Shadows & Frost
FLD
Disclaimer: proud owner of Miyami Kinomiya and Kaz Kinomiya
Warnings: OC - mild OOC - AU (high school) - freeform!Kai
Author's Note: While writing Because. Camping (which I have yet to post), I couldn't ignore this little plotbunny any longer. I tried. Hard. But he said, "screw you, we're doing this live" and, well, here we are. This is a companion piece to B.C. and follows the Frisco Lux Dolls timeline. Aspin (Fayeth) is mentioned briefly as well. Plotbunny, over here, insisted I do an introspective drabble on Kai since his relationship with cousin Miyami is one I covet. It turned into whatever the heck it is now.
Thank you for reading!
Tari
You lose yourself trying to hold on to someone who doesn't care about losing you.
xxx
It's cold. His cheeks burn from it. His fingertips and lips and nose and heart are numb. Kai hates the grey skies and stark white and emptiness he finds in Russia. Tala doesn't seem bothered, eager to answer Grandfather's questions. Eager to please a man who would prefer Kai be more like him. More malleable and obedient, no questions asked because it's about respect.
Respect him and maybe he'll give it all back.
Kai grasped at that hope for years only to find disappointment after every encounter.
Voltaire doesn't give back. He takes. Takes things Kai doesn't realize he has until there's nothing but his bruised soul left between them, both playing and manipulating in an emotional tug-of-war.
Kai doesn't let go easily but he's running out of strength. He's running out of a reason to keep holding on.
Voltaire leaves them. Surrounded by cement and metal and the hum of machines calculating how little they have in common anymore, they stare at one another. Kai is unsure whether to be unforgiving or defeated. His father reaches out but changes his mind and returns his hand to his lap.
"You look good."
"You look miserable."
He doesn't mean for it to come out like ash and embers but it's hard to swallow and his throat is so dry. The silence is so loud. It rings in his ears and he needs to go. Somewhere. Anywhere but here because this is too much.
Kai stands. His father stares at the nothingness between them, quiet, not fighting. Kai leaves.
Tala suggests they visit Boris at the company in the morning. Kai doesn't object but he doesn't agree either. He sits, surrounded by memories and damp air in his childhood bedroom, on the floor below the window. Where his toy box once sat. Where his mother used to play makebelieve with him. Where she used to hold him and read stories with happy endings. Where she used to.
Kai is starting to forget. Surrounded by naked trees, crooked and black against the pale of the snow. He sits awhile longer, letting the winter cold bite his cheeks and neck, welcoming it, wanting to feel. He can't remember what the gardens look like filled with green and color and sunlight. He can't remember what it's like to be warm.
Call her.
Because she is everything this place isn't and knows how to hold him when he's broken and fix the pieces of himself that he can't ever seem to mend alone.
Call her.
…
Tomorrow.
It fills him like a gnarled sickness. He decides he doesn't want to this and swallows the hurt, letting the film that keeps rolling in his mind melt and burn away until he can't see her face anymore. He hides the photo with the shattered glass and splintered frame in the trunk. Under the extra blankets, between the shadows of who he was and what he could have been.
Why did she leave me? He asked once. He refuses to ask again. He doesn't like the answer.
"You're too soft, Kai. Do not embarrass me with this love you have for someone who can't return it. It's useless and a poor excuse for a distraction."
"Yes Grandfather."
Johnny says something that makes Kai think. Really think. Pull at loose threads and unravel the fabric he'd spent so long weaving, tight, around his heart.
"Why not?"
Why not accept it? Breathe it in? Let it change him? Why not hold on to that all-encompassing, soft candlelight, warm cinnamon-milk, sweet hugs and kisses love that only a mother can give?
Why not let himself remember?
Call her.
"Mmm, zdravstvuj, brat." Her voice is broken and weak with sleep.
Kai pulls his phone away from his ear to check the time and realizes it's 6am in San Francisco. He grimaces, guilty, yet doesn't apologize.
Instead, he pauses and composes himself, "Privyet, sestra."
He hears fabric being pushed aside, a mattress shifting as Miyami readjusts herself on the other side of the world.
Though he'll never admit it out loud, the call could have waited. But Tala had gotten on his nerves and Bryan had disappeared somewhere between Bar BQ Café and his grandfather's house, and Johnny kept pestering him to play tour-guide … He needs the familiar, relenting comfort of home.
Because the hurt and cold and stone of visiting his mother was too much and he needs something to remind him that it will be okay, I promise. A promise that won't be forgotten. A promise of getting it all back.
Even if he doesn't answer, he knows Miyami – all sunshine-bright and optimism – will change the subject and try again and keep going until he grunts or sighs as some manner of encouragement for her to continue. He can always count on her to distract from the feelings of loss that, for him, rest in thick, grey broadstrokes over Moscow.
He is nudged back into the present when she asks, "Are you still there?"
"Yeah."
On his back, head cradled in the crook of an elbow, he lets the static coax her.
Miyami tells him about the movie she saw and the concert she'd gone to with Kaz and Salima (both, she swears, he would have, "absolutely loved"). How her mother had been busy planning a career-deciding party in LA; treated her daughters to manicures and dress fittings and all the perks having a distinguished events-coordinator-mom entails. About Judy Tate's wedding where the bartender didn't ask for IDs and Hiro took advantage till he was Carlton-dancing in the middle of the reception hall.
"I think," She chokes through her laughter, "He meant to do the Running Man but – oh my God – that didn't happen."
When he thinks she's run out of things to share, she launches into another story.
But this only lasts so long. Miyami knows what he's doing; knows Kai doesn't do casual check-ins.
"Is everything okay, cousin? I assumed grandfather would've dragged you to the office by now."
"Hm. Tomorrow." Stiff. Walls slowly being re-erected; threads being pulled tighter.
"Have you seen – "
Crimson eyes widen then quickly narrow. He pushes a warning through his teeth on a breath, "No."
Miyami falls silent and he is suddenly afraid she's hung up; his guilt blooms like frost in his gut.
"Oh."
She didn't. She never would.
…
…
"I'm sorry."
…
"How are the guys?" A cautious approach, like trying to bait a wild animal. "How's Arista?"
Kai allows the affectionate smile to form, "Johnny's busy trying to break into the Kremlin, by now."
"I'm pretty sure I said 'guys'. Plural."
"Do you really care about the others?"
"Heh, just don't go and tell them I have a favorite, alright?"
"Sure."
Dogs whimper in the background. "I have to go," Miyami says and he hears excited yips and snorts, imagines her standing and trailing them downstairs. "Wish me luck, by the by."
"For?"
"The camping trip! Yeesh, how could you forget?"
How could Kai forget. It's a miracle every year that anybody makes it to the end of the street, never mind the beach.
"Heh. Ah,"
"I'll give you 'ah'," A gasp. "Ugh, 'kay, I've really gotta go. Ya tebya lyublyu, brat, khoroshego dnya!"
He wants to thank her. For answering her phone and not forcing issues and understanding. For everything.
"Da, poka."
And that's that.
He watches the ceiling in cold silence, slipping into a daydream: Salty air and crisp water, cookouts, endless sunsets, beating Tyson at volleyball. All of him wishes he was there rather than under the cool, lurking scrutiny of his grandfather who has asked the man standing outside of Kai's bedroom door to do so. Not threatening. Assertive.
His phone buzzes on his chest, alerting him to a message.
"Hm," The smallest of smiles, "Thanks, cousin."
The picture is a slanted close-up of the side of Miyami's face. In the space behind her he sees Aspin Grant in splatter-print leggings, jogging backwards as Miyami's dogs bounce around her. '#RespectingKaiBootcamp' is typed across the top. Another message arrives within seconds, stating that she will do her very best to send him snapshots throughout the week.
A long-distance way to include him.
She'll never know, because he'll never tell her, how much he appreciates it.
Notes: This was supposed to be the second chapter of Because. Camping. but I feel it works better as a standalone. I love Kai as a character and thought he needed a little attention of his own before I barrel into Miyami's life-drama. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Let me know what you think,
Tari
The Russian – I love the idea that Miyami and Kai were speaking Russian throughout the duration of their conversation. Maybe some English thrown in.
Zdravstvuj, brat – Hi, cousin (m) [in this context]
Privyet, sestra – Hello, cousin (f) [in this context]
Ya tebya lyublyu – I love you
Khoroshego dnya – Have a good day
Da, poka – Yeah, bye