fic: REMister (2/2)
Jin lies on his bed in the dark and feels relaxation hitting him. He’s right there at the border - awake but asleep. Neither, but both. It’s a confusing state and he tries to lure himself deeper in. Dwell in the dream, let it become more stable.
Everything feels oddly weird. Unreal. Sort of dark, even though the scenery is still the same. His bedroom is still around him, all his belonging scattered around messily.
Reality check. He needs a reality check. He pinches his nose and tries to breathe through and - he succeeds. Succession.
He congratulates himself happily for a successful WILD and sits up. He lightens up the room with sunlight and walks from his bedroom outside to a pretty dream forest. It reminds him of the forest in Tim Burton’s adaption of Alice in Wonderland with enormous, colourful mushrooms and odd mist. That could be because he finds it pretty cool.
He climbs on a mushroom and sighs, looking around. The mist tickles his naked ankles (he’s barefoot) and feels a bit moist on his skin. It’s a bit chilly and he pulls his hands inside the sleeves of his pink hoodie.
“Jin,” a voice says behind him gently, making him quickly turn around. His lips are pursed and all of sudden he feels very quiet and unsure of himself. He merely nods and turns his gaze back down as Kame approaches him and sits down by his side.
After a moment of silence Kame rests his head on his shoulder and Jin starts feeling a bit better again. Kame… does want to make up with him. He smiles a bit and takes his hand in his, enjoying the warmth of Kame’s fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Kame sighs heavily and kisses his shoulder gently before he sits up better again. “About last time.”
“No, it’s okay,” Jin answers right away with a nod. “You thought I was being unreasonable. It isn’t what you want, right? Or maybe it is but it can’t go like that or something. I wouldn’t know. What’s your name?”
Kame snickers a bit and lies down on the soft mushroom cap, resting his head on Jin’s lap. His knees are bent and he plays with the curls of Jin’s hair, making him feel sort of awkward. It’s still nice, though.
“…I don’t want you to find me, Jin,” Kame finally breaks the eerie silence with a heavy sigh. He looks exhausted and depressed, which is something Jin doesn’t quite remember seeing before. Most of the time Kame’s really happy. He doesn’t really like this side of him. It makes his chest ache.
“Why?” he tries to question, bending over to press a small kiss on Kame’s forehead. To get closer. There’s this magnetism between them that he can’t quite explain in words, but he feels it nonetheless. It’s undeniable. “Please tell me.”
“Jin, you have to understand that I do like you in here,” Kame groans and pushes him away for a bit, his palm pressed against Jin’s chest. “That’s exactly why.”
“Are you married?” Jin sniffs, barely holding the pieces of his heart together. “Dating? Closet gay?”
“Jin, we can be anything in here,” Kame laughs nervously. “We can be anything. The world is open, we can be anywhere, do anything. This world… it’s a dream,” Kame tries to argue his point. Jin doesn’t quite get it, though.
“Are you afraid I won’t be like this in real life?”
“No,” Kame shakes his head. “I’m saying I’m not like this in real life.”
“…Oh,” Jin nods miserably. “But it’s okay. How are you different?”
Kame grants him a tired smile and brushes his lips with a thumb. Jin kisses his palm and snuggles his arm.
“I don’t want to tell you,” Kame answers quietly, but his voice is gentle. Loving. “This is a dream, right? This isn’t my reality. But what I know is that I’d only weigh you down,” he sighs heavily. “It’s the truth.”
“I can take it,” Jin gulps desperately and squeezes Kame’s hand reassuringly. “I can take anything. I swear to god, Kame. I’m stupid like that.”
Kame scoffs and rolls his eyes but it does make him smile a little.
“You know… I’m not your projection,” Kame suddenly notes and Jin stares at him in confusion, trying to let the words sink in. “There are three types of sleepers. Most people fall into the category of dreamers - they just see dreams, you know. It all happens in their tired brains and imagination. But then… there are the creators and the guards.”
“Are you a guard?” Jin asks right away. “Sometimes it kind of feels as if you were babysitting me, you know.”
“Mm,” Kame admits with a nod. “Guards… can’t dream on their own. We don’t see dreams. But we can pick up universes that creators fill,” he tries to explain as simply as possible. “We can slip into them and take over them. Guards have a purpose, though,” Kame grimaces. “We’re keeping creators under control. Because you have no idea of your power and we can’t let you create just about anything, for the greater good. Wars and everything all because someone ‘felt like it’… It’s cruel. So we can take control and force the creators down towards normal dream state.”
“Am I a… creator?” Jin asks confusedly, furrowing his brow. “What the hell?”
“Only recently,” Kame nods. “Since you started lucid dreaming, most of your dreams go beyond ordinary dreams. You slip over the fence, leaving your mind and travelling to the first void to fill it with your out-bursting subconscious.”
“I’m not dangerous, am I?” Jin asks sadly, looking around the forest. Small and angry cats hiss and run quickly on the road below them, disappearing into the bushes. He hears the faint echo of crows croaking.
“You?” Kame laughs at him in genuine amusement. “Please tell me that was a joke.”
“WHY DO YOU FIND IT SO FUNNY!?” Jin cries, folding his arms angrily. “I don’t understand why everyone seems to be so keen on making fun of me!”
“Because of this, maybe?” Kame asks and taps Jin’s chest helpfully. “Your heart is too big. It’s just impossible for you,” he argues his point with an apologetic and gentle smile. “You only hurt people when you’re angry and then you apologize and try to make up for it. Or when your own interest overshadows theirs but… You don’t really mean that. You love harmony too much to be taken seriously as a bad guy.”
“I think my ego just got crumpled and died,” Jin mumbles through his pursed lips and Kame tickles his side gently, awakening his smile once again. “Ah, stop it!”
“Cut the self-pity then,” Kame commands him.
“Fine,” Jin scoffs, looking away grumpily. Kame starts playing with his hair again, calming him down quickly.
Jin helps Kame up and jumps down from the cap of the mushroom. He opens his arms wide in a welcoming manner and Kame follows his lead, landing in his arms. They start walking on the dim but straight street, looking up from amidst the trees that reach the sky so high they can’t make out their tops, never mind the night sky.
“I play on the streets,” Jin tells with a gentle voice as they walk hand in hand on the road. A group of bright red butterflies decide to pass them and Kame covers his face with a joyful smile. “With my friend. Pi. Yamashita Tomohisa. We play and sing. It’s a hobby,” he informs. “I also teach children to play the guitar. That’s more of a job. But I like children. So it’s a nice job. When they don’t start bullying me. Do you like children?”
Kame laughs and hooks their arms as they wander forward on the road, deeper into the darkness. Flowers stare at them and sing pretty songs around them in a language Jin doesn’t understand. It’s almost as if they’d be cocooning them.
“I live in -”
“I knew you had an ulterior motive,” Kame cuts him off with laughter and nudges his shoulder gently with his free hand. “Jin…”
“I’m still going to find you,” Jin informs stubbornly. “Stop being an ass about it!”
“Jin… don’t ruin my dream,” Kame asks gently and stops. He pulls Jin close and kisses him softly on the lips before resting his head between Jin’s ticklish collarbones. It’s okay, though. “My dream is beautiful in here.”
“I want to expand it,” Jin tries to argue desperately. “I don’t want to only dream about you.”
He catches a small ball of light in his hands and lays it gently on Kame’s empty palms, kissing him on the lips again. Kame feels soft against his touch. Kame always does.
“That’s strength,” he notes hoarsely and guides Kame’s hands to his chest, observes as the light gently sinks in. “I’ll give it to you. Strength. You just… hold on to it.”
“Idiot,” Kame chokes and turns around on his heels, stomping forward on the road. Jin runs after him but the roots of the trees grow and he finds himself tripping and falling to the ground.
“THAT HURT!”
“Stay,” Kame commands and then the roots grow further, making Jin wail until he suddenly finds himself sitting on an elegant wooden chair. The roots keep growing and snake around his arms until he’s hopelessly trapped where he is, only able to watch as Kame stretches before him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show you something I’ve lost,” Kame answers and his gaze is so serious it silences him. He merely nods hesitantly and decides to stop struggling since it isn’t getting him loose and Kame doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Unless he suddenly starts to sprint away, of course.
Then Kame’s legs start moving. Jin observes him curiously, watches him as he takes some stupid odd-looking steps that make him look like some whacko who’s stomping some worms or ants or something alike on the ground. Except that in this particular dream, ants and stuff could potentially prove to be much bigger. Not to mention fatally dangerous to anger. Yeah.
The realisation that Kame is dancing hits him later. It’s a bit difficult to understand since there isn’t any music, there’s nothing but Kame, dancing silently. He’s a good dancer. It’s almost as if he’d be telling a story with his movements. Occasionally he fists the fabric over his chest in his hand and moves slower, as if lost in time. He looks a bit dizzy, but Jin assumes it’s just an act, because Kame can transform into fiery and burning fury in the matter of seconds.
In the end, Kame just sits on the ground miserably with his knees bent. Jin isn’t really sure if he should say something. He probably should.
“You’re good.”
“Was,” Kame answers quickly, shaking his head and biting his knuckles. “I was good.”
“…Okay,” Jin nods and realises that his own creator powers work on the branches imprisoning him. They shrivel at his touch and break so that he gets to leave his cage without as much as a scratch. He kneels down next to Kame and pulls him in a gentle hug.
“It’s cruel,” Kame sniffs against his shoulder. He isn’t crying. Kame doesn’t really cry. But he feels weak and fragile in his arms, almost as if he’d really want to cry but wouldn’t be able to. “Losing something you love. Losing what you love the most.”
“…I guess,” Jin agrees and rubs his back gently. He focuses on the feeling of their hearts beating together, chests pressed so close it feels almost as if they’d be reaching for each other. Then again, they probably aren’t - he’s just a corny softy when it comes to love, head creating lovely little metaphors for the feelings he doesn’t have words for.
“That’s why you can’t look for me anymore, Jin,” Kame tells him quietly and Jin clenches his teeth hard. “…You have to stop looking for me. I don’t want you to destroy my best dream, Jin.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You can’t promise anything,” Kame smiles at him sadly and caresses his jaw, lips pressed gently under his ear. “And I don’t want to take the chances. I’m not ready to take the chance.”
“I will most definitely find you and prove you wrong,” Jin cries to Kame’s nape. “And you’re going to look at me straight in the face once I do.”
Kame’s hold of him tightens and, caught up in the moment, Jin knows that no matter what he’ll never give up on his difficult quest.
-
Jin’s tired. Exhausted, even. He wanders on the streets, trying his hardest to see the face of every single person who passes him by. He checks the people in all of his favourite cafés, bars and restaurants and curses when he tries to do the same in the biggest shopping centre he can find, knowing it’s probably all for nothing anyway because there’s just no way he can. He’s just sort of hoping to get lucky. He does get lucky quite often when he thinks about it. His mother used to call him a wonder child.
“Maybe you should look for him where you think he would be,” Pi’s voice mutters to him through his mobile phone’s speaker. Jin gets distracted by a cool-looking shirt with a skull print on the rack and examines it briefly, trying to keep track of his surroundings while he’s at it.
“He could be shopping. Everyone has to shop every now and then!” he objects. “Kame looks cool.”
“Yes, Jin. Of course,” Pi mocks him from the other end of the line. Jin listens to the heavy exhale and forgets about the shirt, heading out. Pi obviously doesn’t think it’s that good of an idea and Pi’s the smart one. Or at least it feels like that quite often. Less now that they aren’t drunk, of course, but even though he dislikes admitting it out loud, Pi sort of is the one with the brains. “Can’t you think of anything he’d like?”
“Well, he likes dancing, I think,” Jin tries to think back to his old dream. He sort of remembers it. In fragments a bit, but still. He gets the point. “He said he used to dance. But he can’t dance anymore so it’s probably not a very useful hint…”
“Yeah, probably not,” Pi sighs. “But it can’t hurt to check, right? Maybe you should try to search for him through the show business area or something,” his friend helpfully suggests. Pi’s pretty good at guiding. “Check some arenas. Or their surroundings, anyway.”
“You’re the best, Pi. You’re totally the best,” Jin swears and smooches at his phone. “I’ll make this up to you!”
“Let’s play outside someday again,” Pi suggests softly. “I feel like this Kame is kicking me out of your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Jin scoffs. “I’m still on the phone with you, am I not? You goldfish-brained idiot.”
“Bakanishi.”
“Fish-lips,” Jin answers smugly. “I’m hanging up.”
“Chicke-”
“Can’t hear yoooou~” Jin chimes happily as he cuts the call and slips his mobile back in the back pocket of his baggy jeans before he jogs down the escalators and back to the sunshine. He waits fifteen minutes for a bus next to an old lady who keeps flirting at him with alarming intimacy. When his ride arrives he’s happy to hop on the bus and escape the newest victim of his unmeant physical charms. It’s kind of freaky sometimes.
His luck doesn’t help him find his target, though. After midnight he finally faces the truth and calls a taxi to take him home. His first teaching lesson starts at three in the afternoon, but he wants to reserve some time for dreaming with Kame too. The longer the better.
-
Jin likes spending time with Kame at home. He purposefully creates his own apartment around them, even though it makes Kame a bit more quiet and withdrawn. It’s still basically his dream, and having Kame with him at home is his biggest dream, something he wants to live even if it’s artificial.
After some time his home starts changing, though. It starts with random small objects in their surroundings - Jin’s stack of CDs has some odd ballads and whatever he certainly can’t even imagine himself buying (hell, he hasn’t even heard of half of them!) and he discovers a baseball bat and gloves in their foyer, almost as if ready to get snatched away on the way out. Finally it gets so out of hands his bedroom walls change colour from white to deep red and more often than not his belongings disappear and get replaced by unfamiliar ones.
“It’s just a dream, right? Doesn’t matter,” Kame mumbles at him once as he munches on fresh strawberries on the kitchen table. “It’s not like you’ve really lost anything important.”
“You seem to be settling here nicely, though,” Jin notes, playing a short bit of melody with his guitar as Kame feeds him a strawberry. “It’ch khind o’ niche.”
“What?” Kame laughs, cheeks rising high. “Chew first, I can’t make sense of what you’re saying.”
Jin swallows and licks the juice from his lips obediently. “I said it’s kind of nice. You living here with me. It feels so much like home.”
“I guess so,” Kame sighs and starts braiding Jin’s hair in a bored manner. “You’re good at this creating thing now. Much better than you were when you started out. This is very detailed.”
“Thanks,” Jin blushes slightly, a stupid smile rising on his lips. “I wish I could just create you in my house when I’m awake.”
“Well, you can’t,” Kame presses tensely, pulling on his hair more than necessary. It makes Jin gasp and arch his neck back. He misses a few notes before he stops playing. “We’ve talked about this. It isn’t only your choice, you self-centred brat.”
“That hurts,” Jin sighs. “I’m an adult, you know. I’m at the perfect age for commitment -”
“Which is also something I’ve heard several times,” Kame cuts him off and pecks his ear gently. “Drop it.”
Jin sighs and continues playing. Kame takes the strawberry bowl on his lap and keeps munching at the “non-fattening food” as he seems to have named everything he eats.
“I think it’s a waste, though,” he continues quietly after a wordless moment. “Keeping apart when we’re so obviously in love. When you yearn so much to be here with me.”
Kame stays silent as he examines the strawberry in his hand. He doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t have a counter argument. Or maybe he has, but he doesn’t want to voice it out. He doesn’t want to break his dream with whatever reality he has up his sleeve.
“I’ll find you,” Jin assures him again with a smile. He continues playing his guitar again to the latest radio hit. “Or maybe one day you’ll come to me.”
“Maybe,” Kame answers with a disbelieving shrug as he bitterly digs his teeth into yet another strawberry.
They don’t really need to say much more.
-
“Jin, wake up!” Pi screams furiously and throws a pillow at him. “For god’s sake, you need to wake up!”
“It’s none of your goddamn business, Pi!” Jin roars back. Pi laughs in disbelief and shakes his head.
He’s just worried, Jin knows. Hell, he knows he’d be furious would the roles be the other way around. But the problem is that Pi doesn’t understand, he can’t possibly understand. Pi can’t understand the seriousness of his need.
“He’s a dream,” Pi cries out and wrestles him on the bed. “You need to let go, Jin! Stop doing this to yourself!”
“Kame is real, he told me!” Jin tries to defend himself desperately. Pi attacks his nightstand and even though Jin puts up an aggressive fight to stop his friend, Pi backs away with his precious dream diary in his hands. Jin shakes his head furiously, extending his hand in desperation.
“Pi, please. Please. I’m begging you, just please!” he hyperventilates in panic. “Don’t do anything to it. Please give it back to me. You can’t do this. You can’t.”
“Listen to yourself,” Pi begs him. “You don’t know where the line goes anymore. Between reality and dream. You’ve lost it. This is entirely my fault. I should’ve stopped you. I shouldn’t have ever introduced you to this, you’re too naïve for this,” he laughs, but there’s no joy in his laughter. Only hollow guilt. “This isn’t healthy anymore, Jin.”
“You’ve supported me,” Jin wails, hugging one of his turtle plushies anxiously. “Why are you so against it all of sudden!?”
“Jin, you have to let go,” Pi pleads again. “Look around! Look at what you’re doing to yourself over this!”
“I’m not -!”
“You hurt yourself if you fail to produce a lucid dream,” Pi laughs madly. “You punish yourself like it’s a crime. You do all this crazy stuff and you sleep so much. Look in the mirror, you’re exhausted! You don’t hang out with us anymore late until night, this is… And he doesn’t even exist!”
“HE DOES, HE JUST -!”
“No, Jin,” Pi tells him quietly and shakes his head, looking at him. “…It’s gone too far. I’m… I’m taking this,” he sniffs. “I can’t make you stop. But… I might have to. I’ll get help for you if you don’t let me help you.”
“But he exists, Pi,” Jin tries to assure him with a broken voice. “He exists.”
“Yet he doesn’t even want to be with you,” Pi croaks back at him. “…You need to face the facts, Jin, and come back to reality. You have to stop dreaming.”
When Pi turns around on his heels and leaves with Jin’s memories of Kame, he cries. Only then does he start thinking that maybe he actually is messed up.
If it is so, he’s sure he’s messed up beyond repair. The love refuses to leave him.
-
He stops. Without a word, he stops.
Pi’s always been the smart one, he’s always been the rational one with the brains. If Pi thinks he’s losing his mind, Pi must be right. It’s Pi’s job to keep him on the track.
Honestly speaking, he’s scared of going out of his mind. He’s afraid to the point of allowing his friend behind the wheel if it just guides him away from the alarming mess that has been polluting his brains nonstop for too many months.
So he stops. They burn his instruction papers and diary. Pi keeps hugging and soothing him the best he can while Jin suffers from the biggest heartbreak yet.
It’s not even funny how unreachable his dreams are sometimes.
Or how his own imagination can destroy him the way it can.
-
It’s a chilly autumn day. The leaves are turning into vibrant shades of orange and red. They cover the ground like an imperfect carpet Jin walks on, his fedora pulled over his eyes and an iPod Nano in his hand. He skips a few songs on shuffle before he slips it back in his pocket.
It’s then that the battery dies and he curses out loud. He stops and yanks out his earplugs, trying to wrestle the small electronic device back to life again but failing miserably. In the end he just stores it to the bottom of his jacket’s pocket before he continues his way with a frustrated sigh.
In order to calm himself down, he takes in the peaceful scenario around him, peeking from under the shadows his hat casts over his face. He peers at the thin lines of clouds on the sky, feels the weak wind that makes the leaves in the trees tremble. An old couple walks silently somewhere behind him and Jin smiles to himself as he turns his eyes away. Wonders if one day he’ll meet a love like that.
Ahead of him are two men. They have their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and the other one tries to limp forward. He looks hurt so Jin grows worried and heads closer curiously to see if he can offer any help.
It doesn’t take him long to see the wheelchair that a tree had been covering from his previous line of sight. The young man looks exhausted and clings to his companion, face buried in his arm. Jin starts feeling awkward and almost turns around just to avoid walking into them before he sees the side profile of the man in pain, looking at his friend pleadingly.
He freezes. The old couple passes him by and he watches the man helping Kame sit in the wheelchair. Kame takes a few gulps of bottled tea and moans something with a distressed voice Jin can’t quite catch from so afar.
Jin makes a reality check. Thrice. No, he isn’t able to breathe. He’s definitely awake.
“Oh god,” he whimpers in horror as he sees the gangster-looking man start pushing Kame forward on the road. They chat something calmly when Jin forces his lead-like legs to move.
It’s just a familiar face, he tells himself. That’s all it is. A familiar face. There will be no recognition, because Pi is always right. It’s just a face he’s seen sometime in the past, someone he hasn’t even fully acknowledged. That’s everything. It’s not the person he spent months obsessively dreaming about.
“Kame?” he croaks and the man raises his head, eyes wide in horror. He looks at Jin like he’d be seeing a ghost and his knuckles turn white from squeezing the armrests of his wheelchair. His friend or whoever merely stares at Jin in honest, oblivious confusion.
Jin kneels down in front of the wheelchair, cutting their movement. Kame’s face goes blank as he tries to conceal his recognition.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re real,” Jin speaks feverishly, taking a strong hold of Kame’s familiar hands. They’re rough and callused but familiar. “I thought you… I thought..!”
“Who are you?”
“SHUT UP,” Jin snaps at the friend, feeling incredibly jealous all of sudden. Kame opens his mouth to object but Jin slaps his palm over his mouth to silence him.
To his dismay, it seems to piss Kame’s companion off. Big time. The man grabs a hold of the fabric stretching over his shoulders and yanks him up and away. He looks at him dangerously and takes a protective position before Kame.
“You might want to leave, stranger,” the man states furiously. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll punch your teeth in.”
Jin briefly considers his options. He tries to go through them desperately and reach Kame’s eyes but the man stares away stubbornly.
Jin goes on panic mode. He throws a punch at Kame’s friend to distract him, flips around him and starts pushing Kame’s wheelchair, stealing him away and making a run for it.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Kame panics and turns around to look at him, trying to wrestle his hands off the handles of his portable seat. “JIN, STOP IT!”
“NO!” Jin cries out frantically and looks over his shoulder, seeing Kame’s friend running behind them. He’s approaching dangerously fast. It sort of makes Jin see him as a bull seeing red - the bad thing about the image is probably that he’s the red veil in the bull fight, and the horns are sure as hell going to hurt.
Alright, maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
“Please tell your friend to let me be?!” he whimpers, making Kame roll his eyes.
“Stop first.”
“HE’S GOING TO MURDER ME!” Jin objects just as the man grabs his shoulder and stops them. He gets shoved to the ground and the man climbs on top of him, throwing a punch at his face. Jin sees stars, and it has nothing to do with night-time or dreams.
“Koki, stop!” Kame snaps quickly. “I know him.”
“You couldn’t tell that to me before?” the man groans somewhere above him. Jin blinks a few times to adjust his eyesight and see clearly again. “Kame, the man almost kidnapped you!”
“Just give us a second,” Kame asks. “He won’t take me anywhere. Right, Jin?”
“But I want to…” Jin mumbles stupidly from the ground. He hears Kame sigh as the man who’s apparently called Koki helps him back on his feet. The world gets a bit clearer now that it’s the right way around again. Jin sucks at his lips as he glares at the man. No engagement ring. That’s probably promising.
“Is he your boyfriend?” he slurs jealously. The man looks genuinely surprised and chuckles, rolling his eyes.
“Is he your fanboy?”
“A moment, please?” Kame asks his friend gently. “Koki… This is sort of private. Please give us a moment.”
”Okay,” Koki agrees. ”I’ll walk around a bit. I’ll be back in a while.”
“Thank you,” Kame smiles and nods at his friend before he starts hesitantly walking away, casting worrying glances over his shoulder. Jin has a feeling they aren’t going to leave his supervision at any point of his so called walk.
“Kame,” he croaks as he sits on the ground in front of Kame again. His heart is pounding like crazy and he sort of wants Kame to just pull him in and guide him to his lips, but he has a feeling it isn’t going to happen. It doesn’t stop his wild dreams, though. “I found you.”
“You weren’t supposed to look for me,” Kame sighs and his fingers find their way to his locks by nature. Jin smiles at the caress and presses his chin on Kame’s knee, desperate for intimacy.
It feels just like a dream.
“Can you… not on the knee?” Kame asks him with a strained expression and Jin quickly removes his head, standing up on his feet again. He feels sort of rejected before Kame takes his hand in his own again, caressing it apologetically. “Jin…”
“I really thought you weren’t real,” Jin whispers, squeezing Kame’s hand hard. He’s sort of childishly afraid it’ll just slip away. “…Pi made me stop. He said you weren’t real. He said it’s for the better. I didn’t know.”
“It’s over already, okay?” Kame tells him sadly and Jin feels his heart breaking. His lips tremble and he shakes his head furiously.
“Then I’ll just kidnap you!” he cries out desperately. “It continues now!”
“It never was,” Kame snaps at him. There’s hurt in his eyes, though. “Jin, look at me.”
Jin does. He furrows his brow concernedly as he takes in the sight before his eyes. Kame’s maybe slightly chubbier than the slender man in his sleep, but it’s not that big of a difference. He sort of likes it, actually.
He looks very sad, though. Beaten.
“I made a promise,” he mumbles, gaze averting. “I meant that promise.”
“I’m in a wheelchair,” Kame sighs and shakes his head. “I can’t walk, Jin. I have metal supporting my legs the short whiles I try to stand.”
“Are you paralyzed?” Jin asks concernedly, licking his lips. Kame shakes his head and bites his lip. He arches his neck and looks up at a tree. Jin follows his gaze apathetically and gets startled by a red and worn leaf landing on his face. Kame isn’t able to hold back a chuckle as he swipes it away in slight panic.
He’s missed Kame’s chuckles so much.
“My knees were broken,” Kame informs him. “And my right ankle. I got this part. This huge part. Lead,” he sighs and looks down at his hands on his lap. “It’s pretty heated there. Backstage. There are so many strong emotions, everyone’s trying so hard. There was a rumour I slept with the person responsible for casting,” he sighs and looks back up at Jin with tired eyes. “It’s probably needless to say that the person who formerly got the leads wasn’t exactly pleased.”
“S-someone did that to you?” Jin whimpers. His mouth feels dry and he has no idea what he should say - he doesn’t even know how long it’s been. It could be months, it could be years. Anything. He isn’t exactly an expert when it comes to broken bones, never having broken one himself even with the close calls.
“I’m pretty much a cripple now,” Kame shrugs. “Maybe one day. But not today, Jin,” he tells him and straightens Jin’s jacket, as if only to get something to do for his hands. “Today isn’t a good day.”
Jin rests his palm on Kame’s cheek and Kame hesitantly meets his gaze. Jin leans down and steals a soft kiss from the man, his previous love for the man rushing back to every cell of his body and taking over.
“I said I’d prove you wrong,” he smiles against the familiar lips. “It was a promise.”
“It was a long time ago,” Kame sighs contently against his lips. Jin feels the warm rush of air entering his mouth through his cracked lips and shivers. “In a dreamland.”
“Do you know what’s my biggest wish?” Jin asks him, fingers burying themselves in the soft locks of Kame’s brown hair. Kame shrugs and his breath on Jin’s face feels just a bit heavier.
He assumes that true love never really dies. It can only be forcefully smothered for a short period of time in the right surroundings, but when the beloved person walks back into the victim’s life, there’s no fighting it. He’s a goner.
“I wish my dream would be real,” he tells determinately.
Kame nods weakly and wraps his arms around Jin’s form. Jin hugs him back, even though it’s a little difficult. He’s a tall man and Kame sits down in a chair. There are all these imperfections but nothing matters enough.
“I can’t live with you,” Kame apologizes, his voice bitter and yearning. “You’re so full of life and naïve happiness. I’ll weigh you down.”
“No,” Jin objects and smiles against the young man’s ear. Kame’s hair softly tickles his nose, making him chuckle and jolt a bit. “I’ll be your feet. Just watch me, I’m pretty capable,” he chuckles and guides Kame’s hand on his arm. “Do you feel that? Hmm?”
Kame slaps him playfully and lets out a tearful smile. Jin feels like he can fall for it every time.
“And in our dreams,” he whispers in the man’s ear mischievously, “we can walk and run all we want.”
“As far as our legs carry us, huh?” Kame jokes with a sniff against his face. Jin nods in all seriousness and pecks his lips lightly again. “You won’t just let me off the leash, will you?”
Jin shakes his head with a smile and Kame caresses his hair. His wrist smells like a pleasant perfume. Not too strong, but fashionably masculine.
“You’re too corny, Jin,” Kame complains and looks away with a wide smile. Jin groans as an answer and hugs him tighter, almost climbing up on the young man’s lap, never mind the yelled ‘no’s. He only stops when the wheelchair creaks dangerously and Kame’s friend seems to start approaching from afar. There’s something really alarming about his over-protectiveness.
Kame laughs in his ear, sending jolts of pleasure running through his body.
They exchange phone numbers and part with a longing kiss that just isn’t enough. Jin doesn’t want to go. Not really. It doesn’t feel like Kame wants him to go either, but Koki doesn’t seem to be all too fond of him for the moment. It looks like they have some talking to do before he’ll be getting his chance.
Kame whispers to his ear a command to tail them for a few hours so that he can soften the ground before introducing them to each other. Jin mutters back darkly how Koki is an overprotective bastard who totally needs to chill out and start looking less scary if he wants to score any chicks with plump lips and boobs. Kame whacks him on the head before he waves a goodbye and Jin is left standing under the trees with an aching heart.
im gonna fucking kill u, u fish-brained bastard he texts Pi and laughs at the gorgeous sunshine all around him.
His heart beats in anticipation.
Everything feels oddly weird. Unreal. Sort of dark, even though the scenery is still the same. His bedroom is still around him, all his belonging scattered around messily.
Reality check. He needs a reality check. He pinches his nose and tries to breathe through and - he succeeds. Succession.
He congratulates himself happily for a successful WILD and sits up. He lightens up the room with sunlight and walks from his bedroom outside to a pretty dream forest. It reminds him of the forest in Tim Burton’s adaption of Alice in Wonderland with enormous, colourful mushrooms and odd mist. That could be because he finds it pretty cool.
He climbs on a mushroom and sighs, looking around. The mist tickles his naked ankles (he’s barefoot) and feels a bit moist on his skin. It’s a bit chilly and he pulls his hands inside the sleeves of his pink hoodie.
“Jin,” a voice says behind him gently, making him quickly turn around. His lips are pursed and all of sudden he feels very quiet and unsure of himself. He merely nods and turns his gaze back down as Kame approaches him and sits down by his side.
After a moment of silence Kame rests his head on his shoulder and Jin starts feeling a bit better again. Kame… does want to make up with him. He smiles a bit and takes his hand in his, enjoying the warmth of Kame’s fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Kame sighs heavily and kisses his shoulder gently before he sits up better again. “About last time.”
“No, it’s okay,” Jin answers right away with a nod. “You thought I was being unreasonable. It isn’t what you want, right? Or maybe it is but it can’t go like that or something. I wouldn’t know. What’s your name?”
Kame snickers a bit and lies down on the soft mushroom cap, resting his head on Jin’s lap. His knees are bent and he plays with the curls of Jin’s hair, making him feel sort of awkward. It’s still nice, though.
“…I don’t want you to find me, Jin,” Kame finally breaks the eerie silence with a heavy sigh. He looks exhausted and depressed, which is something Jin doesn’t quite remember seeing before. Most of the time Kame’s really happy. He doesn’t really like this side of him. It makes his chest ache.
“Why?” he tries to question, bending over to press a small kiss on Kame’s forehead. To get closer. There’s this magnetism between them that he can’t quite explain in words, but he feels it nonetheless. It’s undeniable. “Please tell me.”
“Jin, you have to understand that I do like you in here,” Kame groans and pushes him away for a bit, his palm pressed against Jin’s chest. “That’s exactly why.”
“Are you married?” Jin sniffs, barely holding the pieces of his heart together. “Dating? Closet gay?”
“Jin, we can be anything in here,” Kame laughs nervously. “We can be anything. The world is open, we can be anywhere, do anything. This world… it’s a dream,” Kame tries to argue his point. Jin doesn’t quite get it, though.
“Are you afraid I won’t be like this in real life?”
“No,” Kame shakes his head. “I’m saying I’m not like this in real life.”
“…Oh,” Jin nods miserably. “But it’s okay. How are you different?”
Kame grants him a tired smile and brushes his lips with a thumb. Jin kisses his palm and snuggles his arm.
“I don’t want to tell you,” Kame answers quietly, but his voice is gentle. Loving. “This is a dream, right? This isn’t my reality. But what I know is that I’d only weigh you down,” he sighs heavily. “It’s the truth.”
“I can take it,” Jin gulps desperately and squeezes Kame’s hand reassuringly. “I can take anything. I swear to god, Kame. I’m stupid like that.”
Kame scoffs and rolls his eyes but it does make him smile a little.
“You know… I’m not your projection,” Kame suddenly notes and Jin stares at him in confusion, trying to let the words sink in. “There are three types of sleepers. Most people fall into the category of dreamers - they just see dreams, you know. It all happens in their tired brains and imagination. But then… there are the creators and the guards.”
“Are you a guard?” Jin asks right away. “Sometimes it kind of feels as if you were babysitting me, you know.”
“Mm,” Kame admits with a nod. “Guards… can’t dream on their own. We don’t see dreams. But we can pick up universes that creators fill,” he tries to explain as simply as possible. “We can slip into them and take over them. Guards have a purpose, though,” Kame grimaces. “We’re keeping creators under control. Because you have no idea of your power and we can’t let you create just about anything, for the greater good. Wars and everything all because someone ‘felt like it’… It’s cruel. So we can take control and force the creators down towards normal dream state.”
“Am I a… creator?” Jin asks confusedly, furrowing his brow. “What the hell?”
“Only recently,” Kame nods. “Since you started lucid dreaming, most of your dreams go beyond ordinary dreams. You slip over the fence, leaving your mind and travelling to the first void to fill it with your out-bursting subconscious.”
“I’m not dangerous, am I?” Jin asks sadly, looking around the forest. Small and angry cats hiss and run quickly on the road below them, disappearing into the bushes. He hears the faint echo of crows croaking.
“You?” Kame laughs at him in genuine amusement. “Please tell me that was a joke.”
“WHY DO YOU FIND IT SO FUNNY!?” Jin cries, folding his arms angrily. “I don’t understand why everyone seems to be so keen on making fun of me!”
“Because of this, maybe?” Kame asks and taps Jin’s chest helpfully. “Your heart is too big. It’s just impossible for you,” he argues his point with an apologetic and gentle smile. “You only hurt people when you’re angry and then you apologize and try to make up for it. Or when your own interest overshadows theirs but… You don’t really mean that. You love harmony too much to be taken seriously as a bad guy.”
“I think my ego just got crumpled and died,” Jin mumbles through his pursed lips and Kame tickles his side gently, awakening his smile once again. “Ah, stop it!”
“Cut the self-pity then,” Kame commands him.
“Fine,” Jin scoffs, looking away grumpily. Kame starts playing with his hair again, calming him down quickly.
Jin helps Kame up and jumps down from the cap of the mushroom. He opens his arms wide in a welcoming manner and Kame follows his lead, landing in his arms. They start walking on the dim but straight street, looking up from amidst the trees that reach the sky so high they can’t make out their tops, never mind the night sky.
“I play on the streets,” Jin tells with a gentle voice as they walk hand in hand on the road. A group of bright red butterflies decide to pass them and Kame covers his face with a joyful smile. “With my friend. Pi. Yamashita Tomohisa. We play and sing. It’s a hobby,” he informs. “I also teach children to play the guitar. That’s more of a job. But I like children. So it’s a nice job. When they don’t start bullying me. Do you like children?”
Kame laughs and hooks their arms as they wander forward on the road, deeper into the darkness. Flowers stare at them and sing pretty songs around them in a language Jin doesn’t understand. It’s almost as if they’d be cocooning them.
“I live in -”
“I knew you had an ulterior motive,” Kame cuts him off with laughter and nudges his shoulder gently with his free hand. “Jin…”
“I’m still going to find you,” Jin informs stubbornly. “Stop being an ass about it!”
“Jin… don’t ruin my dream,” Kame asks gently and stops. He pulls Jin close and kisses him softly on the lips before resting his head between Jin’s ticklish collarbones. It’s okay, though. “My dream is beautiful in here.”
“I want to expand it,” Jin tries to argue desperately. “I don’t want to only dream about you.”
He catches a small ball of light in his hands and lays it gently on Kame’s empty palms, kissing him on the lips again. Kame feels soft against his touch. Kame always does.
“That’s strength,” he notes hoarsely and guides Kame’s hands to his chest, observes as the light gently sinks in. “I’ll give it to you. Strength. You just… hold on to it.”
“Idiot,” Kame chokes and turns around on his heels, stomping forward on the road. Jin runs after him but the roots of the trees grow and he finds himself tripping and falling to the ground.
“THAT HURT!”
“Stay,” Kame commands and then the roots grow further, making Jin wail until he suddenly finds himself sitting on an elegant wooden chair. The roots keep growing and snake around his arms until he’s hopelessly trapped where he is, only able to watch as Kame stretches before him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show you something I’ve lost,” Kame answers and his gaze is so serious it silences him. He merely nods hesitantly and decides to stop struggling since it isn’t getting him loose and Kame doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Unless he suddenly starts to sprint away, of course.
Then Kame’s legs start moving. Jin observes him curiously, watches him as he takes some stupid odd-looking steps that make him look like some whacko who’s stomping some worms or ants or something alike on the ground. Except that in this particular dream, ants and stuff could potentially prove to be much bigger. Not to mention fatally dangerous to anger. Yeah.
The realisation that Kame is dancing hits him later. It’s a bit difficult to understand since there isn’t any music, there’s nothing but Kame, dancing silently. He’s a good dancer. It’s almost as if he’d be telling a story with his movements. Occasionally he fists the fabric over his chest in his hand and moves slower, as if lost in time. He looks a bit dizzy, but Jin assumes it’s just an act, because Kame can transform into fiery and burning fury in the matter of seconds.
In the end, Kame just sits on the ground miserably with his knees bent. Jin isn’t really sure if he should say something. He probably should.
“You’re good.”
“Was,” Kame answers quickly, shaking his head and biting his knuckles. “I was good.”
“…Okay,” Jin nods and realises that his own creator powers work on the branches imprisoning him. They shrivel at his touch and break so that he gets to leave his cage without as much as a scratch. He kneels down next to Kame and pulls him in a gentle hug.
“It’s cruel,” Kame sniffs against his shoulder. He isn’t crying. Kame doesn’t really cry. But he feels weak and fragile in his arms, almost as if he’d really want to cry but wouldn’t be able to. “Losing something you love. Losing what you love the most.”
“…I guess,” Jin agrees and rubs his back gently. He focuses on the feeling of their hearts beating together, chests pressed so close it feels almost as if they’d be reaching for each other. Then again, they probably aren’t - he’s just a corny softy when it comes to love, head creating lovely little metaphors for the feelings he doesn’t have words for.
“That’s why you can’t look for me anymore, Jin,” Kame tells him quietly and Jin clenches his teeth hard. “…You have to stop looking for me. I don’t want you to destroy my best dream, Jin.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You can’t promise anything,” Kame smiles at him sadly and caresses his jaw, lips pressed gently under his ear. “And I don’t want to take the chances. I’m not ready to take the chance.”
“I will most definitely find you and prove you wrong,” Jin cries to Kame’s nape. “And you’re going to look at me straight in the face once I do.”
Kame’s hold of him tightens and, caught up in the moment, Jin knows that no matter what he’ll never give up on his difficult quest.
-
Jin’s tired. Exhausted, even. He wanders on the streets, trying his hardest to see the face of every single person who passes him by. He checks the people in all of his favourite cafés, bars and restaurants and curses when he tries to do the same in the biggest shopping centre he can find, knowing it’s probably all for nothing anyway because there’s just no way he can. He’s just sort of hoping to get lucky. He does get lucky quite often when he thinks about it. His mother used to call him a wonder child.
“Maybe you should look for him where you think he would be,” Pi’s voice mutters to him through his mobile phone’s speaker. Jin gets distracted by a cool-looking shirt with a skull print on the rack and examines it briefly, trying to keep track of his surroundings while he’s at it.
“He could be shopping. Everyone has to shop every now and then!” he objects. “Kame looks cool.”
“Yes, Jin. Of course,” Pi mocks him from the other end of the line. Jin listens to the heavy exhale and forgets about the shirt, heading out. Pi obviously doesn’t think it’s that good of an idea and Pi’s the smart one. Or at least it feels like that quite often. Less now that they aren’t drunk, of course, but even though he dislikes admitting it out loud, Pi sort of is the one with the brains. “Can’t you think of anything he’d like?”
“Well, he likes dancing, I think,” Jin tries to think back to his old dream. He sort of remembers it. In fragments a bit, but still. He gets the point. “He said he used to dance. But he can’t dance anymore so it’s probably not a very useful hint…”
“Yeah, probably not,” Pi sighs. “But it can’t hurt to check, right? Maybe you should try to search for him through the show business area or something,” his friend helpfully suggests. Pi’s pretty good at guiding. “Check some arenas. Or their surroundings, anyway.”
“You’re the best, Pi. You’re totally the best,” Jin swears and smooches at his phone. “I’ll make this up to you!”
“Let’s play outside someday again,” Pi suggests softly. “I feel like this Kame is kicking me out of your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Jin scoffs. “I’m still on the phone with you, am I not? You goldfish-brained idiot.”
“Bakanishi.”
“Fish-lips,” Jin answers smugly. “I’m hanging up.”
“Chicke-”
“Can’t hear yoooou~” Jin chimes happily as he cuts the call and slips his mobile back in the back pocket of his baggy jeans before he jogs down the escalators and back to the sunshine. He waits fifteen minutes for a bus next to an old lady who keeps flirting at him with alarming intimacy. When his ride arrives he’s happy to hop on the bus and escape the newest victim of his unmeant physical charms. It’s kind of freaky sometimes.
His luck doesn’t help him find his target, though. After midnight he finally faces the truth and calls a taxi to take him home. His first teaching lesson starts at three in the afternoon, but he wants to reserve some time for dreaming with Kame too. The longer the better.
-
Jin likes spending time with Kame at home. He purposefully creates his own apartment around them, even though it makes Kame a bit more quiet and withdrawn. It’s still basically his dream, and having Kame with him at home is his biggest dream, something he wants to live even if it’s artificial.
After some time his home starts changing, though. It starts with random small objects in their surroundings - Jin’s stack of CDs has some odd ballads and whatever he certainly can’t even imagine himself buying (hell, he hasn’t even heard of half of them!) and he discovers a baseball bat and gloves in their foyer, almost as if ready to get snatched away on the way out. Finally it gets so out of hands his bedroom walls change colour from white to deep red and more often than not his belongings disappear and get replaced by unfamiliar ones.
“It’s just a dream, right? Doesn’t matter,” Kame mumbles at him once as he munches on fresh strawberries on the kitchen table. “It’s not like you’ve really lost anything important.”
“You seem to be settling here nicely, though,” Jin notes, playing a short bit of melody with his guitar as Kame feeds him a strawberry. “It’ch khind o’ niche.”
“What?” Kame laughs, cheeks rising high. “Chew first, I can’t make sense of what you’re saying.”
Jin swallows and licks the juice from his lips obediently. “I said it’s kind of nice. You living here with me. It feels so much like home.”
“I guess so,” Kame sighs and starts braiding Jin’s hair in a bored manner. “You’re good at this creating thing now. Much better than you were when you started out. This is very detailed.”
“Thanks,” Jin blushes slightly, a stupid smile rising on his lips. “I wish I could just create you in my house when I’m awake.”
“Well, you can’t,” Kame presses tensely, pulling on his hair more than necessary. It makes Jin gasp and arch his neck back. He misses a few notes before he stops playing. “We’ve talked about this. It isn’t only your choice, you self-centred brat.”
“That hurts,” Jin sighs. “I’m an adult, you know. I’m at the perfect age for commitment -”
“Which is also something I’ve heard several times,” Kame cuts him off and pecks his ear gently. “Drop it.”
Jin sighs and continues playing. Kame takes the strawberry bowl on his lap and keeps munching at the “non-fattening food” as he seems to have named everything he eats.
“I think it’s a waste, though,” he continues quietly after a wordless moment. “Keeping apart when we’re so obviously in love. When you yearn so much to be here with me.”
Kame stays silent as he examines the strawberry in his hand. He doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t have a counter argument. Or maybe he has, but he doesn’t want to voice it out. He doesn’t want to break his dream with whatever reality he has up his sleeve.
“I’ll find you,” Jin assures him again with a smile. He continues playing his guitar again to the latest radio hit. “Or maybe one day you’ll come to me.”
“Maybe,” Kame answers with a disbelieving shrug as he bitterly digs his teeth into yet another strawberry.
They don’t really need to say much more.
-
“Jin, wake up!” Pi screams furiously and throws a pillow at him. “For god’s sake, you need to wake up!”
“It’s none of your goddamn business, Pi!” Jin roars back. Pi laughs in disbelief and shakes his head.
He’s just worried, Jin knows. Hell, he knows he’d be furious would the roles be the other way around. But the problem is that Pi doesn’t understand, he can’t possibly understand. Pi can’t understand the seriousness of his need.
“He’s a dream,” Pi cries out and wrestles him on the bed. “You need to let go, Jin! Stop doing this to yourself!”
“Kame is real, he told me!” Jin tries to defend himself desperately. Pi attacks his nightstand and even though Jin puts up an aggressive fight to stop his friend, Pi backs away with his precious dream diary in his hands. Jin shakes his head furiously, extending his hand in desperation.
“Pi, please. Please. I’m begging you, just please!” he hyperventilates in panic. “Don’t do anything to it. Please give it back to me. You can’t do this. You can’t.”
“Listen to yourself,” Pi begs him. “You don’t know where the line goes anymore. Between reality and dream. You’ve lost it. This is entirely my fault. I should’ve stopped you. I shouldn’t have ever introduced you to this, you’re too naïve for this,” he laughs, but there’s no joy in his laughter. Only hollow guilt. “This isn’t healthy anymore, Jin.”
“You’ve supported me,” Jin wails, hugging one of his turtle plushies anxiously. “Why are you so against it all of sudden!?”
“Jin, you have to let go,” Pi pleads again. “Look around! Look at what you’re doing to yourself over this!”
“I’m not -!”
“You hurt yourself if you fail to produce a lucid dream,” Pi laughs madly. “You punish yourself like it’s a crime. You do all this crazy stuff and you sleep so much. Look in the mirror, you’re exhausted! You don’t hang out with us anymore late until night, this is… And he doesn’t even exist!”
“HE DOES, HE JUST -!”
“No, Jin,” Pi tells him quietly and shakes his head, looking at him. “…It’s gone too far. I’m… I’m taking this,” he sniffs. “I can’t make you stop. But… I might have to. I’ll get help for you if you don’t let me help you.”
“But he exists, Pi,” Jin tries to assure him with a broken voice. “He exists.”
“Yet he doesn’t even want to be with you,” Pi croaks back at him. “…You need to face the facts, Jin, and come back to reality. You have to stop dreaming.”
When Pi turns around on his heels and leaves with Jin’s memories of Kame, he cries. Only then does he start thinking that maybe he actually is messed up.
If it is so, he’s sure he’s messed up beyond repair. The love refuses to leave him.
-
He stops. Without a word, he stops.
Pi’s always been the smart one, he’s always been the rational one with the brains. If Pi thinks he’s losing his mind, Pi must be right. It’s Pi’s job to keep him on the track.
Honestly speaking, he’s scared of going out of his mind. He’s afraid to the point of allowing his friend behind the wheel if it just guides him away from the alarming mess that has been polluting his brains nonstop for too many months.
So he stops. They burn his instruction papers and diary. Pi keeps hugging and soothing him the best he can while Jin suffers from the biggest heartbreak yet.
It’s not even funny how unreachable his dreams are sometimes.
Or how his own imagination can destroy him the way it can.
-
It’s a chilly autumn day. The leaves are turning into vibrant shades of orange and red. They cover the ground like an imperfect carpet Jin walks on, his fedora pulled over his eyes and an iPod Nano in his hand. He skips a few songs on shuffle before he slips it back in his pocket.
It’s then that the battery dies and he curses out loud. He stops and yanks out his earplugs, trying to wrestle the small electronic device back to life again but failing miserably. In the end he just stores it to the bottom of his jacket’s pocket before he continues his way with a frustrated sigh.
In order to calm himself down, he takes in the peaceful scenario around him, peeking from under the shadows his hat casts over his face. He peers at the thin lines of clouds on the sky, feels the weak wind that makes the leaves in the trees tremble. An old couple walks silently somewhere behind him and Jin smiles to himself as he turns his eyes away. Wonders if one day he’ll meet a love like that.
Ahead of him are two men. They have their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and the other one tries to limp forward. He looks hurt so Jin grows worried and heads closer curiously to see if he can offer any help.
It doesn’t take him long to see the wheelchair that a tree had been covering from his previous line of sight. The young man looks exhausted and clings to his companion, face buried in his arm. Jin starts feeling awkward and almost turns around just to avoid walking into them before he sees the side profile of the man in pain, looking at his friend pleadingly.
He freezes. The old couple passes him by and he watches the man helping Kame sit in the wheelchair. Kame takes a few gulps of bottled tea and moans something with a distressed voice Jin can’t quite catch from so afar.
Jin makes a reality check. Thrice. No, he isn’t able to breathe. He’s definitely awake.
“Oh god,” he whimpers in horror as he sees the gangster-looking man start pushing Kame forward on the road. They chat something calmly when Jin forces his lead-like legs to move.
It’s just a familiar face, he tells himself. That’s all it is. A familiar face. There will be no recognition, because Pi is always right. It’s just a face he’s seen sometime in the past, someone he hasn’t even fully acknowledged. That’s everything. It’s not the person he spent months obsessively dreaming about.
“Kame?” he croaks and the man raises his head, eyes wide in horror. He looks at Jin like he’d be seeing a ghost and his knuckles turn white from squeezing the armrests of his wheelchair. His friend or whoever merely stares at Jin in honest, oblivious confusion.
Jin kneels down in front of the wheelchair, cutting their movement. Kame’s face goes blank as he tries to conceal his recognition.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re real,” Jin speaks feverishly, taking a strong hold of Kame’s familiar hands. They’re rough and callused but familiar. “I thought you… I thought..!”
“Who are you?”
“SHUT UP,” Jin snaps at the friend, feeling incredibly jealous all of sudden. Kame opens his mouth to object but Jin slaps his palm over his mouth to silence him.
To his dismay, it seems to piss Kame’s companion off. Big time. The man grabs a hold of the fabric stretching over his shoulders and yanks him up and away. He looks at him dangerously and takes a protective position before Kame.
“You might want to leave, stranger,” the man states furiously. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll punch your teeth in.”
Jin briefly considers his options. He tries to go through them desperately and reach Kame’s eyes but the man stares away stubbornly.
Jin goes on panic mode. He throws a punch at Kame’s friend to distract him, flips around him and starts pushing Kame’s wheelchair, stealing him away and making a run for it.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Kame panics and turns around to look at him, trying to wrestle his hands off the handles of his portable seat. “JIN, STOP IT!”
“NO!” Jin cries out frantically and looks over his shoulder, seeing Kame’s friend running behind them. He’s approaching dangerously fast. It sort of makes Jin see him as a bull seeing red - the bad thing about the image is probably that he’s the red veil in the bull fight, and the horns are sure as hell going to hurt.
Alright, maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
“Please tell your friend to let me be?!” he whimpers, making Kame roll his eyes.
“Stop first.”
“HE’S GOING TO MURDER ME!” Jin objects just as the man grabs his shoulder and stops them. He gets shoved to the ground and the man climbs on top of him, throwing a punch at his face. Jin sees stars, and it has nothing to do with night-time or dreams.
“Koki, stop!” Kame snaps quickly. “I know him.”
“You couldn’t tell that to me before?” the man groans somewhere above him. Jin blinks a few times to adjust his eyesight and see clearly again. “Kame, the man almost kidnapped you!”
“Just give us a second,” Kame asks. “He won’t take me anywhere. Right, Jin?”
“But I want to…” Jin mumbles stupidly from the ground. He hears Kame sigh as the man who’s apparently called Koki helps him back on his feet. The world gets a bit clearer now that it’s the right way around again. Jin sucks at his lips as he glares at the man. No engagement ring. That’s probably promising.
“Is he your boyfriend?” he slurs jealously. The man looks genuinely surprised and chuckles, rolling his eyes.
“Is he your fanboy?”
“A moment, please?” Kame asks his friend gently. “Koki… This is sort of private. Please give us a moment.”
”Okay,” Koki agrees. ”I’ll walk around a bit. I’ll be back in a while.”
“Thank you,” Kame smiles and nods at his friend before he starts hesitantly walking away, casting worrying glances over his shoulder. Jin has a feeling they aren’t going to leave his supervision at any point of his so called walk.
“Kame,” he croaks as he sits on the ground in front of Kame again. His heart is pounding like crazy and he sort of wants Kame to just pull him in and guide him to his lips, but he has a feeling it isn’t going to happen. It doesn’t stop his wild dreams, though. “I found you.”
“You weren’t supposed to look for me,” Kame sighs and his fingers find their way to his locks by nature. Jin smiles at the caress and presses his chin on Kame’s knee, desperate for intimacy.
It feels just like a dream.
“Can you… not on the knee?” Kame asks him with a strained expression and Jin quickly removes his head, standing up on his feet again. He feels sort of rejected before Kame takes his hand in his own again, caressing it apologetically. “Jin…”
“I really thought you weren’t real,” Jin whispers, squeezing Kame’s hand hard. He’s sort of childishly afraid it’ll just slip away. “…Pi made me stop. He said you weren’t real. He said it’s for the better. I didn’t know.”
“It’s over already, okay?” Kame tells him sadly and Jin feels his heart breaking. His lips tremble and he shakes his head furiously.
“Then I’ll just kidnap you!” he cries out desperately. “It continues now!”
“It never was,” Kame snaps at him. There’s hurt in his eyes, though. “Jin, look at me.”
Jin does. He furrows his brow concernedly as he takes in the sight before his eyes. Kame’s maybe slightly chubbier than the slender man in his sleep, but it’s not that big of a difference. He sort of likes it, actually.
He looks very sad, though. Beaten.
“I made a promise,” he mumbles, gaze averting. “I meant that promise.”
“I’m in a wheelchair,” Kame sighs and shakes his head. “I can’t walk, Jin. I have metal supporting my legs the short whiles I try to stand.”
“Are you paralyzed?” Jin asks concernedly, licking his lips. Kame shakes his head and bites his lip. He arches his neck and looks up at a tree. Jin follows his gaze apathetically and gets startled by a red and worn leaf landing on his face. Kame isn’t able to hold back a chuckle as he swipes it away in slight panic.
He’s missed Kame’s chuckles so much.
“My knees were broken,” Kame informs him. “And my right ankle. I got this part. This huge part. Lead,” he sighs and looks down at his hands on his lap. “It’s pretty heated there. Backstage. There are so many strong emotions, everyone’s trying so hard. There was a rumour I slept with the person responsible for casting,” he sighs and looks back up at Jin with tired eyes. “It’s probably needless to say that the person who formerly got the leads wasn’t exactly pleased.”
“S-someone did that to you?” Jin whimpers. His mouth feels dry and he has no idea what he should say - he doesn’t even know how long it’s been. It could be months, it could be years. Anything. He isn’t exactly an expert when it comes to broken bones, never having broken one himself even with the close calls.
“I’m pretty much a cripple now,” Kame shrugs. “Maybe one day. But not today, Jin,” he tells him and straightens Jin’s jacket, as if only to get something to do for his hands. “Today isn’t a good day.”
Jin rests his palm on Kame’s cheek and Kame hesitantly meets his gaze. Jin leans down and steals a soft kiss from the man, his previous love for the man rushing back to every cell of his body and taking over.
“I said I’d prove you wrong,” he smiles against the familiar lips. “It was a promise.”
“It was a long time ago,” Kame sighs contently against his lips. Jin feels the warm rush of air entering his mouth through his cracked lips and shivers. “In a dreamland.”
“Do you know what’s my biggest wish?” Jin asks him, fingers burying themselves in the soft locks of Kame’s brown hair. Kame shrugs and his breath on Jin’s face feels just a bit heavier.
He assumes that true love never really dies. It can only be forcefully smothered for a short period of time in the right surroundings, but when the beloved person walks back into the victim’s life, there’s no fighting it. He’s a goner.
“I wish my dream would be real,” he tells determinately.
Kame nods weakly and wraps his arms around Jin’s form. Jin hugs him back, even though it’s a little difficult. He’s a tall man and Kame sits down in a chair. There are all these imperfections but nothing matters enough.
“I can’t live with you,” Kame apologizes, his voice bitter and yearning. “You’re so full of life and naïve happiness. I’ll weigh you down.”
“No,” Jin objects and smiles against the young man’s ear. Kame’s hair softly tickles his nose, making him chuckle and jolt a bit. “I’ll be your feet. Just watch me, I’m pretty capable,” he chuckles and guides Kame’s hand on his arm. “Do you feel that? Hmm?”
Kame slaps him playfully and lets out a tearful smile. Jin feels like he can fall for it every time.
“And in our dreams,” he whispers in the man’s ear mischievously, “we can walk and run all we want.”
“As far as our legs carry us, huh?” Kame jokes with a sniff against his face. Jin nods in all seriousness and pecks his lips lightly again. “You won’t just let me off the leash, will you?”
Jin shakes his head with a smile and Kame caresses his hair. His wrist smells like a pleasant perfume. Not too strong, but fashionably masculine.
“You’re too corny, Jin,” Kame complains and looks away with a wide smile. Jin groans as an answer and hugs him tighter, almost climbing up on the young man’s lap, never mind the yelled ‘no’s. He only stops when the wheelchair creaks dangerously and Kame’s friend seems to start approaching from afar. There’s something really alarming about his over-protectiveness.
Kame laughs in his ear, sending jolts of pleasure running through his body.
They exchange phone numbers and part with a longing kiss that just isn’t enough. Jin doesn’t want to go. Not really. It doesn’t feel like Kame wants him to go either, but Koki doesn’t seem to be all too fond of him for the moment. It looks like they have some talking to do before he’ll be getting his chance.
Kame whispers to his ear a command to tail them for a few hours so that he can soften the ground before introducing them to each other. Jin mutters back darkly how Koki is an overprotective bastard who totally needs to chill out and start looking less scary if he wants to score any chicks with plump lips and boobs. Kame whacks him on the head before he waves a goodbye and Jin is left standing under the trees with an aching heart.
im gonna fucking kill u, u fish-brained bastard he texts Pi and laughs at the gorgeous sunshine all around him.
His heart beats in anticipation.