[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 93 ~Part Two - Too Much Again~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my
plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. They immediately clash but is that all they'll ever be? How much is fate and how much choice? And how will their meeting change the world around them?
Author's Note: Well, here you go. The second half of the chapter. I hope you like it.
BANNER BY DESHISORABA!! THE MOST AWESOME BANNER EVER AND I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES!
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 93 ~Part Two - Too Much Again~
The sudden outcry from Kazuya as he threw his arm around Jin cut threw everything Jin was thinking, shoving it all aside to race right past to his heart.
Don’t go, Jin.
I don’t want you to go.
The pleading in his voice and the abandon with which he flung himself at Jin was so different from the way Kazuya usually was. He’d… he’d gotten like this before, though. Back when Jin had been ready to storm out of the office and leave, Kame had said the same thing with tear-wetted eyes.
Please don’t go, Jin.
Jin’s arms slid around his lover as he softly said his name. But there was still something different this time. Something Jin’s mind was racing to figure out because it just wasn’t right. Kazuya wasn’t right. Even as he threw his arm around Jin just now, he was sort of… swaying. Yes, that was it! His hold on Jin was much weaker than it should be, at least when comparing it to other times he’d had his arms around Jin. He was unsteady and…
…and slumping in Jin’s arms.
“Kazu! Kazu, what’s wrong?” Jin forgot all about the fight and the promise and everything else. His awareness sharpened instantly to a finely focused point like it had so often before on the streets, that automatic response that had saved his life more than once.
But Kazuya hadn’t exactly passed out. His eyes were somewhat open still even though he had basically collapsed. He was flushed, too. Earlier, Jin had attributed it to Kazuya’s anger without really giving it much thought but now it occurred to him that it was something else altogether. His forehead was warm to the touch but not that badly, not like a high fever would be, so it problem wasn’t an infection of some kind.
Not only that, but Kazuya was talking… well, babbling, really, though Jin had to lean in really close to make out the words because the voice was so soft. Something about Koki being mad at him, which was ridiculous because Jin had just seen the man and he hadn’t been angry at all. Frustrated at Jin for not telling him what was wrong, sure, but not mad at Kazuya by any stretch.
Jin was torn. As he carefully scooped Kazuya up and put him on the sleeping mat, he tried to decide whether it would be best to stay right here with Kazuya to tend to him or if it would be best to go get Koki and ask him if he knew what was happening and why Kazuya would be babbling about him.
Then again, there wasn’t really anything in the office he could use to tend the man, so either way he’d have to leave. So… both it was! He’s go get a bowl of cool water and a wash rag and he’d make sure to find Koki on his way.
Koki wasn’t in the kitchen like Jin was hoping (though he did get the bowl of water and all that) but it didn’t take too long to find him. He was outside helping serve breakfast to the homeless and the street kids and whoever else wandered along. Well, more like brunch, but whatever. It didn’t matter what they called it. He waved at Jin and said, “Hey, does this mean Kame isn’t on office restriction anymore?”
Some murmurings among the other Kizuna members (Jin distinctly heard Okura’s voice saying, “Oh, that’s what he was doing?” and found himself annoyed) but Jin did his best to ignore them, approaching Koki so that he wouldn’t be shouting for all of Kizuna and the homeless to hear.
Koki seemed to realize something was wrong. His gaze darted down to the bowl and rag in Jin’s hands and then back up to Jin’s face. “Jin…?”
“Something is wrong with Kazuya. He’s… I don’t know. Not sick, but something like it,” Jin said. “He’s gone all weak and fainted but not exactly and now he’s b-”
“GOD DAMN IT, KAME!” Koki shouted, dropping everything he was doing and taking off at a sprint into the church, disappearing almost faster than Jin was able to recognize he’d left. Everyone was staring now, but fuck them. He didn’t care. He couldn’t exactly sprint like Koki without spilling the bowl of water everywhere but he did go as fast as he could back to the office.
Koki was softly berating Kazuya but at the same time, he looked more worried than pissed. He was holding one of Kazuya’s hands tightly. Jin would be jealous if he wasn’t so worried himself. Kazuya was still babbling and though Jin couldn’t hear what the man was saying because he was speaking so quietly, Koki’s response of, “Of course I’m mad, you idiot!” made it pretty clear that Kazuya was still talking about the same thing.
Only then Koki rounded on him, eyes accusing. “And you! You were supposed to be taking care of him! How could you let this happen? Were you even paying attention to him at all? Or were you just so happy to be getting laid that you didn’t care what happens to him? Give me that bowl!”
“What are you ta… hey, that’s my job!” Jin shrieked as Koki snatched it out of his hands. But fighting wouldn’t help so instead Jin dropped down on the other side of Kazuya and took hold of his free hand. “I was paying attention. Or at least, I thought I was… What’s wrong with him? What did I miss that makes you say these things to me?”
Koki wrung the extra water out of the wash rag and put it on Kazuya’s forehead. “It happened once before… Last month, early May. Kizuna was really starting to run out of money. It was the tail end of the flu season and a lot of us got sick and couldn’t work the streets or go on jobs so we didn’t have a whole lot coming in even though we did our best. With the money tight and half of Kizuna sick, and some people wanted to stop running the soup kitchen so there would be more money for the gang but Kame fought them on that. He said he’d find a way and that while he did that, we needed to take care of each other. Kame had been sick, too, one of the first of us to get sick actually, but he’d recovered so we weren’t really all that concerned about him anymore. We were so focused on tending to the sick and all… we didn’t realize how ragged he was running himself. He kept himself so busy trying to take care of everyone and make sure there was money for food and that those who could still work the streets had protection, that he was barely eating for weeks and running on almost no sleep.”
“He’s always been like that, at least as long as I’ve known him. He… he gets so caught up taking care of everyone else, he doesn’t take as good of care of himself. But you know, he usually gets… well, I won’t say enough but… he manages to keep going. But the whole thing, the stress of it all, he needed more than what he was getting. More food, more sleep… With so much added stress, he just needed more and he wasn’t getting it.
“He collapsed.”
“Like now,” Jin said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah. Like now,” Koki responded with a glare. “We took care of him, though, and he said he’d do better. He swore it was okay, that normally it wouldn’t have happened. And you know, as far as what everyone else was saying, it never had happened before though the ones who knew him the longest said that he hadn’t always run himself so ragged. It was something that happened gradually as Kizuna grew and he took on more and more responsibility.
“That’s why we all try to make him take better care of himself.” Like the time Koki had threatened to remove his balls with a spoon if he didn’t make sure Kazuya ate that plate of food on that first day. Kazuya had been more concerned about others being fed than himself. He’d brushed the whole thing off as unimportant.
“I thought you were watching him, Jin. That I didn’t have to worry about whether he was eating or not because you were with him, taking care of him, making him take care of himself. I mean, it seemed like you were! I remember you carried him to the office and make him get some sleep that one time. I know things are getting really stressful around here with everything going on, though others tell me it’s usually one problem after another anyway, ever since the beginning. Danger isn’t new to him. I don’t know… what makes now worse…” but as Koki just trailed off finally. Jin had an inkling, though. This was to do with Papa K. The fact that it was his former pimp after his current family had put a lot of extra strain on Kazuya. That guilt he felt, that not-so-tiny voice inside him that said he was responsible for what the man did after Kazuya ran away…
But…
“I was watching him. We ate together when we weren’t busy. I know he ate… well, I don’t know about last night but we had breakfast together yesterday. Um…” When else? “I don’t know about dinner the night before that, but he said when I went to talk to Maru that he was going to go help with breakfast so I assumed that meant he was going to eat…”
“He helped but I never actually saw him eat,” Koki admitted. “I thought that meant he already had.”
As for sleeping, well, Jin felt he should probably accept his share of the blame in that. He was the one that kept Kazuya up to have sex. He was the one that hurt Kazuya when he suggested they have sex in the alley and then left for the rest of the day so that Kazuya had no choice but to find him at one in the morning to make up. The nightmares Kazuya obviously had weren’t his fault, but the rest of it definitely was.
And it was also his fault for confusing Kazuya’s heart, making him feel things he never had before when he had enough problems to deal with. He set Kizuna against Papa K to save Tatsuya, too, without a thought as to how it might hurt Kazuya. Granted, he didn’t know at the time there was a history between Kazuya and that one-eyed bastard, but…
Koki sighed. “I thought he seemed so much happier now that the two of you were together. I figured that meant everything was okay. There were problems but that’s nothing new, right? We can all tell you’re good for him. God, why does he have to be so stubborn! We try our best to help him but it’s never enough, is it…”
“I wish I’d known all of this before. He never told me. Nobody told me. You know… he smiled sometimes. He laughed. He seemed… really stressed but definitely happy. Not all the time, but…” This time Jin sighed. You know, the twins were going to kill him. He’d pushed because he wanted to know so he could help, even though they said not to push. And now he’d hurt his Kazu. Needled information out of him and then fought so hard for that stupid promise. It was the last straw, apparently.
Jin glanced back at Koki with, “I’ll take care of him. I’ll do a better job of it. Please, can you… I dunno, keep everyone together? You know, make sure everything is okay, that Kizuna is okay? Be… be Kazuya for a day. Everyone respects you or at least it seems that way to me. They don’t really know me and… and… my place is here by Kazuya’s side.”
“Sure thing…” Koki handed the bowl back to Jin. “I’ll make him some soup, too. I’ll bring it by as soon as it’s done.”
“Thank you…”
Koki left, shutting the door quietly behind him and returned not much later with some soup and a spoon.
Kazuya was no longer babbling, at least. Jin wasn’t sure if that was an improvement or if it was just a sign he didn’t have the energy for even that much. Running his hand through Kazuya’s hair gently, Jin spoke softly to him, telling him it would be okay, that everything was okay now. That his Kizuna family was safe, that he was safe, too. That everything that had weighed him down for so long was all one long nightmare and that everything was going to be better tomorrow, if he’d just eat the soup Jin was feeding him.
He was lying, sort of. Well, maybe a lot. But it was what Kazuya needed to hear in that moment. Then when the soup was gone, or at least mostly gone, Jin put the bowl on the desk along with the water bowl and rag. He stretched out next to Kazuya on the sleeping mat and pulled him into his arms, not too tightly but enough that Kazuya could rest his head on Jin’s chest and fall asleep with the comfort of someone who loved him completely.
And as he was finally drifting off into actual slumber, Kazuya whispered one last thing in a tiny voice, so much like a child, “Please don’t hurt them, papa… Hurt me instead…” And then he was asleep.
Don’t hurt them, papa…
Hurt me instead…
That’s when Jin finally figured it all out. That last little piece of the puzzle which made the whole picture make sense. And, even though Kazuya wouldn’t really hear him, there was only one thing Jin could say to that.
“I’m going to kill that man.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 94 ~The Suspicious Behavior of Miss S~
A/N: OKay, if I was a smart woman, I wouldn't be writing when I'm this tired and up till one. But I'm not a smart woman. I'm book smart but I've not got a lick of sense.
So I guess Jin's figured it out. He wasn't supposed to, you know. Not yet. Not... not for a really, really long time. Months later. But that's out the window. I think I can slightly modify the stuff I already wrote to take this into account though and have it still make sense.
Without too much of a spoiler, expect some fluffy stuff in the next present!chapter. Because, well, we need fluffy stuff and I think I can use that to get to where they have to be in order for time to pass faster in the chapters for a while, which is necessary because there has to be a few months passed before certain other stuff can happen.