maayacolabackup

Touch

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Autumn sets in before Yamapi can even process that the seasons should be changing. It is autumn that he misses seeing the most. The red and gold leaves always fill him with the majesty of the earth’s beauty. Even as the greenery dies and winter slowly approaches, there is something agonizingly gorgeous about the colors as everything falls to sleep.

Jin takes him on walks, and talks a mile a minute about what he sees. Jin’s voice gives color and shape to their wanderings, as he describes the awful clothes that a middle-aged jogger is wearing, or the ugly haircut that someone has given their dog, or the way the leaves in the park are all brown now. His voice always catches, when he talks about the leaves, because he knows that they are Yamapi’s favorite.

Jin stops, suddenly, and Yamapi only knows because the air beside him is empty. Jin huffs to catch up to him, grabbing him by the elbow and then unfurling Yamapi’s hand. He presses something into it, and curls Yamapi’s fingers closed around it. Yamapi can feel the texture against his palm, and it crackles as he squeezes just the slightest bit. A leaf.

“This one’s still golden,” Jin says softly, and Yamapi smiles at him. “I know you like those ones the best. So you can keep it, and when you can see again, this one will be waiting for you.”

“Jin,” Yamapi whispers. “Thank you.”

Jin’s breath speeds up inexplicably, and Yamapi reaches out with his other hand and catches the end of Jin’s flannel sleeve. It’s soft and warm and feels, somehow, like Jin himself.

“You alright?” Yamapi asks, concerned.

“I will be,” Jin replies softly. “Ready to go home?”

Home is full of wool blankets and Jin curled softly into his side and the familiar sounds of boiling tea and Jin whistling and Jin burning food on the stove.

“Yes,” Yamapi says, and he doesn’t let go of Jin’s sleeve.

***

Yamapi has rough hands. His skin is dry and calloused, from hours at the gym, and his fingertips catch when they brush across slick fabrics, sometimes snagging the delicate material of his costumes, or the dozy cloth of Jin’s expensive button up blouses that he wears when he goes out to expensive bars in Ginza with Kamenashi whenever they attempt to bridge the monstrous gap that has sprung up between them.

Yamapi has rough hands, but they can be gentle, tangling in the fur that bunches in the scruff of Miles’ neck and lightly tugging. Yamapi has a weightless touch when his nimble fingers slowly untangle Rina’s hair while she sits on the bed in front of him and cries about boyfriends or about life. Yamapi has a weightless touch when he strokes Jin’s back when Jin has trouble going to sleep.

Jin always makes this small whining sound in his sleep, before he relaxes into Yamapi’s soothing contact and settles into slumber.

***

Jin stays out of the house a lot, these days. He’s always there at night, helping Yamapi wash his hair and making dinner and tucking Yamapi into bed with a soft squeeze of his hands, but Yamapi can feel Jin drawing away from him. More often than not, when he reaches out to touch Jin’s hair, or feel Jin solid next to him, Jin is gone, and there is only the faint smell of lilac in the air to remind Yamapi that he was even there in the first place. It’s starting to feel too cold, Yamapi thinks, when there’s nothing of Jin there for him to touch.

***

Yamapi has become accustomed to the feel of every light switch in the house, every unevenly painted wall, and every dip and rise of the floor.

He’s lived in this apartment with Jin for two years now, and he never noticed, before, but the walls feel different in every room, like some of them have a little piece of their painter in them. He can tell which walls Jin painted, because the paint is sloppy but full of effort and passion, just like Jin. Yamapi’s walls are smooth and straight and carefully edged, because that’s how Yamapi is, too. Careful and clean.

Yamapi remembers when they first bought the place.

The walls were an uneven yellowed white, and the paint was peeling off near the air vents and where the previous owners had kept furniture against the walls. Jin had rubbed his hands together gleefully, and cackled “Project!” the moment he had seen the place, and Yamapi had resigned himself to hours of remodeling and painting.

He was right, but at the same time, he was wrong. He had thought he was signing himself up for a lot of work with this place, but he’d forgotten how doing anything with Jin was fun, is fun, and how Jin can take the most mundane of tasks and turn them into an adventure.

At the hardware store, Jin pours over all the paint choices like it’s a life or death decision, tugging Yamapi down to the floor with him where he spreads out 7 different cards that all look the same to Yamapi, who just wants to go home and sit on their bare floor and order a pizza. “Help me, Pi! It’s your house, too!”

“Yeah, but you know I don’t give a damn what color you paint it, Jin,” Yamapi says patiently, and Jin pouts at him, and Yamapi stares impassively back.

“Please help?” Jin says softly. “The reason I got so excited is because we get to do it together, all of it.”

Yamapi sighs quietly, and scratches the side of his face.

But Yamapi leans his head on Jin’s shoulder as Jin contemplates the colors, before he plucks a different color, a pale, pale pink, off the color board and hands it to Jin.

“How about this one?” He asks softly, and Jin beams at him.

“It’s perfect,” Jin replies, his mouth stretched wide. “We’ll go with this,” Jin says to the bored looking consultant, who jumps in surprise that Jin has made a decision.

Yamapi stands, and holds a hand out to Jin, who grasps it and pulls himself up, still smiling.

Later when they’re painting, Jin paints himself and Yamapi more than he paints the walls. Yamapi ends up having to finish the entire kitchen by himself as Jin has to go shower and get the paint out of his eyes before he goes blind.

But they paint the last wall of the living room together. In the middle, where they race to see who can cover the most space first, Yamapi thinks the paint feels both smooth and a little exciting. The wall where they work together feels the best of all the walls in the house.

***

Jin has this way of filling every space he’s in with his own special kind of glow. Yamapi doesn’t know how he does it, but it’s like every corner of the room fills up with his presence. It makes him impossible to ignore, not that Yamapi’s ever wanted to ignore him, and it makes him invaluable to Yamapi now, when everything is so dark and all he wants is something familiar.

The feeling of Jin resting warm against his side, though, close enough for Yamapi to tug on a piece of his hair or to feel Jin’s chapped lips against the skin of his neck, that is one of Yamapi’s favorite touches in the world.

***

The blanket is warm and woolly, scratching his skin. When he fell asleep, there was no blanket, so Yamapi knows Jin is home from work. (“You always look so cold, when you’re sleeping!”)

Yamapi finds Jin in the kitchen, standing in front of the counter. His arms feel tense, and he jumps away when Yamapi touches him. “Pi, you scared me.”

Yamapi knows Jin knew he was there, but he doesn’t correct him. Something about Jin is weird, lately. He shies from Yamapi’s touches like they burn.

He tries to pretend that it doesn’t hurt, that Jin can’t bear his touch anymore, and most of the time, he manages to succeed. “When did you get home?”

Jin chuckles nervously, and shifts next to him. Yamapi imagines that he’s probably tugging anxiously on a piece of hair like he always does, or maybe chewing on his lips. “Only about a half an hour ago. Not much to do at work these days,” Jin replies, and Yamapi frowns at him.

“I heard about the movie.”

Jin is tapping on the counter now, his nails clacking against the marble. “Who told you about it?” he asks softly, and Yamapi’s mouth presses into a thin line.

“Kamenashi,” he answers, and Jin swears a little, under his breath. “Jin, you could have done it. I could have been here by myself and—“

“Not for four weeks, you couldn’t have,” Jin snaps, before he backtracks. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to bite your head off.” He clears his throat. “I thought a lot about it, and it wasn’t really a good time for me to be gallivanting off to Africa.”

“Well, I could have stayed with my mom, too,” Yamapi says.

Jin exhales, loudly. “Look, I know you don’t need me, specifically, but I couldn’t just leave you and go film a movie right now. Even if you were safe at your mom’s, I would have just been worrying about you, and I wouldn’t have done a good job, anyway.” Jin’s hands resume their tapping, and Yamapi stares blankly ahead. He can’t see Jin’s face. More than anything, right now, he wants to see Jin’s face. He wants to cry, just sit and cry and feel sorry for himself, for once, too.

“You didn’t have to turn down a big opportunity just because of my problems, Jin,” Yamapi says, almost desperately. “You should be focusing on your career, not the fact that I got careless and hurt myself and now I’m basically useless.”

Jin snorts. “You are not useless, and you weren’t careless. Accidents happen, Pi.”

“But still…”

“If you think I want to be anywhere else than where I am right now, you’re wrong. If you think I would rather you be left to someone else’s care, you’re wrong.”

“It’s your life, Jin, and…”

“You’re right, there. It’s my life. I choose, everyday, to spend a lot of it with you. Not just when things are good. That’s not what a best friend is. A best friend is there when things are good, and when things are bad.”

Yamapi can feel his eyes welling up, and Jin reaches out to touch him lightly on the shoulder.

“Hey, you okay, Pi? I didn’t mean to make you cry.” Jin’s voice sounds suspiciously choked, as well.

“Bakanishi,” Yamapi says with wet laugh. “You make it sound like we’re married. For better or for worse.”

Jin’s laugh this time is strangely bitter. “Yeah, well, either way, you’re stuck with me, Pi. Better get used to it.”

Yamapi grabs at Jin and pulls him close. Jin’s sweatshirt feels like it’s made of fleece, so Yamapi knows it’s the ugly black and yellow one that Jin wears when he thinks it’s starting to get too cold for sweatshirts. Jin sort of melts into his arms, against his will. “Thank you,” Yamapi says, and he can feel Jin smiling, somehow, as if it were a touch.

***

When Yamapi is young, really young, and his father’s hoarse and wild shouts echo through the house or when his mother’s soft sobs echo in his head, Yamapi hides in the cedar chest hidden in the only unused room in the house, the room that will soon belong to his little sister. The chest holds two kimono, one from his mother’s wedding and one from her traditional coming of age ceremony. The soft silks smell like cedar and roses, and the white under-robe brushes against his skin and wraps around him like an embrace. Even though the silk is thin, the chest is thick, and inside the only thing Yamapi can hear is his own heartbeat.

His mother always finds him eventually. She always opens the chest and looks in, lifting the heavy robs out one by one until Yamapi is left alone and cold in the chest, his body twisted tight into a ball to fit inside.

“Tomohisa, hiding again?” his mother says softly, one arm wrapped around her swollen stomach. Yamapi tucks his face under his arm, and his mother reaches in and runs her fingers through his thick black hair. “Tomohisa, it’s bad for the kimono, to wrinkle them all up like that,” she chides, but she doesn’t sound angry.

Sometimes Yamapi thinks his mother wishes she could curl up and hide in the cedar chest too.

“Isn’t it scary, in the dark?” She asks him later, when he’s crawled out and curled around her pregnant belly, listening to Rina move around inside.

“I don’t mind the dark,” Yamapi says, and it’s true, as long as he can smell the roses and cedar and feel the comforting weight of the kimono on top of him.

When Yamapi’s father leaves, and his mother has to sell the kimono to help pay for things like school for Rina and food, basic things, (because Yamapi’s not famous, not yet,) that’s when Yamapi becomes afraid of the dark.

***

Yamapi is seventeen. His hair is wet from the shower he took to hide the fact that he has been crying. Jin is sitting on the bed, his backpack packed and a slight frown on his lips.

“Where are you going?” Yamapi asks, his voice slightly hysterical.

Jin looks up at him surprised. “You want me to stay? You just escaped into the bathroom, so I figured…”

“No!” Yamapi almost shouts. “No, don’t go.”

Jin smiles at him, and reaches out. Jin has surprisingly soft hands, and the wrap around Yamapi’s wrist and drag him down to the bed, where he is caught in Jin’s comforting embrace. “Alright then,” he whispers, his lips moving Yamapi’s hair with each word. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to.”

“Thank you,” Yamapi whispers back, and suddenly his heartbreak doesn’t seem so terrible in comparison to the eager roots pushing their way up into his chest, sprouting like fresh tulips in the dawning of spring, seeking the sunlight that is Jin’s smile.

“Silly,” Jin responds, clutching Yamapi to him even tighter. “I’d do anything for you, don’t you know that? This is nothing.” There’s something in Jin’s voice that says more, but Yamapi isn’t ready to try and understand it.

Yamapi releases, crying into Jin’s neck until there aren’t any tears left, because he doesn’t have to pretend in front of Jin. He doesn’t have to be perfect in front of Jin. Jin’s hands are broad as they run up and down his back, and it’s the touch that makes Yamapi finally stop crying over her and start smiling at Jin.

Jin’s touch, Yamapi thinks, might be a little bit of magic.

***

Jin is playing with the ends of Yamapi's hair absently, like he hasn’t done in a long time. Jin is always pulling away as Yamapi tries to bring him closer, lately.

Yamapi doesn’t know what he’s done, but Jin is disappearing even though he is always near. He feels far away despite being in the same room.

“I miss you,” Yamapi mutters.

“What?” Jin laughs. “How can you miss me? I’m always here. I live here, stupid.”

“Yeah, you’re physically here but you feel…” It sounds strange, Yamapi knows, to say Jin feels about as close as he felt when he was in LA, even as Jin sits next to him. “You’re acting strange,” Yamapi ventures instead.

“I’m not acting strange,” Jin says defensively, and his muscles tense up and Jin knows exactly what Yamapi is talking about.

“Stop,” Yamapi says as Jin runs a hand through his hair. “Just…stop.”

“Stop what?” Jin says softly. “Stop touching you? Stop helping you? Stop being here?” Jin’s voice sounds wobbly, like he’s holding something back again. “Stop what?” Jin is always holding something back, these days, and Yamapi fears he knows what it is.

“Stop feeling sorry for me,” Yamapi whispers harshly, and he can hear Jin’s voice catch. “It’s only temporary, Jin. I’ll be able to see again, the doctor is sure. So you don’t have to keep—“

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Jin says firmly, and he sounds…sincere.

“Then why?” Yamapi asks helplessly, wanting more than anything to see Jin’s face, to know how Jin is looking at him right now. “What are you hiding from me? Why do you keep walking away whenever you get too close?”

“You don’t know?” Jin laughs incredulously. “You really don’t know? You can’t see what’s right in front of you?”

“I can’t see anything,” Yamapi says bitterly, and Jin snorts.

“If you don’t want people to feel sorry for you, don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself,” Jin growls, before his hands grab at Yamapi’s elbows, turning Yamapi to face him. Yamapi can smell peppermint on Jin’s breath, probably from the tea, and Jin’s body heat is coming off him in waves, warming Yamapi even as he tries to pull away. “You don’t need your eyes to see me, Yamapi.”

“What are you talking about? You need your eyes to see anything.” Yamapi knows how much he needs his eyes now, knows how much he wishes he could look at Jin so he could figure out why he was losing Jin a little more every day.

Jin’s hand slides up Yamapi’s arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. His hand tickles the sensitive skin of Yamapi’s neck as it grazes the skin of his neck and slides down his chest, stopping to rest on his right pectoral. “Look with this,” Jin says. “Look at me with your heart.”

It doesn’t make any sense, and Yamapi wants to tell Jin that this isn’t a song, this is real life, and you can’t just tell people to Look With Their Hearts, because that’s incredibly metaphorical and nonsensical and it’s not reality, but then Yamapi starts to feel the heat of Jin’s hand bleeding through his shirt and into his chest, and his heart starts to beat faster, and faster, like a steady African drumbeat, or like the relentless pounding of the rain during the summer monsoon season.

And suddenly, it’s like his whole world is flooded with light, even though his eyes are still sightless. “Jin,” Yamapi whispers, and his hands reach desperately for Jin’s face.

Jin’s skin feels smooth under his fingertips. Like Chinese silk, or like the soft white under-robe of his mother’s kimono. Yamapi explores the bridge of Jin’s nose, before his hands splay outward, thumbs brushing the velvety skin of Jin’s cheeks and the not quite soft skin of Jin’s lips. His index fingers linger at the outer corners of Jin’s eyes, as Jin’s eyelashes flutter against the pads of his fingers, tickling him. There’s a bit of moisture there, so Yamapi catches it, wipes it away.

“Jin,” Yamapi says again, and Jin makes this choking sound that makes Yamapi’s heart clench inside of his chest.

“Can you see me yet?” Jin asks, his voice sounding trapped inside his throat, like he wants to sob but also like he’s relieved. Yamapi finds that he doesn’t have to see to know what expression is on Jin’s face right now. Jin, he knows, is staring at him with wide hopeful eyes, like when he asked Yamapi to move in with him, or when he wanted Yamapi to come to his concert, or when he wanted to get the ugly broken down apartment. His lips are slightly parted, Yamapi is sure, and he’s blinking slowly, and his nostrils are a little bit flared. Jin is as beautiful as always, glowing with optimism and dreams and the glorious ability to keep on loving, no matter how much it hurts him. Yamapi can see the whole thing in his mind, and he wonders if this is what Jin meant, when he asked Yamapi to look with his heart.

“Yeah,” Yamapi answers. “I can see you.”

His first kiss misses slightly, landing on Jin’s prickly upper lip, but Yamapi quickly readjusts, and his second attempt brings their mouths together perfectly. Yamapi can feel Jin’s lips stretch in a little smile as he sighs, pressing closer to Yamapi.

Yamapi’s hands slide across Jin’s waist, pulling Jin in, as his tongue peeks out and licks at Jin’s mouth. Jin opens beneath him with no hesitation, his mouth hot and wet beneath Yamapi’s, and it’s like an oasis, like Yamapi has been thirsty all this time, stranded in a hot and lonely desert, and suddenly he is at an endless pool of cold, cool water and invited to drink to his heart's content. Jin, with his soft sighs and eager kisses, is filling up some part of Yamapi that has always been partially incomplete, like mortar filling the gap between bricks and holding everything together.

He kisses Jin again and again, his hands holding Jin’s face tightly, Jin’s buttery skin slipping between his fingers and his hot tongue sliding in and out of Yamapi’s mouth, while Yamapi tries again and again to catch it. Jin kisses him like he’s been waiting to do it forever, like there’s nothing more important to Jin right now than touching every inch of Yamapi’s mouth with his own, like he wants to devour Yamapi until there’s nothing left but melding lips and heated breaths. Yamapi can’t help but realize that he’s late, again, that Jin has known all along that they were meant to be this, but Yamapi has been strangely sightless in more ways than one.

“Jin,” Yamapi whispers, when their mouths part. “Jin, I can see you.”

And then Jin is crying, and there’s nothing Yamapi can do but pull him even closer, so close that he can’t tell where he ends and Jin begins, and so close that the soft cotton of Jin’s t-shirt is rough beneath his hands, because of how desperately tight he’s pressing into it.

“Good,” Jin says. “Because I’ve been waiting a long time for you to open your eyes.”

They lie together in bed, kissing and touching softly, exploring each others' mouths until they both drift to sleep tangled up in each other on top of the covers.

Yamapi feels irrepressible heat wherever Jin’s skin touches his own, and so he doesn’t worry that they’ll get cold in the night.

Yamapi can still taste Jin when he wakes up, still feel Jin’s skin pressed against his own skin, still smell the faint lilac smell of Jin’s shampoo and hear Jin’s gentle whiffing exhales as night becomes morning.

Jin is like a warm, breathing canvas beneath his hands, and he can’t stop his fingertips from exploring every exposed inch of him, even as Jin slowly returns to bemused wakefulness. “Pi?” he whispers, and Yamapi has never seen anyone as clearly as he sees Jin right now.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispers, and Jin sighs and rolls closer.

“Okay,” he says, and laces his fingers with Yamapi’s, his soft hands molding perfectly with Yamapi’s rough and calloused one. “You too,” he adds, and Yamapi reaches out with his other hand to touch Jin’s cheek.

“Okay,” he says, and then he’s sleeping.

Taste Sight, Again