Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-09-10 23:06:00 |
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Current music: | Losing Your Memory - Ryan Star |
Who: Katou and Jin
What: Jin comes to check up on Katou, who's been avoiding him.
When: Recently
Where: Katou's place
Warnings/Ratings: Angst
Status: Complete
Katou had been avoiding him for a while, and Jin didn’t know why. It was fine if the guy wanted to avoid him, but Jin genuinely liked him, and it was all so sudden and weird. He just wanted to know why. Which was why he was doing something he normally wouldn’t do: vague stalking. It was vague because finding out where Katou lived hadn’t been hard, and it wasn’t like he was going to do anything, just talk. But it was stalking because technically... it was.
Jin leaned against a wall, waiting for Katou to emerge, eyes lighting up when he saw a familiar head of white-blond hair. “Hey, long time no see.”
Katou’s memories of his life had been disappearing for a couple of weeks. At first he hadn’t thought anything of it, but things had been getting extreme lately. He couldn’t remember his own sister’s name, and sometimes remembering his own was a chore. The upside to it was that even if his memories of people and events were fading, his feelings toward other people weren’t. It made it easier to hide just how messed up everything in his head was right now. But there was only so much he could hide, and so avoiding his closer friends had seemed like the best course of action.
When he saw Jin, he smiled, a genuine smile, if not a little strained around the eyes. He might not know exactly who Jin was, but he knew he liked him quite a bit, and, despite a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach that Jin might figure out something was up, he was happy to see him. “Hey you,” Katou said. “Fuck, has it been? Sorry man, I’ve been super busy. How’s it going?”
“All right. I thought maybe I’d done something.” Jin awkwardly scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know, I thought you were having second thoughts or something.” Katou seemed upset or different or awkward somehow.
"Naw man, you didn't do nothing." Katou sure could say that confidently enough. But he could already tell that this was going to be a helluva conversation to navigate through right now, and his grin faded into a more somber expression. For one, he was pretty sure he was a goner. In his dreams, his body had started to rot because of his dreams, and his soul was disconnecting. The whole rotting body thing wasn't carrying over and he was thankful as all hell for that, but his soul still didn't seem to want to hang out no more. The humane thing to do would be to tell Jin to fuck off, and just be a real cold asshole. "It's just... You know. Trying to relearn the guitar is all. It ain't so easy with a fake arm," he said after a long moment, attempting an easy smile.
Jin just blinked. Of course that was a true statement, but it seemed very ... not super connected to what they were talking about. “Are you okay? You can tell me if something’s happening.”
Katou lit a smoke and observed Jin quietly for a couple of drags. “Why don’t we talk about this inside after this,” he said after a moment, far more serious than he normally was. He was tired, really, and not just because he’d been trying to stave off sleep since his memory had started getting worse. It seemed every Dream he had made the whole thing worse, and frankly, he was scared of forgetting what he looked like. He’d never sleep again if it meant protecting his face. More importantly, keeping up the farce that nothing was wrong was draining.
Katou looked so tired, Jin didn’t really care about keeping up the pretense that he was straight or whatever. Jin moved closer and wrapped his arms around Katou, hugging him tightly. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.”
"Mmm," Katou muttered noncommittally. If Jin wanted to take that as an agreement, he was free too, but Katou wasn't entirely sure he would get through it. The hug was nice though, and he wrapped his arms around the other and breathed in his scent. He hadn't told Jin anything, so for now he wasn't concerned that the hug was something filled with pity.
He broke the hug after a moment, not quite breaking contact as he took comfort from the feel of Jin's arm against his own, and finished his cigarette quietly, flicking the butt into the street. "Come on," he said, nodding toward the house.
The house itself wasn't something that most people would think a guy like Katou would live in. It was tastefully, femininely decorated, kind of crafty with plenty of knick-knacks, and smelled a little like scented candles and flowers. A couple of Jack's sketches hung on the walls.
Jin continued to hold Katou’s hand loosely. The other man seemed to like the physical contact, and Jin wanted to give it. Anything that scared Katou scared Jin too, if only because Katou’s dreams were so fucking strange and he took such a beating in them.
Looking around the house, Jin smiled to himself. “Wendy?”
“Eh?” Katou asked, turning to Jin with a confused expression on his face. “Who-” he started. Wendy, his roommate. It kind of chewed him up that he was forgetting her and the other person he lived with. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”
Katou’s bedroom wasn’t exactly a room per se, so much as an area of the living room that had been sectioned off to give him some privacy. His bed was built into the wall as an alcove, the ceiling slanted above it. It was rather tidy, but then, Katou didn’t have a whole lot of stuff to begin with. A couple clothes hanging out of the hamper, some CDs in broken cases sitting in the shelving that was above his pillow. His sword sat mounted above his bed, and he had a couple punk show posters hanging up on the slanted ceiling above his bed. His electric guitar was resting on his bed, plugged into a small amp, and his acoustic was standing in a guitar stand tucked away in the corner.
He moved the guitar to the side to make room so that he and Jin could sit on the bed. “You want anything? I think we got beer or pop or something. Or I could make something. For eating.” Attempting to put things off? Katou would never do something like that.
Jin smiled at his bed. “You get to sleep in a reading nook, that’s nice.” He looked around and sat down, running his hands awkwardly over his thighs. “We could do that. I know you don’t want to talk, but you know we should, right?”
“S’cozy, that’s for sure,” Katou said, grinning a bit. He left briefly to grab a couple cans of pop from the fridge. He’d more or less stopped drinking once the memory problems started in earnest. He really didn’t need anything exacerbating the problem. He sat down next to Jin, leaning against the wall. “Anyway, there’s just some dream stuff that’s been going on. Nothing major or nothing just… kinda hard to deal with, I guess.”
Jin took the can of soda to have something to do with his hands. It was hard to not want to kiss Katou, but Jin didn’t want to interrupt him. “Can I help?” Jin was good at helping, he could research stuff or hit things.
“I don’t think so,” Katou said. “I’m not sure if anything could be done.” Katou opened the can with the tip of his mechanical finger, not bothering to use the tab to push the opening in, though he didn’t take a sip. “I guess this injury,” he rolled his shoulder as he said it just to be clear that he was, in fact, talking about the arm “was worse than I thought, and it’s been… messing with my head a little bit. I’ve been losing,” everything, “some stuff.”
Brown eyes went wide, and Jin blinked. “Some? How much is some? Gods, that must be terrifying.” He shivered, opening his own soda.
Katou sucked on his teeth, and then decided that that was probably a good time to take a couple large gulps of his pop. Which, okay, probably wasn’t going to help him so much with the ‘it’s not a big deal’ angle he was shooting for. He really, really didn’t want to talk about this. He probably had to. “Just like, you know, some memories and shit is all. It could always be worse, yeah? Pretty sure most of my memories were shit anyway.”
“Do you remember me?” Maybe Jin was recent enough to not have been forgotten. “If not, don’t feel bad, Katou. It’s not like you can control what’s happening to you.” Jin felt more sad than he felt he had any right to feel. It wasn’t like they were dating or anything. Fuck. He always felt attachments too fucking fast.
Katou looked at Jin's face for a moment, hoping that he'd remember something but knowing he wouldn't, and it carried through in his eyes. "I don't know who you are," Katou admitted after a couple of seconds. "I know I care about you, and that I trust you but... I'm sorry. I don't remember my roommates most of the time. Wendy and... And the other one. Or my sister's name." And now that he was talking he couldn't really stop himself. "lt's like I'm watching sand slipping through my fingers. I don't... I don't," he had to bite off his words there to stop himself from sobbing. He’d be damned if he was going to start crying now.
Jin put down his soda and reached out to hold Katou. He wanted to hold the kid at the best of times, and as it would turn out, the worst. “My name is Jin Kung. We’ve been on a couple of dates, and I kind of have a big crush on you. I’ll write all of this down somewhere so you can always call me and ask me questions about your life, okay? Just until we figure this out.” Because they would. Jin pressed a kiss to Katou’s forehead, squinching his own eyes closed to keep them from tearing. It wouldn’t do to cry over something that wasn’t even his own tragedy.
“S’probably not worth the trouble,” Katou muttered. Had he been someone else, Katou would have pushed him away and told him to fuck off, but he did enjoy Jin’s touch. He wasn’t acting like he pitied Katou, wasn’t trying to treat him like an invalid. “I think when I disappear from my dreams, that’s it for me here, too.” And he couldn’t stop himselfl from crying then. He bowed his head, covering his eyes with his hand. “I’ll forget my face, and then I’m going to die like the fuck-up I used to be. I never made anything for myself here, I never fucking did anything. My soul’s going to wither and vanish meaninglessly, and there’s not a goddamn fucking thing I can do about it,” he sobbed. For all his fronting, he was scared. He was really, truly, terrified about what was coming.
“For what it’s worth, you made me care about you? A lot more than I should.” Jin wrapped his arms tighter around Katou, and he closed his eyes against his own tears. There was nothing he could say to comfort the guy that he was really coming to care about, and it was breaking his fucking heart.
Katou clung to Jin as though he was a lifebouy until he managed to get himself under control, something he managed after taking a couple deep gulps of air. He laughed a little, and it was neither a bitter laugh or a particularly joyous one. “Well, it’s no Champion to the Messiah, but I’ll take it.” He pulled away from Jin and gave him a cheerful smile, the effect lost somewhat by the tears that still streaked Katou’s face. He wiped them away, feeling a little bit childish “I’m sorry, Jin,” Katou said, the words feeling almost foreign in his mouth. He might not remember that he had stopped apologizing when he had run away from home, but he did know it wasn’t something he said often. “This ain’t your problem. I shouldn’ta unloaded on you like that. I’m good now.”
“Katou, I want you to be able to do that. I’m your friend.” Hell, Jin felt like they were more than that, but that was a conversation to have far, far in the future. “That’s what friends are for.” Rummaging through his ever present backpack, Jin pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to Katou. “It’s a problem for me because I like you.”
Katou stared at the handkerchief like he had no idea what to do with it. Mostly because he didn’t. Even had Katou not been having memory problems, he probably would have been nearly as lost, though after a moment he blew his nose into it. “There’s no point stressing on the things you can’t do nothing about, yeah?” Katou said. “I’ve been trying to look forward and shit.” It wasn’t easy. If there were things that Katou had always wanted to do before he died, he had forgotten them. “Like, muddling through my day so that no one treats me different, ‘cause I don’t wanna be treated like no invalid or something for the rest of my… stay here.”
Jin sighed. He supposed he could understand why someone wouldn’t want to be treated differently in this situation, but how could he not treat Katou differently? It was somehow vaguely reassuring that Katou blew his nose into the hankie, as it was something that Jin would’ve expected from him. Crass yet adorable at the same time.
“I wonder if there are any healers on the network,” Jin mused. “Maybe someone could help?” Katou had said he was a vegetable, right? Jin wondered if sticking him in a fridge would help, but then figured he was being far too literal.
“Maybe,” Katou said. “I think there’s healers, but…” he shrugged. He had a vague sense that he had seen one a couple times, but he couldn’t remember anything about them. “I don’t know if they can help me, though I guess they probably can’t make anything worse either.”
“Want me to keep an ear out?” Jin wrapped his arms around Katou, figuring that the younger man had responded well to hugs last time. “Like you said, they can’t hurt. I’m sorry I’m kind of useless here. If you needed me to find a book or kill someone, I’d be all over it.”
Hugs were nice. Right now, they made Katou feel vulnerable and kind of infantile, but he also kind of felt for the first time in weeks that maybe things would end up okayish. It was an idiotic thought and he knew it, but he hadn’t felt anything resembling hope in a while and he’d take what he could get. “Yeah, that’d be alright I guess,” he said, and then laughed a little at Jin’s next comment. “I don’t think there’s anyone I really want dead over here, but if I think of someone I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll shoot the shit out of them,” Jin murmured. He kissed the top of Katou’s head, mostly because he wanted to kiss Katou on the mouth, but didn’t want to take advantage of someone with amnesia.
The hell was it that was so damn comforting about getting kissed on the head? He pulled away a little so he could look at Jin’s face, and wished he could remember him. Jin definitely didn’t seem like the kind of guy who Katou would want to forget. Not really one to be too concerned with boundaries, he pushed a loose piece of Jin’s hair back with his right hand so that he could feel the touch of Jin’s cheek against his flesh, and leaned forward to kiss him. He probably wouldn’t remember it tomorrow, but maybe he would.
Jin’s eyes teared up when Katou kissed him. Katou didn’t deserve any of the shit that happened to him in his dreams, and it made Jin unbearably angry on Katou’s behalf. It also made Jin really scared that someday he might lose Katou. Because if Katou was comfortable enough to kiss him when Katou’s world was pretty much ending, Jin was sure that what he felt for the kid was real.
“I’m here, Katou. I’m not going anywhere. Even if you forget me tomorrow,” Jin murmured. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Katou said, though he suddenly felt rather guilty about it. He didn’t want Jin to leave, but he probably deserved something better than someone who would probably forget all about him and then disappear from this world. He probably deserved more than Katou even when he was at his best. Jin would probably realize on his own that he could do better and take off, and Katou would forget about him, and everyone would be a winner. But for now, Katou would enjoy the moment.