[JE] [FAIRY] Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 2/2
Title: Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 2/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG for kissing and zombies (these two things are not related)
Genre: AU, twisted fairy tale, crack
Word count: 12,276 (in 2 parts only because of LJ's character limit)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 2/2
Entry to the final room was barred by another door made entirely of hair; not braided in intricate patterns as before, but composed of thick layers of tangled snarls, stiff and unyielding. Where the machete failed, the bicarb and shampoo solution succeeded, but Kame didn't fancy using the Bottle of Plenty for drink again. It was self-cleaning, in theory. In practice, the dragon he'd obtained it from had never tried it, the bottle being smaller than even his pinky claw. When the hair parted, falling away in sodden clumps, Kame ventured inside with a sense of triumph. If nothing else, he'd laid a few zombies to rest and had a damned good workout - and it had definitely been a change from his usual sort of quest, which is what he'd wanted all along.
The only thing that could've improved his day was to find the missing Prince Jin and Kame achieved this by stumbling over the man in question. He wasn't sure quite how he'd expected to find Jin - asleep, based on Ueda's suggestion - but sprawled face-down on the floor, a battered black fedora crumpled beneath his leg and a pair of sunglasses lying at his fingertips? That wasn't it. Kame had encountered a few enchanted sleepers before, and they'd always been neatly laid out on marble tables, or beds of rose petals, or at least glass coffins. Jin looked like he'd tripped over and fallen asleep on the spot.
Closer examination of the prince's body convinced Kame his theory was right on the money. The sunglasses, which were enormous, had a wickedly sharp point on the edge of the frame. Dried blood on the frame, the floor and Jin's fingertip suggested he'd pricked his finger on his own sunglasses - presumably when he clutched them to prevent them being smashed as he hit the floor after tripping over his hat. His mother hadn't mentioned in her letter that her son was a touch on the clumsy side.
Kame didn't let this colour his opinion of the prince, whose photo had scarcely done him justice. Once turned over, Jin really was extraordinarily beautiful, except for one thing.
His wavy brown hair, which had only reached his shoulders in the photo, was the source of all the hair pervading the castle and the area beyond. It was as if some demented hairdresser had given him extensions with a mind of their own. Even now, new hair coiled around Jin's neck and headed straight out the door in search of unwary travellers to trip.
It was time for a haircut. Kame set the sword down to remove the scissors from his first aid kit - using the machete was far too risky - and to his dismay, it began glowing green again. Nothing to do with the zombies this time, because the colour brightened the closer he got to the sunglasses. When he risked dangling the sunglasses from the tip of the blade and they caught fire, Kame thought he had the answer. It wasn't undead flesh that caused the sword's unusual reaction but necromantic magic. Blood on the sunglasses.
Jin had been cursed to be undone by his own accessories. Hats and sunglasses both counted. If his fate had been to trip on the hat, to make him prick his finger on the sunglasses, the blood could've been the trigger for the spell, if Ueda knew what he was talking about and Kame had to assume he did. The spell had sent Jin to sleep - obviously an enchanted sleep, because otherwise he'd have died long before the year was up - and from the looks of things, anyone else who'd died in the vicinity had risen as a zombie. Waking Jin might break the spell, or at least stop the hair growth.
But how did one wake a sleeping prince? Kame phoned Koki for advice, never having rescued anyone from enchanted sleep before, and he knew from sharing a cottage with Koki that his housemate knew a thing or two about waking people up. Some of his music, Kame was sure, could wake the dead, never mind the enchanted.
"I know this one," Koki assured him after hearing Kame wanted to wake an enchanted prince. "First you take the frog and get him blessed by-"
"Wait! What frog? I don't have a frog."
"You said you wanted to wake an enchanted prince - I figured you meant you wanted to turn him back to normal. Princes always get turned into frogs, and swans, and sometimes statues when they're too stupid to use the right dipper-"
Kame interrupted again before Koki could go off on a tangent. "This prince is actually asleep."
"Asleep?" Koki sounded horrified. "But I thought enchanted sleep was reserved for princesses. Are you sure this guy's a prince?"
Pretty though Jin was, Kame was fairly certain he was male. His mother had said so, and she ought to know. "He's a prince, and he's been asleep for about a year. Any suggestions?"
"Well...you could try the usual approach for waking sleeping princesses. Kissing him couldn't hurt, could it? He's asleep - if it doesn't work, he'll never know you did it."
If Kame was going to get anywhere near Jin, he'd have to set to work with the scissors first. "I'll try. How did it go with the Three Bears?"
"Let's just say they no longer have a strange blonde girl camping out in their house."
"You managed to get her out of there, huh?"
Koki coughed. "Uh, don't rush home on my account, okay?"
That made Kame laugh and he hung up; he could take a hint. It wouldn't be the first time either of them had brought work home with them. Of course if he didn't get a move on, he wouldn't be going anywhere in the near future. Cutting his way out of the castle again would be exhausting. Breaking the spell seemed a much better idea, and as for kissing Jin...that, Kame thought, would be far from onerous. The prince might've been asleep for a year but he appeared to be freshly preserved thanks to the magic holding him in stasis.
Kame started to cut away some of the excess hair, shearing it to the base of Jin's neck - though he did get a trifle carried away and began shaping his bangs, too, revealing a small beauty mark by Jin's right eye and soft, smooth skin. Wasted on a prince, Kame thought. He could've been a model, or an actor, or anything he wanted to be because one look at that face and anyone would be helpless.
Unsure how quickly regrowth would take place, Kame cut Jin's hair shorter than it had been in the photo, figuring he could always grow it back. Very short hair, like Koki's, would've looked ridiculous but this just looked nice, and Kame didn't do a bad job if he did say so himself. He was better with nails than hair, but Jin didn't appear to need a manicure and besides, Kame wasn't that well-equipped. The first aid kit was a necessity. Nail polish wasn't.
It was the first time Kame had ever tried to wake anyone from an enchanted sleep and he didn't know what to expect. Would it be instantaneous? How long did the kiss have to be? Should it be on the lips? Why weren't there any manuals for this sort of thing? (Not that Kame would've read the manual, but that was beside the point.)
The longer he beat around the bush, the more likely it was he'd be strangled by Jin's hair mid-kiss. There was nothing else to do but go for it. Kame knelt down, raised Jin up with a supporting arm around his back, and pressed their lips together in what he hoped wasn't too awkward a kiss (but with one participant unconscious it didn't have a whole lot of passion going for it).
He knew it had worked when Jin started kissing him back, eyes still closed, clearly not sure what was happening but happy to go with the flow anyway. When Kame broke it off the prince opened sleepy eyes and blinked at him.
And screamed. Kame dropped him like a hot potato.
"Oww..." Jin propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed the back of his head with his other hand. "It's not nice to kiss people then drop them."
"It's not nice to kiss people back and then try to deafen them," Kame retorted. He hoped his hearing would be all right; he hadn't expected such a high-pitched scream, especially now after hearing Jin's speaking voice, which was considerably lower and actually rather pleasant to listen to.
"And you shouldn't have been kissing me in the first place! I don't even know you." Jin hastily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then noticed the shambolic state of the room. "Is that...hair?"
"All hair, all yours," Kame said, but the hair was writhing, now; shrinking, retreating into itself, coiling into tight curls and vanishing altogether. When Kame peered out the window, the forest outside was also shrinking at a tremendous rate. A crash from behind made him turn his attention back to the room, where Jin was staring open-mouthed at the brand new hole in the roof.
"I don't mean to alarm you," Kame said, "but I think your hair was holding that up. I'd like to get out of here before anything else starts falling apart."
"I can't go out like this!" Jin touched a hand to his hair, now shy rather than irritated. "It's so short. And my hat and sunglasses..." He looked sadly at the remains of both on the floor.
"I think they tried to kill you."
"How can a pair of sunglasses try to kill me?"
"You know much about necromancy?"
Jin's face said he didn't have the first clue about necromancy and didn't care, either. He started to brush himself off - a year's worth of dust hadn't done his clothing any favours - and Kame remembered then about the bobble hat in his bag. He offered it to Jin. "Sorry about the hair; I couldn't have got anywhere near you if I hadn't cut it. If it bothers you that much, you can wear this."
The hat was a glorious dark purple, topped with an oversized pompom, and it made Jin look all of six years old. But he seemed happy with it. Kame hadn't believed, until then, that the sulky prince was genuinely capable of the brilliant smile he'd worn in the photograph.
"Thanks...uh..."
"Kame."
"Right." Jin nodded. "Thanks, Kame. Now could you please tell me what's going on?"
Another chunk of ceiling crashed to the floor, burying Kame's scissors forever, and he looked uneasily towards the door. It was a long way back down, and if the stairs collapsed... He stashed both sword and machete in his backpack, grabbed Jin by the hand and started dragging him to the exit. "Your mother sent me a letter..."
Getting down the stairs was much faster than going up, thanks to the lack of hair hazards, and Kame kept up his explanation as they ran. He occasionally had to shout over the sounds of destruction coming from all over the castle (he kept hoping none of it was from the front door), but he managed to get the story out, right down to his theory on how Jin had landed up sleeping for a year.
Jin didn't think much of the theory. "A year?" he scoffed, narrowly avoiding a collapsing wardrobe only because Kame yanked him out of its path. "I've only been in here five minutes."
Kame opted to waste a few precious seconds to show Jin the display on his cell phone, but Jin still wasn't convinced. "You could've rigged that."
"Sure, I could've, but why would I? You said yourself, we don't even know each other."
The prince didn't have an answer for that one and fell silent for a bit. Kame kept a careful eye on him; Jin might be technically awake but his year of sleep was still much in evidence in his sluggish, uncoordinated movements and slow reactions. Under no circumstances was Kame about to write back to Jin's mother and tell her he'd saved her son only to lose him down the gaping hole that had just opened up on the landing.
"Would you watch where you're going?" he snapped. He'd forgotten how much the "rescue" bit of rescues sucked. Getting there was the fun part.
"I'm trying!" To his credit, Jin did manage to dodge the falling beam that suddenly swung down from his left, though he overstepped the mark a bit and crashed into Kame.
Kame didn't usually object to lying down with good-looking men, but there was a big difference between deliberately going to bed with someone and having them fall on you, especially when you had your keys in your back pocket and ouch, that was going to be a nasty bruise in the morning. Jin didn't seem to be in any hurry to move, either, sprawled with his head pillowed nicely on Kame's chest. He yawned, gave Kame a sleepy half-smile, and closed his eyes.
Shouldn't Jin be waking up, not going back to sleep? Kame took him by the shoulders and shook him awake as gently as he could. "Hey. More running, less sleeping, okay? You can nap after we get out of this deathtrap."
"Sorry," Jin mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I'm a little tired."
"A year of sleep wasn't enough for you?"
"Another five minutes wouldn't kill me."
An ornate candlestick holder came crashing down from the wall, too close to Jin's leg for comfort. "It might," Kame said. "Let me see your hand for a second."
It took a minute for the request to register but Jin caught on, held out his left index finger for Kame's inspection. It was bleeding again, and Kame had left his first aid kit upstairs where it was probably buried by now. If the wound was still bleeding and Jin was still sleepy, that meant the spell...
Kame cursed under his breath and tore a strip off the end of his shirt. It would've looked a lot more impressive if it hadn't taken him three tries to do it but he got there in the end. "Hold still; I'm going to bandage this."
"You told me to keep moving," Jin pointed out, but he obeyed anyway, letting Kame take the finger first in his hands, then in his mouth. "Hey!"
Under other circumstances, it might've been more sensual. At the moment, however, Kame was only thinking of cleaning the wound, necromantic magic or no. He laved it with his tongue then swathed it in the torn cloth, tying it off with a flourish. The mini skulls on the fabric seemed horribly appropriate.
"I think the spell's still active," Kame said. "Which means if you fall asleep again, we're both in big trouble. This place is falling apart as it is but if your hair starts to grow again...oh."
"Oh?" Jin said nervously. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Uh...it's nothing." Kame figured it was best not to mention the zombies he hadn't bothered to decapitate, and how there might be more of them running around still. "But I think there might be a necromancer around here somewhere."
"How can the 'nothing' you didn't want to mention possibly be worse than that?"
"Depends. How do you feel about the undead?"
"Sorry I asked."
Jin yawned again, this one a real jaw-popper, and Kame took that as his cue to get them moving again before he had to wake the prince a second time. Not that he'd have objected but a crumbling castle that could potentially take them both down with it was hardly the most romantic of settings. They reached the front door without further incident, sustaining mere scratches en route - and since the front door was no door at all, as even the hair had disappeared, they waltzed straight through. (Not an actual waltz, of course, since Jin's coordination was shot and Kame made a point of not stopping to dance whenever he was fleeing for his life.)
They made it out just in time. Before they'd taken five steps from the door, the front wall began to cave in, which made getting as far away from it as possible their number one priority. If the wall collapsed the rest would follow and some of it was bound to fall out rather than in.
"We made it out!" Kame let them stop to catch their breath - probably a mistake, he thought, since Jin was liable to fall asleep if he stood still for more than five seconds, but a necessary one. It had been a very, very long day for Kame, and it was only going to get longer if he didn't find a way to nullify the spell for good.
Jin nudged him in the side, prodding him to turn around. "We weren't the only ones."
So much for Kame's secret hope that the remaining zombies would be crushed by the collapsing castle. There were too many to count, arrayed in a rough circle between them and freedom, undead and unhappy about it. Kame wanted to feel sorry for his fallen predecessors but it was impossible to even think of them as human anymore. They were walking corpses, animated by the forbidden practice of necromancy.
And, unhampered by trailing hair, they were much faster than before.
"This wasn't part of your rescue plan, was it?" Jin asked. "Us getting eaten by zombies."
Kame didn't dignify that with an answer. "Can you fight?"
"Yeah, but..." Jin hesitated, embarrassed, and mumbled, "I can't move well right now."
"Sorry, forgot." It was all up to Kame, then. He didn't relish the task ahead of him. "Stay behind me." He swung his backpack to the front, started scrabbling frantically for his magic sword.
"Look out!"
Kame looked up, saw the zombie all of three seconds before it took a bite out of his ear, and smashed an elbow into its stomach. There was no time. "Take the backpack and find my sword, okay?" He all but threw it at Jin. "I'll hold them off. Just don't fall asleep!"
"Who could sleep through this!" Jin yelled back, but he caught the bag and that was the last Kame saw before a trio of zombies set on him and there was no time to worry about whether or not Jin was managing to stay out of trouble.
It was fortunate for Kame that the undead, while relentless, untiring, and insensible to pain, were also stupid and apparently retained none of their former skills. It was like being back in high school, where, as the shortest guy in his class, Kame had learned a great deal about surviving attacks from moronic mobs - number one lesson being: whatever happens, don't let them get you on the ground or it's all over.
The first zombie went for Kame's neck - not to bite it, vampire-style, but to break it. Kame swallowed his disgust and caught one of the flailing arms, trying not to think about how flaccid the rotting flesh felt under the rags, pulling his assailant towards him for a fast knee between the legs. (It wasn't as if an undead guy really needed to have anything working down there.) Kame released the zombie just in time for him to fall flat on his face, where he impeded the process of his two pals for the five seconds it took them to figure out that they could simply walk on his fallen body.
The second one succumbed to a powerful right cross that left his head facing the wrong direction, and sent him walking towards the exit rather than towards Kame. As a technique for disposing of zombies Kame thought it so successful he tried it again on the third, but a hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and he fell short, suddenly yanked backwards to find a pair of excessively tall zombies looming over him. He couldn't get the momentum to turn so he hooked his leg around the right leg of the one next to him and drove it back, unbalancing the wretched creature and giving him enough room to jab his captor in the gut.
It seemed to Kame he followed the same pattern for hours. The zombies kept coming no matter how many times he knocked them down, and without physically tearing their heads off he couldn't stop them for good. He couldn't even see Jin, couldn't stop to wonder what had happened with the sword. His whole world comprised grey, rotting, diseased monsters with empty eyes and gaping mouths, all desperate for a piece of him and not in the fun way, either. Strike, duck, twist, crash; another one on the ground and Kame thanked his lucky stars it wasn't him.
But the next time, it was. One of them caught him off-balance, got him down on his side in a daze. The collective groaning rose in volume, took on an excited tone that might've meant "DINNER!!!" in any human language. It echoed in Kame's head, adding to the ringing in his ears from when he'd hit the ground. He wrapped an arm protectively over his head, expecting any moment to feel those sharp teeth sinking into his tender flesh, but the bite never came. The groaning disappeared and a fresh assault on his senses came in the form of the smell of burned meat.
Kame peeked out from under his arm. The zombies lay burning in a circle around him. Jin stood over them, sword in one hand and the Bottle of Plenty in the other, looking at the zombies with great disgust.
"Coffee," Jin said in response to Kame's unasked question, waving the Bottle of Plenty. "Industrial strength. Ghosts, zombies, anything like that scares the hell out of me. I don't dare fall asleep.
"Besides, you looked like you could use a hand."
He shot Kame a challenging grin, which Kame had no qualms about returning. Thank goodness Jin had recognised the Bottle of Plenty for what it was - and hadn't been poisoned by shampoo residue.
"Thanks for the rescue," Kame said, accepting the sword back. He was tempted to make a crack about being glad Jin could pull his own weight, but Jin's eyes brightened at the thanks and Kame didn't want to spoil the moment. The remaining zombies would do that for them soon enough.
"Is that a magic sword? I know I'm hot stuff, but bursting into flame..."
Kame rolled his eyes. "It's anti-necromancy, I think - which should be an advantage when I find the necromancer responsible for all this. But I want to get you out of here first, put you somewhere you can sit and swig coffee in safety."
"Not happening, Kame. I'm not going to hide away while you go hunting for new and exciting ways to get yourself killed."
"To save you," Kame pointed out. "And I'm getting paid. I can name my own price."
"Lot of good that'll do you when you're dead. No," Jin decided, "I'm coming with you." He pulled the machete free from the backpack, then tossed the bag back to Kame. "Where do you think a necromancer would hide out?"
Kame was starting to see why Jin had been alone in the castle. When the prince decided on something, he went straight off and did it, no messing around. It was, Kame thought, quite an appealing quality. He'd had worse questing partners before, one of them a guy who'd refused to make a move without consulting his horoscope and would never, under any circumstances, fight anything on a Wednesday. For a royal brat who'd been asleep for a year, Jin was acquitting himself remarkably well.
"I don't know, but I think we're going to have to do something about the rest of these guys before we find out!" Kame yelled as the remaining zombies descended on them. "Decapitate them if you can and don't let yourself get bitten!"
"I'm not a total novice!"
It had been a while since Kame had last fought back-to-back with anyone, much less a pretty-boy prince with a flesh-beslimed machete and dark, merciless eyes peeking out from beneath the brim of his purple bobble hat. One look was all Kame got before his attention was otherwise engaged but it was enough to tell him Jin could certainly focus when he had to. Kame's sword ignited the zombies at a touch; Jin hacked at the necks of those nearest him, occasionally making good use of his long legs to kick them where he wanted them. It was a messy, vicious brawl with Kame and Jin at its centre and when it ended, they were alone.
"Okay?" Kame panted.
Jin took another gulp of coffee before answering. "Yeah, but I think I'm going to have to burn my clothes when I get home."
"You and me both." Kame didn't even want to think about the state of his own attire - zombie ooze and denim didn't make for the best of friends. "Still feeling sleepy?"
"Like I've been awake for months."
"And the finger?"
"Still bleeding." Though Kame's neat bow had been wrecked during the chaos the bandage held, damp with fresh blood. "Good thing it's just a scratch; I don't think I'm about to bleed out from it."
Kame hoped this was the case, because the more blood Jin lost, the harder it was going to be for him to stay awake, and there was no way Kame could carry him and deal with a necromancer at the same time, especially if Jin's hair started growing again. At least there were no more dead adventurers left to kill. The castle's time as a tourist spot was history - pieces of building debris on the one hand, pieces of undead flesh on the other. Hardly picturesque.
"Let's check the outbuildings," Kame suggested, leading the way. "You did pretty well for yourself back there."
Jin shrugged it off but Kame could tell he was pleased. "I've never attacked anyone with a machete before but it's not like I've never been in a fight. I used to want to run off on quests all the time...until my tutors told me I couldn't because people with curses on them were supposed to be saved themselves, not go adventuring to save other people." Jin's sardonic tone told Kame exactly what he thought of that.
"You won't have the curse on you much longer."
They checked the remaining keeps, guardhouses and shrines, coming up empty on the necromancer front but finding a lingering handful of zombies who hadn't come out to play earlier - in some cases, because they'd been trapped by heavy falling objects. Over an hour and several decapitations later, there was only one place left to search.
"No." Jin shook his head, clearly trying not to laugh. "Can't possibly be in there. Not the tourist information office."
"I have it on good authority the necromancer responsible for those zombies has to be in the area, since they haven't strayed far from the compound." With a lack of any real knowledge about necromancy, Kame was willing to take Ueda's best guess as "good authority". "And we've searched everywhere else. Anyway, it should be the safest place in the world for a hideout - there haven't been any tourists here since you decided to come for a visit."
"You may have a point." Jin downed another mouthful of coffee for fortification before popping the Bottle of Plenty back in Kame's bag. "What's the plan?"
"I thought we could walk in and ask if they have any guidebooks."
"Right." Jin played along. "Maybe see if they have any of those foreign language tour tapes."
Kame caught his eye, checked for the twinkle to say Jin was joking. When he found Jin doing the same thing and both of them quickly turned away with secret smiles, Kame knew he'd be blushing and didn't much care if he was acting like a teenager with his first crush because he wasn't the only one. It had felt nice, fighting with Jin at his back. Felt right. Never mind that they were doing things in the wrong order, starting off with a kiss, following it up with introductions, and then getting to see each other in less than optimal condition on what could possibly be considered the most unusual first date ever - zombie-slaying.
And now necromancer-hunting. Anything else would have to wait until later, or the only place Jin would be seeing Kame would be in his dreams.
Weapons at the ready, they approached the tourist information office. It was a small building, far more modern than anything else in the compound, and made chiefly of glass. "That's definitely the one," Kame said grimly.
Jin picked it up too, which made Kame happy he didn't have to say anything. "The only building in the entire place that's still intact."
It was one thing to suspect; quite another to know. Kame held his sword before him, watched it begin to glow green as they neared the double doors. It was always the same right before he faced down the final enemy, always that slight flutter in his stomach, always that sharpening of his senses till he was aware of even a single blade of grass being blown by the wind. Those feelings wouldn't leave till the quest was over and they were half the reason he'd go in the first place. Jin's reasons, he could only imagine, but the prince was more than old enough - older than Kame, in fact - to make his own decisions and Kame wasn't about to insist he left for his own good. Every professional adventurer had to start somewhere.
But damnit, this was a bad place to start. Night was well on its way and the moment Kame pushed open the door to the office, he knew something was wrong. Something other than that they were hunting down a creature whose power came from death itself. Appropriately, the air was cold, still and silent as a tomb. Kame didn't dare break the silence. One word might tip the balance, shatter the glass. He could sense Jin tensing up beside him, knew Jin's knuckles would be white around the hilt of the machete.
Nothing out front. They passed racks of dusty maps and forgotten flyers, crept past the abandoned desk with its empty chairs and an old jar of sweets, down to its last lonely lollipop. Kame heard Jin's poor attempt at suppressing a yawn and walked faster, into the dark, windowless back office where the only light was the sword's eerie green glow.
The lack of light didn't matter: there wasn't much to see except the dead fairy on the couch.
A gasp escaped Kame's lips before he could even think about keeping silent; Jin echoed it, adding a "What the hell is that?" for colour. Kame could've told him, if he'd had the words. Ueda's rumours about non-human necromancers were rumours no more. The fairy couldn't be mistaken for anything else, not with the giant black wings draped around her shoulders. Her face, bone-white and angular, was small enough to fit in Kame's hand. She didn't look alive...
...But then, she didn't appear to be all the way dead, either. Shallow, weak breaths propelled her tiny lungs, sent a rattle up her narrow throat.
Kame heard Jin yawn behind him and jumped near out of his skin when the fairy's eyes fluttered open. He couldn't look at them; deep, dark wells that would suck him in, let him flounder till he drowned. He looked elsewhere instead, at the pale hand with its nightclub stamp embedded into the skin for all time, at the clawed fingernails and the marks they'd left inside the palms during the death throes. He watched the lips twist in a cruel smile, saw them open and close to form words he did not know.
And Jin yawned again and said Kame's name, and he sounded half-asleep already and that's when Kame knew that if the fairy woke, Jin would not.
"More coffee," Kame muttered. "You have to stay awake, Jin."
He hadn't known necromancers could use themselves in spells, that a dying one could twist her curse to ensure her own resurrection. He couldn't wake her all the way up to ask about it, because if he did that, Jin would fall asleep in seconds and Kame would be at the mercy of an undead fairy necromancer - a combination of three things that were unpleasant enough individually - but he figured she'd returned from the dead once Jin's curse had been activated, and been forced to stay near in order to maintain the spell. If Ueda's information had been right, she couldn't have done it from any great distance.
"I'm trying," Jin mumbled back, voice slurred and a million miles away. "Just let me sit down a few minutes, I'll be fine."
The fairy forced her fingers to unclench, was looking directly at Kame now with triumph in her eyes. Kame didn't want to risk turning away from her but he didn't have a choice. He dumped the backpack out on the floor, passed the Bottle of Plenty over to Jin and demanded it produce the strongest coffee it could manage. Jin almost dropped the bottle but Kame caught his hand, steadied it, pressed the drink to his lips.
"Now talk to me," Kame whispered to him, very conscious that he couldn't do anything that would wake the fairy too. Making a noise was out of the question. "Tell me about yourself. What's your favourite colour? What do you like to do in your free time? Do you play any sports? Anything you can think of, just keep your mind active."
"I can't think," Jin said softly, but the fairy's hands stopped moving and the smile froze in place. "This is a bad dream and I'm not really here. You're not really here."
"I'm not really here? Then you can't feel this?" Kame didn't take his eyes from the fairy but released the Bottle of Plenty to press his hand to Jin's cheek, not quite touching his lips.
Jin leaned in, smiled blearily as he nuzzled Kame's palm. "For a figment of my imagination, you're very comfortable."
Not what Kame had had in mind. "Don't get comfortable." He wondered if the sword would have the same effect on the zombies' creator as on them. Trying to get near her with it would have to wait until her eyes were closed again. He wasn't getting any closer than he could help, not when there was a chance she was alive enough to destroy them both.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. How did one wake a sleeping prince? Kame knew the answer now.
Jin responded just as well as he had to the first kiss - better, even, because he wasn't asleep for the first half of it and was able to push back with equal intensity, letting his tongue meet Kame's in a fierce duel they could both enjoy. Having an undead fairy necromancer watching them didn't do much for the mood but both did their best to ignore her, and when Kame turned back to check, her eyes were closed once more.
Kame hesitated, just a second, and Jin jerked his chin towards the fairy as if to tell Kame to get on with it. Easy for him to say. Decapitating zombies was different, a matter of self-defence. This...wasn't murder, because one couldn't technically kill the dead, but it couldn't be taken lightly, either, even if she had already stolen a year of Jin's life.
But it wasn't as if Kame had a choice. One deep breath, then another, and he plunged the sword into the fairy's heart. Flames shot up from the couch immediately, would've caught him had Jin not pulled him back. Kame liked having someone to do that. He'd always been self-reliant, not wanting to depend on anyone else, but that didn't mean he didn't like having the option and a pair of strong arms around his waist was better than a pair of singed eyebrows anyday.
"I think we're done here," Kame said when Jin didn't seem to be in any rush to let him go. "I don't know about you but I don't much enjoy hanging around in burning buildings."
That seemed to jolt Jin out of his happy little trance; he let go all of a sudden, stepping away from Kame, careful not to look at him. Kame couldn't retrieve his magic sword now but he didn't think he was likely to encounter any more zombies now their source was nothing but a burnt patch on the couch. He scooped up his bag with one hand and the Bottle of Plenty with the other - magic swords were easy to come by but those bottles were like gold dust - and made a beeline for the door, not wanting to be anywhere near all that glass when the fire spread. Since the whole place was due to be knocked down and rebuilt anyway, letting it burn seemed the sensible thing to do. With any luck, fire would take care of the numerous corpses littering the grounds.
They didn't speak till they'd made it outside the compound, out to the deserted streets where the forest of hair had once consumed every single structure. Kame judged that far enough to be safe to slow down, as neither of them was feeling particularly energetic and none of the streetlights were working, so it wasn't safe to be running around in the dark anyway. He thought it was probably a good thing Jin couldn't clearly see the damage wrought by his hair.
The damage done to Jin's person as a result of the cursed sunglasses was no longer an issue, however. He'd shed the makeshift bandage now, so Kame assumed that meant the wound was no longer bleeding. As he didn't show any further signs of sleepiness either, it looked like he was shot of the curse for good.
"Congratulations," Jin said solemnly when they'd slowed to a comfortable speaking pace. "You've completed your quest, right?"
"Almost. I have to return you safely home first, at which point your mother will grant me anything I ask for."
"Money? A title? Land?"
Kame laughed and stopped as they neared civilisation, to the point where they could reasonably expect to be able to flag down a taxi and have a comfortable trip back, assuming one would even deign to pick up two such bedraggled men. The light was better; he could see Jin's face now, fully awake, a little apprehensive. "I've got a house, I don't know what I'd do with a title, and I do okay for money. The letter says I can name my price. You know your mother; I don't. Do you think she'd pay my price?"
"Depends. What's your price?"
"I don't...I don't have..." Kame explained his current situation, how sometimes he went adventuring with Koki, sometimes with others, but didn't have a regular partner so mostly he went alone. "It's not like I need a partner," he added, "but it can be useful. And...enjoyable."
"Oh," Jin breathed, managing to pack a surprising amount of depth in that single syllable, giving Kame hope he'd gotten his message across.
"We've broken your curse. Together. So now you're just a regular prince, and they go on quests all the time." Kame licked his lips, wishing he'd had a go at the Bottle of Plenty before stashing it back in his bag. A drop of something would not have gone amiss. "I thought I'd ask your mother if you could be spared to come with me. You're the eldest son, the heir, and I know that means you're probably too valuable to let go, but-"
"Kame."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not a kid." Jin smiled impishly. "How about asking me instead of my mother?"
"Even if she said no you'd say yes, wouldn't you?"
"Hmm..." Jin pretended to consider it. "Maybe?"
Kame ignored the teasing and extracted the Bottle of Plenty from the backpack.
"Not more coffee," Jin said with a shudder. "I've had enough to last me a lifetime."
"No coffee." And no shampoo and bicarb either, Kame hoped, or that would soon wipe the smiles off both their faces. "Champagne."
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG for kissing and zombies (these two things are not related)
Genre: AU, twisted fairy tale, crack
Word count: 12,276 (in 2 parts only because of LJ's character limit)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 2/2
Entry to the final room was barred by another door made entirely of hair; not braided in intricate patterns as before, but composed of thick layers of tangled snarls, stiff and unyielding. Where the machete failed, the bicarb and shampoo solution succeeded, but Kame didn't fancy using the Bottle of Plenty for drink again. It was self-cleaning, in theory. In practice, the dragon he'd obtained it from had never tried it, the bottle being smaller than even his pinky claw. When the hair parted, falling away in sodden clumps, Kame ventured inside with a sense of triumph. If nothing else, he'd laid a few zombies to rest and had a damned good workout - and it had definitely been a change from his usual sort of quest, which is what he'd wanted all along.
The only thing that could've improved his day was to find the missing Prince Jin and Kame achieved this by stumbling over the man in question. He wasn't sure quite how he'd expected to find Jin - asleep, based on Ueda's suggestion - but sprawled face-down on the floor, a battered black fedora crumpled beneath his leg and a pair of sunglasses lying at his fingertips? That wasn't it. Kame had encountered a few enchanted sleepers before, and they'd always been neatly laid out on marble tables, or beds of rose petals, or at least glass coffins. Jin looked like he'd tripped over and fallen asleep on the spot.
Closer examination of the prince's body convinced Kame his theory was right on the money. The sunglasses, which were enormous, had a wickedly sharp point on the edge of the frame. Dried blood on the frame, the floor and Jin's fingertip suggested he'd pricked his finger on his own sunglasses - presumably when he clutched them to prevent them being smashed as he hit the floor after tripping over his hat. His mother hadn't mentioned in her letter that her son was a touch on the clumsy side.
Kame didn't let this colour his opinion of the prince, whose photo had scarcely done him justice. Once turned over, Jin really was extraordinarily beautiful, except for one thing.
His wavy brown hair, which had only reached his shoulders in the photo, was the source of all the hair pervading the castle and the area beyond. It was as if some demented hairdresser had given him extensions with a mind of their own. Even now, new hair coiled around Jin's neck and headed straight out the door in search of unwary travellers to trip.
It was time for a haircut. Kame set the sword down to remove the scissors from his first aid kit - using the machete was far too risky - and to his dismay, it began glowing green again. Nothing to do with the zombies this time, because the colour brightened the closer he got to the sunglasses. When he risked dangling the sunglasses from the tip of the blade and they caught fire, Kame thought he had the answer. It wasn't undead flesh that caused the sword's unusual reaction but necromantic magic. Blood on the sunglasses.
Jin had been cursed to be undone by his own accessories. Hats and sunglasses both counted. If his fate had been to trip on the hat, to make him prick his finger on the sunglasses, the blood could've been the trigger for the spell, if Ueda knew what he was talking about and Kame had to assume he did. The spell had sent Jin to sleep - obviously an enchanted sleep, because otherwise he'd have died long before the year was up - and from the looks of things, anyone else who'd died in the vicinity had risen as a zombie. Waking Jin might break the spell, or at least stop the hair growth.
But how did one wake a sleeping prince? Kame phoned Koki for advice, never having rescued anyone from enchanted sleep before, and he knew from sharing a cottage with Koki that his housemate knew a thing or two about waking people up. Some of his music, Kame was sure, could wake the dead, never mind the enchanted.
"I know this one," Koki assured him after hearing Kame wanted to wake an enchanted prince. "First you take the frog and get him blessed by-"
"Wait! What frog? I don't have a frog."
"You said you wanted to wake an enchanted prince - I figured you meant you wanted to turn him back to normal. Princes always get turned into frogs, and swans, and sometimes statues when they're too stupid to use the right dipper-"
Kame interrupted again before Koki could go off on a tangent. "This prince is actually asleep."
"Asleep?" Koki sounded horrified. "But I thought enchanted sleep was reserved for princesses. Are you sure this guy's a prince?"
Pretty though Jin was, Kame was fairly certain he was male. His mother had said so, and she ought to know. "He's a prince, and he's been asleep for about a year. Any suggestions?"
"Well...you could try the usual approach for waking sleeping princesses. Kissing him couldn't hurt, could it? He's asleep - if it doesn't work, he'll never know you did it."
If Kame was going to get anywhere near Jin, he'd have to set to work with the scissors first. "I'll try. How did it go with the Three Bears?"
"Let's just say they no longer have a strange blonde girl camping out in their house."
"You managed to get her out of there, huh?"
Koki coughed. "Uh, don't rush home on my account, okay?"
That made Kame laugh and he hung up; he could take a hint. It wouldn't be the first time either of them had brought work home with them. Of course if he didn't get a move on, he wouldn't be going anywhere in the near future. Cutting his way out of the castle again would be exhausting. Breaking the spell seemed a much better idea, and as for kissing Jin...that, Kame thought, would be far from onerous. The prince might've been asleep for a year but he appeared to be freshly preserved thanks to the magic holding him in stasis.
Kame started to cut away some of the excess hair, shearing it to the base of Jin's neck - though he did get a trifle carried away and began shaping his bangs, too, revealing a small beauty mark by Jin's right eye and soft, smooth skin. Wasted on a prince, Kame thought. He could've been a model, or an actor, or anything he wanted to be because one look at that face and anyone would be helpless.
Unsure how quickly regrowth would take place, Kame cut Jin's hair shorter than it had been in the photo, figuring he could always grow it back. Very short hair, like Koki's, would've looked ridiculous but this just looked nice, and Kame didn't do a bad job if he did say so himself. He was better with nails than hair, but Jin didn't appear to need a manicure and besides, Kame wasn't that well-equipped. The first aid kit was a necessity. Nail polish wasn't.
It was the first time Kame had ever tried to wake anyone from an enchanted sleep and he didn't know what to expect. Would it be instantaneous? How long did the kiss have to be? Should it be on the lips? Why weren't there any manuals for this sort of thing? (Not that Kame would've read the manual, but that was beside the point.)
The longer he beat around the bush, the more likely it was he'd be strangled by Jin's hair mid-kiss. There was nothing else to do but go for it. Kame knelt down, raised Jin up with a supporting arm around his back, and pressed their lips together in what he hoped wasn't too awkward a kiss (but with one participant unconscious it didn't have a whole lot of passion going for it).
He knew it had worked when Jin started kissing him back, eyes still closed, clearly not sure what was happening but happy to go with the flow anyway. When Kame broke it off the prince opened sleepy eyes and blinked at him.
And screamed. Kame dropped him like a hot potato.
"Oww..." Jin propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed the back of his head with his other hand. "It's not nice to kiss people then drop them."
"It's not nice to kiss people back and then try to deafen them," Kame retorted. He hoped his hearing would be all right; he hadn't expected such a high-pitched scream, especially now after hearing Jin's speaking voice, which was considerably lower and actually rather pleasant to listen to.
"And you shouldn't have been kissing me in the first place! I don't even know you." Jin hastily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then noticed the shambolic state of the room. "Is that...hair?"
"All hair, all yours," Kame said, but the hair was writhing, now; shrinking, retreating into itself, coiling into tight curls and vanishing altogether. When Kame peered out the window, the forest outside was also shrinking at a tremendous rate. A crash from behind made him turn his attention back to the room, where Jin was staring open-mouthed at the brand new hole in the roof.
"I don't mean to alarm you," Kame said, "but I think your hair was holding that up. I'd like to get out of here before anything else starts falling apart."
"I can't go out like this!" Jin touched a hand to his hair, now shy rather than irritated. "It's so short. And my hat and sunglasses..." He looked sadly at the remains of both on the floor.
"I think they tried to kill you."
"How can a pair of sunglasses try to kill me?"
"You know much about necromancy?"
Jin's face said he didn't have the first clue about necromancy and didn't care, either. He started to brush himself off - a year's worth of dust hadn't done his clothing any favours - and Kame remembered then about the bobble hat in his bag. He offered it to Jin. "Sorry about the hair; I couldn't have got anywhere near you if I hadn't cut it. If it bothers you that much, you can wear this."
The hat was a glorious dark purple, topped with an oversized pompom, and it made Jin look all of six years old. But he seemed happy with it. Kame hadn't believed, until then, that the sulky prince was genuinely capable of the brilliant smile he'd worn in the photograph.
"Thanks...uh..."
"Kame."
"Right." Jin nodded. "Thanks, Kame. Now could you please tell me what's going on?"
Another chunk of ceiling crashed to the floor, burying Kame's scissors forever, and he looked uneasily towards the door. It was a long way back down, and if the stairs collapsed... He stashed both sword and machete in his backpack, grabbed Jin by the hand and started dragging him to the exit. "Your mother sent me a letter..."
Getting down the stairs was much faster than going up, thanks to the lack of hair hazards, and Kame kept up his explanation as they ran. He occasionally had to shout over the sounds of destruction coming from all over the castle (he kept hoping none of it was from the front door), but he managed to get the story out, right down to his theory on how Jin had landed up sleeping for a year.
Jin didn't think much of the theory. "A year?" he scoffed, narrowly avoiding a collapsing wardrobe only because Kame yanked him out of its path. "I've only been in here five minutes."
Kame opted to waste a few precious seconds to show Jin the display on his cell phone, but Jin still wasn't convinced. "You could've rigged that."
"Sure, I could've, but why would I? You said yourself, we don't even know each other."
The prince didn't have an answer for that one and fell silent for a bit. Kame kept a careful eye on him; Jin might be technically awake but his year of sleep was still much in evidence in his sluggish, uncoordinated movements and slow reactions. Under no circumstances was Kame about to write back to Jin's mother and tell her he'd saved her son only to lose him down the gaping hole that had just opened up on the landing.
"Would you watch where you're going?" he snapped. He'd forgotten how much the "rescue" bit of rescues sucked. Getting there was the fun part.
"I'm trying!" To his credit, Jin did manage to dodge the falling beam that suddenly swung down from his left, though he overstepped the mark a bit and crashed into Kame.
Kame didn't usually object to lying down with good-looking men, but there was a big difference between deliberately going to bed with someone and having them fall on you, especially when you had your keys in your back pocket and ouch, that was going to be a nasty bruise in the morning. Jin didn't seem to be in any hurry to move, either, sprawled with his head pillowed nicely on Kame's chest. He yawned, gave Kame a sleepy half-smile, and closed his eyes.
Shouldn't Jin be waking up, not going back to sleep? Kame took him by the shoulders and shook him awake as gently as he could. "Hey. More running, less sleeping, okay? You can nap after we get out of this deathtrap."
"Sorry," Jin mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I'm a little tired."
"A year of sleep wasn't enough for you?"
"Another five minutes wouldn't kill me."
An ornate candlestick holder came crashing down from the wall, too close to Jin's leg for comfort. "It might," Kame said. "Let me see your hand for a second."
It took a minute for the request to register but Jin caught on, held out his left index finger for Kame's inspection. It was bleeding again, and Kame had left his first aid kit upstairs where it was probably buried by now. If the wound was still bleeding and Jin was still sleepy, that meant the spell...
Kame cursed under his breath and tore a strip off the end of his shirt. It would've looked a lot more impressive if it hadn't taken him three tries to do it but he got there in the end. "Hold still; I'm going to bandage this."
"You told me to keep moving," Jin pointed out, but he obeyed anyway, letting Kame take the finger first in his hands, then in his mouth. "Hey!"
Under other circumstances, it might've been more sensual. At the moment, however, Kame was only thinking of cleaning the wound, necromantic magic or no. He laved it with his tongue then swathed it in the torn cloth, tying it off with a flourish. The mini skulls on the fabric seemed horribly appropriate.
"I think the spell's still active," Kame said. "Which means if you fall asleep again, we're both in big trouble. This place is falling apart as it is but if your hair starts to grow again...oh."
"Oh?" Jin said nervously. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Uh...it's nothing." Kame figured it was best not to mention the zombies he hadn't bothered to decapitate, and how there might be more of them running around still. "But I think there might be a necromancer around here somewhere."
"How can the 'nothing' you didn't want to mention possibly be worse than that?"
"Depends. How do you feel about the undead?"
"Sorry I asked."
Jin yawned again, this one a real jaw-popper, and Kame took that as his cue to get them moving again before he had to wake the prince a second time. Not that he'd have objected but a crumbling castle that could potentially take them both down with it was hardly the most romantic of settings. They reached the front door without further incident, sustaining mere scratches en route - and since the front door was no door at all, as even the hair had disappeared, they waltzed straight through. (Not an actual waltz, of course, since Jin's coordination was shot and Kame made a point of not stopping to dance whenever he was fleeing for his life.)
They made it out just in time. Before they'd taken five steps from the door, the front wall began to cave in, which made getting as far away from it as possible their number one priority. If the wall collapsed the rest would follow and some of it was bound to fall out rather than in.
"We made it out!" Kame let them stop to catch their breath - probably a mistake, he thought, since Jin was liable to fall asleep if he stood still for more than five seconds, but a necessary one. It had been a very, very long day for Kame, and it was only going to get longer if he didn't find a way to nullify the spell for good.
Jin nudged him in the side, prodding him to turn around. "We weren't the only ones."
So much for Kame's secret hope that the remaining zombies would be crushed by the collapsing castle. There were too many to count, arrayed in a rough circle between them and freedom, undead and unhappy about it. Kame wanted to feel sorry for his fallen predecessors but it was impossible to even think of them as human anymore. They were walking corpses, animated by the forbidden practice of necromancy.
And, unhampered by trailing hair, they were much faster than before.
"This wasn't part of your rescue plan, was it?" Jin asked. "Us getting eaten by zombies."
Kame didn't dignify that with an answer. "Can you fight?"
"Yeah, but..." Jin hesitated, embarrassed, and mumbled, "I can't move well right now."
"Sorry, forgot." It was all up to Kame, then. He didn't relish the task ahead of him. "Stay behind me." He swung his backpack to the front, started scrabbling frantically for his magic sword.
"Look out!"
Kame looked up, saw the zombie all of three seconds before it took a bite out of his ear, and smashed an elbow into its stomach. There was no time. "Take the backpack and find my sword, okay?" He all but threw it at Jin. "I'll hold them off. Just don't fall asleep!"
"Who could sleep through this!" Jin yelled back, but he caught the bag and that was the last Kame saw before a trio of zombies set on him and there was no time to worry about whether or not Jin was managing to stay out of trouble.
It was fortunate for Kame that the undead, while relentless, untiring, and insensible to pain, were also stupid and apparently retained none of their former skills. It was like being back in high school, where, as the shortest guy in his class, Kame had learned a great deal about surviving attacks from moronic mobs - number one lesson being: whatever happens, don't let them get you on the ground or it's all over.
The first zombie went for Kame's neck - not to bite it, vampire-style, but to break it. Kame swallowed his disgust and caught one of the flailing arms, trying not to think about how flaccid the rotting flesh felt under the rags, pulling his assailant towards him for a fast knee between the legs. (It wasn't as if an undead guy really needed to have anything working down there.) Kame released the zombie just in time for him to fall flat on his face, where he impeded the process of his two pals for the five seconds it took them to figure out that they could simply walk on his fallen body.
The second one succumbed to a powerful right cross that left his head facing the wrong direction, and sent him walking towards the exit rather than towards Kame. As a technique for disposing of zombies Kame thought it so successful he tried it again on the third, but a hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and he fell short, suddenly yanked backwards to find a pair of excessively tall zombies looming over him. He couldn't get the momentum to turn so he hooked his leg around the right leg of the one next to him and drove it back, unbalancing the wretched creature and giving him enough room to jab his captor in the gut.
It seemed to Kame he followed the same pattern for hours. The zombies kept coming no matter how many times he knocked them down, and without physically tearing their heads off he couldn't stop them for good. He couldn't even see Jin, couldn't stop to wonder what had happened with the sword. His whole world comprised grey, rotting, diseased monsters with empty eyes and gaping mouths, all desperate for a piece of him and not in the fun way, either. Strike, duck, twist, crash; another one on the ground and Kame thanked his lucky stars it wasn't him.
But the next time, it was. One of them caught him off-balance, got him down on his side in a daze. The collective groaning rose in volume, took on an excited tone that might've meant "DINNER!!!" in any human language. It echoed in Kame's head, adding to the ringing in his ears from when he'd hit the ground. He wrapped an arm protectively over his head, expecting any moment to feel those sharp teeth sinking into his tender flesh, but the bite never came. The groaning disappeared and a fresh assault on his senses came in the form of the smell of burned meat.
Kame peeked out from under his arm. The zombies lay burning in a circle around him. Jin stood over them, sword in one hand and the Bottle of Plenty in the other, looking at the zombies with great disgust.
"Coffee," Jin said in response to Kame's unasked question, waving the Bottle of Plenty. "Industrial strength. Ghosts, zombies, anything like that scares the hell out of me. I don't dare fall asleep.
"Besides, you looked like you could use a hand."
He shot Kame a challenging grin, which Kame had no qualms about returning. Thank goodness Jin had recognised the Bottle of Plenty for what it was - and hadn't been poisoned by shampoo residue.
"Thanks for the rescue," Kame said, accepting the sword back. He was tempted to make a crack about being glad Jin could pull his own weight, but Jin's eyes brightened at the thanks and Kame didn't want to spoil the moment. The remaining zombies would do that for them soon enough.
"Is that a magic sword? I know I'm hot stuff, but bursting into flame..."
Kame rolled his eyes. "It's anti-necromancy, I think - which should be an advantage when I find the necromancer responsible for all this. But I want to get you out of here first, put you somewhere you can sit and swig coffee in safety."
"Not happening, Kame. I'm not going to hide away while you go hunting for new and exciting ways to get yourself killed."
"To save you," Kame pointed out. "And I'm getting paid. I can name my own price."
"Lot of good that'll do you when you're dead. No," Jin decided, "I'm coming with you." He pulled the machete free from the backpack, then tossed the bag back to Kame. "Where do you think a necromancer would hide out?"
Kame was starting to see why Jin had been alone in the castle. When the prince decided on something, he went straight off and did it, no messing around. It was, Kame thought, quite an appealing quality. He'd had worse questing partners before, one of them a guy who'd refused to make a move without consulting his horoscope and would never, under any circumstances, fight anything on a Wednesday. For a royal brat who'd been asleep for a year, Jin was acquitting himself remarkably well.
"I don't know, but I think we're going to have to do something about the rest of these guys before we find out!" Kame yelled as the remaining zombies descended on them. "Decapitate them if you can and don't let yourself get bitten!"
"I'm not a total novice!"
It had been a while since Kame had last fought back-to-back with anyone, much less a pretty-boy prince with a flesh-beslimed machete and dark, merciless eyes peeking out from beneath the brim of his purple bobble hat. One look was all Kame got before his attention was otherwise engaged but it was enough to tell him Jin could certainly focus when he had to. Kame's sword ignited the zombies at a touch; Jin hacked at the necks of those nearest him, occasionally making good use of his long legs to kick them where he wanted them. It was a messy, vicious brawl with Kame and Jin at its centre and when it ended, they were alone.
"Okay?" Kame panted.
Jin took another gulp of coffee before answering. "Yeah, but I think I'm going to have to burn my clothes when I get home."
"You and me both." Kame didn't even want to think about the state of his own attire - zombie ooze and denim didn't make for the best of friends. "Still feeling sleepy?"
"Like I've been awake for months."
"And the finger?"
"Still bleeding." Though Kame's neat bow had been wrecked during the chaos the bandage held, damp with fresh blood. "Good thing it's just a scratch; I don't think I'm about to bleed out from it."
Kame hoped this was the case, because the more blood Jin lost, the harder it was going to be for him to stay awake, and there was no way Kame could carry him and deal with a necromancer at the same time, especially if Jin's hair started growing again. At least there were no more dead adventurers left to kill. The castle's time as a tourist spot was history - pieces of building debris on the one hand, pieces of undead flesh on the other. Hardly picturesque.
"Let's check the outbuildings," Kame suggested, leading the way. "You did pretty well for yourself back there."
Jin shrugged it off but Kame could tell he was pleased. "I've never attacked anyone with a machete before but it's not like I've never been in a fight. I used to want to run off on quests all the time...until my tutors told me I couldn't because people with curses on them were supposed to be saved themselves, not go adventuring to save other people." Jin's sardonic tone told Kame exactly what he thought of that.
"You won't have the curse on you much longer."
They checked the remaining keeps, guardhouses and shrines, coming up empty on the necromancer front but finding a lingering handful of zombies who hadn't come out to play earlier - in some cases, because they'd been trapped by heavy falling objects. Over an hour and several decapitations later, there was only one place left to search.
"No." Jin shook his head, clearly trying not to laugh. "Can't possibly be in there. Not the tourist information office."
"I have it on good authority the necromancer responsible for those zombies has to be in the area, since they haven't strayed far from the compound." With a lack of any real knowledge about necromancy, Kame was willing to take Ueda's best guess as "good authority". "And we've searched everywhere else. Anyway, it should be the safest place in the world for a hideout - there haven't been any tourists here since you decided to come for a visit."
"You may have a point." Jin downed another mouthful of coffee for fortification before popping the Bottle of Plenty back in Kame's bag. "What's the plan?"
"I thought we could walk in and ask if they have any guidebooks."
"Right." Jin played along. "Maybe see if they have any of those foreign language tour tapes."
Kame caught his eye, checked for the twinkle to say Jin was joking. When he found Jin doing the same thing and both of them quickly turned away with secret smiles, Kame knew he'd be blushing and didn't much care if he was acting like a teenager with his first crush because he wasn't the only one. It had felt nice, fighting with Jin at his back. Felt right. Never mind that they were doing things in the wrong order, starting off with a kiss, following it up with introductions, and then getting to see each other in less than optimal condition on what could possibly be considered the most unusual first date ever - zombie-slaying.
And now necromancer-hunting. Anything else would have to wait until later, or the only place Jin would be seeing Kame would be in his dreams.
Weapons at the ready, they approached the tourist information office. It was a small building, far more modern than anything else in the compound, and made chiefly of glass. "That's definitely the one," Kame said grimly.
Jin picked it up too, which made Kame happy he didn't have to say anything. "The only building in the entire place that's still intact."
It was one thing to suspect; quite another to know. Kame held his sword before him, watched it begin to glow green as they neared the double doors. It was always the same right before he faced down the final enemy, always that slight flutter in his stomach, always that sharpening of his senses till he was aware of even a single blade of grass being blown by the wind. Those feelings wouldn't leave till the quest was over and they were half the reason he'd go in the first place. Jin's reasons, he could only imagine, but the prince was more than old enough - older than Kame, in fact - to make his own decisions and Kame wasn't about to insist he left for his own good. Every professional adventurer had to start somewhere.
But damnit, this was a bad place to start. Night was well on its way and the moment Kame pushed open the door to the office, he knew something was wrong. Something other than that they were hunting down a creature whose power came from death itself. Appropriately, the air was cold, still and silent as a tomb. Kame didn't dare break the silence. One word might tip the balance, shatter the glass. He could sense Jin tensing up beside him, knew Jin's knuckles would be white around the hilt of the machete.
Nothing out front. They passed racks of dusty maps and forgotten flyers, crept past the abandoned desk with its empty chairs and an old jar of sweets, down to its last lonely lollipop. Kame heard Jin's poor attempt at suppressing a yawn and walked faster, into the dark, windowless back office where the only light was the sword's eerie green glow.
The lack of light didn't matter: there wasn't much to see except the dead fairy on the couch.
A gasp escaped Kame's lips before he could even think about keeping silent; Jin echoed it, adding a "What the hell is that?" for colour. Kame could've told him, if he'd had the words. Ueda's rumours about non-human necromancers were rumours no more. The fairy couldn't be mistaken for anything else, not with the giant black wings draped around her shoulders. Her face, bone-white and angular, was small enough to fit in Kame's hand. She didn't look alive...
...But then, she didn't appear to be all the way dead, either. Shallow, weak breaths propelled her tiny lungs, sent a rattle up her narrow throat.
Kame heard Jin yawn behind him and jumped near out of his skin when the fairy's eyes fluttered open. He couldn't look at them; deep, dark wells that would suck him in, let him flounder till he drowned. He looked elsewhere instead, at the pale hand with its nightclub stamp embedded into the skin for all time, at the clawed fingernails and the marks they'd left inside the palms during the death throes. He watched the lips twist in a cruel smile, saw them open and close to form words he did not know.
And Jin yawned again and said Kame's name, and he sounded half-asleep already and that's when Kame knew that if the fairy woke, Jin would not.
"More coffee," Kame muttered. "You have to stay awake, Jin."
He hadn't known necromancers could use themselves in spells, that a dying one could twist her curse to ensure her own resurrection. He couldn't wake her all the way up to ask about it, because if he did that, Jin would fall asleep in seconds and Kame would be at the mercy of an undead fairy necromancer - a combination of three things that were unpleasant enough individually - but he figured she'd returned from the dead once Jin's curse had been activated, and been forced to stay near in order to maintain the spell. If Ueda's information had been right, she couldn't have done it from any great distance.
"I'm trying," Jin mumbled back, voice slurred and a million miles away. "Just let me sit down a few minutes, I'll be fine."
The fairy forced her fingers to unclench, was looking directly at Kame now with triumph in her eyes. Kame didn't want to risk turning away from her but he didn't have a choice. He dumped the backpack out on the floor, passed the Bottle of Plenty over to Jin and demanded it produce the strongest coffee it could manage. Jin almost dropped the bottle but Kame caught his hand, steadied it, pressed the drink to his lips.
"Now talk to me," Kame whispered to him, very conscious that he couldn't do anything that would wake the fairy too. Making a noise was out of the question. "Tell me about yourself. What's your favourite colour? What do you like to do in your free time? Do you play any sports? Anything you can think of, just keep your mind active."
"I can't think," Jin said softly, but the fairy's hands stopped moving and the smile froze in place. "This is a bad dream and I'm not really here. You're not really here."
"I'm not really here? Then you can't feel this?" Kame didn't take his eyes from the fairy but released the Bottle of Plenty to press his hand to Jin's cheek, not quite touching his lips.
Jin leaned in, smiled blearily as he nuzzled Kame's palm. "For a figment of my imagination, you're very comfortable."
Not what Kame had had in mind. "Don't get comfortable." He wondered if the sword would have the same effect on the zombies' creator as on them. Trying to get near her with it would have to wait until her eyes were closed again. He wasn't getting any closer than he could help, not when there was a chance she was alive enough to destroy them both.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. How did one wake a sleeping prince? Kame knew the answer now.
Jin responded just as well as he had to the first kiss - better, even, because he wasn't asleep for the first half of it and was able to push back with equal intensity, letting his tongue meet Kame's in a fierce duel they could both enjoy. Having an undead fairy necromancer watching them didn't do much for the mood but both did their best to ignore her, and when Kame turned back to check, her eyes were closed once more.
Kame hesitated, just a second, and Jin jerked his chin towards the fairy as if to tell Kame to get on with it. Easy for him to say. Decapitating zombies was different, a matter of self-defence. This...wasn't murder, because one couldn't technically kill the dead, but it couldn't be taken lightly, either, even if she had already stolen a year of Jin's life.
But it wasn't as if Kame had a choice. One deep breath, then another, and he plunged the sword into the fairy's heart. Flames shot up from the couch immediately, would've caught him had Jin not pulled him back. Kame liked having someone to do that. He'd always been self-reliant, not wanting to depend on anyone else, but that didn't mean he didn't like having the option and a pair of strong arms around his waist was better than a pair of singed eyebrows anyday.
"I think we're done here," Kame said when Jin didn't seem to be in any rush to let him go. "I don't know about you but I don't much enjoy hanging around in burning buildings."
That seemed to jolt Jin out of his happy little trance; he let go all of a sudden, stepping away from Kame, careful not to look at him. Kame couldn't retrieve his magic sword now but he didn't think he was likely to encounter any more zombies now their source was nothing but a burnt patch on the couch. He scooped up his bag with one hand and the Bottle of Plenty with the other - magic swords were easy to come by but those bottles were like gold dust - and made a beeline for the door, not wanting to be anywhere near all that glass when the fire spread. Since the whole place was due to be knocked down and rebuilt anyway, letting it burn seemed the sensible thing to do. With any luck, fire would take care of the numerous corpses littering the grounds.
They didn't speak till they'd made it outside the compound, out to the deserted streets where the forest of hair had once consumed every single structure. Kame judged that far enough to be safe to slow down, as neither of them was feeling particularly energetic and none of the streetlights were working, so it wasn't safe to be running around in the dark anyway. He thought it was probably a good thing Jin couldn't clearly see the damage wrought by his hair.
The damage done to Jin's person as a result of the cursed sunglasses was no longer an issue, however. He'd shed the makeshift bandage now, so Kame assumed that meant the wound was no longer bleeding. As he didn't show any further signs of sleepiness either, it looked like he was shot of the curse for good.
"Congratulations," Jin said solemnly when they'd slowed to a comfortable speaking pace. "You've completed your quest, right?"
"Almost. I have to return you safely home first, at which point your mother will grant me anything I ask for."
"Money? A title? Land?"
Kame laughed and stopped as they neared civilisation, to the point where they could reasonably expect to be able to flag down a taxi and have a comfortable trip back, assuming one would even deign to pick up two such bedraggled men. The light was better; he could see Jin's face now, fully awake, a little apprehensive. "I've got a house, I don't know what I'd do with a title, and I do okay for money. The letter says I can name my price. You know your mother; I don't. Do you think she'd pay my price?"
"Depends. What's your price?"
"I don't...I don't have..." Kame explained his current situation, how sometimes he went adventuring with Koki, sometimes with others, but didn't have a regular partner so mostly he went alone. "It's not like I need a partner," he added, "but it can be useful. And...enjoyable."
"Oh," Jin breathed, managing to pack a surprising amount of depth in that single syllable, giving Kame hope he'd gotten his message across.
"We've broken your curse. Together. So now you're just a regular prince, and they go on quests all the time." Kame licked his lips, wishing he'd had a go at the Bottle of Plenty before stashing it back in his bag. A drop of something would not have gone amiss. "I thought I'd ask your mother if you could be spared to come with me. You're the eldest son, the heir, and I know that means you're probably too valuable to let go, but-"
"Kame."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not a kid." Jin smiled impishly. "How about asking me instead of my mother?"
"Even if she said no you'd say yes, wouldn't you?"
"Hmm..." Jin pretended to consider it. "Maybe?"
Kame ignored the teasing and extracted the Bottle of Plenty from the backpack.
"Not more coffee," Jin said with a shudder. "I've had enough to last me a lifetime."
"No coffee." And no shampoo and bicarb either, Kame hoped, or that would soon wipe the smiles off both their faces. "Champagne."