Fic: No Other Way
Fic: No Other Way
Genre: obligatory post-MeisaJin fic
Rating: PG-14
Word Count: 1,000+
Disclaimer: Standard RPF disclaimer applies.
Summary: Jin gets married. He visits Kame. Maybe a sequel to Not Okay.
A/N: I was gonna stop. Really. But then I picked up this book and right on the first page (well, page 5, actually), it says: “Being a writer is a strenuous marriage between careful observation and just carefully imagining truths you haven't had the opportunity to see. The rest is the necessary strict toiling with language." (John Irving, "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed").
I liked the first line. The second I ignored :)
No Other Way
Kame wakes up with a start and for a moment thinks he has slept during taping for their show. It takes a beat before he realizes Cartoon KAT-TUN has been off the air for two years. He curses Junno for toying with his ring tone before he accepts the call and thereby effectively shutting up Avril Lavigne cheerfully announcing her acceptability as a girlfriend.
“Hey, Kame! You awake?”
“Who the hell is this?” he snarls. He's painfully polite but not at past 4 in the morning when he barely had an hour's sleep.
“It's me. Jin.”
“Jin who?”
“How many Jins do you know?”
Kame wades through the haze in his mind then he woefully mutters, “One too many.” There's a brief chuckle on the other end. He's been heard.
“Open the door, man.”
“What door?”
“The door to Narnia. Duh. Your front door, stupid!” And the line goes dead.
Kame stares at his phone. Maybe it's the fatigue - maybe his heart is still asleep - but try as he might he can't feel anything about the unexpected visit except slight annoyance. He briefly entertains going back to sleep - liking the idea of Jin waiting in vain in front of his apartment - but then he thinks it's Jin.
He gets off the bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants.
♥
“Were you dreaming of me?” Jin asks as soon as Kame opens the door.
Kame looks down and if it has been anyone else he would have been embarrassed with the protrusion inside his sweatpants. But it's Jin. It's Jin. “What the fuck?” he asks.
Jin raises his right hand, flaunting a six-pack of Asahi Super Dry. “Let's hang,” he says. He nudges with his broad shoulders Kame out of the doorway and proceeds inside.
Kame stoically follows Jin, watches Jin plop on the couch and turn on the television. Despite his state, he manages to catch the can of beer Jin throws towards him. Jin smiles. “You should really have pursued baseball.”
“I did. I am,” Kame says.
“Right,” Jin says. “And remember, you owe me that.”
Kame doesn't answer and merely raises a brow. He likes to think he got the sportscasting job on his own merit and not because it's the jimusho's way to stop him from going bat-shit crazy after allowing the selfish loafer to have a solo career.
He sits beside Jin who's looking like everything's A-okay in the world. Like they're back in 2005 - 2006 at the latest - when there's no bad blood between them. “Okay,” Kame says slowly. “In what universe is this taking place?”
“What do you mean?” Jin asks.
“This. You. Here in my apartment,” Kame says.
Jin grunts and lifts his feet onto the center table. “We're okay, right? We had Christmas dinner.”
“That was 2010, Akanishi. It's 2012. In this universe, you have knocked up and married my ex-co-star without telling Johnny and sending the old man into unparalleled snit days before we kick off our concert tour.” Kame pops open his can of beer and takes a drink. He hasn't had dinner and he feels the cold drink sloshing with acid in his empty stomach. He likes it.
Jin chuckles. “You know this is precisely why I love you," he says. "You always always make everything about you."
Kame detects no malice in Jin's words but he knows it's there. He takes no offense.
“Are you cold?” Jin asks.
Kame thinks Jin's referring to his general disposition but he sees Jin's eyeing his naked torso. “Do you want me to put on a shirt? Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asks.
“You always make me uncomfortable,” Jin quips.
“Yet you're here.”
“Yet I am,” Jin says and he winks.
Kame can't help the smile tugging at his lips. So much load of shit has passed between him and Jin, they take perverted pleasure in their animosity. They can't be alone in the same room at the same time without being at each other's neck. Or getting into each other's pants.
But Kame thinks the moment calls for neither. “You're fucking married, Akanishi,” he says.
“Is that Kame-speak for 'I'm hurting'?”
“No,” Kame says. “That's Kame-speak for 'Your douchebaggery knows no bounds.'”
Jin laughs. It's more or less the same laugh Kame's been hearing since they were kids but it's been getting rougher around the edges every year.
“So what did the guys say?” Jin asks.
With the indecent proposal set aside, Kame leans back and relaxes on the couch. “We found out everything on TV. 'Course we were stunned silent. It's Junno who broke the silence.”
“Yeah?” Jin asks, finding it all very amusing. “What did that idiot say?”
“The bitch got hitched,” Kame says. “He was referring to you, of course, not Meisa.”
Jin laughs again and Kame joins in. They clink their beers together. And they drink straight up in silence. It's Jin who finishes first and he says, “You know you can ask me.”
Kame burps. “Ask you what?”
“Anything. Why. How.”
Kame grunts. “I get the how,” he answers, grinning and Jin knocks the empty can against the side of his head. Kame just smiles. “The why...well, I pretty much get that, too.”
“Really?” Jin asks, raising a brow.
“Yeah,” Kame says. “You're fucking crazy, that's why.” He expects Jin to laugh but Jin doesn't. There's just this silly smile plastered on his face and, as always, it annoys him. “You do know you're in deep shit, right?” he says just because he wants to rub it in.
“Yeah,” Jin says. “I don't expect to come out smelling like fresh flowers but...”
“But you don't really care,” Kame finishes for Jin.
“You know me so well.”
Kame smirks. “It's a burden I bear,” he says of the fact that despite everything he can never un-know Jin. The man was his best friend once, after all.
"Only because you love me,” Jin says, exaggerating the wounded puppy eyes look.
Kame snorts but says nothing. Jin has said the L-word twice that night. Jin's always been easy with it. He isn't.
“I'm beat,” Kame says. “I'm going to bed. You know your way out,” he says. He pats Jin on the knee and gets up.
“Kazuya,” Jin calls out just as Kame's about to enter his room. “For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry.”
“Yeah,” Kame says dismissively. He finds it easier to deal with Jin the jerk or Jin the selfish bastard. Jin saying he's sorry is another matter. “It's the least you can say for breaking my heart,” he adds in jest.
Jin breaks into a wide smile. “I guess we're quits then,” he says. “'Cause you broke my heart first.”
Kame smiles, feeling the pinprick in his heart. Fleeting and barely there but he felt it. “Goodnight, Jin.”
“Goodnight, Kame.”
Kame enters his room knowing in the morning, one of them will leave while the other still sleeps; neither knowing when they'll see each other again. He wriggles out of the encumbering sweatpants before he slides between the sheets.
He closes his eyes and waits for sleep to take over. In the meantime, his conscious mind takes a free fall towards Jin and him. Him and Jin.
They've morphed from one form to another and back so many times, neither of them can keep track. They have mutated so many times that whatever it is they have is completely distorted and they don't know what to call it. But it's there. Whatever it is. It's the reason why Jin's in his apartment. It's the reason why he answers the phone. Why he will answer the phone.
He waits until Avril declares she's the motherfucking princess before he picks up and answers. “Yeah?”
“You sure you aren't cold?”
Kame grunts then turns off the phone. So much has changed yet nothing has. Whatever it is they have will always remain pretty much fucked up. He scoots a little away from the center of his bed when the door creaks open.
The End