Title: Ikitsuki Island Blues
Fandom: Samurai Champloo
Characters: Jin/Mugen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~ 990
Summary: "You two are so gross."
A/N: For Riannon who wanted "J/M, licking each other's wounds"... so we're looking at events slightly post-anime, I suppose. :)
The place stinks of fish. Wrong: the place stinks of fever, death and fish; not necessarily in that order.
There's movement, something's... moving, but Jin doesn't find his glasses. In fact, he doesn't even try: he just lets his cheek rest on the tarry wooden board and squints. He can make out a shape framed by a rectangle of light, so that would be Mugen, crawling out the door on all fours.
"Mugen," he says, but his voice is too feeble and the surf is too loud. He does not call out again; he isn't strong enough.
Of course, Mugen doesn't want to be inside; Jin can understand that. Mugen will want to look at the sky and smell the sea. He'll think of his godforsaken Ryukyu's, home to nothing but mongrels and convicts, and meet his mongrel gods on the shore.
May he be reborn as a bug.
Mewling, Jin tries to turn away from the light, but he can't. He's not in pain, no; he's just growing a little numb.
***
Mugen hawks and curses and spits because he's just eaten a gobful of beach scum and that's the last fecking thing he needs. He slumps over and looks at the sky. Digs into wet wormy sand with his hands and feet, because it's good to have an anchor. Something must have crept into his mouth and died there, because no matter how hard he yakks it still tastes rotten - the liquifying seaweed worst of all.
But looking at the waves roll in calms him, it does. The waves roll in and out just like his breath, in, out, what's left of it. The way he figures, it's mighty nice of him to give samurai-boy a few minutes there, talk to whatever Bosatsu is in charge of the dying. Jin will want to flip a few beads, put his hands together, make his peace and stuff.
Much good may it do him.
Mugen strings bloody drool across the sand, tries to amuse himself by swirling patterns round the seashells, but it ends up looking like shit, so he crawls back to the shed and collapses on the threshold.
***
"You," Jin wheezes. "You are hopeless." He closes his eyes. He has given up on trying to find his glasses. "You don't even know how to die, man."
"Who says?" Mugen scowls, wolfing down half the rice balls Fuu has left out for them. Jin has grown very pale now, and steep lines are marring his face. "You're not eating this, are you," Mugen asks before he scoffs Jin's ration, too.
***
Mugen is kind of heavy. He snores and babbles, his breath stinks, but at least he is warm whereas Jin is cold (and terribly hungry.) The growling of his stomach has woken him, and he badly needs to piss, so he whispers, "Mugen. Mugen," accompanied by a little shove to dislodge the lump from his shoulder. "Help me up."
"Whu-" Mugen blurts thickly, blinking. "What?"
"Outside," Jin says, with as much dignity as he can muster.
"Huh." Twenty-two. Twenty-three. "Oh... that." Mugen scratches his butt and yawns. "Okay. Just don't expect me to hold it for you, 'kay?"
"Hrn."
***
This is fucking ridiculous: every time Mugen snuggles up to Jin or flops an arm or a leg over him, Jin grunts in that special way of his.
Just hearing him gives Mugen a boner. And he's convinced Jin doesn't mind 'cos they're going to die no matter what; either their wounds are going to carry them off or they'll kill each other just like they've sworn to, so a little touchy feely isn't gonna hurt, is it.
The thing is, you can't really grope Jin. You can't grab him here, or there, because Jin is still all tender, but how else is a man supposed to feel alive, eh?
***
He panics a bit when he wakes and misses the familiar counterweight that is Jin. Burping, he stares at the cobwebbed ceiling and skritches his belly (decidedly not thinking of Jin's stomach, taut and hard and inflamed under the bandages) and rolls over.
Jin's swords. Mugen goggles. Jin's swords are gone.
Mugen swears and pushes himself up from the ground and dodders out toward the beach. He doesn't know what to expect; it's not like Jin to run, but who knows. Although it's more likely that the stupid fuck sits out there hunched over his blue-white bowels instead of dying like a normal person.
Mugen's stomach sinks as soon as he spots him, because indeed, Jin has doubled over on his haunches, exactly like he expected, so Mugen wobbles towards him as fast as he can.
***
"What?" Jin is still half asleep but alert, thanks to that mujuushin sword-of-no-abiding-mind kenjutsu bred into him a long time ago by a teacher he's had to kill.
"You idiot," Mugen hisses and jabs at his shoulder, "couldn't wait for it, could you? What am I gonna tell Fuu when she gets back?"
Jin rises, propped on his sheathed katana. He smiles vaguely. "You could tell her that you stole my rice balls." Limping back to the shed he stops and rights himself and turns. "You look like shit. Are you sure you should be up yet?"
***
"Ehhhhh," Fuu says softly, so softly nobody hears.
The place still stinks of fish. Wrong: the place stinks of fever, sex, and fish; things that will all smell the same after a while. She is surprised that her boys are lying in such a... a heap, an indecent tangle with Mugen's tattooed wrists and ankles curled around Jin's skinny frame and Jin's saliva trickling down Mugen's stubbly cheek, so she almost blurts, You two are so gross, because her nerves are a bit shot and her mood isn't exactly... good, but then she says nothing.
As long as they're alive, she thinks. That's the main thing now, isn't it?
.