Birthday fic for iris_aya! (2011 edition xD)
Title: Why Nakamaru Should Have Gone to Waseda for A Counseling Degree
Pairing: Akakame, Maru
Rating: PG-13
Genre(s): Drama, Humor, Romance
Word count: 7,143
Beta: sou_kiri
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and I'm not making any money off of this.
Warnings: Language, mild sexual content, Japanese pop stars being divas.
AN: Gah, I've been sitting on this for so long, I'm so happy I finally get to post it! I'm really happy with how it turned out, and Aya, I hope it satisfies the requirements of your prompt. Happy birthday, girl! x3
Summary: Maru fixes things. Awesomely, because he is awesome, except the only time anyone ever seems to notice is when he does something particularly awesome, like solve the Akakame problem once and for all. He'll take what he can get.
Nakamaru doesn't know why Kame and Jin keep calling him to hang out. Well...no, that's not entirely true. He figures with Jin it's because whenever they go out to eat, they end up playing the game where whoever guesses closer to the total cost of the meal sticks the other with the bill, and it turns out that somehow Jin is very, very good at that game.
Kame calls because it seems that more often than not, he needs a friend. More than that, he needs someone to entertain, because when he gets stressed, he either has trouble shutting his idol personality off or having someone to play host to helps him keep his mind off his troubles. Or he just needs someone to help get his drunk ass home at three in the morning.
"Seriously, Kame, it's a ten-minute walk to your place from Shibuya. You really couldn't have managed by yourself?"
"aslkjg," says Kame, lurching dangerously even with his arm wrapped firmly around Maru's shoulders.
~*~*~*~
In addition to inviting him out to dinner so he can stick him with the bill, Jin's also happy to invite him along when he hangs out with his friends, and in most cases, Maru's happy to accept, because when they go out, it's clear Jin is happy in a way that Maru doesn't think he's seen since before KAT-TUN debuted. While his high-pitched laughter and wide, beaming smiles have made appearances over the years, recently the sheer joy never seems to leave his eyes, and more often than not the sight of it has Maru smiling, too, to the point where his cheeks ache and the thought of developing laugh lines before the age of thirty becomes a genuine concern. Although the part of him that stood lost and confused onstage in the weeks following Jin's departure from the group makes it hard to admit it, he can't deny that freedom looks good on Jin. He has the talent and the drive to go far, and even if in the end he falls a bit short of accomplishing he has his sights set on, it'll be worth it in the end if his efforts keep that smile on his face.
So when Jin invites him to go to karaoke with him and his buddies after shooting for the variety show he and Taguchi are supposed to appear on together wraps, he responds immediately with, “SURE” and enough exclamation point emoji to rival one of Kame's J-Web posts.
Karaoke with Jin is particularly fun, because, in the private space of the karaoke box, even for professional singers, the concerns of pitch, harmony, timing, and choreography melt away, which has on more than one occasion resulted in Pi, Jin, and Ryo singing an atrociously off-key version of Seishun Amigo with improvised lyrics that are at best inappropriate for TV and at worst obscene in ways that Maru would never even consider, let alone think about giving voice to. Joey and Kusano laugh uproariously, and after they translate the meaning into what Maru assumes is equally filthy English, Josh, Dominic, and Juice join in falling over each other laughing their asses off.
Although Maru had at first been apprehensive about cramming into a karaoke booth with members of Jin's troop and his dance crew, the lighthearted atmosphere and rounds of cheap booze replace the perceived cultural and language barriers between them with an unexpected feeling of camaraderie. As awkward as the first half-hour or so had been sitting in the corner, before long he had found himself laughing along, even when he hadn't completely understood what was going on, and replying to their playful digs at him with cutting jokes of his own. The whole night, though, Maru waits in trepidation for something to come up that will destroy the fragile sense of friendship that seems to be growing between them, like someone queuing up Real Face or Care, or worse Kizuna to make the situation awkward, but it never happens. Instead, someone adds Rescue to the list, claiming it to be one of the two Japanese songs that Josh knows, but the way Maru gets a mic shoved into his hands when it comes lets him know they really chose it to force him to sing lead. Which is no big deal, really-Maru's long past being embarrassed by KAT-TUN songs. Between him, Jin, and Josh, they end up putting together a pretty good arrangement that earns them a round of high-fives from everyone else in the room and a free round of more crappy booze.
After that, Maru feels decidedly better about the whole situation, a sentiment he can tell doesn't go unanswered from how, by the end of the night, Jin's friends are calling him 'Nakamaqua' and queuing up a lot of American rap and hip-hop songs so he can beatbox along with the backtrack. All in all, it's a very successful night, and the good feeling lingers even after they step out of the room, cramming into the elevator and teasing each other for their alcohol-flushed faces and glassy eyes. Pi and Jin make a last-ditch attempt to stick him with the entire bill, but to Maru's surprise, the rest of Jin's friends roar in protest, jabbing at Jin for trying to 'leech off of Nakamaqua' when he's 'clearly on a college student budget.' The affronted and betrayed expression that comes over Jin's face is enough to make Maru laugh until his stomach hurts, because that excuse has never worked the few times he's tried using it, even as a joke.
Tears come to his eyes, and it feels a lot like well-deserved revenge when Jin realizes he's left his wallet back in the karaoke room and gets even more embarrassed. While he heads back up the stairs to find it, Pi drops enough cash in the tray by the register to cover the full amount and then hounds everyone to pay him back for their share, which is easier said than done considering everyone is in varying states of inebriation as a result of different types of alcohol. Having stuck to ordering beer himself, Maru settles his debt quickly and spends the rest of the time waiting for everyone else to finish squabbling out the remainder. When five minutes pass and Jin still doesn't reappear in the lobby, Maru frowns in the direction of the staircase and decides to head back up.
What he finds when he opens the door to the karaoke box takes him by surprise. Jin has indeed retrieved his wallet-he's turning it over and over in his hands while his eyes remain fixed on the commercial playing on the screen. Maru's about to call him 'Bakanishi,' or even better, 'Space Cadet' (which he's found out is Joey's preferred nickname for him) for zoning out, but then he realizes what it is that has Jin so captivated. On the screen is a preview of KAT-TUN's new single, showcasing the jacket cover that shows the five of them seated around a table playing poker. All of a sudden, Maru hasn't the faintest idea what to say.
Jin, on the other hand, seems like he has plenty he wants to share. As though seeing the program has brought back to the foreground of his mind all of the thoughts about his former group that months of tour preparations, concert adrenaline, travel, booze, and fun nights out with friends have tried to erase, nostalgia rimmed with pain shines clearly in Jin's eyes. The sight of it makes Maru feel like he needs to sit down, so he does, and Jin soon follows suit, taking a seat next to him on the red vinyl.
“I never realized how much I'd lose by leaving the group,” he admits, and unless Maru's ears are deceiving him, thick emotion shapes Jin's words. “Looking forward, I only saw what I stood to gain, but looking back...there's a lot I miss that I'll never be able to get back.”
Seeing how forlorn Jin looks suddenly, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed while his fingers pick at the peeling leather on his wallet, makes Maru clap a hand on his shoulder without really thinking about it. It takes him a long moment to sort through his own thoughts, but eventually he manages to say, “That's not true. You'll never lose us. You can walk out on the group, but you can't turn your back on your memories.”
Jin tenses beneath Maru's hand, and Maru's heart flutters with panic at the thought that it's in response to his poor choice of words (because, okay, maybe he's not quite as over the whole thing as he'd thought), but Jin doesn't call him out on it, making Maru wonder if he'd perhaps expected it. That thought alone makes Maru feel more guilty, but he doesn't have long to dwell on it when Jin suddenly says, “Koki and Kame won't ever forgive me.”
Maru's lips curl into a deep frown when the issue of intra-group politics comes into play. As far as he can tell, along with himself, Junno and Uepi have already come around, seeing almost immediately after it happened the opportunities available to Jin for going solo and offering their blessing in seizing them. Koki and Kame, though... Maru knows they're both still bitter for their own reasons, and Jin's right that getting them to put the issue behind them will be much more difficult. Even so, there's a not Maru likes to attach the word 'never' to, and he tells Jin as such, saying, “Give them some time and they'll come around. Koki's strong-headed and stubborn, but once he sees the hard work you're putting in, he'll have a hard time trying to deny that the decision was for the best. And Kame...”
Maru abruptly trails off, feeling like he's opening a whole Pandora's box of repressed issues by talking about Kame in Jin's presence, but he knows there's no way to back out, not when Jin's already mentioned him himself. With more confidence than he feels, Maru says at last, “You know Kame's the same as ever.”
Jin snorts and turns away. “Somehow, that doesn't bring me a lot of comfort,” he snaps.
Even though Jin's not looking at him to see it, Maru still narrows his eyes, challenging him to say more. “Jin, don't be petty.”
“I'm not being petty!” the other explodes. “The guy's been a robot since Nobuta. He lives for the job, he lives for the group, and so long as his own career is his number-one priority, he'll never understand. And frankly, if that's how he chooses to think about things, then I don't even know if it's worth trying to get him to understand. I don't know if I care enough.”
“Jin...” Maru responds wearily. Letting out a long sigh, he raises the hand not plastered to Jin's broad shoulder to rub at the bridge of his nose. He'd had a feeling that this had been stewing in Jin's mind beneath the excitement of his new, budding career, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before it reared its ugly head. He'd just thought it would happen when Jin turned Kame's lines in Seishun Amigo into a disgusting double-entendre about fat girls in a club. Sitting in the darkness of the empty karaoke room with just the commercials playing on the TV screen for distraction he thinks provides a much better setting to have this particular conversation.
“Jin, he says again, just as hesitantly, in case his former bandmate's volatile temper makes another appearance in face of an extended conversation about Kame, “take it from someone who's been around him as much as anyone else has, yes, what you say is true, he's a slave to the job and he drives us all crazy sometimes for it, but peel away the layers of stage make-up and he's still self-conscious guy with the glass heart we met at the audition all those years ago.”
Jin seems to start a little at Maru using his own words against him, but the elder doesn't give him a chance to say anything about it, continuing with, “Yes, he's angry, and even though he tries to hide it beneath his loyalties to the company and the group, it's clear as day to those of us who know him best that he's more lost and hurt as a result of all of this than anyone else.”
The soloist visibly flinches at that. “I thought you were trying to make me feel better,” he says bitterly.
“I'm telling you that if you want to reconcile with Kame, you've still got a chance. It'd be a shame to see you both write each other off so easily without even trying to fix things.”
Just then, Jin's phone buzzes in his pocket, and he flicks his thumb over the touchscreen to read a text message, which Maru guesses is from one of the guys down in the lobby wondering where the hell they've disappeared to.
Maru's hunch proves right when Jin suddenly stands and heads towards the door. The last thing he says before heading back into the hallway is, “I don't know what I want from him.”
Maru follows Jin back down the staircase in silence, wracking his brain for something he could possibly say in response to that and coming up with nothing.
~*~*~*~
Kame likes to claim that the reason he invites Maru out to eat with him as much as he does is because he's a self-proclaimed food snob who occasionally likes to dine in the company of someone who shares his appreciation for cuisine beyond the standard fare of yakiniku and beer, but Maru knows better. Away from the cameras, Kame has a tendency to use self-deprecation to mask his insecurities, and it's a habit that's only gotten worse in recent months. In the case of eating out, he struggles the most with loneliness, and, knowing this, Maru tries to provide that crutch for him. It doesn't hurt that he does occasionally get a craving for high cuisine and fine wine, particularly when there's a strong possibility that he can charm a tipsy Kame into picking up the entirety of the inevitable six-figure bill.
The thing is, at the dinner table, Kame falls back on conversation to hide his loneliness from view, and pretty much everyone who knows Kame personally or has seen him once on TV knows that he's a born talker, and once he gets going, it's really hard to get him to stop. What makes it really sad, though, is that Maru sometimes gets the feeling when Kame's in the middle of a rant that he's hearing things meant for someone else. For example, one night, Kame confesses that since the plagiarism scandal over NEVER x OVER has broken, he's woken up from bad dreams where the fans blame him for it, and it's the yarakashi with their defaced uchiwa all over again. It's not hard to figure out that if it were really 2006 again, to whom Kame would choose to say something like that.
Kame really has a lot to say, though. Lately, he talks the most about his TV show--about the weight training, the weekly traveling, and the doki-doki feeling he gets in his chest when he shakes hands with athletes he's previously only dreamt of getting to meet. Talking about Going! always leads into talking about baseball in general, at which point Maru always takes it upon himself to order another glass of wine, (lest Kame try to invite him no less than ten or so times to join him in his season-ticket box seats when he goes to Tokyo Dome to see the Giants play), and he keeps from getting too drunk by sipping slowly enough that it lasts throughout all of Kame's inevitable tangents featuring his love for America's pastime.
Ooh, America. Touchy subject. Best not to bring that up...
For Kame, America is mysterious, something he can't tap, and yet he keeps trying, almost without realizing it or even why. But Maru knows. It's not exactly all that hard to figure out, especially when he has the opportunity to see both Kame's self-conscious attempts to make his Japanese tongue better shape the foreign words that appear in his scripts and song lyrics and Jin's casual, near-fluent, and yet still shy attempts to chat up pretty foreign girls in bars. It's quite a contrast, and it makes Maru feel a bit sad when he realizes it.
After a while, they both go quiet. Kame gets the faraway look in his eyes that Maru's gotten used to seeing over the last six months, and he swirls the remaining wine in the bottom of his glass in that way he does when he's thinking about something that troubles him. Vaguely, Maru wonders if their thoughts have arrived at the same normally unbreachable topic by coincidence or if maybe seeing the same look reflected in Maru's eyes got Kame thinking about it, too. Regardless of how it happened, it's inevitable now that they're going to have a conversation about Jin, because lately, there are very few topics the two of them feel uncomfortable discussing. Really, Maru's been expecting it to come up since the moment they both sat down at the table.
Therefore, nothing about Kame's narrowed expression or the frustration in his voice when he suddenly says, “It infuriates me how things just seem to fall into his lap,” surprises him.
He just smiles a bit sadly at Kame's outburst and replies, “Kame, you know that's not true.” Inwardly, he braces; his bandmate never responds well to hearing a voice of reason while he's still angry.
Sure enough, the hand not clutching the wine glass clenches into a fist and slams down on the table, rattling the silverware. “The hell it isn't! All he's ever had to do is ask. He got the hiatus when he wanted it, he was excused from KAT-TUN for the movie, Johnny OK'd him for solo concerts, and then he does three shows overseas and gets himself a fucking record deal. It isn't--”
“Kame,” Maru says, more sternly, because they both know there's no truth to anything Kame is saying and also partially because the younger hasn't bothered to lower his voice. “You know better than anyone, except for maybe me-the three of us were in this together from the very first day, remember?--that there's so much more to it than that.”
Kame, it seems, still won't be pacified. “He wouldn't have been in with us at all had it not been Johnny he returned that damn namepl--”
“Don't you dare try to hold that against him. Wake up, Kame, you're being unreasonable. I know you're angry, and you've got a lot of right to be, but you've got to face the facts.”
Kame's sharp, angled eyes widen a bit at Maru's rare loss of control of his temper, and he quiets down. For a moment, anyway, and then he turns his angry gaze on his friend. “Which are?” he asks brattily, and Maru returns his challenging glare.
“That he's worked just as hard as any of us have to get where he is.”
Kame snorts and rolls his eyes.
“Okay, maybe not as hard as you have, Mr. 'I-don't-have-enough-on-my-plate-if-I-can-pencil-in-more-than-three-hours-to-sleep' Kamenashi,” Maru concedes, “but you can't deny he's struggled.” The oldest member of KAT-TUN pauses to gauge his companion's reaction, but Kame's gaze only hardens, still fixing him with that expectant look.
Maru takes another sip of wine and runs his tongue over his lips. “You can't say you don't remember the twelve years of voice lessons, dance rehearsals, recordings, concerts, interviews, photoshoots, and all the other shit they've put us through in this job. He went through all of that, too, and he's stayed true to himself regardless of what happened along the way. On top of all of that, he's managed to learn English and strike out on his own, fighting back against Johnny when he's had to in order to do it. He hasn't had an easy time of it, and now, after everything, deep down, I know you can't say you're anything but proud of him for it. Give it some time and you'll come to realize that the only reason you're lashing out like this is because you miss him.”
Kame flinches as though he's been struck at Maru's words, and the beatboxer thinks they've finally arrived at the root of the problem. The wine in Kame's glass swirls again, but still he doesn't drink it. He stares into the depths of the glass for a while before coming out with, “Mary wants me to go to one of his shows. Next week in Osaka. They cut my trip to Guam short for it.”
“Ah,” Maru says, finally understanding. “Is that what the question marks in your J-Web were about?”
Kame grimaces. “They made me do that, too.” He lets out a long sigh and removes his hands from the table to rub at his eyes. “Nishikido-kun, BENI, and Imai-senpai are going to be there, and...” He lowers his hands from his face, and in the absence of their previous anger, Maru sees that his eyes betray the apprehension he's feeling.
“You don't want to go alone,” he fills in for him, and Kame nods, looking relieved for not having to come out and say it himself.
Maru smiles and reaches a hand across the table towards his friend. “Don't worry. I'll pull some strings and see what I can do.”
~*~*~*~
Kame's nervousness about meeting Jin on his own turns out to be well-founded. Seated on either side of him, Maru and Ueda glance at him every time he draws his sleeve across his eyes during Jin's live renditions of Care and Murasaki. Unfortunately for Kame, Jin notices, too, and his gaze rarely wavers from the VIP section throughout the whole second half of the concert.
Maru's fingers twitch at his side when, afterwards, he, Kame, and Ueda make their way backstage to congratulate Jin on the show. Kame's complexion is ashen as he walks, his lips drawn into a thin, hard line in the way that Maru knows is an attempt to remove his emotions from the situation. Maru wants nothing more than to clap his friend on the shoulder and tell him it's going to be all right, but there isn't time; they've already arrived at Jin's dressing room.
Ueda raps his knuckles twice on the door, and it opens to reveal a beaming Jin, who rubs at the ends of his damp hair with a towel as he welcomes them in. “You came!” he announces, as though it's the first time he's seen them all night instead of spending the last two hours watching them watch him. While Maru and Ueda respond to the pride and happiness they see sparkling in Jin's eyes by returning his wide smile, Kame crams his hands into his jacket pockets and lowers his gaze to the floor.
Maru feels he better understands Kame's desire to have his friends there as a buffer when what draws his eyes and the corners of his lips upwards again is Ueda stepping forward to clap a hand on Jin's shoulder and congratulate him on getting over his cold in time for his Osaka shows, “so we wouldn't have to sit through two hours of you sounding like a dying cow.”
“Not that we would have been able to tell, anyway, with all the autotune covering for you,” Maru adds, and Jin flails in the way he always has when he's the subject of mock-ridicule.
“Oi, shut up!” He throws his towel at them, and they all watch as it lands harmlessly at their feet. Cheeks flushing at his ex-bandmates' teasing smirks, Jin crosses his arms and tilts his gaze skyward. “Someone remind me why I thought to have Mary invite you...”
Kame starts a little at Jin's words, making Maru wonder if he hadn't been aware that Mary had asked him to come at Jin's request. He himself hadn't known, either, but he would have come regardless of where the invitation had come from, anyway, so for him it's not quite as big a deal. Likewise, Jin doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that the invitation was at first extended only to Kame, and it's only because of the discomfort the youngest felt in coming alone that they're all there. It gives him a lot to think about, but he doesn't have a lot of time to do so as Ueda once again steps forward.
“Really, congratulations, man,” he says, squeezing his broad shoulder. “You did a great job out there.”
Maru smiles as he echoes the sentiment, and Kame clears his throat, seemingly finding his voice at last. “It was a good show,” he says in earnest, even if he still can't manage to maintain a smile for more than a few seconds at a time. “Your hard work's paid off,” he adds, which makes Jin's expressive brown eyes widen and his trademark smile that shows all of his teeth slowly spread across his face.
“Thanks,” he murmurs quietly.
Maru's the only one who knows how difficult it was for Kame to say those words.
Jin's smile shifts into something softer as he regards them, and although he looks between the three of them, they all notice how his gaze lingers on Kame the longest. “Really...thanks so much for coming. It means a lot to me.”
Maru watches Kame's Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard.
Once they arrive back in Tokyo, after dropping Ueda off at his family's house in Kanagawa, Kame insists on accompanying Maru back to his apartment, even though it's out of his way.
Hands once again crammed in his pockets, he bounces on his heels in the parking lot after they've both gotten out of the car to say goodbye, but his cheeks are flushed from more than just the chill in the January air when he turns to look at Maru beneath the glow of a streetlight. “Thanks for coming with me,” he says simply, but twelve years of friendship means Maru can read everything that goes unsaid in his expression and his mannerisms.
He knows tonight was momentous in ways that can't be measured by CD pre-orders or ticket sales. “Of course. It really was a good show, wasn't it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was...”
“Take care, and I'll see you tomorrow at rehearsal.”
“Yup, bright and early.”
It's barely midnight, and even though Kame expresses that he has no desire to do anything other than go home and catch up on his sleep, Maru has a feeling he'll arrive at the dance studio in the morning with the standard bags beneath his eyes. Even when he has time for it, sleep rarely finds Kame easily these days.
~*~*~*~
One night, Jin drags Maru to a club with him. Maru hasn't even gotten a chance to go home and freshen up yet when he gets a text from Jin asking him to meet him in Roppongi Hills. He's sitting in his car in the parking lot of the NHK building in Shibuya, having just finished up a recording of Shounen Club. It's a short drive; he could swing by Roppongi to see what Jin wants, and from there he doesn't have far to go home, where a nice big bathtub and a bottle of vintage red will be waiting for him, his mistresses for the night that he intends to take his time enjoying as a prelude to an even more relaxing full day off.
Except things don't quite work out that way.
As a rather well-known celebrity himself, Maru doesn't need Jin with him to get into VIP lounges at clubs. The beautiful blonde girls on either side of him, though...they might be a result of Jin's influence. The rest of Jin's regular troop is there, too, and they're all on their nth glass of pink champagne, having gathered to celebrate YamaPi's sticking to his strict diet and exercise regimen for months in preparation of his new movie coming out. It's a fact that Maru finds to be quite contradictory, seeing as the human body metabolizes alcohol almost the same way it does liquid fat, but that's not something he expects Jin to know, despite his having been on the receiving end of that particular lecture many a time when he was still a member of KAT-TUN.
He stops caring about things like that, though, when Blonde #1 goes from admiring the pattern on his argyle sweater to teasing his earlobe with her teeth. His last conscious thought before Blonde #2's glossy lips find the sensitive spot on his neck is that he hasn't seen his ex-bandmate in a while, and when he had, he hadn't looked too happy. Hm. Oh well~ He figures Jin's a big boy and can take care of himself.
Less than five minutes later, he realizes he really should have known better. It's barely 2AM, still early in terms of club time, and yet Jin's standing before him expectantly. “Maru, I need to borrow your car.”
“The hell you do!” Maru's cheeks are flushed, but more from frustration than inebriation, because really, can't Jin see he's busy? “Come on, you live in this neighborhood. Are you really lazy enough that you can't walk home?”
The look in Jin's eyes turns a bit sharper in a way that quells both Maru's arousal and his irritation, and his friend's tone gives away that if he's had anything to drink since they've arrived at the club, it's long since worn off. “I'm not going home.”
Jin's brief flash of anger fades into something insecure and, dare he say it, vulnerable for a moment, which makes Maru hesitate further, until Jin eventually gestures to the girls each straddling one of his thighs and bursts out again with, “Come on, it's not like you're going to need it!”
That's underhanded. Underhanded, but also very true. Hm.
“Yeah, yeah, all right.”
“Great~ Now where are your keys?”
“Um.” Blonde #1 giggles and climbs out of Maru's lap long enough for him to fish his car keys out of his front pocket and toss them to Jin.
The soloist catches them effortlessly and flashes a peace sign on his way out, calling out, “Thanks!” in English over his shoulder like that somehow makes him cool.
But Maru's already focused on the girls again, and by the time he wakes up the next morning, he remembers what happened after he left the club far more clearly than what happened in it.
~*~*~*~
Then, unexpectedly, several weeks pass in which neither Kame nor Jin calls Maru at all. Without even really realizing it, all of a sudden Maru finds he has time to get a considerable amount of work done on his undergraduate thesis, hang out with his other friends (because he does have other friends, despite what his idol image would have people believe), and even relax. As much as he loves his bandmates (to him, Jin will always be a member of KAT-TUN, no matter what their record label contracts say), sometimes he's glad to have a break from trying to help them deal with the drama that always seems to be following them around.
It's not a feeling that lasts long, though. When still no contact comes from either of them, his mother hen instincts kick in again, and he starts to worry. Furthermore, when he texts them to see how they're doing, only to receive the standard emoji-filled responses from Kame and one-word answers from Jin, he starts to get concerned that maybe the problem they have is with him. Frantically, he wracks his memory for anything he could have said or done to put them off, and he blanches when he realizes he's been dishing out a lot of tough love pretty much every time he's met up with either of them. Had that not been appreciated? He'd only been trying to help, and he hadn't said anything he hadn't thought needed to be said. Still...
With a firm nod, he resolves to confront Kame about it the next time he sees him.
Except when he tries to corner Kame after a planning meeting for KAT-TUN's upcoming Dome tour, the other completely blows him off. “Sorry, Maru, I really can't talk right now-I have plans.” Fighting his way into his jacket, Kame clarifies, “I'm meeting someone,” even though Maru hadn't asked, and Maru can tell right away from the look in Kame's eyes what he means-he looks happy in a way he only gets when he's pursuing or engaged in a new romance.
Oh. So maybe Kame's not calling him hadn't had anything to do with him-or Jin, for that matter. Can't be helped, then, Maru thinks, and with a cheerful wave, he sends Kame on his way.
That doesn't explain why Jin's neglected to call him, though...
After he gets home, Maru shoots Jin a text to check in and see what's up. It takes Jin two days to get back to him, and all his reply says is, “You and your big nose have been hanging around Koyama too much. Ciao!!”
It isn't until the next time he and Koyama are sitting backstage after filming a new episode of Shounen Club, and he's listening to his co-host talk about how he called Ryo-chan a few days before because he'd heard from Uchi-kun that Ryo-chan's mother was sick and he just wanted to check in and make sure everything was okay that Maru understands what Jin meant; it's almost enough to make Maru give up on trying to get a hold of him. Almost.
Maru waits another week, and he would have given it longer, except that he heard through the grapevine that Jason Derülo is scheduled to appear on Music Station, and he figures that's something Jin would probably like to know about, so he calls him. The phone rings twice before he realizes that Jin probably already knows about it, seeing as Jason Derülo is his Warner Records senpai now and everything, but when he pulls the phone away from his ear to terminate the call, it's not Jin's, but Kame's name he sees on the screen. Panic rising in his throat at the realization that he's hit the wrong speed-dial key, he frantically mashes the 'End Call' button, but the stupid keylock feature he activated after once accidentally pocket-dialing his manager in the middle of the night pops up, and before he can unlock the keypad again, he hears a click from the other end of the line.
“Kamenashi residence.”
Except it's Jin's voice, not Kame's.
“Jin? Ah, sorry, I was trying to get--” Maru blinks, pauses. “Actually I was trying to get a hold of you. ...Wait a second, why did you pick up Kame's phone?”
“Because I'm with him, duh,” Jin responds cheerfully, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world. Maru checks his watch, sees that it's 10:30, and thinks that Jin's probably had at least one, if not three beers already.
If any doubts remained regarding the veracity of Jin's statement, the sound of Kame's voice shouting, “Jin, are you insane?!” in the background, followed by, “Relax, Kame, it's just Maru,” eliminate them.
“He's making dinner,” Jin continues, and Maru can hear the wide smile in his voice.
Wait a second. Maru stops and goes back to the memory of the bright look he'd seen in Kame's eyes that day at the JE office. Jin answering Kame's phone. It takes him maybe half a second to put two and two together. “Hey, Jin, can you put me on speakerphone for a second?”
“Sure,” Jin says, and he clicks a button.
*
When Kame hears the sound of Maru's enraged voice come tinnily through the speakers of his iPhone, he nearly drops the pot of boiling pasta he's straining into the kitchen sink.
“You mean the whole time I felt sorry for the both of you and tried to help you with your problems, you've been fucking each other behind my back?! I hate you both!” There's a click as the line goes dead.
A few seconds later, Kame's phone buzzes with an incoming text notification, and Jin reads the message aloud: “'You guys owe me big time. P.S. Jin, Jason Derülo is going to be on Music Station-thought you'd want to know.”
Wiping his hands on his apron, Kame comes up behind him to look at the message. “Oh. Is that something you wanted to know?”
Already typing a response, Jin replies, “Yeah, but my manager told me last week. ...Ne, Kame, Maru signed the message 'the General'. What does that mean?”
“...It means he's pissed. General Nakamaru doesn't take shit from anyone.”
“Eh?”
Kame waves a hand in dismissal. “You had to be there.”
“Oh...” Jin pauses, and his brow furrows in thought. “Does that mean I won't be able to get him to pay for my yakiniku anymore?”
A small hand takes the phone from Jin's grasp and sets it on the counter. “Why don't you worry about that later?” The suggestion almost drips with promise.
“Okay.”
*
Hours later, Maru gets a text back:
“Jin says he knows! (wink) Thanks!!! (sparkle) (sparkle) (sparkle) (thumbs-up) (thumbs-up) (thumbs-up) O~ya~su~mi~♪ (turtle) (zzz) (zzz) (zzz)”
*
The next morning, Kame wakes to the sound of Jin's voice, and it takes him a moment to clear the last remnants of sleep from his vision, but when he does, the first thing he sees is the broad plane of Jin's naked back, the bedsheets pooled around his waist where he's sitting on the edge of the bed, talking in low tones to someone on his cell phone. Even though Kame only hears half of the conversation, it doesn't take him long to figure out who Jin's talking to.
“...Yeah, that's why I needed to borrow your car that night...Uh-huh. Yeah, we talked about a lot of things...Cleared up some things, and realized some others. ...Hey, man, listen...”
Kame watches as Jin reaches his free arm to scratch at the back of his head.
“Thanks...thanks for everything. You've been a really big help through all of this, and I don't know if I can ever--”
Something inside Kame flips over when Jin breaks away from what he was saying to laugh heartily.
“Yeah, I'll do that. I-yes, I know you'll hold me to it. ...Uh-huh. Yeah, I'll-everything's going to be fine, Maru, relax. Trust me, this time it really will be. ...Mhm. Yeah, I'll talk to you later. Thanks again. Bye.” With a click, he hangs up, and when he settles back on the mattress, Kame shifts a little closer, showing him a sleepy smile.
“Everything all right?” he asks, but the look in his eyes suggests he already knows the answer, and Jin doesn't disappoint him, throwing a lazy arm around his waist.
“Yeah, go back to sleep~”
~*~*~*~
Some time later, Maru and Kame are waiting for the waiter to return with doggy bags for the leftover portions of food on their plates and the bill. Kame's face lights up with genuine, ringing laughter behind the rim of his wine glass as Maru comes to the end of an elaborate story about Massu getting into a fight with both Koyama-kun and Aiba-senpai over whose family's restaurant serves better gyoza, and when the bill comes with their empty containers, Kame signals for it without hesitation.
When Maru protests, Kame just smiles and shakes his head. “Consider this a thank you for...you know, before. With Jin.”
Kame is rarely inarticulate, but when he is, it's adorable. Maru knows part of the reason why the yonuger's cheeks are flushing such an attractive shade of pink is from the bottles of wine they've been sharing, but it's also out of happiness. Despite all of their past bumps and mistakes, he and Jin are still going strong. The demands of their separate careers provide just the right amount of distance to keep them from wanting to kill each other, and Maru thinks he deserves a pat on the back for helping them realize that. Kame's footing the bill for their ¦¥70,000 meal is certainly a good start.
Kame's cheeks turn even redder as he lowers his gaze and fingers the edges of the billfold. “Not that I'm not grateful or anything,” he starts, “but I can't help but wonder...why did you defend Jin all those times I complained about him? I mean, didn't he hurt you, too, when he left?”
Maru just smiles. “Yeah, but that doesn't make him a bad person. I defended him because he's my friend, just like you are. You've made mistakes, too, Kame, but don't think I didn't do the same for you when Jin and I met up and he bitched about you.”
Kame looks as though Maru's words have raised his hackles, and he half expects his friend to rise angrily from the table to shout, “Oi, he bitched about me?!” like the little self-absorbed diva he can be sometimes, but he manages to keep himself under control. Water under the bridge.
Instead, he smiles and reaches his hand across the table to find Maru's. “Thanks, Maru. You're a really good friend.”
Maru's face lights up with glee, and he pulls his hand free to stand up from the table and announce to the whole restaurant, “Did you all hear that? Someone alert the presses! Kamenashi Kazuya just said for the first time in twelve years that I, Nakamaru Yuichi, am a good friend!”
All of the color drains from Kame's face. “What the fuck are you doing, sit down. Oh my god, Maru, I hate you so much right now, I could just--”
Maru sits down, but only because Kame makes him (baseball has made him strong, dammit), and even with his friend cursing him to hell and back, it's a long time before he's able to stop laughing.
Revenge is sweet.
Pairing: Akakame, Maru
Rating: PG-13
Genre(s): Drama, Humor, Romance
Word count: 7,143
Beta: sou_kiri
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and I'm not making any money off of this.
Warnings: Language, mild sexual content, Japanese pop stars being divas.
AN: Gah, I've been sitting on this for so long, I'm so happy I finally get to post it! I'm really happy with how it turned out, and Aya, I hope it satisfies the requirements of your prompt. Happy birthday, girl! x3
Summary: Maru fixes things. Awesomely, because he is awesome, except the only time anyone ever seems to notice is when he does something particularly awesome, like solve the Akakame problem once and for all. He'll take what he can get.
Nakamaru doesn't know why Kame and Jin keep calling him to hang out. Well...no, that's not entirely true. He figures with Jin it's because whenever they go out to eat, they end up playing the game where whoever guesses closer to the total cost of the meal sticks the other with the bill, and it turns out that somehow Jin is very, very good at that game.
Kame calls because it seems that more often than not, he needs a friend. More than that, he needs someone to entertain, because when he gets stressed, he either has trouble shutting his idol personality off or having someone to play host to helps him keep his mind off his troubles. Or he just needs someone to help get his drunk ass home at three in the morning.
"Seriously, Kame, it's a ten-minute walk to your place from Shibuya. You really couldn't have managed by yourself?"
"aslkjg," says Kame, lurching dangerously even with his arm wrapped firmly around Maru's shoulders.
~*~*~*~
In addition to inviting him out to dinner so he can stick him with the bill, Jin's also happy to invite him along when he hangs out with his friends, and in most cases, Maru's happy to accept, because when they go out, it's clear Jin is happy in a way that Maru doesn't think he's seen since before KAT-TUN debuted. While his high-pitched laughter and wide, beaming smiles have made appearances over the years, recently the sheer joy never seems to leave his eyes, and more often than not the sight of it has Maru smiling, too, to the point where his cheeks ache and the thought of developing laugh lines before the age of thirty becomes a genuine concern. Although the part of him that stood lost and confused onstage in the weeks following Jin's departure from the group makes it hard to admit it, he can't deny that freedom looks good on Jin. He has the talent and the drive to go far, and even if in the end he falls a bit short of accomplishing he has his sights set on, it'll be worth it in the end if his efforts keep that smile on his face.
So when Jin invites him to go to karaoke with him and his buddies after shooting for the variety show he and Taguchi are supposed to appear on together wraps, he responds immediately with, “SURE” and enough exclamation point emoji to rival one of Kame's J-Web posts.
Karaoke with Jin is particularly fun, because, in the private space of the karaoke box, even for professional singers, the concerns of pitch, harmony, timing, and choreography melt away, which has on more than one occasion resulted in Pi, Jin, and Ryo singing an atrociously off-key version of Seishun Amigo with improvised lyrics that are at best inappropriate for TV and at worst obscene in ways that Maru would never even consider, let alone think about giving voice to. Joey and Kusano laugh uproariously, and after they translate the meaning into what Maru assumes is equally filthy English, Josh, Dominic, and Juice join in falling over each other laughing their asses off.
Although Maru had at first been apprehensive about cramming into a karaoke booth with members of Jin's troop and his dance crew, the lighthearted atmosphere and rounds of cheap booze replace the perceived cultural and language barriers between them with an unexpected feeling of camaraderie. As awkward as the first half-hour or so had been sitting in the corner, before long he had found himself laughing along, even when he hadn't completely understood what was going on, and replying to their playful digs at him with cutting jokes of his own. The whole night, though, Maru waits in trepidation for something to come up that will destroy the fragile sense of friendship that seems to be growing between them, like someone queuing up Real Face or Care, or worse Kizuna to make the situation awkward, but it never happens. Instead, someone adds Rescue to the list, claiming it to be one of the two Japanese songs that Josh knows, but the way Maru gets a mic shoved into his hands when it comes lets him know they really chose it to force him to sing lead. Which is no big deal, really-Maru's long past being embarrassed by KAT-TUN songs. Between him, Jin, and Josh, they end up putting together a pretty good arrangement that earns them a round of high-fives from everyone else in the room and a free round of more crappy booze.
After that, Maru feels decidedly better about the whole situation, a sentiment he can tell doesn't go unanswered from how, by the end of the night, Jin's friends are calling him 'Nakamaqua' and queuing up a lot of American rap and hip-hop songs so he can beatbox along with the backtrack. All in all, it's a very successful night, and the good feeling lingers even after they step out of the room, cramming into the elevator and teasing each other for their alcohol-flushed faces and glassy eyes. Pi and Jin make a last-ditch attempt to stick him with the entire bill, but to Maru's surprise, the rest of Jin's friends roar in protest, jabbing at Jin for trying to 'leech off of Nakamaqua' when he's 'clearly on a college student budget.' The affronted and betrayed expression that comes over Jin's face is enough to make Maru laugh until his stomach hurts, because that excuse has never worked the few times he's tried using it, even as a joke.
Tears come to his eyes, and it feels a lot like well-deserved revenge when Jin realizes he's left his wallet back in the karaoke room and gets even more embarrassed. While he heads back up the stairs to find it, Pi drops enough cash in the tray by the register to cover the full amount and then hounds everyone to pay him back for their share, which is easier said than done considering everyone is in varying states of inebriation as a result of different types of alcohol. Having stuck to ordering beer himself, Maru settles his debt quickly and spends the rest of the time waiting for everyone else to finish squabbling out the remainder. When five minutes pass and Jin still doesn't reappear in the lobby, Maru frowns in the direction of the staircase and decides to head back up.
What he finds when he opens the door to the karaoke box takes him by surprise. Jin has indeed retrieved his wallet-he's turning it over and over in his hands while his eyes remain fixed on the commercial playing on the screen. Maru's about to call him 'Bakanishi,' or even better, 'Space Cadet' (which he's found out is Joey's preferred nickname for him) for zoning out, but then he realizes what it is that has Jin so captivated. On the screen is a preview of KAT-TUN's new single, showcasing the jacket cover that shows the five of them seated around a table playing poker. All of a sudden, Maru hasn't the faintest idea what to say.
Jin, on the other hand, seems like he has plenty he wants to share. As though seeing the program has brought back to the foreground of his mind all of the thoughts about his former group that months of tour preparations, concert adrenaline, travel, booze, and fun nights out with friends have tried to erase, nostalgia rimmed with pain shines clearly in Jin's eyes. The sight of it makes Maru feel like he needs to sit down, so he does, and Jin soon follows suit, taking a seat next to him on the red vinyl.
“I never realized how much I'd lose by leaving the group,” he admits, and unless Maru's ears are deceiving him, thick emotion shapes Jin's words. “Looking forward, I only saw what I stood to gain, but looking back...there's a lot I miss that I'll never be able to get back.”
Seeing how forlorn Jin looks suddenly, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed while his fingers pick at the peeling leather on his wallet, makes Maru clap a hand on his shoulder without really thinking about it. It takes him a long moment to sort through his own thoughts, but eventually he manages to say, “That's not true. You'll never lose us. You can walk out on the group, but you can't turn your back on your memories.”
Jin tenses beneath Maru's hand, and Maru's heart flutters with panic at the thought that it's in response to his poor choice of words (because, okay, maybe he's not quite as over the whole thing as he'd thought), but Jin doesn't call him out on it, making Maru wonder if he'd perhaps expected it. That thought alone makes Maru feel more guilty, but he doesn't have long to dwell on it when Jin suddenly says, “Koki and Kame won't ever forgive me.”
Maru's lips curl into a deep frown when the issue of intra-group politics comes into play. As far as he can tell, along with himself, Junno and Uepi have already come around, seeing almost immediately after it happened the opportunities available to Jin for going solo and offering their blessing in seizing them. Koki and Kame, though... Maru knows they're both still bitter for their own reasons, and Jin's right that getting them to put the issue behind them will be much more difficult. Even so, there's a not Maru likes to attach the word 'never' to, and he tells Jin as such, saying, “Give them some time and they'll come around. Koki's strong-headed and stubborn, but once he sees the hard work you're putting in, he'll have a hard time trying to deny that the decision was for the best. And Kame...”
Maru abruptly trails off, feeling like he's opening a whole Pandora's box of repressed issues by talking about Kame in Jin's presence, but he knows there's no way to back out, not when Jin's already mentioned him himself. With more confidence than he feels, Maru says at last, “You know Kame's the same as ever.”
Jin snorts and turns away. “Somehow, that doesn't bring me a lot of comfort,” he snaps.
Even though Jin's not looking at him to see it, Maru still narrows his eyes, challenging him to say more. “Jin, don't be petty.”
“I'm not being petty!” the other explodes. “The guy's been a robot since Nobuta. He lives for the job, he lives for the group, and so long as his own career is his number-one priority, he'll never understand. And frankly, if that's how he chooses to think about things, then I don't even know if it's worth trying to get him to understand. I don't know if I care enough.”
“Jin...” Maru responds wearily. Letting out a long sigh, he raises the hand not plastered to Jin's broad shoulder to rub at the bridge of his nose. He'd had a feeling that this had been stewing in Jin's mind beneath the excitement of his new, budding career, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before it reared its ugly head. He'd just thought it would happen when Jin turned Kame's lines in Seishun Amigo into a disgusting double-entendre about fat girls in a club. Sitting in the darkness of the empty karaoke room with just the commercials playing on the TV screen for distraction he thinks provides a much better setting to have this particular conversation.
“Jin, he says again, just as hesitantly, in case his former bandmate's volatile temper makes another appearance in face of an extended conversation about Kame, “take it from someone who's been around him as much as anyone else has, yes, what you say is true, he's a slave to the job and he drives us all crazy sometimes for it, but peel away the layers of stage make-up and he's still self-conscious guy with the glass heart we met at the audition all those years ago.”
Jin seems to start a little at Maru using his own words against him, but the elder doesn't give him a chance to say anything about it, continuing with, “Yes, he's angry, and even though he tries to hide it beneath his loyalties to the company and the group, it's clear as day to those of us who know him best that he's more lost and hurt as a result of all of this than anyone else.”
The soloist visibly flinches at that. “I thought you were trying to make me feel better,” he says bitterly.
“I'm telling you that if you want to reconcile with Kame, you've still got a chance. It'd be a shame to see you both write each other off so easily without even trying to fix things.”
Just then, Jin's phone buzzes in his pocket, and he flicks his thumb over the touchscreen to read a text message, which Maru guesses is from one of the guys down in the lobby wondering where the hell they've disappeared to.
Maru's hunch proves right when Jin suddenly stands and heads towards the door. The last thing he says before heading back into the hallway is, “I don't know what I want from him.”
Maru follows Jin back down the staircase in silence, wracking his brain for something he could possibly say in response to that and coming up with nothing.
~*~*~*~
Kame likes to claim that the reason he invites Maru out to eat with him as much as he does is because he's a self-proclaimed food snob who occasionally likes to dine in the company of someone who shares his appreciation for cuisine beyond the standard fare of yakiniku and beer, but Maru knows better. Away from the cameras, Kame has a tendency to use self-deprecation to mask his insecurities, and it's a habit that's only gotten worse in recent months. In the case of eating out, he struggles the most with loneliness, and, knowing this, Maru tries to provide that crutch for him. It doesn't hurt that he does occasionally get a craving for high cuisine and fine wine, particularly when there's a strong possibility that he can charm a tipsy Kame into picking up the entirety of the inevitable six-figure bill.
The thing is, at the dinner table, Kame falls back on conversation to hide his loneliness from view, and pretty much everyone who knows Kame personally or has seen him once on TV knows that he's a born talker, and once he gets going, it's really hard to get him to stop. What makes it really sad, though, is that Maru sometimes gets the feeling when Kame's in the middle of a rant that he's hearing things meant for someone else. For example, one night, Kame confesses that since the plagiarism scandal over NEVER x OVER has broken, he's woken up from bad dreams where the fans blame him for it, and it's the yarakashi with their defaced uchiwa all over again. It's not hard to figure out that if it were really 2006 again, to whom Kame would choose to say something like that.
Kame really has a lot to say, though. Lately, he talks the most about his TV show--about the weight training, the weekly traveling, and the doki-doki feeling he gets in his chest when he shakes hands with athletes he's previously only dreamt of getting to meet. Talking about Going! always leads into talking about baseball in general, at which point Maru always takes it upon himself to order another glass of wine, (lest Kame try to invite him no less than ten or so times to join him in his season-ticket box seats when he goes to Tokyo Dome to see the Giants play), and he keeps from getting too drunk by sipping slowly enough that it lasts throughout all of Kame's inevitable tangents featuring his love for America's pastime.
Ooh, America. Touchy subject. Best not to bring that up...
For Kame, America is mysterious, something he can't tap, and yet he keeps trying, almost without realizing it or even why. But Maru knows. It's not exactly all that hard to figure out, especially when he has the opportunity to see both Kame's self-conscious attempts to make his Japanese tongue better shape the foreign words that appear in his scripts and song lyrics and Jin's casual, near-fluent, and yet still shy attempts to chat up pretty foreign girls in bars. It's quite a contrast, and it makes Maru feel a bit sad when he realizes it.
After a while, they both go quiet. Kame gets the faraway look in his eyes that Maru's gotten used to seeing over the last six months, and he swirls the remaining wine in the bottom of his glass in that way he does when he's thinking about something that troubles him. Vaguely, Maru wonders if their thoughts have arrived at the same normally unbreachable topic by coincidence or if maybe seeing the same look reflected in Maru's eyes got Kame thinking about it, too. Regardless of how it happened, it's inevitable now that they're going to have a conversation about Jin, because lately, there are very few topics the two of them feel uncomfortable discussing. Really, Maru's been expecting it to come up since the moment they both sat down at the table.
Therefore, nothing about Kame's narrowed expression or the frustration in his voice when he suddenly says, “It infuriates me how things just seem to fall into his lap,” surprises him.
He just smiles a bit sadly at Kame's outburst and replies, “Kame, you know that's not true.” Inwardly, he braces; his bandmate never responds well to hearing a voice of reason while he's still angry.
Sure enough, the hand not clutching the wine glass clenches into a fist and slams down on the table, rattling the silverware. “The hell it isn't! All he's ever had to do is ask. He got the hiatus when he wanted it, he was excused from KAT-TUN for the movie, Johnny OK'd him for solo concerts, and then he does three shows overseas and gets himself a fucking record deal. It isn't--”
“Kame,” Maru says, more sternly, because they both know there's no truth to anything Kame is saying and also partially because the younger hasn't bothered to lower his voice. “You know better than anyone, except for maybe me-the three of us were in this together from the very first day, remember?--that there's so much more to it than that.”
Kame, it seems, still won't be pacified. “He wouldn't have been in with us at all had it not been Johnny he returned that damn namepl--”
“Don't you dare try to hold that against him. Wake up, Kame, you're being unreasonable. I know you're angry, and you've got a lot of right to be, but you've got to face the facts.”
Kame's sharp, angled eyes widen a bit at Maru's rare loss of control of his temper, and he quiets down. For a moment, anyway, and then he turns his angry gaze on his friend. “Which are?” he asks brattily, and Maru returns his challenging glare.
“That he's worked just as hard as any of us have to get where he is.”
Kame snorts and rolls his eyes.
“Okay, maybe not as hard as you have, Mr. 'I-don't-have-enough-on-my-plate-if-I-can-pencil-in-more-than-three-hours-to-sleep' Kamenashi,” Maru concedes, “but you can't deny he's struggled.” The oldest member of KAT-TUN pauses to gauge his companion's reaction, but Kame's gaze only hardens, still fixing him with that expectant look.
Maru takes another sip of wine and runs his tongue over his lips. “You can't say you don't remember the twelve years of voice lessons, dance rehearsals, recordings, concerts, interviews, photoshoots, and all the other shit they've put us through in this job. He went through all of that, too, and he's stayed true to himself regardless of what happened along the way. On top of all of that, he's managed to learn English and strike out on his own, fighting back against Johnny when he's had to in order to do it. He hasn't had an easy time of it, and now, after everything, deep down, I know you can't say you're anything but proud of him for it. Give it some time and you'll come to realize that the only reason you're lashing out like this is because you miss him.”
Kame flinches as though he's been struck at Maru's words, and the beatboxer thinks they've finally arrived at the root of the problem. The wine in Kame's glass swirls again, but still he doesn't drink it. He stares into the depths of the glass for a while before coming out with, “Mary wants me to go to one of his shows. Next week in Osaka. They cut my trip to Guam short for it.”
“Ah,” Maru says, finally understanding. “Is that what the question marks in your J-Web were about?”
Kame grimaces. “They made me do that, too.” He lets out a long sigh and removes his hands from the table to rub at his eyes. “Nishikido-kun, BENI, and Imai-senpai are going to be there, and...” He lowers his hands from his face, and in the absence of their previous anger, Maru sees that his eyes betray the apprehension he's feeling.
“You don't want to go alone,” he fills in for him, and Kame nods, looking relieved for not having to come out and say it himself.
Maru smiles and reaches a hand across the table towards his friend. “Don't worry. I'll pull some strings and see what I can do.”
~*~*~*~
Kame's nervousness about meeting Jin on his own turns out to be well-founded. Seated on either side of him, Maru and Ueda glance at him every time he draws his sleeve across his eyes during Jin's live renditions of Care and Murasaki. Unfortunately for Kame, Jin notices, too, and his gaze rarely wavers from the VIP section throughout the whole second half of the concert.
Maru's fingers twitch at his side when, afterwards, he, Kame, and Ueda make their way backstage to congratulate Jin on the show. Kame's complexion is ashen as he walks, his lips drawn into a thin, hard line in the way that Maru knows is an attempt to remove his emotions from the situation. Maru wants nothing more than to clap his friend on the shoulder and tell him it's going to be all right, but there isn't time; they've already arrived at Jin's dressing room.
Ueda raps his knuckles twice on the door, and it opens to reveal a beaming Jin, who rubs at the ends of his damp hair with a towel as he welcomes them in. “You came!” he announces, as though it's the first time he's seen them all night instead of spending the last two hours watching them watch him. While Maru and Ueda respond to the pride and happiness they see sparkling in Jin's eyes by returning his wide smile, Kame crams his hands into his jacket pockets and lowers his gaze to the floor.
Maru feels he better understands Kame's desire to have his friends there as a buffer when what draws his eyes and the corners of his lips upwards again is Ueda stepping forward to clap a hand on Jin's shoulder and congratulate him on getting over his cold in time for his Osaka shows, “so we wouldn't have to sit through two hours of you sounding like a dying cow.”
“Not that we would have been able to tell, anyway, with all the autotune covering for you,” Maru adds, and Jin flails in the way he always has when he's the subject of mock-ridicule.
“Oi, shut up!” He throws his towel at them, and they all watch as it lands harmlessly at their feet. Cheeks flushing at his ex-bandmates' teasing smirks, Jin crosses his arms and tilts his gaze skyward. “Someone remind me why I thought to have Mary invite you...”
Kame starts a little at Jin's words, making Maru wonder if he hadn't been aware that Mary had asked him to come at Jin's request. He himself hadn't known, either, but he would have come regardless of where the invitation had come from, anyway, so for him it's not quite as big a deal. Likewise, Jin doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that the invitation was at first extended only to Kame, and it's only because of the discomfort the youngest felt in coming alone that they're all there. It gives him a lot to think about, but he doesn't have a lot of time to do so as Ueda once again steps forward.
“Really, congratulations, man,” he says, squeezing his broad shoulder. “You did a great job out there.”
Maru smiles as he echoes the sentiment, and Kame clears his throat, seemingly finding his voice at last. “It was a good show,” he says in earnest, even if he still can't manage to maintain a smile for more than a few seconds at a time. “Your hard work's paid off,” he adds, which makes Jin's expressive brown eyes widen and his trademark smile that shows all of his teeth slowly spread across his face.
“Thanks,” he murmurs quietly.
Maru's the only one who knows how difficult it was for Kame to say those words.
Jin's smile shifts into something softer as he regards them, and although he looks between the three of them, they all notice how his gaze lingers on Kame the longest. “Really...thanks so much for coming. It means a lot to me.”
Maru watches Kame's Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard.
Once they arrive back in Tokyo, after dropping Ueda off at his family's house in Kanagawa, Kame insists on accompanying Maru back to his apartment, even though it's out of his way.
Hands once again crammed in his pockets, he bounces on his heels in the parking lot after they've both gotten out of the car to say goodbye, but his cheeks are flushed from more than just the chill in the January air when he turns to look at Maru beneath the glow of a streetlight. “Thanks for coming with me,” he says simply, but twelve years of friendship means Maru can read everything that goes unsaid in his expression and his mannerisms.
He knows tonight was momentous in ways that can't be measured by CD pre-orders or ticket sales. “Of course. It really was a good show, wasn't it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was...”
“Take care, and I'll see you tomorrow at rehearsal.”
“Yup, bright and early.”
It's barely midnight, and even though Kame expresses that he has no desire to do anything other than go home and catch up on his sleep, Maru has a feeling he'll arrive at the dance studio in the morning with the standard bags beneath his eyes. Even when he has time for it, sleep rarely finds Kame easily these days.
~*~*~*~
One night, Jin drags Maru to a club with him. Maru hasn't even gotten a chance to go home and freshen up yet when he gets a text from Jin asking him to meet him in Roppongi Hills. He's sitting in his car in the parking lot of the NHK building in Shibuya, having just finished up a recording of Shounen Club. It's a short drive; he could swing by Roppongi to see what Jin wants, and from there he doesn't have far to go home, where a nice big bathtub and a bottle of vintage red will be waiting for him, his mistresses for the night that he intends to take his time enjoying as a prelude to an even more relaxing full day off.
Except things don't quite work out that way.
As a rather well-known celebrity himself, Maru doesn't need Jin with him to get into VIP lounges at clubs. The beautiful blonde girls on either side of him, though...they might be a result of Jin's influence. The rest of Jin's regular troop is there, too, and they're all on their nth glass of pink champagne, having gathered to celebrate YamaPi's sticking to his strict diet and exercise regimen for months in preparation of his new movie coming out. It's a fact that Maru finds to be quite contradictory, seeing as the human body metabolizes alcohol almost the same way it does liquid fat, but that's not something he expects Jin to know, despite his having been on the receiving end of that particular lecture many a time when he was still a member of KAT-TUN.
He stops caring about things like that, though, when Blonde #1 goes from admiring the pattern on his argyle sweater to teasing his earlobe with her teeth. His last conscious thought before Blonde #2's glossy lips find the sensitive spot on his neck is that he hasn't seen his ex-bandmate in a while, and when he had, he hadn't looked too happy. Hm. Oh well~ He figures Jin's a big boy and can take care of himself.
Less than five minutes later, he realizes he really should have known better. It's barely 2AM, still early in terms of club time, and yet Jin's standing before him expectantly. “Maru, I need to borrow your car.”
“The hell you do!” Maru's cheeks are flushed, but more from frustration than inebriation, because really, can't Jin see he's busy? “Come on, you live in this neighborhood. Are you really lazy enough that you can't walk home?”
The look in Jin's eyes turns a bit sharper in a way that quells both Maru's arousal and his irritation, and his friend's tone gives away that if he's had anything to drink since they've arrived at the club, it's long since worn off. “I'm not going home.”
Jin's brief flash of anger fades into something insecure and, dare he say it, vulnerable for a moment, which makes Maru hesitate further, until Jin eventually gestures to the girls each straddling one of his thighs and bursts out again with, “Come on, it's not like you're going to need it!”
That's underhanded. Underhanded, but also very true. Hm.
“Yeah, yeah, all right.”
“Great~ Now where are your keys?”
“Um.” Blonde #1 giggles and climbs out of Maru's lap long enough for him to fish his car keys out of his front pocket and toss them to Jin.
The soloist catches them effortlessly and flashes a peace sign on his way out, calling out, “Thanks!” in English over his shoulder like that somehow makes him cool.
But Maru's already focused on the girls again, and by the time he wakes up the next morning, he remembers what happened after he left the club far more clearly than what happened in it.
~*~*~*~
Then, unexpectedly, several weeks pass in which neither Kame nor Jin calls Maru at all. Without even really realizing it, all of a sudden Maru finds he has time to get a considerable amount of work done on his undergraduate thesis, hang out with his other friends (because he does have other friends, despite what his idol image would have people believe), and even relax. As much as he loves his bandmates (to him, Jin will always be a member of KAT-TUN, no matter what their record label contracts say), sometimes he's glad to have a break from trying to help them deal with the drama that always seems to be following them around.
It's not a feeling that lasts long, though. When still no contact comes from either of them, his mother hen instincts kick in again, and he starts to worry. Furthermore, when he texts them to see how they're doing, only to receive the standard emoji-filled responses from Kame and one-word answers from Jin, he starts to get concerned that maybe the problem they have is with him. Frantically, he wracks his memory for anything he could have said or done to put them off, and he blanches when he realizes he's been dishing out a lot of tough love pretty much every time he's met up with either of them. Had that not been appreciated? He'd only been trying to help, and he hadn't said anything he hadn't thought needed to be said. Still...
With a firm nod, he resolves to confront Kame about it the next time he sees him.
Except when he tries to corner Kame after a planning meeting for KAT-TUN's upcoming Dome tour, the other completely blows him off. “Sorry, Maru, I really can't talk right now-I have plans.” Fighting his way into his jacket, Kame clarifies, “I'm meeting someone,” even though Maru hadn't asked, and Maru can tell right away from the look in Kame's eyes what he means-he looks happy in a way he only gets when he's pursuing or engaged in a new romance.
Oh. So maybe Kame's not calling him hadn't had anything to do with him-or Jin, for that matter. Can't be helped, then, Maru thinks, and with a cheerful wave, he sends Kame on his way.
That doesn't explain why Jin's neglected to call him, though...
After he gets home, Maru shoots Jin a text to check in and see what's up. It takes Jin two days to get back to him, and all his reply says is, “You and your big nose have been hanging around Koyama too much. Ciao!!”
It isn't until the next time he and Koyama are sitting backstage after filming a new episode of Shounen Club, and he's listening to his co-host talk about how he called Ryo-chan a few days before because he'd heard from Uchi-kun that Ryo-chan's mother was sick and he just wanted to check in and make sure everything was okay that Maru understands what Jin meant; it's almost enough to make Maru give up on trying to get a hold of him. Almost.
Maru waits another week, and he would have given it longer, except that he heard through the grapevine that Jason Derülo is scheduled to appear on Music Station, and he figures that's something Jin would probably like to know about, so he calls him. The phone rings twice before he realizes that Jin probably already knows about it, seeing as Jason Derülo is his Warner Records senpai now and everything, but when he pulls the phone away from his ear to terminate the call, it's not Jin's, but Kame's name he sees on the screen. Panic rising in his throat at the realization that he's hit the wrong speed-dial key, he frantically mashes the 'End Call' button, but the stupid keylock feature he activated after once accidentally pocket-dialing his manager in the middle of the night pops up, and before he can unlock the keypad again, he hears a click from the other end of the line.
“Kamenashi residence.”
Except it's Jin's voice, not Kame's.
“Jin? Ah, sorry, I was trying to get--” Maru blinks, pauses. “Actually I was trying to get a hold of you. ...Wait a second, why did you pick up Kame's phone?”
“Because I'm with him, duh,” Jin responds cheerfully, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world. Maru checks his watch, sees that it's 10:30, and thinks that Jin's probably had at least one, if not three beers already.
If any doubts remained regarding the veracity of Jin's statement, the sound of Kame's voice shouting, “Jin, are you insane?!” in the background, followed by, “Relax, Kame, it's just Maru,” eliminate them.
“He's making dinner,” Jin continues, and Maru can hear the wide smile in his voice.
Wait a second. Maru stops and goes back to the memory of the bright look he'd seen in Kame's eyes that day at the JE office. Jin answering Kame's phone. It takes him maybe half a second to put two and two together. “Hey, Jin, can you put me on speakerphone for a second?”
“Sure,” Jin says, and he clicks a button.
*
When Kame hears the sound of Maru's enraged voice come tinnily through the speakers of his iPhone, he nearly drops the pot of boiling pasta he's straining into the kitchen sink.
“You mean the whole time I felt sorry for the both of you and tried to help you with your problems, you've been fucking each other behind my back?! I hate you both!” There's a click as the line goes dead.
A few seconds later, Kame's phone buzzes with an incoming text notification, and Jin reads the message aloud: “'You guys owe me big time. P.S. Jin, Jason Derülo is going to be on Music Station-thought you'd want to know.”
Wiping his hands on his apron, Kame comes up behind him to look at the message. “Oh. Is that something you wanted to know?”
Already typing a response, Jin replies, “Yeah, but my manager told me last week. ...Ne, Kame, Maru signed the message 'the General'. What does that mean?”
“...It means he's pissed. General Nakamaru doesn't take shit from anyone.”
“Eh?”
Kame waves a hand in dismissal. “You had to be there.”
“Oh...” Jin pauses, and his brow furrows in thought. “Does that mean I won't be able to get him to pay for my yakiniku anymore?”
A small hand takes the phone from Jin's grasp and sets it on the counter. “Why don't you worry about that later?” The suggestion almost drips with promise.
“Okay.”
*
Hours later, Maru gets a text back:
“Jin says he knows! (wink) Thanks!!! (sparkle) (sparkle) (sparkle) (thumbs-up) (thumbs-up) (thumbs-up) O~ya~su~mi~♪ (turtle) (zzz) (zzz) (zzz)”
*
The next morning, Kame wakes to the sound of Jin's voice, and it takes him a moment to clear the last remnants of sleep from his vision, but when he does, the first thing he sees is the broad plane of Jin's naked back, the bedsheets pooled around his waist where he's sitting on the edge of the bed, talking in low tones to someone on his cell phone. Even though Kame only hears half of the conversation, it doesn't take him long to figure out who Jin's talking to.
“...Yeah, that's why I needed to borrow your car that night...Uh-huh. Yeah, we talked about a lot of things...Cleared up some things, and realized some others. ...Hey, man, listen...”
Kame watches as Jin reaches his free arm to scratch at the back of his head.
“Thanks...thanks for everything. You've been a really big help through all of this, and I don't know if I can ever--”
Something inside Kame flips over when Jin breaks away from what he was saying to laugh heartily.
“Yeah, I'll do that. I-yes, I know you'll hold me to it. ...Uh-huh. Yeah, I'll-everything's going to be fine, Maru, relax. Trust me, this time it really will be. ...Mhm. Yeah, I'll talk to you later. Thanks again. Bye.” With a click, he hangs up, and when he settles back on the mattress, Kame shifts a little closer, showing him a sleepy smile.
“Everything all right?” he asks, but the look in his eyes suggests he already knows the answer, and Jin doesn't disappoint him, throwing a lazy arm around his waist.
“Yeah, go back to sleep~”
~*~*~*~
Some time later, Maru and Kame are waiting for the waiter to return with doggy bags for the leftover portions of food on their plates and the bill. Kame's face lights up with genuine, ringing laughter behind the rim of his wine glass as Maru comes to the end of an elaborate story about Massu getting into a fight with both Koyama-kun and Aiba-senpai over whose family's restaurant serves better gyoza, and when the bill comes with their empty containers, Kame signals for it without hesitation.
When Maru protests, Kame just smiles and shakes his head. “Consider this a thank you for...you know, before. With Jin.”
Kame is rarely inarticulate, but when he is, it's adorable. Maru knows part of the reason why the yonuger's cheeks are flushing such an attractive shade of pink is from the bottles of wine they've been sharing, but it's also out of happiness. Despite all of their past bumps and mistakes, he and Jin are still going strong. The demands of their separate careers provide just the right amount of distance to keep them from wanting to kill each other, and Maru thinks he deserves a pat on the back for helping them realize that. Kame's footing the bill for their ¦¥70,000 meal is certainly a good start.
Kame's cheeks turn even redder as he lowers his gaze and fingers the edges of the billfold. “Not that I'm not grateful or anything,” he starts, “but I can't help but wonder...why did you defend Jin all those times I complained about him? I mean, didn't he hurt you, too, when he left?”
Maru just smiles. “Yeah, but that doesn't make him a bad person. I defended him because he's my friend, just like you are. You've made mistakes, too, Kame, but don't think I didn't do the same for you when Jin and I met up and he bitched about you.”
Kame looks as though Maru's words have raised his hackles, and he half expects his friend to rise angrily from the table to shout, “Oi, he bitched about me?!” like the little self-absorbed diva he can be sometimes, but he manages to keep himself under control. Water under the bridge.
Instead, he smiles and reaches his hand across the table to find Maru's. “Thanks, Maru. You're a really good friend.”
Maru's face lights up with glee, and he pulls his hand free to stand up from the table and announce to the whole restaurant, “Did you all hear that? Someone alert the presses! Kamenashi Kazuya just said for the first time in twelve years that I, Nakamaru Yuichi, am a good friend!”
All of the color drains from Kame's face. “What the fuck are you doing, sit down. Oh my god, Maru, I hate you so much right now, I could just--”
Maru sits down, but only because Kame makes him (baseball has made him strong, dammit), and even with his friend cursing him to hell and back, it's a long time before he's able to stop laughing.
Revenge is sweet.