September Tears Part 4/9
Parts: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
“No, it’s my turn to take care of you, now,” Kame says with indignation. He wants to be the one with the responsibility for once, to be able to care for Jin without having to hold back. Now is his chance.
“Sorry, Kame. But that’s not going to happen. You’re the one who’s sick so you can just forget about it,” Jin says irritably, taking the bottle of shampoo from Kame’s tiny hand and placing it back on the counter. He will not let Kame bathe him.
Well, maybe he will.
But not today.
Jin feels ugly today.
Kame whines and shoves Jin futilely, not moving the latter an inch. He stomps his feet and retreats out of the bathroom. His hair is messier today than usual, Jin notes. After all the messy things they’d done the night before, Jin guesses that Kame would primp himself excessively this early morning, but it seems he hasn’t laid a finger on himself and is instead worried about Jin’s personal grooming.
Jin chuckles dryly.
When has Kame ever put someone else’s needs before his in his entire life?
An hour later, Jin is done showering and shaving and doing all his so-called manly routines and he is feeling great. Jin finds Kame in the guest room in the hidden darkness of the small, enclosed space. Jin recalls that Kame is mildly claustrophobic.
He’s about to sneak up behind Kame and scare him shitless then ask him what he is doing sitting and sulking so quietly in the dark, but something stops him. He is also about to tell Kame to go put on another sweater because the weather is acting up again and he might relapse with that fever if he doesn’t take better care of himself, but that doesn’t happen either.
Because as Jin gets closer, he realizes there’s something terribly wrong.
Kame is bent over an old photo album, the edges eaten away by moths and silverfish and it’s raising a gigantic army of dust bunnies into the air. Jin’s mouth is left gaping open as he bends over Kame and looks down at the other; Kame’s tears are dripping endlessly into the photographs in his hand. There are pictures of them together. Too long ago for either of them to recall when exactly the pictures were taken.
They looked happy.
They looked uncomplicated.
They looked like they hadn’t fucked up everything yet.
Jin did not intend for Kame to find that certain photo album.
“Akame forever?” Jin mumbles more to himself than to Kame, but that only makes Kame sob even harder.
So they hug and cry for a long time, until Kame sits up and looks Jin in the eye.
He says, “Jin, have you ever regretted wanting me? Have you ever regretted needing me?”
“Of course. Every second of everyday of my life I regret it. But it’s not like I can help it, Kazuya.” Jin says slowly in reply.
Kame doesn’t stop crying until he runs out of tears.
-
And that is when Jin realizes Kame doesn’t even know the truth yet.
They’re an ironic mess, Jin reassures himself.
Maybe, they will be okay.
-
The first day of the week when it doesn’t rain or snow, they decide to go for a drive. Kame starts the engine of his old battered up red Subaru while Jin sits in the shotgun and hums an unfamiliar tune-one that Kame’s never heard before. He hasn’t been updated with KAT-TUN things lately so maybe it’s a new single they just did or a new song for a performance coming up. Suddenly, Kame wants to take back everything, suddenly he wants to be back in KAT-TUN again, suddenly he wants to be best friends with Yamapi again and to get advice from Ueda. Suddenly, he wishes he’d never left, never been gone all these years. He’s never felt so freaking left out in his life. And that isn’t even the worse part; he knows it’s lame; it’s stupid to take everything back, to regret everything he’d accomplished. It’s just plain dumb to feel left out.
But that’s the pathetic truth. Kame wants to see Jin act stupid during the interviews and the shows and he wants to see him messing around with the costumes and the props when they do music videos and he wants to see Jin show off his hip-rolls. He wants to hear Jin sing and play that guitar of his back at the empty studio in Tokyo when everyone else had left and it was just him and Jin in the back, “rehearsing”. He misses Jin.
As the old car rolls out of the parking spot and onto the driveway, Kame sticks on his gigantic aviator glasses that he hasn’t worn for months and checks the rearview mirror, stepping on the gas as he gives Jin’s hand a squeeze. He misses him. A lot.
Without having to look at Kame, Jin just squeezes his hand back and sighs, his hum of the unknown song halting. A couple minutes later, he starts again humming “Care” instead.
Kame is glad the glasses are big and dark enough to hide his tears.
---
Jin gets home from the grocery store on the last day of their first week together (which means Kame will have to go back to work the day after that), he is humming again-Jin realizes that he’s been humming a lot lately around Kame. Singing…what does that mean again?
Oh yes.
Happiness. Jin is pretty sure it means happiness.
He smiles.
An hour later, after searching everywhere for Kame in the tiny apartment, he finally finds him. He’s hiding inside the pantry with his head in his hands, the old photo album laid out in a mess in front of him, there are torn pictures of Akame everywhere, ripped right down the middle where they would be standing or sitting beside each other. It stings, but Jin must understand.
He must, because when Kame looks up at him, eyes desperate and hopeless and sick with worry, they are filled with salty tears threatening to spill over, Jin doesn’t look one bit surprised.
Kame finally knows.
Jin’s face is composed, blank, and completely normal. Like he’s been expecting this.
And when Kame holds up the little white envelope and tosses it at Jin’s feet in anger and retribution - almost disgust, and the tears finally flood over, streaming down his face, Jin doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash.
He just sighs and looks up at the ceiling as if to ask God to stop time for a moment so he can put himself back together and prepare himself to deal with what’s to come. When Jin looks back down, he is expecting Kame to throw more things at him and yell, Why the fuck didn’t you tell me, you asshole?!
Instead, all Kames chokes out between broken, disjointed sobs is, “Do you have any more copies of the photos in this album?”
---
“How…?” is all Kame can manage.
Jin doesn’t answer.
He just keeps his focus on the ground, on the brown and white pattern of the cold tiles beneath his bare feet.
“WHY?!” Kame shrieks and looks up with fury at the ceiling as if he is shouting at God, indignant. “Fucking tell me why!”
Then, Jin watches with pain and heartache as Kame shoves Jin aside and storms into the bathroom, slamming the door shut with such force it makes the entire apartment shudder, as if it is telling Jin to make Kame calm the fuck down because it’s offended at being treated so roughly.
Jin stares at the locked white door at the end of the hallway and he blinks once, muttering, “I know, Kame, I know.”
---
Kame is having a mental breakdown. Or is it emotional? He can’t really recall the difference at the moment because he’s having some kind of breakdown. Everything’s a mess, Kame thinks angrily as he turns on the water and watches it splash out of the faucet and splatter on the bottom of the sink. Suddenly, everything is blurry and Kame’s mind spins-the painting on the wall and the shower curtains are starting to morph into one kaleidoscopic, a rainbow blur and Kame wants to scream but he can’t. His chest heaves heavily and a sharp pain strikes it, Kame clenches it and grimaces, the pain instantly shooting to his limbs. It gets worse. In the next three seconds, Kame’s breathing gets heavier and heavier until he is almost suffocating, his hands fly to his neck and he makes futile efforts to try to clear his throat - it feels like there’s something stuck in it. Kame gasps sharply. Then, not knowing what else he can do, he dunks his head in the half-filled sink with the frigid winter tap water flooding over his senses. At least the water helps to freeze his brain enough that he doesn’t have to think about all things he has to deal with when he pulls his head back out. He stays like that for a long time-three minutes, five. Maybe even ten. He’s not sure. But he doesn’t fucking care.
Not like he’s counting.
Not like he’s counting how long it will be until Jin is gone from him forever.
---
Jin doesn’t see Kame for three days. Kame tapes the sticky note on the outside of his door that says:
Jin, I have a bad case of the flu so I don’t want to contaminate you and make you sick too.
There’s frozen dinners in the freezer. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll be alright, don’t worry about me.
Kazu.
Jin decides that Kame is lying and he doesn’t believe him for one second. But he must know, he must understand because during those three days, Jin doesn’t try to bother him for one second, he never tries to knock on his door or barge in and bring him food. Somehow Jin knows this is serious. Not only that, he knows that Kame might never be over it. He might never be okay again.
It hurts. Of course it hurts. But Jin has taken months and months to prepare for this fork in the road of his life. He is ready for anything.
---
At least, Jin thought he was ready for anything.
But not this. He hasn’t prepared for this.
Kame comes finally crawls out of his rabbit hole of a room after three days and five hours of barricading himself. He looks like a raccoon, Jin thinks. Jin takes one look at Kame and lets out a startled shriek.
“Wh-what the fuck?!” Jin yelps.
Kame just stares at him. He reminds Jin of L from Death Note.
“Kame…” Jin begins warily, like he’s afraid to hear the answer.
“What?” Kame says blankly, just staring at Jin with a hollow expression. It hurts.
“What do you mean what?! … You’re wearing eyeliner for cryin’ out loud!” Jin blurts out in a rush of frenzy and panic. Well, this is not what he expected. Kame seriously looks like a raccoon. And Jin is scared.
“It’s not fucking eyeliner, you baka. These,” Kame jabs a finger sharply, indicating his eyes, “are the bags under my eyes.”
Jin can’t exactly understand what Kame means.
No way.
Those black things can’t possibly be part of someone’s face, can they?
Before Jin can utter another sound, Kame holds up a stack of papers at least an inch thick and tosses them down on the table with anguish and frustration. Like he’s disgusted with them. Jin watches as a couple flutter to the ground from the force at which they were thrown.
“What is this?” Jin says with a hint of interest as he bends down and picks up the two sheets that have managed to land on the floor.
Kame doesn’t even bother answering his question; instead, he takes off his glasses tiredly and demands a cup of anything-coffee, tea, whatever. Underneath the glasses, everything looks even worse than they first seemed. Kame’s eyes look like panda eyes and his face is red and blotchy-he looks unhealthily warm. Not only that, but the whites of his eyes are bloodshot and he looks like he’s ready to kill, if not for the overwhelming exhaustion and tiredness that makes his face look hollow and sunken. On top of that, the glasses must have been worn for three days straight because there are purple bruises on the sides of his nose from where they were placed on his face. The purple bruises look menacing, especially because they’re on Kame’s flawless, milky pale white skin.
Jin is taken aback. Kame looks like - to sum it up in one word: a zombie. If he starts demanding for brains any second now, Jin probably wouldn’t even be surprised.
Jin doesn’t dare tell him though because Kame would most likely literally maul him right then and there in the kitchen. It’s one in the morning and he’s sure neither of them feels up to a brawl on the freezing tiled floor.
Hastily, Jin pours Kame a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the pitcher since he’d just made himself a cup moments earlier. Kame’s mug is filled with dark and bitter water, no cream and too much sugar-just like he likes it.
Muttering muffled thanks, Kame begins to sip slowly from the mug, the steam from the beverage leaving droplets of moisture on his face. He burns his tongue but Kame doesn’t even notice. He’s spending too much energy trying to hide his emotional breakdown from Jin.
Kame continues to slurp lethargically from the mug and he watches Jin with a dull, dead expression. Jin flips through the first couple pages and he finally understands that this is Kame’s work. He’s a screenwriter after all. So all this time, Kame has simply been doing his work? For some reason, Jin doesn’t buy it.
As he scans through the first paragraphs on the second page, he starts chuckling involuntarily to himself. Kame rolls his eyes.
“What?” he demands.
Jin just shakes his head and clamps his mouth, trying hopelessly to suppress his laughter that’s getting harder and harder to control by the second.
“What?” Kame demands again, this time using a bit more force.
“Nothing…it’s just…two princes?”
“Why not,” Kame shrugs. Then he adds, “At least it’s not about two princesses.”
His reply only makes Jin giggle more obnoxiously, covering his face with the three sheets of paper.
“It sounds awfully like a badly-written fanfiction, Kazu. I think you know better than this,” Jin jokes.
Kame doesn’t. He scowls at Jin and lets the scalding liquid burn his tongue again.
“Well you should just be glad that writing this badly written fanfic about two gay princes saved my life. I’m sorry that it doesn’t have enough potential to save yours too,” Kame says.
Jin shuts up.
---
Kame is always full of unexpected surprises. Jin is reluctant to admit it though.
The so-called fanfic is good. Really, really freaking good. After the sixth page, Jin is completely sucked in, almost entranced with the piece.
Like he expected, the story’s base is Akame’s past. About how they are forbidden to love each other, forbidden to be together. It’s about regret, pain, happiness, and loss. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time-even if it is a love story about his own relationship, Jin can’t help but tear up. It’s so skillfully and magically woven together. And it’s only now that Jin realizes Kame’s talent at being a writer: the words just seem to write themselves. The story flows flawlessly together into one. There are twists and turns and drama and sad lines and Jin cries at every one of them.
He simply cannot stop himself-the images are too real in his head, the feelings too painful in his chest, the memories too vivid in his mind.
Kame is cruel for writing this. Cruel for making it so beautiful, so perfect, so painful. But most of all, he is cruel for writing about them.
---
It takes three more days for Jin to finish the script. When he’s done, he doesn’t look much better than Kame himself. His eyes have identical black bags under them, just a touch lighter than the color of Kame’s. As soon as Jin’s eyes fall upon the last word, he looks up at Kame, expectant.
“Where’s the ending?” he demands, holding his hand out.
Kame shrugs, gestures to Jin that his hands are empty.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Jin cries indignantly. “You let me read this story about us and you don’t intend on letting me finish reading it?!”
“Our story hasn’t ended yet, Jin…” Kame replies rationally, making him sound like he’s talking about the most obvious thing in the world.
Jin finds that he has no reply to that, so instead, he changes the subject and says, “Is your flu gone yet?”
“I’m not sure, I still feel really out of it,” Kame replies and makes a fake coughing noise for effect. Jin chuckles dryly.
Before Kame can change the subject and start talking about how Tylenol doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, Jin stops him.
Since they’re already seated at the dining table having breakfast, Jin simply picks up the badly battered cream-colored envelope from a couple days ago and tosses it effortlessly on the table. The weight of the envelope makes a light thud on the mahogany surface.
“We need to talk,” Jin says quietly. He looks too serious.
Kame doesn’t say anything. He just stares at his oatmeal like it’s the most interesting this in the world.
“Kazu, please look at me,” Jin pleads.
“What do you want?” Kame groans with frustration. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He doesn’t want to at all. He knows that if they start with even one word, he will explode. He will have another breakdown in front of Jin in the goddamn kitchen and he will never be able to look at oatmeal again for the rest of his life without crying.
“You know what I want,” Jin replies. He’s actually being the reasonable one and taking this whole ‘talk’ thing seriously.
“No, not really.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Nope.”
“Kame.”
“What.”
“Listen to me…”
“I’m listening.”
“What Junno said in the letter isn’t completely true-“
“Fuck you! That’s bullshit! We both know it’s all freaking true so don’t you dare lie to me, Akanishi Jin. How long did you plan on hiding it from me anyway?”
“Kazuya, let me finish!”
“Fine, go ahead,” Kame says in a cold tone, slouching back down on his seat. He has never been so scared and angry at the same time in his life.
“He said that I have two months left in the letter, but that’s not true. I have to go get another thorough check up before we can be sure.”
Kame laughs a bitter laugh that makes Jin’s blood run cold. “Then does that mean you have one month left? It does, doesn’t it? Well it’s already been two weeks so are you telling me you have two more weeks left to live?” Kame’s tone is overwhelmingly sarcastic.
“No, that’s not what I-“
“LALALALALA I don’t want to hear it anymore. I don’t want to know, Jin, I’d rather just wake up one day to find you dead one random morning in December and you’ll look like you’re just sleeping peacefully and I won’t cry because I’d be too shocked to. I don’t want to have a fucking countdown to your death day, Jin. Trust me, I don’t.”
“Fine, but just because you’re going to be a big stupid child about this doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk about it. You’re always like that, Kame. You’re always running away from the things that make you uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why you can never solve your problems. You never talk about them to anyone so how the hell are they supposed to help you?” Jin blurts out all in one go.
Kame realizes it’s too late to take it back now, so he just let’s whatever come to his head fall out of his mouth unfiltered, “Well I’m sorry I’m a big mess of issues. I’m sorry I’m always such a fucking burden on you. I’m sorry I irritate you. But I hate that. I hate the way you treat me like a child, like I can never be my own person. I hate being pitied and looked down on by you.”
“Maybe I treat you like a child because you fucking act like one, Kame,” Jin says impulsively, letting all his venom and undirected anger to be thrown into Kame’s face.
“Yeah? Well I’m fucking sorry I love you!” Kame screams at last and smashes the bowl of oatmeal on the floor. The pieces of ceramic crash onto the floor and break into a couple large pieces and a bunch of small ones.
Kame’s mouth is pulled into a tight, angry line and he’s biting on his lower lip, causing it to start bleeding and leaving teeth marks on it. Jin isn’t any better, there is a pool of tears already forming under his eyes and they’ll flow over any second now as soon as he blinks. But he doesn’t want to be the one to let up first so he doesn’t blink. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t blink until it starts to burn and itch in pain and rash.
Kame doesn’t even see Jin cry because he’s stomping across the room. As soon as he reaches the doorknob of the front door, he swings it open and a gust of frozen snow bites as his cheeks. Kame doesn’t care.
He doesn’t feel it.
He doesn’t feel anything.
Maybe he doesn’t want to.
Just as Kame walks out of the door, he hears Jin mutter, “I’m sorry I have kidney cancer and that I have less than a year to live.”
Kame shuts himself up in the car, the heater on full blast and he feels so stupid and dumb but he can’t stop it so he cries anyways. Cries because he can’t believe this is happening to him. To them. Cries because it’s so not fucking fair. Cries because they don’t deserve this kind of pain. Cries for them. Cries for himself, cries for Jin.
He’s too afraid and cowardly to go back in and apologize. It makes Kame think that perhaps Jin is right. Too right.
All he has to do is go back in there, look Jin in the eye, and say, Jin, I’m sorry, but I lied. I fucking love you and no matter what happens to us, I’ll never be sorry for it.
---
Half an hour later, there’s a knock on the car window and Kame opens the door, surprised to see Jin with a sad smile on his face.
He’s holding a familiar box. Kame lets him in and more tears spill helplessly out when he sees that Jin has spent the past thirty minutes or so taping the pictures of chibi Akame back together that Kame tore up the other day.
“We’re not as good as we were in the past, but I still fixed us. See? We’re okay,” Jin says softly and Kame knows Jin isn’t talking about the photographs. He’s not talking about the photographs at all.
And then they cry together. For how long, Kame doesn’t keep track. They cry for everything that’s gone wrong, for everything that’s going wrong, for each other. Lastly, they cry because they love each other this much even though they never wanted to, never intended to; cry because it happened.
This time, Kame isn’t afraid to say, “I’m not sorry I love you.”
---
The next couple of days pass by slowly, peacefully, and Kame is happy that they have a dreamlike quality to them. Spending time with Jin is less painful this way-when he isn’t constantly thinking of losing him. The third day Kame decides to stay home again and write his scripts on his laptop instead of going to the office, he suggests something to Jin that Jin has not expected.
“We should go get your check up today. Before it gets too crowded, we should go early,” Kame says with a calm, blank expression as he sticks a USB into the side of his black Toshiba laptop. When he’s done, he glances up curiously at Jin, eyes innocent and blinking up at the latter.
Jin sighs as he smiles, looking down at his blue striped sneakers and fingering the lone key in his right back pocket.
“Sure, Kame, why not? Let’s go today,” he says with a small grin.
Kame nods in agreement, stuffing the laptop in its case and swinging the bag over his back. Jin slides over to Kame and helps him get up, their hands clutching onto each other for a couple seconds and Kame feels his body jitter with a flush of delight that falters as soon as Jin lets go. So he replaces the sudden emptiness in his hand by grabbing his steaming mug of coffee from the dining table before they head over to the door.
As they walk over to the door, Kame asks Jin to hold the laptop for him so he can get his car keys out and they can get the heck out of here and enjoy the fresh winter air for a couple hours before a blizzard attacks them again.
They sit in the car silently for a couple minutes, waiting impatiently for the engine to warm up. It’s been a cold night. The energy and restlessness in Kame’s bloodstream from the coffee and the sugar rush makes him shake and tremble constantly, his fingers nervously tapping the driving wheel.
Suddenly, Jin’s warm, comforting hand cups over his right one firmly. Kame’s heart dives into his stomach and he glances at Jin, confused, but not coherent as electricity buzzes through his already erratic nerves.
“Kazu, you can hold my hand if you’re scared,” Jin whispers in the midst of the rumbling engine.
---
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