[JE] [FAIRY] Silver Cinders omake: Indefinite Proposal
Title: Silver Cinders omake: Indefinite Proposal
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Twisted fairy tale with heavy-duty angst
Word count: Approx. 3,600
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Explanation: This is an omake (extra) from 'Silver Cinders on the Road to Matrimony', please see that fic for notes as there's not much point reading this one unless you've read that first. This is the proposal scene, referred to briefly at the wedding, where Kame ends up having to climb half the trees in the palace orchard to propose to Jin. As for why Jin keeps climbing out windows and up trees, and taking long walks with his dog where no one can find him - that's explained at the wedding too.
Indefinite Proposal
It wasn't that Kame minded climbing trees. Far from it. Even though it tended to scratch his carefully painted fingernails, cutting swathes in the polish, he felt that as a guy, his status as prince notwithstanding, it was his duty to climb the occasional tree. It fell into the same category of activities as working on his car and making the odd inappropriate comment towards the more handsome members of the palace staff, though he had servants to take care of the former for him and Yamapi had the latter well in hand. No, it wasn't the climbing trees that Kame objected to.
It was when he had to climb up over three dozen trees in the palace orchards just to find the man he was due to marry in two weeks that Kame felt somewhat aggrieved by the situation.
"Where is that guy?" Kame muttered to himself as he landed lightly at the foot of yet another apple tree, having come up empty again.
The trees had no answer for him, though Kame wouldn't have been surprised if they'd begun to speak. That he'd met Jin in the first place had been the result of magic, that he'd found him again had been sheer luck, and both had played a part in his life. But so far, none of the trees had seen fit to give up their secrets, and he knew Jin had to be there somewhere. He'd been seen sneaking out of his bedroom window again, and since the guards hadn't been given orders to prevent him from doing so, all they could do was point Kame in the right direction.
It wasn't as if the other man was a prisoner, after all, though from the amount of time he spent escaping the walls of the palace it seemed as though he felt otherwise. Kame had no wish to stop him from taking midnight rambles through the grounds, even if it was a nightmare from a security point of view, but he thought that just occasionally, it might be nice if he actually knew where Jin was.
Consequently, Kame spent a great deal of time searching the sub-basements, peering into pantries, walking the gardens and scaling the walls, all in the hopes of getting Jin alone long enough to propose to him.
Well, there was one time they were always guaranteed to be alone, but Kame didn't think it was proper to propose marriage in bed, even if he'd been able to think straight. In any case, he wouldn't put it past Jin to storm out the connecting door between their bedrooms and lock it angrily behind him if Kame attempted to broach the topic of matrimony.
But tonight, Kame was determined, Jin was not going to escape. If it took him until dawn, he was going to track him down and propose, because the wedding was supposed to take place in a mere fortnight, as arranged almost a year ago by Kame's parents, and if he hadn't managed to get Jin to agree to marry him by then they were going to have to call the whole thing off.
The further the prince wandered into the orchard, the less light filtered through from the lamps mounted on the surrounding walls, and Kame was glad he'd brought a torch. He swung it upward in a wide arc, craning his neck to make out the slightest sign of life in the treetops.
Finally, his luck changed for the better. There, at the very top of that old apple tree...was that a pair of boots dangling from a thick branch? Kame stuck the torch in his belt, grasped one of the handful of lower branches with one hand, and began to swarm up the trunk.
Trust Jin to have picked the worst tree for climbing in the entire orchard. Most of the lower branches had been sawn off, and those that remained were weak and snapped easily even under Kame's insubstantial weight. He had to make liberal use of the hollows in the trunk, of knots in the bark, and more than once found himself climbing round in circles in order to reach further up.
It wasn't until Kame got closer to the top that he realised: the adjacent trees, which all had considerably more branches, were near enough that Jin could simply have climbed one of them and crawled across to the next one along. He made a mental note to do that himself on the way down, and then cursed inwardly for even thinking about 'down'. The ground was a long way away, and if he fell he was guaranteed to break something. Jin might agree to marry him out of pity, but a pair of broken legs would seriously hamper his fun at the reception.
And there he was, Kame's 'mysterious stranger' from the ball, the beautiful man in black who'd taken Kame's heart home with him when he'd run away that night.
Not that there was anything mysterious about him now. Jin was frequently hyper at night, chatting into the small hours if Kame didn't make a concerted effort to drain his energy in ways that were immense fun for both of them, but when he slept it was a deep, unguarded sleep. He was sitting in the crook of an enormous, sturdy branch, cuddled close against the trunk with one arm wrapped around it for balance...fast asleep.
Kame contemplated leaving him there, since he looked so peaceful, then decided that left to his own devices, Jin would probably roll over and fall out of the tree when he woke up. It was better to wake him.
He took up a position on the next branch along, one that seemed more than adequate to support his weight, and reached out to put a hand on Jin's shoulder, prepared to steady him if he reacted suddenly to being woken. He made sure the torch wasn't going to shine directly into either of their eyes - if they both fell out the tree, Kame's parents were going to kill them. "Jin?" he murmured.
When he received no response, he tried again, louder, and gently shook the other man. Eventually, with a sleepy "Hmm?", Jin began to stir.
"Kame?" Jin blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Is that you? Why are you in a tree?"
"Because you're in a tree, idiot," Kame said, and smiled warmly at him. "You're not supposed to sleep up here."
"I'm not sleeping."
"You were until I woke you," Kame pointed out. "It's dangerous. You could fall out."
"Hey, waking up someone who's sleeping in a tree is dangerous too, you know?"
Kame lightly squeezed his shoulder. "I wouldn't have let you fall, I promise."
Jin let his head fall to the side, where he nuzzled his curls against Kame's hand. "You can't catch me."
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to try. Can we go back down now? I know I've got leaves in my hair and my hands are scratched half to pieces."
Jin let out a little laugh. "How many trees did you climb?"
"I lost count." Kame shrugged. "Too many. You're difficult to find when you take off like this."
"Sorry." Jin didn't sound at all apologetic. "I felt like some air."
The prince flexed one sore hand and grimaced. "Next time take pity on me and go for a walk on the terrace instead," he suggested.
"You didn't have to come find me. I wasn't going to," Jin's voice caught, "I wasn't going to run away. I would've come back, eventually."
"I didn't doubt that." Kame crept further along his branch and discovered that he could actually sit back-to-back with Jin without risking life and limb to any great extent. He leaned, and Jin leaned back, and they pushed each other up, a reassuring, supportive presence.
"Then what brings you up here?" Jin asked. "Miss me?"
"Always," Kame said dryly. "But you know there's something I need to ask you."
Jin's back went rigid. "If it's about your jacket I swear I didn't know Yamapi was going to wear it to the party! He said you wouldn't mind him borrowing it!"
Kame sighed. "I wasn't talking about the jacket, which, by the way, the palace cleaners have given up on. We're supposed to be getting married in less than two weeks, and the moment I say one word about it you're out the window, or making sure I'm too distracted to remember my own name."
"I can't do that here," Jin mourned. "We'd fall out the tree."
"Then stop running and listen to me for a second." Kame licked his lips nervously and wondered if he should've accepted the proffered advice on proposals from his parents. There was no way to be subtle about it; he settled for blurting out, "Are you unhappy here?"
"Huh?"
"Because we don't have to stay, if living at the palace is a problem for you. The ministers would probably object, but if we took enough security with us we could move to one of the villas or something."
"Kame, I've been here almost a year. In all that time, have I ever given you cause to believe that I hate it here? Have you seen me trying to escape?"
"That's it," Kame said unhappily. "Escape. This is supposed to be your home. Here, with me. Don't you want to be with me?"
"Of course I do. I'm marrying you, aren't I?"
"Not if you don't accept, you're not. I think my parents arranged the wedding so far in advance because they thought it was going to take me this long to talk you into marriage, which means they know something I don't. All the plans have been made, all the guests have been invited...and if you turn me down, that's the end of it."
The wasted effort and expense would be lamented by the ministers, but Kame wasn't concerned with that. His worry was that whatever was making Jin so skittish about the idea of marriage might conceivably outweigh any bonds of love between them, putting a stop to the wedding and dragging this unstable situation out for years.
Jin swallowed loudly enough to reach Kame's ears, and when he spoke, he sounded as nervous as Kame felt. "I wasn't planning on saying no. But-"
"But?" Kame prompted.
"But this wasn't where I thought I'd be. I'm only eighteen, Kame! I know how to run a household, not a kingdom!"
"First, I'm only sixteen," the prince pointed out, "and apparently that's more than old enough to be getting married off. And second, I don't think my parents are planning on handing over the kingdom to us any time soon. We'll probably be in our sixties by the time I get crowned king. By then, we'll have learned from all the horrible mistakes I look forward to making with you."
"Oh, you really know how to charm a guy," Jin grumbled.
Kame smiled. "I learned from the best. Anyway, don't worry about your official duties. All I've had to do so far is make a couple of speeches, open a handful of events and attend a dinner or two, so I don't think you'll end up with anything more strenuous. And whatever develops, we'll handle it together, right?"
"That's not what I'm worried about."
Kame couldn't see Jin's face, but he knew the other man well enough by now to know he was most likely expressionless, keeping his emotion from his features. "If you're happy living here, you want to be with me and you're not worried about the work, what are you running from?"
Silence. In the distance, Junno, Jin's beloved pet Labrador, barked cheerfully as he pursued one of the palace cats into the vegetable gardens.
"Jin? Talk to me. Please."
"I can't. You won't...it's just me being..." Jin made a small, despairing noise in the back of his throat and clammed up again.
Cautiously, Kame swivelled round on his branch and edged nearer to the trunk, where, if he was careful, he could wrap his arms round Jin from behind, holding his reluctant consort close to his chest and resting his chin lightly on his shoulder. "Every time I think I've got you figured out, I hit something I don't understand, and you won't explain it to me."
"I wouldn't want to make things easy for you," Jin said, and turned his head just enough that he could meet one of Kame's eyes. "I haven't even figured myself out yet, so I don't see any reason why you should have. But that doesn't mean I won't marry you."
As responses to proposals went, it was anti-climactic, particularly since Kame hadn't even managed to pop the question yet. He didn't want all the hours of tree-climbing to go to waste.
"Don't laugh, but...I had a ring all picked out months ago, and then you lost so much weight I had to send it off to be resized, and then one of my dads borrowed it thinking it was mine, and-"
"You can stop there," Jin gasped out through his laughter. "Not much point in an engagement ring, is there? The wedding's so close. And I wouldn't want to be the only one wearing a ring."
"You won't be," Kame promised. "I couldn't get you to talk about it with me so I had to pick out the wedding rings myself, but I think you'll like them. I went to the same jeweller who made *this* for you." He placed a gentle kiss on Jin's earlobe, causing the silver lady to swing lightly back and forth.
Kame had opted to throw tradition out the window altogether, partly because he enjoyed sending the ministers into fits, but mostly because he thought that a) silver suited them both far better than gold and b) if Jin was so opposed to matrimony, he was more likely to agree to wear a ring that signified something else. The matching silver pinky rings were hidden away in a box in Kame's room, somewhere his parents couldn't possibly find them, and he looked forward to surprising Jin when the big day finally came.
"If you picked them out, I'm sure I'll like them," Jin agreed. "I guess we'll see in two weeks. We're doing this all backwards, aren't we?"
"The wedding's nearly here and I haven't even proposed yet! All the magazines keep demanding to know how I asked you to marry me, and I have to keep telling them it was very romantic but I don't kiss and tell."
"Hah. You do - you just tell Yamapi. And now you can tell them you proposed in an apple tree in the middle of the night, without a ring, after waking me up from a very pleasant nap. I'm sure they'll love that."
"It sounds better if I say that I saved you from a terrible fall, doesn't it? Because you could've fallen, if I hadn't woken you up. Everyone loves a hero."
"Everyone loves a prince," Jin corrected.
"That too." Kame cleared his throat and tightened his arms around Jin's chest as much as he could without hurting him, largely because he didn't put it past him to make a last-ditch escape attempt. "Maybe everyone loves a prince, but this prince is only in love with one person. I don't know what I can say or do to make you happy, but I'm willing to try anything, and even if you can't tell me what's wrong I'm not going to give up. I won't ask you for your secrets; I won't demand anything of you. You've lived with me for almost a full year, you know my bad habits and my weak points, what makes me laugh and what makes me cry. Knowing all that - Jin Akanishi, will you marry me?"
"Yes." Jin's voice was small, subdued. "Yes, I'll marry you."
Every cell in Kame's body was singing in one happy chorus, waving flags of victory and cheering him on. He'd finally done it! He'd proposed, and Jin had said yes! They could walk down the aisle in a fortnight and begin all over again as a married couple.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"Kame?" Jin whispered back. "Isn't this supposed to be the happiest moment of our lives?"
"Until the actual wedding, I think."
"Then why do I feel like I've just signed my own death warrant?"
Kame didn't have an answer for him, just held on, nuzzling the curls in the hollow between neck and shoulder and planting tender kisses along the smooth skin of Jin's throat. It was all the comfort he could give, tempered by their inconvenient location and the weight of the shadows in the darkened orchard. Words wouldn't be enough, could never be enough when talk was meaningless and the truth was a closely-guarded secret that Jin refused to share.
He was no unwanted burden, the distressed young man in Kame's arms. He was easy to love: though his behaviour was often cheeky or exasperating, it was always well-meant, and even the sternest, most conservative of the ministers had taken him to heart.
Where Kame had grown up in a warm, loving environment with parents who nurtured him, Jin had lived through the turmoil of his mother's death, his father's eventual remarriage, and the downhill spiral his life had become since his father's death. Kame had been sheltered by virtue of his rank and status as heir: Jin hadn't been sheltered so much as constricted, restricted in appearance, behaviour and freedom till his only desire in life was to leave home and start again. Kame couldn't comprehend that. He was no fool, but he was willing to admit that there were many things he simply didn't have the experience to understand yet.
"You don't strike me as a man who fears death," Kame said heavily. "Look where you chose to sleep tonight, after all."
"I didn't mean to fall asleep," Jin protested. "But you're right, I don't fear death. Once you're dead, life can't possibly get any worse."
It was a warm night, still and stifling even in the treetops, and as the atmosphere grew heavier the air thickened, forcing its way into the prince's lungs with the intent to choke, to drown him in quiet, hopeless despair.
It occurred to Kame that perhaps Jin didn't need to walk out the palace gates to escape, and his grip tightened further still. "Do you want to retract your answer? We'll be the only ones who know."
Jin shook his head, accidentally giving Kame a mouthful of soft, brown hair. "I'm not a man who goes back on my word, either. And I *do* want to be with you."
"But you still can't tell me what's upsetting you?"
"It's not very flattering," Jin assured him. "It's also probably not something I should be worrying about, so just forget it, okay?"
"It's not often I find a subject *you* don't want to talk about," Kame teased, though there was nothing frivolous about his mood. The internal cheering squad had stopped congratulating him on his successful proposal and was instead calculating the odds of the two of them making it to their first anniversary.
"I'm sorry."
Kame relaxed his arms, lowering them to lie loosely round Jin's waist. Both of them breathed a little easier; the melancholy seemed to be lifting.
"No problem. If you can't tell me, you can't tell me. I trust you." The faint tremor in Kame's voice was there not because he didn't trust Jin, but because he didn't know what would happen, not tomorrow morning, when he gave his parents the good news, or in two weeks, when they would all come together for the ceremony. Jin's word was all he had, the only guarantee that he'd stay, and Kame clung to it.
"We could spend tomorrow picking outfits for the wedding?" he suggested, changing the subject to something less painful. "I wouldn't let them make the decision without you. Yamapi tried to hint at a nice white wedding gown, but I thought you'd probably kill him for that."
Jin growled. "I still might. You'd look ridiculous in that get-up."
"Actually, he suggested it for you," Kame said, amused. "Though it was better than his first idea, which involved a lot of leather and not much else. I had to reject that one; some of the wedding guests have weak hearts."
Jin's hand, the one not wrapped round the tree trunk, grasped Kame's where they met round his waist. "Save it for the honeymoon. We're not going to have an audience for *that*, I hope?"
"I don't know where we're going but we have to take security with us. Don't worry - I'm good at losing guards. I've been practising since I was old enough to walk."
"So it'll finally be just you and me? No guards? No friends? No family?"
Kame thought Jin sounded suspiciously happy about that last part. Perhaps with a stepfamily like his, it was inevitable. It couldn't be Kame's family he wanted to get away from, could it? No, it was unthinkable.
"Just you and me," he promised, and was thrilled when Jin removed his other hand from the tree to join the first, relying solely on his own sense of balance and Kame's steadying presence behind him to keep his seat on the branch. It was dangerous, but then, Kame had often thought that courting Jin was a bit like tap-dancing in a minefield. A beautiful, dangerous activity where one false step would result in everything blowing up in his face.
They sat like that for a while, content to remain motionless save for the twining of their fingers, light caresses on warm skin. The night wasn't going anywhere.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Twisted fairy tale with heavy-duty angst
Word count: Approx. 3,600
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Explanation: This is an omake (extra) from 'Silver Cinders on the Road to Matrimony', please see that fic for notes as there's not much point reading this one unless you've read that first. This is the proposal scene, referred to briefly at the wedding, where Kame ends up having to climb half the trees in the palace orchard to propose to Jin. As for why Jin keeps climbing out windows and up trees, and taking long walks with his dog where no one can find him - that's explained at the wedding too.
Indefinite Proposal
It wasn't that Kame minded climbing trees. Far from it. Even though it tended to scratch his carefully painted fingernails, cutting swathes in the polish, he felt that as a guy, his status as prince notwithstanding, it was his duty to climb the occasional tree. It fell into the same category of activities as working on his car and making the odd inappropriate comment towards the more handsome members of the palace staff, though he had servants to take care of the former for him and Yamapi had the latter well in hand. No, it wasn't the climbing trees that Kame objected to.
It was when he had to climb up over three dozen trees in the palace orchards just to find the man he was due to marry in two weeks that Kame felt somewhat aggrieved by the situation.
"Where is that guy?" Kame muttered to himself as he landed lightly at the foot of yet another apple tree, having come up empty again.
The trees had no answer for him, though Kame wouldn't have been surprised if they'd begun to speak. That he'd met Jin in the first place had been the result of magic, that he'd found him again had been sheer luck, and both had played a part in his life. But so far, none of the trees had seen fit to give up their secrets, and he knew Jin had to be there somewhere. He'd been seen sneaking out of his bedroom window again, and since the guards hadn't been given orders to prevent him from doing so, all they could do was point Kame in the right direction.
It wasn't as if the other man was a prisoner, after all, though from the amount of time he spent escaping the walls of the palace it seemed as though he felt otherwise. Kame had no wish to stop him from taking midnight rambles through the grounds, even if it was a nightmare from a security point of view, but he thought that just occasionally, it might be nice if he actually knew where Jin was.
Consequently, Kame spent a great deal of time searching the sub-basements, peering into pantries, walking the gardens and scaling the walls, all in the hopes of getting Jin alone long enough to propose to him.
Well, there was one time they were always guaranteed to be alone, but Kame didn't think it was proper to propose marriage in bed, even if he'd been able to think straight. In any case, he wouldn't put it past Jin to storm out the connecting door between their bedrooms and lock it angrily behind him if Kame attempted to broach the topic of matrimony.
But tonight, Kame was determined, Jin was not going to escape. If it took him until dawn, he was going to track him down and propose, because the wedding was supposed to take place in a mere fortnight, as arranged almost a year ago by Kame's parents, and if he hadn't managed to get Jin to agree to marry him by then they were going to have to call the whole thing off.
The further the prince wandered into the orchard, the less light filtered through from the lamps mounted on the surrounding walls, and Kame was glad he'd brought a torch. He swung it upward in a wide arc, craning his neck to make out the slightest sign of life in the treetops.
Finally, his luck changed for the better. There, at the very top of that old apple tree...was that a pair of boots dangling from a thick branch? Kame stuck the torch in his belt, grasped one of the handful of lower branches with one hand, and began to swarm up the trunk.
Trust Jin to have picked the worst tree for climbing in the entire orchard. Most of the lower branches had been sawn off, and those that remained were weak and snapped easily even under Kame's insubstantial weight. He had to make liberal use of the hollows in the trunk, of knots in the bark, and more than once found himself climbing round in circles in order to reach further up.
It wasn't until Kame got closer to the top that he realised: the adjacent trees, which all had considerably more branches, were near enough that Jin could simply have climbed one of them and crawled across to the next one along. He made a mental note to do that himself on the way down, and then cursed inwardly for even thinking about 'down'. The ground was a long way away, and if he fell he was guaranteed to break something. Jin might agree to marry him out of pity, but a pair of broken legs would seriously hamper his fun at the reception.
And there he was, Kame's 'mysterious stranger' from the ball, the beautiful man in black who'd taken Kame's heart home with him when he'd run away that night.
Not that there was anything mysterious about him now. Jin was frequently hyper at night, chatting into the small hours if Kame didn't make a concerted effort to drain his energy in ways that were immense fun for both of them, but when he slept it was a deep, unguarded sleep. He was sitting in the crook of an enormous, sturdy branch, cuddled close against the trunk with one arm wrapped around it for balance...fast asleep.
Kame contemplated leaving him there, since he looked so peaceful, then decided that left to his own devices, Jin would probably roll over and fall out of the tree when he woke up. It was better to wake him.
He took up a position on the next branch along, one that seemed more than adequate to support his weight, and reached out to put a hand on Jin's shoulder, prepared to steady him if he reacted suddenly to being woken. He made sure the torch wasn't going to shine directly into either of their eyes - if they both fell out the tree, Kame's parents were going to kill them. "Jin?" he murmured.
When he received no response, he tried again, louder, and gently shook the other man. Eventually, with a sleepy "Hmm?", Jin began to stir.
"Kame?" Jin blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Is that you? Why are you in a tree?"
"Because you're in a tree, idiot," Kame said, and smiled warmly at him. "You're not supposed to sleep up here."
"I'm not sleeping."
"You were until I woke you," Kame pointed out. "It's dangerous. You could fall out."
"Hey, waking up someone who's sleeping in a tree is dangerous too, you know?"
Kame lightly squeezed his shoulder. "I wouldn't have let you fall, I promise."
Jin let his head fall to the side, where he nuzzled his curls against Kame's hand. "You can't catch me."
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to try. Can we go back down now? I know I've got leaves in my hair and my hands are scratched half to pieces."
Jin let out a little laugh. "How many trees did you climb?"
"I lost count." Kame shrugged. "Too many. You're difficult to find when you take off like this."
"Sorry." Jin didn't sound at all apologetic. "I felt like some air."
The prince flexed one sore hand and grimaced. "Next time take pity on me and go for a walk on the terrace instead," he suggested.
"You didn't have to come find me. I wasn't going to," Jin's voice caught, "I wasn't going to run away. I would've come back, eventually."
"I didn't doubt that." Kame crept further along his branch and discovered that he could actually sit back-to-back with Jin without risking life and limb to any great extent. He leaned, and Jin leaned back, and they pushed each other up, a reassuring, supportive presence.
"Then what brings you up here?" Jin asked. "Miss me?"
"Always," Kame said dryly. "But you know there's something I need to ask you."
Jin's back went rigid. "If it's about your jacket I swear I didn't know Yamapi was going to wear it to the party! He said you wouldn't mind him borrowing it!"
Kame sighed. "I wasn't talking about the jacket, which, by the way, the palace cleaners have given up on. We're supposed to be getting married in less than two weeks, and the moment I say one word about it you're out the window, or making sure I'm too distracted to remember my own name."
"I can't do that here," Jin mourned. "We'd fall out the tree."
"Then stop running and listen to me for a second." Kame licked his lips nervously and wondered if he should've accepted the proffered advice on proposals from his parents. There was no way to be subtle about it; he settled for blurting out, "Are you unhappy here?"
"Huh?"
"Because we don't have to stay, if living at the palace is a problem for you. The ministers would probably object, but if we took enough security with us we could move to one of the villas or something."
"Kame, I've been here almost a year. In all that time, have I ever given you cause to believe that I hate it here? Have you seen me trying to escape?"
"That's it," Kame said unhappily. "Escape. This is supposed to be your home. Here, with me. Don't you want to be with me?"
"Of course I do. I'm marrying you, aren't I?"
"Not if you don't accept, you're not. I think my parents arranged the wedding so far in advance because they thought it was going to take me this long to talk you into marriage, which means they know something I don't. All the plans have been made, all the guests have been invited...and if you turn me down, that's the end of it."
The wasted effort and expense would be lamented by the ministers, but Kame wasn't concerned with that. His worry was that whatever was making Jin so skittish about the idea of marriage might conceivably outweigh any bonds of love between them, putting a stop to the wedding and dragging this unstable situation out for years.
Jin swallowed loudly enough to reach Kame's ears, and when he spoke, he sounded as nervous as Kame felt. "I wasn't planning on saying no. But-"
"But?" Kame prompted.
"But this wasn't where I thought I'd be. I'm only eighteen, Kame! I know how to run a household, not a kingdom!"
"First, I'm only sixteen," the prince pointed out, "and apparently that's more than old enough to be getting married off. And second, I don't think my parents are planning on handing over the kingdom to us any time soon. We'll probably be in our sixties by the time I get crowned king. By then, we'll have learned from all the horrible mistakes I look forward to making with you."
"Oh, you really know how to charm a guy," Jin grumbled.
Kame smiled. "I learned from the best. Anyway, don't worry about your official duties. All I've had to do so far is make a couple of speeches, open a handful of events and attend a dinner or two, so I don't think you'll end up with anything more strenuous. And whatever develops, we'll handle it together, right?"
"That's not what I'm worried about."
Kame couldn't see Jin's face, but he knew the other man well enough by now to know he was most likely expressionless, keeping his emotion from his features. "If you're happy living here, you want to be with me and you're not worried about the work, what are you running from?"
Silence. In the distance, Junno, Jin's beloved pet Labrador, barked cheerfully as he pursued one of the palace cats into the vegetable gardens.
"Jin? Talk to me. Please."
"I can't. You won't...it's just me being..." Jin made a small, despairing noise in the back of his throat and clammed up again.
Cautiously, Kame swivelled round on his branch and edged nearer to the trunk, where, if he was careful, he could wrap his arms round Jin from behind, holding his reluctant consort close to his chest and resting his chin lightly on his shoulder. "Every time I think I've got you figured out, I hit something I don't understand, and you won't explain it to me."
"I wouldn't want to make things easy for you," Jin said, and turned his head just enough that he could meet one of Kame's eyes. "I haven't even figured myself out yet, so I don't see any reason why you should have. But that doesn't mean I won't marry you."
As responses to proposals went, it was anti-climactic, particularly since Kame hadn't even managed to pop the question yet. He didn't want all the hours of tree-climbing to go to waste.
"Don't laugh, but...I had a ring all picked out months ago, and then you lost so much weight I had to send it off to be resized, and then one of my dads borrowed it thinking it was mine, and-"
"You can stop there," Jin gasped out through his laughter. "Not much point in an engagement ring, is there? The wedding's so close. And I wouldn't want to be the only one wearing a ring."
"You won't be," Kame promised. "I couldn't get you to talk about it with me so I had to pick out the wedding rings myself, but I think you'll like them. I went to the same jeweller who made *this* for you." He placed a gentle kiss on Jin's earlobe, causing the silver lady to swing lightly back and forth.
Kame had opted to throw tradition out the window altogether, partly because he enjoyed sending the ministers into fits, but mostly because he thought that a) silver suited them both far better than gold and b) if Jin was so opposed to matrimony, he was more likely to agree to wear a ring that signified something else. The matching silver pinky rings were hidden away in a box in Kame's room, somewhere his parents couldn't possibly find them, and he looked forward to surprising Jin when the big day finally came.
"If you picked them out, I'm sure I'll like them," Jin agreed. "I guess we'll see in two weeks. We're doing this all backwards, aren't we?"
"The wedding's nearly here and I haven't even proposed yet! All the magazines keep demanding to know how I asked you to marry me, and I have to keep telling them it was very romantic but I don't kiss and tell."
"Hah. You do - you just tell Yamapi. And now you can tell them you proposed in an apple tree in the middle of the night, without a ring, after waking me up from a very pleasant nap. I'm sure they'll love that."
"It sounds better if I say that I saved you from a terrible fall, doesn't it? Because you could've fallen, if I hadn't woken you up. Everyone loves a hero."
"Everyone loves a prince," Jin corrected.
"That too." Kame cleared his throat and tightened his arms around Jin's chest as much as he could without hurting him, largely because he didn't put it past him to make a last-ditch escape attempt. "Maybe everyone loves a prince, but this prince is only in love with one person. I don't know what I can say or do to make you happy, but I'm willing to try anything, and even if you can't tell me what's wrong I'm not going to give up. I won't ask you for your secrets; I won't demand anything of you. You've lived with me for almost a full year, you know my bad habits and my weak points, what makes me laugh and what makes me cry. Knowing all that - Jin Akanishi, will you marry me?"
"Yes." Jin's voice was small, subdued. "Yes, I'll marry you."
Every cell in Kame's body was singing in one happy chorus, waving flags of victory and cheering him on. He'd finally done it! He'd proposed, and Jin had said yes! They could walk down the aisle in a fortnight and begin all over again as a married couple.
"Thank you," he whispered.
"Kame?" Jin whispered back. "Isn't this supposed to be the happiest moment of our lives?"
"Until the actual wedding, I think."
"Then why do I feel like I've just signed my own death warrant?"
Kame didn't have an answer for him, just held on, nuzzling the curls in the hollow between neck and shoulder and planting tender kisses along the smooth skin of Jin's throat. It was all the comfort he could give, tempered by their inconvenient location and the weight of the shadows in the darkened orchard. Words wouldn't be enough, could never be enough when talk was meaningless and the truth was a closely-guarded secret that Jin refused to share.
He was no unwanted burden, the distressed young man in Kame's arms. He was easy to love: though his behaviour was often cheeky or exasperating, it was always well-meant, and even the sternest, most conservative of the ministers had taken him to heart.
Where Kame had grown up in a warm, loving environment with parents who nurtured him, Jin had lived through the turmoil of his mother's death, his father's eventual remarriage, and the downhill spiral his life had become since his father's death. Kame had been sheltered by virtue of his rank and status as heir: Jin hadn't been sheltered so much as constricted, restricted in appearance, behaviour and freedom till his only desire in life was to leave home and start again. Kame couldn't comprehend that. He was no fool, but he was willing to admit that there were many things he simply didn't have the experience to understand yet.
"You don't strike me as a man who fears death," Kame said heavily. "Look where you chose to sleep tonight, after all."
"I didn't mean to fall asleep," Jin protested. "But you're right, I don't fear death. Once you're dead, life can't possibly get any worse."
It was a warm night, still and stifling even in the treetops, and as the atmosphere grew heavier the air thickened, forcing its way into the prince's lungs with the intent to choke, to drown him in quiet, hopeless despair.
It occurred to Kame that perhaps Jin didn't need to walk out the palace gates to escape, and his grip tightened further still. "Do you want to retract your answer? We'll be the only ones who know."
Jin shook his head, accidentally giving Kame a mouthful of soft, brown hair. "I'm not a man who goes back on my word, either. And I *do* want to be with you."
"But you still can't tell me what's upsetting you?"
"It's not very flattering," Jin assured him. "It's also probably not something I should be worrying about, so just forget it, okay?"
"It's not often I find a subject *you* don't want to talk about," Kame teased, though there was nothing frivolous about his mood. The internal cheering squad had stopped congratulating him on his successful proposal and was instead calculating the odds of the two of them making it to their first anniversary.
"I'm sorry."
Kame relaxed his arms, lowering them to lie loosely round Jin's waist. Both of them breathed a little easier; the melancholy seemed to be lifting.
"No problem. If you can't tell me, you can't tell me. I trust you." The faint tremor in Kame's voice was there not because he didn't trust Jin, but because he didn't know what would happen, not tomorrow morning, when he gave his parents the good news, or in two weeks, when they would all come together for the ceremony. Jin's word was all he had, the only guarantee that he'd stay, and Kame clung to it.
"We could spend tomorrow picking outfits for the wedding?" he suggested, changing the subject to something less painful. "I wouldn't let them make the decision without you. Yamapi tried to hint at a nice white wedding gown, but I thought you'd probably kill him for that."
Jin growled. "I still might. You'd look ridiculous in that get-up."
"Actually, he suggested it for you," Kame said, amused. "Though it was better than his first idea, which involved a lot of leather and not much else. I had to reject that one; some of the wedding guests have weak hearts."
Jin's hand, the one not wrapped round the tree trunk, grasped Kame's where they met round his waist. "Save it for the honeymoon. We're not going to have an audience for *that*, I hope?"
"I don't know where we're going but we have to take security with us. Don't worry - I'm good at losing guards. I've been practising since I was old enough to walk."
"So it'll finally be just you and me? No guards? No friends? No family?"
Kame thought Jin sounded suspiciously happy about that last part. Perhaps with a stepfamily like his, it was inevitable. It couldn't be Kame's family he wanted to get away from, could it? No, it was unthinkable.
"Just you and me," he promised, and was thrilled when Jin removed his other hand from the tree to join the first, relying solely on his own sense of balance and Kame's steadying presence behind him to keep his seat on the branch. It was dangerous, but then, Kame had often thought that courting Jin was a bit like tap-dancing in a minefield. A beautiful, dangerous activity where one false step would result in everything blowing up in his face.
They sat like that for a while, content to remain motionless save for the twining of their fingers, light caresses on warm skin. The night wasn't going anywhere.