"Inevitable Fate", chapter five
Title: Inevitable Fate
Chapter: 5/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): Kame/OFC, Kame/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Language, sexual content
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: There's a lot in this chapter because I refuse to cut the last scene. Also, raise your hand if you hate LJ's new posting page, because it ate this the first time.
The sun the next morning was tinted with burnt orange, just like it always was. Kame stared at his reflection in the mirror a long time while the shower water ran, and by the time he snapped himself out of his internal thoughts, the mirror was fogged with a layer of steam. He stood under the spray of the water and pushed hair out of his forehead, glaring down at the circling whirl of the drain as if it was responsible for all of his problems.
Even touching his fingers to the cool metal of his transmitter, nothing felt different. The difference was all in his head, and he couldn't ignore that.
Kame tried not to think about what Tanaka had said, what Nakamaru had said, but he couldn't force the memories out of his mind. Going to the brick building to grab information wouldn't hurt anyone, although it might look somewhat suspicious if anyone paid attention to the people who took the pamphlets. Maybe they would assume Kame had already gotten his summon, and that he was looking to see what was going to be required of him.
He groaned and pushed sopping hair out of his face, tilting his neck back so the spray hit him in the chest. The heaviness of the air around him, saturated with humidity, didn't do anything to help displace the furious questions.
He thought about scooping rice at work. He thought about playing baseball in the fenced diamond. He thought about Taguchi's burnt rice and Tanaka's casino floor teaming with people and Jin ordering them to wait another week for more information and-
-the shiver went all the way through his body, right down to his toes. It was intense, so much so that he couldn't ignore it. He gasped and jolted forward, one hand going to the side of the wall to steady himself. The other he slid down his stomach to close his fingers around himself, biting his lip at the renewed sensation.
His whole body was buzzing. Kame bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes shut and moved: one, two, three quick jerks and his nerves were on overload, trembling with something he couldn't identify. All he knew is that he desperately wanted more- craved more, needed it. His fingers against the porcelain curled without anything to hang on to, and when he tried to suck in a furious breath, he managed to almost inhale water in the process.
He tightened his fingers and moaned before he even realized he'd made any noise. Of its own volition his hand sped up, and it didn't take long before he was groaning, the sound forced out of his throat of its own accord, trying to keep himself upright as the ripples resounded through his form.
When the aftershocks faded, he opened his eyes and stared down at his hand already rinsed clean in the steady flow of water.
What the hell was going on?
--
The brick building looked more frightening than Kame had ever thought it would before. He wasn't even sure what he was so afraid of- he knew what he was going in to, and he knew that for his partner, it wasn't a big deal. But the overload of emotions in his head were keeping his fingers jittery, anxiously twitching as he made his way inside and checked in with the woman behind the desk.
She gave him a number, a small key to the room, and a small paper cup containing two blue-colored pills. Kame stared at them as he made his way to the room number he'd been given- 1582.
He arrived first. The receptionist hadn't given him any other information, and he knew he had to wait until his matched partner arrived. Ueda had explained the process, and the rest Kame knew from others; it was random, for the most part, the way the couples were matched. Some were called twice in a year and others could go for ten years without their number coming up. The system didn't factor in apprenticeships or age, though it did remove all numbers past 40 years old automatically.
Kame sat down on the bed and tried to keep his hands from trembling, which was mostly a losing battle. The block of time that made up his excused absence from work was four hours. He knew that, according to the others, it wouldn't last nearly that long. The room was simple: a bed, a sink, and a small bathroom off to one side. He knew that there was no other purpose for the room other than the one that he was there to fulfill. For some reason, the realization made his skin crawl, and he fought to push the sensations away.
It took about twenty minutes for the woman to arrive. She didn't knock on the door and didn't seem surprised that Kame was already there. She gave him a small nod and made her way inside the room, dropping her purse off.
"Nice to meet you," Kame said, because he felt he had to say something. It seemed to catch her off-guard. She blinked at him, pushing dark bangs away from her face and tucking hair behind her ear, and then she nodded again.
"Nice to meet you," she echoed. She looked older than him- if Kame had to venture a guess, he would have guessed around 30. The insignia on her collar labeled her as a nurse, but Kame didn't know what sector she was stationed in.
She didn't sit, clasping her hands in front of her. "Are you ready?" she asked.
Kame hadn't taken the pills yet- they were still sitting in the bottom of the paper cup, where he'd left it on the table near the sink. "Just a minute," he told her, rising and moving towards them. His hand was shaking when he turned on the water and stared down at the plastic coating.
He thought about the shower.
The pills went down easy when he tilted his head back. Then he waited for a long moment, hands curled around the sides of the sink. He couldn't give too much away- he didn't know how obvious it was going to be that he was nervous. He was fairly sure that he shouldn't be able to feel all the anxiety making its way through his veins.
When Kame turned around again, the woman had stripped most of her clothing off. It was strange to let his eyes rove down the smooth lines of her back and shoulders, the dip of her waist and the soft curves of her hips. She didn't look uncomfortable when she tugged her bra free from her arms and let it fall to the ground, in an arc around her feet.
She turned, hands going up to her neck to smooth flyaway hair down. "Ready?"
The air was cold when it hit Kame's bare skin. She lay down on the bed and Kame turned away, unsure why, exactly, he did; he wasn't sure what the receptionist had given his partner, but he knew there had to be something. Each of them had to prepare for the process. He pulled his clothing off, swallowing down all the ways that it felt so wrong.
Even just dimming the lights would have made the entire thing seem easier to deal with, but when Kame knelt on the bed beside her relaxed form, he realized that maybe that was the whole point to keeping them on. There wasn't supposed to be anything romantic or meaningful about it; his brain was attempting to put emotion where others wouldn't. His brain was trying to assign meaning to places it couldn't possibly be. And Kame knew it, just as he knew that his life would never be the same, but that didn't make it less uncomfortable when he slid over to her side.
"Have you done this before?" he asked. He thought it was probably an acceptable question.
"Yes," she replied, easily. "It's not hard."
Kame was- achingly so. He could barely think about anything other than how much need there was, coiled in the bottom of his stomach. Whatever the pills were that they'd given him, they'd worked, and they'd worked quickly.
He was at a loss of what to do until her hand found him, and he had to bite back his groan. Her fingers felt wonderful against his length. She pulled him down and wrapped her legs up and around his waist and guided him in, and he had to keep his eyes closed, because she wasn't even looking at him. She was staring at the ceiling, like there was something more interesting there- detached and neutral.
To her, this was just something the government mandated that she do. It didn't mean anything.
Kame didn't know what it meant to him.
Everything was hot. Hot and warm and tight and Kame gasped. Her arms went around his shoulders to loosely curl her hands around his ribs, like she had been taught how to lie and how to move by someone. It was easy from there. Kame squeezed his eyes shut and just moved with the sensations, feeling more alive than he'd felt in a long time. She didn't make any noise and she didn't really move with him, but he didn't really need her to- his rhythm was enough to carry them both.
If he thought about where he was and who was beneath him, a nameless face who would forget him by nightfall, he'd lose it. So he tried to think of something else- the water in his shower, the swirl of his soap down the drain, the feel of his own hand finding himself.
Kame thought about that night in the street, when he'd been overwhelmed by the sensations flooding his brain. He thought about the panic when he'd woken up, and the tightening in his chest when he'd seen what the others were doing to make him feel welcome. The woman's hands on his arms tightened a bit, and he did groan then, without thinking of holding it back. It didn't seem to matter- the pressure was starting to quiver like a rubber band stretching beyond its limits, waiting to snap.
When release hit, he froze. His breath caught in his throat and choked him, and his whole body stilled. Beneath him, he could feel her start to move, almost as if she was restless. Anxious to be done with the whole thing, maybe.
Kame pulled out and rolled over, shaking and confused, and she just sat up without giving him another glance. He tried to pull his clothing on as fast as she did, but he couldn't get his hands to work that quickly; she spent a few moments in front of the mirror, adjusting her hair again, before picking up her purse and giving him one final nod before leaving the room.
Kame stayed. He stayed and his head fell into his hands, and he wondered why, of all the things he could have been thinking about when the jolt of pleasure had undone him, it had to be Jin.
--
Kame didn't sleep much that night. The light of the moon kept shifting the designs on his ceiling and he lay against the pillow watching it, until his eyes felt as if they were made of sand and he was still unable to slip into dreams. At some point he managed to doze, and he only knew it because he woke feeling stiff and sticky the next morning when his alarm went off.
Work was a nightmare; the kind he couldn't wake up from because his exhaustion was the only thing he could think about. The only way to keep his thoughts at bay was to focus on dishing the rice into bowls and separating it into burlap sacks, and that was so mind-numbing that it hardly worked as a manner of distraction. He got a message there, halfway through his shift.
It's unfortunate that the weather isn't good for baseball tonight.
Kame shoved the paper into his back pocket. There was a meeting at The Joker Club that night, then.
Ueda was the only one in the back room when Kame finally got there, tired and cranky and covered in dust from the dry heat enveloping the city.
"Welcome back," he said, with an odd sort of smile that Kame was pretty sure went straight to his bones. "How was it?"
"Fine," Kame said. He slid into one of the seats at the counter, feeling awkward and out of place. Was he supposed to say something more? Ueda didn't seem like the one that would press for details, but just thinking about the whole thing was making Kame's fingers tremble. The one detail he couldn't stop focusing on was the one detail he didn't want to tell the others; the divide was so sharp in his head he could practically see it, and he was afraid he'd fall off the edge without meaning to, taking his secret with him for everyone to see.
Ueda just looked at him, and the look seemed to mean everything and nothing all at once. "Hopefully with that out of the way, we'll be able to concentrate on the transmitter facility."
"It's more important," Kame agreed, glad to find solid footing again.
He thought the danger had passed until there was a hard slap to his shoulder and Tanaka's voice crowing, "And here's the man of the hour! How does it feel to finally be one of the big boys?"
"Don't you have chips to be counting on the floor?" Ueda asked. He was stirring a pot of something on the burners, something that smelled like leftovers from the remains of everyone's rations that week thrown together just to be rid of them. "Surely there's something more important than hassling Kamenashi."
"There is nothing more important than learning about how my boy's big day was," Tanaka assured them both, taking the seat at the counter next to Kame. His hand was still on Kame's shoulders, fingers curling around the joint. "So, how was it? And please give me as many details as possible. Was she beautiful?"
Kame couldn't even remember- the woman's face was blurring with everything else, the lines he so desperately didn't want to make out. "I don't- I guess she was."
"You guess?" Tanaka repeated, eyebrows high. "Man, must have been some mind-blowing sex if you can't even remember her face. Bet you can remember the rest of her. Leave nothing out."
Kame wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. He could barely remember the shape of her thighs or the length of her hair; all he could remember were the feelings, vivid shapes against the blurring background, all cocooned heat and shaking muscles. If pressed for specifics, he really didn't think he could come up with anything, and he was too rattled to lie about it.
There was a long moment when he was sure that Tanaka knew, he knew everything, and Kame would be outcast from the group just as quickly as he'd been welcomed into it, and then Ueda's hand made solid contact with the back of Tanaka's head.
"Seriously, shut up," Ueda said, frowning. "Leave him alone. We have more important things to worry about."
"God, fine," Tanaka replied. He rubbed a hand over his hair and his fingers made the strands stand on end. From behind them there were footsteps and the familiar creak of a door. Nakamaru, Akanishi, and Taguchi were in the middle of a conversation when they spilled inside, and Kame was glad for the cover.
He stared at his hands instead of staring at Jin.
"Good, everyone's here," Nakamaru said. He didn't sit. "I've been trying to hack the access codes for level 5, but they're too heavily encrypted, and if I try anything further they're going to know I was doing something."
"So that's it?" Tanaka asked. "We don't know what it is? Are we giving up?"
Ueda's hodge-podge of food was done, and he took it off the burner without turning to look at the rest of them. It smelled sweet and bitter at the same time, a conglomeration of competing scents mixed together. "I don't think we can give up now that we know about it."
"But we can't get in," Nakamaru said.
"We can't get in to the files," Jin pointed out. Kame still couldn't risk venturing a gaze at the other man, but he could hear his voice from the opposite end of the counter.
There was a moment, and then Nakamaru said, "You can't be serious."
"Serious about what?" Taguchi asked.
"You want us to get into the building?" Nakamaru said, though it wasn't really a question, and Kame let his gaze slide over to see him leaning forward, expression incredulous, arms crossed over his chest. And Jin- Kame finally saw- didn't have any expression on his face at all. "You want us to go into a building with more security than we've ever encountered before without knowing what we are even going to find in there?"
"What can it be?" Jin demanded.
Maru's hands uncrossed, fingers in the air. "That's exactly what I'm saying! We don't know. Akanishi, there could be anything in there. The central mainframe, the system controls; if they have that under that tight a lockdown, there's no way we can slip in there undetected, and there's even less of a chance of any of us coming back out without being deactivated by the rooks."
"And I think we have a duty to go and see what that 'anything' is," Jin shot back.
Behind the counter, Ueda was dishing up the bland-looking food, bowl by bowl. He didn't seem fazed by the conversation, and Kame didn't know how he was managing it; Kame's arms were covered in goose bumps just thinking about the six of them waltzing into level 5 territory without so much as a master plan.
"Okay, I'm not putting my ass on the line for something we can't identify," Tanaka said. "I have The Joker Club, and I have my life, and I don't think we can just-"
"I don't think we can just sit around!" Jin exploded. "I refuse to sit here while there is something going on there, something so important that Maru can't even figure out who in the ward has access to the files. This is important. And this is about all of us."
Kame's hands were shaking again; he shifted them to his lap, to hide them between his knees.
"You know," Ueda said, voice calm, "it's possible that when we get into the transmitter facility, we'll find more information about the building next door."
"And it's also possible that we'll find ourselves up to our necks in rooks before we know what hit us," Maru hissed.
But Kame understood where Ueda was going- the pieces were falling into place slowly, but they hadn't stopped. "We won't be up against level 5 security going for the transmitters. You said the buildings were connected, right?"
"We might be," Maru said. "Don't you get it; we might encounter the same security for the transmitters as the other building."
"But we might not," Ueda replied, holding up the spoon and one of the bowls, filled with beige-colored rice and small bits of dried meat, curled up onto itself and embedded in the lumps.
It was the most unappetizing thing Kame had ever seen before, and his stomach churned at the mere thought of ingesting anything at all. He took Ueda's offered bowl anyway, just to have something to occupy his hands with.
"There's gotta be something there," Jin said, finally taking a seat at the table and sliding his elbow across the surface. "Air ducts. Sewer drains. Think about it- they're not going to be worried about someone getting through the security from the other building; they're worried about people accessing it from the outside. There's our hole."
"That's not a hole," Nakamaru replied. "We still have to get in."
There was a long period of silence, and Kame looked up from his meal. Taguchi's mouth was a thin line, and Koki was frowning, shaking his head a bit. Jin and Nakamaru stared at each other for a long minute in a stalemate that Kame couldn't touch, and then Nakamaru finally looked away, to where Ueda was offering him his portion of the makeshift dinner. The air was tense but Kame knew the feel to it: inevitability.
There really was only one option for them, and they all knew it, even if they were fighting against it. Kame almost wanted to reach around his back and feel for his transmitter, just to press his fingertips against the cool metal. The action used to be reassuring.
"You know what? Sleep on it," Jin said, pushing himself back and away from the counter abruptly, chair legs squeaking against the floorboards. "Everyone sleep on it. Convene back here in the morning. We're making a decision tomorrow and I don't care if it's not unanimous."
He disappeared into one of the back rooms, and most of the gazes followed him.
"Guess we're staying here," Taguchi said.
Kame just pushed away his bowl without eating. It wasn't appetizing, anyway.
--
Exhaustion was a good sleeping drug, but it only worked halfway; in the middle of the night, Kame woke to the unfamiliar sounds of the club and the hall around him. Floorboards creaking, ceiling settling, and the rhythmic humming of the machines not in use but still turned on were too different from his own place. When he'd first arrived, it had seemed like the most meaningless detail because he'd been overloaded with information and panic and stress, but now- now it was loud and echoing in his ears.
He pushed the sheets away from his legs, figuring he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep again.
Kame didn't expect anyone else to be up- even Ueda didn't stay up all night, but there was a figure at the counter hunched over the blueprint plans, and he knew who it was before his vision had even completely adjusted to the dim lighting.
Jin turned around, took note of him, and then nodded. "Did I wake you?"
"No," Kame said. "It's just hard to sleep here, is all."
The other man didn't reply to that. When Kame got closer, he could see the papers spread beneath Jin's arms, pinned down by his elbows against the surface. They were the same blueprints they had all been studying a week ago, when the new security information had come to light. Kame doubted there was anything different about them now, but Jin was staring at them like they held all the secrets to the group's success.
Kame's heart was hammering in his chest, but he sat down next to Jin's seated form anyway. He hoped the other man couldn't hear the pounding.
"You really want to do this?" Kame asked.
"No," Jin said, and shook his head, a few braided bits of hair falling beneath his collar. "I don't want to. We have to. There's something there, and we have to know what it is. Otherwise, we're still just running away."
He was glaring so intently at the plans, biting on the edge of his thumb, that Kame thought he might burn a hole right through the page with just the intensity of his gaze.
"I don't think any of us are running away," Kame said. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to say anything- after all, he was new. What did he know about the group's activities and desires? He stared down at the cuticles on his fingernails. "I think that we're doing the only thing we can, and that's moving forward."
Jin was silent for a long moment, and Kame could see his jaw clenching and unclenching on his balled fists, stacked one on top of the other. Then his eyes flickered in Kame's direction. "I bet Koki asked for all the details, huh?"
The abrupt change in conversation left Kame reeling.
"I- guess," he said. "I don't... not really."
"He loves that stuff," Jin laughed, mirthless. "Gets him all excited. He's the only one that thinks it's great to have your number get called."
Kame wasn't sure why Jin was saying that to him, but his lungs were pressing hard against his ribcage, making his whole chest feel too small. "I think it's supposed to mean something," he said, without thinking, and then deflated when Jin's gaze hit him again. "I mean, it felt like it should."
"No, I think you're right," Jin said. He looked back to the prints, and Kame could see his fingers unclenching a bit. "I think it should."
When he dragged his index finger down along the paper, it left blurry smudge marks behind.
"Have you ever seen level 5 security before?" Kame asked.
"No."
Jin was staring at the prints like they were going to answer all the questions he had. Kame shifted a bit, wondering when the pressing need to fidget had arrived- was it before his transmitter had stopped working or after? "What do you think is there?" he asked.
"Honestly?" Jin said, flexing his fingers a bit like he was stretching his boundaries. He shook his head, and strands of dark hair caught in the corners of his mouth. Kame could see him, watching, out of the corner of his eyes, just enough to take in Kame's shape without really looking over. "I have no fucking clue."
When Kame didn't answer, Jin let out a mirthless bark of a laugh and leaned forward over the counter, elbows slanted outwards. "Does this make me a bad leader?" Jin asked.
"No," Kame replied. "I think it just makes you realistic."
"Leaders are supposed to be optimistic and driven," Jin said. He sounded like he didn't quite believe it himself.
"Leaders are supposed to hold everyone together," Kame shot back. "And I'm pretty sure that's what you're doing."
Jin leveled him with a look that was hooded in the shadows; Kame could only see half of his face, and another quarter was obscured by the parts of his bangs that were loose from the braids winding backwards into the ponytail.
"Am I?" the other man asked. "Or am I just digging everyone's graves, one decision at a time?"
It wasn't something Kame knew how to answer; or, rather, he did, in the base of his stomach, a curling knot of anticipation and nerves that seemed to get worse every time Akanishi was around.
It seemed the other man didn't want an answer. If he was expecting one, he gave up. He turned back to the prints and didn't say anything else for a long moment, and when he finally opened his mouth again, it was to exhale long, loud and slow.
"Get some sleep, Kamenashi," he said.
Easier said than done- Kame didn't sleep much the rest of the night, staring at the crack of light from under the small door and wondering what the hell was going on.
--
They slipped out again after curfew, with another timed rigging of their transmitters through Ueda's handiwork. Kame was almost more nervous the second time than the first- because he knew the costs, now, and the risks they were all taking by going out. And seeing Jin's face tight with worry lines he couldn't disguise didn't do much to dispel the anxious feeling in the pit of Kame's stomach. He trailed the back of the group as they made their way through the sewers that ran beneath the roads, connected by small, moldy tunnels that were rank with long-since ignored waste systems.
"I'm still against this," Nakamaru said, as he trudged between Taguchi and Koki anyway.
"Noted," Jin barked, and said nothing else. The line of his shoulders was tense. Kame watched the braids in his ponytail swing back and forth in time with his gait.
It took longer than Kame expected to get up beneath the transmitter factory they had originally planned to infiltrate. Just looking up through the bars of the old sewer access on the side of one of the alleys made Kame's nervousness increase again- it was like they were already trapped, staring up at their captors hoping to be granted clemency.
And he knew that the bishops weren't in the business of doling out favors.
"Listen," Jin stopped them, as Taguchi was ready to start up the rickety ladder. The line split halfway up, into an old piping system beneath the building. "I'm going to be the one going in through the vents into the adjacent building."
"What?" Koki's jaw nearly hit the floor. "No. No way."
"Not open for discussion," Jin snapped. "This was my decision to go in, and I'm going to be the one to get in there and see what's going on. End of committee input."
Taguchi, one foot swinging unhappily from the bottom rung of the ladder, hopped back down again and wiped the resulting grime on his pants. "I don't like this."
"I don't really care," Jin replied.
"If you don't come back," Ueda started, and seemed unwilling to finish- Kame didn't blame him. Just saying the words out loud made the whole sewer trip seem suddenly far more uneasy than it had previously.
But Jin's jaw was set, and Kame knew he wouldn't budge- not given the way he'd been poring over the map last night, trying to solve everything on his own.
"Final decision," he said. "Go up, get what we were looking for, and I'm going through the vents next door. If I'm not back with only twenty minutes left on the transmitters, go back without me."
"Jin..." Taguchi started, and then stopped. There wasn't much else to say.
"Go," Jin ordered.
Following Koki, Kame did. The pipe leading into the building was cold and damp but large enough that he could get his shoulders through without scraping the fabric of his clothes against the sides. Not that it really mattered, but Kame wasn't sure how loud the acoustics within the tunnel really were. He followed the soles of Koki's shoes as the other man crawled through, wishing he could give a backwards glance back at Jin, who brought up the rear.
Inside the underbelly of the building, there wasn't much going on. It had shut down for the day and most of the lights were off, aside from the emergency lighting from the floor. It smelled faintly of oil- like refined oil, not the crude stuff they had in barrels in the other storerooms around the blocks, and it was a strangely sweet smell that hit Kame's nose.
"There should be unused transmitters near the machines," Ueda whispered, as they congregated in the darkest part of the shadows in the back of the basement. It was cool down below the earth, and it was nicer than being in the piping. Kame followed Ueda up to the main floor with only Jin trailing behind, searching for the venting system he'd no doubt memorized from the blueprints.
"Just one?" Koki asked.
Ueda shrugged. "Any more and we'll alert suspicion. One is easy to misplace; two is taking a bigger risk."
"Go and get it," Jin said, turning and starting in the other direction, towards the far corner across the open floor of the factory. "Remember- at twenty minutes left, you guys go home."
"Then work fast," Nakamaru said through gritted teeth. Jin just gave him a withering glare and a salute, moving out of the comfortable whispering zone. Kame watched him until he disappeared around a corner, but made a note of where he was going- just in case.
The factory was big enough that Kame could loiter at the back of the group as Ueda tried to find what they were looking for. He wasn't really interested in seeing the transmitters- he'd had enough already just worrying about the one hooked into his back. If Ueda found something, it was great, but Kame wanted to be out of the security problem sooner rather than later.
"Here," Ueda said, approaching a small metal shelving unit shoved between two machines that Kame couldn't discern the functions of. "I think these are it."
"In pieces?" Taguchi asked.
"Don't touch anything else," Ueda snapped, louder than he should have. Everyone paused for a long moment, and Kame's breath caught in his throat, and when there was nothing but the echo back at them from the high rafters, he exhaled slowly.
Taguchi looked abashed. "Sorry."
Whatever Ueda was doing, it was mostly inspecting things without moving them to see if they were the right object. Kame took a few steps backwards, so he could see the area where Jin had disappeared to just barely in the low lighting. He couldn't hear anything, but he thought he could see the vent where the other man would have gone through- maybe.
"Okay," Ueda said. "I've got it."
And that was when the alarm went off.
"Motion activated," Nakamaru hissed. "Fucking hell."
"Back to the pipes," Ueda ordered.
But when the others darted for the wall they'd come from, Kame took off in the other direction. He knew it was stupid- and even more than that, it was in direct violation of what Jin had told them to do. It was just that knowing the bishops might be coming and that Jin could be stuck in the other building alone, he had to do something; Kame couldn't let him take the fall alone.
"Kame!" Nakamaru said, and that was all Kame could hear before he was out of range and moving along the shadows of the machines towards the vent. It was slightly ajar, edges not quite re-aligned- nothing that someone would notice who wasn't already looking for it. It was enough that Kame knew he was going in the right direction. He pulled the vent up by the top two screws and slid inside, knees clanking painfully against the bottom. He bit back the grimace- it was completely dark inside the vents, and there wasn't much more room in the square passageway as there was in the rounded pipes they'd come in through.
For a wild, frenzied second, Kame was terrified he would be trapped in the vents and left to rot, but he swallowed it down and started forward, dragging himself inch by inch with his elbows and his fingers squeaking across the surface.
He didn't know how far he'd gone or how long it had been- every second felt like ten minutes inside the pitch blackness- until he hit something with his fingers. He panicked and froze, and just as soon as he'd convinced himself that he was going to be caught, Jin scooted backwards and somehow managed to wedge himself next to Kame. There wasn't enough room at all; they'd met at an awkward angle, with Jin's arm up and around Kame to balance himself on the opposite wall, flush front to back. Kame was half on his stomach, prepared to keep moving, and Jin's breath was very near his ear when the other man whispered a frantic, "Don't move."
Kame tried to still every muscle. From beyond the vent, he could hear things- he had been far closer to the end than he'd anticipated, or at least an opening that Jin had come back through. There were voices, and he could hear only the muffled echo of them as they moved around the opposite building. It felt like his blood had turned to ice, back pressed against Jin's chest with the other man's arm taut across his shoulders, palm pressed to the metal.
The voices got closer. Kame couldn't keep his hands from shaking, from fear and fire racing through his veins, and it was only when he jostled himself, slightly, trying to keep his trembling forearms from giving out, that he brushed back against Jin and felt the other man hard against the back of his thigh. The sounds from outside paused somewhere near the opening.
He could hear Jin's wheezing, embarrassed laugh that caught in his throat; there was just too much there, squeezed together and terrified of the looming, eminent doom just beyond. Kame tried to ignore the sudden onslaught of pinpricks on his skin, but Jin's ragged breathing was so close to his neck that Kame could feel the heat hitting him in slightly off-rhythm puffs. And he wanted, more than anything, to press back against him- the desire to arch back into Jin's hips was sudden and fierce and invaded all of Kame's senses.
Whoever was outside in the building, they hadn't moved on yet. Kame couldn't pick out individual words, only the slurred notion of sound. And Jin's breathing next to his ear was getting more and more erratic, out of beat and time. Kame was aching against the ground, hips flush with the metal. It was through sheer force of will that he kept himself from bucking backwards and meeting Jin's arousal.
Kame's arms were going to give out. He was shaking too much from sensory overload to hold up his own weight- he shifted his hand upwards and his fingers rammed into Jin's, and he could feel the other man's muscles hitch as Jin swallowed his own gasp. And then, as if unsure and seeking and perhaps more afraid of what was inside the vent than outside, Jin's fingers slid until they half covered Kame's own, index and middle finger slipping between Kame's.
That was too much. Kame squeezed his eyes shut- although he hadn't been able to see anything anyway- and allowed himself to arch backwards. It wasn't enough to make noise, at least nothing louder than their own wheezing was, but it was enough to feel Jin further against his ass, still hard and pressed against him.
"Kame," Jin breathed. Kame felt the syllables as much as he heard them; Jin's lips made feather-light contact with the dip of his shoulder.
The voices faded, and finally disappeared completely. It was as much of an opening to get back as they were going to get, and Kame could barely get his body to detangle itself from Jin's. Moving away felt like stealing all the warmth that was there in the vent with them, but Kame pushed himself backwards, moving the opposite way- because there wasn't enough space to turn- until his feet fell out the vent in the factory.
As soon as he was on his feet again, so was Jin, shoving Kame back in the direction of the pipes and the sewer line. "Move, now."
Kame didn't need to be told twice. He was in the pipes before he even knew he had crossed the factory floor, moving with the rush of terror that had only just caught up to him. They jumped down the ladder without even hitting the last two rungs and Kame's ankle cracked under the weight- he ignored it and kept running, through the sewers and into the paths more familiar that he knew led back to The Joker Club.
By the time they arrived, Kame was out of breath and shaking. They burst into the basement without so much as a word between them, and found the other four sitting around a small black object on the counter.
"Shit," Koki exhaled. "We thought you were done for."
"Why the hell did you go for Akanishi?" Nakamaru asked. "You knew the rules, you put yourself at risk."
Kame didn't know how to answer- somehow, all the replies he might have had earlier had completely changed, and he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to get the first ones back.
"Whatever," Jin said, sounding so much less confident of himself, "it doesn't matter. We're all back, right? And you got it?"
"I got it," Ueda said, eyeing Jin carefully. "But I'm more interested in what was in that second building. Something the alarms off, and it wasn't us."
Kame looked to Jin then, trying to avoid direct eye contact. Jin was looking at the rest of the group anyway, gaze flickering between the other four and the transmitter sitting silently on the countertop.
"I didn't get far," he explained. "But there's something going on there- something big. I think... I think it's the Web."
"The what?" Kame asked, just as Nakamaru exclaimed, "You can't be serious!"
Kame waited until the resulting seconds of stymied silence passed. "What do you mean by the Web?"
"The thing we're all hooked up to," Jin said, voice grim. He still didn't look in Kame's direction. His eyes stayed locked on the transmitter, brow furrowed. And as the rush of fear faded, Kame felt the swift replacement of the emotion with the same fire he'd felt in the vent, the same all-encompassing need he couldn't seem to put into words.
He looked away, trying to focus on anything else.
"You can't know that's what's there," Nakamaru said, but he seemed to be trying to convince himself more than Jin.
Ueda was silent, staring at a stain on the counter, and when he finally looked up, Kame couldn't read the expression on his face. "So we have to go back in there."
"No," Nakamaru said, even as Jin was nodding in grim agreement.
"There's no other way," Koki said. "We wanted to find out what it was, didn't we? Well, we didn't think we'd like what we found."
"I told you, I didn't get that far in," Jin told them, and he was twisting his hands together, fingers knotting in uncomfortable, nervous energy. "I set off some kind of alarm just by walking- that place is wired, tighter than anything else we've ever seen. But I could... I could feel it in there. There was this rhythm beneath my feet, like this constant beat. Generators or something."
"Something with that much energy, to be reverberating like that," Ueda started, and shook his head. "Jin, the level of security that has to be there, we'll never get back in."
Nakamaru looked almost sick. His skin was tinged with green near the corners of his mouth, quirked downwards in harsh, taut lines. "We aren't going back in."
"Well, we can't just leave it be," Jin shot back. "This is what we've been searching for."
Nakamaru opened his mouth and Kame waited for his response that never came. When the other man closed his jaw again, brows furrowing further, Kame was pretty sure he knew what the reply would have been- it's not what we've been searching for at all. They were just searching for a way to keep living under the radar.
Kame just wanted a way to survive.
Koki started to shake his head, like he was going to pick up where Nakamaru had left off, and Jin raised one hand, fingers slightly folded into his palm.
"Don't," he said. It came out harsh and edgy in the silence. "Everyone just... think about it."
"Think about it here, you mean," Koki mumbled. It was far too late to try and get home; Kame knew the bishops would be out in their patrol. The last thing he wanted to do was run into one after the awful minutes spent stuck in the vents. Thinking about the whole thing was just making his blood pound against his ears all over again, and the sensation wasn't particularly pleasant.
Usually when they shuffled off into the small rooms off the main opening, there was a sense of something else- purpose, maybe, if Kame had to put a name to it. It was solid and tangible and it was what kept Kame feeling safe enough to sleep at all beneath The Joker Club. As he made his way to the tiny room with the bed that was starting to become more familiar than his own, he wondered how he hadn't noticed the feeling until it was gone.
He was too keyed up to fall asleep- one of the many downsides, he decided, to having heightened reactions to everything. It took forever for the rush to finally fade away and get his body back to normal. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling wasn't going to do much for his still erratic heartbeat, so Kame swung his legs off the mattress and wandered back outside. The casino above was silent, and Kame let his feet carry him up the stairs without really thinking about it.
Being between the tables and machines in the dark, with only the few generator-run lamps at the far walls lit, was calming, somehow. Kame walked between the tables and let his fingers run across the wooden sides of them, between the green felt and the curve of the corners. Without the constant whir and hum of noise, it felt less like a casino.
There was a clatter behind him, like someone's shoulder hitting the wall, and Kame spun.
"Sorry," Jin said, hands in the air in what might have been a small gesture of surrender. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Jin did scare him; at least, Kame's heart was in his throat again, hammering away and cutting off his air. He swallowed hard and the action was painful.
"About today," Kame started. He wasn't even sure why, he just felt like he had to say something.
"Don't," Jin cut him off. "Just... don't."
But Kame needed to do something, needed to dislodge everything that was welling up in the open hole someone had cut into his chest. He tried to suck in another lungful of oxygen and couldn't seem to get his body to respond right- he looked to the right, to the lamps, to the far machines backed up against the wall, and when he turned his head straight again, Jin had crossed the space between them and was standing only a few hand spans away.
Kame wondered when all the air had left the room.
His arms and hands were trembling with excess energy when Jin lifted a hand and reached forward, slowly, almost as if he was giving Kame the chance to move away. When Kame didn't, the other man's mouth parted slightly. Jin's fingers were warm against Kame's arm, in the best possible way- the kind of way that sent shivers down Kame's spine, settling where his transmitter was.
Jin's breath came out in a puff, the exhale audible as he shifted forward. Both his hands moved to find Kame's forearms, sliding along the exposed skin until his fingertips hit the bunched fabric of Kame's shirt and then continuing upwards. It was like he was trying to catch onto something, to find a place to hold; Kame took a step forward just to make it easier. He wanted the space between them lessened, fueled by something that told him to act first and contemplate everything later.
For a moment that seemed completely suspended in time, there was hardly any space between them at all, with Jin pulling Kame flush towards him and Kame's hand slipping up to mimic Jin's earlier movements. Jin breathed out the first syllable of Kame's name and that was it- the rest, Kame swallowed when he leaned forward to cover Jin's mouth with his own.
It was almost strange at first, the sensation- Kame wanted to analyze it and store it away so he'd always be able to remember it, but he couldn't focus because everything sped back up again. Jin's lips parted and his tongue darted out, finding the corner of Kame's mouth and sweeping along his bottom lip. Their noses bumped when Kame tried to change the angle of his head, and Jin's hands found his waist to push him backwards until his back hit the poker table behind where they were standing. The action rattled the chips piled there in towers at the sides.
When Jin laughed a bit, against Kame's mouth, Kame thought that it was exactly what it was supposed to be like- that was what it was supposed to feel like. He was meant to be feeling the fire all the way down to his toes, he was meant to be grabbing at Jin's shoulders trying to align their bodies together.
"Kazu," Jin half-groaned, half-laughed, when Kame flipped their positions and pressed forward hard enough to get Jin bent backwards onto the table. His elbow hit the chips and half the towers fell, sending chips raining down to the floor in a barrage of color. Jin was arching up beneath him, grinding their hips together, and Kame was harder than he'd ever felt before. He wanted more; he needed more- more of Jin, more of this, more of them.
Jin tugged at his shoulders, getting more fabric than joints, but still managing to get Kame up onto the table above him. Kame's knees banged against the side and the pain barely registered- it was just kind of fuzzy, on the side, something he'd probably feel again later.
"Jin," he said, without really knowing why. It just slipped out between fevered, searing kisses that went straight down to his groin.
"Yeah," Jin laughed, and arched up into Kame's hips again. "Yeah."
Moving against Jin was easy. They fit together like the corners of the tables Kame had helped assemble in the rations distribution warehouse, pieces that were made to align snug. He rolled his hips against the other man's and listened to the hissing moan he got in response. Jin had his head thrown back against the felt of the table, throat arced and exposed so much that Kame moved his mouth down to find Jin's pulse point there. He wasn't gentle- he let his teeth sink into the flesh there and Jin's whole body shuddered. Jin's fingers were digging into his shoulders in sharp, painful bursts, and it felt good.
For a second, Kame was hyperaware of his thoughts and feelings- he could see himself and Jin, moving together on the poker table, like he was watching from afar and everything was a bit fuzzy. He felt almost light-headed. Idly, he wondered why he hadn't been feeling so much pounding in his head, so much unfiltered desire and need, when he'd been with the anonymous woman in the brick building. Where she'd been quiet, Jin was loud, all gasps and wheezed breathing and Kame's name, over and over again, and Kame liked it. He wanted more; he wanted to hear all the moans Jin could give him and wanted to find out how the man looked when they were wrenched from his lips.
His cock ached, pressed against the bend of Jin's thigh, and Kame so badly wanted Jin to touch him. But they were in the casino, still, with the others sleeping below, and he just ground their hips together again to try to make up for the lack of the friction he was seeking. He could feel Jin hard against him, and when his mouth found Jin's ear, the other man groaned so loud it resonated and reverberated in his chest.
"Kazu," Jin whined, arching his back off the table. And Kame loved the way it sounded, broken and desperate- he slid his leg between Jin's to fix the angle of their bodies, to give himself more leverage to work with. It worked better than he'd hoped. A shot of pleasure shot up the back of his legs and his vision started to blur at the edges.
Jin reached up with both hands to grab the sides of Kame's head and pull him down for a kiss that was more demand than request. His tongue slid between Kame's mouth and when Jin moaned, Kame could feel it all the way through him. He came with a muffled cry and a jerk, muscles contracting- for a second, everything was hot and vivid white, and all he could feel was Jin.
Coming back down was like snapping back into a cold reality, away from the feeling he couldn't keep forever. And Jin sort of whined against Kame's mouth, still hard beneath Kame's hips. "Kazu, fuck, please-"
Kame's hand found him without direction. Just beneath the fabric of Jin's pants, feeling the curve and shape of him through his underwear- Kame's breath hitched when Jin's did. Jin was close enough that Kame could already feel stickiness through the fabric, from the tip, and he curled his fingers around Jin as much as he could given the barrier. It seemed to be enough just to move his palm quickly a few times- Jin's fingers tightened around Kame's arm painfully when he gasped and moaned, and Kame could feel the release that coiled and snapped.
It was strange, how much Kame still felt his body pulsing with want even after the desperate need for it had been satisfied. He still wanted Jin beneath his hands, he still wanted to feel more and taste the salt of Jin's skin again. He found Jin's mouth once more and tried to pour everything he was overloaded with into the kiss.
"We made a mess," Jin whispered breathlessly when they pulled apart, the syllables puffs of heat against Kame's cheek. "I have no fucking clue how those chips were arranged."
"What," Kame started, still reeling from aftershocks.
Jin's fingers found the curve of his jaw. "Good, yeah?"
Good couldn't even begin to cover it. "The best," Kame sighed, and kissed Jin again.
It took awhile to detangle themselves, and Kame didn't want to let go. After release, he felt sated and tired- all he really wanted to do was curl up next to the warmth Jin radiated and sleep, but they stacked up the towers of chips again and Kame wasn't sure what to do about his clothing, soiled to the point of discomfort.
Jin reached for him again, when they were back down in the basement, just before they reached Kame's room.
"I don't," the other man trailed off. His eyes were dark. "It's you and me, you know?"
"Yeah," Kame said.
Jin kissed him, hard, and when he pulled back, said, "You know we can't... we shouldn't be doing this."
"We shouldn't be able to," Kame said, tongue feeling thick.
Jin regarded him for a long moment with an expression that Kame couldn't read, and then his tongue slid out to wet his lower lip. "We can't tell the others."
"I know," Kame replied.
"This is dangerous," Jin continued.
Kame dragged him back down again and repeated I know against the corner of his mouth, and swallowed Jin's resulting sigh.
Chapter: 5/??
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): Kame/OFC, Kame/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Language, sexual content
Summary: We are the ones who will break the wall of fate. Kamenashi's life is the same as it always has been, until the day his transmitter shorts out and his entire existence is irrevocably altered, launching him into a rebellion he didn't even know existed.
Notes: There's a lot in this chapter because I refuse to cut the last scene. Also, raise your hand if you hate LJ's new posting page, because it ate this the first time.
The sun the next morning was tinted with burnt orange, just like it always was. Kame stared at his reflection in the mirror a long time while the shower water ran, and by the time he snapped himself out of his internal thoughts, the mirror was fogged with a layer of steam. He stood under the spray of the water and pushed hair out of his forehead, glaring down at the circling whirl of the drain as if it was responsible for all of his problems.
Even touching his fingers to the cool metal of his transmitter, nothing felt different. The difference was all in his head, and he couldn't ignore that.
Kame tried not to think about what Tanaka had said, what Nakamaru had said, but he couldn't force the memories out of his mind. Going to the brick building to grab information wouldn't hurt anyone, although it might look somewhat suspicious if anyone paid attention to the people who took the pamphlets. Maybe they would assume Kame had already gotten his summon, and that he was looking to see what was going to be required of him.
He groaned and pushed sopping hair out of his face, tilting his neck back so the spray hit him in the chest. The heaviness of the air around him, saturated with humidity, didn't do anything to help displace the furious questions.
He thought about scooping rice at work. He thought about playing baseball in the fenced diamond. He thought about Taguchi's burnt rice and Tanaka's casino floor teaming with people and Jin ordering them to wait another week for more information and-
-the shiver went all the way through his body, right down to his toes. It was intense, so much so that he couldn't ignore it. He gasped and jolted forward, one hand going to the side of the wall to steady himself. The other he slid down his stomach to close his fingers around himself, biting his lip at the renewed sensation.
His whole body was buzzing. Kame bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes shut and moved: one, two, three quick jerks and his nerves were on overload, trembling with something he couldn't identify. All he knew is that he desperately wanted more- craved more, needed it. His fingers against the porcelain curled without anything to hang on to, and when he tried to suck in a furious breath, he managed to almost inhale water in the process.
He tightened his fingers and moaned before he even realized he'd made any noise. Of its own volition his hand sped up, and it didn't take long before he was groaning, the sound forced out of his throat of its own accord, trying to keep himself upright as the ripples resounded through his form.
When the aftershocks faded, he opened his eyes and stared down at his hand already rinsed clean in the steady flow of water.
What the hell was going on?
--
The brick building looked more frightening than Kame had ever thought it would before. He wasn't even sure what he was so afraid of- he knew what he was going in to, and he knew that for his partner, it wasn't a big deal. But the overload of emotions in his head were keeping his fingers jittery, anxiously twitching as he made his way inside and checked in with the woman behind the desk.
She gave him a number, a small key to the room, and a small paper cup containing two blue-colored pills. Kame stared at them as he made his way to the room number he'd been given- 1582.
He arrived first. The receptionist hadn't given him any other information, and he knew he had to wait until his matched partner arrived. Ueda had explained the process, and the rest Kame knew from others; it was random, for the most part, the way the couples were matched. Some were called twice in a year and others could go for ten years without their number coming up. The system didn't factor in apprenticeships or age, though it did remove all numbers past 40 years old automatically.
Kame sat down on the bed and tried to keep his hands from trembling, which was mostly a losing battle. The block of time that made up his excused absence from work was four hours. He knew that, according to the others, it wouldn't last nearly that long. The room was simple: a bed, a sink, and a small bathroom off to one side. He knew that there was no other purpose for the room other than the one that he was there to fulfill. For some reason, the realization made his skin crawl, and he fought to push the sensations away.
It took about twenty minutes for the woman to arrive. She didn't knock on the door and didn't seem surprised that Kame was already there. She gave him a small nod and made her way inside the room, dropping her purse off.
"Nice to meet you," Kame said, because he felt he had to say something. It seemed to catch her off-guard. She blinked at him, pushing dark bangs away from her face and tucking hair behind her ear, and then she nodded again.
"Nice to meet you," she echoed. She looked older than him- if Kame had to venture a guess, he would have guessed around 30. The insignia on her collar labeled her as a nurse, but Kame didn't know what sector she was stationed in.
She didn't sit, clasping her hands in front of her. "Are you ready?" she asked.
Kame hadn't taken the pills yet- they were still sitting in the bottom of the paper cup, where he'd left it on the table near the sink. "Just a minute," he told her, rising and moving towards them. His hand was shaking when he turned on the water and stared down at the plastic coating.
He thought about the shower.
The pills went down easy when he tilted his head back. Then he waited for a long moment, hands curled around the sides of the sink. He couldn't give too much away- he didn't know how obvious it was going to be that he was nervous. He was fairly sure that he shouldn't be able to feel all the anxiety making its way through his veins.
When Kame turned around again, the woman had stripped most of her clothing off. It was strange to let his eyes rove down the smooth lines of her back and shoulders, the dip of her waist and the soft curves of her hips. She didn't look uncomfortable when she tugged her bra free from her arms and let it fall to the ground, in an arc around her feet.
She turned, hands going up to her neck to smooth flyaway hair down. "Ready?"
The air was cold when it hit Kame's bare skin. She lay down on the bed and Kame turned away, unsure why, exactly, he did; he wasn't sure what the receptionist had given his partner, but he knew there had to be something. Each of them had to prepare for the process. He pulled his clothing off, swallowing down all the ways that it felt so wrong.
Even just dimming the lights would have made the entire thing seem easier to deal with, but when Kame knelt on the bed beside her relaxed form, he realized that maybe that was the whole point to keeping them on. There wasn't supposed to be anything romantic or meaningful about it; his brain was attempting to put emotion where others wouldn't. His brain was trying to assign meaning to places it couldn't possibly be. And Kame knew it, just as he knew that his life would never be the same, but that didn't make it less uncomfortable when he slid over to her side.
"Have you done this before?" he asked. He thought it was probably an acceptable question.
"Yes," she replied, easily. "It's not hard."
Kame was- achingly so. He could barely think about anything other than how much need there was, coiled in the bottom of his stomach. Whatever the pills were that they'd given him, they'd worked, and they'd worked quickly.
He was at a loss of what to do until her hand found him, and he had to bite back his groan. Her fingers felt wonderful against his length. She pulled him down and wrapped her legs up and around his waist and guided him in, and he had to keep his eyes closed, because she wasn't even looking at him. She was staring at the ceiling, like there was something more interesting there- detached and neutral.
To her, this was just something the government mandated that she do. It didn't mean anything.
Kame didn't know what it meant to him.
Everything was hot. Hot and warm and tight and Kame gasped. Her arms went around his shoulders to loosely curl her hands around his ribs, like she had been taught how to lie and how to move by someone. It was easy from there. Kame squeezed his eyes shut and just moved with the sensations, feeling more alive than he'd felt in a long time. She didn't make any noise and she didn't really move with him, but he didn't really need her to- his rhythm was enough to carry them both.
If he thought about where he was and who was beneath him, a nameless face who would forget him by nightfall, he'd lose it. So he tried to think of something else- the water in his shower, the swirl of his soap down the drain, the feel of his own hand finding himself.
Kame thought about that night in the street, when he'd been overwhelmed by the sensations flooding his brain. He thought about the panic when he'd woken up, and the tightening in his chest when he'd seen what the others were doing to make him feel welcome. The woman's hands on his arms tightened a bit, and he did groan then, without thinking of holding it back. It didn't seem to matter- the pressure was starting to quiver like a rubber band stretching beyond its limits, waiting to snap.
When release hit, he froze. His breath caught in his throat and choked him, and his whole body stilled. Beneath him, he could feel her start to move, almost as if she was restless. Anxious to be done with the whole thing, maybe.
Kame pulled out and rolled over, shaking and confused, and she just sat up without giving him another glance. He tried to pull his clothing on as fast as she did, but he couldn't get his hands to work that quickly; she spent a few moments in front of the mirror, adjusting her hair again, before picking up her purse and giving him one final nod before leaving the room.
Kame stayed. He stayed and his head fell into his hands, and he wondered why, of all the things he could have been thinking about when the jolt of pleasure had undone him, it had to be Jin.
--
Kame didn't sleep much that night. The light of the moon kept shifting the designs on his ceiling and he lay against the pillow watching it, until his eyes felt as if they were made of sand and he was still unable to slip into dreams. At some point he managed to doze, and he only knew it because he woke feeling stiff and sticky the next morning when his alarm went off.
Work was a nightmare; the kind he couldn't wake up from because his exhaustion was the only thing he could think about. The only way to keep his thoughts at bay was to focus on dishing the rice into bowls and separating it into burlap sacks, and that was so mind-numbing that it hardly worked as a manner of distraction. He got a message there, halfway through his shift.
It's unfortunate that the weather isn't good for baseball tonight.
Kame shoved the paper into his back pocket. There was a meeting at The Joker Club that night, then.
Ueda was the only one in the back room when Kame finally got there, tired and cranky and covered in dust from the dry heat enveloping the city.
"Welcome back," he said, with an odd sort of smile that Kame was pretty sure went straight to his bones. "How was it?"
"Fine," Kame said. He slid into one of the seats at the counter, feeling awkward and out of place. Was he supposed to say something more? Ueda didn't seem like the one that would press for details, but just thinking about the whole thing was making Kame's fingers tremble. The one detail he couldn't stop focusing on was the one detail he didn't want to tell the others; the divide was so sharp in his head he could practically see it, and he was afraid he'd fall off the edge without meaning to, taking his secret with him for everyone to see.
Ueda just looked at him, and the look seemed to mean everything and nothing all at once. "Hopefully with that out of the way, we'll be able to concentrate on the transmitter facility."
"It's more important," Kame agreed, glad to find solid footing again.
He thought the danger had passed until there was a hard slap to his shoulder and Tanaka's voice crowing, "And here's the man of the hour! How does it feel to finally be one of the big boys?"
"Don't you have chips to be counting on the floor?" Ueda asked. He was stirring a pot of something on the burners, something that smelled like leftovers from the remains of everyone's rations that week thrown together just to be rid of them. "Surely there's something more important than hassling Kamenashi."
"There is nothing more important than learning about how my boy's big day was," Tanaka assured them both, taking the seat at the counter next to Kame. His hand was still on Kame's shoulders, fingers curling around the joint. "So, how was it? And please give me as many details as possible. Was she beautiful?"
Kame couldn't even remember- the woman's face was blurring with everything else, the lines he so desperately didn't want to make out. "I don't- I guess she was."
"You guess?" Tanaka repeated, eyebrows high. "Man, must have been some mind-blowing sex if you can't even remember her face. Bet you can remember the rest of her. Leave nothing out."
Kame wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. He could barely remember the shape of her thighs or the length of her hair; all he could remember were the feelings, vivid shapes against the blurring background, all cocooned heat and shaking muscles. If pressed for specifics, he really didn't think he could come up with anything, and he was too rattled to lie about it.
There was a long moment when he was sure that Tanaka knew, he knew everything, and Kame would be outcast from the group just as quickly as he'd been welcomed into it, and then Ueda's hand made solid contact with the back of Tanaka's head.
"Seriously, shut up," Ueda said, frowning. "Leave him alone. We have more important things to worry about."
"God, fine," Tanaka replied. He rubbed a hand over his hair and his fingers made the strands stand on end. From behind them there were footsteps and the familiar creak of a door. Nakamaru, Akanishi, and Taguchi were in the middle of a conversation when they spilled inside, and Kame was glad for the cover.
He stared at his hands instead of staring at Jin.
"Good, everyone's here," Nakamaru said. He didn't sit. "I've been trying to hack the access codes for level 5, but they're too heavily encrypted, and if I try anything further they're going to know I was doing something."
"So that's it?" Tanaka asked. "We don't know what it is? Are we giving up?"
Ueda's hodge-podge of food was done, and he took it off the burner without turning to look at the rest of them. It smelled sweet and bitter at the same time, a conglomeration of competing scents mixed together. "I don't think we can give up now that we know about it."
"But we can't get in," Nakamaru said.
"We can't get in to the files," Jin pointed out. Kame still couldn't risk venturing a gaze at the other man, but he could hear his voice from the opposite end of the counter.
There was a moment, and then Nakamaru said, "You can't be serious."
"Serious about what?" Taguchi asked.
"You want us to get into the building?" Nakamaru said, though it wasn't really a question, and Kame let his gaze slide over to see him leaning forward, expression incredulous, arms crossed over his chest. And Jin- Kame finally saw- didn't have any expression on his face at all. "You want us to go into a building with more security than we've ever encountered before without knowing what we are even going to find in there?"
"What can it be?" Jin demanded.
Maru's hands uncrossed, fingers in the air. "That's exactly what I'm saying! We don't know. Akanishi, there could be anything in there. The central mainframe, the system controls; if they have that under that tight a lockdown, there's no way we can slip in there undetected, and there's even less of a chance of any of us coming back out without being deactivated by the rooks."
"And I think we have a duty to go and see what that 'anything' is," Jin shot back.
Behind the counter, Ueda was dishing up the bland-looking food, bowl by bowl. He didn't seem fazed by the conversation, and Kame didn't know how he was managing it; Kame's arms were covered in goose bumps just thinking about the six of them waltzing into level 5 territory without so much as a master plan.
"Okay, I'm not putting my ass on the line for something we can't identify," Tanaka said. "I have The Joker Club, and I have my life, and I don't think we can just-"
"I don't think we can just sit around!" Jin exploded. "I refuse to sit here while there is something going on there, something so important that Maru can't even figure out who in the ward has access to the files. This is important. And this is about all of us."
Kame's hands were shaking again; he shifted them to his lap, to hide them between his knees.
"You know," Ueda said, voice calm, "it's possible that when we get into the transmitter facility, we'll find more information about the building next door."
"And it's also possible that we'll find ourselves up to our necks in rooks before we know what hit us," Maru hissed.
But Kame understood where Ueda was going- the pieces were falling into place slowly, but they hadn't stopped. "We won't be up against level 5 security going for the transmitters. You said the buildings were connected, right?"
"We might be," Maru said. "Don't you get it; we might encounter the same security for the transmitters as the other building."
"But we might not," Ueda replied, holding up the spoon and one of the bowls, filled with beige-colored rice and small bits of dried meat, curled up onto itself and embedded in the lumps.
It was the most unappetizing thing Kame had ever seen before, and his stomach churned at the mere thought of ingesting anything at all. He took Ueda's offered bowl anyway, just to have something to occupy his hands with.
"There's gotta be something there," Jin said, finally taking a seat at the table and sliding his elbow across the surface. "Air ducts. Sewer drains. Think about it- they're not going to be worried about someone getting through the security from the other building; they're worried about people accessing it from the outside. There's our hole."
"That's not a hole," Nakamaru replied. "We still have to get in."
There was a long period of silence, and Kame looked up from his meal. Taguchi's mouth was a thin line, and Koki was frowning, shaking his head a bit. Jin and Nakamaru stared at each other for a long minute in a stalemate that Kame couldn't touch, and then Nakamaru finally looked away, to where Ueda was offering him his portion of the makeshift dinner. The air was tense but Kame knew the feel to it: inevitability.
There really was only one option for them, and they all knew it, even if they were fighting against it. Kame almost wanted to reach around his back and feel for his transmitter, just to press his fingertips against the cool metal. The action used to be reassuring.
"You know what? Sleep on it," Jin said, pushing himself back and away from the counter abruptly, chair legs squeaking against the floorboards. "Everyone sleep on it. Convene back here in the morning. We're making a decision tomorrow and I don't care if it's not unanimous."
He disappeared into one of the back rooms, and most of the gazes followed him.
"Guess we're staying here," Taguchi said.
Kame just pushed away his bowl without eating. It wasn't appetizing, anyway.
--
Exhaustion was a good sleeping drug, but it only worked halfway; in the middle of the night, Kame woke to the unfamiliar sounds of the club and the hall around him. Floorboards creaking, ceiling settling, and the rhythmic humming of the machines not in use but still turned on were too different from his own place. When he'd first arrived, it had seemed like the most meaningless detail because he'd been overloaded with information and panic and stress, but now- now it was loud and echoing in his ears.
He pushed the sheets away from his legs, figuring he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep again.
Kame didn't expect anyone else to be up- even Ueda didn't stay up all night, but there was a figure at the counter hunched over the blueprint plans, and he knew who it was before his vision had even completely adjusted to the dim lighting.
Jin turned around, took note of him, and then nodded. "Did I wake you?"
"No," Kame said. "It's just hard to sleep here, is all."
The other man didn't reply to that. When Kame got closer, he could see the papers spread beneath Jin's arms, pinned down by his elbows against the surface. They were the same blueprints they had all been studying a week ago, when the new security information had come to light. Kame doubted there was anything different about them now, but Jin was staring at them like they held all the secrets to the group's success.
Kame's heart was hammering in his chest, but he sat down next to Jin's seated form anyway. He hoped the other man couldn't hear the pounding.
"You really want to do this?" Kame asked.
"No," Jin said, and shook his head, a few braided bits of hair falling beneath his collar. "I don't want to. We have to. There's something there, and we have to know what it is. Otherwise, we're still just running away."
He was glaring so intently at the plans, biting on the edge of his thumb, that Kame thought he might burn a hole right through the page with just the intensity of his gaze.
"I don't think any of us are running away," Kame said. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to say anything- after all, he was new. What did he know about the group's activities and desires? He stared down at the cuticles on his fingernails. "I think that we're doing the only thing we can, and that's moving forward."
Jin was silent for a long moment, and Kame could see his jaw clenching and unclenching on his balled fists, stacked one on top of the other. Then his eyes flickered in Kame's direction. "I bet Koki asked for all the details, huh?"
The abrupt change in conversation left Kame reeling.
"I- guess," he said. "I don't... not really."
"He loves that stuff," Jin laughed, mirthless. "Gets him all excited. He's the only one that thinks it's great to have your number get called."
Kame wasn't sure why Jin was saying that to him, but his lungs were pressing hard against his ribcage, making his whole chest feel too small. "I think it's supposed to mean something," he said, without thinking, and then deflated when Jin's gaze hit him again. "I mean, it felt like it should."
"No, I think you're right," Jin said. He looked back to the prints, and Kame could see his fingers unclenching a bit. "I think it should."
When he dragged his index finger down along the paper, it left blurry smudge marks behind.
"Have you ever seen level 5 security before?" Kame asked.
"No."
Jin was staring at the prints like they were going to answer all the questions he had. Kame shifted a bit, wondering when the pressing need to fidget had arrived- was it before his transmitter had stopped working or after? "What do you think is there?" he asked.
"Honestly?" Jin said, flexing his fingers a bit like he was stretching his boundaries. He shook his head, and strands of dark hair caught in the corners of his mouth. Kame could see him, watching, out of the corner of his eyes, just enough to take in Kame's shape without really looking over. "I have no fucking clue."
When Kame didn't answer, Jin let out a mirthless bark of a laugh and leaned forward over the counter, elbows slanted outwards. "Does this make me a bad leader?" Jin asked.
"No," Kame replied. "I think it just makes you realistic."
"Leaders are supposed to be optimistic and driven," Jin said. He sounded like he didn't quite believe it himself.
"Leaders are supposed to hold everyone together," Kame shot back. "And I'm pretty sure that's what you're doing."
Jin leveled him with a look that was hooded in the shadows; Kame could only see half of his face, and another quarter was obscured by the parts of his bangs that were loose from the braids winding backwards into the ponytail.
"Am I?" the other man asked. "Or am I just digging everyone's graves, one decision at a time?"
It wasn't something Kame knew how to answer; or, rather, he did, in the base of his stomach, a curling knot of anticipation and nerves that seemed to get worse every time Akanishi was around.
It seemed the other man didn't want an answer. If he was expecting one, he gave up. He turned back to the prints and didn't say anything else for a long moment, and when he finally opened his mouth again, it was to exhale long, loud and slow.
"Get some sleep, Kamenashi," he said.
Easier said than done- Kame didn't sleep much the rest of the night, staring at the crack of light from under the small door and wondering what the hell was going on.
--
They slipped out again after curfew, with another timed rigging of their transmitters through Ueda's handiwork. Kame was almost more nervous the second time than the first- because he knew the costs, now, and the risks they were all taking by going out. And seeing Jin's face tight with worry lines he couldn't disguise didn't do much to dispel the anxious feeling in the pit of Kame's stomach. He trailed the back of the group as they made their way through the sewers that ran beneath the roads, connected by small, moldy tunnels that were rank with long-since ignored waste systems.
"I'm still against this," Nakamaru said, as he trudged between Taguchi and Koki anyway.
"Noted," Jin barked, and said nothing else. The line of his shoulders was tense. Kame watched the braids in his ponytail swing back and forth in time with his gait.
It took longer than Kame expected to get up beneath the transmitter factory they had originally planned to infiltrate. Just looking up through the bars of the old sewer access on the side of one of the alleys made Kame's nervousness increase again- it was like they were already trapped, staring up at their captors hoping to be granted clemency.
And he knew that the bishops weren't in the business of doling out favors.
"Listen," Jin stopped them, as Taguchi was ready to start up the rickety ladder. The line split halfway up, into an old piping system beneath the building. "I'm going to be the one going in through the vents into the adjacent building."
"What?" Koki's jaw nearly hit the floor. "No. No way."
"Not open for discussion," Jin snapped. "This was my decision to go in, and I'm going to be the one to get in there and see what's going on. End of committee input."
Taguchi, one foot swinging unhappily from the bottom rung of the ladder, hopped back down again and wiped the resulting grime on his pants. "I don't like this."
"I don't really care," Jin replied.
"If you don't come back," Ueda started, and seemed unwilling to finish- Kame didn't blame him. Just saying the words out loud made the whole sewer trip seem suddenly far more uneasy than it had previously.
But Jin's jaw was set, and Kame knew he wouldn't budge- not given the way he'd been poring over the map last night, trying to solve everything on his own.
"Final decision," he said. "Go up, get what we were looking for, and I'm going through the vents next door. If I'm not back with only twenty minutes left on the transmitters, go back without me."
"Jin..." Taguchi started, and then stopped. There wasn't much else to say.
"Go," Jin ordered.
Following Koki, Kame did. The pipe leading into the building was cold and damp but large enough that he could get his shoulders through without scraping the fabric of his clothes against the sides. Not that it really mattered, but Kame wasn't sure how loud the acoustics within the tunnel really were. He followed the soles of Koki's shoes as the other man crawled through, wishing he could give a backwards glance back at Jin, who brought up the rear.
Inside the underbelly of the building, there wasn't much going on. It had shut down for the day and most of the lights were off, aside from the emergency lighting from the floor. It smelled faintly of oil- like refined oil, not the crude stuff they had in barrels in the other storerooms around the blocks, and it was a strangely sweet smell that hit Kame's nose.
"There should be unused transmitters near the machines," Ueda whispered, as they congregated in the darkest part of the shadows in the back of the basement. It was cool down below the earth, and it was nicer than being in the piping. Kame followed Ueda up to the main floor with only Jin trailing behind, searching for the venting system he'd no doubt memorized from the blueprints.
"Just one?" Koki asked.
Ueda shrugged. "Any more and we'll alert suspicion. One is easy to misplace; two is taking a bigger risk."
"Go and get it," Jin said, turning and starting in the other direction, towards the far corner across the open floor of the factory. "Remember- at twenty minutes left, you guys go home."
"Then work fast," Nakamaru said through gritted teeth. Jin just gave him a withering glare and a salute, moving out of the comfortable whispering zone. Kame watched him until he disappeared around a corner, but made a note of where he was going- just in case.
The factory was big enough that Kame could loiter at the back of the group as Ueda tried to find what they were looking for. He wasn't really interested in seeing the transmitters- he'd had enough already just worrying about the one hooked into his back. If Ueda found something, it was great, but Kame wanted to be out of the security problem sooner rather than later.
"Here," Ueda said, approaching a small metal shelving unit shoved between two machines that Kame couldn't discern the functions of. "I think these are it."
"In pieces?" Taguchi asked.
"Don't touch anything else," Ueda snapped, louder than he should have. Everyone paused for a long moment, and Kame's breath caught in his throat, and when there was nothing but the echo back at them from the high rafters, he exhaled slowly.
Taguchi looked abashed. "Sorry."
Whatever Ueda was doing, it was mostly inspecting things without moving them to see if they were the right object. Kame took a few steps backwards, so he could see the area where Jin had disappeared to just barely in the low lighting. He couldn't hear anything, but he thought he could see the vent where the other man would have gone through- maybe.
"Okay," Ueda said. "I've got it."
And that was when the alarm went off.
"Motion activated," Nakamaru hissed. "Fucking hell."
"Back to the pipes," Ueda ordered.
But when the others darted for the wall they'd come from, Kame took off in the other direction. He knew it was stupid- and even more than that, it was in direct violation of what Jin had told them to do. It was just that knowing the bishops might be coming and that Jin could be stuck in the other building alone, he had to do something; Kame couldn't let him take the fall alone.
"Kame!" Nakamaru said, and that was all Kame could hear before he was out of range and moving along the shadows of the machines towards the vent. It was slightly ajar, edges not quite re-aligned- nothing that someone would notice who wasn't already looking for it. It was enough that Kame knew he was going in the right direction. He pulled the vent up by the top two screws and slid inside, knees clanking painfully against the bottom. He bit back the grimace- it was completely dark inside the vents, and there wasn't much more room in the square passageway as there was in the rounded pipes they'd come in through.
For a wild, frenzied second, Kame was terrified he would be trapped in the vents and left to rot, but he swallowed it down and started forward, dragging himself inch by inch with his elbows and his fingers squeaking across the surface.
He didn't know how far he'd gone or how long it had been- every second felt like ten minutes inside the pitch blackness- until he hit something with his fingers. He panicked and froze, and just as soon as he'd convinced himself that he was going to be caught, Jin scooted backwards and somehow managed to wedge himself next to Kame. There wasn't enough room at all; they'd met at an awkward angle, with Jin's arm up and around Kame to balance himself on the opposite wall, flush front to back. Kame was half on his stomach, prepared to keep moving, and Jin's breath was very near his ear when the other man whispered a frantic, "Don't move."
Kame tried to still every muscle. From beyond the vent, he could hear things- he had been far closer to the end than he'd anticipated, or at least an opening that Jin had come back through. There were voices, and he could hear only the muffled echo of them as they moved around the opposite building. It felt like his blood had turned to ice, back pressed against Jin's chest with the other man's arm taut across his shoulders, palm pressed to the metal.
The voices got closer. Kame couldn't keep his hands from shaking, from fear and fire racing through his veins, and it was only when he jostled himself, slightly, trying to keep his trembling forearms from giving out, that he brushed back against Jin and felt the other man hard against the back of his thigh. The sounds from outside paused somewhere near the opening.
He could hear Jin's wheezing, embarrassed laugh that caught in his throat; there was just too much there, squeezed together and terrified of the looming, eminent doom just beyond. Kame tried to ignore the sudden onslaught of pinpricks on his skin, but Jin's ragged breathing was so close to his neck that Kame could feel the heat hitting him in slightly off-rhythm puffs. And he wanted, more than anything, to press back against him- the desire to arch back into Jin's hips was sudden and fierce and invaded all of Kame's senses.
Whoever was outside in the building, they hadn't moved on yet. Kame couldn't pick out individual words, only the slurred notion of sound. And Jin's breathing next to his ear was getting more and more erratic, out of beat and time. Kame was aching against the ground, hips flush with the metal. It was through sheer force of will that he kept himself from bucking backwards and meeting Jin's arousal.
Kame's arms were going to give out. He was shaking too much from sensory overload to hold up his own weight- he shifted his hand upwards and his fingers rammed into Jin's, and he could feel the other man's muscles hitch as Jin swallowed his own gasp. And then, as if unsure and seeking and perhaps more afraid of what was inside the vent than outside, Jin's fingers slid until they half covered Kame's own, index and middle finger slipping between Kame's.
That was too much. Kame squeezed his eyes shut- although he hadn't been able to see anything anyway- and allowed himself to arch backwards. It wasn't enough to make noise, at least nothing louder than their own wheezing was, but it was enough to feel Jin further against his ass, still hard and pressed against him.
"Kame," Jin breathed. Kame felt the syllables as much as he heard them; Jin's lips made feather-light contact with the dip of his shoulder.
The voices faded, and finally disappeared completely. It was as much of an opening to get back as they were going to get, and Kame could barely get his body to detangle itself from Jin's. Moving away felt like stealing all the warmth that was there in the vent with them, but Kame pushed himself backwards, moving the opposite way- because there wasn't enough space to turn- until his feet fell out the vent in the factory.
As soon as he was on his feet again, so was Jin, shoving Kame back in the direction of the pipes and the sewer line. "Move, now."
Kame didn't need to be told twice. He was in the pipes before he even knew he had crossed the factory floor, moving with the rush of terror that had only just caught up to him. They jumped down the ladder without even hitting the last two rungs and Kame's ankle cracked under the weight- he ignored it and kept running, through the sewers and into the paths more familiar that he knew led back to The Joker Club.
By the time they arrived, Kame was out of breath and shaking. They burst into the basement without so much as a word between them, and found the other four sitting around a small black object on the counter.
"Shit," Koki exhaled. "We thought you were done for."
"Why the hell did you go for Akanishi?" Nakamaru asked. "You knew the rules, you put yourself at risk."
Kame didn't know how to answer- somehow, all the replies he might have had earlier had completely changed, and he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to get the first ones back.
"Whatever," Jin said, sounding so much less confident of himself, "it doesn't matter. We're all back, right? And you got it?"
"I got it," Ueda said, eyeing Jin carefully. "But I'm more interested in what was in that second building. Something the alarms off, and it wasn't us."
Kame looked to Jin then, trying to avoid direct eye contact. Jin was looking at the rest of the group anyway, gaze flickering between the other four and the transmitter sitting silently on the countertop.
"I didn't get far," he explained. "But there's something going on there- something big. I think... I think it's the Web."
"The what?" Kame asked, just as Nakamaru exclaimed, "You can't be serious!"
Kame waited until the resulting seconds of stymied silence passed. "What do you mean by the Web?"
"The thing we're all hooked up to," Jin said, voice grim. He still didn't look in Kame's direction. His eyes stayed locked on the transmitter, brow furrowed. And as the rush of fear faded, Kame felt the swift replacement of the emotion with the same fire he'd felt in the vent, the same all-encompassing need he couldn't seem to put into words.
He looked away, trying to focus on anything else.
"You can't know that's what's there," Nakamaru said, but he seemed to be trying to convince himself more than Jin.
Ueda was silent, staring at a stain on the counter, and when he finally looked up, Kame couldn't read the expression on his face. "So we have to go back in there."
"No," Nakamaru said, even as Jin was nodding in grim agreement.
"There's no other way," Koki said. "We wanted to find out what it was, didn't we? Well, we didn't think we'd like what we found."
"I told you, I didn't get that far in," Jin told them, and he was twisting his hands together, fingers knotting in uncomfortable, nervous energy. "I set off some kind of alarm just by walking- that place is wired, tighter than anything else we've ever seen. But I could... I could feel it in there. There was this rhythm beneath my feet, like this constant beat. Generators or something."
"Something with that much energy, to be reverberating like that," Ueda started, and shook his head. "Jin, the level of security that has to be there, we'll never get back in."
Nakamaru looked almost sick. His skin was tinged with green near the corners of his mouth, quirked downwards in harsh, taut lines. "We aren't going back in."
"Well, we can't just leave it be," Jin shot back. "This is what we've been searching for."
Nakamaru opened his mouth and Kame waited for his response that never came. When the other man closed his jaw again, brows furrowing further, Kame was pretty sure he knew what the reply would have been- it's not what we've been searching for at all. They were just searching for a way to keep living under the radar.
Kame just wanted a way to survive.
Koki started to shake his head, like he was going to pick up where Nakamaru had left off, and Jin raised one hand, fingers slightly folded into his palm.
"Don't," he said. It came out harsh and edgy in the silence. "Everyone just... think about it."
"Think about it here, you mean," Koki mumbled. It was far too late to try and get home; Kame knew the bishops would be out in their patrol. The last thing he wanted to do was run into one after the awful minutes spent stuck in the vents. Thinking about the whole thing was just making his blood pound against his ears all over again, and the sensation wasn't particularly pleasant.
Usually when they shuffled off into the small rooms off the main opening, there was a sense of something else- purpose, maybe, if Kame had to put a name to it. It was solid and tangible and it was what kept Kame feeling safe enough to sleep at all beneath The Joker Club. As he made his way to the tiny room with the bed that was starting to become more familiar than his own, he wondered how he hadn't noticed the feeling until it was gone.
He was too keyed up to fall asleep- one of the many downsides, he decided, to having heightened reactions to everything. It took forever for the rush to finally fade away and get his body back to normal. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling wasn't going to do much for his still erratic heartbeat, so Kame swung his legs off the mattress and wandered back outside. The casino above was silent, and Kame let his feet carry him up the stairs without really thinking about it.
Being between the tables and machines in the dark, with only the few generator-run lamps at the far walls lit, was calming, somehow. Kame walked between the tables and let his fingers run across the wooden sides of them, between the green felt and the curve of the corners. Without the constant whir and hum of noise, it felt less like a casino.
There was a clatter behind him, like someone's shoulder hitting the wall, and Kame spun.
"Sorry," Jin said, hands in the air in what might have been a small gesture of surrender. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Jin did scare him; at least, Kame's heart was in his throat again, hammering away and cutting off his air. He swallowed hard and the action was painful.
"About today," Kame started. He wasn't even sure why, he just felt like he had to say something.
"Don't," Jin cut him off. "Just... don't."
But Kame needed to do something, needed to dislodge everything that was welling up in the open hole someone had cut into his chest. He tried to suck in another lungful of oxygen and couldn't seem to get his body to respond right- he looked to the right, to the lamps, to the far machines backed up against the wall, and when he turned his head straight again, Jin had crossed the space between them and was standing only a few hand spans away.
Kame wondered when all the air had left the room.
His arms and hands were trembling with excess energy when Jin lifted a hand and reached forward, slowly, almost as if he was giving Kame the chance to move away. When Kame didn't, the other man's mouth parted slightly. Jin's fingers were warm against Kame's arm, in the best possible way- the kind of way that sent shivers down Kame's spine, settling where his transmitter was.
Jin's breath came out in a puff, the exhale audible as he shifted forward. Both his hands moved to find Kame's forearms, sliding along the exposed skin until his fingertips hit the bunched fabric of Kame's shirt and then continuing upwards. It was like he was trying to catch onto something, to find a place to hold; Kame took a step forward just to make it easier. He wanted the space between them lessened, fueled by something that told him to act first and contemplate everything later.
For a moment that seemed completely suspended in time, there was hardly any space between them at all, with Jin pulling Kame flush towards him and Kame's hand slipping up to mimic Jin's earlier movements. Jin breathed out the first syllable of Kame's name and that was it- the rest, Kame swallowed when he leaned forward to cover Jin's mouth with his own.
It was almost strange at first, the sensation- Kame wanted to analyze it and store it away so he'd always be able to remember it, but he couldn't focus because everything sped back up again. Jin's lips parted and his tongue darted out, finding the corner of Kame's mouth and sweeping along his bottom lip. Their noses bumped when Kame tried to change the angle of his head, and Jin's hands found his waist to push him backwards until his back hit the poker table behind where they were standing. The action rattled the chips piled there in towers at the sides.
When Jin laughed a bit, against Kame's mouth, Kame thought that it was exactly what it was supposed to be like- that was what it was supposed to feel like. He was meant to be feeling the fire all the way down to his toes, he was meant to be grabbing at Jin's shoulders trying to align their bodies together.
"Kazu," Jin half-groaned, half-laughed, when Kame flipped their positions and pressed forward hard enough to get Jin bent backwards onto the table. His elbow hit the chips and half the towers fell, sending chips raining down to the floor in a barrage of color. Jin was arching up beneath him, grinding their hips together, and Kame was harder than he'd ever felt before. He wanted more; he needed more- more of Jin, more of this, more of them.
Jin tugged at his shoulders, getting more fabric than joints, but still managing to get Kame up onto the table above him. Kame's knees banged against the side and the pain barely registered- it was just kind of fuzzy, on the side, something he'd probably feel again later.
"Jin," he said, without really knowing why. It just slipped out between fevered, searing kisses that went straight down to his groin.
"Yeah," Jin laughed, and arched up into Kame's hips again. "Yeah."
Moving against Jin was easy. They fit together like the corners of the tables Kame had helped assemble in the rations distribution warehouse, pieces that were made to align snug. He rolled his hips against the other man's and listened to the hissing moan he got in response. Jin had his head thrown back against the felt of the table, throat arced and exposed so much that Kame moved his mouth down to find Jin's pulse point there. He wasn't gentle- he let his teeth sink into the flesh there and Jin's whole body shuddered. Jin's fingers were digging into his shoulders in sharp, painful bursts, and it felt good.
For a second, Kame was hyperaware of his thoughts and feelings- he could see himself and Jin, moving together on the poker table, like he was watching from afar and everything was a bit fuzzy. He felt almost light-headed. Idly, he wondered why he hadn't been feeling so much pounding in his head, so much unfiltered desire and need, when he'd been with the anonymous woman in the brick building. Where she'd been quiet, Jin was loud, all gasps and wheezed breathing and Kame's name, over and over again, and Kame liked it. He wanted more; he wanted to hear all the moans Jin could give him and wanted to find out how the man looked when they were wrenched from his lips.
His cock ached, pressed against the bend of Jin's thigh, and Kame so badly wanted Jin to touch him. But they were in the casino, still, with the others sleeping below, and he just ground their hips together again to try to make up for the lack of the friction he was seeking. He could feel Jin hard against him, and when his mouth found Jin's ear, the other man groaned so loud it resonated and reverberated in his chest.
"Kazu," Jin whined, arching his back off the table. And Kame loved the way it sounded, broken and desperate- he slid his leg between Jin's to fix the angle of their bodies, to give himself more leverage to work with. It worked better than he'd hoped. A shot of pleasure shot up the back of his legs and his vision started to blur at the edges.
Jin reached up with both hands to grab the sides of Kame's head and pull him down for a kiss that was more demand than request. His tongue slid between Kame's mouth and when Jin moaned, Kame could feel it all the way through him. He came with a muffled cry and a jerk, muscles contracting- for a second, everything was hot and vivid white, and all he could feel was Jin.
Coming back down was like snapping back into a cold reality, away from the feeling he couldn't keep forever. And Jin sort of whined against Kame's mouth, still hard beneath Kame's hips. "Kazu, fuck, please-"
Kame's hand found him without direction. Just beneath the fabric of Jin's pants, feeling the curve and shape of him through his underwear- Kame's breath hitched when Jin's did. Jin was close enough that Kame could already feel stickiness through the fabric, from the tip, and he curled his fingers around Jin as much as he could given the barrier. It seemed to be enough just to move his palm quickly a few times- Jin's fingers tightened around Kame's arm painfully when he gasped and moaned, and Kame could feel the release that coiled and snapped.
It was strange, how much Kame still felt his body pulsing with want even after the desperate need for it had been satisfied. He still wanted Jin beneath his hands, he still wanted to feel more and taste the salt of Jin's skin again. He found Jin's mouth once more and tried to pour everything he was overloaded with into the kiss.
"We made a mess," Jin whispered breathlessly when they pulled apart, the syllables puffs of heat against Kame's cheek. "I have no fucking clue how those chips were arranged."
"What," Kame started, still reeling from aftershocks.
Jin's fingers found the curve of his jaw. "Good, yeah?"
Good couldn't even begin to cover it. "The best," Kame sighed, and kissed Jin again.
It took awhile to detangle themselves, and Kame didn't want to let go. After release, he felt sated and tired- all he really wanted to do was curl up next to the warmth Jin radiated and sleep, but they stacked up the towers of chips again and Kame wasn't sure what to do about his clothing, soiled to the point of discomfort.
Jin reached for him again, when they were back down in the basement, just before they reached Kame's room.
"I don't," the other man trailed off. His eyes were dark. "It's you and me, you know?"
"Yeah," Kame said.
Jin kissed him, hard, and when he pulled back, said, "You know we can't... we shouldn't be doing this."
"We shouldn't be able to," Kame said, tongue feeling thick.
Jin regarded him for a long moment with an expression that Kame couldn't read, and then his tongue slid out to wet his lower lip. "We can't tell the others."
"I know," Kame replied.
"This is dangerous," Jin continued.
Kame dragged him back down again and repeated I know against the corner of his mouth, and swallowed Jin's resulting sigh.