghae asked, hair flopping into his eyes and one earphone tucked in.
"Confessing."
Ryeowook and Henry shared a smile. Han Geng bent his head, hiding the worry in his expression, an unbidden sort of hope fighting to rise inside him.
Donghae leaned against an oblivious Siwon, who was lost in an attempt to read a Chinese book. He fiddled idly with his iPod for a moment, before looking up. "I hope," he said, catching Ryeowook's eye, serious and adult in this moment, "I hope it goes okay."
fandom: super junior m
pairing: zhou mi/kyuhyun
rating: PG
summary: this is how a confession is birthed. it starts with a two and a half day vacation in a city where kyuhyun dreams and zhou mi answers.
notes: inspired by this post, linked from sjchina.
They were given a week off because five of their members needed to go back to Seoul for four days. In the two and a half days before they had to leave, Zhou Mi took Kyuhyun's hand and said breathlessly, "Let's go to Hong Kong."
And because it was Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun went.
It was just the two of them in a city of lights, lost in the towering shadows of skyscrapers reaching into the night and rivers of people who spoke in tongues. Kyuhyun understood less than ever, English and Cantonese flowing past him as he turned, as always, to Zhou Mi for translation. He felt like he never looked away in those two and a half days, Zhou Mi's arm around his waist or hand on his wrist, lips murmuring translations into his ear like they had practiced for a year and half.
"How do you know Cantonese again?" Kyuhyun asked as Zhou Mi steered them down the crowded streets and toward some unknown destination.
Zhou Mi's smile was quick and bright, eyes warm with memories. "I used to live here. For two years."
Two years and he could speak passably, enough to guide them through their private holiday. Two years on-and-off in China and Kyuhyun still wasn't sure he'd ever master Mandarin. There was something that felt like pride in his chest when he smiled back at Zhou Mi, who - even though he couldn't dance and couldn't cook and fled from the first sight of a spider - was amazing.
I bet you can do anything.
He didn't say the words, because they were stupid. He wasn't Zhou Mi's mother, wasn't even a childhood friend - no one who had claim on him and had the right to beam at him and his sheer, incredible talent. All Kyuhyun could do was lean into him on the subway, clutch at him when the crowd threatened to separate them, and stay at his side through this journey into a city foreign to both of them. All Kyuhyun could do was watch him, eyes trained forever on that smile, that face, and feel his heart clench up inside his chest.
"Oh! Look! Let's try this!"
He let Zhou Mi drag him into a shop where he gamely put unidentified food into his mouth and agreed that, yeah, it was delicious. Amazing. Wonderful. Everything was, in these two and a half days on their own, their phones the only connection to frantic managers and a weary leader. Two and a half days where they could be anonymous, another two figures lost in a sea of people, in a city of possibilities, pretending that they had no responsibilities except each other. Kyuhyun slept beside Zhou Mi at night and breathed in the scent of stale hotel air and Zhou Mi's expensive lotion, and he dreamed.
Just for two and half days, he dreamed, with his head on Zhou Mi's shoulder and their chests rising and falling in unison.
---
The four days in Seoul Zhou Mi spent trying to compose a letter, words vanishing in his mind as he stared at the blank sheet of paper, pen poised and ready. There were a hundred, a thousand, ways he could say it - but none of them were right. He sorted through the words and discarded them as wrong, incomplete, not what he was trying to say. In the end, he left the notebook blank on the desk and curled up in front of the TV to rewatch his favorite movie.
"What's this?" Henry asked him, finding him engrossed in the love story on screen.
"My favorite movie," Zhou Mi told him, and was shocked that Henry had never even heard of it. He made Henry sit down and watch it with him, putting the box of Kleenex between them. Henry accompanied him willingly, though silently. When Ian died, Zhou Mi was crying softly, clutching tissues and slightly embarrassed. He wondered what Henry was thinking.
Henry seemed unmoved by the movie but he still smiled at Zhou Mi. "It figures you would like something like this," he said in Mandarin and patted him on the shoulder. "You're kinda in love with the idea of love like this. Epic. All-consuming."
The last two words were said in English and Zhou Mi could only stare at him with red, watery eyes, uncomprehending. Henry shrugged helplessly, because he didn't know the words in Chinese.
Zhou Mi blew his nose and let his eyes fall back on the TV, where Sam was sobbing over Ian like she would never be whole again. He thought of the pristine notebook on his desk and the pen lying beside it, recapped without ever making contact. He thought about the way his heart ached sometimes, wanting and wistful. Henry was right. Zhou Mi didn't know what love like that was like, but he longed to know. Longed to know a love that was worth dying for, that made every agonized sob worth it.
When Kyuhyun came over late that night, he was exhausted but happy. He said hi to Henry, stole Zhou Mi's Coke, and asked him what he was writing.
"A love song," Zhou Mi told him, bent over his notebook. A love confession.
---
Two months after debut, Han Geng had already known. He had seen the way they'd been close even before debut, during album preparations and MV filming, but had thought little of it until he hadn't been able to ignore it anymore. There was being clueless and there was willful ignorance, and Han Geng had never knowingly engaged in the latter. He couldn't miss the way Kyuhyun teased Zhou Mi hardest or the way he'd always look at Zhou Mi when he spoke. He had worried, at first, as a leader, as a bandmate, as a friend. Zhou Mi was just friendly. Zhou Mi talked to him late at night in Mandarin about girls he had liked, girls he had seen his friends love. Zhou Mi told him about the kind of person he could imagine loving, and Han Geng had never once thought it might be Kyuhyun.
As a leader, a bandmate, a friend... As Kyuhyun's big brother, Han Geng had worried. He kept it to himself, a knot of silent anxiety that he carried on his shoulders with his other burdens. It wasn't his right to say anything. It wasn't anything that could be fixed by talking about it. Months passed. A year passed. And sometimes Han Geng didn't think about it, but it always lingered in the back of his mind.
Then they had gone to Hong Kong and Han Geng had known for sure.
He wouldn't stop worrying about Kyuhyun, but now he worried for Zhou Mi too. A different kind of worry that ate at his thoughts, about society, about secret-keeping.
"You look tired, ge," Zhou Mi said to him and Han Geng only shrugged and smiled half-heartedly.
"When am I not tired? I'm old, remember?" he joked. Old and tired and worried, and willing to let Zhou Mi work out the tension in his back with a firm massage. Han Geng would always worry, but it was a sign of his affection for the people he cared about. He would gladly worry for the rest of his life for them.
---
Siwon never saw it, because Siwon wasn't wired that way. He loved everyone, deeply, platonically, and he sincerely believed that everyone else loved the same way. Some bonds were deeper than others - he could be sworn brothers with no one but Han Geng - but he never looked at Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi and worried. He only laughed and cuffed Kyuhyun on the head for being smart, dropped an arm around Zhou Mi as they walked toward the van. He didn't spend as much time as Zhou Mi wishing he had known love. Even though Siwon hadn't really loved his past girlfriends, he had liked him, and he was in no rush. He believed that God would introduce the right person to his life when it was time. Zhou Mi, he sometimes thought, spent too much time wishing when he should just wait instead. Love would come, when it was time.
---
Donghae was watching Meo play with Ni Qiu when he looked up and realized. Kyuhyun was battling Henry in Wii Bowling while Zhou Mi played spectator on the couch, the puppies at his feet. His attention was diverted completely as he turned his face towards Kyuhyun's, laughing as their eyes met and Henry swung his arm and bowled another strike.
Donghae had known Kyuhyun longer than he had known Zhou Mi, and he knew Kyuhyun well.
"Beat that!" Henry announced cockily, and Kyuhyun turned away from Zhou Mi. Donghae sat back on his heels as the puppies yapped and rolled and tumbled into his lap. He looked down at them, scratching behind their ears fondly, and felt like he had seen something he wasn't supposed to.
He wasn't sure how to feel.
---
"Where did you go in Hong Kong?" Henry asked, sitting down at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice. Zhou Mi glanced up from his notebook and took a moment to reconnect with the world.
"Oh, kind of...everywhere." He was vague. His gaze drifted back to the notebook, pen tapping against the table.
"What are you writing?"
"A song," he said and Henry craned his neck to see. But Henry could hardly read Chinese characters when they were printed neatly before him, and it was a hopeless cause when they were scrawled and upside-down.
He took a drink of his juice instead. "For our next album? Are you going to write the music for it too?" Zhou Mi had been working with Ryeowook and studio composers, learning how to put together the music as well as the words for a song. He was still tentative, but if Henry knew Zhou Mi at all, he knew that Zhou Mi would work tirelessly at it until the day he finally composed an entire track by himself.
"I... I'm not sure if it'll be for the album," Zhou Mi said after a pause. He didn't meet Henry's eyes. "It's kind of a personal thing. I'm writing out my feelings."
Henry let that sink in for a moment. He was hesitant when he spoke again, unsure if he should broach the topic. He had never been one for confrontation, much less one on a lazy Sunday morning at the kitchen table of their Chinese apartment. But sometimes the timing didn't matter.
"Is it for Kyuhyun?"
Zhou Mi stared at him with wide, startled eyes: an answer in itself. Henry hadn't known, but he had guessed. One of his good friends back home had been gay. He had never dated anyone that Henry had known of, but he'd had his crushes. And Henry had seen the looks Zhou Mi had given Kyuhyun, melting and all-encompassing, in his best friend's eyes before, when she looked at her boyfriend of two years.
Henry didn't know how China or Korea took these things, but he knew where he stood. His smile caught Zhou Mi off-guard, as did his light cuff to Zhou Mi's shoulder. "Hey," he said awkwardly in Mandarin, smiling encouragingly, "good luck."
---
Ryeowook knew because Kyuhyun had confessed his confused, conflicted feelings to him earlier in the year. He knew because he was a good listener, because Kyuhyun couldn't keep everything to himself forever, and Ryeowook was always a sympathetic ear.
Ryeowook knew because he helped Zhou Mi compose a melody to go with the lyrics he had written, because Zhou Mi had come to him with a wary expression and an unsure request. He knew because he had said, yes, of course I'll help.
Love was love was love, and Ryeowook believed in it in all forms.
---
The song was titled 两天半的假期 (Two and a Half Day Vacation) and Kyuhyun remembered lights, sights, smells, and the press of a body next to him in the chilly autumn evening. Hong Kong, he said with a smile, warming with Zhou Mi's returning smile.
"I hope you like it," Zhou Mi said nervously, as his finger hovered over the play button. "It's just a demo, I mean. So it's just me singing. But...music and lyrics and everything." He stumbled over his words uncharacteristically, and Kyuhyun reached out, stroking a soothing thumb over the sharp knob of Zhou Mi's wrist. A wordless reassurance.
Zhou Mi flashed him another smile, smaller and more unsure, his eyes oblique.
He pressed play.
---
"Where's Zhou Mi?" Donghae asked, hair flopping into his eyes and one earphone tucked in.
"Confessing."
Ryeowook and Henry shared a smile. Han Geng bent his head, hiding the worry in his expression, an unbidden sort of hope fighting to rise inside him.
Donghae leaned against an oblivious Siwon, who was lost in an attempt to read a Chinese book. He fiddled idly with his iPod for a moment, before looking up. "I hope," he said, catching Ryeowook's eye, serious and adult in this moment, "I hope it goes okay."