fic: Northern Downpour
Sometimes you think the world is the colour of that dull grey you have a faint memory of painting on a sheet of white paper with your too-wet grey water paint. Sometime’s you’re certain it is. Like today as the rain keeps continuously and violently hitting the concrete ground, making little droplets of rainwater break into millions and millions of pearls too small to be seen, really.
Your hand feels wet as you press it against the glass, as you feel water dripping through. It just refuses to be covered. First you were at the verge of crying. Maybe you did, even if it was only for a while. It feels scary and threatening. Still. The feeling just won’t go away.
“Kame -”
“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” he shushes you and dips his hand in the bowl of water around your head, fluffing your hair that floats heavily in the water. Your lips tremble - whether it’s because of the cold or the constant, cold fear in the pit of your stomach, you don’t know. Kame pulls you better on his lap and circles his hands around you.
“Let me have a look,” he asks again and you shake your head slowly as an answer. No. “Please?”
“It leaks,” you tell him with a shaky and hoarse voice, your voice echoing weakly in the water. Kame stops insisting. It isn’t like he hasn’t noticed already, he has. It’s not like you kept quiet about it.
And it isn’t as if you had anything to fix it with. Removing your hand means seconds less.
You shiver.
The downpour continues. People walk past you on the streets, water filling their bowls. Some hold umbrellas, those people with the fancy clothing, women walking with their heels and not giving you even as much as one look - people who treasure the quality of their water. You don’t have a choice.
You won’t have even that much of a choice for long, you know and shiver. Kame rubs your arm to keep you warm, sighing heavily.
They all just pass you by and the best you can get is a pitying glance and a shake of head. And no one will help you, you know it. No one’s going to save you. There are no rescuers.
You shiver as the water running down your arm soaks your shoulders and drips down your side. And the world is awfully cold.
The world is grey like the clouds on the sky, no fairytale silver linings. And you’re running out of water.
Kame holds you gently in his arms.
“Let’s get you some water,” he whispers, running his hands through your hair - and it doesn’t feel like heavy and floating anymore. And you know the water doesn’t cover the top of your head anymore.
“But it’s leaking,” you object. “It leaks so fast, I can’t stop it.”
“Come,” he just tells you and sits under a water pipe, water soon splashing over his filled bowl, soaking him like an ice-cold shower. You quiver as you go over to him and he helps you to position yourself on the ground between his feet, back against his chest. He helps you bend your neck back and soon you feel a constant flow of water on top of your head. Kame takes care of you, giving his water for you.
“You’re not going to run out of it, right?” you ask him, squeezing his knees anxiously. The water is cold and makes your lips slowly turn blue-ish. You don’t want to imagine what it’s like for Kame. He’s completely soaked.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s a downpour, there’s plenty of water,” he insists, squeezing his arms around your chest. “Just try to hold your hand on the crack, alright?”
“Mmm,” you answer, unable to see him. You just watch the streets. Dirt, wet newspaper making a pathetic attempt to fly in the wind, raindrops hitting the pavement. People feel cold and distant.
It’s been just the two of you for a while now, just the two of you and not much more than a brief glance at you beside the streets. You don’t belong in their world now, you aren’t one of them.
You’re just two poor, pathetic and sad people sleeping against each other in the streets and taking shelter from the rain.
And now one of you, you yourself to be exact, is slowly coming towards the end.
You don’t want to leave him. But it isn’t like you can cry now anymore either. You find his hand and squeeze it tightly. Squeeze it as you follow the world of gray just a few meters away. As you watch the heels hitting the ground, stepping into an occasional puddle of water and continuing without disturbance. And their bowls are crackless and beautiful.
Kame shifts behind you and you hear him sigh quietly, squeezing your hand tighter. It feels cold, cold and numb. Like your lips. Your poor water-needing lungs aren’t disturbed, not yet.
But the water keeps running down your arms and it doesn’t take many hours until the two of you sit and shiver in a big puddle of water. And you wonder if his tries are futile. You’ve known they are, it’s not that. Maybe you just wished.
“Are you worrying, don’t worry?” Kame tells you quietly, helping you lie down between his legs. You hear the quiet cling as his bowl touches yours. The rain is passing and all you can do is watch. Watch and shiver in the cold. And you just know you aren’t going to feel warmth again.
“Don’t worry,” he tells you with a quiet mumble, voice soft and caring. Soothing. You swallow and blink your eyes. The water only reaches your forehead and you wonder why Kame isn’t giving you more. But you think you know. You know the inevitable.
“Stop worrying,” Kame tells you and caresses your bangs off your face and behind your ear. You squeeze his knee, grasping for support. Contact, anything. Anything he can give to you anymore, anything. Anything so you can feel the closeness.
“I won’t let anything hurt you,” he whispers to you, voice barely detectable. “Do you understand? Are you comfortable?”
“…I’m leaking,” you tell him miserably and blink your sore eyes, lashes fluttering beneath the water. The water tastes salty on your tongue. “But I’m leaking, Kame.”
“Hush,” he murmurs, rubbing your tense shoulders. “…How about you go to sleep, Jin?” he continues with a quiet whisper, fingers trembling. And you know. You hate it, you can’t stand it but… you can’t help it.
The inevitable was inevitable. And it was all your fault for cracking your bowl in the first place.
Stupid Jin. It was you who killed you, it was you yourself. You yourself all along.
“Go to sleep,” you repeat his words with a hoarse voice. “Just go to sleep, h-huh.”
“Yes,” he prompts, pulling you closer to him. The line of water he’s slowly giving to you isn’t all that much at all anymore.
You know you will never see the sun again. And it makes you want to cry so badly.
But everything is numb, dull and grey and so are your emotions. So you just watch the busy streets with your half-lidded eyes and wonder why it has to be so, so cold.
“Alright,” you whisper. “Here. On your lap. I’ll just sleep.”
“Yeah,” he chokes out, voice cracking. It makes you feel so, so bad. “Yeah, here in my arms. Just sleep. And dream beautiful, Jin-like dreams. Dream of the sun and rainbow, dream of the fresh smell of air after the rain.”
“Okay,” you gulp, searching for his hand again and squeezing it tightly. “And you. I’ll always dream of you. Forever and ever after.”
Kame’s heart pounds against your back. And slowly you do fall asleep. Slowly you do.
The sound of rain hitting the ground, even for a bit, is gone.
--
Waves hit your nose and tickle it. You lick your wet lips, breathing in heavily and shifting. It’s still cold and chilly but when you crack your eye open, the world is beautifully golden. A small and weak smile tucks your lips. You know it’s going to be a beautiful and warm day, you know the sunrays will melt under your skin and you can laugh all you want while holding his hand.
“Kame?” you croak, sitting up and blinking, trying to wake your tired eyes. His hand is still in yours, chilly. He needs some sunlight too.
You watch the wet streets. And you wonder why your eyes feel so, so dry, you wonder why your hair feels light and fluffy. And then you realise the waves right above your mouth, panic, and press your hand on the crack. It had fallen.
But it doesn’t leak anymore. You gasp. Your hand doesn’t get wet, it doesn’t drip cold water down your arm.
You’ve been given a miracle. A smile tucks your lips. And you know you’re the luckiest man on the earth for sure.
“KAME!” you cry out excitedly, a loud laughter ringing in the air as you turn around and hug him hard. “Kame! Kame, I’m not leaking! Kame, we’re going to be okay! We’re going to be alright, just like you said! Look! Look Kame, look, it’s…”
But Kame doesn’t have a bowl on his head anymore, Kame’s bowl-free. He sleeps against the dirty brick wall, clothes damp and cold and skin blue-ish. And you realise he’s going to sleep forever-after.
Your old bowl is on the ground next to him.