Title: Eye of the Storm
Author: Yours Truly, Instant-Café
Length: 2055 words
Raiting: PG, I believe.
Disclaimer: I do not own SME, Zi Tao, Chan Yeol or anyone else used in this story. Actually, I do not even own a car or a house. To be honest, I don't even think I own my thoughts sometimes. Oh well, this was created by me with the muses that flutter around my brain, inspired by things and stuff and people and so much more... This is me writing whatever and liking it enough to post it.
Warnings: No Beta apart from my (not so) awesome self. I have tried to correct as much as I can, but my brain is a bit fried right now. Every mistake is obviously mine. Please enjoy.

Eye of the Storm

He was the wind as it curled around a flower, shaking it around, making it dance in the flow, to the tune it created. 
He was the sea as it lapped across the sand, pushing things forward and pulling the rest back. 
He was the rain as it fell onto the leaves of the trees, creating a ruckus unknown to man, shaking the trees to their core. 
He was the sound that woke up when the sun came up and the one that quieted down when the moon went up into place. He was nothing ordinary and everything extraordinary. He was-- and that was perfect. 
 
And then they met. 
They met and the wind stopped curling around flowers and started to push them away.  
They met and the sea pushed things forward no more, pulling everything back under its lapels. 
They met and the rain stopped pouring, stopped creating sound and laid there, empty. 
He was asleep when the sound was supposed to wake up, no more was he smiling and screaming like a child. 
He turned to be the frightening sounds of the night and the silence of the day. 
 
He was no more and people took notice. 
 
The strangest thing was that the young man was told to be unstoppable as the wind, to be unbreakable as the sea, to be indestructible as the earth. In the end, he was only a tempest that went on its way until it quitted down when it met his match. Zi Tao had met Chan Yeol and there was no going back. 
 
Out of the 12 people in the gang, they were the only two who fought constantly. Tao had been the last recruit and they seemed to hate each other. The hate came mostly from Chan Yeol who hated Tao for being so alive when he was hardly surviving. Their friends loved them both equally and it was gnawing Chan Yeol to the bones. He was a possessive man, he wanted his friends to like him the best, to be preferred over the new kid. Only the others knew it was not fair. He didn't seem to mind the others mingling without him but if Zi Tao was known to have been with Kris without Chan Yeol, his words became whips he lashed across Zi Tao's mind, his words going deeper and deeper, meaner and meaner with each strike. 
 
Zi Tao was hurting, it was hard to miss but the other ten thought it was necessary at one point. They needed to wait until Zi Tao would respond and lash back in turn. It just never occurred to them that at one moment in time, Zi Tao would be too weak to respond anything witty or that it would be too difficult to stay so alive when it seemed to be the reason for all the hate. 
 
Therefore, the bright, fluorescent, obnoxious Zi Tao started to crumble under the watchful eye of his parents in the group. Suho and Kris watched as their baby in everything but blood was slowly dying under the pressure Chan Yeol seemed to put on him. He was only a kid in the end and the fact that he was not accepted for whom he was created grooves in his mind and slowly it was tearing him apart. 
 
"Enough!" has cried out Suho, one day, as Chan Yeol was being particularly vicious to Zi Tao who never responded but smiled nonetheless. He was smiling the most infuriating smile known to man and yet his eyes were shining no more. Dead. He was no longer the person with the most life encased in his  six foot something body. He was not even surviving like Chan Yeol had been for years now. No, he was dead to the world and the last had broken the back of the hypothetical camel. 
 
"You going to protect him, now? After what he's done to us?" yelled out Chan Yeol, beyond pissed at Suho, his eyes dark with irrevocable pain. Kris sighed as he saw the ten other people starting to fight with words they meant not. Words were said and felt in ways they never thought would be possible. Fights happened to others, but not them. Never them. 
 
Kris slowly went to the kitchen, grabbed a bucket and filled it with cold water. Teetering across the hallway, he went where the fights were still going full throttle and threw the content of the bucket on them. They all froze as if the water was freezing and started laughing one by one. Kris followed last, laughing as he looked at the wet rats they now resembled. 
 
It was only much later when they noticed an irrevocable absence. Zi Tao was gone and he never did come back on his own. 
 
Searching for Zi Tao was nothing new and like any other time before, they didn't find him. He was always the one with the best hiding places despite not knowing the city as well as they did. It surely had someone to do with his interest in secrets, in enclaves, nooks and crannies. Only, usually, when they saw him again, he was back at the house, smirking as if he knew exactly what was crossing their minds. 
 
Days later, he hadn't come back. He was nowhere to be seen and that is when Chan Yeol started to regret every word. He had been so over his own belly button, his own self he never noticed the lights diminishing from the guarded eyes of the liveliest person alive. 
 
They saw him again, far from the home they had made together. Looking at his frail stature, they knew he was in trouble. After all, his eyes didn't resemble the dead but spoke of pain instead, and the dead did not feel pain. It was numbing slowly, his pain. They noticed when Zi Tao was smacked behind the head by an older figure. Chan Yeol, the one with the most regret, trampled towards the two of them until Kris took a hold of him, shaking his head no. They sadly couldn't interfere because this was what was keeping Zi Tao alive. 
 
Chan Yeol and Kris had never fought before, never had they even raised their voice on each other until that day. Screaming and punching were started to evolve until a soft spoken voice twisted around the air until it reached their ear. They stopped, looking at Zi Tao with shock, never having noticed him getting closer until he was within reach. His eyes, so near, were also so far away. He looked at them as if he didn't seem them completely, as if he didn't seem them at all. 
 
Kris, having known Zi Tao better than the others, pulled Chan Yeol away, pushing him further away as the larger eared one started to fight to see Zi Tao and apologize. Screaming out to Zi Tao sorry over and over again, begging for forgiveness, he crumbled to the ground when he saw Zi Tao turn around and start walking away as if not hearing the words thrown violently his way. 
 
Having had enough, Kris sat down next to Chan Yeol and sighed softly. It was time for him to unravel all the secrets Zi Tao had kept from most of them and better yet, it was time to tell Chan Yeol just how much he was fooled by Zi Tao's smiles and laughter. 
 
Zi Tao was alive, perky and fun to be around. He was more childish than the youngest of the group and he had no qualms in screaming like a girl, as some compared. He was himself more than anyone else. Only, not many knew he was himself so much for a reason only. In his home, he could not be himself, not half of himself, not at all. He was a shadow of himself, he was trying too hard to please his father, despite never doing exactly what his old man wanted him to do. He was alive outside because he was dead inside. 
 
And the more Kris explained the life of one Huang Zi Tao, the more Chan Yeol got angry. At himself, at them and the father and even at Zi Tao. At Zi Tao for staying in a place where it was destroying him and again at Zi Tao because he found another place that was destroying him, the EXO family, Chan Yeol himself. 
 
The 11 of them started to cry as the story progressed and as it progressed, the darker it became. It was a sad story, impossible to even comprehend completely in one night, even less so in a couple hours. Suho, usually calmer, started hitting the walls around them, shoving things and people out of his way as he stalked to the house he knew Zi Tao lived in. The gang followed numbly behind, watching as their leader punched the door instead of knocking it. 
 
Yelling was heard inside, and a lanky young man, Zi Tao, answered, looking bored at Suho, almost as if he knew… and in retrospect, they knew that he did know they would try to take him back. It just didn't work.  
 
Suho ended walking away from the rich house, nodding softly to himself as the words Tao had said reverberated in his mind. "I do not need your help," he had said with the conviction of a dying man who knew things others did not. 
 
So, they walked away and left him alone. Never hearing from him again nor Kris. 
 
Until, one sunny morning when they heard two familiar laughter. One being more familiar than the other, but the other being too particular to ignore, to forget. Crossing the path that laid in front of the smaller gang, they saw Kris and Zi Tao together. Kris was pushing a needy Zi Tao higher and higher towards the sky. His eyes were closed in bliss and he had his arms extended, parallel to the ground as he went higher and higher on the swing. 
 
Chan Yeol was the first to see them so happy, so carefree and so comfortable with each other. Envy surged in him, fear crippled his feet and tears welled in his eyes. He had missed that laughter. Since the day they left Tao behind and that Kris disappeared, Chan Yeol had known he had liked Zi Tao, just a tiny bit. Just enough for him to be scared and hurtful. And now, he found them both, happy together as Kris ignored them and Zi Tao was obvious. 
 
"Zi," voiced out Kris as they all took a step forward, leaving Chan Yeol behind. And 'Zi' didn't open his eyes, he just smiled bashfully at the sky and stopped swinging his legs as high as possible. He let his body rest as the swinging stopped completely and they all talked for a while. Happy to see finally the two of them happy. Only Chan Yeol stayed away. He stayed away and like moth to flame, Zi Tao went to the one who burnt him the most with a shudder of anticipation. 
 
They locked eyes and just as if they never hated each other, took step after step toward each other until they were too close. Too close not to feel the attraction that was and without a second thought, Chan Yeol leaned in and as the wind blew around them, as the rain pelted their skin with water, as the sound of ruffled leaves glided around them, they had finally found the place they were meant to be all along. Together, in the eye of the storm. 
 
 
Zi Tao had been a hurricane that when meeting his match, slowed down until he picked himself up again and blasted forward again, creating a havoc of happiness whenever he went. He was back, as the wind that ruffled the trees, as the sea that caressed the pebbles, as the rain that touched everything in its way. Touching Chan Yeol's heart the most, healing it without ever noticing it. Or that was so until Chan Yeol turned into rain and followed Zi Tao's steps, hurricane after hurricane. Spreading across nations. They had found happiness in each other. They had found a safe haven, right in the middle of the storm. In the eye of the storm.