[JE] Mixed Messages
Title: Mixed Messages
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff, mystery
Word count: 1,400
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: The owners of 'Red Turtle Charms' receive an anonymous letter.
A/N: I try not to post WIPs anymore - I learned my lesson with Gravitation and Prince of Tennis - but I'm not sure this counts, as such. I'm having fun drabbling in this universe from time to time, but I don't have any plans for it right now.
Mixed Messages
"Jin?"
"Mmm?"
"JIN!"
"What?"
Kame elbowed Jin in the chest, which was all the movement he could manage. "There's someone ringing the doorbell and if one of us doesn't get out of bed, we'll never find out who it is."
Jin yawned, blinking eyes still heavy with sleep. "You go."
"I'm trying to but..."
"Oh." It finally registered with Jin that he was clutching Kame tight enough to bruise. He let go immediately. "Sorry."
Kame took a deep, heavily exaggerated breath, releasing it slowly. "Now I know how a clamped tyre feels."
He had to clamber over Jin to get out, since the floor on his side of the bed was occupied by boxes of ingredients that he had yet to unpack. After only three months in operation, 'Red Turtle Charms' was beginning to take over the small apartment above the store, the stockroom downstairs not being *quite* big enough to hold all the supplies they needed. Kame was starting to wish they'd picked a more roomy location than Takeshita Street. Had he known how much business they were going to get, he'd have looked into renting a department store instead.
Jin took advantage of the empty space to sprawl across the sheets, stretching out the cramped muscles caused by limpet-style cuddling. Getting up didn't occur to him. Kame would come back and magic up breakfast in bed, then the two of them would enjoy their day off as only two mages could - even if one of them was only recently-qualified.
But Kame didn't mention anything about breakfast when he returned. He was puzzling over a silver envelope, studying each side in turn.
"Some people open them, you know," Jin said. "Unless...you haven't developed X-ray vision, have you?"
Kame grinned. "No, but if I had, there wouldn't be much point in you wearing clothes." He perched on the edge of the bed, pushing Jin's leg aside. "I had to sign for this, but I don't know who it's from - the delivery guy couldn't tell me. Are you expecting anything?"
"Not that I know of." Jin pushed back against the pillows till he was sitting up. "Maybe we're getting thank-you cards from satisfied customers? There was that girl last week who was ready to propose marriage after we fixed her little hair problem."
"The perm that wouldn't die?"
"That's the one. She seemed pretty thankful."
"She did," Kame admitted, "but I don't think this is from a customer. I'm getting some weird feelings from it."
"Like, you want to magic up chocolate and marshmallow ice cream for breakfast and lick it off me, that kind of weird?"
"No, but hold that thought." Kame passed the envelope over to Jin. "Here, see if you can get anything from it."
Jin took the slim, silver sheath, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. If Kame thought there was something weird about it, he wanted as little contact as possible. There were no markings on the envelope save Kame's name and the store's address. No return details.
He closed his eyes. Magic gave him a sixth sense, one that could work either in tandem with the other five or in isolation; in isolation, every sensation became sharper, closer, more real. Jin let the soft puffs of Kame's breath fade from hearing, held his own to filter out the scents of sweat and strawberry incense, and concentrated.
Nothing, at first. Then a slight tingle, the merest hint of something not quite right. Corrosion under the sensitive pads of Jin's fingertips, not that of acid eating through metal; more the slow, gradual weathering of cliffs by time and tide. Dangerous, no, but ominous...
He described the sensation to Kame as he returned the envelope.
Kame agreed. "Whoever sent this must use magic," he said. "I think that's what we're picking up. It's not deliberate - it's a leak."
"But is it bad?" Jin wanted to know.
"No idea." Kame slid one black-painted fingernail underneath the flap. "But no mage with total control of their powers should leak like that."
Jin wasn't sure whether to close his eyes, stick his fingers in his ears, dive for cover or do all three. He just hoped that whatever was in the envelope, it wasn't explosive. Kame would go crazy over the mess.
No explosions, no fireworks, just one sheet of plain white paper.
"Who goes to all the trouble to send a message special delivery and forgets to write on it?" Jin wondered aloud. "You think someone's using invisible ink?"
"Or the magical equivalent. Let's try it and see, shall we?"
Kame spread the paper flat on the nearest box, then thought better of it. Working magic near ingredients probably wasn't a good idea unless he wanted to rearrange the bedroom in new and fascinating ways. He set it down on the small dressing table instead, brushing aside half a dozen sprays and a set of straighteners to do so.
"If you want to hide a mark, you apply concealer, right?" he said.
Jin snorted. "You're going to tell me there's magical concealer and we're not already selling it?"
"I'm not sure how well this would work with skin. Think of the text as one layer, the paper as another. To hide the layer above - the text - you make a copy of the layer underneath - the paper - and fix it on top, so the words are hidden."
"So how do we peel off the top layer?" Jin asked.
"We dissolve it. It's just a construct made from magic - it wouldn't exist, otherwise."
"Oh." Jin thought he'd got it. "Unravel it, right, like you did with my tattoo?"
Kame nodded. "But we won't have to disrupt the spell first this time. Take a look at the upper left-hand corner."
Jin peered at the paper, letting his eyes cloud over with mage-sight. There, right at the very edge, was a loose strand in the spell, one that refused to lie flat; the power leakage, Jin was sure, came from here, this improperly finished work of magic.
"I see it," he said. "You want to do the honours? Since you seem to know all about it."
A pained expression crossed Kame's face. "I didn't even notice it till just now. But yeah, I'll do it."
He took hold of the thread between two neatly trimmed fingernails. The process wasn't complicated - merely pull gently to unravel the spell like a half-finished scarf, taking great care not to break it. This one wasn't difficult to unweave. Kame curled the magic round his finger, moving slowly across the paper, back and forth in a steady rhythm.
It bored Jin to tears - at least, until black ink began to show. He squinted at the paper; it was like trying to read through bubbled glass. He sounded out the hiragana individually. "Ta...da...i...ma. Tadaima!"
"Okaeri," Kame said automatically, then bit back a curse as the paper went up in flames.
"Did you do that?" Jin frantically swept the cans of hairspray off the table, lest they should come into contact with the fire.
Kame extinguished the flames with a wave of his hand and a hasty vacuum spell. "Not intentionally! That must've been a trigger."
"No, really?" Jin gave Kame his best look of wide-eyed innocence, the one that said he'd believe anything up to and including Ueda as a candidate for the priesthood.
"It's too early in the morning to be that sarcastic," Kame grumbled. He wasn't happy about the scorched dressing table, though it was nothing he couldn't fix with a wave of his hand. Restoring scorched wood wasn't a stretch - not like repairing his computer, which he still had to take into the shop whenever something went wrong. He'd never had much luck fixing anything electronic, which accounted for the gaping hole in the wall where the burglar alarm used to be.
"Tell that to the guy sending you incendiary hate mail."
"I'm not sure that really counts as 'hate mail', Jin..."
Jin pointed to the pile of ashes, which was all that remained of the message. "Then what do you call a note that tries to burn down your apartment?"
That sounded like the start of a really bad joke, Kame thought, but the punchline was nothing to laugh about.
"I call it a warning," he said.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff, mystery
Word count: 1,400
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: The owners of 'Red Turtle Charms' receive an anonymous letter.
A/N: I try not to post WIPs anymore - I learned my lesson with Gravitation and Prince of Tennis - but I'm not sure this counts, as such. I'm having fun drabbling in this universe from time to time, but I don't have any plans for it right now.
Mixed Messages
"Jin?"
"Mmm?"
"JIN!"
"What?"
Kame elbowed Jin in the chest, which was all the movement he could manage. "There's someone ringing the doorbell and if one of us doesn't get out of bed, we'll never find out who it is."
Jin yawned, blinking eyes still heavy with sleep. "You go."
"I'm trying to but..."
"Oh." It finally registered with Jin that he was clutching Kame tight enough to bruise. He let go immediately. "Sorry."
Kame took a deep, heavily exaggerated breath, releasing it slowly. "Now I know how a clamped tyre feels."
He had to clamber over Jin to get out, since the floor on his side of the bed was occupied by boxes of ingredients that he had yet to unpack. After only three months in operation, 'Red Turtle Charms' was beginning to take over the small apartment above the store, the stockroom downstairs not being *quite* big enough to hold all the supplies they needed. Kame was starting to wish they'd picked a more roomy location than Takeshita Street. Had he known how much business they were going to get, he'd have looked into renting a department store instead.
Jin took advantage of the empty space to sprawl across the sheets, stretching out the cramped muscles caused by limpet-style cuddling. Getting up didn't occur to him. Kame would come back and magic up breakfast in bed, then the two of them would enjoy their day off as only two mages could - even if one of them was only recently-qualified.
But Kame didn't mention anything about breakfast when he returned. He was puzzling over a silver envelope, studying each side in turn.
"Some people open them, you know," Jin said. "Unless...you haven't developed X-ray vision, have you?"
Kame grinned. "No, but if I had, there wouldn't be much point in you wearing clothes." He perched on the edge of the bed, pushing Jin's leg aside. "I had to sign for this, but I don't know who it's from - the delivery guy couldn't tell me. Are you expecting anything?"
"Not that I know of." Jin pushed back against the pillows till he was sitting up. "Maybe we're getting thank-you cards from satisfied customers? There was that girl last week who was ready to propose marriage after we fixed her little hair problem."
"The perm that wouldn't die?"
"That's the one. She seemed pretty thankful."
"She did," Kame admitted, "but I don't think this is from a customer. I'm getting some weird feelings from it."
"Like, you want to magic up chocolate and marshmallow ice cream for breakfast and lick it off me, that kind of weird?"
"No, but hold that thought." Kame passed the envelope over to Jin. "Here, see if you can get anything from it."
Jin took the slim, silver sheath, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. If Kame thought there was something weird about it, he wanted as little contact as possible. There were no markings on the envelope save Kame's name and the store's address. No return details.
He closed his eyes. Magic gave him a sixth sense, one that could work either in tandem with the other five or in isolation; in isolation, every sensation became sharper, closer, more real. Jin let the soft puffs of Kame's breath fade from hearing, held his own to filter out the scents of sweat and strawberry incense, and concentrated.
Nothing, at first. Then a slight tingle, the merest hint of something not quite right. Corrosion under the sensitive pads of Jin's fingertips, not that of acid eating through metal; more the slow, gradual weathering of cliffs by time and tide. Dangerous, no, but ominous...
He described the sensation to Kame as he returned the envelope.
Kame agreed. "Whoever sent this must use magic," he said. "I think that's what we're picking up. It's not deliberate - it's a leak."
"But is it bad?" Jin wanted to know.
"No idea." Kame slid one black-painted fingernail underneath the flap. "But no mage with total control of their powers should leak like that."
Jin wasn't sure whether to close his eyes, stick his fingers in his ears, dive for cover or do all three. He just hoped that whatever was in the envelope, it wasn't explosive. Kame would go crazy over the mess.
No explosions, no fireworks, just one sheet of plain white paper.
"Who goes to all the trouble to send a message special delivery and forgets to write on it?" Jin wondered aloud. "You think someone's using invisible ink?"
"Or the magical equivalent. Let's try it and see, shall we?"
Kame spread the paper flat on the nearest box, then thought better of it. Working magic near ingredients probably wasn't a good idea unless he wanted to rearrange the bedroom in new and fascinating ways. He set it down on the small dressing table instead, brushing aside half a dozen sprays and a set of straighteners to do so.
"If you want to hide a mark, you apply concealer, right?" he said.
Jin snorted. "You're going to tell me there's magical concealer and we're not already selling it?"
"I'm not sure how well this would work with skin. Think of the text as one layer, the paper as another. To hide the layer above - the text - you make a copy of the layer underneath - the paper - and fix it on top, so the words are hidden."
"So how do we peel off the top layer?" Jin asked.
"We dissolve it. It's just a construct made from magic - it wouldn't exist, otherwise."
"Oh." Jin thought he'd got it. "Unravel it, right, like you did with my tattoo?"
Kame nodded. "But we won't have to disrupt the spell first this time. Take a look at the upper left-hand corner."
Jin peered at the paper, letting his eyes cloud over with mage-sight. There, right at the very edge, was a loose strand in the spell, one that refused to lie flat; the power leakage, Jin was sure, came from here, this improperly finished work of magic.
"I see it," he said. "You want to do the honours? Since you seem to know all about it."
A pained expression crossed Kame's face. "I didn't even notice it till just now. But yeah, I'll do it."
He took hold of the thread between two neatly trimmed fingernails. The process wasn't complicated - merely pull gently to unravel the spell like a half-finished scarf, taking great care not to break it. This one wasn't difficult to unweave. Kame curled the magic round his finger, moving slowly across the paper, back and forth in a steady rhythm.
It bored Jin to tears - at least, until black ink began to show. He squinted at the paper; it was like trying to read through bubbled glass. He sounded out the hiragana individually. "Ta...da...i...ma. Tadaima!"
"Okaeri," Kame said automatically, then bit back a curse as the paper went up in flames.
"Did you do that?" Jin frantically swept the cans of hairspray off the table, lest they should come into contact with the fire.
Kame extinguished the flames with a wave of his hand and a hasty vacuum spell. "Not intentionally! That must've been a trigger."
"No, really?" Jin gave Kame his best look of wide-eyed innocence, the one that said he'd believe anything up to and including Ueda as a candidate for the priesthood.
"It's too early in the morning to be that sarcastic," Kame grumbled. He wasn't happy about the scorched dressing table, though it was nothing he couldn't fix with a wave of his hand. Restoring scorched wood wasn't a stretch - not like repairing his computer, which he still had to take into the shop whenever something went wrong. He'd never had much luck fixing anything electronic, which accounted for the gaping hole in the wall where the burglar alarm used to be.
"Tell that to the guy sending you incendiary hate mail."
"I'm not sure that really counts as 'hate mail', Jin..."
Jin pointed to the pile of ashes, which was all that remained of the message. "Then what do you call a note that tries to burn down your apartment?"
That sounded like the start of a really bad joke, Kame thought, but the punchline was nothing to laugh about.
"I call it a warning," he said.