[JE] [FAIRY] Fish Out of Water 2/2
Title: Fish Out of Water 2/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Word count: 19,500
Rating: PG
Genre: Twisted fairy tale, AU, fluff
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Akame take on the classic fairytale, 'The Little Mermaid', but with an ending closer to the Disney version than the angsty original. When Jin visits a mermage to help him achieve his goal of being with Kame on the surface, he soon learns that there's more to being human than walking on two legs, especially when his laidback surfer friend turns out to be a workaholic idol with a passion for fashion.
Fish Out of Water 2/2
He woke up alone, though he could hear Kame moving around somewhere in another room; based on the height of the sun streaming in through the windows, he knew he must have been asleep for quite some time. It had done him a world of good, he thought. The tiredness had left his limbs - in fact, he felt like he could keep walking for days.
It took a while for Jin to extricate himself from the covers. Without any means of attracting Kame's attention he had to go exploring unaided, but he was more than up to the task, lowering his legs carefully from the bed and standing straight without the need for support. Walking was no longer a novelty. Why, Jin thought he might even be up to running - assuming he had anywhere to run to. Kame's house wasn't really built for it.
There weren't many rooms Jin hadn't seen yet. His tentative explorations led him to a room for cooking, where a lidded pot contained the remains of the soup; another, even tinier room led off this one, big enough to hold a large metal box and a basket of clothes.
When he heard Kame call, "I'm in the lounge!", Jin opened the remaining mystery door to discover Kame reclining on a long brown couch, watching moving pictures on a flat screen. Since Kame seemed to find the pictures so absorbing, Jin looked at them too. There were tiny men hitting a ball with a bat and running, and other men catching the ball. Baseball, Jin thought it was. He'd seen kids playing it at the beach once, and asked them about the game.
"The Tigers are playing the Giants," Kame said. "You a fan?"
Jin made a noncommittal hand gesture. He was more interested in how the little men got in the screen in the first place. There didn't appear to be a door of any kind.
Kame scrabbled around for something Jin couldn't see, and then the game froze. Jin stared at the tiny figures, watching for the slightest sign of movement. Why had they stopped? Had they been bespelled?
"I recorded it last night," Kame said. "It's not live." He moved over on the couch to make room, leaving space for Jin to join him. "Feeling any better?"
Jin nodded, dropping down onto the soft cushions and enjoying the way he immediately bounced back up again. Kame had nice furniture. It wasn't quite the same as being in the water, of course, but he'd take what he could get.
"Okay, you certainly look livelier," Kame pulled the dreaded thermometer out of nowhere, "but let's make sure."
He was much happier with Jin's temperature this time, telling him he was almost back to normal. Jin didn't have a clue what the "normal" body temperature for a merman was, but he was sure it wasn't the same as a human's. If Jin was becoming normal for a human, did that mean he was sick for a merman?
Kame went to rinse the thermometer, returning with hot, sweet tea for them both; having learned his lesson from the soup, Jin managed to hold back long enough to avoid burning his mouth again. He'd never been very good at self-restraint, though.
"You've been asleep for almost seven hours," Kame said. "I kept checking on you and finding you trying to turn yourself upside down."
That wouldn't do. Not only had Jin slept through seven perfectly good hours which he could've been using to make Kame fall for him, but he'd been acting suspiciously too. There was no way he could explain himself.
At least, not verbally. Jin had seen performers at the beach before, doing all sorts of tricks to entertain the crowds, and he'd clapped along with everyone else at the sight. Underwater, he'd loved lazing around on his back, tail over his head - why couldn't he do that on land?
Without the tail, of course. Jin was no stranger to walking on his hands, only he usually had the water as a buffer to stop him toppling over and even if he fell, he was hardly going to hurt himself.
He swivelled round on the couch so that his legs were draped over the back, but before he could lower his hands to the floor, Kame reached out and tickled his stomach where his shirt had left a gap. Jin brought his knees down automatically and almost rolled backwards off the couch.
"Sorry," Kame said, helping him back up, "but I couldn't resist."
Jin did his best to look indignant but judging by Kame's gleeful response, he figured he'd ended up with something more like a pout. Ueda's comments on communication via body language weren't helping - even though Kame was touching him, these were not the sort of touches that were going to satisfy the spell.
"Were you aiming for a handstand?" Kame asked.
He leapt off the couch, kicked off his slippers and bent down, hands spread in front of him. Jin watched enviously as he took a few halting steps, and then worriedly as he approached the teacups. To avoid a collision, he grabbed Kame round the ankles to steer him away from harm. They managed less than a dozen steps in this manner before Kame's laughter got the better of him and he had to right himself or choke.
Jin gave Kame's approach a try and was delighted to discover that as long as he remembered not to wave his tail - no, his legs - around or try to swim, he fared perfectly well.
"Show-off," Kame said as Jin began his second circuit of the room. "For someone who couldn't even walk on his feet this morning, you've come a long way."
Jin flashed him an upside-down grin, toddled round to the other side of the couch and promptly overbalanced. Kame laughed so hard he couldn't stand up, so Jin joined him on the floor, huddled in the corner, immersed in fits of silent giggles.
The longer Jin laughed soundlessly, the more alarmed Kame became. "It worries me that you're not making any sound at all," he said. "Even if your throat's bad, there should still be something." He pulled out his cell phone; Jin grabbed for the dangling surfboard strap, snatching it away before Kame could call for medical assistance.
Exasperated, Kame let the phone go rather than break the strap. "I wasn't going to call a doctor." He didn't sound terribly convincing. Jin glared at him until he relented. "Fine, I was. But I think you need to get yourself checked out. What if it's trauma-related? I found you naked and unconscious on the beach - no clothes, no keys, no cell phone... Anything could've happened to you."
Jin silently cursed his uncle for destroying his collection of clothing. He couldn't have done anything about the lack of cell phone, of course - while plenty of them ended up in the sea, the water didn't do them a great deal of good. Besides, who would he have called?
"You're obviously repressing some kind of terrible memory," Kame decided, ignoring Jin's attempts to look casual, at ease, and wholly without voice-stealing trauma. Ueda might've been weird, but he wasn't *that* scary. "Though I don't suppose a doctor would be much help considering you can't answer questions right now..."
As gratifying as it was to have Kame concerned about him, it was verging on annoying. Jin gave Kame his biggest, brightest smile before returning to the couch. The tiny frozen men were no longer showing on the screen - it appeared to have switched itself off.
Kame shrugged and joined him. "You're right. Get into normal routine, that's the important thing. Let's see what's on television. Stop me if you see a channel you want to watch."
He brought out a long plastic rectangle, covered in buttons; the television, as Jin now knew it was, returned to life. No more baseball games, though. Every time Kame pressed a button the image changed, flicking from a diving contest to a family sitting round a table to a row of young men interviewing a guest.
The television must have been incredibly vast on the inside, Jin thought, to hold all those people. By far the most interesting channels for him were those playing music - especially when Kame appeared on the screen. Jin grabbed his hand to stop him changing channel again, eliciting a pained groan from Kame.
"You want to watch one of my PVs?"
Jin nodded. He still wasn't sure what a PV was, but if it involved Kame wearing a black fedora and masses of eye make-up he was all for it. In any case, he liked the song. It wasn't one he could've danced to but if he'd had a voice and known the words, he'd definitely have been singing along.
"LIPS is pretty impressive to look at, I guess," Kame mused. "It was a lot of fun to film. I must've sprayed half the staff with my microphone."
Film. That explained it. Kame obviously couldn't split himself in two to be on the television at the same time as sitting next to Jin on the couch. There were no people in the screen - everything was pre-recorded. It was such a shame Jin was never going to be able to brag to Nakamaru and Koki about all the wonderful discoveries he was making.
The song finished and another Kame appeared on the screen, this time with another young man, a small boy, and a group of dancers.
"Seishun Amigo?" Kame covered his eyes with his hands. "They must be playing doubles. You don't need to watch this."
By the time Kame risked uncovering his eyes, Jin was off the couch and dancing along like he'd known the moves all his life. This song was a completely different genre to the previous one but no less enjoyable; Jin hoped there would be more to follow.
He got his wish almost immediately, as it transpired that the channel was hosting a request show and anyone could call in, though only women were doing so and they weren't interested in requesting music by anyone but Kame.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Kame complained as Jin thrust his hips to a song announced as 'Don't U Ever Stop'. "I bet you're unstoppable in a club."
Jin didn't respond, only tugged him off the couch so they could dance together and then Kame, too, was moving to the beat, keeping time with a wicked smirk and one hand resting lightly on Jin's hip.
"That launch party I told you about," Kame murmured. "That's tomorrow night. Feeling up to it?"
In Jin's experience, parties led to dancing and dancing led to kissing and kissing was going to lead to him having legs for the rest of his life, not to mention other interesting things that Jin wasn't quite sure how you were supposed to accomplish with legs in the way but he was more than willing to find out about.
"Then I think we'd better go shopping in the morning," Kame said once Jin had made his interest in the party more than clear. "You need something to wear."
The prospect of having his own clothes was a heartening one for Jin. Dressing up, where he came from, generally didn't involve much more than making sure your scales were shiny and possibly donning a shell necklace or two. If the event was really formal, gold jewellery and gems lost by the surface added a touch of class. For parties on the land, he was going to have to look to Kame for cues on what might be appropriate.
They danced for a few more songs, practising for the following night, but to Jin's dismay Kame was more interested in singing them to him than making other use of his lips. Jin tried being more obvious, sliding his arms around Kame's neck as they slow-danced to a beautiful ballad with the intention of bringing them closer together.
It didn't work. Kame disengaged as the song faded out, declaring that he was starving and would Jin be interested in getting some dinner?
"I've got menus for everywhere," Kame said, taking a handful from a drawer. "We can order in whatever we want. I could really go for some squid."
Jin froze, feeling mildly sick at the thought of eating someone he might have met.
"Or maybe some shrimp," Kame continued. "There's this place down the street that does-" He caught sight of Jin's horrified face and immediately dropped the menus. "I should've guessed - no seafood, huh?"
-----
It took a great deal of ingenious miming on Jin's part and detective work on Kame's, but they eventually ended up ordering a couple of pizzas which, Kame went to great lengths to assure Jin, did not contain seafood in any shape or form. Neither did the garlic bread, the potato wedges, or the giant chocolate brownies they had for dessert.
"We'll work it all off tomorrow," Kame said airily. "You need a lot of calories for clothes shopping."
They watched more television while they ate, though Kame always changed the channel whenever his own face appeared. Between the music, dramas and commercials he'd made, that meant they never stayed longer than a few minutes on anything.
"I like working," Kame said when Jin acted out a silent skit of Kame working himself to death. "It's nice to take a break, but if I stay still too long I'll go crazy."
Privately, Jin thought anyone who worked as much as Kame obviously did was already crazy. The results were worth it, though. When Kame left the room to take a call, Jin played around with the remote until he found one of the dramas - this one, with Kame playing a boxer in love with a nun. Jin wasn't sure which impressed him the most - Kame's physique or the sheer amount of food he managed to cram into his mouth.
After about half an episode, Kame returned. "I need to go out for a bit. Will you be okay by yourself?"
Jin nodded, thoroughly engrossed in watching Kame hug inanimate objects on the screen. He wasn't going anywhere.
Kame sighed. "If you're going to watch 'One Pound Gospel', you might as well start from the beginning and see how they meet. Here, I'll put the DVD on for you."
Ten minutes later, Jin had been educated in the use of DVD players and Kame was long gone, not returning until Jin had worked his way through a whole three episodes.
"I think that's enough for one night," Kame said gently, switching off the equipment. "Time for bed. I picked up a toothbrush for you on my way home."
Thanks to the wonders of television, Jin knew what one did with a toothbrush, and many other mysteries of the human world had become clear to him. Similarities, too. In some ways, his world wasn't so different. The young and weak were bullied regardless of species, friendship could be a tremendous source of strength, and love was always fraught with difficulties.
Kame left him alone in the bathroom after showing him where everything was, which gave Jin time to explore properly. He had a few issues with some of the buttons on the toilet but escaped mostly unscathed. As with the television and DVD remotes, he had to memorise the symbols; he was going to have to learn to read, sooner or later, else he was going to end up with more than just a few minor burns.
When Jin emerged, he looked at Kame expectantly. The couch, in the time he'd been away from it, had acquired a cover and pillows.
"This is for me," Kame said, patting its back. "You take the bed."
Jin shook his head. He didn't want to make more of a nuisance of himself than he had already, considering Kame had done so much for him. He made for the couch himself, but Kame steered him back to the bedroom.
"If you need anything, come wake me up, okay? I promise not to get too mad about it."
Kame refused to leave until Jin was snuggled up in the bed again, but there was still plenty of room - Jin didn't see why they couldn't share. He patted the empty space next to him and gave Kame a hopeful look.
"And get kicked when you try to turn yourself upside down again? No thanks." Kame paused by the door. "I'm serious; wake me if you have to. Goodnight, Jin."
In lieu of speech, Jin offered a small smile and an inclined head, though the latter was less out of politeness and more because he was trying to watch Kame's hand, which was hovering over a panel on the wall. When the overhead light suddenly went out, plunging the bedroom into darkness, Jin was able to add another item to his ever-growing list of marvellous human discoveries.
The light switch.
-----
Perhaps it was the hours he'd slept during the day, or perhaps it was the excitement of being able to walk amongst humans at last, but Jin spent a restless night, tossing and turning so much that he almost rolled out of bed. He pretended to be asleep, though, when Kame periodically crept in to check on him - only cracking his eyelids a fraction to see Kame's silhouette in the light streaming from the room beyond.
But on the fourth such occasion, when he peeked, it wasn't Kame who'd come to check on him.
"You're not doing very well, are you?"
Ueda, dressed in black pants, white shirt and grey cardigan, strolled casually over to the bed to lounge in the remaining space, one of the glowing magical orbs following in his wake to light up the room.
Jin sat up in a panic, looking frantically at the bedroom door. What if Kame heard?
"He can't hear me," Ueda said. "Or see me. I'm only here to visit you. Like the legs? They're not as long as yours, of course, but I'm not out to seduce anyone. Not today."
That was small comfort to Jin, given that the mermage was lying mere inches away from him while wearing an expression to which even the word "predatory" didn't do justice.
"Think you'll be able to make him kiss you in time? I'm not so sure. He's puzzled about you...and worried. Because you don't have this." Ueda held out the clam shell containing Jin's voice, opening it just enough for the first few bars of a sea shanty to escape before snapping it shut again, tucking it away in his cardigan where Jin didn't dare try to snatch it. "What would you say to Kame if you had your voice back? Tell him how much you like his music, or perhaps that you enjoyed his dramas?"
As if Jin would waste his words on something like that. He scowled at Ueda, crossing his arms over his chest to indicate the depth of his displeasure.
"It's frustrating for you, isn't it?" Ueda's tone was sympathetic but Jin was positive he didn't mean it. "Not being able to tell anyone what you're thinking, what you want. Doesn't it make you angry?"
Jin opened his mouth to give Ueda a piece of his mind, but this only served to amuse him further.
"How about we raise the stakes, then? If you manage to win yourself a kiss by the time your three days are up, I'll return your voice too. But..." Ueda made the ball of magic disappear, leaving them in darkness. "If you fail, you disappear. No second chances, no going back to your uncle, no life of servitude under me - I don't need another incompetent minion."
With that final, terrible bargain, the mermage vanished. Jin could no longer feel the extra weight on the bed, or the sinister presence beside him - just by Ueda *not* being there, the room seemed less dark. What that said about Ueda's twisted personality, Jin didn't want to contemplate.
Still, Ueda was giving him a chance, wasn't he? Jin thought he might explode if he had to remain silent for the rest of his life. Obviously it wasn't necessary to sacrifice a voice to acquire legs, since Ueda had temporarily traded in his tail without having to resort to mime to communicate.
Jin sank into an uneasy sleep, Ueda's gleaming smile threatening to wipe the memories of Kame's gentleness from his mind, which roiled much as his body had done before. Such turbulence directed his dreams, taking him back to the night he'd first met Kame.
Oh, not the first time Kame thought they'd met, eyes locking over Kame's broken surfboard while the lifeguard shouted for everyone to leave the water. This was another storm, another time - a night when Jin had swum up to the surface in a huff, angry at his uncle, and almost hit his head on a boat. The weather had been nearly as bad as his mood, with black, tempestuous skies, threatening rain but never quite delivering; it was a night neither man nor merman should be away from home.
To this day, Jin still wasn't sure exactly what had been taking place on the boat. He could recognise cameras, now, after seeing them around the necks of countless tourists, but these were much larger; some, mounted on stands. Everyone seemed to be engaged in one of two activities. Either they were busy securing the boat against the weather, or they were pointing their cameras at a young man in black.
Jin couldn't see his face clearly, but he admired the cut of his clothes, which were like nothing Jin had yet managed to acquire for his collection. The black-clad man was constantly moving, keeping his balance remarkably well despite the turbulence until one great gust of wind caused him to slip. He clutched the rail to save himself from the deck; his hat, less fortunate, was carried out to sea, where it was immediately whipped away from all would-be rescuers.
The other men and women on the boat wanted to turn around and head back to the shore till the storm passed. It would've been the sensible thing to do. Jin's seabird friends would take shelter on a such a night; humans ought to do the same. Jin wondered if there would be an accident, if he'd end up having to save drowning men and women from the storm the way his ancestors had in the stories his uncle used to tell him.
No one appeared to be in immediate danger of falling overboard, however, though they were clearly having trouble steering. Jin swam closer, knowing no one would notice him in such violent weather.
But someone did. The man in black caught sight of him.
A life preserver came flying towards Jin; the man responsible yelled encouragement at him. Jin was half-tempted to duck beneath the waves and disappear but he didn't want to risk the humans trying to "rescue" him. They had no way of knowing he was far safer than anyone on the boat.
He also couldn't let them pull him to safety. One glimpse of his tail and it was all over. From Jin's perspective, the heavy rain that began to fall was well-timed, providing him with cover.
Not so for the humans, of course, who were hard-pressed to keep their feet. The pair who were steering lost control altogether. Unchecked, the boat bore strongly to the left and the man in black, hammered by the torrential rain, disappeared from Jin's sight.
He reappeared again a few moments later, coughing, fighting to keep his head above water. No one on the boat seemed to have noticed that their star attraction had left them for the stormy seas. Jin pushed the life preserver towards him - it might have been useless for a merman but it could mean everything to a human, whose fragile respiratory system could not extract oxygen from water, and whose skin was no more use than paper to stave off the cold.
The man went under twice before Jin reached him. The second time, he stayed submerged until Jin got a handful of his shirt and yanked him up to the surface. A pale, half-drowned wretch with a blue tint to his lips and a smear of blood where his head had gotten acquainted with the rail; Jin wasn't sure he was even breathing anymore.
Nevertheless, he made the poor creature fast to the preserver, giving him all the support he could without tangling his own tail in the rope. Meanwhile, the humans on the boat had finally noticed that one of their number had fallen overboard. Soon enough they started drawing him in; Jin clung on for as long as he dared, hoping he wasn't holding onto a dead man.
They were reeled in almost to the boat before Jin's hopes were confirmed. "Thank you," the man in black wheezed, so faint that Jin could barely hear him over the storm. His eyes were still closed, his limbs motionless.
Surprised, Jin said, "You're welcome."
He made a great show of swimming towards the shore, waiting until he was far enough away that they couldn't possibly have spotted him before diving for home. On his way, he stopped to pick up a souvenir - one soaked black fedora.
-----
Jin's troubled night showed itself on his face the next morning, when Kame expressed alarm over his obvious weariness. It would have been easier to appreciate his concern had Kame not been showing signs of his own broken sleep.
"I was checking up on you," Kame confessed when Jin pointed to his tired eyes. "What's your excuse?"
Assuming he didn't expect an answer, Jin shrugged. He didn't have the concentration to spare on dodging the issue, not when his omelette was in danger of landing up on the floor rather than in his mouth. Though he'd seen cutlery in use many times, grasping the theory didn't quite equate to successful practice. They hadn't needed any last night; this morning, Kame had made them both breakfast and Jin intended to do justice to it.
"I suppose you can't be feeling *that* bad," Kame said with amusement after he had to make Jin a second helping. "Not with that appetite."
He presented Jin with a plastic bag, apologising for having to guess at the size, and packed him off to the bedroom to find something to wear for their shopping trip. Now in possession of underwear, Jin wondered if that was why Kame had been out so long the previous night. He picked out a pair of jeans and a plain white shirt that only buttoned up from halfway down his chest, hoping it was suitable attire for wherever they were going; Kame had to delve in the back of his wardrobe for a pair of black boots he said would probably fit Jin. A pair of sunglasses completed the outfit.
"Be careful with those," Kame warned. "They're vintage."
Kame himself was costumed none too formally, wearing ripped jeans and a navy T-shirt covered in light blue dolphins. He donned the twin to Jin's sunglasses, grabbed keys, phone and wallet and escorted Jin outside for his first ever ride in a car.
Jin hadn't even noticed the shiny white vehicle parked outside Kame's house on his way in - he'd been too busy watching the scenery. Walking outside now on his own two feet put a different spin on things. He followed Kame to the car, trying to act like he'd been riding in them all his life, but knew he'd failed when Kame gave him a gentle nudge and told him to go round to the other side and climb in his own door.
He knew to fasten his seatbelt, though - television was very educational, not that knowing what to expect made it any less disconcerting when the car suddenly started moving. Jin clutched the door handle.
"You're not one of those guys who freaks out if they're being driven by someone else, are you? Because there's no way I'm letting you drive my car."
Pity. After watching Kame for a while, Jin thought he could probably manage quite well behind the wheel, though he doubted Kame would ever let him try. It was the putting his feet on the pedals part that might give him difficulty, as he didn't ordinarily use his tail to control anything except his own movements.
He enjoyed the ride, watching the world out the windows while Kame concentrated on the road ahead, sparing Jin only the occasional glance until they parked underground. Although Jin remembered to unfasten his seatbelt before attempting to exit the car, he forgot that sunglasses and dark, underground car parks didn't mix too well and avoided walking into a pillar only because Kame stopped him, directing him towards a set of double doors at the far end.
"Let's see what we can find before I get spotted by fans. Whatever happens, just keep smiling," Kame advised.
The advice didn't register with Jin until the second shop (they hadn't found anything in the first) where two sales assistants, three other shoppers and the security guard all asked for Kame's autograph. Jin looked askance at the attention. Was Kame really so well known? It would explain why he was all over the television - not to mention, half-a-dozen billboards they'd passed during the drive.
They found themselves ducking behind clothing racks whenever teenage girls appeared, though Jin's extra inches of height sometimes hampered him in this and Kame had a tendency to get distracted by certain items of clothing which led to him running off in pursuit, forgetting to keep himself hidden as a rack of shirts rolled past. Then they had their pictures taken, an experience Jin found sort of alarming until he saw the results and understood why Kame had advised him to keep smiling. He looked much better that way.
"You can wear that to the party if you really want, but you might get some strange looks." Kame expressed his doubt over the tiny black dress Jin was holding up. "And we'd have to get you some shoes to match."
Jin tried to point out that he hadn't chosen it for himself, he'd just picked it up off the floor having accidentally knocked it off the hanger, but his acting skills only took him so far. He hurriedly returned the dress and went over to study a selection of sleek black jeans; Kame approved of these and took him off to try them on.
There wasn't much space in the fitting room. Kame waited outside till Jin emerged in denim so tight he was beginning to regret having a second serving of breakfast.
"The simple black and white look really suits you," Kame said, and the cluster of sales assistants who'd gathered around him agreed. "Let's find you a top to go with it."
They didn't find one for Jin, but while Kame was paying for the jeans he spotted a cute pink one for himself and immediately added it to the pile. The assistant at the register asked if Jin was an idol too.
Kame had an answer ready. "He's playing opposite me in my next drama," he said. "He's already getting into character as a mute, so please don't expect him to speak to you.
"And he doesn't do autographs."
-----
Kame's story changed each time anyone asked about Jin, so Jin endeavoured to play the part to the best of his ability. In one shop he was Kame's cousin from out of town who'd lost his voice after watching his best friend die in a horrific shark attack, in another he was an eccentric songwriter who wouldn't speak to anyone except his personal psychic. When they broke for lunch and the waiter, who seemed fascinated by Jin, showed them to a private table in the back, Kame changed tactics slightly.
"He's mine," he said firmly, "and he's not allowed to talk or I'll punish him later."
Jin had to hide his face behind the menu so the stunned waiter couldn't see how hard he was laughing.
Kame waited until they were alone before joining in. "It'll stop him trying to flirt with you. Look, you're going to end up in the gossip magazines with me now anyway so you might as well cultivate an air of mystery. If we get enough stories going about you today, by the time they hit the press no one's going to have any idea which one's true."
It was fortunate indeed that the menu had pictures for every item of food - Jin could simply point to what he wanted. But when Kame asked him what he'd like to drink, showing him the back page of the menu, Jin was alarmed to see that it was nothing but a sea of text, all nonsensical to him. Should he risk picking one at random?
"Can't decide?"
It wasn't a matter of indecision. Jin shook his head and quickly jabbed the first line of the menu that wasn't printed twice as large as the rest.
"It's not Tuesday," Kame said, sounding puzzled as he read the text. "That offer doesn't apply. And even if it *was* Tuesday, you're not under ten." He leaned in across the table, lowering his voice to a hushed murmur. "You can't read, can you? Any more than you can write."
Kame didn't sound unkind, merely curious, but that didn't stop Jin's shoulders from drooping. He wished he'd known reading was such an essential skill before going to Ueda - he might have been able to bargain with the mermage for some lessons, since if anyone under the sea could read, it was sure to be him.
"It's fine, okay? Really." Kame placed a comforting hand on his arm and began to read the drinks menu aloud. "Stop me when you hear something you want. Coke, Diet Coke, orange juice, apple juice, lemonade, ginger ale, green tea..."
This continued until Kame reached the end; since Jin still hadn't chosen, he repeated himself. Jin went with apple juice second time round.
Kame still had one hand on his arm when the waiter returned to take their order, so he had to fend off an enquiry into Jin's welfare by explaining that Jin looked upset because they'd accidentally broken his favourite pair of handcuffs last night.
"I just think it's funny to watch his face turn different colours," Kame said once the embarrassed server had scampered off.
Jin wasn't sure what handcuffs had to do with anything - he'd seen them on a criminal in one of the dramas he'd skimmed through last night, but couldn't work out how that was relevant to his situation. His obvious bewilderment amused Kame no end, right up until the waiter returned with a bowl of the sweet crackers they kept for children, as a means of cheering Jin up.
The crackers were shaped like fish. Jin burst into tears.
One free meal later, they were back in the clothing stores. Kame had had to explain three times that the crackers were merely shaped like fish and did not contain seafood in any shape or form before Jin ceased his silent sobs over the fate of his neighbours. The waiter had been absolutely mortified, though that was nothing compared to his manager's distress.
"I thought she was going to fire him on the spot," Kame confessed. "Especially when he then screwed up your order and brought you sashimi by mistake."
The whole ordeal had been rather embarrassing for Jin. He resolved that next time he was presented with something that might be the remains of someone he knew, he would investigate it carefully to ascertain whether or not this was truly the case.
Still red-faced, he worked his way through shirt after shirt before settling on one in white silk, smooth and cool under his fingers. A black tank top for beneath completed the outfit to Jin's satisfaction.
"It's perfect." Kame had squeezed in the fitting room too, ignoring the suspicious looks he'd received from the staff. "We just need to get you some socks and a few other things..."
"A few other things" turned out to be a buttery-soft leather jacket, matching boots, and a silver pinky ring to which Jin took a fancy. He wasn't sure why until he noticed an identical ring glinting on Kame's hand. Matching jewellery, he thought, was a step in the right direction.
In the time they'd put together one outfit for Jin, they'd managed to buy three for Kame. The expense gnawed a bit at Jin's conscience but when Kame expressed his surprise at how little they'd spent compared to his normal clothes shopping sprees, Jin immediately stopped feeling guilty and started wondering what else he might need. He had to look good for his first party on the surface, after all.
His first...and possibly his last, if Kame didn't start showing some interest. He hadn't so much as pounced on Jin in the fitting room - though he had been looking out of the corner of his eye, Jin had noticed. That still didn't add up to a kiss. If the worst came to the worst, Jin would simply have to go with his back-up plan - get Kame very, very drunk and make himself very, very available. Ueda hadn't said he couldn't.
By the time they drove home, Jin had regained his confidence. It helped that he knew he was going to look extremely good. Kame's willpower couldn't be *that* strong.
While Kame had first shower, Jin took the opportunity to poke around the house for a bit, trying to learn more about his host. Not the wardrobe - he already knew Kame had more clothes than he could possibly wear in one lifetime - but in cupboards and drawers, on shelves and behind furniture. He found accessories in almost as great a quantity as clothing (Kame appeared to have a particular fondness for skull imagery), sports memorabilia (Kame was quite the baseball fan, it seemed) and stacks of albums that were not, if the covers were any indication, by Kame (Jin had watched Kame change music in the car, but not once did he ever play any of his own). Jin was impressed by the sheer amount of possessions. Even before his uncle had destroyed his treasure trove, he'd never had even half as much to call his own.
But then, most of Kame's fancy toys and pretty clothes would do him no good underwater.
"Your turn."
Jin whirled round from his study of the kitchen cupboards - which were, thankfully, fish-free - to find Kame leaning against the counter, towel wrapped around his hips, hair dripping. Water trickled down his bare skin, on a mission to catch as much of Jin's attention as possible before it reached the tiled floor. Thus far, it was doing an excellent job.
"The shower? Your turn, Jin." Kame's smirk said he hadn't missed the way Jin was staring at him like he was the first human he'd ever seen. "Try not to destroy the bathroom again."
A dismissal, not an invitation. Jin swallowed his disappointment and went to immerse himself in water for as long as he could get away with it. When he finally emerged, Kame was already dressed. Pity.
"You'll break some hearts tonight," Kame declared once they were both ready to go.
If Jin had been able to, he'd have said the same thing about Kame. His outfit matched Jin's closely, but where Jin wore white, Kame wore a deep, rich purple; both adorned themselves with silver jewellery. Jin thought that if he got to stay on the surface, he might get his ear pierced like Kame.
They were picked up in a black car driven by someone Kame evidently didn't know that well, because he made no attempt to talk to the driver beyond telling him where to go. That matter taken care of, he turned his attention to creating a cover story for Jin.
"Who would you like to be tonight?" Kame whispered. "An exotic foreign film star with a rare throat condition? A singer who needs to rest his vocal cords for a show tomorrow? A former gang member who had his voice tortured out of him in a really sadistic initiation ritual?"
Jin didn't even want to think about what Kame meant with that final option.
"Or maybe...I just won't say anything," Kame decided. "I'll let everyone speculate on my handsome mystery date. Don't forget to smile for the cameras."
But Jin never got anywhere near the cameras.
They were waiting at a set of traffic lights when pain flared across Jin's hips, making him double over against the seatbelt. The same, familiar agony he'd felt on the beach, sacrificing his tail for legs. Twin trails of fire streaked down his thighs, racing lower and lower till even his toes were burning.
"Jin? What's wrong?" Kame had one hand on his back now. "What happened?"
Jin turned desperate eyes on him. How could he make Kame understand what was happening, when he didn't even know himself? Was Ueda's spell failing? Was Jin about to make his brand-new jeans completely redundant?
Kame told the driver to take them to the hospital, but Jin shook his head. If he really was changing back, going to hospital wasn't going to do him any good. He had to see Ueda.
"But you're in pain," Kame protested. "I can see it. I know you don't like hospitals but-" He broke off sharply as Jin caught his hand in a bone-crushing grip, squeezing down in a move he'd learned from a crab friend of his who wrestled professionally.
Kame winced. "Fine, no hospitals. What about home?"
Not Jin's home. Kame's home. But for all intents and purposes, the same place right now. Jin relaxed his grip; Kame massaged his sore hand with the other and told the driver to take them back where they came from.
The agony only increased on the return trip; Jin didn't even have the mercy of oblivion this time. He remained hunched over, taking huge, hungry gasps of air and screaming down into his chest, all soundless. He barely noticed Kame making a phone call to explain his absence from the party. The excuse flew straight past him, as did all other sounds and sights until they pulled up in front of Kame's house.
"Now," Kame said grimly as they watched the car speed off into the distance again, "I'll take you home. Hold on."
Jin had been sitting against the front door, waiting for Kame to find his keys, but Kame scooped him up instead and headed for the beach as fast as he could manage - not a smart move, perhaps, given the darkness, but the right one.
Heedless of the detrimental effects of sand and seawater on their respective party outfits, Kame sank to his knees by the water's edge, setting Jin on the ground. "There," he panted. "Home. Right?"
The shock cut through Jin's pain-induced haze, snapping him, if not completely back to his senses, at least to a state of something less than total muzziness. Why had Kame brought him to the beach? Did he know? Could he know?
Slowly, Jin pushed off his boots, letting them lie empty on the sand. It didn't look like he was going to need them anymore.
Socks followed. The lamps set at intervals along the beach were too far away for Jin to examine his bare skin closely but he couldn't feel scales yet. If he was transforming back into a merman, he wasn't starting with his toes.
"What's happening to you? Can I help?" Kame's distress level wasn't much lower than Jin's. "Who are you, Jin?
"What are you?"
"If you want to help, get that stuff off him and get him in the water."
Koki?
Sure enough, Koki was bobbing in the water, calling across the waves; he'd had to moderate his voice so Kame could understand him. Jin couldn't understand why he was there, though. Koki should be far below, maybe seeing his AquaDance star girlfriend, maybe hanging out on the reef with Nakamaru.
But no, Nakamaru was there too, swimming as close to the shore as he dared. "We said we'd watch for you, didn't we?"
Kame's hands dropped to his sides and he mouthed silent exclamations, like he was the one with no voice. Jin wanted more than anything to be able to explain to him, especially when Nakamaru flipped over and crawled up the beach, tail on bold display. Kame didn't recoil in disgust, or run away in horror. He sat perfectly still, with Jin's head propped up in his lap.
Neither merman bothered to address him again, speaking only to Jin, although they knew full well he was unable to reply.
"Ueda's on his way," Nakamaru said. "He sent us to wait for you."
"You didn't think we'd been waiting around all this time, did you?" Koki's flippancy failed to mask his concern; Jin returned the smile with a weak attempt of his own, hoping the pain didn't contort it into a grimace.
Kame finally found his voice. "You really are a mermaid?"
Jin scowled up at him.
"Merman," Nakamaru corrected. "I know he's pretty, but-"
"Right now he's neither." Ueda rose from the water, accompanied by a tall, dark-haired merman who didn't need to introduce himself - the moment Jin saw his cheerful, sunny demeanor, he knew he was looking at Junno's original form. "Neither human nor merman, that is, and that's not a state he can sustain for long."
Kame folded his arms protectively around Jin's chest. "What's happening to him? And why can't he speak?"
Ueda ignored him, holding out a clam shell to Jin. It wasn't the one with his voice, Jin knew - this one was considerably paler. When he showed no signs of accepting it, Ueda sighed, grabbed Jin's hand and folded his fingers over the shell.
"Junno knocked the other one off the shelf," he explained. "Sixteen times."
"It kept opening up and making fun of me!" Junno protested.
A small bolt of lightning flashed from Ueda's index finger, zapping Junno on the arm. "You could've ignored it. Or argued back, or done anything except swimming past it and knocking it off the shelf. I'm only giving you your real form back so you don't regress any further into primitive behaviour."
Even through the pain, Jin couldn't keep from smiling. His voice had been acting independently, it seemed.
"When the shell finally shattered, your voice was released," Ueda continued. "That broke our bargain, which is why you're beginning to change back. We don't have a deal anymore."
Jin's legs spasmed, twitching furiously as his body tried to regain its original shape. He clenched his fists against the pain, crushing the shell in his palm...and was astonished to hear his own soft moans when a thin, incorporeal stream pushed past his lips, giving him voice once more.
It wasn't much, but it was enough for Kame to catch. He helped Jin sit up. "Since nobody else is willing to tell me what's going on with you..."
"I..." Jin swallowed hard. It seemed like years since he'd last spoken, even though it was less than two days and it wasn't as if he didn't have the practice. "I wanted to see you. So I made a deal. My voice for legs."
"You currently have both," Ueda pointed out, "yet you haven't fulfilled your end of the bargain. I told you last night how you could have both."
This was news to Koki and Nakamaru.
"Both?" Koki said. "What kind of bargain is that?"
Ueda shrugged. "I changed the rules."
"Can he do that?" Nakamaru asked.
Junno nodded. "He can do whatever he wants. You try stopping him, see how far you get."
He received a gentle smack from Ueda for that. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around," the mermage said.
As thrilled as Jin was to see his friends again - and better yet, to be able to talk to them - he was slightly annoyed that no one appeared to care about the excruciating pain making him wish his lower body would simply dissolve. He didn't recall it being so bad the first time round - though passing out might have had something to do with it...
"It's the clothes." Ueda fingered the cuff of Jin's jeans. "Your tail can't reform with the material in the way."
"Then we should get you out of these, shouldn't we?" Kame's fingers flew to Jin's waistband, sought out button and zip and undid both before Jin even registered what was happening.
"You want me to turn back?" Jin was crushed. After everything that had happened, Kame wanted him out of his life? Was it that detestable, for him, that Jin was a merman?
"No, I want you to stop hurting, silly."
"But-"
"He's doing the right thing, so let him help," Nakamaru advised. "You can't stay like this forever, Jin."
"You can still see me," Kame said. "I'm always here, aren't I?"
"But you'll be here," Jin trailed his fingers over the sand, "and I'll be here," then let them slide into the sea. "I can't walk in your world and you can't breathe in mine."
No one argued with Jin - how could they, when he was right? Kame's time in the water was limited in many ways, and Jin couldn't manage with a tail on the surface. He'd seen wheelchairs, now, but he rather suspected that unless he got one equipped with a water tank, his tail would soon feel the lack of moisture.
"Would you accept a deal from a human?"
Kame's addressing Ueda surprised everyone - except possibly Ueda. "Depends what you have to offer," the mermage said, all business now.
"What would it take to make me a mermai- uh, merman?," Kame hastily corrected himself.
Jin froze in the act of wriggling closer to the water, which he'd hoped would help ease the burning. "You can't do that! You shouldn't do that!" He locked eyes with Kame, searching for some sort of reasonable explanation as to why he would be willing to throw away a perfectly good life on the surface for one so foreign to him. "Why would you do that?"
Kame sighed. "Jin, do you know where I was last night? I went to meet the guy I thought was your swim coach. They didn't have anyone on the team fitting your description - well, except some first-year named Takaki and even then it was only the hair. Then I asked about all currently enrolled students."
"I never actually told you I was at university," Jin said uncomfortably. "You made that assumption yourself."
"I thought I'd misunderstood at first. But since I found you here yesterday...the more time I spent with you, the more obvious it became that not only were you not from around here, but you were from nowhere I could ever go.
"Did you know I tried to follow you, sometimes? I'd pretend to leave, then wait for you to dive before I returned to the water. I thought maybe you were swimming round to a cove or something, that you had some secret hideaway.
"I didn't know you were hiding a whole other world."
"It hides itself, really..." Nakamaru muttered.
"You knew I wasn't human?" Jin asked.
"Well...for a while I did think you were just some kind of piscine rights activist from an extremely sheltered background. But you did seem much more at home in the water than out of it, so I thought maybe..."
Koki snickered. "He's not exactly at home in the water either. This isn't the first time he's tried to leave, only the first he's been successful. Sort of."
Ueda looked thoughtful. "Not many humans would think of merpeople, though - we don't exist, as far as you're concerned."
"But I've seen one before," Kame said.
He related the tale of what Jin knew to be their first actual meeting, and what Kame thought was some sort of miraculous rescue that he might possibly have hallucinated, given that one did not ordinarily see men with tails, much less get saved by them.
"I lost sight of him," Kame finished on a sad note. "But I know I saw a tail! Just not much else."
With the storm, and Kame's state of injury, Jin wasn't surprised that Kame had neither seen nor remembered much. He'd barely been able to open his eyes.
"I remember that storm," Nakamaru interrupted. "Jin, wasn't that the night you and your uncle had that big fight about..." He trailed off, suddenly suspicious. "Please, tell me that wasn't you."
"Would you believe me if I did?"
"You can't lie to save your life," Koki said. "Your face gives you away every time."
"This is all very touching," Ueda said, sounding more amused than touched, "but if we don't come to some arrangement soon, Jin's body will start to reshape itself around the fabric and I'm in no hurry to see the results."
"You're the one with the magic powers," Jin huffed. "Why can't you just fix me?"
"Because you haven't kept your end of the bargain," Ueda said gently. "Granted, matters are coming to a head earlier than they should be and that isn't your fault - unless you want to take responsibility for your voice's provocative actions while removed from your body - but one way or another, this must end tonight. Either fulfil your end, or let your body resume its original shape."
Behind him, Koki and Nakamaru were giving Jin hopeful looks, telling him that he could always come home.
"To fulfil your end of the bargain, you have to lose your voice again?" Kame asked.
Jin laughed bitterly. "It's not that simple." Ueda's eyes warned him that he couldn't tell Kame, not if he wanted to hold on to his chance. "To become human, I have to..." he searched for a euphemism, "...give myself to one."
"You have ownership papers?"
The other mermen laughed so hard they almost caused a tidal wave between them.
"Uh...not exactly..."
"Is there some phrase or...oh." From the sparkle in Kame's eyes, Jin was hoping he'd hit on it. "Do merpeople claim each other through mating rituals?"
Even Ueda was beginning to get sick of this. Or perhaps he was just annoyed because Jin kept splashing him every time his legs twitched. "Think on a smaller scale," he advised. "Not so ambitious, especially not out here. You'll get us all arrested."
Jin failed to see how this was an issue for a guy who could probably make them all invisible if he wanted, but he wasn't about to complain if Ueda was giving out hints.
Hints Kame eventually got. At least, Jin hoped he had, otherwise Kame was sliding his arms around Jin's back for no good reason, pointlessly pressing his lips to Jin's, wasting his time nudging them apart to slip his tongue uselessly inside. It was a desperate kiss, searching for confirmation; Jin's body tingled in a way that had nothing to do with the spell and everything to do with the way Kame tasted. It was the first kiss he'd ever had that didn't taste of the sea.
Kame withdrew, looking uncertainly at Jin's legs. "Did I do the right thing?"
The searing pains had vanished about the same time Jin was sliding too far into bliss to notice them. "I think so, but it never hurts to make sure." He tucked his now-mobile legs under him, ignoring the soaked denim so he could sit up properly. "We should try again."
Kame grinned as Jin leaned in for a second attempt. "Fine by me. I'm happy to keep experimenting as long as you want."
Ueda's fake cough was so loud it actually drowned out the sounds of Koki's fake vomiting. "You might want to save that for another time. Here's a tip for you, Jin - humans get sick when they sit around at night in wet clothing."
"He really is human now?" Nakamaru asked.
"Should be. Strip him and find out," Ueda suggested.
Jin didn't care for that idea, but he did want to make sure he wasn't just on another two-day trial. Shucking the clothing on his lower body and ignoring the resulting catcalls from his friends, he stepped into the water. Nothing happened. His legs remained solid, without scales. He removed the rest - everything except the silver pinky ring - and went further, deep enough that he could no longer stand.
Kame swam out to join him. "You got that ring with me," he said. "Take it off, and let's see if anything happens when you're completely free from human ties." He held out his hand.
The second the ring lost contact with Jin's skin, he felt an odd tugging at his legs, as though he'd been wrapped in seaweed. He flipped back in the water, trying to bring his legs up for a look.
"That answers that question," Ueda muttered. "By removing the ring, he breaks his bond with Kame and loses his human form."
Kame was so fascinated by Jin's tail he nearly didn't return the jewellery. "What happens if he loses the ring?"
"Don't," Ueda advised, "or the two of you are going to have much bigger problems than who left the straighteners on."
"Huh?" Jin didn't have a clue what that meant.
Ueda flashed them both a sunny smile before diving beneath the waves, dragging Junno behind him.
"Assuming he was telling the truth, I think we'd better head home," Kame said, horror written all over his face. "If it's still there!"
-----
Luckily, Kame *hadn't* left the straighteners on - Ueda mentioned later that he'd just wanted to leave on a high note - so the house was still there, just as they'd left it not three hours ago. Nakamaru and Koki's protests had been silenced by Jin's promise to meet at the beach the next day, but he'd been adamant that he wasn't returning to the water.
"But what if you argue?" Nakamaru had asked.
"I argue with everyone," Jin had pointed out. "And I make up with them too. No one can resist me for long."
"Don't bet on it," Koki had said, splashing Jin with his tail as he left.
"You definitely get to keep your voice?" Kame checked for the third time as he and Jin huddled under blankets with dry clothes and hot drinks, trying to stave off the chill.
"Unless Ueda's lying to me, which isn't impossible, I get to keep it."
"That's a relief, because I hope your singing is as good as I think it is."
"It is," Jin assured him. "Why?"
"Well," Kame grinned wickedly, "it's always helpful to have a nice singing voice if you're going to launch a career as a singer. What, did you think I was going to support us both forever?"
Jin had never done a day's work in his life; the thought of trying to maintain Kame's schedule horrified him. "Uh...did I ever tell you about how I'm a prince?"
"No, but my next tour's going to be pirate-themed, with me as the king of a band of criminally pretty underaged pirates, and we've got an opening for the queen. Interested?"
It was just as well that nobody Jin knew was ever going to see what he made of himself on the land, as the only person likely to approve, in a creepy sort of way, might actually be Uncle Johnny. After he'd gotten over the horror of Jin running away to live with the humans, anyway.
No. To be human, to the best of his ability and with Kame's help. They lived every day through together, worked and played, quarrelled and made up. Jin learned, in time, to fill in the gaps in his knowledge: how to name the unknown, how to entertain his fellow humans with his talents, and how physical love was radically different when there were no tails involved.
Kame learned too. How to say 'no' to work, how to take time for himself without feeling guilty about being unproductive, and how much fun it was to teach Jin all sorts of things that had never seemed magical to Kame simply because they'd always been a part of his life. Watching Jin use the microwave for the first time, or talk to sponges, or even stare in rapt fascination at the moving hands of a clock - these were all experiences to be treasured, just as much as every kiss, every caress, every touch between them.
Jin had a whole new treasure trove now - one no one, not even his uncle, could take away from him. His memories were far more precious to him than all the possessions in the world; Kame was always eager to help him add to his collection, suggesting places that Jin had never even dreamed of going, or activities he hadn't known existed.
There was one thing Jin flatly refused to do, though, no matter how many times Kame tried to convince him that it was all right.
He still wouldn't eat seafood.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Word count: 19,500
Rating: PG
Genre: Twisted fairy tale, AU, fluff
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Akame take on the classic fairytale, 'The Little Mermaid', but with an ending closer to the Disney version than the angsty original. When Jin visits a mermage to help him achieve his goal of being with Kame on the surface, he soon learns that there's more to being human than walking on two legs, especially when his laidback surfer friend turns out to be a workaholic idol with a passion for fashion.
Fish Out of Water 2/2
He woke up alone, though he could hear Kame moving around somewhere in another room; based on the height of the sun streaming in through the windows, he knew he must have been asleep for quite some time. It had done him a world of good, he thought. The tiredness had left his limbs - in fact, he felt like he could keep walking for days.
It took a while for Jin to extricate himself from the covers. Without any means of attracting Kame's attention he had to go exploring unaided, but he was more than up to the task, lowering his legs carefully from the bed and standing straight without the need for support. Walking was no longer a novelty. Why, Jin thought he might even be up to running - assuming he had anywhere to run to. Kame's house wasn't really built for it.
There weren't many rooms Jin hadn't seen yet. His tentative explorations led him to a room for cooking, where a lidded pot contained the remains of the soup; another, even tinier room led off this one, big enough to hold a large metal box and a basket of clothes.
When he heard Kame call, "I'm in the lounge!", Jin opened the remaining mystery door to discover Kame reclining on a long brown couch, watching moving pictures on a flat screen. Since Kame seemed to find the pictures so absorbing, Jin looked at them too. There were tiny men hitting a ball with a bat and running, and other men catching the ball. Baseball, Jin thought it was. He'd seen kids playing it at the beach once, and asked them about the game.
"The Tigers are playing the Giants," Kame said. "You a fan?"
Jin made a noncommittal hand gesture. He was more interested in how the little men got in the screen in the first place. There didn't appear to be a door of any kind.
Kame scrabbled around for something Jin couldn't see, and then the game froze. Jin stared at the tiny figures, watching for the slightest sign of movement. Why had they stopped? Had they been bespelled?
"I recorded it last night," Kame said. "It's not live." He moved over on the couch to make room, leaving space for Jin to join him. "Feeling any better?"
Jin nodded, dropping down onto the soft cushions and enjoying the way he immediately bounced back up again. Kame had nice furniture. It wasn't quite the same as being in the water, of course, but he'd take what he could get.
"Okay, you certainly look livelier," Kame pulled the dreaded thermometer out of nowhere, "but let's make sure."
He was much happier with Jin's temperature this time, telling him he was almost back to normal. Jin didn't have a clue what the "normal" body temperature for a merman was, but he was sure it wasn't the same as a human's. If Jin was becoming normal for a human, did that mean he was sick for a merman?
Kame went to rinse the thermometer, returning with hot, sweet tea for them both; having learned his lesson from the soup, Jin managed to hold back long enough to avoid burning his mouth again. He'd never been very good at self-restraint, though.
"You've been asleep for almost seven hours," Kame said. "I kept checking on you and finding you trying to turn yourself upside down."
That wouldn't do. Not only had Jin slept through seven perfectly good hours which he could've been using to make Kame fall for him, but he'd been acting suspiciously too. There was no way he could explain himself.
At least, not verbally. Jin had seen performers at the beach before, doing all sorts of tricks to entertain the crowds, and he'd clapped along with everyone else at the sight. Underwater, he'd loved lazing around on his back, tail over his head - why couldn't he do that on land?
Without the tail, of course. Jin was no stranger to walking on his hands, only he usually had the water as a buffer to stop him toppling over and even if he fell, he was hardly going to hurt himself.
He swivelled round on the couch so that his legs were draped over the back, but before he could lower his hands to the floor, Kame reached out and tickled his stomach where his shirt had left a gap. Jin brought his knees down automatically and almost rolled backwards off the couch.
"Sorry," Kame said, helping him back up, "but I couldn't resist."
Jin did his best to look indignant but judging by Kame's gleeful response, he figured he'd ended up with something more like a pout. Ueda's comments on communication via body language weren't helping - even though Kame was touching him, these were not the sort of touches that were going to satisfy the spell.
"Were you aiming for a handstand?" Kame asked.
He leapt off the couch, kicked off his slippers and bent down, hands spread in front of him. Jin watched enviously as he took a few halting steps, and then worriedly as he approached the teacups. To avoid a collision, he grabbed Kame round the ankles to steer him away from harm. They managed less than a dozen steps in this manner before Kame's laughter got the better of him and he had to right himself or choke.
Jin gave Kame's approach a try and was delighted to discover that as long as he remembered not to wave his tail - no, his legs - around or try to swim, he fared perfectly well.
"Show-off," Kame said as Jin began his second circuit of the room. "For someone who couldn't even walk on his feet this morning, you've come a long way."
Jin flashed him an upside-down grin, toddled round to the other side of the couch and promptly overbalanced. Kame laughed so hard he couldn't stand up, so Jin joined him on the floor, huddled in the corner, immersed in fits of silent giggles.
The longer Jin laughed soundlessly, the more alarmed Kame became. "It worries me that you're not making any sound at all," he said. "Even if your throat's bad, there should still be something." He pulled out his cell phone; Jin grabbed for the dangling surfboard strap, snatching it away before Kame could call for medical assistance.
Exasperated, Kame let the phone go rather than break the strap. "I wasn't going to call a doctor." He didn't sound terribly convincing. Jin glared at him until he relented. "Fine, I was. But I think you need to get yourself checked out. What if it's trauma-related? I found you naked and unconscious on the beach - no clothes, no keys, no cell phone... Anything could've happened to you."
Jin silently cursed his uncle for destroying his collection of clothing. He couldn't have done anything about the lack of cell phone, of course - while plenty of them ended up in the sea, the water didn't do them a great deal of good. Besides, who would he have called?
"You're obviously repressing some kind of terrible memory," Kame decided, ignoring Jin's attempts to look casual, at ease, and wholly without voice-stealing trauma. Ueda might've been weird, but he wasn't *that* scary. "Though I don't suppose a doctor would be much help considering you can't answer questions right now..."
As gratifying as it was to have Kame concerned about him, it was verging on annoying. Jin gave Kame his biggest, brightest smile before returning to the couch. The tiny frozen men were no longer showing on the screen - it appeared to have switched itself off.
Kame shrugged and joined him. "You're right. Get into normal routine, that's the important thing. Let's see what's on television. Stop me if you see a channel you want to watch."
He brought out a long plastic rectangle, covered in buttons; the television, as Jin now knew it was, returned to life. No more baseball games, though. Every time Kame pressed a button the image changed, flicking from a diving contest to a family sitting round a table to a row of young men interviewing a guest.
The television must have been incredibly vast on the inside, Jin thought, to hold all those people. By far the most interesting channels for him were those playing music - especially when Kame appeared on the screen. Jin grabbed his hand to stop him changing channel again, eliciting a pained groan from Kame.
"You want to watch one of my PVs?"
Jin nodded. He still wasn't sure what a PV was, but if it involved Kame wearing a black fedora and masses of eye make-up he was all for it. In any case, he liked the song. It wasn't one he could've danced to but if he'd had a voice and known the words, he'd definitely have been singing along.
"LIPS is pretty impressive to look at, I guess," Kame mused. "It was a lot of fun to film. I must've sprayed half the staff with my microphone."
Film. That explained it. Kame obviously couldn't split himself in two to be on the television at the same time as sitting next to Jin on the couch. There were no people in the screen - everything was pre-recorded. It was such a shame Jin was never going to be able to brag to Nakamaru and Koki about all the wonderful discoveries he was making.
The song finished and another Kame appeared on the screen, this time with another young man, a small boy, and a group of dancers.
"Seishun Amigo?" Kame covered his eyes with his hands. "They must be playing doubles. You don't need to watch this."
By the time Kame risked uncovering his eyes, Jin was off the couch and dancing along like he'd known the moves all his life. This song was a completely different genre to the previous one but no less enjoyable; Jin hoped there would be more to follow.
He got his wish almost immediately, as it transpired that the channel was hosting a request show and anyone could call in, though only women were doing so and they weren't interested in requesting music by anyone but Kame.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Kame complained as Jin thrust his hips to a song announced as 'Don't U Ever Stop'. "I bet you're unstoppable in a club."
Jin didn't respond, only tugged him off the couch so they could dance together and then Kame, too, was moving to the beat, keeping time with a wicked smirk and one hand resting lightly on Jin's hip.
"That launch party I told you about," Kame murmured. "That's tomorrow night. Feeling up to it?"
In Jin's experience, parties led to dancing and dancing led to kissing and kissing was going to lead to him having legs for the rest of his life, not to mention other interesting things that Jin wasn't quite sure how you were supposed to accomplish with legs in the way but he was more than willing to find out about.
"Then I think we'd better go shopping in the morning," Kame said once Jin had made his interest in the party more than clear. "You need something to wear."
The prospect of having his own clothes was a heartening one for Jin. Dressing up, where he came from, generally didn't involve much more than making sure your scales were shiny and possibly donning a shell necklace or two. If the event was really formal, gold jewellery and gems lost by the surface added a touch of class. For parties on the land, he was going to have to look to Kame for cues on what might be appropriate.
They danced for a few more songs, practising for the following night, but to Jin's dismay Kame was more interested in singing them to him than making other use of his lips. Jin tried being more obvious, sliding his arms around Kame's neck as they slow-danced to a beautiful ballad with the intention of bringing them closer together.
It didn't work. Kame disengaged as the song faded out, declaring that he was starving and would Jin be interested in getting some dinner?
"I've got menus for everywhere," Kame said, taking a handful from a drawer. "We can order in whatever we want. I could really go for some squid."
Jin froze, feeling mildly sick at the thought of eating someone he might have met.
"Or maybe some shrimp," Kame continued. "There's this place down the street that does-" He caught sight of Jin's horrified face and immediately dropped the menus. "I should've guessed - no seafood, huh?"
-----
It took a great deal of ingenious miming on Jin's part and detective work on Kame's, but they eventually ended up ordering a couple of pizzas which, Kame went to great lengths to assure Jin, did not contain seafood in any shape or form. Neither did the garlic bread, the potato wedges, or the giant chocolate brownies they had for dessert.
"We'll work it all off tomorrow," Kame said airily. "You need a lot of calories for clothes shopping."
They watched more television while they ate, though Kame always changed the channel whenever his own face appeared. Between the music, dramas and commercials he'd made, that meant they never stayed longer than a few minutes on anything.
"I like working," Kame said when Jin acted out a silent skit of Kame working himself to death. "It's nice to take a break, but if I stay still too long I'll go crazy."
Privately, Jin thought anyone who worked as much as Kame obviously did was already crazy. The results were worth it, though. When Kame left the room to take a call, Jin played around with the remote until he found one of the dramas - this one, with Kame playing a boxer in love with a nun. Jin wasn't sure which impressed him the most - Kame's physique or the sheer amount of food he managed to cram into his mouth.
After about half an episode, Kame returned. "I need to go out for a bit. Will you be okay by yourself?"
Jin nodded, thoroughly engrossed in watching Kame hug inanimate objects on the screen. He wasn't going anywhere.
Kame sighed. "If you're going to watch 'One Pound Gospel', you might as well start from the beginning and see how they meet. Here, I'll put the DVD on for you."
Ten minutes later, Jin had been educated in the use of DVD players and Kame was long gone, not returning until Jin had worked his way through a whole three episodes.
"I think that's enough for one night," Kame said gently, switching off the equipment. "Time for bed. I picked up a toothbrush for you on my way home."
Thanks to the wonders of television, Jin knew what one did with a toothbrush, and many other mysteries of the human world had become clear to him. Similarities, too. In some ways, his world wasn't so different. The young and weak were bullied regardless of species, friendship could be a tremendous source of strength, and love was always fraught with difficulties.
Kame left him alone in the bathroom after showing him where everything was, which gave Jin time to explore properly. He had a few issues with some of the buttons on the toilet but escaped mostly unscathed. As with the television and DVD remotes, he had to memorise the symbols; he was going to have to learn to read, sooner or later, else he was going to end up with more than just a few minor burns.
When Jin emerged, he looked at Kame expectantly. The couch, in the time he'd been away from it, had acquired a cover and pillows.
"This is for me," Kame said, patting its back. "You take the bed."
Jin shook his head. He didn't want to make more of a nuisance of himself than he had already, considering Kame had done so much for him. He made for the couch himself, but Kame steered him back to the bedroom.
"If you need anything, come wake me up, okay? I promise not to get too mad about it."
Kame refused to leave until Jin was snuggled up in the bed again, but there was still plenty of room - Jin didn't see why they couldn't share. He patted the empty space next to him and gave Kame a hopeful look.
"And get kicked when you try to turn yourself upside down again? No thanks." Kame paused by the door. "I'm serious; wake me if you have to. Goodnight, Jin."
In lieu of speech, Jin offered a small smile and an inclined head, though the latter was less out of politeness and more because he was trying to watch Kame's hand, which was hovering over a panel on the wall. When the overhead light suddenly went out, plunging the bedroom into darkness, Jin was able to add another item to his ever-growing list of marvellous human discoveries.
The light switch.
-----
Perhaps it was the hours he'd slept during the day, or perhaps it was the excitement of being able to walk amongst humans at last, but Jin spent a restless night, tossing and turning so much that he almost rolled out of bed. He pretended to be asleep, though, when Kame periodically crept in to check on him - only cracking his eyelids a fraction to see Kame's silhouette in the light streaming from the room beyond.
But on the fourth such occasion, when he peeked, it wasn't Kame who'd come to check on him.
"You're not doing very well, are you?"
Ueda, dressed in black pants, white shirt and grey cardigan, strolled casually over to the bed to lounge in the remaining space, one of the glowing magical orbs following in his wake to light up the room.
Jin sat up in a panic, looking frantically at the bedroom door. What if Kame heard?
"He can't hear me," Ueda said. "Or see me. I'm only here to visit you. Like the legs? They're not as long as yours, of course, but I'm not out to seduce anyone. Not today."
That was small comfort to Jin, given that the mermage was lying mere inches away from him while wearing an expression to which even the word "predatory" didn't do justice.
"Think you'll be able to make him kiss you in time? I'm not so sure. He's puzzled about you...and worried. Because you don't have this." Ueda held out the clam shell containing Jin's voice, opening it just enough for the first few bars of a sea shanty to escape before snapping it shut again, tucking it away in his cardigan where Jin didn't dare try to snatch it. "What would you say to Kame if you had your voice back? Tell him how much you like his music, or perhaps that you enjoyed his dramas?"
As if Jin would waste his words on something like that. He scowled at Ueda, crossing his arms over his chest to indicate the depth of his displeasure.
"It's frustrating for you, isn't it?" Ueda's tone was sympathetic but Jin was positive he didn't mean it. "Not being able to tell anyone what you're thinking, what you want. Doesn't it make you angry?"
Jin opened his mouth to give Ueda a piece of his mind, but this only served to amuse him further.
"How about we raise the stakes, then? If you manage to win yourself a kiss by the time your three days are up, I'll return your voice too. But..." Ueda made the ball of magic disappear, leaving them in darkness. "If you fail, you disappear. No second chances, no going back to your uncle, no life of servitude under me - I don't need another incompetent minion."
With that final, terrible bargain, the mermage vanished. Jin could no longer feel the extra weight on the bed, or the sinister presence beside him - just by Ueda *not* being there, the room seemed less dark. What that said about Ueda's twisted personality, Jin didn't want to contemplate.
Still, Ueda was giving him a chance, wasn't he? Jin thought he might explode if he had to remain silent for the rest of his life. Obviously it wasn't necessary to sacrifice a voice to acquire legs, since Ueda had temporarily traded in his tail without having to resort to mime to communicate.
Jin sank into an uneasy sleep, Ueda's gleaming smile threatening to wipe the memories of Kame's gentleness from his mind, which roiled much as his body had done before. Such turbulence directed his dreams, taking him back to the night he'd first met Kame.
Oh, not the first time Kame thought they'd met, eyes locking over Kame's broken surfboard while the lifeguard shouted for everyone to leave the water. This was another storm, another time - a night when Jin had swum up to the surface in a huff, angry at his uncle, and almost hit his head on a boat. The weather had been nearly as bad as his mood, with black, tempestuous skies, threatening rain but never quite delivering; it was a night neither man nor merman should be away from home.
To this day, Jin still wasn't sure exactly what had been taking place on the boat. He could recognise cameras, now, after seeing them around the necks of countless tourists, but these were much larger; some, mounted on stands. Everyone seemed to be engaged in one of two activities. Either they were busy securing the boat against the weather, or they were pointing their cameras at a young man in black.
Jin couldn't see his face clearly, but he admired the cut of his clothes, which were like nothing Jin had yet managed to acquire for his collection. The black-clad man was constantly moving, keeping his balance remarkably well despite the turbulence until one great gust of wind caused him to slip. He clutched the rail to save himself from the deck; his hat, less fortunate, was carried out to sea, where it was immediately whipped away from all would-be rescuers.
The other men and women on the boat wanted to turn around and head back to the shore till the storm passed. It would've been the sensible thing to do. Jin's seabird friends would take shelter on a such a night; humans ought to do the same. Jin wondered if there would be an accident, if he'd end up having to save drowning men and women from the storm the way his ancestors had in the stories his uncle used to tell him.
No one appeared to be in immediate danger of falling overboard, however, though they were clearly having trouble steering. Jin swam closer, knowing no one would notice him in such violent weather.
But someone did. The man in black caught sight of him.
A life preserver came flying towards Jin; the man responsible yelled encouragement at him. Jin was half-tempted to duck beneath the waves and disappear but he didn't want to risk the humans trying to "rescue" him. They had no way of knowing he was far safer than anyone on the boat.
He also couldn't let them pull him to safety. One glimpse of his tail and it was all over. From Jin's perspective, the heavy rain that began to fall was well-timed, providing him with cover.
Not so for the humans, of course, who were hard-pressed to keep their feet. The pair who were steering lost control altogether. Unchecked, the boat bore strongly to the left and the man in black, hammered by the torrential rain, disappeared from Jin's sight.
He reappeared again a few moments later, coughing, fighting to keep his head above water. No one on the boat seemed to have noticed that their star attraction had left them for the stormy seas. Jin pushed the life preserver towards him - it might have been useless for a merman but it could mean everything to a human, whose fragile respiratory system could not extract oxygen from water, and whose skin was no more use than paper to stave off the cold.
The man went under twice before Jin reached him. The second time, he stayed submerged until Jin got a handful of his shirt and yanked him up to the surface. A pale, half-drowned wretch with a blue tint to his lips and a smear of blood where his head had gotten acquainted with the rail; Jin wasn't sure he was even breathing anymore.
Nevertheless, he made the poor creature fast to the preserver, giving him all the support he could without tangling his own tail in the rope. Meanwhile, the humans on the boat had finally noticed that one of their number had fallen overboard. Soon enough they started drawing him in; Jin clung on for as long as he dared, hoping he wasn't holding onto a dead man.
They were reeled in almost to the boat before Jin's hopes were confirmed. "Thank you," the man in black wheezed, so faint that Jin could barely hear him over the storm. His eyes were still closed, his limbs motionless.
Surprised, Jin said, "You're welcome."
He made a great show of swimming towards the shore, waiting until he was far enough away that they couldn't possibly have spotted him before diving for home. On his way, he stopped to pick up a souvenir - one soaked black fedora.
-----
Jin's troubled night showed itself on his face the next morning, when Kame expressed alarm over his obvious weariness. It would have been easier to appreciate his concern had Kame not been showing signs of his own broken sleep.
"I was checking up on you," Kame confessed when Jin pointed to his tired eyes. "What's your excuse?"
Assuming he didn't expect an answer, Jin shrugged. He didn't have the concentration to spare on dodging the issue, not when his omelette was in danger of landing up on the floor rather than in his mouth. Though he'd seen cutlery in use many times, grasping the theory didn't quite equate to successful practice. They hadn't needed any last night; this morning, Kame had made them both breakfast and Jin intended to do justice to it.
"I suppose you can't be feeling *that* bad," Kame said with amusement after he had to make Jin a second helping. "Not with that appetite."
He presented Jin with a plastic bag, apologising for having to guess at the size, and packed him off to the bedroom to find something to wear for their shopping trip. Now in possession of underwear, Jin wondered if that was why Kame had been out so long the previous night. He picked out a pair of jeans and a plain white shirt that only buttoned up from halfway down his chest, hoping it was suitable attire for wherever they were going; Kame had to delve in the back of his wardrobe for a pair of black boots he said would probably fit Jin. A pair of sunglasses completed the outfit.
"Be careful with those," Kame warned. "They're vintage."
Kame himself was costumed none too formally, wearing ripped jeans and a navy T-shirt covered in light blue dolphins. He donned the twin to Jin's sunglasses, grabbed keys, phone and wallet and escorted Jin outside for his first ever ride in a car.
Jin hadn't even noticed the shiny white vehicle parked outside Kame's house on his way in - he'd been too busy watching the scenery. Walking outside now on his own two feet put a different spin on things. He followed Kame to the car, trying to act like he'd been riding in them all his life, but knew he'd failed when Kame gave him a gentle nudge and told him to go round to the other side and climb in his own door.
He knew to fasten his seatbelt, though - television was very educational, not that knowing what to expect made it any less disconcerting when the car suddenly started moving. Jin clutched the door handle.
"You're not one of those guys who freaks out if they're being driven by someone else, are you? Because there's no way I'm letting you drive my car."
Pity. After watching Kame for a while, Jin thought he could probably manage quite well behind the wheel, though he doubted Kame would ever let him try. It was the putting his feet on the pedals part that might give him difficulty, as he didn't ordinarily use his tail to control anything except his own movements.
He enjoyed the ride, watching the world out the windows while Kame concentrated on the road ahead, sparing Jin only the occasional glance until they parked underground. Although Jin remembered to unfasten his seatbelt before attempting to exit the car, he forgot that sunglasses and dark, underground car parks didn't mix too well and avoided walking into a pillar only because Kame stopped him, directing him towards a set of double doors at the far end.
"Let's see what we can find before I get spotted by fans. Whatever happens, just keep smiling," Kame advised.
The advice didn't register with Jin until the second shop (they hadn't found anything in the first) where two sales assistants, three other shoppers and the security guard all asked for Kame's autograph. Jin looked askance at the attention. Was Kame really so well known? It would explain why he was all over the television - not to mention, half-a-dozen billboards they'd passed during the drive.
They found themselves ducking behind clothing racks whenever teenage girls appeared, though Jin's extra inches of height sometimes hampered him in this and Kame had a tendency to get distracted by certain items of clothing which led to him running off in pursuit, forgetting to keep himself hidden as a rack of shirts rolled past. Then they had their pictures taken, an experience Jin found sort of alarming until he saw the results and understood why Kame had advised him to keep smiling. He looked much better that way.
"You can wear that to the party if you really want, but you might get some strange looks." Kame expressed his doubt over the tiny black dress Jin was holding up. "And we'd have to get you some shoes to match."
Jin tried to point out that he hadn't chosen it for himself, he'd just picked it up off the floor having accidentally knocked it off the hanger, but his acting skills only took him so far. He hurriedly returned the dress and went over to study a selection of sleek black jeans; Kame approved of these and took him off to try them on.
There wasn't much space in the fitting room. Kame waited outside till Jin emerged in denim so tight he was beginning to regret having a second serving of breakfast.
"The simple black and white look really suits you," Kame said, and the cluster of sales assistants who'd gathered around him agreed. "Let's find you a top to go with it."
They didn't find one for Jin, but while Kame was paying for the jeans he spotted a cute pink one for himself and immediately added it to the pile. The assistant at the register asked if Jin was an idol too.
Kame had an answer ready. "He's playing opposite me in my next drama," he said. "He's already getting into character as a mute, so please don't expect him to speak to you.
"And he doesn't do autographs."
-----
Kame's story changed each time anyone asked about Jin, so Jin endeavoured to play the part to the best of his ability. In one shop he was Kame's cousin from out of town who'd lost his voice after watching his best friend die in a horrific shark attack, in another he was an eccentric songwriter who wouldn't speak to anyone except his personal psychic. When they broke for lunch and the waiter, who seemed fascinated by Jin, showed them to a private table in the back, Kame changed tactics slightly.
"He's mine," he said firmly, "and he's not allowed to talk or I'll punish him later."
Jin had to hide his face behind the menu so the stunned waiter couldn't see how hard he was laughing.
Kame waited until they were alone before joining in. "It'll stop him trying to flirt with you. Look, you're going to end up in the gossip magazines with me now anyway so you might as well cultivate an air of mystery. If we get enough stories going about you today, by the time they hit the press no one's going to have any idea which one's true."
It was fortunate indeed that the menu had pictures for every item of food - Jin could simply point to what he wanted. But when Kame asked him what he'd like to drink, showing him the back page of the menu, Jin was alarmed to see that it was nothing but a sea of text, all nonsensical to him. Should he risk picking one at random?
"Can't decide?"
It wasn't a matter of indecision. Jin shook his head and quickly jabbed the first line of the menu that wasn't printed twice as large as the rest.
"It's not Tuesday," Kame said, sounding puzzled as he read the text. "That offer doesn't apply. And even if it *was* Tuesday, you're not under ten." He leaned in across the table, lowering his voice to a hushed murmur. "You can't read, can you? Any more than you can write."
Kame didn't sound unkind, merely curious, but that didn't stop Jin's shoulders from drooping. He wished he'd known reading was such an essential skill before going to Ueda - he might have been able to bargain with the mermage for some lessons, since if anyone under the sea could read, it was sure to be him.
"It's fine, okay? Really." Kame placed a comforting hand on his arm and began to read the drinks menu aloud. "Stop me when you hear something you want. Coke, Diet Coke, orange juice, apple juice, lemonade, ginger ale, green tea..."
This continued until Kame reached the end; since Jin still hadn't chosen, he repeated himself. Jin went with apple juice second time round.
Kame still had one hand on his arm when the waiter returned to take their order, so he had to fend off an enquiry into Jin's welfare by explaining that Jin looked upset because they'd accidentally broken his favourite pair of handcuffs last night.
"I just think it's funny to watch his face turn different colours," Kame said once the embarrassed server had scampered off.
Jin wasn't sure what handcuffs had to do with anything - he'd seen them on a criminal in one of the dramas he'd skimmed through last night, but couldn't work out how that was relevant to his situation. His obvious bewilderment amused Kame no end, right up until the waiter returned with a bowl of the sweet crackers they kept for children, as a means of cheering Jin up.
The crackers were shaped like fish. Jin burst into tears.
One free meal later, they were back in the clothing stores. Kame had had to explain three times that the crackers were merely shaped like fish and did not contain seafood in any shape or form before Jin ceased his silent sobs over the fate of his neighbours. The waiter had been absolutely mortified, though that was nothing compared to his manager's distress.
"I thought she was going to fire him on the spot," Kame confessed. "Especially when he then screwed up your order and brought you sashimi by mistake."
The whole ordeal had been rather embarrassing for Jin. He resolved that next time he was presented with something that might be the remains of someone he knew, he would investigate it carefully to ascertain whether or not this was truly the case.
Still red-faced, he worked his way through shirt after shirt before settling on one in white silk, smooth and cool under his fingers. A black tank top for beneath completed the outfit to Jin's satisfaction.
"It's perfect." Kame had squeezed in the fitting room too, ignoring the suspicious looks he'd received from the staff. "We just need to get you some socks and a few other things..."
"A few other things" turned out to be a buttery-soft leather jacket, matching boots, and a silver pinky ring to which Jin took a fancy. He wasn't sure why until he noticed an identical ring glinting on Kame's hand. Matching jewellery, he thought, was a step in the right direction.
In the time they'd put together one outfit for Jin, they'd managed to buy three for Kame. The expense gnawed a bit at Jin's conscience but when Kame expressed his surprise at how little they'd spent compared to his normal clothes shopping sprees, Jin immediately stopped feeling guilty and started wondering what else he might need. He had to look good for his first party on the surface, after all.
His first...and possibly his last, if Kame didn't start showing some interest. He hadn't so much as pounced on Jin in the fitting room - though he had been looking out of the corner of his eye, Jin had noticed. That still didn't add up to a kiss. If the worst came to the worst, Jin would simply have to go with his back-up plan - get Kame very, very drunk and make himself very, very available. Ueda hadn't said he couldn't.
By the time they drove home, Jin had regained his confidence. It helped that he knew he was going to look extremely good. Kame's willpower couldn't be *that* strong.
While Kame had first shower, Jin took the opportunity to poke around the house for a bit, trying to learn more about his host. Not the wardrobe - he already knew Kame had more clothes than he could possibly wear in one lifetime - but in cupboards and drawers, on shelves and behind furniture. He found accessories in almost as great a quantity as clothing (Kame appeared to have a particular fondness for skull imagery), sports memorabilia (Kame was quite the baseball fan, it seemed) and stacks of albums that were not, if the covers were any indication, by Kame (Jin had watched Kame change music in the car, but not once did he ever play any of his own). Jin was impressed by the sheer amount of possessions. Even before his uncle had destroyed his treasure trove, he'd never had even half as much to call his own.
But then, most of Kame's fancy toys and pretty clothes would do him no good underwater.
"Your turn."
Jin whirled round from his study of the kitchen cupboards - which were, thankfully, fish-free - to find Kame leaning against the counter, towel wrapped around his hips, hair dripping. Water trickled down his bare skin, on a mission to catch as much of Jin's attention as possible before it reached the tiled floor. Thus far, it was doing an excellent job.
"The shower? Your turn, Jin." Kame's smirk said he hadn't missed the way Jin was staring at him like he was the first human he'd ever seen. "Try not to destroy the bathroom again."
A dismissal, not an invitation. Jin swallowed his disappointment and went to immerse himself in water for as long as he could get away with it. When he finally emerged, Kame was already dressed. Pity.
"You'll break some hearts tonight," Kame declared once they were both ready to go.
If Jin had been able to, he'd have said the same thing about Kame. His outfit matched Jin's closely, but where Jin wore white, Kame wore a deep, rich purple; both adorned themselves with silver jewellery. Jin thought that if he got to stay on the surface, he might get his ear pierced like Kame.
They were picked up in a black car driven by someone Kame evidently didn't know that well, because he made no attempt to talk to the driver beyond telling him where to go. That matter taken care of, he turned his attention to creating a cover story for Jin.
"Who would you like to be tonight?" Kame whispered. "An exotic foreign film star with a rare throat condition? A singer who needs to rest his vocal cords for a show tomorrow? A former gang member who had his voice tortured out of him in a really sadistic initiation ritual?"
Jin didn't even want to think about what Kame meant with that final option.
"Or maybe...I just won't say anything," Kame decided. "I'll let everyone speculate on my handsome mystery date. Don't forget to smile for the cameras."
But Jin never got anywhere near the cameras.
They were waiting at a set of traffic lights when pain flared across Jin's hips, making him double over against the seatbelt. The same, familiar agony he'd felt on the beach, sacrificing his tail for legs. Twin trails of fire streaked down his thighs, racing lower and lower till even his toes were burning.
"Jin? What's wrong?" Kame had one hand on his back now. "What happened?"
Jin turned desperate eyes on him. How could he make Kame understand what was happening, when he didn't even know himself? Was Ueda's spell failing? Was Jin about to make his brand-new jeans completely redundant?
Kame told the driver to take them to the hospital, but Jin shook his head. If he really was changing back, going to hospital wasn't going to do him any good. He had to see Ueda.
"But you're in pain," Kame protested. "I can see it. I know you don't like hospitals but-" He broke off sharply as Jin caught his hand in a bone-crushing grip, squeezing down in a move he'd learned from a crab friend of his who wrestled professionally.
Kame winced. "Fine, no hospitals. What about home?"
Not Jin's home. Kame's home. But for all intents and purposes, the same place right now. Jin relaxed his grip; Kame massaged his sore hand with the other and told the driver to take them back where they came from.
The agony only increased on the return trip; Jin didn't even have the mercy of oblivion this time. He remained hunched over, taking huge, hungry gasps of air and screaming down into his chest, all soundless. He barely noticed Kame making a phone call to explain his absence from the party. The excuse flew straight past him, as did all other sounds and sights until they pulled up in front of Kame's house.
"Now," Kame said grimly as they watched the car speed off into the distance again, "I'll take you home. Hold on."
Jin had been sitting against the front door, waiting for Kame to find his keys, but Kame scooped him up instead and headed for the beach as fast as he could manage - not a smart move, perhaps, given the darkness, but the right one.
Heedless of the detrimental effects of sand and seawater on their respective party outfits, Kame sank to his knees by the water's edge, setting Jin on the ground. "There," he panted. "Home. Right?"
The shock cut through Jin's pain-induced haze, snapping him, if not completely back to his senses, at least to a state of something less than total muzziness. Why had Kame brought him to the beach? Did he know? Could he know?
Slowly, Jin pushed off his boots, letting them lie empty on the sand. It didn't look like he was going to need them anymore.
Socks followed. The lamps set at intervals along the beach were too far away for Jin to examine his bare skin closely but he couldn't feel scales yet. If he was transforming back into a merman, he wasn't starting with his toes.
"What's happening to you? Can I help?" Kame's distress level wasn't much lower than Jin's. "Who are you, Jin?
"What are you?"
"If you want to help, get that stuff off him and get him in the water."
Koki?
Sure enough, Koki was bobbing in the water, calling across the waves; he'd had to moderate his voice so Kame could understand him. Jin couldn't understand why he was there, though. Koki should be far below, maybe seeing his AquaDance star girlfriend, maybe hanging out on the reef with Nakamaru.
But no, Nakamaru was there too, swimming as close to the shore as he dared. "We said we'd watch for you, didn't we?"
Kame's hands dropped to his sides and he mouthed silent exclamations, like he was the one with no voice. Jin wanted more than anything to be able to explain to him, especially when Nakamaru flipped over and crawled up the beach, tail on bold display. Kame didn't recoil in disgust, or run away in horror. He sat perfectly still, with Jin's head propped up in his lap.
Neither merman bothered to address him again, speaking only to Jin, although they knew full well he was unable to reply.
"Ueda's on his way," Nakamaru said. "He sent us to wait for you."
"You didn't think we'd been waiting around all this time, did you?" Koki's flippancy failed to mask his concern; Jin returned the smile with a weak attempt of his own, hoping the pain didn't contort it into a grimace.
Kame finally found his voice. "You really are a mermaid?"
Jin scowled up at him.
"Merman," Nakamaru corrected. "I know he's pretty, but-"
"Right now he's neither." Ueda rose from the water, accompanied by a tall, dark-haired merman who didn't need to introduce himself - the moment Jin saw his cheerful, sunny demeanor, he knew he was looking at Junno's original form. "Neither human nor merman, that is, and that's not a state he can sustain for long."
Kame folded his arms protectively around Jin's chest. "What's happening to him? And why can't he speak?"
Ueda ignored him, holding out a clam shell to Jin. It wasn't the one with his voice, Jin knew - this one was considerably paler. When he showed no signs of accepting it, Ueda sighed, grabbed Jin's hand and folded his fingers over the shell.
"Junno knocked the other one off the shelf," he explained. "Sixteen times."
"It kept opening up and making fun of me!" Junno protested.
A small bolt of lightning flashed from Ueda's index finger, zapping Junno on the arm. "You could've ignored it. Or argued back, or done anything except swimming past it and knocking it off the shelf. I'm only giving you your real form back so you don't regress any further into primitive behaviour."
Even through the pain, Jin couldn't keep from smiling. His voice had been acting independently, it seemed.
"When the shell finally shattered, your voice was released," Ueda continued. "That broke our bargain, which is why you're beginning to change back. We don't have a deal anymore."
Jin's legs spasmed, twitching furiously as his body tried to regain its original shape. He clenched his fists against the pain, crushing the shell in his palm...and was astonished to hear his own soft moans when a thin, incorporeal stream pushed past his lips, giving him voice once more.
It wasn't much, but it was enough for Kame to catch. He helped Jin sit up. "Since nobody else is willing to tell me what's going on with you..."
"I..." Jin swallowed hard. It seemed like years since he'd last spoken, even though it was less than two days and it wasn't as if he didn't have the practice. "I wanted to see you. So I made a deal. My voice for legs."
"You currently have both," Ueda pointed out, "yet you haven't fulfilled your end of the bargain. I told you last night how you could have both."
This was news to Koki and Nakamaru.
"Both?" Koki said. "What kind of bargain is that?"
Ueda shrugged. "I changed the rules."
"Can he do that?" Nakamaru asked.
Junno nodded. "He can do whatever he wants. You try stopping him, see how far you get."
He received a gentle smack from Ueda for that. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around," the mermage said.
As thrilled as Jin was to see his friends again - and better yet, to be able to talk to them - he was slightly annoyed that no one appeared to care about the excruciating pain making him wish his lower body would simply dissolve. He didn't recall it being so bad the first time round - though passing out might have had something to do with it...
"It's the clothes." Ueda fingered the cuff of Jin's jeans. "Your tail can't reform with the material in the way."
"Then we should get you out of these, shouldn't we?" Kame's fingers flew to Jin's waistband, sought out button and zip and undid both before Jin even registered what was happening.
"You want me to turn back?" Jin was crushed. After everything that had happened, Kame wanted him out of his life? Was it that detestable, for him, that Jin was a merman?
"No, I want you to stop hurting, silly."
"But-"
"He's doing the right thing, so let him help," Nakamaru advised. "You can't stay like this forever, Jin."
"You can still see me," Kame said. "I'm always here, aren't I?"
"But you'll be here," Jin trailed his fingers over the sand, "and I'll be here," then let them slide into the sea. "I can't walk in your world and you can't breathe in mine."
No one argued with Jin - how could they, when he was right? Kame's time in the water was limited in many ways, and Jin couldn't manage with a tail on the surface. He'd seen wheelchairs, now, but he rather suspected that unless he got one equipped with a water tank, his tail would soon feel the lack of moisture.
"Would you accept a deal from a human?"
Kame's addressing Ueda surprised everyone - except possibly Ueda. "Depends what you have to offer," the mermage said, all business now.
"What would it take to make me a mermai- uh, merman?," Kame hastily corrected himself.
Jin froze in the act of wriggling closer to the water, which he'd hoped would help ease the burning. "You can't do that! You shouldn't do that!" He locked eyes with Kame, searching for some sort of reasonable explanation as to why he would be willing to throw away a perfectly good life on the surface for one so foreign to him. "Why would you do that?"
Kame sighed. "Jin, do you know where I was last night? I went to meet the guy I thought was your swim coach. They didn't have anyone on the team fitting your description - well, except some first-year named Takaki and even then it was only the hair. Then I asked about all currently enrolled students."
"I never actually told you I was at university," Jin said uncomfortably. "You made that assumption yourself."
"I thought I'd misunderstood at first. But since I found you here yesterday...the more time I spent with you, the more obvious it became that not only were you not from around here, but you were from nowhere I could ever go.
"Did you know I tried to follow you, sometimes? I'd pretend to leave, then wait for you to dive before I returned to the water. I thought maybe you were swimming round to a cove or something, that you had some secret hideaway.
"I didn't know you were hiding a whole other world."
"It hides itself, really..." Nakamaru muttered.
"You knew I wasn't human?" Jin asked.
"Well...for a while I did think you were just some kind of piscine rights activist from an extremely sheltered background. But you did seem much more at home in the water than out of it, so I thought maybe..."
Koki snickered. "He's not exactly at home in the water either. This isn't the first time he's tried to leave, only the first he's been successful. Sort of."
Ueda looked thoughtful. "Not many humans would think of merpeople, though - we don't exist, as far as you're concerned."
"But I've seen one before," Kame said.
He related the tale of what Jin knew to be their first actual meeting, and what Kame thought was some sort of miraculous rescue that he might possibly have hallucinated, given that one did not ordinarily see men with tails, much less get saved by them.
"I lost sight of him," Kame finished on a sad note. "But I know I saw a tail! Just not much else."
With the storm, and Kame's state of injury, Jin wasn't surprised that Kame had neither seen nor remembered much. He'd barely been able to open his eyes.
"I remember that storm," Nakamaru interrupted. "Jin, wasn't that the night you and your uncle had that big fight about..." He trailed off, suddenly suspicious. "Please, tell me that wasn't you."
"Would you believe me if I did?"
"You can't lie to save your life," Koki said. "Your face gives you away every time."
"This is all very touching," Ueda said, sounding more amused than touched, "but if we don't come to some arrangement soon, Jin's body will start to reshape itself around the fabric and I'm in no hurry to see the results."
"You're the one with the magic powers," Jin huffed. "Why can't you just fix me?"
"Because you haven't kept your end of the bargain," Ueda said gently. "Granted, matters are coming to a head earlier than they should be and that isn't your fault - unless you want to take responsibility for your voice's provocative actions while removed from your body - but one way or another, this must end tonight. Either fulfil your end, or let your body resume its original shape."
Behind him, Koki and Nakamaru were giving Jin hopeful looks, telling him that he could always come home.
"To fulfil your end of the bargain, you have to lose your voice again?" Kame asked.
Jin laughed bitterly. "It's not that simple." Ueda's eyes warned him that he couldn't tell Kame, not if he wanted to hold on to his chance. "To become human, I have to..." he searched for a euphemism, "...give myself to one."
"You have ownership papers?"
The other mermen laughed so hard they almost caused a tidal wave between them.
"Uh...not exactly..."
"Is there some phrase or...oh." From the sparkle in Kame's eyes, Jin was hoping he'd hit on it. "Do merpeople claim each other through mating rituals?"
Even Ueda was beginning to get sick of this. Or perhaps he was just annoyed because Jin kept splashing him every time his legs twitched. "Think on a smaller scale," he advised. "Not so ambitious, especially not out here. You'll get us all arrested."
Jin failed to see how this was an issue for a guy who could probably make them all invisible if he wanted, but he wasn't about to complain if Ueda was giving out hints.
Hints Kame eventually got. At least, Jin hoped he had, otherwise Kame was sliding his arms around Jin's back for no good reason, pointlessly pressing his lips to Jin's, wasting his time nudging them apart to slip his tongue uselessly inside. It was a desperate kiss, searching for confirmation; Jin's body tingled in a way that had nothing to do with the spell and everything to do with the way Kame tasted. It was the first kiss he'd ever had that didn't taste of the sea.
Kame withdrew, looking uncertainly at Jin's legs. "Did I do the right thing?"
The searing pains had vanished about the same time Jin was sliding too far into bliss to notice them. "I think so, but it never hurts to make sure." He tucked his now-mobile legs under him, ignoring the soaked denim so he could sit up properly. "We should try again."
Kame grinned as Jin leaned in for a second attempt. "Fine by me. I'm happy to keep experimenting as long as you want."
Ueda's fake cough was so loud it actually drowned out the sounds of Koki's fake vomiting. "You might want to save that for another time. Here's a tip for you, Jin - humans get sick when they sit around at night in wet clothing."
"He really is human now?" Nakamaru asked.
"Should be. Strip him and find out," Ueda suggested.
Jin didn't care for that idea, but he did want to make sure he wasn't just on another two-day trial. Shucking the clothing on his lower body and ignoring the resulting catcalls from his friends, he stepped into the water. Nothing happened. His legs remained solid, without scales. He removed the rest - everything except the silver pinky ring - and went further, deep enough that he could no longer stand.
Kame swam out to join him. "You got that ring with me," he said. "Take it off, and let's see if anything happens when you're completely free from human ties." He held out his hand.
The second the ring lost contact with Jin's skin, he felt an odd tugging at his legs, as though he'd been wrapped in seaweed. He flipped back in the water, trying to bring his legs up for a look.
"That answers that question," Ueda muttered. "By removing the ring, he breaks his bond with Kame and loses his human form."
Kame was so fascinated by Jin's tail he nearly didn't return the jewellery. "What happens if he loses the ring?"
"Don't," Ueda advised, "or the two of you are going to have much bigger problems than who left the straighteners on."
"Huh?" Jin didn't have a clue what that meant.
Ueda flashed them both a sunny smile before diving beneath the waves, dragging Junno behind him.
"Assuming he was telling the truth, I think we'd better head home," Kame said, horror written all over his face. "If it's still there!"
-----
Luckily, Kame *hadn't* left the straighteners on - Ueda mentioned later that he'd just wanted to leave on a high note - so the house was still there, just as they'd left it not three hours ago. Nakamaru and Koki's protests had been silenced by Jin's promise to meet at the beach the next day, but he'd been adamant that he wasn't returning to the water.
"But what if you argue?" Nakamaru had asked.
"I argue with everyone," Jin had pointed out. "And I make up with them too. No one can resist me for long."
"Don't bet on it," Koki had said, splashing Jin with his tail as he left.
"You definitely get to keep your voice?" Kame checked for the third time as he and Jin huddled under blankets with dry clothes and hot drinks, trying to stave off the chill.
"Unless Ueda's lying to me, which isn't impossible, I get to keep it."
"That's a relief, because I hope your singing is as good as I think it is."
"It is," Jin assured him. "Why?"
"Well," Kame grinned wickedly, "it's always helpful to have a nice singing voice if you're going to launch a career as a singer. What, did you think I was going to support us both forever?"
Jin had never done a day's work in his life; the thought of trying to maintain Kame's schedule horrified him. "Uh...did I ever tell you about how I'm a prince?"
"No, but my next tour's going to be pirate-themed, with me as the king of a band of criminally pretty underaged pirates, and we've got an opening for the queen. Interested?"
It was just as well that nobody Jin knew was ever going to see what he made of himself on the land, as the only person likely to approve, in a creepy sort of way, might actually be Uncle Johnny. After he'd gotten over the horror of Jin running away to live with the humans, anyway.
No. To be human, to the best of his ability and with Kame's help. They lived every day through together, worked and played, quarrelled and made up. Jin learned, in time, to fill in the gaps in his knowledge: how to name the unknown, how to entertain his fellow humans with his talents, and how physical love was radically different when there were no tails involved.
Kame learned too. How to say 'no' to work, how to take time for himself without feeling guilty about being unproductive, and how much fun it was to teach Jin all sorts of things that had never seemed magical to Kame simply because they'd always been a part of his life. Watching Jin use the microwave for the first time, or talk to sponges, or even stare in rapt fascination at the moving hands of a clock - these were all experiences to be treasured, just as much as every kiss, every caress, every touch between them.
Jin had a whole new treasure trove now - one no one, not even his uncle, could take away from him. His memories were far more precious to him than all the possessions in the world; Kame was always eager to help him add to his collection, suggesting places that Jin had never even dreamed of going, or activities he hadn't known existed.
There was one thing Jin flatly refused to do, though, no matter how many times Kame tried to convince him that it was all right.
He still wouldn't eat seafood.