FIC: "The Christmas Spirit" 1/1 AKAME AU, 2900 WORDS
Title: The Christmas Spirit
Author: [info]soundczech
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, not even the premise.
Summary: Sequel (sort of ) to The Dirty Three, my remix fic of unrequitedangst's superhero fic. Our intrepid heroes celebrate Christmas. Akame, Akamepi. Rated PG.
Notes: I wrote this in less than 24 hours and I haven't written anything in more than a year, so it is pretty shaky. Un-proofread. I ran out of time, sorry guys :( Let me know if you find any horrible errors where I've like, written half a sentence and just never finished it. I'm not being falsely modest, it is genuinely probably terrible. It's the Christmas spirit that counts!!!
They pull into a small town in late December, stolen station wagon sliding on icy streets, the midnight dark broken by houses lit up with gaudy Christmas joy. Jin presses his nose against the car window and watches as the snowmen and Santas roll by, the reindeer and elaborate wreathes. He hums jingle bells under his breath until Pi notices and starts to sing along.
Jin always loved Christmas. He’d been a kind-of-rich kid, so Christmas to him had been about huge turkey dinners and trips to the snow, nintendos and puppies and whatever the toy of the moment was; Furbies, BMX, Tamagotchi. So he’d loved Christmas because of all the awesome stuff he got, but now, looking back, he loves it because of his parents. He misses their dorky Christmas spirit; their Santa hats and stockings, their eggnog and rum balls. He misses their faces.
He remembers watching his father climb onto the roof every winter to string up the Christmas lights, his mother staring fretfully up with the ropelight clutched tightly in her hands. "Be careful," she'd yell, wincing with his every slight movement. Every year his dad would pretend to slip and fall, chortling at her shrieks.
He thinks of the big tree they cram into the corner of the family room every year, the way his father can never seem to tell in the lot that the tree he buys is going to be way too big for the room, so that the branches brush against the walls and the star on top scrapes against the ceiling. Presents spill out over the base, all crazy Santa wrapping paper and gold ribbon. Every year until he was fourteen Jin made an ornament that his mother hung lovingly from the crooked branches, nestled haphazardly against the dazzling tinsel and twinkling lights. He closes his eyes and counts them year by year; the handprint in brightly painted clay from when he was barely six months old; the felt reindeer he made with his babysitter when he was five; the very last one, a fat laughing santa scrawled haphazardly on a piece of cardboard, rushed and crappy because Pi was waiting for him in the snow. His fifteenth Christmas he’d decided he was too sophisticated and cool for that, and had cringed when his mother dragged out all the old crappy decorations and proudly hung them from the prime branches. He’d snuck down the stairs at night and moved them all to the back of the tree, where they couldn’t easily be seen by his friends if they happened to drop by.
He’d give anything to be able to make his mother an ornament now; to press a reindeer or sprig of holly into her hand and have her eyes light up with pride. He breathes against the glass and draws a star in the fog. Merry Christmas, Mom, he thinks.
-
They check into a bed and breakfast run by an almost alarmingly gay couple both called Travis. Jin thinks it would be really weird to sleep with someone who shared your own name - he can’t help but think of himself moaning, “Jin, Jin...” The idea grosses him out.
He finds himself eyeing Travis & Travis critically. It’s not that they’re the first gay people he’s ever met in his life, but they’re the first gay couple he’s seen since he realised this thing he has for Kame is real and that he doesn’t just really like him in a totally heterosexual way. He can’t help but wonder if they can tell, because gay people are supposed to be able to do that, right? To them, the gay should just be written all over his face, probably in sparkling rainbow letters. He feels himself blushing bright pink whenever either of them look at him.
-
They’re all sharing a room, a king sized bed and a shitty fold out stretcher. Jin crawls into the bed without even pretending he is willing to take the stretcher. He’s a bit surprised when Kame follows immediately, because he’ll usually make a big show of being generous even if he’s totally full of shit.
Pi kicks dubiously at the stretcher, watching as it squeaks pathetically and collapses to the floor in a mess of blankets and threadbare mattress.
“Fuck it,” Pi says, and climbs onto the king size on Kame’s other side. He strains to flick the switch on the bedside lamp and the room falls into darkness. Pi falls asleep immediately, all snuffling snores and deep, calm breathing. Jin lies awake listening to the tide of their breath. It takes him a while to realise that Kame’s breath is not as deep and steady as Pi’s. He opens his eyes and finds Kame watching him, brown eyes disappearing beneath a brow furrowed in concern.
“Are you okay?” Kame whispers. He and Jin are lying on their sides facing each other. Kame’s knee is brushing Jin’s thigh. Jin has to speak through the mountain that has suddenly risen in his throat.
“I wish I could go home for Christmas,” Jin says.
Kame moves his head onto Jin’s pillow, so close their foreheads are almost bumping. Jin goes cross eyed in the dark trying to look at him. “I know,” Kame says.
“Do you wish you could go home?” Jin asks.
“I don’t really have a home,” Kame says. “Except for here.”
Jin’s heart roars and for a minute he nearly kisses Kame, right there in the dark, but then Pi grunts in his sleep and rolls over to cuddle against Kame’s back and Jin thinks that making a move on your supernatural bondmate while your other supernatural bondmate sleeps in the bed behind him is just kind of creepy and weird, so he doesn’t.
They fall asleep that way and Jin wakes up drooling into Kame’s hair.
-
Jin had always thought that being on the run would be really exciting, but the truth is they do a lot of sitting around doing nothing in tents and hotel rooms. Today it is Christmas Eve so they order in room service and watch sappy old Christmas movies on the tiny tv. Jin and Kame slept in but Pi had probably been watching since around dawn when he suddenly says, “We should go perform some christmas miracles.”
Kame is just a head sticking out of a giant cocoon of blankets. He’s sitting with his knees pulled to his chest and Jin can see the bumps of his elbows and knees beneath the fleece. “Huh?”
“Well, we have all these powers, right?” Pi waves the remote at the tv in a vagely frustrated way. On screen is an ad for a charity, low mourning versions of christmas carols played over the sad faces of children and old people. “Why don’t we do something good with them for a change?”
They’re all silent for a minute as the adorable little girl on screen bursts into tears and says she wishes Santa could give her Daddy his job back. Jin has never seen such a manipulative ad in his life, but it works. Jin wants to pat her on the head and buy her candy. In a totally not creepy way.
“It’s risky...” Kame says, but from the tone of his voice it is clear that he is reluctant to use his usual Grinchy voice of reason. It’s a token effort that will fold at the slightest pressure, so Jin grabs Kame’s arms through the blankets and whines, “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. COME ON, Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.”
Pi laughs as Kame sighs his compliance. “Ok,” Pi says. “So what do we do?”
-
Jin is a bit disappointed to realise that the nature of his powers disqualifies him from offering any extraordinary amount of help; no-one is really going to consider their property bursting into flames a Christmas miracle. Even if he did it in their fireplace they’d probably still freak out. He feels better when Pi slings his arm over his shoulder and says, “All for one and one for all, Jin.”
Kame says, “Maybe you can go light some fires for homeless people later.”
They go to an ATM that submits to Pi’s will and spits out hundreds of fifty dollar bills. Jin’s pretty sure this is the first Christmas miracle ever that begins with grand larceny.
They take their money to the huge toy store on the edge of town. They each get a huge trolley. Pi looks at Kame and says, “You should get the girl’s stuff,” and just smiles charmingly in the face of Kame’s sigh.
The whole trip is like some kind of childhood fantasy. Anything awesome Jin sees on the shelves he throws right into the trolley; no thought or hesitation. Soldier dolls, stuffed toys, talking robotic dinosaurs, air hockey tables, footballs, basketballs, computer games. He and Pi spend a good twenty minutes in the costume section trying on masks and debating whether the three of them should have a superhero costume and, if so, what it should look like. Jin wants all three of them to wear fedoras over white masks. Pi wants to go more traditional - like early Spiderman, before the Tobey Maguire movies.
Kame comes back forty five minutes later with a trolley overflowing with pink - Barbie dolls and stuffed unicorns, make up kits, Bratz, soccer balls, baseballs, tiny pink plastic high heels that seem like the weirdest toy in the world to Jin. He’s also got a huge stash of educational toys that Jin would have never even thought to look at, let alone pick up.
Jin picks one of them up now and looks at Kame doubtfully. “Learning can be fun,” Kame says defensively.
“If you say so,” Jin says.
The checkout girl looks at them with wide eyes as she rings up their tally. It edges into the tens of thousands of dollars and she looks like she’s going to faint as Pi carefully counts out the fifties and presses them into her hand. He winks at her as he does and Jin can practically see the blood rushing to her face.
“Do you need these wrapped?” she asks.
“Yes please!” Pi says. The three of them go play video games on the old arcade machines by the entrance while they wait. Jin kicks both their asses at Street Fighter because he is totally awesome.
When they finally leave the car is so full of gifts that Pi can’t really use the rearview mirror to see what is coming; they nearly get killed five times just getting out of the parking lot.
-
They drop off the gifts at the churches and homeless shelters dotted across town. Jin and Kame create diversions while Pi levitates the huge sacks of gifts through the door and settles them at the bottom of the tree. He lets the gifts spill artfully from the sack. As far as the social workers and church guys are concerned, one minute the presents weren’t there and then the next, there they were. A miracle. A real Christmas miracle.
They take the last sack of gifts to the hospital, but it is mostly a cover. Jin has a thick stack of picture books to read to the kids, too. They let Kame do the talking to the nurses. He seems the most harmless, and he also has a weird power over people where he can smile sweetly and look up through his eyelashes and then they’ll do anything he wants. Not a super power. Just a Kame power.
“My class raised a bunch of money and bought presents for the kids,” he tells a middle aged nurse, severe looking with glasses perched on her nose. “Can we give them out please?” She looks hesitant, so Kame says, “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?”
“Oh, go on then,” she says. “But don’t disturb them if they’re sleeping.”
“Of course not,” Kame says, sweet as an angel.
They visit kids sick and pale, their little faces wasted away by disease. Jin feels frantic and teary just looking at them, but he tries to keep it together long enough to chat to their harried looking parents who gratefully allow him to read the kids their stories. While he and Pi read Kame stands by the bed with his hand on the kids shoulder, and no-one knows it but them, but those kids will wake up in the morning in remission from cancer, or with bones all knit together, or failing organs suddenly turn around and working at their best.
The last girl is small and blonde and her parents tell them she’s been in and out of hospital her whole life; she was diagnosed with leukemia when she was very small and every time they think she’s better it lasts a few months and then they’re right back where they started from. Jin wishes he could tell them, as Kame brushes his hand over her pale hair, that it won’t be like that this time. That when Kame heals, it’s for good.
He can’t though, so he just sits by her bed and reads from Winnie the Pooh. She looks at him shyly through her oxygen mask and says, “You’re pretty.”
Jin’s chest gets all tight and he thinks he is going to cry - with happiness, maybe, because he can see already the colour coming back into her cheeks, hear the wheezing in her lungs growing fainter. He imagines her growing healthy and strong and the things she might one day do with her life. She could be a doctor or a lawyer or a mother; she could write great books; she could be president. She has her life ahead of her now, because of Kame. Because of them.
“You’re pretty too,” Jin says, and leans down to loudly smack a kiss on her forehead. “Merry Christmas, kid.”
-
That night, Kame is pale and sweating and sick. The healing takes a lot out of him, and there must have been two dozen kids in that ward, almost a quarter of them terminally ill. They’ve got clean bills of health now, but Kame will have to sleep for hours to recover.
Jin carries him inside from the car. At first Pi was going to but then Jin felt all freakishly jealous about it and insisted that he do it; the second he does he kind of regrets it, because Kame looks waifish and light but he feels heavy as lead and Jin is worried he will drop him. Pi snickers at the strain on his face and says, “Need a hand?”
“NO.” Jin says loudly. “I’m FINE.”
He drops Kame a little carelessly on the mattress, feeling a bit guilty when he bounces a bit and groans. Pi helps him pull him up the bed and settle his head on the pillow. They pull the covers right up to his cheek and Jin kisses his cheek gently, blushing under Pi’s grin.
-
Kame’s exhaustion is catching and Jin and Pi end up crashing soon after that. They sleep for hours and hours, all pressed into the centre of the bed in a big pile. Jin sleeps with his head on Kame’s shoulder, face pressed into the lively warmth of his neck.
When he wakes up, though, Kame and Pi are gone. He sits up and looks around with a minute’s panic; it’s always scary when they’re unexpectedly separated, but he reaches out with the bond and feels their presence somewhere nearby, tired and maybe a bit busy, but otherwise fine.
He stumbles out of the bed, stopping only for a second when he catches sight of the frightful mess of his hair in the mirror. He manhandles it into a messy ponytail and yawns as he walks out into the halls of the bed and breakfast; it is Christmas afternoon and he hears music and laughter coming from the kitchen.
He walks in to see a huge mess. Kame’s got flour on his cheeks and what looks like gravy in his hair, and Pi is sitting idly on a stool eating a carrot and not helping. Travis and Travis are drinking wine in Santa hats, calling out advice to Kame as he stirs and chops and sautes.
“What’s going on?” Jin asks.
Kame looks up through the frazzled bangs of his hair, and Jin has one of those moments where he thinks, Jesus, because he’s so beautiful in that moment.
“I know it’s not like your mother’s Christmas,” Kame says, “but I thought we should try anyway.”
Pi kicks Jin in the back of the knee with his slippered foot (where the hell did he get slippers?) and says, “We’re a family now, right?”
Jin’s eyes feel moist and his chest goes puffy and warm. “Can I help?” he asks.
Kame grins broadly and hands him a carving knife and fork. “You wanna do the carving?”
They stuff themselves with turkey and roast vegetables, with plum pudding helpfully provided by the Travises. They sing Christmas carols and pull Christmas crackers and tell each other stupid jokes and stories, and later that night they sneak into the kitchen and make turkey sandwiches while watching the snow falling outside. Jin leans on Kame’s shoulder and says, “We’re pretty lucky.”
Kame bumps his elbow with his own and says, “Yeah.”
Author: [info]soundczech
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, not even the premise.
Summary: Sequel (sort of ) to The Dirty Three, my remix fic of unrequitedangst's superhero fic. Our intrepid heroes celebrate Christmas. Akame, Akamepi. Rated PG.
Notes: I wrote this in less than 24 hours and I haven't written anything in more than a year, so it is pretty shaky. Un-proofread. I ran out of time, sorry guys :( Let me know if you find any horrible errors where I've like, written half a sentence and just never finished it. I'm not being falsely modest, it is genuinely probably terrible. It's the Christmas spirit that counts!!!
They pull into a small town in late December, stolen station wagon sliding on icy streets, the midnight dark broken by houses lit up with gaudy Christmas joy. Jin presses his nose against the car window and watches as the snowmen and Santas roll by, the reindeer and elaborate wreathes. He hums jingle bells under his breath until Pi notices and starts to sing along.
Jin always loved Christmas. He’d been a kind-of-rich kid, so Christmas to him had been about huge turkey dinners and trips to the snow, nintendos and puppies and whatever the toy of the moment was; Furbies, BMX, Tamagotchi. So he’d loved Christmas because of all the awesome stuff he got, but now, looking back, he loves it because of his parents. He misses their dorky Christmas spirit; their Santa hats and stockings, their eggnog and rum balls. He misses their faces.
He remembers watching his father climb onto the roof every winter to string up the Christmas lights, his mother staring fretfully up with the ropelight clutched tightly in her hands. "Be careful," she'd yell, wincing with his every slight movement. Every year his dad would pretend to slip and fall, chortling at her shrieks.
He thinks of the big tree they cram into the corner of the family room every year, the way his father can never seem to tell in the lot that the tree he buys is going to be way too big for the room, so that the branches brush against the walls and the star on top scrapes against the ceiling. Presents spill out over the base, all crazy Santa wrapping paper and gold ribbon. Every year until he was fourteen Jin made an ornament that his mother hung lovingly from the crooked branches, nestled haphazardly against the dazzling tinsel and twinkling lights. He closes his eyes and counts them year by year; the handprint in brightly painted clay from when he was barely six months old; the felt reindeer he made with his babysitter when he was five; the very last one, a fat laughing santa scrawled haphazardly on a piece of cardboard, rushed and crappy because Pi was waiting for him in the snow. His fifteenth Christmas he’d decided he was too sophisticated and cool for that, and had cringed when his mother dragged out all the old crappy decorations and proudly hung them from the prime branches. He’d snuck down the stairs at night and moved them all to the back of the tree, where they couldn’t easily be seen by his friends if they happened to drop by.
He’d give anything to be able to make his mother an ornament now; to press a reindeer or sprig of holly into her hand and have her eyes light up with pride. He breathes against the glass and draws a star in the fog. Merry Christmas, Mom, he thinks.
-
They check into a bed and breakfast run by an almost alarmingly gay couple both called Travis. Jin thinks it would be really weird to sleep with someone who shared your own name - he can’t help but think of himself moaning, “Jin, Jin...” The idea grosses him out.
He finds himself eyeing Travis & Travis critically. It’s not that they’re the first gay people he’s ever met in his life, but they’re the first gay couple he’s seen since he realised this thing he has for Kame is real and that he doesn’t just really like him in a totally heterosexual way. He can’t help but wonder if they can tell, because gay people are supposed to be able to do that, right? To them, the gay should just be written all over his face, probably in sparkling rainbow letters. He feels himself blushing bright pink whenever either of them look at him.
-
They’re all sharing a room, a king sized bed and a shitty fold out stretcher. Jin crawls into the bed without even pretending he is willing to take the stretcher. He’s a bit surprised when Kame follows immediately, because he’ll usually make a big show of being generous even if he’s totally full of shit.
Pi kicks dubiously at the stretcher, watching as it squeaks pathetically and collapses to the floor in a mess of blankets and threadbare mattress.
“Fuck it,” Pi says, and climbs onto the king size on Kame’s other side. He strains to flick the switch on the bedside lamp and the room falls into darkness. Pi falls asleep immediately, all snuffling snores and deep, calm breathing. Jin lies awake listening to the tide of their breath. It takes him a while to realise that Kame’s breath is not as deep and steady as Pi’s. He opens his eyes and finds Kame watching him, brown eyes disappearing beneath a brow furrowed in concern.
“Are you okay?” Kame whispers. He and Jin are lying on their sides facing each other. Kame’s knee is brushing Jin’s thigh. Jin has to speak through the mountain that has suddenly risen in his throat.
“I wish I could go home for Christmas,” Jin says.
Kame moves his head onto Jin’s pillow, so close their foreheads are almost bumping. Jin goes cross eyed in the dark trying to look at him. “I know,” Kame says.
“Do you wish you could go home?” Jin asks.
“I don’t really have a home,” Kame says. “Except for here.”
Jin’s heart roars and for a minute he nearly kisses Kame, right there in the dark, but then Pi grunts in his sleep and rolls over to cuddle against Kame’s back and Jin thinks that making a move on your supernatural bondmate while your other supernatural bondmate sleeps in the bed behind him is just kind of creepy and weird, so he doesn’t.
They fall asleep that way and Jin wakes up drooling into Kame’s hair.
-
Jin had always thought that being on the run would be really exciting, but the truth is they do a lot of sitting around doing nothing in tents and hotel rooms. Today it is Christmas Eve so they order in room service and watch sappy old Christmas movies on the tiny tv. Jin and Kame slept in but Pi had probably been watching since around dawn when he suddenly says, “We should go perform some christmas miracles.”
Kame is just a head sticking out of a giant cocoon of blankets. He’s sitting with his knees pulled to his chest and Jin can see the bumps of his elbows and knees beneath the fleece. “Huh?”
“Well, we have all these powers, right?” Pi waves the remote at the tv in a vagely frustrated way. On screen is an ad for a charity, low mourning versions of christmas carols played over the sad faces of children and old people. “Why don’t we do something good with them for a change?”
They’re all silent for a minute as the adorable little girl on screen bursts into tears and says she wishes Santa could give her Daddy his job back. Jin has never seen such a manipulative ad in his life, but it works. Jin wants to pat her on the head and buy her candy. In a totally not creepy way.
“It’s risky...” Kame says, but from the tone of his voice it is clear that he is reluctant to use his usual Grinchy voice of reason. It’s a token effort that will fold at the slightest pressure, so Jin grabs Kame’s arms through the blankets and whines, “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. COME ON, Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.”
Pi laughs as Kame sighs his compliance. “Ok,” Pi says. “So what do we do?”
-
Jin is a bit disappointed to realise that the nature of his powers disqualifies him from offering any extraordinary amount of help; no-one is really going to consider their property bursting into flames a Christmas miracle. Even if he did it in their fireplace they’d probably still freak out. He feels better when Pi slings his arm over his shoulder and says, “All for one and one for all, Jin.”
Kame says, “Maybe you can go light some fires for homeless people later.”
They go to an ATM that submits to Pi’s will and spits out hundreds of fifty dollar bills. Jin’s pretty sure this is the first Christmas miracle ever that begins with grand larceny.
They take their money to the huge toy store on the edge of town. They each get a huge trolley. Pi looks at Kame and says, “You should get the girl’s stuff,” and just smiles charmingly in the face of Kame’s sigh.
The whole trip is like some kind of childhood fantasy. Anything awesome Jin sees on the shelves he throws right into the trolley; no thought or hesitation. Soldier dolls, stuffed toys, talking robotic dinosaurs, air hockey tables, footballs, basketballs, computer games. He and Pi spend a good twenty minutes in the costume section trying on masks and debating whether the three of them should have a superhero costume and, if so, what it should look like. Jin wants all three of them to wear fedoras over white masks. Pi wants to go more traditional - like early Spiderman, before the Tobey Maguire movies.
Kame comes back forty five minutes later with a trolley overflowing with pink - Barbie dolls and stuffed unicorns, make up kits, Bratz, soccer balls, baseballs, tiny pink plastic high heels that seem like the weirdest toy in the world to Jin. He’s also got a huge stash of educational toys that Jin would have never even thought to look at, let alone pick up.
Jin picks one of them up now and looks at Kame doubtfully. “Learning can be fun,” Kame says defensively.
“If you say so,” Jin says.
The checkout girl looks at them with wide eyes as she rings up their tally. It edges into the tens of thousands of dollars and she looks like she’s going to faint as Pi carefully counts out the fifties and presses them into her hand. He winks at her as he does and Jin can practically see the blood rushing to her face.
“Do you need these wrapped?” she asks.
“Yes please!” Pi says. The three of them go play video games on the old arcade machines by the entrance while they wait. Jin kicks both their asses at Street Fighter because he is totally awesome.
When they finally leave the car is so full of gifts that Pi can’t really use the rearview mirror to see what is coming; they nearly get killed five times just getting out of the parking lot.
-
They drop off the gifts at the churches and homeless shelters dotted across town. Jin and Kame create diversions while Pi levitates the huge sacks of gifts through the door and settles them at the bottom of the tree. He lets the gifts spill artfully from the sack. As far as the social workers and church guys are concerned, one minute the presents weren’t there and then the next, there they were. A miracle. A real Christmas miracle.
They take the last sack of gifts to the hospital, but it is mostly a cover. Jin has a thick stack of picture books to read to the kids, too. They let Kame do the talking to the nurses. He seems the most harmless, and he also has a weird power over people where he can smile sweetly and look up through his eyelashes and then they’ll do anything he wants. Not a super power. Just a Kame power.
“My class raised a bunch of money and bought presents for the kids,” he tells a middle aged nurse, severe looking with glasses perched on her nose. “Can we give them out please?” She looks hesitant, so Kame says, “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?”
“Oh, go on then,” she says. “But don’t disturb them if they’re sleeping.”
“Of course not,” Kame says, sweet as an angel.
They visit kids sick and pale, their little faces wasted away by disease. Jin feels frantic and teary just looking at them, but he tries to keep it together long enough to chat to their harried looking parents who gratefully allow him to read the kids their stories. While he and Pi read Kame stands by the bed with his hand on the kids shoulder, and no-one knows it but them, but those kids will wake up in the morning in remission from cancer, or with bones all knit together, or failing organs suddenly turn around and working at their best.
The last girl is small and blonde and her parents tell them she’s been in and out of hospital her whole life; she was diagnosed with leukemia when she was very small and every time they think she’s better it lasts a few months and then they’re right back where they started from. Jin wishes he could tell them, as Kame brushes his hand over her pale hair, that it won’t be like that this time. That when Kame heals, it’s for good.
He can’t though, so he just sits by her bed and reads from Winnie the Pooh. She looks at him shyly through her oxygen mask and says, “You’re pretty.”
Jin’s chest gets all tight and he thinks he is going to cry - with happiness, maybe, because he can see already the colour coming back into her cheeks, hear the wheezing in her lungs growing fainter. He imagines her growing healthy and strong and the things she might one day do with her life. She could be a doctor or a lawyer or a mother; she could write great books; she could be president. She has her life ahead of her now, because of Kame. Because of them.
“You’re pretty too,” Jin says, and leans down to loudly smack a kiss on her forehead. “Merry Christmas, kid.”
-
That night, Kame is pale and sweating and sick. The healing takes a lot out of him, and there must have been two dozen kids in that ward, almost a quarter of them terminally ill. They’ve got clean bills of health now, but Kame will have to sleep for hours to recover.
Jin carries him inside from the car. At first Pi was going to but then Jin felt all freakishly jealous about it and insisted that he do it; the second he does he kind of regrets it, because Kame looks waifish and light but he feels heavy as lead and Jin is worried he will drop him. Pi snickers at the strain on his face and says, “Need a hand?”
“NO.” Jin says loudly. “I’m FINE.”
He drops Kame a little carelessly on the mattress, feeling a bit guilty when he bounces a bit and groans. Pi helps him pull him up the bed and settle his head on the pillow. They pull the covers right up to his cheek and Jin kisses his cheek gently, blushing under Pi’s grin.
-
Kame’s exhaustion is catching and Jin and Pi end up crashing soon after that. They sleep for hours and hours, all pressed into the centre of the bed in a big pile. Jin sleeps with his head on Kame’s shoulder, face pressed into the lively warmth of his neck.
When he wakes up, though, Kame and Pi are gone. He sits up and looks around with a minute’s panic; it’s always scary when they’re unexpectedly separated, but he reaches out with the bond and feels their presence somewhere nearby, tired and maybe a bit busy, but otherwise fine.
He stumbles out of the bed, stopping only for a second when he catches sight of the frightful mess of his hair in the mirror. He manhandles it into a messy ponytail and yawns as he walks out into the halls of the bed and breakfast; it is Christmas afternoon and he hears music and laughter coming from the kitchen.
He walks in to see a huge mess. Kame’s got flour on his cheeks and what looks like gravy in his hair, and Pi is sitting idly on a stool eating a carrot and not helping. Travis and Travis are drinking wine in Santa hats, calling out advice to Kame as he stirs and chops and sautes.
“What’s going on?” Jin asks.
Kame looks up through the frazzled bangs of his hair, and Jin has one of those moments where he thinks, Jesus, because he’s so beautiful in that moment.
“I know it’s not like your mother’s Christmas,” Kame says, “but I thought we should try anyway.”
Pi kicks Jin in the back of the knee with his slippered foot (where the hell did he get slippers?) and says, “We’re a family now, right?”
Jin’s eyes feel moist and his chest goes puffy and warm. “Can I help?” he asks.
Kame grins broadly and hands him a carving knife and fork. “You wanna do the carving?”
They stuff themselves with turkey and roast vegetables, with plum pudding helpfully provided by the Travises. They sing Christmas carols and pull Christmas crackers and tell each other stupid jokes and stories, and later that night they sneak into the kitchen and make turkey sandwiches while watching the snow falling outside. Jin leans on Kame’s shoulder and says, “We’re pretty lucky.”
Kame bumps his elbow with his own and says, “Yeah.”