Fic for korn_lotr_luver
Title: 
By: hilaryscribbles
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre/Warnings: Extreme AU; reincarnation fic; weirdness; wangst; mentions of THE SOLO CON (insert dramatic music here).
Notes: The first incarnation of Jin we encounter is stolen blatantly and unapologetically from the music video to Damien Rice's "9 Crimes."
Summary: Jin floats.
++
Kame is returning from the market when he comes upon a balloon. It is not just any balloon--it's a balloon shaped like a boy's head, a very pretty head, with big innocent eyes that blink up at Kame in expectation.
"Hi," the balloon says in his lilting, high voice. "I've been waiting for you."
"Hi," Kame says back, kneeling to get a better look at him. "Are you a head?"
The balloon smiles serenely. "No, I'm just a balloon shaped like a head." He yawns, cute button nose screwing up for a few moments. "I'm running out of air, though."
Kame covers his mouth with his hands. "Oh no! What do I do?"
The balloon doesn't shrug because it doesn't have shoulders, so Kame just imagines that it does.
"I'm okay," the balloon lies. "I was trapped inside a birthday party last week. I escaped, though!"
"How did you do it?" Kame asks.
"I bit someone," the balloon says, and gives a devious little laugh.
The late spring breeze blows the balloon backward a few centimetres, lifting him off the ground. Kame freaks out because he's suddenly terrified of losing the balloon, that the breeze will blow it too far away to reach.
"I'll take you home," Kame says, taking hold of the bright red string tied around the balloon's throat. The balloon giggles.
"That tickles," he says as Kame gathers him in his arms.
"Will you bite me if I keep you?" Kame asks, ever cautious and logically-minded.
The balloon deliberates for a few seconds. "Maybe if I don't like you," he says seriously. "I don't think that will happen, though." His voice drops to a whisper. "I think you're probably going to be my most favorite person ever."
Kame pets the balloon's hair fondly.
++
Kame's house has a balcony, and Kame ties Mr. Red String Balloon to the railing. Mr. Red String Balloon loves the wind, especially the wind from the west, and he tells Kame all kinds of stories about the far away places it has taken him in all of his many, many lives.
"We have lived two hundred and ninety eight times before," Balloon says. "Once, I was a famous samurai! And you were there too. We fought and blew stuff up. IT WAS AMAZING."
"No way. Did samurai blow stuff up?" Kame laughs. Kame is a boring old schoolboy in this life because he hurt his arm last year and can't play cricket anymore. Some people think dreaming of becoming a cricket player is a waste if time, but Balloon doesn't. Balloon thinks Kame is amazing.
"We raced horses," Balloon tells him.
"And paddled gondolas?" Kame imagines them in striped shirts and berets.
"And sang to people," Balloon adds.
Kame sighs. How wonderful their many lives have been.
"And when we were famous dancers in France?" Balloon says, "People used to pretend you were in love with me. We always auditioned for the same roles." Balloon looks sort of grossed out, but in a totally smug kind of way.
"Were we? In love, I mean," Kame asks, feeling a little embarassed, but mostly just ridiculously romantic. Being in love with a famous person, and a rival, and one with as pretty a face as Balloon's, is the kind of thought Kame finds beautiful.
"I don't know if we ever decided," Balloon says sadly. He bobs in the wind, wolf eyes staring off across the seashore to places Kame can't even imagine.
"I think it would be okay to love somebody like you," Kame replies, and tugs at Balloon's string.
"I was afraid you wouldn't," Balloon says. "Sometimes I didn't. I was afraid in a lot of lives. I don't know; I'm not scared now, though!"
Kame can't help but burst out laughing at that. Imagining Balloon afraid of anyone--especially of Kame--seems ridiculous. Balloon has been a samurai. Balloon has been to outer space. Like he could ever be afraid of Kame.
"I think I'll love you now," Kame says plainly, "and you'll just have to deal with it."
"But I have no body," Balloon points out. "Also, I run into things a lot, and then you have to pull me back down. Isn't it hard to love someone like that?"
Kame becomes petulant. "I think that doesn't matter to me," he says.
"Well, it should," Balloon says. "Because I could pop if you hug me too hard."
"I could pop too, if someone hugs me too hard," Kame says.
"It just won't work," Balloon says. "It's too weird."
After a while, this conversation makes Kame sad, so he brings Balloon inside to sing duets to the radio instead.
++
One morning, a long time later, Kame wakes up in the middle of the night and Balloon is trying to tuck him into bed with his teeth. Kame laughs for a long time.
"What are you doing?" Kame holds Balloon up, palms cradling Balloon's chin. "Why would you try that?"
"Because people who love each other tuck each other in, stupid!" Balloon tries to say around a mouthful of blanket.
"You told me it wouldn't work," Kame says, stifling his giggles.
"Shut up," mutters Balloon, totally embarrassed.
Balloon makes Kame really happy.
++
Some time later, they are taking a walk in the pine forest when they are stopped by little children. All of them are fascinated by Balloon, and Balloon is fascinated by them. The children laugh at him when he tells jokes, and they poke his chubby cheeks and pull his soft hair. He chases them around, tugging Kame along by the string that connects them.
Balloon tells Kame sometimes that, had be been born a human, he'd have a hundred children. Kame thinks this probably isn't true, because Balloon loves Kame best and Kame is a BOY, but he doesn't tell Balloon he thinks so.
At one point, a little girl falls down and cuts her leg open, and there's blood all over the place. Balloon freaks out because he has no arms and can't put a bandage on it, but Kame reaches into his pocket and pulls one out right away. He rolls it around the little girl's knee, and she's better in no time. Mostly she was just scared, anyway.
"That was the worst ever," says Balloon, as the kids run away waving goodbye. Their mothers are calling.
"Don't be scared. She still likes you," Kame says sagely, sitting in the grass. Balloon has some gum stuck in his hair, and Kame starts picking it out with his fingernails.
"I need you though," Balloon says. "What if I just made her bleed and I couldn't do anything about it? I bet she'd just keep bleeding til she DIED!"
"Well," Kame reasons, stroking the smooth streak of skin behind Balloon's ear, "I have a body, so you don't have to worry about anything as long as I'm here."
Balloon doesn't say anything to that.
++
Kame takes Balloon everywhere; to school, to the seaside, to the market, to the office to scare his papa, to his brother's graveside. At first everybody thinks Balloon is terrifying, but then they realize he's just sort of amazing. Balloon loves people, and he loves showing himself off, and he loves showing Kame off too.
"This is the person that rescued me," Balloon says, and tells all about Kame finding him on the ground behind the locksmith's shop. No matter what Balloon and Kame do or say, the crowd is impressed.
++
Sometimes Balloon gets frustrated, because he's just a balloon. Sometimes he even hates being a balloon, because he's a bodiless head on a string and not a proper balloon at all. He tells Kame that he's going to become a hot air balloon and carry people around someday, but Kame reminds him that hot air balloons are large, and that Balloon is older than thirteen and probably won't grow any larger. Kame is an adult now and has become quite practical.
Balloon always hides while he's in a bad mood, usually in a closet where he listens to loud music and knocks things over and gets rough with Kame's coats, but he snaps out of it after the pouting ends and Kame takes him outside again.
++
Balloon lasts for a long time, but soon he starts to lose more and more air. He has trouble staying inflated after awhile, and his skin is turning gray. It's hard, because Kame hasn't had as much time to take him out of the house, and Kame doesn't know what to do about it.
Balloon still loves Kame, though, and Kame loves him back. This makes things worse.
"What's wrong, Balloon?" Kame asks on a day when he hasn't brought Balloon to the office because the boss says foreign beneficiaries won't approve of a grown man carrying around a head on a string.
"I need to go outside," Balloon says, and his pout is pleading. "I'm just really...I just want to feel the wind."
"Okay," Kame says, and they step out into the fading March sunshine. There's a great gust of wind that pulls Kame and Balloon forward; Balloon escapes for just a moment, but Kame grabs him back. Balloon heaves a great sigh. Kame can't tell if it's relief or disappointment.
For that brief moment, Kame caught a glimpse of the old Balloon; the Balloon who told a million stories and laughed at Kame's horrible jokes. Kame knows this is how heartbreak feels.
"I think this isn't where you belong," Kame realizes, watching the sunset dance red highlights in Balloon's hair.
Balloon turns a horrified expression on Kame. He's got shadows around his eyes; in the hollows of his cheeks. "No," he says firmly. "If you let me go I'll never come back."
"I don't think that's true," Kame says, pinching a strand of hair between his fingers. "And even if you don't in this life, I know I'll see you next time."
"Kame," whispers Balloon, all whiny and gorgeous. "But I'll miss you too much."
"I'll be here," Kame says. He presses three soft kisses to Balloon's forehead, because at the end of all things, Kame is a hopeless romantic.
Kame unties the string from around Balloon's neck, and lets him go. Their tether flutters to the grass, forgotten; Kame's too busy watching the sky. Balloon has caught the wind, and he's flying up, up, and away.
From the ground he's a speck of sparkling golden red. He looks happy.
++
After that, Kame never sees Mr. Red String Balloon again.
++
Many years later, a different Kame sits on a different balcony, smoking through his second pack of cigarettes that day. He sits side-to-side with the person who matters most to him in the entire world.
Jin is beautiful, silhouetted against the sunset. He toys with the hem of his pants, nervous and exhausted and scruffy. Kame wants to hug him, to clutch at him and keep him safe and locked away from the world full of paparazzi and managers and fangirls, like he used to when they were boys and Jin was honest about things. Jin pretends he's all manly and grown up and stoic now, but he's more fragile than Kame's ever seen him.
"Jin," Kame sighs, smoke curling from between his teeth. This is about as far as the conversation has gone since the production meeting that morning.
Jin is the one who won't talk. People think Jin has changed, that he's turned into this big asshole that doesn't care about anyone but himself, but it isn't true. Jin is just as much the boy who wanted everybody to love him as he's ever been. He's just not as good at being lovable anymore.
"Um," Jin says (finally, finally). "Yeah. Sorry."
Kame's response is a wry smile, and a plaintive offer of the ash tray. Jin just stares at it, like he can't see it at all, like he's already trying to read the baggage claim sings at LAX.
He turns away. He's acting badass, but he's totally miserable, Kame can see it in the way he's slumped over; in the untamed mess of stubble on his chin and on his head and the grayness that clings to his skin from too many nights in too many stuffy, airless clubs.
For some reason, Kame thinks of deflating balloons and strings tied around wrists and necks. It's a pretty cheap metaphor; totally childish and not at all subtle or clever. Josh'd laugh at the sentimentality of it.
Kame couldn't care less what that idiot thinks, of course.
"Why are you apologizing?" Kame nudges Jin with the ashtray again. "You are such an egoist."
The sun sinks lower, and the wind picks up. Kame imagines Jin yearning to follow it away. He imagines them tied together; Jin locked in Kame's house, gone limp, beating up Kame's coats in the closet out of frustration.
"So are you going to be happy the next time I see you?" Kame asks. Jin finally turns back then, finally looks at Kame again.
"I think so," Jin shrugs helplessly, big shoulders bobbing up and down. "I mean, well, fuck yeah, hell yeah...but they had to do this while you guys are on tour, and--it's just bullshit. I mean, it's smart marketing, but it's bullshit, right? Way to go, ruining this for me."
"Oh, stop," Kame rolls his eyes. "You didn't mess us up then, you won't mess us up now."
Jin doesn't seem convinced.
"You need to go?" Kame says. "You go. Get out of here. Go chase that pipedream. That's what normal people do." He grins. He's Kame. He's supportive. He's the backbone; the body. He'll make this work. They will make this work. "I can't believe you're even thinking about anyone else. Look at you, so grown up."
"Shut up," Jin hisses.
Kame just wants to kiss him.
"What if--" Jin begins.
"Things don't work out for us?" Kame lights up another.
"Don't make this about you," Jin says, except it's been about Kame--and the band, of course--ever since Jin cracked his first dictionary of English slang.
Kame remembers what happened the last time Jin left for California--not for fun, not to visit friends. Everybody knows what Jin has become, when it began. Everybody knows why Jin is the one getting a solo con in a foreign country that can't even pronounce Johnny Kitagawa.
Jin loves California.
Kame doesn't see it; he doesn't see anything sad, or severing. Kame sees Jin flying free, no strings attached, radiating the happiness of achieving something he's wanted forever. This isn't like last time. I'm okay. We're okay. This is okay. Kame wants to say, but that seems cheap somehow. Jin probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
In the end, "Look, okay. I will probably miss you," is all anybody says, like it's an apology, and of course it's Jin saying it, like he's hurting Kame to the core of his being. Jin's never been modest.
Kame just shakes his head. "You ass. I'm not going anywhere."
"Yeah well. You'd better come find me eventually," Jin says, a little fierce, a little hopeful like the boy he used to be.
++
As he's done two hundred and ninety-nine times before, Kame drops the string.
This time, though, Jin catches it and carries it with him.
++
Footnote: The title was my beta's idea. She made it, too. Painstakingly, at that. Because she's AMAZING AND BRILLIANT.
By: hilaryscribbles
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre/Warnings: Extreme AU; reincarnation fic; weirdness; wangst; mentions of THE SOLO CON (insert dramatic music here).
Notes: The first incarnation of Jin we encounter is stolen blatantly and unapologetically from the music video to Damien Rice's "9 Crimes."
Summary: Jin floats.
++
Kame is returning from the market when he comes upon a balloon. It is not just any balloon--it's a balloon shaped like a boy's head, a very pretty head, with big innocent eyes that blink up at Kame in expectation.
"Hi," the balloon says in his lilting, high voice. "I've been waiting for you."
"Hi," Kame says back, kneeling to get a better look at him. "Are you a head?"
The balloon smiles serenely. "No, I'm just a balloon shaped like a head." He yawns, cute button nose screwing up for a few moments. "I'm running out of air, though."
Kame covers his mouth with his hands. "Oh no! What do I do?"
The balloon doesn't shrug because it doesn't have shoulders, so Kame just imagines that it does.
"I'm okay," the balloon lies. "I was trapped inside a birthday party last week. I escaped, though!"
"How did you do it?" Kame asks.
"I bit someone," the balloon says, and gives a devious little laugh.
The late spring breeze blows the balloon backward a few centimetres, lifting him off the ground. Kame freaks out because he's suddenly terrified of losing the balloon, that the breeze will blow it too far away to reach.
"I'll take you home," Kame says, taking hold of the bright red string tied around the balloon's throat. The balloon giggles.
"That tickles," he says as Kame gathers him in his arms.
"Will you bite me if I keep you?" Kame asks, ever cautious and logically-minded.
The balloon deliberates for a few seconds. "Maybe if I don't like you," he says seriously. "I don't think that will happen, though." His voice drops to a whisper. "I think you're probably going to be my most favorite person ever."
Kame pets the balloon's hair fondly.
++
Kame's house has a balcony, and Kame ties Mr. Red String Balloon to the railing. Mr. Red String Balloon loves the wind, especially the wind from the west, and he tells Kame all kinds of stories about the far away places it has taken him in all of his many, many lives.
"We have lived two hundred and ninety eight times before," Balloon says. "Once, I was a famous samurai! And you were there too. We fought and blew stuff up. IT WAS AMAZING."
"No way. Did samurai blow stuff up?" Kame laughs. Kame is a boring old schoolboy in this life because he hurt his arm last year and can't play cricket anymore. Some people think dreaming of becoming a cricket player is a waste if time, but Balloon doesn't. Balloon thinks Kame is amazing.
"We raced horses," Balloon tells him.
"And paddled gondolas?" Kame imagines them in striped shirts and berets.
"And sang to people," Balloon adds.
Kame sighs. How wonderful their many lives have been.
"And when we were famous dancers in France?" Balloon says, "People used to pretend you were in love with me. We always auditioned for the same roles." Balloon looks sort of grossed out, but in a totally smug kind of way.
"Were we? In love, I mean," Kame asks, feeling a little embarassed, but mostly just ridiculously romantic. Being in love with a famous person, and a rival, and one with as pretty a face as Balloon's, is the kind of thought Kame finds beautiful.
"I don't know if we ever decided," Balloon says sadly. He bobs in the wind, wolf eyes staring off across the seashore to places Kame can't even imagine.
"I think it would be okay to love somebody like you," Kame replies, and tugs at Balloon's string.
"I was afraid you wouldn't," Balloon says. "Sometimes I didn't. I was afraid in a lot of lives. I don't know; I'm not scared now, though!"
Kame can't help but burst out laughing at that. Imagining Balloon afraid of anyone--especially of Kame--seems ridiculous. Balloon has been a samurai. Balloon has been to outer space. Like he could ever be afraid of Kame.
"I think I'll love you now," Kame says plainly, "and you'll just have to deal with it."
"But I have no body," Balloon points out. "Also, I run into things a lot, and then you have to pull me back down. Isn't it hard to love someone like that?"
Kame becomes petulant. "I think that doesn't matter to me," he says.
"Well, it should," Balloon says. "Because I could pop if you hug me too hard."
"I could pop too, if someone hugs me too hard," Kame says.
"It just won't work," Balloon says. "It's too weird."
After a while, this conversation makes Kame sad, so he brings Balloon inside to sing duets to the radio instead.
++
One morning, a long time later, Kame wakes up in the middle of the night and Balloon is trying to tuck him into bed with his teeth. Kame laughs for a long time.
"What are you doing?" Kame holds Balloon up, palms cradling Balloon's chin. "Why would you try that?"
"Because people who love each other tuck each other in, stupid!" Balloon tries to say around a mouthful of blanket.
"You told me it wouldn't work," Kame says, stifling his giggles.
"Shut up," mutters Balloon, totally embarrassed.
Balloon makes Kame really happy.
++
Some time later, they are taking a walk in the pine forest when they are stopped by little children. All of them are fascinated by Balloon, and Balloon is fascinated by them. The children laugh at him when he tells jokes, and they poke his chubby cheeks and pull his soft hair. He chases them around, tugging Kame along by the string that connects them.
Balloon tells Kame sometimes that, had be been born a human, he'd have a hundred children. Kame thinks this probably isn't true, because Balloon loves Kame best and Kame is a BOY, but he doesn't tell Balloon he thinks so.
At one point, a little girl falls down and cuts her leg open, and there's blood all over the place. Balloon freaks out because he has no arms and can't put a bandage on it, but Kame reaches into his pocket and pulls one out right away. He rolls it around the little girl's knee, and she's better in no time. Mostly she was just scared, anyway.
"That was the worst ever," says Balloon, as the kids run away waving goodbye. Their mothers are calling.
"Don't be scared. She still likes you," Kame says sagely, sitting in the grass. Balloon has some gum stuck in his hair, and Kame starts picking it out with his fingernails.
"I need you though," Balloon says. "What if I just made her bleed and I couldn't do anything about it? I bet she'd just keep bleeding til she DIED!"
"Well," Kame reasons, stroking the smooth streak of skin behind Balloon's ear, "I have a body, so you don't have to worry about anything as long as I'm here."
Balloon doesn't say anything to that.
++
Kame takes Balloon everywhere; to school, to the seaside, to the market, to the office to scare his papa, to his brother's graveside. At first everybody thinks Balloon is terrifying, but then they realize he's just sort of amazing. Balloon loves people, and he loves showing himself off, and he loves showing Kame off too.
"This is the person that rescued me," Balloon says, and tells all about Kame finding him on the ground behind the locksmith's shop. No matter what Balloon and Kame do or say, the crowd is impressed.
++
Sometimes Balloon gets frustrated, because he's just a balloon. Sometimes he even hates being a balloon, because he's a bodiless head on a string and not a proper balloon at all. He tells Kame that he's going to become a hot air balloon and carry people around someday, but Kame reminds him that hot air balloons are large, and that Balloon is older than thirteen and probably won't grow any larger. Kame is an adult now and has become quite practical.
Balloon always hides while he's in a bad mood, usually in a closet where he listens to loud music and knocks things over and gets rough with Kame's coats, but he snaps out of it after the pouting ends and Kame takes him outside again.
++
Balloon lasts for a long time, but soon he starts to lose more and more air. He has trouble staying inflated after awhile, and his skin is turning gray. It's hard, because Kame hasn't had as much time to take him out of the house, and Kame doesn't know what to do about it.
Balloon still loves Kame, though, and Kame loves him back. This makes things worse.
"What's wrong, Balloon?" Kame asks on a day when he hasn't brought Balloon to the office because the boss says foreign beneficiaries won't approve of a grown man carrying around a head on a string.
"I need to go outside," Balloon says, and his pout is pleading. "I'm just really...I just want to feel the wind."
"Okay," Kame says, and they step out into the fading March sunshine. There's a great gust of wind that pulls Kame and Balloon forward; Balloon escapes for just a moment, but Kame grabs him back. Balloon heaves a great sigh. Kame can't tell if it's relief or disappointment.
For that brief moment, Kame caught a glimpse of the old Balloon; the Balloon who told a million stories and laughed at Kame's horrible jokes. Kame knows this is how heartbreak feels.
"I think this isn't where you belong," Kame realizes, watching the sunset dance red highlights in Balloon's hair.
Balloon turns a horrified expression on Kame. He's got shadows around his eyes; in the hollows of his cheeks. "No," he says firmly. "If you let me go I'll never come back."
"I don't think that's true," Kame says, pinching a strand of hair between his fingers. "And even if you don't in this life, I know I'll see you next time."
"Kame," whispers Balloon, all whiny and gorgeous. "But I'll miss you too much."
"I'll be here," Kame says. He presses three soft kisses to Balloon's forehead, because at the end of all things, Kame is a hopeless romantic.
Kame unties the string from around Balloon's neck, and lets him go. Their tether flutters to the grass, forgotten; Kame's too busy watching the sky. Balloon has caught the wind, and he's flying up, up, and away.
From the ground he's a speck of sparkling golden red. He looks happy.
++
After that, Kame never sees Mr. Red String Balloon again.
++
Many years later, a different Kame sits on a different balcony, smoking through his second pack of cigarettes that day. He sits side-to-side with the person who matters most to him in the entire world.
Jin is beautiful, silhouetted against the sunset. He toys with the hem of his pants, nervous and exhausted and scruffy. Kame wants to hug him, to clutch at him and keep him safe and locked away from the world full of paparazzi and managers and fangirls, like he used to when they were boys and Jin was honest about things. Jin pretends he's all manly and grown up and stoic now, but he's more fragile than Kame's ever seen him.
"Jin," Kame sighs, smoke curling from between his teeth. This is about as far as the conversation has gone since the production meeting that morning.
Jin is the one who won't talk. People think Jin has changed, that he's turned into this big asshole that doesn't care about anyone but himself, but it isn't true. Jin is just as much the boy who wanted everybody to love him as he's ever been. He's just not as good at being lovable anymore.
"Um," Jin says (finally, finally). "Yeah. Sorry."
Kame's response is a wry smile, and a plaintive offer of the ash tray. Jin just stares at it, like he can't see it at all, like he's already trying to read the baggage claim sings at LAX.
He turns away. He's acting badass, but he's totally miserable, Kame can see it in the way he's slumped over; in the untamed mess of stubble on his chin and on his head and the grayness that clings to his skin from too many nights in too many stuffy, airless clubs.
For some reason, Kame thinks of deflating balloons and strings tied around wrists and necks. It's a pretty cheap metaphor; totally childish and not at all subtle or clever. Josh'd laugh at the sentimentality of it.
Kame couldn't care less what that idiot thinks, of course.
"Why are you apologizing?" Kame nudges Jin with the ashtray again. "You are such an egoist."
The sun sinks lower, and the wind picks up. Kame imagines Jin yearning to follow it away. He imagines them tied together; Jin locked in Kame's house, gone limp, beating up Kame's coats in the closet out of frustration.
"So are you going to be happy the next time I see you?" Kame asks. Jin finally turns back then, finally looks at Kame again.
"I think so," Jin shrugs helplessly, big shoulders bobbing up and down. "I mean, well, fuck yeah, hell yeah...but they had to do this while you guys are on tour, and--it's just bullshit. I mean, it's smart marketing, but it's bullshit, right? Way to go, ruining this for me."
"Oh, stop," Kame rolls his eyes. "You didn't mess us up then, you won't mess us up now."
Jin doesn't seem convinced.
"You need to go?" Kame says. "You go. Get out of here. Go chase that pipedream. That's what normal people do." He grins. He's Kame. He's supportive. He's the backbone; the body. He'll make this work. They will make this work. "I can't believe you're even thinking about anyone else. Look at you, so grown up."
"Shut up," Jin hisses.
Kame just wants to kiss him.
"What if--" Jin begins.
"Things don't work out for us?" Kame lights up another.
"Don't make this about you," Jin says, except it's been about Kame--and the band, of course--ever since Jin cracked his first dictionary of English slang.
Kame remembers what happened the last time Jin left for California--not for fun, not to visit friends. Everybody knows what Jin has become, when it began. Everybody knows why Jin is the one getting a solo con in a foreign country that can't even pronounce Johnny Kitagawa.
Jin loves California.
Kame doesn't see it; he doesn't see anything sad, or severing. Kame sees Jin flying free, no strings attached, radiating the happiness of achieving something he's wanted forever. This isn't like last time. I'm okay. We're okay. This is okay. Kame wants to say, but that seems cheap somehow. Jin probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
In the end, "Look, okay. I will probably miss you," is all anybody says, like it's an apology, and of course it's Jin saying it, like he's hurting Kame to the core of his being. Jin's never been modest.
Kame just shakes his head. "You ass. I'm not going anywhere."
"Yeah well. You'd better come find me eventually," Jin says, a little fierce, a little hopeful like the boy he used to be.
++
As he's done two hundred and ninety-nine times before, Kame drops the string.
This time, though, Jin catches it and carries it with him.
++
Footnote: The title was my beta's idea. She made it, too. Painstakingly, at that. Because she's AMAZING AND BRILLIANT.