fic for ayuzak
Title: Anchors
By: juniority
Pairing: Kamenashi Kazuya/Akanishi Jin/Nishikido Ryo
Word count: 8,400
Rating: NC-17
Genre/Warnings: Slightly introspective, some romance, and a bit of fluff and humor, with one explicit sexual scene that involves a threesome.
Notes: This fanfiction takes place in the past, from approximately the summer of 2000 to the autumn of 2003, and follows the factual timeline of Kame, Jin, and Ryo’s lives, although it is, of course, completely fictional.
Summary: Pebbles are the only thing keeping Jin anchored in the world outside of the music in his head and heart. His life has always been an unhappy balance of living in his own universe, and forcing himself to interact with others in a way that they can understand. Then he meets Ryo, and then Kame. Now Jin has to try and figure out how to have them both, even though they can’t stand each other.
Jin often picks up pebbles. Feathers too, and grains of sand completely indistinguishable from the billions of others bordering the ocean, and shells and string and the stems of dandelions whose wishes have long since been scattered in the breeze. Lots of things. Mostly though, it’s pebbles that he likes.
The ordinary little bits of rock keep him grounded, a slight weight in his pocket or the palm of his hand that he can touch at any time his mind starts to wander.
“Focus, Jin, try to focus.” First it’s his mom that tells him, then teachers and the instructors at his after school activities. A lot of them think he’s stupid, a self-centered, attention-deficient brat who can’t even bother to pretend to be interested in the things that bore him (everything, basically) long enough to keep himself out of trouble. It isn’t uncommon, after all, for kids to be bored by their classes. Jin just doesn’t bother to put up a façade, and thus spends a lot of his formative years getting yelled at.
Until he discovers the pebble trick. While sometimes it’s not enough, it definitely helps. Jin both loves and hates the pebbles because they drag him out of his personal world, a world of music and motion, into the world of pure commotion that grates on his nerves but that he must participate in, if he wants to get by.
The pebbles sing to him, the ones that he chooses. Well, everything sings to him; the point is, the pebbles that he picks have lovely voices, he chooses them solely for that reason, while lots of other things just sort of screech and shriek.
Like the color yellow. It… It scratches at him, that’s the only word he can think of to describe it, scratches him in an unbearably painful way. As a small child, anything yellow sent him into throes of agony. Now he can control himself a bit better, not because the pain has lessened, because he’s found ways to deal with it. Namely by focusing on something else soothing that doesn’t require the entirety of his attention. Like the pebbles. He can listen to them and be calmed, and still be able to deal with the outside as well.
It’s strange, because he’s totally fine with the sounds that gold and orange and green produce in his mind’s ear, and they are relatively close to yellow. Jin’s long since given up trying to figure out the logic behind how he hears. The questions haven’t gone away, he’s just accepted that he’ll never have an explanation, or that anyone will understand. It’s an awful, whiny thing to think, but it’s true.
Sights and tastes and touches don’t sing to other people. Only actual singing does. Jin pities them, sort of.
Then there’s the dancing, which is something else altogether, more of a quirky talent than a difference in perception. Emotions, for Jin, manifest best as dance steps whose intricacy and elaborateness increase proportionally to the complexity of his mood. It’d be easier for him to literally show someone else how he’s feeling with a twirl or a shimmy or a shake of his hips, than to put the contents of his heart into words. In fact, often, in order to communicate how he feels, he has to mentally dance the sentiment and then translate it into words as they come to him, which often results in him tripping over his speech. After all, it’s not like the dance is smooth and instantaneous, any more than emotions are. It takes time to put together.
It’s hard for Jin to get along with other Japanese kids, who, like their parents, constantly stress about fitting in and conforming to the norm. The nail that sticks up get smashed down… Jin never stood a chance, really; it’d take a hell of a lot more than the metaphorical tap of the hammer of isolation and bullying to get him into place, because in addition to being different, he’s self-confident and obstinate.
Physical beauty is a nonentity to Jin. To him, it’s the sound of something in his mind, the dance that it starts in his heart that matters. It ends up being to his benefit though, that he’s quite handsome. People tend to be a little more lenient towards him, at least at first, because he’s got good looks.
“More pebbles, Jin?” Mom sighs when she sees the familiar bulge in his pocket. “You’re going to run out of space in your room.”
“That’s alright; Reio’s got tons in his.” Jin smirked, shoved his little brother out of his way -because if the kid was going to protest, Jin might as well give him something to wail about for real- and ignored his mother’s scolding as he took he stairs two-at-a-time up to his room. Because no one was watching, he let his feelings run wild, and once he’d reached the second floor he tap danced the rest of the way to his room.
“Jin! No dancing!” Mom yelled from downstairs. Once again, Jin ignored her. It felt good to be unrestrained after a day of trying to get by without being punished for who he was and how he acted. Mom might admonish, but she was never serious about getting Jin to change. She just wanted to try to save him from being hurt by the rest of the world, who didn’t adore and accept him unconditionally, like she did. And, to protect her from being hurt like she tried to do for him, Jin never told her about some of the things he’d been subjected to. Love, after all, was about give-and-take.
The windowsills of Jin’s room were completely covered with pebbles. To the unobservant eye, or rather, to any eye that didn’t belong to Jin, they weren’t organized in the slightest. In fact, they were arranged to produce a delightful chorus that only he could hear. So while physically they were in disarray, harmonically, they couldn’t be more euphonic. Carefully, he placed the new additions to his collection in the spots where they’d sound the best.
With all the lovely music from his room resonating at once, if he wanted to hear one thing clearly, it helped to touch it. At the moment, he was in the mood for feathers. They matched the lightness in his heart and in his feet; he skipped across the floor to where they took up one entire row of his bookshelf, layer upon layer of downy freedom lost by birds and found by him.
At first he could only manage to breathe, overcome though he knew their songs well by now. Then, when it became bearable, Jin sang along, his high notes soaring up beside those belonging to the feathers.
His mother couldn’t bear to interrupt. While it was physically impossible for her to feel even remotely like Jin did, she could and did sense the beauty in the normal way. So she waited until he’d quieted and sunk onto his bed, tired and happy and a little bit hungry because really, he was always hungry, to knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
She entered. “Jin, the school called again today. And don’t say ‘who cares, they call every day’. This is serious. At the rate you’re going, you aren’t going to be able to finish middle school on time. Won’t you at least make an effort to do the homework and participate in class?”
“Can’t I just go the international school? I can stand the people there. I’d learn there.” Jin curled up into a ball before his body could start showing its anger through motion. That would just make his mom wince and tiredly reprimand him again, and he didn’t want to put her through that, or have to deal with it himself.
Mom sighed. “Jin, we’ve been over this a hundred times. You have to take a test to get into an international school, and you don’t know anywhere near enough to pass. All you have to do is graduate middle school, Jin. High school… Well, it’s not really in the picture for you at this point. Graduating middle school is mandatory though. If you’d just try harder, it won’t take any more time for you than it takes for anyone else.”
The choice of words made him tense, because he knew what they were both thinking: that he’s not like anyone else, and it kind of sucks.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Without noticing it, Jin had started to rock, which he always did when he was sad as a prelude to the dance steps that expressed his sorrow (which differed, depending on the degree of it). Embarrassed, he stilled himself. “It’s fine! I mean, it’s fine. I’ll work harder, okay?”
“The school suggested that we get a tutor. Isn’t that a good idea?” The false cheeriness in her voice pains him.
“Yes.” Jin responded dully. “Why not?” He doubts that a tutor will do him any good, but maybe he’ll be able to trick the guy into giving him some answers on his homework or something.
“Great! I’ll ask them to send someone over. Now, come downstairs and have a snack, and promise your baby brother that you’re not going to pile those dirty rocks in his room.” She smiled and flicked one with her index finger, oblivious to the shiver that ran through Jin’s spine when she did so. As he followed her out of the room, he quickly righted the pebble and corrected the mistake she’d inadvertently caused in the symphony.
Ryo Nishikido isn’t at all what Jin expected. For one, he’s from Osaka, which is the first thing he tells Jin about himself, after his name. Even if he hadn’t said so, his accent is quite strong. For another, he looks like he’s about eight, when in reality he’s the same age as Jin, fourteen, in his last year of middle school.
“No short jokes. They’re what got me into this tutoring crap in the first place.” The warning doesn’t exactly fill Jin with confidence that Ryo will be able to help him succeed, or at least pass.
“So you got assigned to me as a punishment?”
“Yup. And based on how stupid your teachers told me you are, it’s a punishment that far exceeds my crime in harshness.”
Jin wonders how many times he can use the word “tiny” before Ryo snaps. Seven, it turns out. The little guy packs a wallop, but Jin’s an experienced fighter, not to mention his height and weight advantage, so Ryo ends up pinned to the floor, struggling fruitlessly until he finally gives in and mutters for “mercy.”
Adrenaline racing through his body (Jin loves a good scuffle, especially when he wins), Jin stood and started to dance, not caring that Ryo was watching because if the kid teased him, he could just beat him up again. Besides, once he started the steps, Ryo faded from his consciousness completely. Jin danced to satisfy himself, to release the passion he felt in this instant of time.
When he finished, Ryo clapped slowly. It seemed sarcastic until he said: “you’re good” in a voice that expressed too much admiration to be ingenuous. “I wish I could move like that.”
“It’s just the way I am.” Jin said with a shrug. Accepting compliments wasn't exactly a strong point of his, mostly because they were few and far between. “Same as some people can run fast or solve math problems.”
“Yeah. Speaking of which…”
They got down to business. Soon, Jin comes to like Ryo, and despite his sharp-tongued-ness, Jin’s inclined to believe that Ryo doesn’t hate him all that much either. Even when his punishment is up, and the school sends someone else to tutor Jin, Ryo comes over at least once a week to hang out. He’s the first friend that Jin’s ever made outside of the foreign kids who attend the nearby international school and who let him chill with them sometimes.
Most of the time that they’re together is spent fighting about one thing or another, since both of them are quick-tempered and neither of them like to compromise. Ryo loves to insult him, and he’s witty enough that oftentimes Jin can’t come up with decent verbal response and just has to hit him. But for all that Ryo seems mean, he never once teases Jin about his oddities (instead, he mocks his intelligence, his lack of a girlfriend, his lack of skill at video games, and pretty much anything else that he can think of), and as a result, Jin trusts Ryo completely and is unafraid of being himself around Ryo.
“You ever think about putting your singing and dancing together?”
Jin shrugged. “Not really.” Now that he considered it, it did seem odd that he’d never tried to combine what were arguably the two focal points of his existence. The notion simply hadn’t occurred to him. “See, when I sing, I’m mirroring the feeling that something else gives me. When I dance, it’s expressing the things that I feel for myself. It doesn’t seem like I could put them together.”
“Try.” Ryo ordered.
“What should I sing?”
“It doesn’t matter! Anything will do. Seriously, you’re such a retard sometimes.”
“Fine, jerk-off. I won’t do it then.”
They glared at each other; Ryo caved first. “Fine, fine. Um, sing something easy. Like ‘Kono Hoshi de Umarete,’ you know that song, don’t you?”
In fact, Jin had heard it once or twice at school, enough times to know the lyrics to the chorus, because a few girls in his class thought the singer was “cute” or something. So he tried. It was hard to focus on forming the lyrics and staying in tune while simultaneously moving his body in a way that reflected how the song made him feel. Jin wanted to lose himself in the motions and the tune in his head and forget the words that meant nothing to him. The only reason why he didn’t is because he knew Ryo would make fun of him for it.
“Not bad.” Was Ryo’s verdict when he finished the part of the song that he remembered. “You basically managed to be in-tune, and you dancing was pretty good, if unentertaining at times.” That was a huge compliment, coming from Ryo.
“Ah. Wanna tell me what the point of that was, or are you going to tell me what to do some more?”
“The second option. Now, I know this might be hard for a loser like you, but try to remember these steps.”
Dramatically over-exaggerating, ostensibly to make them easier to remember, Ryo showed Jin the moves that he wanted him to copy. It took all of a minute for Jin to commit them to memory. “Very good.” Ryo praised him like one might a small child. Jin ignored the overwhelming desire to stuff his smaller friend’s face into the nearest toilet.
“Match the steps to the beat now.” As Ryo clapped, Jin danced mechanically. “For crying out loud, put some feeling into it, Jin! This is important.”
“Why? I don’t get why I’m doing all of this.”
“Because if you don't suck, you can try out for the talent agency I’m in. Or do you have a better idea for what you’re going to do with yourself once you graduate middle school?”
“Wait, talent agency? But Ryo, you have no talent.”
It was exactly the sort of remark that would ordinarily make Ryo snap. This time, however, he just narrowed his eyes and clapped louder, making Jin dance for nearly half an hour until he was finally satisfied.
“Alright. You can definitely learn to dance like you’re supposed to, if you’re forced. That’s good enough, although eventually, you’re going to have to figure out how to dance and sing well at the same time.”
Jin collapsed onto his futon and put his head in Ryo’s lap. “So you’re going to make me a rockstar now, Ryo.”
Ryo laughed and pushed Jin’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “More like a pop idol. And it’s not gonna be me. You have to send in an application, then go audition, and if you pass, you get a manager. They basically do all the work. We’ll get to spend more time together, though. Magazine photoshoots and live performances tend to take place in Tokyo.”
“So that’s why you’re here all the time, even though you think that Osaka is better. Ahhh, I thought it was for me.” Jin pretended to pout up at Ryo. Unexpectedly, the other boy flushed.
“Of course it’s not for you… You make it worth it, though.” Ryo mumbled. Because he knew his friend, Jin pretended not to hear and didn’t make a big deal over the kind words. On the inside though, his heart was singing like it never had before, and his arms and legs nearly twitched to dance out the whirlwind of happiness swirling within him.
Jin does his best to recall that amazing feeling as he struggles through the audition process. The dance is just so wrong for the song that Jin can’t force his feet to follow the steps that they want him to. Annoyed, they tell him to hand in his number, and he does so, planning to tell Ryo that he decided that he didn’t want to spend his life in sparkles, instead of that he failed.
Only the old man that he gives his number to gives it right back, before patting him on the head and telling him that he sees something in Jin. Something good.
Nobody has ever told Jin that before. Face lit up by a smile that’s simultaneously surprised and screaming “suck on this, bitches!” Jin makes up a new dance that incorporates the few correct steps that the dance instructors had been trying to impose upon him with what he felt were the right moves.
The old man is actually the owner of the whole company, and he promises that if Jin listens to him, and to whatever professionals the old man sends to guide him, he’ll let Jin have a freedom that isn’t usually afforded to idols. Jin says okay.
That night, Ryo takes Jin to Osaka to celebrate, and after stuffing himself to the point of pain with takoyaki, udon, and okonomiyaki, Jin is forced to admit that food in Osaka is probably better than food and Tokyo, to Ryo’s glee. While they’re enjoying the wares of one final food stand, a bunch of Ryo’s Osakan friends, guys who are also apparently in Johnny’s, show up. Ryo introduces them to Jin, but he’s never been good with names.
After that, they go to a bar. Technically, the stamps that they were all given upon entrance are supposed to keep people from selling them alcoholic beverages. Though given the age-range of the present clientele, combined with the bar’s obvious popularity, Jin’s willing to bet that a fair amount of looking the other way while pouring goes on. Sure enough, it’s not long before most of the guys who Jin came with, including Ryo, who still looks like an elementary school kid, have some sort of drink.
The atmosphere is raucous to the extent of cacophony, young people reveling in their ability to flaunt the law through drinking themselves silly. It’s grating, more than Jin can take, but he can’t very well leave, he has no idea where he is, so he just closes his eyes and reaches for the pebble in his pocket.
“Here, take this. Uchi won’t notice.” Ryo jostles his shoulder and thrusts a cup into his free hand before wading back into the crowd of his buddies. The continuous rhythmic motion ends up being soothing; take a sip, squeeze the pebble, take a sip, squeeze the pebble. Before long, Jin feels good enough to open his eyes again.
Someone he doesn’t recognize is sitting beside him. It could be one of Ryo’s friends, or it could be a complete stranger. He asks the bartender for a Shirley Temple, and Jin is surprised to hear that he has a Tokyo accent, instead of an Osakan one. When he sees Jin staring at him, he nods and gives him a tiny smile, which makes Jin think that he came with Ryo’s crowd.
His clothing makes him seem fashionable, not that Jin really has a clue. Stylish for Jin means not wearing stripes and checkers at the same time. So he just says the first thing that comes to his mind.
“The color yellow sucks. It should be voted out of the rainbow.”
The guy snorts into his soda, and it’s then that Jin realizes that while Ryo might look young, this kid actually is. Jin’s not the greatest at guessing ages, but now that he’s noticing more than just cool outfit and carefully gelled hair, he can see the awkward just-beginning-to-elongate limbs and hear the unsteady squeak in his laughter that are the hallmarks of fourteen.
“I don’t think that’s quite how rainbows work, Jin Akanishi.”
Surprise must have registered on his features, because the younger boy quickly says: “um, I was with you at the audition. Like, literally right next to you, until the old guy pulled you aside.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess I was supposed to fail, only he’s the boss and he wanted to keep me, so…” Jin shrugged the shoulders and wondered why the kid was pulling a face like he’d just eaten something sour. Did it sound like he was bragging? Jin had been called out for being too arrogant on many occasions, though he didn’t really get why. It was the truth, after all, and it’s not like he was making a big deal out of it.
“What’s your name?” He blurted out to change the subject, realizing a second later that it probably only made him look like more of a jerk, first for talking about how he was elite, and then for not remember the name of someone who’d been by his side for the majority of the auditioning process. Not that he cared. What did he care what some fourteen year old thought?
“I’m Kame. Kamenashi. Kazuya. Kazuya Kamenashi. I look forward to working with you in the future. Please support me.”
The tiny smile on his lips was pretty cute. “Nice to meet you, Kame. Again.” Jin winked and got another snorty giggle, to his amusement.
“What are you playing with in your pocket? Yourself?”
“Hell no! It’s just a pebble.”
Kame inspected the little rock that Jin placed on the bar. “Not ‘just’” was his judgement, and Jin was fairly certain that he was being genuine. “Not ‘just’ at all. It’s so perfect and smooth. How did you get it like that?”
“It wasn’t me. The ocean washed the rough right out of it long before I picked it up. I’ve got a lot more like this one in my room, and a lot that got to keep their rough too. All sorts. If you like it, you can keep it. There’s nothing easier in the world to take care of than a pebble; you just find a spot, sunny or shady, it doesn’t make a difference, and let it sit there whenever you’re tired of carrying it around.”
“You talk kind of weird.” Kame said, rolling the pebble between his forefinger and his thumb.
“Words aren’t that easy for me.” Jin replied. “If you like things smooth, you should see what the ocean does to glass. It’s seriously beautiful. It’s like…” He gestured uselessly with his hand. “Well, you know.”
“No, I’ve never seen if before.”
Hesitation. And then: “come outside for a second,” Jin invited, and Kame went readily. The night air was a blanket, hot and heavy, immediately making Kame feel sleepy. It didn’t seem to have any effect on Jin though.
“The smoothness of regular glass is sharp and uniform, manufactured. Sea glass though, it’s perfect without being consistent. Pay attention: this is the difference.”
As Kame looked on, Jin performed the song and dance of glass, a delicate sequence of steps that illustrated the contrast between the glass that went into the ocean and that which that came out of it. When the impromptu show beneath the streetlights was finished, Kame wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t noticed it at the audition, having been occupied with executing the given instructions as best as he could, but now that he’d truly watched Jin, he could see that every movement of the other male’s body was inherently different from his own. It was as though the entirety of his body was a mouth that spoke kinesthetically.
“I bet you’re going to be great. You have no excuse not to be.” Kame said, and if he sounded a little bitter, well, who could blame him? He and Jin were going to be directly competing against each other in the near future, for fans and airtime and everything, and it didn’t take a trained critic to see which of them was obviously the better dancer.
Jin sat down beside him, too close; Kame shifted away and absurdly thought about chemistry, the property of cohesion, and if the beads of sweat on his arms wanted to bond to those on Jin’s. Gross.
“It’s hot.” Jin mumbled, facing straight forward and scooting too close to Kame again. “Huddling together will just make us warmer.” There was a snappish note in Kame’s voice, one that implied “idiot,” that Jin had heard lots of times. He thought about hearing Kame use that tone again in the future and felt inexplicably, simultaneously happy and sad.
“The stars are so bright. It makes being out here worth it. Don’t you like the unreachableness of them?”
Something about the question made Kame soften. “They aren’t really unreachable. We send rocket ships up there all the time.”
“What, rainbows don’t have freedom of choice, but we can touch the stars?”
Jin meant it as a joke, but Kame responded seriously. “I don’t think anybody has freedom of any kind, not truly. Everything is governed by some kind of authority, from your parents to the laws of physics.”
“So you guys are the sober kinds of drunks. Ironic.” Jin and Kame turned in tandem to look at Ryo, lounging in the doorway and laughing at his own play on words.
“Neither of us is drunk.” Kame said indignantly. “We’re not even allowed to drink, although that obviously hasn’t stopped you, Nishikido.” His voice went a little whiny, probably because he was annoyed, and he sounded exactly fourteen.
Ryo sneered and swayed, and swayed and sneered. His eyes weren’t exactly focused. “Ryo?” Was the last thing he heard before he fell face forward, saved from unpleasantly meeting asphalt by Kame’s quick reflexes.
“He’s small, so he doesn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol.” That much, at least, Kame knew. “Can you carry him? You’re staying at his house, right?”
“Probably, if you help. And yeah. Aren’t you staying there too?”
“I got dragged along by Yokoyama, so I thought that I’d stay at his place. He’s friends with my big brothers.”
“Come stay at Ryo’s with me instead.”
“It’s not your home to invite people to.” There was that snappish note again, to Jin’s chagrin, and pleasure. Kame was smiling though, which Jin took to mean ‘yes.’
Surprisingly, Ryo experiences no ill-effects from his encounter with alcohol, other than his fall the night before that Jin recounts with relish, reveling in the abject horror in Ryo’s eyes when he learns that it was Kame who rescued him. “That stays between the three of us, or else.” He threatened; Jin and Kame exchanged smirks and didn’t promise anything.
It made Ryo feel a little bit left out. He’d been friends with Jin for longer, Jin’s only true friend, really, and now he and Kame had bonded. Over what, Ryo didn’t exactly know. The desire to ask what they’d been doing outside, alone, together, itched at him, but he refused to scratch it and thereby make himself look weak. Instead, Ryo was even snappier than usual, to the point where Jin wondered if he was lying and actually did have a headache from having imbibed too much, and had only said that he was fine because he was trying to act tough.
Kame didn’t care to try and speculate about why Ryo was being so mean. As far as he knew, the teen just has a bad attitude. “Screw you, I’m going back to Yokoyama’s. Dealing with you isn’t worth it, even if you do have great taste in music.” The three boys had been going through Ryo’s CD collection, although Ryo refused to play any of the songs that Kame picked out and said that he’d like to hear. “Want to go too, Jin?”
Jin got to his feet, one arm extended slightly towards Kame, the other towards Ryo, literally torn by indecision. When Kame finally grew impatient with waiting for a response, he walked out of the room, and Jin was left hoping that Kame hadn’t insisted that he come out of kindness, so as not to drive a wedge between him and Ryo (and not because Kame didn’t actually want to be with Jin and had only invited him to be polite). Kame seemed to be a very polite boy. Jin and Ryo listened silently as he thanked Ryo’s parents and shut the front door quietly behind him on the way out.
“C’mere, jerkoff.” When several minutes had passed without Kame’s returning and saying that he’d only been joking about leaving, that he was going to fight back against Ryo now like Jin would have, Jin turned to Ryo. The smaller male let Jin push him down onto the futon on his back. “Don’t touch my face! I don’t know where you’ve been.” Ryo protested when Jin started to rub his forehead. “Shut up. This’ll make you feel better.”
What would really make Ryo feel better was if Kame just went away. “You know, you joined Johnny’s to spend more time with me. Not other people. And because dancing and singing are the only things you can do right. Why…” Ryo bit down hard on his tongue before it could betray him further. “Forget it.”
Jin flopped down beside Ryo. “Damn, Akanishi, you’re always too close.” Ryo grumbled. He didn’t move though.
“Will we be in a group together, Ryo-chan?”
“No way. I’ll be with other guys from Kansai. You, you’ll get thrown together with some kids from Tokyo. They don’t mix east and west. Hey, maybe we’ll get to fight against each other! I’d get paid to kick your ass in front of millions of my adoring fans. How great would that be?”
It ends up that Ryo’s prediction is correct (though only partially, time will tell). And Kame is one of those “kids from Tokyo,” to Jin’s delight. It affected Jin to see the emotions reflected in Ryo’s eyes change lightning-fast when Jin triumphantly told him, from surprise to jealousy to anger to happiness. How, he could not exactly put into words.
“Fucking lucky is what you are. I’ve been in longer, and even I haven’t been put into a proper unit yet.” Ryo complained. “Koki’s great, he’s been in the agency for a while. We actually sang together a couple times.”
“I don’t really like any of them. They aren’t terrible though. Kame’s great, so…” As usual, when Jin referenced Kame, Ryo clammed up. It made Jin wonder a little, about what Ryo’s feelings were for Kame exactly. Whatever they were, they were obviously strong.
“I bet I’ll get to debut before you.” Jin teased, breaking the tension. “No way in hell!”
They stay up late, playing soccer under the stars. “What’s it sound like?” Ryo asked as he tried to steal the ball from Jin. “What’s what sound like?”
“You know! Soccer.” Panting happily, Jin raced down the field with the ball, Ryo in hot pursuit.
“I’ve never focused on it. Usually, I’m too busy beating you at it to care what it sounds like.” As he thought, Jin practiced his lifting, trying to get Ryo frustrated because there was something undeniably cute about how he lost his temper. “If you mean, ‘what do you hear when you think about soccer,’ it’s all the music of racing hearts and sweat and happy, fast paced and familiar. It’s nice.”
“Sounds like sex.” The ball dropped. Hard as it was to believe, them being two healthy, teenage boys, the topic of sex had never come up between them before.
“I guess.” Jin laughed awkwardly. “Kame said it’s like that anyways.”
“You talked about sex with him? Wait, he’s had sex? He’s just a kid!” Ryo’s voice always took a certain tone when he said “him” or “he” meaning Kame, so Jin always knew whom he meant.
“With an older girl. He said it was nice, but that he was no good at it.” Ryo barked a single cruel laugh unfeelingly because he felt obligated to. “Have you had it?”
“Yes.” Jin quirked an eyebrow at him. “Alright, no.” Ryo relented. “Not yet. When I do though, I’ll be good at it. Unlike him.”
“You’re always saying bad things about Kame.”
Sometimes, Jin’s voice took on a really annoying quality. It wasn’t quite a whine, just the undertone of one, and it infuriated Ryo. He shoved Jin hard enough to make him stumble and fall. “So what? I can say whatever I want, about him or anyone else.”
Equally mad, Jin kicked Ryo’s shins, causing him to cry out and join Jin on the ground, where Jin quickly pinned him. “After all these years you still can’t win a fight against me. You’re too small.” The taunt made Ryo thrash harder, and Jin, in turn, pressed down harder with all his weight.
“Fatass, you’re squishing me.” Ryo’s voice was strained. “I can’t breathe.” Past his fury, since Ryo was too, Jin eased up. Fights were always like that between them. They burned fiercely and quickly, and then they were done.
“My shorts are all twisted.” Jin laughed. “I can’t believe I gave you a handless wedgie. That takes skill.”
“Whatever, let me up so I can fix it, it’s seriously aggravating.”
Before bothering to consider the repercussions, Jin was putting his hands down Ryo’s pants and adjusting his underwear. Ryo was too stunned to react.
“What? No comment about violations of personal space?”
It was hot, having Ryo underneath him. Jin wondered why he hadn’t noticed that ages ago. There was just something thrilling about being on top of another person.
“I wonder what kind of music I would make with a partner. A duet. I should ask Kame…”
And then Jin was on his back on the ground and Ryo was stomping furiously off the field.
The way Ryo acted doesn’t worry Jin, until he sees Ryo in the corridor the next day and his friend doesn’t respond to his greeting, not even with a cursory grunt or glare. At dance practice, Jin is off, his nervousness about what to do with Ryo manifesting physically and interfering with his ability to learn the designated steps.
“Ueda, can’t we have a break?” Kame demands. While Ueda is leader in name, it is Kame who calls most of the shots in KAT-TUN. Jin ambles into the hall, hoping to find the room where Ryo was by chance, since he doesn’t have a clue.
It’s got to be some sort of luck that he finds Ryo in the stairwell instead. Bad luck, maybe, since he’s talking and laughing with another boy exactly like how he should be talking and laughing with Jin.
“What’s up with your hands?”
The guy he doesn’t know asks. Jin stuffs them into his pockets. “Nothing. Who are you?”
Ryo smirked at him. “Pi, dumbass, he’s Pi the golden boy. And the guy with the over-active hands is KAT-TUN’s Jin.”
Jin interjected: “I’m just Jin, not anybody’s anything.” Of course Jin’s happy to be part of a unit. He knows full well that it means his success is pretty much guaranteed. However, he doesn’t intend to give up his identity, or his dreams, just because he was fortunate enough to be sorted into some random group of guys.
Ryo took a step back when Jin drew close to him, and it hurt. “Here,” he said, his voice nearly inaudible. “I wanted you to have one too.” Without looking into his eyes, Jin passed Ryo a pebble and then raced up the steps two at a time, ducking into the first door that he saw.
It was empty, probably because it being renovated. The back half of the room was nonexistent except for some crumbly plaster. In hopes of sorting out his feelings, Jin got as near to the edge as he dared and began to hum to himself. Time passed, though he wasn’t cognizant of it in the slightest.
Then arms wrapped around his waist and yanked back. “What are you doing, Jin?” Kame sounded weary. “Thinking about Ryo,” was the honest response. “And you too, Kame.”
“He’d probably laugh at you if you told him that.”
“You do it too.”
“Laugh at you? Well, yeah, you’re funny when you do stupid things---”
“Not that!” Jin interrupted. “You say ‘he’ in a certain way when you mean Ryo. Ryo does it for you. Hey, do you guys…” A sly smile spread across Jin’s lips.
“Jin, I have no idea what you’re thinking, but you’d better stop it right now.” Kame warned, now wary rather than weary.
“Right, right. What did you say I had to do? Costume fitting? Lets go!” It doesn’t even bother him that the costumes are a hideous yellow, he’s so happy with the plan that’s forming in his mind, although later he’ll complain and complain about them until they get handed down to another junior unit. When the other members of his unit unanimously comment (which is a feat in it of itself, given their propensity for disagreement) that Jin is even less focused than usual, he says that it’s because he doesn’t have anything to weigh him down.
As Jin and Kame walk to the train station together, Kame breaks their companionable silence with an odd statement. “It must feel like betrayal. I’m sorry.”
“You’re both worth it, Kame, totally and completely. Besides, sometimes being in Johnny’s feels like a betrayal too, and you don’t see me giving that up. And I like you and Ryo a whole lot more than I like Johnny’s.”
Kame gives Jin a look that means “elaborate, you’re not making sense,” something that he often shoots at Jin during magazine interviews and talk shows, so Jin continues.
“Every time I take my body and make it move to someone else’s beat, singing words that mean nothing to mean composed by someone else, it’s like a betrayal to the movement and voice of my heart. It’s not such a big deal though. I understand that I can’t always do things my own way. And it’s worth it because I get to be with you and Ryo-chan, who are also both worth it. Am I worth it to you?”
Kame tugged on Jin’s elbow until the other boy stopped and faced him. “It’s not the same situation at all, but yes, Jin, fuck yes, you are worth it.” There’s something raw and painful in Kame’s voice that makes Jin hurt. He can’t figure out why Kame sounds that way though, and knows instinctively that he shouldn’t ask, so Jin just smiles at him and starts to hum the song of the feathers, which always makes him feel great, and then begins to walk again, with Kame at his heels listening intently.
The next day, Ryo isn’t mad at all, though he is kind of confused. “Why’d you give me a pebble, Jin? I know you like them, they’re all over your room.”
“I don’t know. I just wanted you to have it. I gave one to Kame to.” From the way Jin was shuffling his feet, Ryo realized that he couldn’t press for more information because Jin wouldn’t be able to verbalize. “If you think of a better reason, let me know. It’s not exactly normal for guys to go around giving other guys little rocks.”
“Will you keep it?”
“Of course I’ll keep it. You gave it to me, didn’t you?”
The emphasis on the “you” is meant to be an insult; it just makes Jin happy though.
He finally gets a chance to carry out his plan a year later. “Suck on THIS, Jin! I’m in two groups and I get to debut before you!” Ryo’s crowing, but beneath the triumph in his voice is worry. “Yeah, yeah. You’re going to be amazing; you’re with Pi, right?” Now that Ryo is his again, Jin doesn’t hate the so-called golden boy. They’re even friends.
“Uh-huh. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I debuted twice before you? First with NEWS, then with Kanjani8?”
Jin elbowed Ryo. “Not gonna happen. Hey, why don't you come over tonight? We’ll celebrate. With booze.” That part was implied, but Jin stated it anyways. Alcohol made a great social lubricant for someone like Jin, who still kind of sucked at interacting with others in a regular sort of way. Plus, there was always something delicious in the forbidden. “Make it around 10. Everyone else in my house will be asleep by then.”
Obviously, Jin doesn’t tell Ryo that Kame will be there to.
“Congratulations, Nishikido.” Kame manages to actually sound sincere, and Ryo doctors his expression so that it shows only mild, rather than outright, disgust. “Um. Thanks.” It isn’t a true smile on his lips by any stretch of the imagination. It isn’t quite a scowl though, and that’s good enough.
They each take a couple of swigs from the bottles Jin had been hiding under his blanket just for the sake of drinking, not to get drunk.
“Why do you have all this stuff in your room?” Kame wants to know.
“It’s kind of complicated.” Jin replied, taking in the assorted objects that he’d collected over the years. Right now, focused as he was on Ryo and Kame, he could hardly hear them.
“I guess you could say that it’s in my head. Or maybe, if you want to think about it in a different way, it’s NOT in your head. Nor anybody else’s, as far as I know. For me, everything on this earth has a voice. Everything sings. Sometimes I like to sing along, so I collect the songs and keep ‘em close. Sometimes, though, I wish I could close my ears the way I can close my eyes, because it hurts.”
“What about the dancing?” Again, Kame is the one to ask.
“My body talks better than my mouth. When I feel something, I want to show it, not say it. My heart pumps the emotions through my veins, into my arms and legs and all over, and they just move me, literally. That’s why I do what I do.”
“Why so many pebbles?” This time it’s Ryo who speaks up, to Jin’s surprise. His friend had never showed any overt curiosity in his collection before. “Oh. Well, they’re special, in that I used to use them to keep me grounded in this world.”
“You don’t anymore?” Kame and Ryo question in unison, then make identical disgruntled faces. “Stop copying me!”
“No. Not anymore. Now that I have you guys, I want to be part of this world, and don’t need little anchors to keep me tied to it. You’re enough.”
The statement puts a sudden stop to the budding argument between Ryo and Kame.
“I know that you guys have feelings for each other as well.”
And that began a whole new fight.
“Excuse me?” “Are you stupid? No, wait, I know I know the answer to that.”
“I know it’s true! You guys use special tones to refer to each other.”
“Th-that’s hatred, dumbass!” “Pure, unadulterated hatred.”
“C’mon. Don’t you want to try to make music together?”
The trio fell silent after Jin voiced his query. As he had before, Jin reached out slightly, one hand towards Kame, one hand towards Ryo. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he didn’t want to choose between them, and he knew that he didn’t have to. Although Jin operated on a very different wavelength from most other humans, he understood Ryo and Kame, and therefore was certain that while they might deny it, there was definitely chemistry between the two of them, and between each of them and himself. It could work. Jin would make it work.
“Yeah, okay. At least sex will keep your stupid mouth shut, Kamenashi.” Ryo caved. He figured he could always blame it on the alcohol later.
“Quite the opposite, Ryo-chan. I intend to make Kame-chan sing.”
And really, how could Kame say “no” when Jin was promising that in such a sultry voice? Even Ryo gulped, and Jin wasn’t talking about him. “What about me?” His tone was an even mixture of demanding and really turned on. “What are you going to do to me?”
“First, I’m going to have you take your clothes off. Both of you.” It was ironic how Ryo and Kame, who were so often the bossy ones, jumped to do what Jin said. Words had never been Jin’s strong point, yet in this context he knew exactly how to weave them into an erotic spell, the pauses that he routinely took to locate the correct piece of vocabulary now working in his advantage to build and build suspense.
By the time they were both naked, Jin having instructed them throughout the process, Kame and Ryo were both to desperate to protest when Jin said that they should kiss. Instead they fell upon each other ravenously, vying for dominance, which technically they shouldn’t have been doing. Because Jin was the one in control.
When fingertips brushed across the nape of his neck, Ryo moaned into Kame’s mouth. Jin’s touch fueled him to kiss Kame harder, only the other man had stopped responding. Pulling back slightly, not far enough to move out of Jin’s grasp, Ryo opened his eyes and found Jin gently mouthing Kame’s neck in a way that was oddly nearly symmetric with how he was touching Ryo, leaving the tiniest impressions of his teeth and little pink welts all over it.
“Ahhh…” It was more of an exhale than a moan. Kame was trying his best to keep quiet, being by far the most inhibited of the three of them. Ryo took it as a challenge and joined Jin in leaving marks (ones that Kame would feel but that would not last long enough to cause trouble at work) on Kame’s neck.
Jin curled his fingers into Ryo’s hair and tugged back gently. In response, Ryo immediately stepped back, and as he did Kame half fell, half shuffled forward, dependent upon Ryo to keep him standing. In that way, the three of them made their way to Jin’s bed without pausing their respective ministrations.
Throughout the time that they were both kissing Kame, Jin never once broke eye contact with Ryo, and Ryo was so completely wrapped up in his gaze, and in eliciting reactions from Kame, that when Jin breathed: “touch him now, Kame,” although Ryo physically heard the order, it still came as a shock when fingers began stroking their way down to his erect cock.
“Lube?” Ryo whimpered, because although he was a virgin, he knew the mechanics of sex.
“Huh?”
The cutely puzzled look on Jin’s face and his confused tone of voice completely broke the mood. “You’re such a virgin.” Kame groaned.
“You weren’t complaining a second ago, Mr. I’ve-had-sex-once-so-that-makes-me-an-expert-obviously.” Jin retorted, affronted at the insult to his ego.
“Whatever. We’ll teach you all about the requirements of a threesome after we finish with this.” Ryo said decisively. “Where were we?”
“Here.” And, without having to be told to, Kame took Ryo into his mouth, sucking lightly. Ryo would have cried out, had Jin not hastily hushed him for fear of waking the rest of his family.
“What about me, Kame?” Just like that, Jin was once again in control. Kame met Jin’s eyes and began to bob his head, his gaze conveying complete eagerness to please. Pensively running his fingertips over Ryo’s body, an action that heightened the other boy’s pleasure immensely, Jin finally began to touch himself, with a slight twist.
“Don’t let him come until I’m ready to.” By teasing himself, he teased Ryo, keeping the both of them on the brink of orgasm with the assistance of Kame, the obedient proxy. It was Jin who ultimately brought Ryo off, however, pushing Kame’s mouth off of Ryo and immediately taking up stroking his friend so that when they came, they both striped Kame with sticky white, and it was impossible to tell whose cum was whose.
“Now it’s your turn.” Jin and Ryo traded off licking Kame’s erection until the youngest of the three of them was mewling and squirming with desperation. Once again, it was Jin who took full responsibility for the orgasm, making Kame add his own cum to the mess already cooling on his stomach, chin, and chest.
“That was amazing.” Kame breathed, all depth gone from his voice, while Jin and Ryo cleaned him off as best they could with some tissues.
“I guess now Jin can say he’s decent at three things: singing, dancing, and sex.”
The three laughed tiredly.
“So, what does it sound like?”
Jin knew exactly what Ryo was asking; Kame sat up, suddenly alert and interested in hearing the answer to the question that he’d been thinking too.
“It sounds like everything does when it’s with the two of you.”
Jin smiled, pulled Ryo and Kame close, and whispered:
“It sounds like I want it to last forever. Because even though I’m my own self, and I’ll never give up my dreams, I’m yours too. Both of yours. Forever.”
When he wasn’t so tired, Jin would show them in his way, through song and through dance. For now though, he lay down between his two most important people, and slept.
By: juniority
Pairing: Kamenashi Kazuya/Akanishi Jin/Nishikido Ryo
Word count: 8,400
Rating: NC-17
Genre/Warnings: Slightly introspective, some romance, and a bit of fluff and humor, with one explicit sexual scene that involves a threesome.
Notes: This fanfiction takes place in the past, from approximately the summer of 2000 to the autumn of 2003, and follows the factual timeline of Kame, Jin, and Ryo’s lives, although it is, of course, completely fictional.
Summary: Pebbles are the only thing keeping Jin anchored in the world outside of the music in his head and heart. His life has always been an unhappy balance of living in his own universe, and forcing himself to interact with others in a way that they can understand. Then he meets Ryo, and then Kame. Now Jin has to try and figure out how to have them both, even though they can’t stand each other.
Jin often picks up pebbles. Feathers too, and grains of sand completely indistinguishable from the billions of others bordering the ocean, and shells and string and the stems of dandelions whose wishes have long since been scattered in the breeze. Lots of things. Mostly though, it’s pebbles that he likes.
The ordinary little bits of rock keep him grounded, a slight weight in his pocket or the palm of his hand that he can touch at any time his mind starts to wander.
“Focus, Jin, try to focus.” First it’s his mom that tells him, then teachers and the instructors at his after school activities. A lot of them think he’s stupid, a self-centered, attention-deficient brat who can’t even bother to pretend to be interested in the things that bore him (everything, basically) long enough to keep himself out of trouble. It isn’t uncommon, after all, for kids to be bored by their classes. Jin just doesn’t bother to put up a façade, and thus spends a lot of his formative years getting yelled at.
Until he discovers the pebble trick. While sometimes it’s not enough, it definitely helps. Jin both loves and hates the pebbles because they drag him out of his personal world, a world of music and motion, into the world of pure commotion that grates on his nerves but that he must participate in, if he wants to get by.
The pebbles sing to him, the ones that he chooses. Well, everything sings to him; the point is, the pebbles that he picks have lovely voices, he chooses them solely for that reason, while lots of other things just sort of screech and shriek.
Like the color yellow. It… It scratches at him, that’s the only word he can think of to describe it, scratches him in an unbearably painful way. As a small child, anything yellow sent him into throes of agony. Now he can control himself a bit better, not because the pain has lessened, because he’s found ways to deal with it. Namely by focusing on something else soothing that doesn’t require the entirety of his attention. Like the pebbles. He can listen to them and be calmed, and still be able to deal with the outside as well.
It’s strange, because he’s totally fine with the sounds that gold and orange and green produce in his mind’s ear, and they are relatively close to yellow. Jin’s long since given up trying to figure out the logic behind how he hears. The questions haven’t gone away, he’s just accepted that he’ll never have an explanation, or that anyone will understand. It’s an awful, whiny thing to think, but it’s true.
Sights and tastes and touches don’t sing to other people. Only actual singing does. Jin pities them, sort of.
Then there’s the dancing, which is something else altogether, more of a quirky talent than a difference in perception. Emotions, for Jin, manifest best as dance steps whose intricacy and elaborateness increase proportionally to the complexity of his mood. It’d be easier for him to literally show someone else how he’s feeling with a twirl or a shimmy or a shake of his hips, than to put the contents of his heart into words. In fact, often, in order to communicate how he feels, he has to mentally dance the sentiment and then translate it into words as they come to him, which often results in him tripping over his speech. After all, it’s not like the dance is smooth and instantaneous, any more than emotions are. It takes time to put together.
It’s hard for Jin to get along with other Japanese kids, who, like their parents, constantly stress about fitting in and conforming to the norm. The nail that sticks up get smashed down… Jin never stood a chance, really; it’d take a hell of a lot more than the metaphorical tap of the hammer of isolation and bullying to get him into place, because in addition to being different, he’s self-confident and obstinate.
Physical beauty is a nonentity to Jin. To him, it’s the sound of something in his mind, the dance that it starts in his heart that matters. It ends up being to his benefit though, that he’s quite handsome. People tend to be a little more lenient towards him, at least at first, because he’s got good looks.
“More pebbles, Jin?” Mom sighs when she sees the familiar bulge in his pocket. “You’re going to run out of space in your room.”
“That’s alright; Reio’s got tons in his.” Jin smirked, shoved his little brother out of his way -because if the kid was going to protest, Jin might as well give him something to wail about for real- and ignored his mother’s scolding as he took he stairs two-at-a-time up to his room. Because no one was watching, he let his feelings run wild, and once he’d reached the second floor he tap danced the rest of the way to his room.
“Jin! No dancing!” Mom yelled from downstairs. Once again, Jin ignored her. It felt good to be unrestrained after a day of trying to get by without being punished for who he was and how he acted. Mom might admonish, but she was never serious about getting Jin to change. She just wanted to try to save him from being hurt by the rest of the world, who didn’t adore and accept him unconditionally, like she did. And, to protect her from being hurt like she tried to do for him, Jin never told her about some of the things he’d been subjected to. Love, after all, was about give-and-take.
The windowsills of Jin’s room were completely covered with pebbles. To the unobservant eye, or rather, to any eye that didn’t belong to Jin, they weren’t organized in the slightest. In fact, they were arranged to produce a delightful chorus that only he could hear. So while physically they were in disarray, harmonically, they couldn’t be more euphonic. Carefully, he placed the new additions to his collection in the spots where they’d sound the best.
With all the lovely music from his room resonating at once, if he wanted to hear one thing clearly, it helped to touch it. At the moment, he was in the mood for feathers. They matched the lightness in his heart and in his feet; he skipped across the floor to where they took up one entire row of his bookshelf, layer upon layer of downy freedom lost by birds and found by him.
At first he could only manage to breathe, overcome though he knew their songs well by now. Then, when it became bearable, Jin sang along, his high notes soaring up beside those belonging to the feathers.
His mother couldn’t bear to interrupt. While it was physically impossible for her to feel even remotely like Jin did, she could and did sense the beauty in the normal way. So she waited until he’d quieted and sunk onto his bed, tired and happy and a little bit hungry because really, he was always hungry, to knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
She entered. “Jin, the school called again today. And don’t say ‘who cares, they call every day’. This is serious. At the rate you’re going, you aren’t going to be able to finish middle school on time. Won’t you at least make an effort to do the homework and participate in class?”
“Can’t I just go the international school? I can stand the people there. I’d learn there.” Jin curled up into a ball before his body could start showing its anger through motion. That would just make his mom wince and tiredly reprimand him again, and he didn’t want to put her through that, or have to deal with it himself.
Mom sighed. “Jin, we’ve been over this a hundred times. You have to take a test to get into an international school, and you don’t know anywhere near enough to pass. All you have to do is graduate middle school, Jin. High school… Well, it’s not really in the picture for you at this point. Graduating middle school is mandatory though. If you’d just try harder, it won’t take any more time for you than it takes for anyone else.”
The choice of words made him tense, because he knew what they were both thinking: that he’s not like anyone else, and it kind of sucks.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Without noticing it, Jin had started to rock, which he always did when he was sad as a prelude to the dance steps that expressed his sorrow (which differed, depending on the degree of it). Embarrassed, he stilled himself. “It’s fine! I mean, it’s fine. I’ll work harder, okay?”
“The school suggested that we get a tutor. Isn’t that a good idea?” The false cheeriness in her voice pains him.
“Yes.” Jin responded dully. “Why not?” He doubts that a tutor will do him any good, but maybe he’ll be able to trick the guy into giving him some answers on his homework or something.
“Great! I’ll ask them to send someone over. Now, come downstairs and have a snack, and promise your baby brother that you’re not going to pile those dirty rocks in his room.” She smiled and flicked one with her index finger, oblivious to the shiver that ran through Jin’s spine when she did so. As he followed her out of the room, he quickly righted the pebble and corrected the mistake she’d inadvertently caused in the symphony.
Ryo Nishikido isn’t at all what Jin expected. For one, he’s from Osaka, which is the first thing he tells Jin about himself, after his name. Even if he hadn’t said so, his accent is quite strong. For another, he looks like he’s about eight, when in reality he’s the same age as Jin, fourteen, in his last year of middle school.
“No short jokes. They’re what got me into this tutoring crap in the first place.” The warning doesn’t exactly fill Jin with confidence that Ryo will be able to help him succeed, or at least pass.
“So you got assigned to me as a punishment?”
“Yup. And based on how stupid your teachers told me you are, it’s a punishment that far exceeds my crime in harshness.”
Jin wonders how many times he can use the word “tiny” before Ryo snaps. Seven, it turns out. The little guy packs a wallop, but Jin’s an experienced fighter, not to mention his height and weight advantage, so Ryo ends up pinned to the floor, struggling fruitlessly until he finally gives in and mutters for “mercy.”
Adrenaline racing through his body (Jin loves a good scuffle, especially when he wins), Jin stood and started to dance, not caring that Ryo was watching because if the kid teased him, he could just beat him up again. Besides, once he started the steps, Ryo faded from his consciousness completely. Jin danced to satisfy himself, to release the passion he felt in this instant of time.
When he finished, Ryo clapped slowly. It seemed sarcastic until he said: “you’re good” in a voice that expressed too much admiration to be ingenuous. “I wish I could move like that.”
“It’s just the way I am.” Jin said with a shrug. Accepting compliments wasn't exactly a strong point of his, mostly because they were few and far between. “Same as some people can run fast or solve math problems.”
“Yeah. Speaking of which…”
They got down to business. Soon, Jin comes to like Ryo, and despite his sharp-tongued-ness, Jin’s inclined to believe that Ryo doesn’t hate him all that much either. Even when his punishment is up, and the school sends someone else to tutor Jin, Ryo comes over at least once a week to hang out. He’s the first friend that Jin’s ever made outside of the foreign kids who attend the nearby international school and who let him chill with them sometimes.
Most of the time that they’re together is spent fighting about one thing or another, since both of them are quick-tempered and neither of them like to compromise. Ryo loves to insult him, and he’s witty enough that oftentimes Jin can’t come up with decent verbal response and just has to hit him. But for all that Ryo seems mean, he never once teases Jin about his oddities (instead, he mocks his intelligence, his lack of a girlfriend, his lack of skill at video games, and pretty much anything else that he can think of), and as a result, Jin trusts Ryo completely and is unafraid of being himself around Ryo.
“You ever think about putting your singing and dancing together?”
Jin shrugged. “Not really.” Now that he considered it, it did seem odd that he’d never tried to combine what were arguably the two focal points of his existence. The notion simply hadn’t occurred to him. “See, when I sing, I’m mirroring the feeling that something else gives me. When I dance, it’s expressing the things that I feel for myself. It doesn’t seem like I could put them together.”
“Try.” Ryo ordered.
“What should I sing?”
“It doesn’t matter! Anything will do. Seriously, you’re such a retard sometimes.”
“Fine, jerk-off. I won’t do it then.”
They glared at each other; Ryo caved first. “Fine, fine. Um, sing something easy. Like ‘Kono Hoshi de Umarete,’ you know that song, don’t you?”
In fact, Jin had heard it once or twice at school, enough times to know the lyrics to the chorus, because a few girls in his class thought the singer was “cute” or something. So he tried. It was hard to focus on forming the lyrics and staying in tune while simultaneously moving his body in a way that reflected how the song made him feel. Jin wanted to lose himself in the motions and the tune in his head and forget the words that meant nothing to him. The only reason why he didn’t is because he knew Ryo would make fun of him for it.
“Not bad.” Was Ryo’s verdict when he finished the part of the song that he remembered. “You basically managed to be in-tune, and you dancing was pretty good, if unentertaining at times.” That was a huge compliment, coming from Ryo.
“Ah. Wanna tell me what the point of that was, or are you going to tell me what to do some more?”
“The second option. Now, I know this might be hard for a loser like you, but try to remember these steps.”
Dramatically over-exaggerating, ostensibly to make them easier to remember, Ryo showed Jin the moves that he wanted him to copy. It took all of a minute for Jin to commit them to memory. “Very good.” Ryo praised him like one might a small child. Jin ignored the overwhelming desire to stuff his smaller friend’s face into the nearest toilet.
“Match the steps to the beat now.” As Ryo clapped, Jin danced mechanically. “For crying out loud, put some feeling into it, Jin! This is important.”
“Why? I don’t get why I’m doing all of this.”
“Because if you don't suck, you can try out for the talent agency I’m in. Or do you have a better idea for what you’re going to do with yourself once you graduate middle school?”
“Wait, talent agency? But Ryo, you have no talent.”
It was exactly the sort of remark that would ordinarily make Ryo snap. This time, however, he just narrowed his eyes and clapped louder, making Jin dance for nearly half an hour until he was finally satisfied.
“Alright. You can definitely learn to dance like you’re supposed to, if you’re forced. That’s good enough, although eventually, you’re going to have to figure out how to dance and sing well at the same time.”
Jin collapsed onto his futon and put his head in Ryo’s lap. “So you’re going to make me a rockstar now, Ryo.”
Ryo laughed and pushed Jin’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “More like a pop idol. And it’s not gonna be me. You have to send in an application, then go audition, and if you pass, you get a manager. They basically do all the work. We’ll get to spend more time together, though. Magazine photoshoots and live performances tend to take place in Tokyo.”
“So that’s why you’re here all the time, even though you think that Osaka is better. Ahhh, I thought it was for me.” Jin pretended to pout up at Ryo. Unexpectedly, the other boy flushed.
“Of course it’s not for you… You make it worth it, though.” Ryo mumbled. Because he knew his friend, Jin pretended not to hear and didn’t make a big deal over the kind words. On the inside though, his heart was singing like it never had before, and his arms and legs nearly twitched to dance out the whirlwind of happiness swirling within him.
Jin does his best to recall that amazing feeling as he struggles through the audition process. The dance is just so wrong for the song that Jin can’t force his feet to follow the steps that they want him to. Annoyed, they tell him to hand in his number, and he does so, planning to tell Ryo that he decided that he didn’t want to spend his life in sparkles, instead of that he failed.
Only the old man that he gives his number to gives it right back, before patting him on the head and telling him that he sees something in Jin. Something good.
Nobody has ever told Jin that before. Face lit up by a smile that’s simultaneously surprised and screaming “suck on this, bitches!” Jin makes up a new dance that incorporates the few correct steps that the dance instructors had been trying to impose upon him with what he felt were the right moves.
The old man is actually the owner of the whole company, and he promises that if Jin listens to him, and to whatever professionals the old man sends to guide him, he’ll let Jin have a freedom that isn’t usually afforded to idols. Jin says okay.
That night, Ryo takes Jin to Osaka to celebrate, and after stuffing himself to the point of pain with takoyaki, udon, and okonomiyaki, Jin is forced to admit that food in Osaka is probably better than food and Tokyo, to Ryo’s glee. While they’re enjoying the wares of one final food stand, a bunch of Ryo’s Osakan friends, guys who are also apparently in Johnny’s, show up. Ryo introduces them to Jin, but he’s never been good with names.
After that, they go to a bar. Technically, the stamps that they were all given upon entrance are supposed to keep people from selling them alcoholic beverages. Though given the age-range of the present clientele, combined with the bar’s obvious popularity, Jin’s willing to bet that a fair amount of looking the other way while pouring goes on. Sure enough, it’s not long before most of the guys who Jin came with, including Ryo, who still looks like an elementary school kid, have some sort of drink.
The atmosphere is raucous to the extent of cacophony, young people reveling in their ability to flaunt the law through drinking themselves silly. It’s grating, more than Jin can take, but he can’t very well leave, he has no idea where he is, so he just closes his eyes and reaches for the pebble in his pocket.
“Here, take this. Uchi won’t notice.” Ryo jostles his shoulder and thrusts a cup into his free hand before wading back into the crowd of his buddies. The continuous rhythmic motion ends up being soothing; take a sip, squeeze the pebble, take a sip, squeeze the pebble. Before long, Jin feels good enough to open his eyes again.
Someone he doesn’t recognize is sitting beside him. It could be one of Ryo’s friends, or it could be a complete stranger. He asks the bartender for a Shirley Temple, and Jin is surprised to hear that he has a Tokyo accent, instead of an Osakan one. When he sees Jin staring at him, he nods and gives him a tiny smile, which makes Jin think that he came with Ryo’s crowd.
His clothing makes him seem fashionable, not that Jin really has a clue. Stylish for Jin means not wearing stripes and checkers at the same time. So he just says the first thing that comes to his mind.
“The color yellow sucks. It should be voted out of the rainbow.”
The guy snorts into his soda, and it’s then that Jin realizes that while Ryo might look young, this kid actually is. Jin’s not the greatest at guessing ages, but now that he’s noticing more than just cool outfit and carefully gelled hair, he can see the awkward just-beginning-to-elongate limbs and hear the unsteady squeak in his laughter that are the hallmarks of fourteen.
“I don’t think that’s quite how rainbows work, Jin Akanishi.”
Surprise must have registered on his features, because the younger boy quickly says: “um, I was with you at the audition. Like, literally right next to you, until the old guy pulled you aside.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess I was supposed to fail, only he’s the boss and he wanted to keep me, so…” Jin shrugged the shoulders and wondered why the kid was pulling a face like he’d just eaten something sour. Did it sound like he was bragging? Jin had been called out for being too arrogant on many occasions, though he didn’t really get why. It was the truth, after all, and it’s not like he was making a big deal out of it.
“What’s your name?” He blurted out to change the subject, realizing a second later that it probably only made him look like more of a jerk, first for talking about how he was elite, and then for not remember the name of someone who’d been by his side for the majority of the auditioning process. Not that he cared. What did he care what some fourteen year old thought?
“I’m Kame. Kamenashi. Kazuya. Kazuya Kamenashi. I look forward to working with you in the future. Please support me.”
The tiny smile on his lips was pretty cute. “Nice to meet you, Kame. Again.” Jin winked and got another snorty giggle, to his amusement.
“What are you playing with in your pocket? Yourself?”
“Hell no! It’s just a pebble.”
Kame inspected the little rock that Jin placed on the bar. “Not ‘just’” was his judgement, and Jin was fairly certain that he was being genuine. “Not ‘just’ at all. It’s so perfect and smooth. How did you get it like that?”
“It wasn’t me. The ocean washed the rough right out of it long before I picked it up. I’ve got a lot more like this one in my room, and a lot that got to keep their rough too. All sorts. If you like it, you can keep it. There’s nothing easier in the world to take care of than a pebble; you just find a spot, sunny or shady, it doesn’t make a difference, and let it sit there whenever you’re tired of carrying it around.”
“You talk kind of weird.” Kame said, rolling the pebble between his forefinger and his thumb.
“Words aren’t that easy for me.” Jin replied. “If you like things smooth, you should see what the ocean does to glass. It’s seriously beautiful. It’s like…” He gestured uselessly with his hand. “Well, you know.”
“No, I’ve never seen if before.”
Hesitation. And then: “come outside for a second,” Jin invited, and Kame went readily. The night air was a blanket, hot and heavy, immediately making Kame feel sleepy. It didn’t seem to have any effect on Jin though.
“The smoothness of regular glass is sharp and uniform, manufactured. Sea glass though, it’s perfect without being consistent. Pay attention: this is the difference.”
As Kame looked on, Jin performed the song and dance of glass, a delicate sequence of steps that illustrated the contrast between the glass that went into the ocean and that which that came out of it. When the impromptu show beneath the streetlights was finished, Kame wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t noticed it at the audition, having been occupied with executing the given instructions as best as he could, but now that he’d truly watched Jin, he could see that every movement of the other male’s body was inherently different from his own. It was as though the entirety of his body was a mouth that spoke kinesthetically.
“I bet you’re going to be great. You have no excuse not to be.” Kame said, and if he sounded a little bitter, well, who could blame him? He and Jin were going to be directly competing against each other in the near future, for fans and airtime and everything, and it didn’t take a trained critic to see which of them was obviously the better dancer.
Jin sat down beside him, too close; Kame shifted away and absurdly thought about chemistry, the property of cohesion, and if the beads of sweat on his arms wanted to bond to those on Jin’s. Gross.
“It’s hot.” Jin mumbled, facing straight forward and scooting too close to Kame again. “Huddling together will just make us warmer.” There was a snappish note in Kame’s voice, one that implied “idiot,” that Jin had heard lots of times. He thought about hearing Kame use that tone again in the future and felt inexplicably, simultaneously happy and sad.
“The stars are so bright. It makes being out here worth it. Don’t you like the unreachableness of them?”
Something about the question made Kame soften. “They aren’t really unreachable. We send rocket ships up there all the time.”
“What, rainbows don’t have freedom of choice, but we can touch the stars?”
Jin meant it as a joke, but Kame responded seriously. “I don’t think anybody has freedom of any kind, not truly. Everything is governed by some kind of authority, from your parents to the laws of physics.”
“So you guys are the sober kinds of drunks. Ironic.” Jin and Kame turned in tandem to look at Ryo, lounging in the doorway and laughing at his own play on words.
“Neither of us is drunk.” Kame said indignantly. “We’re not even allowed to drink, although that obviously hasn’t stopped you, Nishikido.” His voice went a little whiny, probably because he was annoyed, and he sounded exactly fourteen.
Ryo sneered and swayed, and swayed and sneered. His eyes weren’t exactly focused. “Ryo?” Was the last thing he heard before he fell face forward, saved from unpleasantly meeting asphalt by Kame’s quick reflexes.
“He’s small, so he doesn’t have a high tolerance for alcohol.” That much, at least, Kame knew. “Can you carry him? You’re staying at his house, right?”
“Probably, if you help. And yeah. Aren’t you staying there too?”
“I got dragged along by Yokoyama, so I thought that I’d stay at his place. He’s friends with my big brothers.”
“Come stay at Ryo’s with me instead.”
“It’s not your home to invite people to.” There was that snappish note again, to Jin’s chagrin, and pleasure. Kame was smiling though, which Jin took to mean ‘yes.’
Surprisingly, Ryo experiences no ill-effects from his encounter with alcohol, other than his fall the night before that Jin recounts with relish, reveling in the abject horror in Ryo’s eyes when he learns that it was Kame who rescued him. “That stays between the three of us, or else.” He threatened; Jin and Kame exchanged smirks and didn’t promise anything.
It made Ryo feel a little bit left out. He’d been friends with Jin for longer, Jin’s only true friend, really, and now he and Kame had bonded. Over what, Ryo didn’t exactly know. The desire to ask what they’d been doing outside, alone, together, itched at him, but he refused to scratch it and thereby make himself look weak. Instead, Ryo was even snappier than usual, to the point where Jin wondered if he was lying and actually did have a headache from having imbibed too much, and had only said that he was fine because he was trying to act tough.
Kame didn’t care to try and speculate about why Ryo was being so mean. As far as he knew, the teen just has a bad attitude. “Screw you, I’m going back to Yokoyama’s. Dealing with you isn’t worth it, even if you do have great taste in music.” The three boys had been going through Ryo’s CD collection, although Ryo refused to play any of the songs that Kame picked out and said that he’d like to hear. “Want to go too, Jin?”
Jin got to his feet, one arm extended slightly towards Kame, the other towards Ryo, literally torn by indecision. When Kame finally grew impatient with waiting for a response, he walked out of the room, and Jin was left hoping that Kame hadn’t insisted that he come out of kindness, so as not to drive a wedge between him and Ryo (and not because Kame didn’t actually want to be with Jin and had only invited him to be polite). Kame seemed to be a very polite boy. Jin and Ryo listened silently as he thanked Ryo’s parents and shut the front door quietly behind him on the way out.
“C’mere, jerkoff.” When several minutes had passed without Kame’s returning and saying that he’d only been joking about leaving, that he was going to fight back against Ryo now like Jin would have, Jin turned to Ryo. The smaller male let Jin push him down onto the futon on his back. “Don’t touch my face! I don’t know where you’ve been.” Ryo protested when Jin started to rub his forehead. “Shut up. This’ll make you feel better.”
What would really make Ryo feel better was if Kame just went away. “You know, you joined Johnny’s to spend more time with me. Not other people. And because dancing and singing are the only things you can do right. Why…” Ryo bit down hard on his tongue before it could betray him further. “Forget it.”
Jin flopped down beside Ryo. “Damn, Akanishi, you’re always too close.” Ryo grumbled. He didn’t move though.
“Will we be in a group together, Ryo-chan?”
“No way. I’ll be with other guys from Kansai. You, you’ll get thrown together with some kids from Tokyo. They don’t mix east and west. Hey, maybe we’ll get to fight against each other! I’d get paid to kick your ass in front of millions of my adoring fans. How great would that be?”
It ends up that Ryo’s prediction is correct (though only partially, time will tell). And Kame is one of those “kids from Tokyo,” to Jin’s delight. It affected Jin to see the emotions reflected in Ryo’s eyes change lightning-fast when Jin triumphantly told him, from surprise to jealousy to anger to happiness. How, he could not exactly put into words.
“Fucking lucky is what you are. I’ve been in longer, and even I haven’t been put into a proper unit yet.” Ryo complained. “Koki’s great, he’s been in the agency for a while. We actually sang together a couple times.”
“I don’t really like any of them. They aren’t terrible though. Kame’s great, so…” As usual, when Jin referenced Kame, Ryo clammed up. It made Jin wonder a little, about what Ryo’s feelings were for Kame exactly. Whatever they were, they were obviously strong.
“I bet I’ll get to debut before you.” Jin teased, breaking the tension. “No way in hell!”
They stay up late, playing soccer under the stars. “What’s it sound like?” Ryo asked as he tried to steal the ball from Jin. “What’s what sound like?”
“You know! Soccer.” Panting happily, Jin raced down the field with the ball, Ryo in hot pursuit.
“I’ve never focused on it. Usually, I’m too busy beating you at it to care what it sounds like.” As he thought, Jin practiced his lifting, trying to get Ryo frustrated because there was something undeniably cute about how he lost his temper. “If you mean, ‘what do you hear when you think about soccer,’ it’s all the music of racing hearts and sweat and happy, fast paced and familiar. It’s nice.”
“Sounds like sex.” The ball dropped. Hard as it was to believe, them being two healthy, teenage boys, the topic of sex had never come up between them before.
“I guess.” Jin laughed awkwardly. “Kame said it’s like that anyways.”
“You talked about sex with him? Wait, he’s had sex? He’s just a kid!” Ryo’s voice always took a certain tone when he said “him” or “he” meaning Kame, so Jin always knew whom he meant.
“With an older girl. He said it was nice, but that he was no good at it.” Ryo barked a single cruel laugh unfeelingly because he felt obligated to. “Have you had it?”
“Yes.” Jin quirked an eyebrow at him. “Alright, no.” Ryo relented. “Not yet. When I do though, I’ll be good at it. Unlike him.”
“You’re always saying bad things about Kame.”
Sometimes, Jin’s voice took on a really annoying quality. It wasn’t quite a whine, just the undertone of one, and it infuriated Ryo. He shoved Jin hard enough to make him stumble and fall. “So what? I can say whatever I want, about him or anyone else.”
Equally mad, Jin kicked Ryo’s shins, causing him to cry out and join Jin on the ground, where Jin quickly pinned him. “After all these years you still can’t win a fight against me. You’re too small.” The taunt made Ryo thrash harder, and Jin, in turn, pressed down harder with all his weight.
“Fatass, you’re squishing me.” Ryo’s voice was strained. “I can’t breathe.” Past his fury, since Ryo was too, Jin eased up. Fights were always like that between them. They burned fiercely and quickly, and then they were done.
“My shorts are all twisted.” Jin laughed. “I can’t believe I gave you a handless wedgie. That takes skill.”
“Whatever, let me up so I can fix it, it’s seriously aggravating.”
Before bothering to consider the repercussions, Jin was putting his hands down Ryo’s pants and adjusting his underwear. Ryo was too stunned to react.
“What? No comment about violations of personal space?”
It was hot, having Ryo underneath him. Jin wondered why he hadn’t noticed that ages ago. There was just something thrilling about being on top of another person.
“I wonder what kind of music I would make with a partner. A duet. I should ask Kame…”
And then Jin was on his back on the ground and Ryo was stomping furiously off the field.
The way Ryo acted doesn’t worry Jin, until he sees Ryo in the corridor the next day and his friend doesn’t respond to his greeting, not even with a cursory grunt or glare. At dance practice, Jin is off, his nervousness about what to do with Ryo manifesting physically and interfering with his ability to learn the designated steps.
“Ueda, can’t we have a break?” Kame demands. While Ueda is leader in name, it is Kame who calls most of the shots in KAT-TUN. Jin ambles into the hall, hoping to find the room where Ryo was by chance, since he doesn’t have a clue.
It’s got to be some sort of luck that he finds Ryo in the stairwell instead. Bad luck, maybe, since he’s talking and laughing with another boy exactly like how he should be talking and laughing with Jin.
“What’s up with your hands?”
The guy he doesn’t know asks. Jin stuffs them into his pockets. “Nothing. Who are you?”
Ryo smirked at him. “Pi, dumbass, he’s Pi the golden boy. And the guy with the over-active hands is KAT-TUN’s Jin.”
Jin interjected: “I’m just Jin, not anybody’s anything.” Of course Jin’s happy to be part of a unit. He knows full well that it means his success is pretty much guaranteed. However, he doesn’t intend to give up his identity, or his dreams, just because he was fortunate enough to be sorted into some random group of guys.
Ryo took a step back when Jin drew close to him, and it hurt. “Here,” he said, his voice nearly inaudible. “I wanted you to have one too.” Without looking into his eyes, Jin passed Ryo a pebble and then raced up the steps two at a time, ducking into the first door that he saw.
It was empty, probably because it being renovated. The back half of the room was nonexistent except for some crumbly plaster. In hopes of sorting out his feelings, Jin got as near to the edge as he dared and began to hum to himself. Time passed, though he wasn’t cognizant of it in the slightest.
Then arms wrapped around his waist and yanked back. “What are you doing, Jin?” Kame sounded weary. “Thinking about Ryo,” was the honest response. “And you too, Kame.”
“He’d probably laugh at you if you told him that.”
“You do it too.”
“Laugh at you? Well, yeah, you’re funny when you do stupid things---”
“Not that!” Jin interrupted. “You say ‘he’ in a certain way when you mean Ryo. Ryo does it for you. Hey, do you guys…” A sly smile spread across Jin’s lips.
“Jin, I have no idea what you’re thinking, but you’d better stop it right now.” Kame warned, now wary rather than weary.
“Right, right. What did you say I had to do? Costume fitting? Lets go!” It doesn’t even bother him that the costumes are a hideous yellow, he’s so happy with the plan that’s forming in his mind, although later he’ll complain and complain about them until they get handed down to another junior unit. When the other members of his unit unanimously comment (which is a feat in it of itself, given their propensity for disagreement) that Jin is even less focused than usual, he says that it’s because he doesn’t have anything to weigh him down.
As Jin and Kame walk to the train station together, Kame breaks their companionable silence with an odd statement. “It must feel like betrayal. I’m sorry.”
“You’re both worth it, Kame, totally and completely. Besides, sometimes being in Johnny’s feels like a betrayal too, and you don’t see me giving that up. And I like you and Ryo a whole lot more than I like Johnny’s.”
Kame gives Jin a look that means “elaborate, you’re not making sense,” something that he often shoots at Jin during magazine interviews and talk shows, so Jin continues.
“Every time I take my body and make it move to someone else’s beat, singing words that mean nothing to mean composed by someone else, it’s like a betrayal to the movement and voice of my heart. It’s not such a big deal though. I understand that I can’t always do things my own way. And it’s worth it because I get to be with you and Ryo-chan, who are also both worth it. Am I worth it to you?”
Kame tugged on Jin’s elbow until the other boy stopped and faced him. “It’s not the same situation at all, but yes, Jin, fuck yes, you are worth it.” There’s something raw and painful in Kame’s voice that makes Jin hurt. He can’t figure out why Kame sounds that way though, and knows instinctively that he shouldn’t ask, so Jin just smiles at him and starts to hum the song of the feathers, which always makes him feel great, and then begins to walk again, with Kame at his heels listening intently.
The next day, Ryo isn’t mad at all, though he is kind of confused. “Why’d you give me a pebble, Jin? I know you like them, they’re all over your room.”
“I don’t know. I just wanted you to have it. I gave one to Kame to.” From the way Jin was shuffling his feet, Ryo realized that he couldn’t press for more information because Jin wouldn’t be able to verbalize. “If you think of a better reason, let me know. It’s not exactly normal for guys to go around giving other guys little rocks.”
“Will you keep it?”
“Of course I’ll keep it. You gave it to me, didn’t you?”
The emphasis on the “you” is meant to be an insult; it just makes Jin happy though.
He finally gets a chance to carry out his plan a year later. “Suck on THIS, Jin! I’m in two groups and I get to debut before you!” Ryo’s crowing, but beneath the triumph in his voice is worry. “Yeah, yeah. You’re going to be amazing; you’re with Pi, right?” Now that Ryo is his again, Jin doesn’t hate the so-called golden boy. They’re even friends.
“Uh-huh. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I debuted twice before you? First with NEWS, then with Kanjani8?”
Jin elbowed Ryo. “Not gonna happen. Hey, why don't you come over tonight? We’ll celebrate. With booze.” That part was implied, but Jin stated it anyways. Alcohol made a great social lubricant for someone like Jin, who still kind of sucked at interacting with others in a regular sort of way. Plus, there was always something delicious in the forbidden. “Make it around 10. Everyone else in my house will be asleep by then.”
Obviously, Jin doesn’t tell Ryo that Kame will be there to.
“Congratulations, Nishikido.” Kame manages to actually sound sincere, and Ryo doctors his expression so that it shows only mild, rather than outright, disgust. “Um. Thanks.” It isn’t a true smile on his lips by any stretch of the imagination. It isn’t quite a scowl though, and that’s good enough.
They each take a couple of swigs from the bottles Jin had been hiding under his blanket just for the sake of drinking, not to get drunk.
“Why do you have all this stuff in your room?” Kame wants to know.
“It’s kind of complicated.” Jin replied, taking in the assorted objects that he’d collected over the years. Right now, focused as he was on Ryo and Kame, he could hardly hear them.
“I guess you could say that it’s in my head. Or maybe, if you want to think about it in a different way, it’s NOT in your head. Nor anybody else’s, as far as I know. For me, everything on this earth has a voice. Everything sings. Sometimes I like to sing along, so I collect the songs and keep ‘em close. Sometimes, though, I wish I could close my ears the way I can close my eyes, because it hurts.”
“What about the dancing?” Again, Kame is the one to ask.
“My body talks better than my mouth. When I feel something, I want to show it, not say it. My heart pumps the emotions through my veins, into my arms and legs and all over, and they just move me, literally. That’s why I do what I do.”
“Why so many pebbles?” This time it’s Ryo who speaks up, to Jin’s surprise. His friend had never showed any overt curiosity in his collection before. “Oh. Well, they’re special, in that I used to use them to keep me grounded in this world.”
“You don’t anymore?” Kame and Ryo question in unison, then make identical disgruntled faces. “Stop copying me!”
“No. Not anymore. Now that I have you guys, I want to be part of this world, and don’t need little anchors to keep me tied to it. You’re enough.”
The statement puts a sudden stop to the budding argument between Ryo and Kame.
“I know that you guys have feelings for each other as well.”
And that began a whole new fight.
“Excuse me?” “Are you stupid? No, wait, I know I know the answer to that.”
“I know it’s true! You guys use special tones to refer to each other.”
“Th-that’s hatred, dumbass!” “Pure, unadulterated hatred.”
“C’mon. Don’t you want to try to make music together?”
The trio fell silent after Jin voiced his query. As he had before, Jin reached out slightly, one hand towards Kame, one hand towards Ryo. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he didn’t want to choose between them, and he knew that he didn’t have to. Although Jin operated on a very different wavelength from most other humans, he understood Ryo and Kame, and therefore was certain that while they might deny it, there was definitely chemistry between the two of them, and between each of them and himself. It could work. Jin would make it work.
“Yeah, okay. At least sex will keep your stupid mouth shut, Kamenashi.” Ryo caved. He figured he could always blame it on the alcohol later.
“Quite the opposite, Ryo-chan. I intend to make Kame-chan sing.”
And really, how could Kame say “no” when Jin was promising that in such a sultry voice? Even Ryo gulped, and Jin wasn’t talking about him. “What about me?” His tone was an even mixture of demanding and really turned on. “What are you going to do to me?”
“First, I’m going to have you take your clothes off. Both of you.” It was ironic how Ryo and Kame, who were so often the bossy ones, jumped to do what Jin said. Words had never been Jin’s strong point, yet in this context he knew exactly how to weave them into an erotic spell, the pauses that he routinely took to locate the correct piece of vocabulary now working in his advantage to build and build suspense.
By the time they were both naked, Jin having instructed them throughout the process, Kame and Ryo were both to desperate to protest when Jin said that they should kiss. Instead they fell upon each other ravenously, vying for dominance, which technically they shouldn’t have been doing. Because Jin was the one in control.
When fingertips brushed across the nape of his neck, Ryo moaned into Kame’s mouth. Jin’s touch fueled him to kiss Kame harder, only the other man had stopped responding. Pulling back slightly, not far enough to move out of Jin’s grasp, Ryo opened his eyes and found Jin gently mouthing Kame’s neck in a way that was oddly nearly symmetric with how he was touching Ryo, leaving the tiniest impressions of his teeth and little pink welts all over it.
“Ahhh…” It was more of an exhale than a moan. Kame was trying his best to keep quiet, being by far the most inhibited of the three of them. Ryo took it as a challenge and joined Jin in leaving marks (ones that Kame would feel but that would not last long enough to cause trouble at work) on Kame’s neck.
Jin curled his fingers into Ryo’s hair and tugged back gently. In response, Ryo immediately stepped back, and as he did Kame half fell, half shuffled forward, dependent upon Ryo to keep him standing. In that way, the three of them made their way to Jin’s bed without pausing their respective ministrations.
Throughout the time that they were both kissing Kame, Jin never once broke eye contact with Ryo, and Ryo was so completely wrapped up in his gaze, and in eliciting reactions from Kame, that when Jin breathed: “touch him now, Kame,” although Ryo physically heard the order, it still came as a shock when fingers began stroking their way down to his erect cock.
“Lube?” Ryo whimpered, because although he was a virgin, he knew the mechanics of sex.
“Huh?”
The cutely puzzled look on Jin’s face and his confused tone of voice completely broke the mood. “You’re such a virgin.” Kame groaned.
“You weren’t complaining a second ago, Mr. I’ve-had-sex-once-so-that-makes-me-an-expert-obviously.” Jin retorted, affronted at the insult to his ego.
“Whatever. We’ll teach you all about the requirements of a threesome after we finish with this.” Ryo said decisively. “Where were we?”
“Here.” And, without having to be told to, Kame took Ryo into his mouth, sucking lightly. Ryo would have cried out, had Jin not hastily hushed him for fear of waking the rest of his family.
“What about me, Kame?” Just like that, Jin was once again in control. Kame met Jin’s eyes and began to bob his head, his gaze conveying complete eagerness to please. Pensively running his fingertips over Ryo’s body, an action that heightened the other boy’s pleasure immensely, Jin finally began to touch himself, with a slight twist.
“Don’t let him come until I’m ready to.” By teasing himself, he teased Ryo, keeping the both of them on the brink of orgasm with the assistance of Kame, the obedient proxy. It was Jin who ultimately brought Ryo off, however, pushing Kame’s mouth off of Ryo and immediately taking up stroking his friend so that when they came, they both striped Kame with sticky white, and it was impossible to tell whose cum was whose.
“Now it’s your turn.” Jin and Ryo traded off licking Kame’s erection until the youngest of the three of them was mewling and squirming with desperation. Once again, it was Jin who took full responsibility for the orgasm, making Kame add his own cum to the mess already cooling on his stomach, chin, and chest.
“That was amazing.” Kame breathed, all depth gone from his voice, while Jin and Ryo cleaned him off as best they could with some tissues.
“I guess now Jin can say he’s decent at three things: singing, dancing, and sex.”
The three laughed tiredly.
“So, what does it sound like?”
Jin knew exactly what Ryo was asking; Kame sat up, suddenly alert and interested in hearing the answer to the question that he’d been thinking too.
“It sounds like everything does when it’s with the two of you.”
Jin smiled, pulled Ryo and Kame close, and whispered:
“It sounds like I want it to last forever. Because even though I’m my own self, and I’ll never give up my dreams, I’m yours too. Both of yours. Forever.”
When he wasn’t so tired, Jin would show them in his way, through song and through dance. For now though, he lay down between his two most important people, and slept.