fic for sweetpaopuwind / bluebirdsongs
Title: Love Muzak
By: soundczech
Pairing: Akame
Word count: 3400 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: fluff, Jin ridin’ solo.
Notes: I hope you enjoy this bluebirdsongs!
Summary: Jin resorts to wrongful imprisonment.
Jin is only back in Japan for a couple of days. A couple of long, boring days full of meetings that could have been held over Skype if JE wasn’t technologically stuck in the 1980s. He sits in stuffy rooms high up in skyscrapers and stares at the blank grey sky outside the window, imagining the world outside. The friends he hasn’t seen in a long time in clusters all over the city. He didn’t tell many people he was back, because he won’t really have time for anyone; it’s hard for him to turn down invitations that he’d really rather accept, so he’d rather not get the invitation at all.
The meetings are full of old guys in business suits pushing numbers and statistics around as if they’re supposed to mean something and not-quite-young people in fashionable clothes who talk about markets and demographics as if they’re different to the numbers and statistics, when they’re really not. Jin is their commodity. Four years ago, five years ago, that would have bothered him a lot. Now he just wants to make music. This is just the bullshit he has to endure before he can make people dance.
These meetings were easier when it was six of them. Kamenashi would be pretending to listen attentively, spine straight and lips slightly pursed, but after a few minutes there’d be a look in his eyes that let Jin know he was really in Yankee stadium, watching Ichiro hit it out of the park. Nakamaru would be genuinely trying to listen, chin resting in his hand and brow slightly furrowed, but he would fold at the slightest distraction, like Jin and Taguchi making faces at him across the table. Kamenashi would always turn and glare at them angrily, but a few minutes later Jin would glance at him and see crossed eyes a fish face beneath his finely arched brows. Kame wasn’t really any more mature than the rest of them. He was just a much better actor.
Now he has to sit through the meetings alone, with no-one to make dumb faces at him or play violent games of footsy beneath the table where nobody can see. He tried to convince his manager to let Josh tag along with him, but he said that he’d be a distraction. Well, obviously, Jin thought. That was the point.
Going solo was the right thing to do and Jin hasn’t ever seriously regretted the decision, even when it’s hard, even when Nakamaru sends him YouTube links and KAT-TUN are riding around fucking Tokyo Dome on horses and they’re talking about holding huge fun outdoor festivals where everyone gets to bring their dogs and it sounds pretty awesome. They’re probably doing something awesome right now while Jin is stuck in this stupid meeting that has involved a two hour conversation about whether or not JE can afford to let Jin have his own YouTube channel.
Even with all that, Jin knows he made the right decision. He just wishes he could maybe force a couple of them to accompany him for the boring bits. Like maybe if he goes and complains enough, Johnny will let him take Taguchi as his personal assistant. KAT-TUN have survived without Jin. Nobody would even notice Taguchi was gone. If he’s honest with himself, he really wants Kame, but even Jin knows an unreasonable request when he thinks of one.
The meeting is disappointingly inconclusive. Jin and his Warner reps have been pushing for the channel for months but JE management are inherently resistant to change. They got to the top doing things a certain way they fear the unknown; KAT-TUN have always been up against this but it’s even worse with Jin on his own, trying to break America. His chances are next to zero. He feels like a superhero trying to stop the earth from crashing into the sun.
He leaves his management arguing amongst themselves, telling them he’s just going out for a smoke to get some fresh air. He is on the 25th floor. When he steps inside, the elevator is playing muzak that he vaguely recognises as an old Arashi song. He and Kame practised it for a bit on Shounen Club that never actually happened. He can’t remember the lyrics but he still remembers some of the choreography, the graceful/awkward sweep of Kame’s faggy little hands, his twirling. He doesn’t remember his own parts at all.
Jin takes out a cigarette in anticipation. In America, his friends all roll their own cigarettes with sticky papers and loose tobacco. It seems like it’s cool to pretend you don’t have any money even when you’re loaded. Jin tried rollies a few times but couldn’t get the hang of them. It is a relief to be back in Japan where he can unselfconsciously slide the smooth, perfect, mass-produced cigarette between his fingers and not worry about the overstuffed tobacco falling in clumps to the floor. He’s going to go smoke it then buy some fancy imported beer. He doesn’t need to try hard to be cool here. He is Akanishi Jin. It’s cool if he says it is.
The elevator opens on the 15th floor and Kame is there. Jin just stares at him for a minute, the cleanly pressed line of his sharply tailored suit over his straight, dependable shoulders, the soft caramel of his hair melting over his temple. Kame doesn’t see him at first, saying farewell to some boring men in less beautiful guys. Jin doesn’t understand how or why he can be here, this isn’t a jimusho building, but Jin doesn’t really know where they are. There could be a billion different reasons for him to be here, in any one of the mysterious offices in this building that stretches endlessly into the sky. Jin doesn’t really know what Kame does with his time anymore, other than KAT-TUN and his baseball shows and that half-naked ad for the razor. For all Jin knows he’s got a part time job in a law firm or something. He wouldn’t put it past him. Jin wouldn’t put anything past Kamenashi.
Kame turns and sees him, and Jin doesn’t know for a minute what is going to happen; they haven’t really talked much since Jin left a little over a year ago; they’d seen each other in similar circumstances at the jimusho and Kame had just quietly wished him a good trip before disappearing out the door again. Jin had always wished he’d said more. Done more. Explained himself, maybe, though he doesn’t really think he needed to; Kame has always understood him better than most people. What he really wanted to do was make sure Kame was okay, but he had been too afraid of the answer to ask.
“Oh,” is what Kame says as he steps into the elevator and the doors close behind him, leaving them alone. Arashi jangles in the slightly awkward silence between them. Jin watches the floors light up as they pass. “Hey,” Kame adds.
“Hey,” Jin says. He wants to reach out and bump fists like they might have a few years ago, but Kame’s suit and cashmere scarf don’t belong to a fist bumping kind of guy and Jin doesn’t know how to approach him. He shoves his hand in the pocket of his own baggy jeans. They were expensive but don’t look it. He feels like a slob.
Kame’s face is guarded; once upon a time Jin might have assumed he was angry, but it’s hard to tell if Kame is angry from looking at his face. The warning signs of fury are in his body, jumping hands and jiggling legs. His limbs are calm and still. Jin relaxes a bit. “I didn’t know you were in Japan,” Kame says.
Jin scratches the side of his nose. “Nobody does,” he says. “It just seemed - easier. I don’t have much time.”
“Ahh,” Kame says. He is looking curiously at Jin’s face and Jin feels his cheeks heating slightly beneath the scrutiny. Being the centre of Kame’s considerable attention has always been a bit unnerving. Jin has always wondered what he sees when he stares at him with those almost unbearably focused eyes. “How have you been?”
“Good,” Jin says. “Good.” He scratches his own elbow awkwardly. “You?”
“I’ve been okay,” Kame says. They watch the floors pass, and then Kame’s voice changes in a way that makes Jin’s stomach turn miserably because it isn’t right when he sounds sad like that; “I never thought you’d be some guy I only run into in elevators.”
Jin has always been impulsive; sometimes he moves with literally no preconceived thought to his actions at all, so that he is as surprised as Kame is when his hand reaches out and slams over the emergency stop button and the lift grinds to a halt. They both just stare at the control panel for a minute, listening to the machinery creak as it settles. They hang suspended some place between the sixth and seventh floors.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” Kame says after a pause, “but I’ve got a meeting downtown.”
Jin can feel that his own face is flushed cherry red; his cheeks are so hot that he feels they must be flickering like a fire. “I - it just happened. I don’t want us to be elevator guys.”
“So you trap me?” Kame snaps, growing agitated. “We couldn’t have gone for drinks after work?”
“I SAID IT JUST HAPPENED, OKAY?” Jin yells miserably, jabbing at the emergency button hoping that he can reverse the process and the lift will start moving again. They just sit there, swaying in their tiny metal death box. He’s about to tell Kame it is his fault for sounding all sad and making Jin panic when the intercom scratches to life and a man’s voice excuses himself as if he has stumbled bodily into the room.
“I accidentally pressed the button,” Jin tells the disembodied voice, hoping they won’t check the security cameras, uncover his lie and sell him out to the tabloids. “Can you get this thing moving again?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the voice says after a minute, as if the whole thing wasn’t Jin’s fault in the first place. “We can’t seem to get it started. We will call out a technician to assist us as soon as possible.”
The intercom thanks them and the voice disappears and then Jin is left there with Kame, who is probably about to murder him. He pushes up his sleeves and turns towards Kame, who is standing there with murderously dark eyes, ankle jiggling furiously. He is a human explosive about to go off.
“Hey,” Jin says weakly. “Some people would kill for the chance to hang out with me like this.”
Kame stares at him in mute rage, but then his shoulders start shaking and he starts laughing, his stupid spazzy face scrunching up in a way that makes Jin’s tension melt away. “You’re unbelievable,” Kame says, rolling his eyes in the face of Jin’s wide-mouthed outrage. Kame pulls his blazer off, brushing down the sleeves and draping it over the hand rail that lines the wall. Then he leans against the wall and slides down until he’s sitting cross legged on the filthy linoleum in his two thousand dollar trousers. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and pulls his tie loose.
“Sorry,” Jin says, as Kame pulls a deck of cards out of his bag. They actually belong to Jin; he got them in Vegas. They have gold foil dancing tigers on the back. Before Jin left, they’d been in the middle of a seemingly never-ending poker tournament, played out in green rooms and photo shoots, in the dim blue light backstage at Tokyo Dome. They’d been playing since they were kids and they both claim to be winning. Seeing the cards in Kame’s hands overwhelms Jin with a surge of pathetic homesickness. He sits against the wall opposite Kame and picks up the cards as Kame deals them.
“Who have you been playing with?” Jin asks, trying to hide the embarrassing note of jealousy that creeps into his words.
Kame frowns, not meeting Jin’s eyes. “No-one,” he says. “They’re still in here from when you left.” He picks up his own cards. “Sometimes I play Solitaire.”
Jin wants to make a dirty joke about that but he’s only barely in Kame’s good graces, so he swallows the impulse. At first, they’re tense and awkward as they play, but eventually they fall into the quiet insults and trash-talking that have always made up the bulk of their conversations. Kame is ruder to Jin than he is to anybody else in his life, but that’s okay, Jin likes that. If there is a single figure in his life that he would consider his rival, it is Kamenashi, but he’s also one of the most important.
While they play, Jin tells Kame about everything, his new American friends and the shows he has coming up and the songs he’s been writing with Josh over Skype, how scared he was of Jason Derulo at first and how boring and lonely it is in business meetings. He even tells him about the one night stand he had with Ke$ha and how badly that turned out. He’s surprised by how much Kame knows about his life already, but when he says so, Kame just shrugs and says, unembarrassed, “I keep tabs on you.”
Jin is momentarily overcome by a strange, unspecific kind of gratitude, but he says, “That’s so creepy.”
Kame snorts. “Like I’d let you run off to America without checking up on you,” he says. “You could be dead in a ditch somewhere.”
Jin bristles. “Excuse me,” he says haughtily, “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much.”
Kame looks at him over the cards with his bitchy, judgmental little face. “Nakamaru told that you let some scientologists measure your thetans -“ he starts. Jin interjects, “That isn’t what they do! And you don’t understand, the girl with the pamphlets was REALLY HOT -“ and Kame continues, “And then you went back to a second meeting.”
“Only the second one,” Jin says, “then the guy that held the meeting wasn’t as hot and he asked me for money, so I left.”
“And they kept calling you twenty times a day for weeks,” Kame says, and Jin winces. “If you want me to stop worrying about you then you’re going to have to stop acting like an idiot.” He runs a hand through his hair, scolding voice turning gentle. “But I guess then you wouldn’t be you anymore.”
Jin folds his hand and Kame wins the game, sweeping the kitty that includes about 2000 yen, some American dollars, Kame’s watch and one of Jin’s rings towards himself. Every stupid piece of evidence about their matching accessories the fangirls have ever found can probably be explained by their poker games; there is a pair of sunglasses that they have swapped back and forth a dozen times.
“I have to worry about you too, you know,” Jin says. “You act like you’re all responsible and mature but I take my eyes off you for one minute and bam, you’re 40 kilograms and screwing some old lady that treats you like shit.” He shuffles the cards and starts dealing them out again. They have been sitting here for almost an hour.
“I’m not nineteen anymore,” Kame says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Uh huh,” Jin says.
Kame rolls his eyes. “I’m doing fine.”
“Uh huh,” Jin repeats obnoxiously.
“If you’re so worried,” Kame says, looking at him in that arresting way again. “What have I been doing with myself?” He just keeps staring. “Have you been checking up on me?”
Jin can’t answer for a minute; he feels claustrophobic and embarrassed, alternating between wishing that the technician would come and save them from this hotbox and give him just another twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and hour with Kame. “I can’t,” he chokes out finally, because Kame deserves to know that.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Kame asks. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It annoys me,” Jin says, feeling his face heating up again. “When other people tell me shit about you, it annoys me.”
Kame stares, and Jin feels his heart beating; that was getting too close to the unspoken yet somehow acknowledged truth of their relationship for his comfort. Kame says, “Why don’t you call me yourself, then?”
Jin tugs his sleeves over his fists, feeling exposed. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to.”
Kame looks down at his cards and says, voice cracking a bit in a way that Jin is sure embarrasses him, “I don’t want you to be a stranger.”
Jin kisses him.
It’s another one of those actions that is simultaneously totally impulsive and totally deliberate; too long coming and yet somehow way too soon. He tastes like the pringles they’ve been sharing while they play, bottom lip smeared slightly with salt. For a minute it is terrifying and then Kame takes control and everything is okay, like always, as he threads his hand into Jin’s hair and holds him solidly in place. Jin mumbles, “Kame,” into his mouth and Kame winds his other arm around Jin’s neck and holds him tight. He feels so much bigger than he expected in Jin’s arms.
Jin has thought about this for a long time, starting when Kame was tiny and skinny like he was. They’ve come so far; moved so far apart yet somehow never really let each other go.
“I missed you,” Kame says, when they part minutely. His lips rub against Jin’s cheek as he speaks and Jin shivers. He buries his face in Kame’s neck. This thing between them has always terrified him. There’s nothing else that he wants so badly while being so simultaneously terrified of its actual eventuation, except maybe his US breakthrough. The two thoughts fill him with the same terror and exhilaration. He’s standing on the edge of something so beautiful that he could fuck up so badly.
“Kame,” he says again, and Kame pets his hair. After a minute, Jin feels a pressure that he thinks must be Kame’s lips on the crown of his head.
“Your timing really sucks, as usual,” Kame says. “You’re gonna be on a plane in, what, seven hours?”
“Six,” Jin whines miserably. His hand makes a fist in the thick cotton of Kame’s business shirt. “I’ll come back for you.”
“You’re so cheesy,” Kame says, but he smoothes Jin’s hair back behind his ears, thumb lingering at his temple, and he says, “I know you will.”
“You better not run off with some old hag while I’m gone,” Jin threatens, twisting his fist at Kame’s side until Kame wriggles away in annoyance.
“Better not take too long,” Kame says, lifts Jin’s chin, and kisses him.
When the technician finally gets there twenty minutes later, they’re sitting on either side of the elevator, looking resolutely at their phones as if nothing ever happened. They say goodbye by the giant fountain in the lobby, Kame reaching out to touch Jin’s elbow in a polite, friendly sort of way. Jin wishes they could hug goodbye.
“It’s nice to see your smile,” Kame says, then he walks away.
-
Later, when Jin is sitting on his plane waiting for it to take off, he sends Kame a message last thing before he has to switch his phone off.
i miss u alredy it says.
Kame replies barely a minute later. He says, don’t come back without a grammy, but he signs it off with a kiss.
By: soundczech
Pairing: Akame
Word count: 3400 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: fluff, Jin ridin’ solo.
Notes: I hope you enjoy this bluebirdsongs!
Summary: Jin resorts to wrongful imprisonment.
Jin is only back in Japan for a couple of days. A couple of long, boring days full of meetings that could have been held over Skype if JE wasn’t technologically stuck in the 1980s. He sits in stuffy rooms high up in skyscrapers and stares at the blank grey sky outside the window, imagining the world outside. The friends he hasn’t seen in a long time in clusters all over the city. He didn’t tell many people he was back, because he won’t really have time for anyone; it’s hard for him to turn down invitations that he’d really rather accept, so he’d rather not get the invitation at all.
The meetings are full of old guys in business suits pushing numbers and statistics around as if they’re supposed to mean something and not-quite-young people in fashionable clothes who talk about markets and demographics as if they’re different to the numbers and statistics, when they’re really not. Jin is their commodity. Four years ago, five years ago, that would have bothered him a lot. Now he just wants to make music. This is just the bullshit he has to endure before he can make people dance.
These meetings were easier when it was six of them. Kamenashi would be pretending to listen attentively, spine straight and lips slightly pursed, but after a few minutes there’d be a look in his eyes that let Jin know he was really in Yankee stadium, watching Ichiro hit it out of the park. Nakamaru would be genuinely trying to listen, chin resting in his hand and brow slightly furrowed, but he would fold at the slightest distraction, like Jin and Taguchi making faces at him across the table. Kamenashi would always turn and glare at them angrily, but a few minutes later Jin would glance at him and see crossed eyes a fish face beneath his finely arched brows. Kame wasn’t really any more mature than the rest of them. He was just a much better actor.
Now he has to sit through the meetings alone, with no-one to make dumb faces at him or play violent games of footsy beneath the table where nobody can see. He tried to convince his manager to let Josh tag along with him, but he said that he’d be a distraction. Well, obviously, Jin thought. That was the point.
Going solo was the right thing to do and Jin hasn’t ever seriously regretted the decision, even when it’s hard, even when Nakamaru sends him YouTube links and KAT-TUN are riding around fucking Tokyo Dome on horses and they’re talking about holding huge fun outdoor festivals where everyone gets to bring their dogs and it sounds pretty awesome. They’re probably doing something awesome right now while Jin is stuck in this stupid meeting that has involved a two hour conversation about whether or not JE can afford to let Jin have his own YouTube channel.
Even with all that, Jin knows he made the right decision. He just wishes he could maybe force a couple of them to accompany him for the boring bits. Like maybe if he goes and complains enough, Johnny will let him take Taguchi as his personal assistant. KAT-TUN have survived without Jin. Nobody would even notice Taguchi was gone. If he’s honest with himself, he really wants Kame, but even Jin knows an unreasonable request when he thinks of one.
The meeting is disappointingly inconclusive. Jin and his Warner reps have been pushing for the channel for months but JE management are inherently resistant to change. They got to the top doing things a certain way they fear the unknown; KAT-TUN have always been up against this but it’s even worse with Jin on his own, trying to break America. His chances are next to zero. He feels like a superhero trying to stop the earth from crashing into the sun.
He leaves his management arguing amongst themselves, telling them he’s just going out for a smoke to get some fresh air. He is on the 25th floor. When he steps inside, the elevator is playing muzak that he vaguely recognises as an old Arashi song. He and Kame practised it for a bit on Shounen Club that never actually happened. He can’t remember the lyrics but he still remembers some of the choreography, the graceful/awkward sweep of Kame’s faggy little hands, his twirling. He doesn’t remember his own parts at all.
Jin takes out a cigarette in anticipation. In America, his friends all roll their own cigarettes with sticky papers and loose tobacco. It seems like it’s cool to pretend you don’t have any money even when you’re loaded. Jin tried rollies a few times but couldn’t get the hang of them. It is a relief to be back in Japan where he can unselfconsciously slide the smooth, perfect, mass-produced cigarette between his fingers and not worry about the overstuffed tobacco falling in clumps to the floor. He’s going to go smoke it then buy some fancy imported beer. He doesn’t need to try hard to be cool here. He is Akanishi Jin. It’s cool if he says it is.
The elevator opens on the 15th floor and Kame is there. Jin just stares at him for a minute, the cleanly pressed line of his sharply tailored suit over his straight, dependable shoulders, the soft caramel of his hair melting over his temple. Kame doesn’t see him at first, saying farewell to some boring men in less beautiful guys. Jin doesn’t understand how or why he can be here, this isn’t a jimusho building, but Jin doesn’t really know where they are. There could be a billion different reasons for him to be here, in any one of the mysterious offices in this building that stretches endlessly into the sky. Jin doesn’t really know what Kame does with his time anymore, other than KAT-TUN and his baseball shows and that half-naked ad for the razor. For all Jin knows he’s got a part time job in a law firm or something. He wouldn’t put it past him. Jin wouldn’t put anything past Kamenashi.
Kame turns and sees him, and Jin doesn’t know for a minute what is going to happen; they haven’t really talked much since Jin left a little over a year ago; they’d seen each other in similar circumstances at the jimusho and Kame had just quietly wished him a good trip before disappearing out the door again. Jin had always wished he’d said more. Done more. Explained himself, maybe, though he doesn’t really think he needed to; Kame has always understood him better than most people. What he really wanted to do was make sure Kame was okay, but he had been too afraid of the answer to ask.
“Oh,” is what Kame says as he steps into the elevator and the doors close behind him, leaving them alone. Arashi jangles in the slightly awkward silence between them. Jin watches the floors light up as they pass. “Hey,” Kame adds.
“Hey,” Jin says. He wants to reach out and bump fists like they might have a few years ago, but Kame’s suit and cashmere scarf don’t belong to a fist bumping kind of guy and Jin doesn’t know how to approach him. He shoves his hand in the pocket of his own baggy jeans. They were expensive but don’t look it. He feels like a slob.
Kame’s face is guarded; once upon a time Jin might have assumed he was angry, but it’s hard to tell if Kame is angry from looking at his face. The warning signs of fury are in his body, jumping hands and jiggling legs. His limbs are calm and still. Jin relaxes a bit. “I didn’t know you were in Japan,” Kame says.
Jin scratches the side of his nose. “Nobody does,” he says. “It just seemed - easier. I don’t have much time.”
“Ahh,” Kame says. He is looking curiously at Jin’s face and Jin feels his cheeks heating slightly beneath the scrutiny. Being the centre of Kame’s considerable attention has always been a bit unnerving. Jin has always wondered what he sees when he stares at him with those almost unbearably focused eyes. “How have you been?”
“Good,” Jin says. “Good.” He scratches his own elbow awkwardly. “You?”
“I’ve been okay,” Kame says. They watch the floors pass, and then Kame’s voice changes in a way that makes Jin’s stomach turn miserably because it isn’t right when he sounds sad like that; “I never thought you’d be some guy I only run into in elevators.”
Jin has always been impulsive; sometimes he moves with literally no preconceived thought to his actions at all, so that he is as surprised as Kame is when his hand reaches out and slams over the emergency stop button and the lift grinds to a halt. They both just stare at the control panel for a minute, listening to the machinery creak as it settles. They hang suspended some place between the sixth and seventh floors.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” Kame says after a pause, “but I’ve got a meeting downtown.”
Jin can feel that his own face is flushed cherry red; his cheeks are so hot that he feels they must be flickering like a fire. “I - it just happened. I don’t want us to be elevator guys.”
“So you trap me?” Kame snaps, growing agitated. “We couldn’t have gone for drinks after work?”
“I SAID IT JUST HAPPENED, OKAY?” Jin yells miserably, jabbing at the emergency button hoping that he can reverse the process and the lift will start moving again. They just sit there, swaying in their tiny metal death box. He’s about to tell Kame it is his fault for sounding all sad and making Jin panic when the intercom scratches to life and a man’s voice excuses himself as if he has stumbled bodily into the room.
“I accidentally pressed the button,” Jin tells the disembodied voice, hoping they won’t check the security cameras, uncover his lie and sell him out to the tabloids. “Can you get this thing moving again?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the voice says after a minute, as if the whole thing wasn’t Jin’s fault in the first place. “We can’t seem to get it started. We will call out a technician to assist us as soon as possible.”
The intercom thanks them and the voice disappears and then Jin is left there with Kame, who is probably about to murder him. He pushes up his sleeves and turns towards Kame, who is standing there with murderously dark eyes, ankle jiggling furiously. He is a human explosive about to go off.
“Hey,” Jin says weakly. “Some people would kill for the chance to hang out with me like this.”
Kame stares at him in mute rage, but then his shoulders start shaking and he starts laughing, his stupid spazzy face scrunching up in a way that makes Jin’s tension melt away. “You’re unbelievable,” Kame says, rolling his eyes in the face of Jin’s wide-mouthed outrage. Kame pulls his blazer off, brushing down the sleeves and draping it over the hand rail that lines the wall. Then he leans against the wall and slides down until he’s sitting cross legged on the filthy linoleum in his two thousand dollar trousers. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and pulls his tie loose.
“Sorry,” Jin says, as Kame pulls a deck of cards out of his bag. They actually belong to Jin; he got them in Vegas. They have gold foil dancing tigers on the back. Before Jin left, they’d been in the middle of a seemingly never-ending poker tournament, played out in green rooms and photo shoots, in the dim blue light backstage at Tokyo Dome. They’d been playing since they were kids and they both claim to be winning. Seeing the cards in Kame’s hands overwhelms Jin with a surge of pathetic homesickness. He sits against the wall opposite Kame and picks up the cards as Kame deals them.
“Who have you been playing with?” Jin asks, trying to hide the embarrassing note of jealousy that creeps into his words.
Kame frowns, not meeting Jin’s eyes. “No-one,” he says. “They’re still in here from when you left.” He picks up his own cards. “Sometimes I play Solitaire.”
Jin wants to make a dirty joke about that but he’s only barely in Kame’s good graces, so he swallows the impulse. At first, they’re tense and awkward as they play, but eventually they fall into the quiet insults and trash-talking that have always made up the bulk of their conversations. Kame is ruder to Jin than he is to anybody else in his life, but that’s okay, Jin likes that. If there is a single figure in his life that he would consider his rival, it is Kamenashi, but he’s also one of the most important.
While they play, Jin tells Kame about everything, his new American friends and the shows he has coming up and the songs he’s been writing with Josh over Skype, how scared he was of Jason Derulo at first and how boring and lonely it is in business meetings. He even tells him about the one night stand he had with Ke$ha and how badly that turned out. He’s surprised by how much Kame knows about his life already, but when he says so, Kame just shrugs and says, unembarrassed, “I keep tabs on you.”
Jin is momentarily overcome by a strange, unspecific kind of gratitude, but he says, “That’s so creepy.”
Kame snorts. “Like I’d let you run off to America without checking up on you,” he says. “You could be dead in a ditch somewhere.”
Jin bristles. “Excuse me,” he says haughtily, “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much.”
Kame looks at him over the cards with his bitchy, judgmental little face. “Nakamaru told that you let some scientologists measure your thetans -“ he starts. Jin interjects, “That isn’t what they do! And you don’t understand, the girl with the pamphlets was REALLY HOT -“ and Kame continues, “And then you went back to a second meeting.”
“Only the second one,” Jin says, “then the guy that held the meeting wasn’t as hot and he asked me for money, so I left.”
“And they kept calling you twenty times a day for weeks,” Kame says, and Jin winces. “If you want me to stop worrying about you then you’re going to have to stop acting like an idiot.” He runs a hand through his hair, scolding voice turning gentle. “But I guess then you wouldn’t be you anymore.”
Jin folds his hand and Kame wins the game, sweeping the kitty that includes about 2000 yen, some American dollars, Kame’s watch and one of Jin’s rings towards himself. Every stupid piece of evidence about their matching accessories the fangirls have ever found can probably be explained by their poker games; there is a pair of sunglasses that they have swapped back and forth a dozen times.
“I have to worry about you too, you know,” Jin says. “You act like you’re all responsible and mature but I take my eyes off you for one minute and bam, you’re 40 kilograms and screwing some old lady that treats you like shit.” He shuffles the cards and starts dealing them out again. They have been sitting here for almost an hour.
“I’m not nineteen anymore,” Kame says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Uh huh,” Jin says.
Kame rolls his eyes. “I’m doing fine.”
“Uh huh,” Jin repeats obnoxiously.
“If you’re so worried,” Kame says, looking at him in that arresting way again. “What have I been doing with myself?” He just keeps staring. “Have you been checking up on me?”
Jin can’t answer for a minute; he feels claustrophobic and embarrassed, alternating between wishing that the technician would come and save them from this hotbox and give him just another twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and hour with Kame. “I can’t,” he chokes out finally, because Kame deserves to know that.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Kame asks. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It annoys me,” Jin says, feeling his face heating up again. “When other people tell me shit about you, it annoys me.”
Kame stares, and Jin feels his heart beating; that was getting too close to the unspoken yet somehow acknowledged truth of their relationship for his comfort. Kame says, “Why don’t you call me yourself, then?”
Jin tugs his sleeves over his fists, feeling exposed. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to.”
Kame looks down at his cards and says, voice cracking a bit in a way that Jin is sure embarrasses him, “I don’t want you to be a stranger.”
Jin kisses him.
It’s another one of those actions that is simultaneously totally impulsive and totally deliberate; too long coming and yet somehow way too soon. He tastes like the pringles they’ve been sharing while they play, bottom lip smeared slightly with salt. For a minute it is terrifying and then Kame takes control and everything is okay, like always, as he threads his hand into Jin’s hair and holds him solidly in place. Jin mumbles, “Kame,” into his mouth and Kame winds his other arm around Jin’s neck and holds him tight. He feels so much bigger than he expected in Jin’s arms.
Jin has thought about this for a long time, starting when Kame was tiny and skinny like he was. They’ve come so far; moved so far apart yet somehow never really let each other go.
“I missed you,” Kame says, when they part minutely. His lips rub against Jin’s cheek as he speaks and Jin shivers. He buries his face in Kame’s neck. This thing between them has always terrified him. There’s nothing else that he wants so badly while being so simultaneously terrified of its actual eventuation, except maybe his US breakthrough. The two thoughts fill him with the same terror and exhilaration. He’s standing on the edge of something so beautiful that he could fuck up so badly.
“Kame,” he says again, and Kame pets his hair. After a minute, Jin feels a pressure that he thinks must be Kame’s lips on the crown of his head.
“Your timing really sucks, as usual,” Kame says. “You’re gonna be on a plane in, what, seven hours?”
“Six,” Jin whines miserably. His hand makes a fist in the thick cotton of Kame’s business shirt. “I’ll come back for you.”
“You’re so cheesy,” Kame says, but he smoothes Jin’s hair back behind his ears, thumb lingering at his temple, and he says, “I know you will.”
“You better not run off with some old hag while I’m gone,” Jin threatens, twisting his fist at Kame’s side until Kame wriggles away in annoyance.
“Better not take too long,” Kame says, lifts Jin’s chin, and kisses him.
When the technician finally gets there twenty minutes later, they’re sitting on either side of the elevator, looking resolutely at their phones as if nothing ever happened. They say goodbye by the giant fountain in the lobby, Kame reaching out to touch Jin’s elbow in a polite, friendly sort of way. Jin wishes they could hug goodbye.
“It’s nice to see your smile,” Kame says, then he walks away.
-
Later, when Jin is sitting on his plane waiting for it to take off, he sends Kame a message last thing before he has to switch his phone off.
i miss u alredy it says.
Kame replies barely a minute later. He says, don’t come back without a grammy, but he signs it off with a kiss.