FIC FOR ALIENASHI
For: alienashi
From: maayacola
Title: The Quiet Game
Pairings/Characters: Koki/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: sexytimes, Japanese societal concepts (always explained)
Notes: Jooface, clearly it is a measure of my adoration for you that I have written you Koki/Jin. I hope you like it, despite the fact that it is not quite as fluffy as I had planned! (Read: Not Fluffy At All) Tatemae (建前) is usually used to refer to one’s ‘public face’-what is expected by society, or the behavior one is expected to exhibit based on one’s societal position. Honne (本音) is its opposite, one’s ‘private face’.
Summary: In some ways, Jin and Koki are just alike. In other ways, Jin needs Koki to teach him how to play the game.
Mod note: This fic was submitted before the Jincident™ chapter II.
#
Honne. Truth.
Tatemae. Façade.
Jin can’t help but bleed the truth out of his pores as instinctually as he draws breath. He tries to stem the flow with hats and glasses and four jackets layered atop each other, but it crawls out of his mouth, and shakes his hands, and makes his legs cross and uncross, until everyone is looking at him, drinking in what he’s spilled and leaving him dry and bare.
Koki’s better about it. Koki saves his honne, his truth, for quiet moments between takes, sharp gaze cutting through Jin’s apathy as sharp and slick as a knife. Jin can feel all the bits of himself he tries to hold inside leaking out messy and red under Koki’s piercing eyes.
Then two ticks of the second hand on Jin’s oversized watch echo in his ears, and Koki’s smiling and teasing Junno, walled up and hidden again behind a jovial expression that says everything and nothing.
This is Koki’s tatemae, and Jin is envious. (Just a little.)
#
Koki likes to tease. He likes the way Jin tries to bite back screams when Koki’s lips find his collarbone, and he likes the way Jin rocks his hips desperately when his hands trail, fluttering and barely there, across Jin’s hipbones, taunting in ways that make Jin feel like clawing out of his own skin.
That’s okay, though, because Jin likes all those things too.
It’s almost a game, between them. Koki will teach Jin tatemae; how to play. The one rule is that Jin isn’t allowed to make a sound. Koki will teach him, gasp by restrained, choking gasp, how to hide it all away.
Maybe there are two rules. The second rule is that Jin, when they’re like this, isn’t allowed to fall apart.
#
Sometimes Koki is the only person that understands Jin.
Jin likes to sit outside on the curb, cool concrete under his ass with the sound of morning traffic beyond the parking lot playing like a subtle soundtrack to his musing. Jin takes long draws from his cigarette, letting the smoke fill his lungs, and feels the nicotine sing in his veins, and somehow it’s the only peace that exists in between one performance and the next.
Koki often finds him like this, and sits down on Jin’s left, strong thighs flexing under loose sweatpants and face obscured by his large frame sunglasses.
Koki’s got a way of slowly working his way into Jin’s personal space and stealing Jin’s air. Often, just the lightest press of his shoulder against Jin’s steals Jin’s anxiety along with it.
“Don’t think about things so much,” Koki says, lips relaxed into the slightest of smiles. “It shows on your face.”
“You don’t think about things?” Jin asks. He lets a little of his weight rest on Koki, and Koki leans back, so they’re resting on each other. Koki’s brow wrinkles when Jin exhales a cloud of smoke, so Jin puts out his cigarette.
“Not where other people can see,” Koki corrects, and he reaches with his left hand into Jin’s jacket pocket and fishes out the cigarettes. He hands Jin the pack pointedly.
Jin takes another out and thinks about lighting it. “I thought you minded it,” Jin says by way of explanation, and Koki’s lips quirk into a grin. “The smoke, I mean.”
“Not particularly,” Koki says. “I just don’t like the way you depend on it.”
“Oh,” Jin says, and Koki’s smile doesn’t budge.
“Just now,” Koki says, licking his lips and holding Jin’s gaze, “you put out your cigarette for me.”
“Yeah?” Jin’s mouth feels dry. The cigarette sits between his index and middle finger, and Jin has his right hand palming his lighter. “So?”
“How do you feel?” Koki asks, and he breaks away from Jin and looks out into the empty lot, eyes flickering from Kame’s truck to Nakamaru’s sensible Toyota with its high gas mileage and boring silver paint job.
Jin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. There’s no smoke on the inhale. “At peace,” Jin says, and he wonders if depending on Koki is any healthier than depending on cigarettes.
Still, Jin is relaxed in his own skin. This is honne, easy and free.
#
Koki sings songs about making girls wet, but it’s the first few bars of ‘Pinky’ he sings when he goes down on Jin, with no hat or wig blocking Jin’s view of Koki’s perfectly shaped mouth.
Koki’s lips wrap around his cock, and Jin bites his own lower lip hard enough to bleed.
“Koki,” he wants to murmur. “More.” But that’s… not allowed. Jin’s almost relieved it’s not allowed, because finally someone’s told Jin the rules-it’s easier to follow them if he knows what they are.
So instead he shudders, and closes his eyes, the sheets that used to be cool suddenly feeling hot and rough beneath him.
Koki presses warm hands to his thighs, and Jin can imagine black-painted nails skimming up his pale skin, California tan long gone. Jin can imagine Koki’s slow smile, tender and doting, as his tongue slides up the underside of Jin’s cock.
“Shhh,” Koki says. “This is practice.” The blood is metallic in his mouth, and Jin’s hips move upward even as he tries to contain himself.
Jin’s vision is going red around the edges, and when he opens his eyes, Koki’s gaze meets his own, and what passes between them is understanding.
Koki knows how much Jin wants to scream. Koki always knows how much Jin wants to scream.
“If I know,” Koki says, “isn’t that enough?”
It is, Jin thinks. It is. But he doesn’t say that. He just clings to Koki’s forearms, and focuses on the hot, slick moisture of Koki sliding up and down his erection, and holds himself together for as long as he can, because those are the rules.
He wants to make a front just so he and Koki can stay behind it, and Koki can be close to him just like this.
#
“You show too much,” Koki says.
“No one’s said that to me in a long time,” Jin says, and pulls his vest and blazer a little tighter and closer.
“You sit there with your hat pulled down over your eyes, and everyone can still see exactly what you’re thinking.”
“I know,” Jin replies miserably, scratching at his nose and his cheeks like he always does when he’s nervous. He can’t stop that, either. “I always give myself away.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Koki says, and there’s a shiver down Jin’s spine at the look in his eyes. It’s an invitation, like he’s beckoning Jin to play his game.
#
Jin is not an idol. Jin is a boy playing dress-up in an idol’s clothes, and singing an idol’s songs.
Jin’s a pretender who’s bad at pretending.
Koki’s an idol, though. Koki’s playing all the right games, and smiling all the right smiles.
When they’re alone, Koki has a different sort of smile for Jin, one that tears through Jin like a wildfire and leaves him, for the briefest of moments, feeling like he’s been burned out from the inside. Then that same smile fills him up again, and Jin knows, knows, that no one else will ever see it.
Jin wants to learn how to do that. Jin wants to have a side of himself that he’s not expected to share. Jin wants to have a side of himself that’s special, so he can save Koki a smile that’s just for him, too.
Tatemae, he thinks, could give him that.
#
Jin’s never thought of himself as observant of other people’s emotions. He can barely keep abreast of his own, let alone everyone else’s. After all these years, he’s pretty good at guessing, though. He knows when Ueda is feeling mischievous, and when Kamenashi hasn’t gotten enough sleep. He knows when Taguchi’s about to make an absolutely awful pun, and when Nakamaru will shove him off the stage for his teasing.
But Jin never knows with Koki, because as predictable as Koki seems, he’s the most difficult for Jin to understand. Jin can’t tell when Koki is upset, or sleepy, or tired. Jin can’t tell when Koki’s had enough. Jin can’t tell anything about Koki at all, really, because Koki wears a mask of contentment that Jin can’t even begin to fathom.
Jin wears his feelings on his face like a second skin, and Jin knows that in everything from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, he betrays each scattered thought that crosses his mind. For better or for worse, Jin is transparent.
Koki’s not transparent at all.
In each laugh that echoes across the stage, there’s a lie buried inside. Jin doesn’t think the lies are bad, but they are hard to spot sometimes, because Koki is very good at tucking them into the folds of sound, as easily as he tucks his folded lyrics sheets into the notebook he carries in his dufflebag.
Jin’s not good at tucking anything; he crumples his papers up and stuffs them into his jeans or into his backpack, and by the time he finds them again, they’re often ruined and illegible.
Jin thinks he and Koki are nothing alike.
#
Koki loves everything. Koki loves puppies and playing games. He loves variety show hosts and making PVs (“I love making PVs,” he says, every damn time, and they all laugh at him but he really does. Jin knows he does, because the sparkle in his eyes isn’t fake, it’s just something he allows them to see.)
Koki loves all those things, with a deep and honest fervor. But Koki, he who loves everything, also loves quiet moments and hushed whispers just as much as he likes shouts and screams. He likes private smiles just as much as he likes public ones.
Koki’s honne is all the things Koki keeps to himself. It’s all the things he loves but doesn’t want to share.
"Why are you touching me like this?" Jin asks, as Koki slides fingers across Jin's jaw, the pads catching on his stubble. "I'm not Kamenashi." Jin swallows, and Koki's eyes are dark and playful. Jin can see his own reflection in them, sort of. Maybe it’s his imagination, but Jin thinks his own cheeks might be flushed. “You only touch Kamenashi like this.”
"I know you're not Kame," Koki says, and his voice is rough. "I touch Kame for the cameras. I touch Kame for the screaming girls, and to satisfy Johnny." Koki smiles, and Jin thinks it looks a little predatory. “Kame's my friend. It doesn't mean anything."
"Then..." Jin starts, and then he stops again. Koki’s hand rests there, on his face, pausing in front of his ear. His fingers feel like fire, scorching Jin’s skin where they linger. “Then what are you doing?”
“I touch Kame for everyone else,” Koki repeats. “I’m touching you for myself.”
Koki leaves Jin standing there, and Jin’s heart, for some strange reason, is thumping to a beat that is irregular at best.
#
In some ways, Jin and Koki are just alike.
Jin thinks Koki hates prying eyes and invasive questions as much as Jin does.
The difference is in push and pull.
Jin tries to pull as much of himself inside as he can, like a child gathering the covers close because of the monster lurking beneath the bed.
Koki pushes as much of himself outward as he can, so that everyone’s so blinded by his charm that they forget to look past it.
Both of them want to be safe, though. Both of them want to keep pieces of themselves that no one is allowed to see.
Sometimes, Jin remembers that at the strangest moments.
#
“Here are the rules,” Koki says, and Jin’s abs clench as Koki slides a single flattened palm down Jin’s belly, hot and slow. “If you make noise, I’ll stop.”
“What’s that supposed to prove?” Jin asks, even as he feels his pulse quicken like he’s a rabbit in a cage.
“That you can hide away,” Koki says, and his tongue replaces his hands, and Jin squirms in Koki’s grip.
“But why would I hide from you?” Jin asks, and then Koki kisses him, and Jin realizes that if he can hide from Koki, maybe he can hide from anyone.
“Shhh,” Koki whispers into Jin’s lips, and Jin listens, and breathes.
Honne. Jin is stripped down to his bones, and there’s nothing to protect him.
#
Jin does interviews all by himself now. As the interviewer pries into his severed relationship with his band, Jin tries to remember the way Koki’s callused hands had felt clutching at his forearms, and the way Koki’s breath had been hot in the hollow of Jin’s throat as he moved inside of Jin, Jin clenching around him, silent and needy, body aching for more.
Jin is hard in his too-baggy pants, and he doubts that this is tatemae. But it’s all he can do. Jin’s heart is still on his sleeve, so he tucks his hands into his pockets and hopes that’s enough to shelter and protect the silly unpredictable organ from outside eyes.
#
Koki’s skin is warm, after, when Jin’s head is resting on his chest, listening to the thump of Koki’s heart under his ear. Jin’s legs tangle in the sheets of Koki’s bed, and Sakura and Rai have curled up at their feet, because Koki doesn’t have the heart to lock the door.
Koki’s even breathing is reassuring, and Jin feels like Koki’s hands slipping along the skin of his back are like a lullaby, the kind of melody that Jin hears in his head, playing out as slow drags across the discs of his spine.
Jin melts into it, because even though Koki demands silence while they play the game, afterwards, Jin’s soft noises are enough to inspire kisses to Jin’s eyelids and to his forehead, over sweat-slick bangs that stick to Jin’s face.
“Those sounds,” Koki says, “are just for me.”
This is honne, and it’s not for anyone else. Times like these, Jin doesn’t care about winning, or losing, because everything is so very loud.
#
“Jin, you’re so quiet,” Junno says to him, leaning into his space in a way that makes Jin want strike out. “So. Quiet. It’s weird.”
“Weird?” Jin asks, lightly, like he doesn’t know what Junno’s talking about.
“When interviewers ask you questions, you’re supposed to answer, Akanishi,” Ueda says, and Jin blushes, and licks his lips, slumping lower in his seat.
“Sorry,” he says, and he knows if he looks left, Koki’s eyes will rest on him, heavy and sure. The thought makes heat sprawl out like a blooming flower in his belly.
He thought he was supposed to be quiet. To conceal the parts of him that are too loud, too broken, too wrong. He wants a cigarette, or a drink, or to be completely alone, but he can’t have any of that.
Jin closes his eyes, and imagines Koki with two fingers inside of him, stretching him as Jin clenches his jaw and spreads himself for more. His body runs flush from head to toe, but there’s a strange peace in it, because Jin knows how to be with Koki.
Jin might not know how to be with anyone else, but Jin knows how to be with Koki, without any kind of pretense.
Tatemae, he thinks, has got nothing to do with Koki, or what is between them.
#
It’s not that it’s all a secret, just that maybe Jin has learned to keep some things private after all.
When he goes on Hanamaru Café, Jin realizes that he’s so afraid to let anything slip that he holds everything back, and maybe that’s not the right answer either-- monosyllabic responses to long questions.
Jin rambles on and on about stained glass and Shirota Yu, and hopes that later, Koki will slide fingers through his hair and tell him it’s going to be okay, even if Jin’s lips taste like cigarettes and hidden truths.
#
Going solo ends the game. Not out of anger, but out of distance. Jin’s sheets are cold, and his heart is even colder.
Switching markets leaves Jin in the middle of a game with all sorts of new rules. You make music-Jin gets that part. It’s the other parts he doesn’t get-remembering all the new words for the things he knows how to do, navigating being an ‘other’, all over again, in a place where no one knows his name.
In America, everyone wants Jin to be himself. Now instead of not being Japanese enough, he’s suddenly too Japanese.
In America, there’s no such thing as honne and tatemae; there is only mainstream and not, and Jin has a sinking feeling that he’s never going to find a place he can just fit in.
When that happens, Jin misses, with a sharp ache, the one game he’s ever played where he knew all the players and all the rules, and Koki’s elbow digging into his side as they sleep curled into each other in a moment no one will ever be allowed to see.
#
Stolen kisses make it easier, Jin thinks, to face an audience. Without them, Jin sometimes doesn’t even want to play.
#
“Koki,” Jin says, and Koki looks up at him, long dark hair falling into his face, and that ready smile already curling up the corners of his lips.
“Yeah?” Koki says, and his arm is pressing up against Jin’s, like it’s old times instead of new, and like Jin isn’t making mistakes with his words that no one can cover up. Jin is all by himself now, but with Koki’s breath hot just like this on his cheeks, Jin feels like it isn’t possible to be alone. Not now and not ever.
Koki and Jin are so alike.
When they’re alone just like this, neither is pulling or pushing, they’re just breathing, and it’s slow and easy on the exhale.
“Now I’ve forgotten how to speak,” Jin says. “Or I’ve forgotten how to say anything.” Jin’s hair, wavy and wild, falls into his eyes, the remnants of his perm causing the ends to flip out in strange ways. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just be myself.”
“Don’t worry,” Koki says, and he leans forward, pressing his mouth to the spot behind Jin’s ear. His lips find the back of Jin’s diamond earring, and it feels strange, and warm. Jin doesn’t move, just relaxes into the touch. It’s a safe touch, after all.
It’s Koki, who knows Jin. It’s Koki whose hand is a familiar weight on Jin’s thigh, and whose lips are like fire burning Jin to ash. It’s Koki, who waits patiently for Jin to learn. For Jin to catch up. It’s Koki, who has seen the worst of Jin, and can still somehow see the best.
“Don’t worry?” Jin asks, and his voice is crackling and tinny, like it’s coming from far away. But they are both right here.
“Yeah,” Koki says. “Because I can teach you that, too.”
With Koki, it’s effortless to trust. Honne slips between his fingers and down into Koki’s outstretched palm, and their fingers lace together. Jin’s not scared.
And Jin closes his eyes, and lets the barriers fall away.
This is a different game.
From: maayacola
Title: The Quiet Game
Pairings/Characters: Koki/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: sexytimes, Japanese societal concepts (always explained)
Notes: Jooface, clearly it is a measure of my adoration for you that I have written you Koki/Jin. I hope you like it, despite the fact that it is not quite as fluffy as I had planned! (Read: Not Fluffy At All) Tatemae (建前) is usually used to refer to one’s ‘public face’-what is expected by society, or the behavior one is expected to exhibit based on one’s societal position. Honne (本音) is its opposite, one’s ‘private face’.
Summary: In some ways, Jin and Koki are just alike. In other ways, Jin needs Koki to teach him how to play the game.
Mod note: This fic was submitted before the Jincident™ chapter II.
#
Honne. Truth.
Tatemae. Façade.
Jin can’t help but bleed the truth out of his pores as instinctually as he draws breath. He tries to stem the flow with hats and glasses and four jackets layered atop each other, but it crawls out of his mouth, and shakes his hands, and makes his legs cross and uncross, until everyone is looking at him, drinking in what he’s spilled and leaving him dry and bare.
Koki’s better about it. Koki saves his honne, his truth, for quiet moments between takes, sharp gaze cutting through Jin’s apathy as sharp and slick as a knife. Jin can feel all the bits of himself he tries to hold inside leaking out messy and red under Koki’s piercing eyes.
Then two ticks of the second hand on Jin’s oversized watch echo in his ears, and Koki’s smiling and teasing Junno, walled up and hidden again behind a jovial expression that says everything and nothing.
This is Koki’s tatemae, and Jin is envious. (Just a little.)
#
Koki likes to tease. He likes the way Jin tries to bite back screams when Koki’s lips find his collarbone, and he likes the way Jin rocks his hips desperately when his hands trail, fluttering and barely there, across Jin’s hipbones, taunting in ways that make Jin feel like clawing out of his own skin.
That’s okay, though, because Jin likes all those things too.
It’s almost a game, between them. Koki will teach Jin tatemae; how to play. The one rule is that Jin isn’t allowed to make a sound. Koki will teach him, gasp by restrained, choking gasp, how to hide it all away.
Maybe there are two rules. The second rule is that Jin, when they’re like this, isn’t allowed to fall apart.
#
Sometimes Koki is the only person that understands Jin.
Jin likes to sit outside on the curb, cool concrete under his ass with the sound of morning traffic beyond the parking lot playing like a subtle soundtrack to his musing. Jin takes long draws from his cigarette, letting the smoke fill his lungs, and feels the nicotine sing in his veins, and somehow it’s the only peace that exists in between one performance and the next.
Koki often finds him like this, and sits down on Jin’s left, strong thighs flexing under loose sweatpants and face obscured by his large frame sunglasses.
Koki’s got a way of slowly working his way into Jin’s personal space and stealing Jin’s air. Often, just the lightest press of his shoulder against Jin’s steals Jin’s anxiety along with it.
“Don’t think about things so much,” Koki says, lips relaxed into the slightest of smiles. “It shows on your face.”
“You don’t think about things?” Jin asks. He lets a little of his weight rest on Koki, and Koki leans back, so they’re resting on each other. Koki’s brow wrinkles when Jin exhales a cloud of smoke, so Jin puts out his cigarette.
“Not where other people can see,” Koki corrects, and he reaches with his left hand into Jin’s jacket pocket and fishes out the cigarettes. He hands Jin the pack pointedly.
Jin takes another out and thinks about lighting it. “I thought you minded it,” Jin says by way of explanation, and Koki’s lips quirk into a grin. “The smoke, I mean.”
“Not particularly,” Koki says. “I just don’t like the way you depend on it.”
“Oh,” Jin says, and Koki’s smile doesn’t budge.
“Just now,” Koki says, licking his lips and holding Jin’s gaze, “you put out your cigarette for me.”
“Yeah?” Jin’s mouth feels dry. The cigarette sits between his index and middle finger, and Jin has his right hand palming his lighter. “So?”
“How do you feel?” Koki asks, and he breaks away from Jin and looks out into the empty lot, eyes flickering from Kame’s truck to Nakamaru’s sensible Toyota with its high gas mileage and boring silver paint job.
Jin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. There’s no smoke on the inhale. “At peace,” Jin says, and he wonders if depending on Koki is any healthier than depending on cigarettes.
Still, Jin is relaxed in his own skin. This is honne, easy and free.
#
Koki sings songs about making girls wet, but it’s the first few bars of ‘Pinky’ he sings when he goes down on Jin, with no hat or wig blocking Jin’s view of Koki’s perfectly shaped mouth.
Koki’s lips wrap around his cock, and Jin bites his own lower lip hard enough to bleed.
“Koki,” he wants to murmur. “More.” But that’s… not allowed. Jin’s almost relieved it’s not allowed, because finally someone’s told Jin the rules-it’s easier to follow them if he knows what they are.
So instead he shudders, and closes his eyes, the sheets that used to be cool suddenly feeling hot and rough beneath him.
Koki presses warm hands to his thighs, and Jin can imagine black-painted nails skimming up his pale skin, California tan long gone. Jin can imagine Koki’s slow smile, tender and doting, as his tongue slides up the underside of Jin’s cock.
“Shhh,” Koki says. “This is practice.” The blood is metallic in his mouth, and Jin’s hips move upward even as he tries to contain himself.
Jin’s vision is going red around the edges, and when he opens his eyes, Koki’s gaze meets his own, and what passes between them is understanding.
Koki knows how much Jin wants to scream. Koki always knows how much Jin wants to scream.
“If I know,” Koki says, “isn’t that enough?”
It is, Jin thinks. It is. But he doesn’t say that. He just clings to Koki’s forearms, and focuses on the hot, slick moisture of Koki sliding up and down his erection, and holds himself together for as long as he can, because those are the rules.
He wants to make a front just so he and Koki can stay behind it, and Koki can be close to him just like this.
#
“You show too much,” Koki says.
“No one’s said that to me in a long time,” Jin says, and pulls his vest and blazer a little tighter and closer.
“You sit there with your hat pulled down over your eyes, and everyone can still see exactly what you’re thinking.”
“I know,” Jin replies miserably, scratching at his nose and his cheeks like he always does when he’s nervous. He can’t stop that, either. “I always give myself away.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Koki says, and there’s a shiver down Jin’s spine at the look in his eyes. It’s an invitation, like he’s beckoning Jin to play his game.
#
Jin is not an idol. Jin is a boy playing dress-up in an idol’s clothes, and singing an idol’s songs.
Jin’s a pretender who’s bad at pretending.
Koki’s an idol, though. Koki’s playing all the right games, and smiling all the right smiles.
When they’re alone, Koki has a different sort of smile for Jin, one that tears through Jin like a wildfire and leaves him, for the briefest of moments, feeling like he’s been burned out from the inside. Then that same smile fills him up again, and Jin knows, knows, that no one else will ever see it.
Jin wants to learn how to do that. Jin wants to have a side of himself that he’s not expected to share. Jin wants to have a side of himself that’s special, so he can save Koki a smile that’s just for him, too.
Tatemae, he thinks, could give him that.
#
Jin’s never thought of himself as observant of other people’s emotions. He can barely keep abreast of his own, let alone everyone else’s. After all these years, he’s pretty good at guessing, though. He knows when Ueda is feeling mischievous, and when Kamenashi hasn’t gotten enough sleep. He knows when Taguchi’s about to make an absolutely awful pun, and when Nakamaru will shove him off the stage for his teasing.
But Jin never knows with Koki, because as predictable as Koki seems, he’s the most difficult for Jin to understand. Jin can’t tell when Koki is upset, or sleepy, or tired. Jin can’t tell when Koki’s had enough. Jin can’t tell anything about Koki at all, really, because Koki wears a mask of contentment that Jin can’t even begin to fathom.
Jin wears his feelings on his face like a second skin, and Jin knows that in everything from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, he betrays each scattered thought that crosses his mind. For better or for worse, Jin is transparent.
Koki’s not transparent at all.
In each laugh that echoes across the stage, there’s a lie buried inside. Jin doesn’t think the lies are bad, but they are hard to spot sometimes, because Koki is very good at tucking them into the folds of sound, as easily as he tucks his folded lyrics sheets into the notebook he carries in his dufflebag.
Jin’s not good at tucking anything; he crumples his papers up and stuffs them into his jeans or into his backpack, and by the time he finds them again, they’re often ruined and illegible.
Jin thinks he and Koki are nothing alike.
#
Koki loves everything. Koki loves puppies and playing games. He loves variety show hosts and making PVs (“I love making PVs,” he says, every damn time, and they all laugh at him but he really does. Jin knows he does, because the sparkle in his eyes isn’t fake, it’s just something he allows them to see.)
Koki loves all those things, with a deep and honest fervor. But Koki, he who loves everything, also loves quiet moments and hushed whispers just as much as he likes shouts and screams. He likes private smiles just as much as he likes public ones.
Koki’s honne is all the things Koki keeps to himself. It’s all the things he loves but doesn’t want to share.
"Why are you touching me like this?" Jin asks, as Koki slides fingers across Jin's jaw, the pads catching on his stubble. "I'm not Kamenashi." Jin swallows, and Koki's eyes are dark and playful. Jin can see his own reflection in them, sort of. Maybe it’s his imagination, but Jin thinks his own cheeks might be flushed. “You only touch Kamenashi like this.”
"I know you're not Kame," Koki says, and his voice is rough. "I touch Kame for the cameras. I touch Kame for the screaming girls, and to satisfy Johnny." Koki smiles, and Jin thinks it looks a little predatory. “Kame's my friend. It doesn't mean anything."
"Then..." Jin starts, and then he stops again. Koki’s hand rests there, on his face, pausing in front of his ear. His fingers feel like fire, scorching Jin’s skin where they linger. “Then what are you doing?”
“I touch Kame for everyone else,” Koki repeats. “I’m touching you for myself.”
Koki leaves Jin standing there, and Jin’s heart, for some strange reason, is thumping to a beat that is irregular at best.
#
In some ways, Jin and Koki are just alike.
Jin thinks Koki hates prying eyes and invasive questions as much as Jin does.
The difference is in push and pull.
Jin tries to pull as much of himself inside as he can, like a child gathering the covers close because of the monster lurking beneath the bed.
Koki pushes as much of himself outward as he can, so that everyone’s so blinded by his charm that they forget to look past it.
Both of them want to be safe, though. Both of them want to keep pieces of themselves that no one is allowed to see.
Sometimes, Jin remembers that at the strangest moments.
#
“Here are the rules,” Koki says, and Jin’s abs clench as Koki slides a single flattened palm down Jin’s belly, hot and slow. “If you make noise, I’ll stop.”
“What’s that supposed to prove?” Jin asks, even as he feels his pulse quicken like he’s a rabbit in a cage.
“That you can hide away,” Koki says, and his tongue replaces his hands, and Jin squirms in Koki’s grip.
“But why would I hide from you?” Jin asks, and then Koki kisses him, and Jin realizes that if he can hide from Koki, maybe he can hide from anyone.
“Shhh,” Koki whispers into Jin’s lips, and Jin listens, and breathes.
Honne. Jin is stripped down to his bones, and there’s nothing to protect him.
#
Jin does interviews all by himself now. As the interviewer pries into his severed relationship with his band, Jin tries to remember the way Koki’s callused hands had felt clutching at his forearms, and the way Koki’s breath had been hot in the hollow of Jin’s throat as he moved inside of Jin, Jin clenching around him, silent and needy, body aching for more.
Jin is hard in his too-baggy pants, and he doubts that this is tatemae. But it’s all he can do. Jin’s heart is still on his sleeve, so he tucks his hands into his pockets and hopes that’s enough to shelter and protect the silly unpredictable organ from outside eyes.
#
Koki’s skin is warm, after, when Jin’s head is resting on his chest, listening to the thump of Koki’s heart under his ear. Jin’s legs tangle in the sheets of Koki’s bed, and Sakura and Rai have curled up at their feet, because Koki doesn’t have the heart to lock the door.
Koki’s even breathing is reassuring, and Jin feels like Koki’s hands slipping along the skin of his back are like a lullaby, the kind of melody that Jin hears in his head, playing out as slow drags across the discs of his spine.
Jin melts into it, because even though Koki demands silence while they play the game, afterwards, Jin’s soft noises are enough to inspire kisses to Jin’s eyelids and to his forehead, over sweat-slick bangs that stick to Jin’s face.
“Those sounds,” Koki says, “are just for me.”
This is honne, and it’s not for anyone else. Times like these, Jin doesn’t care about winning, or losing, because everything is so very loud.
#
“Jin, you’re so quiet,” Junno says to him, leaning into his space in a way that makes Jin want strike out. “So. Quiet. It’s weird.”
“Weird?” Jin asks, lightly, like he doesn’t know what Junno’s talking about.
“When interviewers ask you questions, you’re supposed to answer, Akanishi,” Ueda says, and Jin blushes, and licks his lips, slumping lower in his seat.
“Sorry,” he says, and he knows if he looks left, Koki’s eyes will rest on him, heavy and sure. The thought makes heat sprawl out like a blooming flower in his belly.
He thought he was supposed to be quiet. To conceal the parts of him that are too loud, too broken, too wrong. He wants a cigarette, or a drink, or to be completely alone, but he can’t have any of that.
Jin closes his eyes, and imagines Koki with two fingers inside of him, stretching him as Jin clenches his jaw and spreads himself for more. His body runs flush from head to toe, but there’s a strange peace in it, because Jin knows how to be with Koki.
Jin might not know how to be with anyone else, but Jin knows how to be with Koki, without any kind of pretense.
Tatemae, he thinks, has got nothing to do with Koki, or what is between them.
#
It’s not that it’s all a secret, just that maybe Jin has learned to keep some things private after all.
When he goes on Hanamaru Café, Jin realizes that he’s so afraid to let anything slip that he holds everything back, and maybe that’s not the right answer either-- monosyllabic responses to long questions.
Jin rambles on and on about stained glass and Shirota Yu, and hopes that later, Koki will slide fingers through his hair and tell him it’s going to be okay, even if Jin’s lips taste like cigarettes and hidden truths.
#
Going solo ends the game. Not out of anger, but out of distance. Jin’s sheets are cold, and his heart is even colder.
Switching markets leaves Jin in the middle of a game with all sorts of new rules. You make music-Jin gets that part. It’s the other parts he doesn’t get-remembering all the new words for the things he knows how to do, navigating being an ‘other’, all over again, in a place where no one knows his name.
In America, everyone wants Jin to be himself. Now instead of not being Japanese enough, he’s suddenly too Japanese.
In America, there’s no such thing as honne and tatemae; there is only mainstream and not, and Jin has a sinking feeling that he’s never going to find a place he can just fit in.
When that happens, Jin misses, with a sharp ache, the one game he’s ever played where he knew all the players and all the rules, and Koki’s elbow digging into his side as they sleep curled into each other in a moment no one will ever be allowed to see.
#
Stolen kisses make it easier, Jin thinks, to face an audience. Without them, Jin sometimes doesn’t even want to play.
#
“Koki,” Jin says, and Koki looks up at him, long dark hair falling into his face, and that ready smile already curling up the corners of his lips.
“Yeah?” Koki says, and his arm is pressing up against Jin’s, like it’s old times instead of new, and like Jin isn’t making mistakes with his words that no one can cover up. Jin is all by himself now, but with Koki’s breath hot just like this on his cheeks, Jin feels like it isn’t possible to be alone. Not now and not ever.
Koki and Jin are so alike.
When they’re alone just like this, neither is pulling or pushing, they’re just breathing, and it’s slow and easy on the exhale.
“Now I’ve forgotten how to speak,” Jin says. “Or I’ve forgotten how to say anything.” Jin’s hair, wavy and wild, falls into his eyes, the remnants of his perm causing the ends to flip out in strange ways. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just be myself.”
“Don’t worry,” Koki says, and he leans forward, pressing his mouth to the spot behind Jin’s ear. His lips find the back of Jin’s diamond earring, and it feels strange, and warm. Jin doesn’t move, just relaxes into the touch. It’s a safe touch, after all.
It’s Koki, who knows Jin. It’s Koki whose hand is a familiar weight on Jin’s thigh, and whose lips are like fire burning Jin to ash. It’s Koki, who waits patiently for Jin to learn. For Jin to catch up. It’s Koki, who has seen the worst of Jin, and can still somehow see the best.
“Don’t worry?” Jin asks, and his voice is crackling and tinny, like it’s coming from far away. But they are both right here.
“Yeah,” Koki says. “Because I can teach you that, too.”
With Koki, it’s effortless to trust. Honne slips between his fingers and down into Koki’s outstretched palm, and their fingers lace together. Jin’s not scared.
And Jin closes his eyes, and lets the barriers fall away.
This is a different game.