Slow Burn
Title : Slow Burn
Pairing : RyoKame (with a bit of Jin thrown in)
Rating : R
Genre : drama
Summary : it's time for Kame to move forward after Jin.
A/N : Thanks for everyone who replied at the fanfic writer's meme, it made me feel like I should start writing something. I've actually finished the first half like ages ago, I just have no idea where to fit Jin. Go easy on me. :P Probably a one-shot, unless I feel like tormenting them further. XD
Comments loved.
Kame was fully aware that Nishikido Ryo and he had very little in common. They didn’t move in common circles, and in another life, Nishikido Ryo would be the kind of person Kame steered clear of on sight. Not because he hated him, oh far from it, it was just that people that inherently confident as Ryo frightened him. It made him feel like he was lacking and maybe that was the truth. He lacked in the most important of places, in the most acute sense. And it seemed only he himself knew it.
-----
“Hello.”
That was the first official beginning of their relationship. Nishikido Ryo saying hi to him like he didn’t know him, like he was the kind of person to be swept off his feet by grandiose ideas of screwing a Johnny’s. Kame just stared back at him, having perfected the mastery of deterring people with a single disinterested glare. But he forgot that Nishikido Ryo wasn’t most people and he was persistent, as though he had sunk his teeth into him and wasn’t going to let go until he shook something out of him. Something like a wayward emotion, or some semblance of frailty, something to prove that Kamenashi Kazuya wasn’t half as perfect as he would like people to believe. So Kame smiled back, the winsome sparkly smile that won over producers and difficult co-workers, the kind that almost always got him exactly what he wanted.
“Hello back.” Ryo smiled crookedly. And Kame knew he should just form an excuse and leave but he didn’t. “Want an autograph too?”
That was how they had met, outside the jimusho, surrounded by the possibility of a dark Tokyo night. They had indulged in anonymous chit-chat, safe unintrusive stuff until Ryo stubbed out his cigarette like he was a little sick of the pretense.
"I think we should get together, sometime." Ryo had taken a step forward and he was crowding him, and Kame thought that it was funny how Ryo asked someone on a date as though he was threatening them and daring them to refuse.
"I don't do relationships." Kame said with a practiced kind of calm but he couldn't escape the raw quality of his voice, as he laid the truth bare. Just when he thought Ryo would back off, like plenty of people do, Ryo flashed him that lopsided smile, a little taunting and very much intimate like they now shared some kind of private joke.
"Well, Kamenashi, neither do I."
-----
Kame remembered the first time they went on a date. It was to the movies and both of them had trucker caps on, the brim pressed low. They missed the first fifteen minutes of the movie, because both of them liked to sneak in when the lights had dimmed and everyone was engrossed in the movie so that no one would notice them. With anyone else, the date would have been a big failure. Kame would have to explain why they couldn't go into the movies on time like any other normal couple, why he couldn't hold their hands, and why they had to keep a distance apart even when walking on the streets. But with Ryo he didn't have to.
"Quite frankly, I think that was a crappy first date." Ryo said, before he looked at Kame, one of his hands still on the steering wheel, a self-deprecating smile on his lips.
Kame had always kept a tight rein on his emotions, sometimes he thought there was such a well of feelings inside him, just waiting to be tapped, that he would scare anyone if he didn't keep that tight control. But Ryo, Ryo messed all that up, and all that neediness and desire to be touched came gushing out of him, as though all this period after Jin, all he had been doing was waiting for the right person to come along before endangering himself.
"I know of a way to make it better." A soft throaty whisper followed by a wicked smile, that promised all the kind of wrong things. And it was one Kame had perfected, just that he hadn't really tried it on anyone outside of the glaring lights of the stage. Kame closed the gap between them, the stick shift poking into his ribs, as he slanted his mouth over Ryo's. And that first taste of Ryo teased out the inevitable, the neediness and all that craving and yearning he had kept tightly suppressed inside him. Ryo seemed to know exactly what he needed though, his hand moved into his scalp, palming his head, keeping him in place. He could hear both their gasps of breath, like the pounding of a loud bass in his ears. His hands grappled between their bodies, seeking for skin beneath the layers of clothing. And his hands settled on Ryo's hips, just above the waistband of his jeans, his fingernails nearly biting into his skin as Ryo's tongue, hot and insistent, melted against his mouth. And then there was a honk, a car speeding past theirs, and they jumped apart, the fear of paparazzi lurking around long ingrained into them.
For a moment, there was an awkward silence, the kind that lingered in the mornings after you had a one night stand with someone you barely knew and Kame just stared at his boots, searching for the right words to defuse the situation, all the while thinking of how Ryo's touch seemed to linger on his skin.
Then he felt Ryo's fingers on his cheek, tilting his face towards him, and Kame thought he was going to kiss him again, and hated himself for thinking that.
"We're not in a relationship. You don't need to justify yourself to me. You're safe." He felt Ryo's soft whisper like a tightness in his chest, and he felt like telling Ryo that he had never been safe. Not with the one before, and definitely not now.
-----
When they finally got together again, both of them were honest enough to just skip through the preliminaries. The funny thing was how Ryo kissed him, like he wasn't his for the taking, as though Kame might actually change his mind. There was some strange beauty in being that open and vulnerable, beneath Ryo, feeling that he was being turned inside out for the first time and his thoughts being sieved through. Ryo's hand rested on the concave of Kame's stomach, as if to restrain himself from touching Kame and his lips brushed across the skin below his navel, just a brief lingering touch. Then Ryo circled his erection, thumb swirling around the bulbous head, teasing strokes and Kame's whole body was just thrumming and quickening with energy.
He could feel Ryo watching him even as his eyes were closed in exquisite pain, studying him with that same inhuman intensity he did with everything else. His fingers, cold with lubricant, entered him and Kame felt like he was being devoured by the bed's warm gravity. There was something liberating about this nakedness, that he had nowhere to hide and Ryo wasn't going to let him. His fingers dug into the flesh on Ryo's shoulders, when he felt Ryo pressing up against him. The initial pain finally gave way to the pleasurable sensation of accommodation as Ryo rocked against him. Kame had opened his eyes, and he had drunk in Ryo's expression. Sweat-drenched fringe falling into his eyes, forearms taut with tension and teeth digging into his lower lip to smother the egress of a moan. Lying beneath Ryo, he could see his pulse throbbing fast and erratic in the hollow of his neck. He angled himself upwards, licking that exact spot and he could hear Ryo making a sound like a stunned whimper as he bucked forward in surprise.
And Kame remembered why he loved this, because sex threw his inhibitions away, and in bed, there was no need for conversations, no room for second-guessing and uncertainty. It was as though he was swept away by the undertow and he wished life consisted of this, and this alone. And as he felt the spasms of pleasure hitting him, he remembered he had once felt like this before, and that maybe this time he was meant to lose it all over again.
-----
Sometimes Kame wondered how easy it was for other people to forget their past mistakes, and how in his case, the transgression of his youth was staring him in his face every day. Hell, the transgression probably liked it this way, Kame thought, as he angled his head upwards and quirked an eyebrow at Jin. His fringe was falling in his eyes, and he had a cigarette clasped between his lips. His shirt brushed him, as Jin reached forward for his cell phone.
“You ought to quit you know.” Kame said, his voice deceptively casual.
He saw a glint of defiance in Jin’s eyes before he took a deep drag from his cigarette, the end of it glowing and his strong cheekbones becoming even more pronounced as he inhaled.
“Some of us need intoxication alright?” Jin said, before turning away. “When did you quit anyway?”
Kame stared at his back, before turning his attention back to his schedule. He had quitted when he realized his whole bedroom smelled like Jin, that peculiar blend of Marlboro Light and Jin’s cologne, even when he wasn’t there.
-----
“When we weren’t having sex, we were quarreling.” Kame could feel Ryo studying him and he shrugged, as though that could somewhat lighten the mood of the conversation, as though that could make the truth less hurting. The truth was he had loved Jin, and for that three or four years, he had felt as though Jin was the only part of his universe that was not attached to the rest of the phony world. The rest, the rest was all a big giant act staged and revolving around his onscreen persona. And while he gave so much of himself mindlessly to the fans and jimusho, he guarded Jin fiercely, like Jin was the only modicum of sanity holding him together.
He felt Ryo’s hand closing over his palm and he looked up.
“Why did you guys break up?” There was a lengthy pause. There were too many reasons, and in the end none of them really mattered.
“I guess….we simply ran out of ways to stay together.”
-----
Jin stared at the ceiling, as he felt a hand settling lazily on the dip of his waist. His female companion leaned over and gave him a kiss, she didn’t seem to notice his lack of response. She got out of bed, stopping at the dressing table as she reached for a brush, tugging it through her long hair. Jin’s eyes moved dispassionately over her as he lit his cigarette, feeling the familiar scent of the tobacco fill his lungs.
“Who is this?”
Jin stared at that picture for a minute. It had been relegated to the back, behind all the other framed photos of him and his friends. In fact, he had almost forgotten about its existence. It was a picture from years ago, and Kame and him were bundled up in their sweaters and they looked like any two ordinary colleague boys. Jin felt a knot in his throat as the cigarette burned down to its filter, scalding his finger. He let his glance linger a while more on the photo, the faces barely discernable in the darkness.
‘Nobody.” He said, as he pulled the covers over him.
-----
Kame sometimes thought Ryo looked like a younger James Dean, all bravado and overboiled vulnerability, the look in his eyes practiced to keep people out. Other times, he thought he looked like a petulant child, all ready to get into a brawl with anyone who dared to look at him the wrong way. He liked him, he liked the fact that Ryo didn’t give a shit, didn’t seem to want to smooth away the sharp edges of his character. There was some kind of excitement in being with someone else again, like trying to learn a new habit, like Kame had to start anew and get some part of himself reconfigured. The years after Jin had been a blank, filled with plenty of faces and meaningless flings. It was as though time had stalled and now it was going extra fast, making up for the space in between.
-----
Kame stared at the pot of bubbling soup and he looked uneasily at Ryo, who was stirring it with a practiced kind of ease.
“Ryo, are you sure you don’t want my help?”
“No, I‘m good.” Ryo said, not without a sideways glance and a knowing smile. “I’m not going to burn down your kitchen, you know.”
“Fine.” Kame said as he sat down on the dining chair, chopping the parsley. Ryo had been on tour the last week and he had insisted on coming over today. His apartment didn’t seem so sparse, or the silence so deafening with Ryo around. And in the last few weeks they had been together, it was as though Ryo had left his own little imprint in the apartment, taking over the corners like his prized Gretsch lounging on the couch, his ipod forgotten on the bedside table and a shirt draped carelessly over the back of a chair. It was nice, disarming even, to realize how fast Ryo had assimilated himself into his life, how easy it would be to fall prey to this kind of pattern.
“Kame, can you get me some coke please? And a cigarette?”
“Okay.”
Without thinking, Kame took out a pack of Marlboro lights from the drawer and handed it to Ryo. There was a stilted pause and Kame could hear the soup boiling furiously, some of it spilling over the edge of the pot.
“Jin smokes the same brand.” Ryo said, like it was an afterthought, as he turned his attention to the stove.
Kame’s fingers tightened uncontrollably over the pack of cigarettes. He had quitted but sometimes in the depth of the night, when sleep eluded him, he would turn to the comfort of the familiar scent. He would light up the cigarette, not smoking it, simply letting the tobacco fill up his bedroom. It would linger for days, the smell clinging to the bed sheets and pillows and it reminded him of Jin, made the nostalgia slightly more bearable. He hadn’t done this ritual for some time, but the cigarettes remained, conveniently tucked away in his drawer just in case. Just in case Jin’s eyes met his in the studio today, just in case that smile hadn’t been directed at TTUN alone. It was a spark of hope Kame kept close.
“I thought you quitted.” Ryo’s tipped Kame’s chin upwards, his thumb slowly moving over his lower lip. He couldn’t bring himself to lie, not to Ryo’s strangely impenetrable eyes. So he crushed the pack of cigarettes in his fist, so hard that his nails bit into his own skin. And he threw it into the dustbin, before walking gratefully into Ryo’s arms.
“I’ll start quitting. Today.”
-----
There was always the gnawing notion that he was setting himself up for another heartbreak, another great fall but Kame had always been a risk-taker. The more Ryo seemed to take up the space in his too-big apartment, the more it seemed to eradicate the memories of Jin. The taping of their program had ended when Kame was walking along the darkened hallway, his fingers moving rapidly over the buttons of his Blackberry. He raised his head and saw Jin walking from the other end, his lazy arrogant saunter striking an unknown chord within him. He briefly contemplated turning the other way, but it was too late. Jin had advanced on him, his fingers curling on his forearm and staying him in his steps.
“Are you with Ryo now?”
Kame knew he wasn’t obligated to answer him. There was no big secret in their circle of acquaintances and workmates, and eventually Jin would figure it out for himself. But he owed him, owed him for all the happy times, times when Jin had made him forget that he didn’t really have a youth, that his youth consisted of practicing backflips and countless rehearsals in the dreary dancing rooms.
“Yeah.” His voice caught in his throat and he could feel Jin’s fingers loosening his grip around him. They were back to being two strangers brushing past each other in the corridor, civil and detached, together but apart.
“Are you happy?”
“It’s enough for me.” And with that, Kame felt as though he had ruthlessly cut the last thread holding them together, the last bit of connection that was still between them. And frankly, it hurt.
Pairing : RyoKame (with a bit of Jin thrown in)
Rating : R
Genre : drama
Summary : it's time for Kame to move forward after Jin.
A/N : Thanks for everyone who replied at the fanfic writer's meme, it made me feel like I should start writing something. I've actually finished the first half like ages ago, I just have no idea where to fit Jin. Go easy on me. :P Probably a one-shot, unless I feel like tormenting them further. XD
Comments loved.
Kame was fully aware that Nishikido Ryo and he had very little in common. They didn’t move in common circles, and in another life, Nishikido Ryo would be the kind of person Kame steered clear of on sight. Not because he hated him, oh far from it, it was just that people that inherently confident as Ryo frightened him. It made him feel like he was lacking and maybe that was the truth. He lacked in the most important of places, in the most acute sense. And it seemed only he himself knew it.
-----
“Hello.”
That was the first official beginning of their relationship. Nishikido Ryo saying hi to him like he didn’t know him, like he was the kind of person to be swept off his feet by grandiose ideas of screwing a Johnny’s. Kame just stared back at him, having perfected the mastery of deterring people with a single disinterested glare. But he forgot that Nishikido Ryo wasn’t most people and he was persistent, as though he had sunk his teeth into him and wasn’t going to let go until he shook something out of him. Something like a wayward emotion, or some semblance of frailty, something to prove that Kamenashi Kazuya wasn’t half as perfect as he would like people to believe. So Kame smiled back, the winsome sparkly smile that won over producers and difficult co-workers, the kind that almost always got him exactly what he wanted.
“Hello back.” Ryo smiled crookedly. And Kame knew he should just form an excuse and leave but he didn’t. “Want an autograph too?”
That was how they had met, outside the jimusho, surrounded by the possibility of a dark Tokyo night. They had indulged in anonymous chit-chat, safe unintrusive stuff until Ryo stubbed out his cigarette like he was a little sick of the pretense.
"I think we should get together, sometime." Ryo had taken a step forward and he was crowding him, and Kame thought that it was funny how Ryo asked someone on a date as though he was threatening them and daring them to refuse.
"I don't do relationships." Kame said with a practiced kind of calm but he couldn't escape the raw quality of his voice, as he laid the truth bare. Just when he thought Ryo would back off, like plenty of people do, Ryo flashed him that lopsided smile, a little taunting and very much intimate like they now shared some kind of private joke.
"Well, Kamenashi, neither do I."
-----
Kame remembered the first time they went on a date. It was to the movies and both of them had trucker caps on, the brim pressed low. They missed the first fifteen minutes of the movie, because both of them liked to sneak in when the lights had dimmed and everyone was engrossed in the movie so that no one would notice them. With anyone else, the date would have been a big failure. Kame would have to explain why they couldn't go into the movies on time like any other normal couple, why he couldn't hold their hands, and why they had to keep a distance apart even when walking on the streets. But with Ryo he didn't have to.
"Quite frankly, I think that was a crappy first date." Ryo said, before he looked at Kame, one of his hands still on the steering wheel, a self-deprecating smile on his lips.
Kame had always kept a tight rein on his emotions, sometimes he thought there was such a well of feelings inside him, just waiting to be tapped, that he would scare anyone if he didn't keep that tight control. But Ryo, Ryo messed all that up, and all that neediness and desire to be touched came gushing out of him, as though all this period after Jin, all he had been doing was waiting for the right person to come along before endangering himself.
"I know of a way to make it better." A soft throaty whisper followed by a wicked smile, that promised all the kind of wrong things. And it was one Kame had perfected, just that he hadn't really tried it on anyone outside of the glaring lights of the stage. Kame closed the gap between them, the stick shift poking into his ribs, as he slanted his mouth over Ryo's. And that first taste of Ryo teased out the inevitable, the neediness and all that craving and yearning he had kept tightly suppressed inside him. Ryo seemed to know exactly what he needed though, his hand moved into his scalp, palming his head, keeping him in place. He could hear both their gasps of breath, like the pounding of a loud bass in his ears. His hands grappled between their bodies, seeking for skin beneath the layers of clothing. And his hands settled on Ryo's hips, just above the waistband of his jeans, his fingernails nearly biting into his skin as Ryo's tongue, hot and insistent, melted against his mouth. And then there was a honk, a car speeding past theirs, and they jumped apart, the fear of paparazzi lurking around long ingrained into them.
For a moment, there was an awkward silence, the kind that lingered in the mornings after you had a one night stand with someone you barely knew and Kame just stared at his boots, searching for the right words to defuse the situation, all the while thinking of how Ryo's touch seemed to linger on his skin.
Then he felt Ryo's fingers on his cheek, tilting his face towards him, and Kame thought he was going to kiss him again, and hated himself for thinking that.
"We're not in a relationship. You don't need to justify yourself to me. You're safe." He felt Ryo's soft whisper like a tightness in his chest, and he felt like telling Ryo that he had never been safe. Not with the one before, and definitely not now.
-----
When they finally got together again, both of them were honest enough to just skip through the preliminaries. The funny thing was how Ryo kissed him, like he wasn't his for the taking, as though Kame might actually change his mind. There was some strange beauty in being that open and vulnerable, beneath Ryo, feeling that he was being turned inside out for the first time and his thoughts being sieved through. Ryo's hand rested on the concave of Kame's stomach, as if to restrain himself from touching Kame and his lips brushed across the skin below his navel, just a brief lingering touch. Then Ryo circled his erection, thumb swirling around the bulbous head, teasing strokes and Kame's whole body was just thrumming and quickening with energy.
He could feel Ryo watching him even as his eyes were closed in exquisite pain, studying him with that same inhuman intensity he did with everything else. His fingers, cold with lubricant, entered him and Kame felt like he was being devoured by the bed's warm gravity. There was something liberating about this nakedness, that he had nowhere to hide and Ryo wasn't going to let him. His fingers dug into the flesh on Ryo's shoulders, when he felt Ryo pressing up against him. The initial pain finally gave way to the pleasurable sensation of accommodation as Ryo rocked against him. Kame had opened his eyes, and he had drunk in Ryo's expression. Sweat-drenched fringe falling into his eyes, forearms taut with tension and teeth digging into his lower lip to smother the egress of a moan. Lying beneath Ryo, he could see his pulse throbbing fast and erratic in the hollow of his neck. He angled himself upwards, licking that exact spot and he could hear Ryo making a sound like a stunned whimper as he bucked forward in surprise.
And Kame remembered why he loved this, because sex threw his inhibitions away, and in bed, there was no need for conversations, no room for second-guessing and uncertainty. It was as though he was swept away by the undertow and he wished life consisted of this, and this alone. And as he felt the spasms of pleasure hitting him, he remembered he had once felt like this before, and that maybe this time he was meant to lose it all over again.
-----
Sometimes Kame wondered how easy it was for other people to forget their past mistakes, and how in his case, the transgression of his youth was staring him in his face every day. Hell, the transgression probably liked it this way, Kame thought, as he angled his head upwards and quirked an eyebrow at Jin. His fringe was falling in his eyes, and he had a cigarette clasped between his lips. His shirt brushed him, as Jin reached forward for his cell phone.
“You ought to quit you know.” Kame said, his voice deceptively casual.
He saw a glint of defiance in Jin’s eyes before he took a deep drag from his cigarette, the end of it glowing and his strong cheekbones becoming even more pronounced as he inhaled.
“Some of us need intoxication alright?” Jin said, before turning away. “When did you quit anyway?”
Kame stared at his back, before turning his attention back to his schedule. He had quitted when he realized his whole bedroom smelled like Jin, that peculiar blend of Marlboro Light and Jin’s cologne, even when he wasn’t there.
-----
“When we weren’t having sex, we were quarreling.” Kame could feel Ryo studying him and he shrugged, as though that could somewhat lighten the mood of the conversation, as though that could make the truth less hurting. The truth was he had loved Jin, and for that three or four years, he had felt as though Jin was the only part of his universe that was not attached to the rest of the phony world. The rest, the rest was all a big giant act staged and revolving around his onscreen persona. And while he gave so much of himself mindlessly to the fans and jimusho, he guarded Jin fiercely, like Jin was the only modicum of sanity holding him together.
He felt Ryo’s hand closing over his palm and he looked up.
“Why did you guys break up?” There was a lengthy pause. There were too many reasons, and in the end none of them really mattered.
“I guess….we simply ran out of ways to stay together.”
-----
Jin stared at the ceiling, as he felt a hand settling lazily on the dip of his waist. His female companion leaned over and gave him a kiss, she didn’t seem to notice his lack of response. She got out of bed, stopping at the dressing table as she reached for a brush, tugging it through her long hair. Jin’s eyes moved dispassionately over her as he lit his cigarette, feeling the familiar scent of the tobacco fill his lungs.
“Who is this?”
Jin stared at that picture for a minute. It had been relegated to the back, behind all the other framed photos of him and his friends. In fact, he had almost forgotten about its existence. It was a picture from years ago, and Kame and him were bundled up in their sweaters and they looked like any two ordinary colleague boys. Jin felt a knot in his throat as the cigarette burned down to its filter, scalding his finger. He let his glance linger a while more on the photo, the faces barely discernable in the darkness.
‘Nobody.” He said, as he pulled the covers over him.
-----
Kame sometimes thought Ryo looked like a younger James Dean, all bravado and overboiled vulnerability, the look in his eyes practiced to keep people out. Other times, he thought he looked like a petulant child, all ready to get into a brawl with anyone who dared to look at him the wrong way. He liked him, he liked the fact that Ryo didn’t give a shit, didn’t seem to want to smooth away the sharp edges of his character. There was some kind of excitement in being with someone else again, like trying to learn a new habit, like Kame had to start anew and get some part of himself reconfigured. The years after Jin had been a blank, filled with plenty of faces and meaningless flings. It was as though time had stalled and now it was going extra fast, making up for the space in between.
-----
Kame stared at the pot of bubbling soup and he looked uneasily at Ryo, who was stirring it with a practiced kind of ease.
“Ryo, are you sure you don’t want my help?”
“No, I‘m good.” Ryo said, not without a sideways glance and a knowing smile. “I’m not going to burn down your kitchen, you know.”
“Fine.” Kame said as he sat down on the dining chair, chopping the parsley. Ryo had been on tour the last week and he had insisted on coming over today. His apartment didn’t seem so sparse, or the silence so deafening with Ryo around. And in the last few weeks they had been together, it was as though Ryo had left his own little imprint in the apartment, taking over the corners like his prized Gretsch lounging on the couch, his ipod forgotten on the bedside table and a shirt draped carelessly over the back of a chair. It was nice, disarming even, to realize how fast Ryo had assimilated himself into his life, how easy it would be to fall prey to this kind of pattern.
“Kame, can you get me some coke please? And a cigarette?”
“Okay.”
Without thinking, Kame took out a pack of Marlboro lights from the drawer and handed it to Ryo. There was a stilted pause and Kame could hear the soup boiling furiously, some of it spilling over the edge of the pot.
“Jin smokes the same brand.” Ryo said, like it was an afterthought, as he turned his attention to the stove.
Kame’s fingers tightened uncontrollably over the pack of cigarettes. He had quitted but sometimes in the depth of the night, when sleep eluded him, he would turn to the comfort of the familiar scent. He would light up the cigarette, not smoking it, simply letting the tobacco fill up his bedroom. It would linger for days, the smell clinging to the bed sheets and pillows and it reminded him of Jin, made the nostalgia slightly more bearable. He hadn’t done this ritual for some time, but the cigarettes remained, conveniently tucked away in his drawer just in case. Just in case Jin’s eyes met his in the studio today, just in case that smile hadn’t been directed at TTUN alone. It was a spark of hope Kame kept close.
“I thought you quitted.” Ryo’s tipped Kame’s chin upwards, his thumb slowly moving over his lower lip. He couldn’t bring himself to lie, not to Ryo’s strangely impenetrable eyes. So he crushed the pack of cigarettes in his fist, so hard that his nails bit into his own skin. And he threw it into the dustbin, before walking gratefully into Ryo’s arms.
“I’ll start quitting. Today.”
-----
There was always the gnawing notion that he was setting himself up for another heartbreak, another great fall but Kame had always been a risk-taker. The more Ryo seemed to take up the space in his too-big apartment, the more it seemed to eradicate the memories of Jin. The taping of their program had ended when Kame was walking along the darkened hallway, his fingers moving rapidly over the buttons of his Blackberry. He raised his head and saw Jin walking from the other end, his lazy arrogant saunter striking an unknown chord within him. He briefly contemplated turning the other way, but it was too late. Jin had advanced on him, his fingers curling on his forearm and staying him in his steps.
“Are you with Ryo now?”
Kame knew he wasn’t obligated to answer him. There was no big secret in their circle of acquaintances and workmates, and eventually Jin would figure it out for himself. But he owed him, owed him for all the happy times, times when Jin had made him forget that he didn’t really have a youth, that his youth consisted of practicing backflips and countless rehearsals in the dreary dancing rooms.
“Yeah.” His voice caught in his throat and he could feel Jin’s fingers loosening his grip around him. They were back to being two strangers brushing past each other in the corridor, civil and detached, together but apart.
“Are you happy?”
“It’s enough for me.” And with that, Kame felt as though he had ruthlessly cut the last thread holding them together, the last bit of connection that was still between them. And frankly, it hurt.