fic for darkgloom (1/5)

[formation_akame]

Title: camera lucida
By: shontos_garden
Pairing: Jin & Kame
Word count: 39,200+
Rating: R
Genre || Warnings: AU, future-fic, angst, romance || language, adult situation, excessive length, food, liberties taken with art world & publishing/book deals
Notes: Thanks to N & M for everything, including meals, hugs, beta services and all-around awesomeness. This fic could not have been completed without you. ♥♥ And also huge thanks to our intrepid, amazing k_x mods. ♥ || I could easily tinker with this story for another two months; might be revised later.

Summary: Now, there is one red circle left on the house calendar in the kitchen. Kame stares at it in the morning as he drinks his coffee. One marked date left for the rest of the year and a scribbled note: new housemate, December first.



Meisa's house has many rooms; it sprawls over ample acreage in the northwest section of the city. Fronted by a broad green lawn scattered with fruit trees, it's screened from the road by tall hedges and accessed by a narrow driveway ending in a circle. On pleasant nights, Meisa's housemates might sit on the terrace out back whose steps lead down to another green lawn and a small Japanese garden with delicate feathery-leafed red maples and creeping evergreen, a pond alive with colored fish, and statues of bronze and stone. Beyond, the property is edged by a ravine that drops down into Rock Creek Park. In the summer it's quiet and still, and there are fireflies and the green gloom of shady back lawn trees holding the humidity at bay. In the autumn, the trees are ablaze with color, and the air is fresh and full of light.

Kame lives in the end room of the west wing. He has a wall of windows with a view onto the west lawn where plum and cherry trees bloom in the spring. His windows are dressed in funereal black.

The room beside his has stood empty for close to three months now, and since the last person moved out, Kame has slowly crept in, hanging blackout cloth over the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the front lawn, stringing up meters of wire in lines that zigzag through the air. Here, diagonal lines of photographs hang from clips low enough that he can study them, but high enough that he can easily duck under.

Just until I find someone new, Meisa had told him when he'd asked to borrow the space while it was empty. He's swapped each photo out, once, twice, several times, looking for a pattern, or a message. He's sure he'll know it when he sees it.

Now, there is one red circle left on the house calendar in the kitchen. Kame stares at it in the morning as he drinks his coffee. One marked date left for the rest of the year and a scribbled note: new housemate, December first. Kame crumbles a chocolate chip cookie and chases the crumbs with a wet forefinger, finishes a glass of milk. It's early November, bright blue sky and spectacularly warm. It's November, so it's totally wrong, but he isn't complaining.

The last guy, a trumpet player, moved to New York City. The girl before him, a cellist, got married. And the session guitarist before her found himself signed to a label and moved to Los Angeles. There were others over the last six years, and they'd all shared a bathroom with Kame; some gave lessons in the morning room, and they all worked musicians' hours. Kame's lived through several such neighbors, separated by soundproofed walls; friendly, occasionally friends.

A few weeks left, then. Kame finishes his coffee, washes out his cup and plate and leaves them in the dish rack. Tripod tipped over a shoulder, he loads his gear into the car, and heads out, Shenandoah, today. A weekday, so Blue Ridge Parkway should be clear. The colors are mostly gone, but he doesn't care. Maybe he'll see deer.

When he gets back that afternoon, he clears out the rows of photographs, the wires, and pulls down the blackout cloth. Warm late autumn light floods the echoing empty room. Kame coils the wire, his hands quick and efficient.

He takes the photographs away. Flips through them, one by one, laying them out in rows on the floor of his room, rearranging them, on his hands and knees. He stares at his mother's face, here and there and again and again. His family spread out in rows: mother, father, three brothers, himself. Print after print, black and white, mostly, but sometimes, shockingly, color. He keeps looking for something elusive, something to reinforce what he remembers. Something truthful and real, captured on film, to reflect the memories he's been carrying, cherishing - all the myriad things he remembers - or what he thinks he remembers - of those days.

He studies the photos, searching for an expression, or a moment, the angle of a gaze. He reaches around and over, moving gingerly, handles the edges carefully. He purses his lips, his body now folded into an easy squat, puffs out his cheeks and blows air. He gathers them up again and files them away. They don't look right or feel right. He retreats to his inheritance: to the cracked, aging binders, to the journals, his and hers. To constructing and reconstructing what he knows, what he remembers, what is, what might have been.

The light is wrong, the shadows bent. The subjects, they mock with a curled lip, fingers pointing to something he can't see, that, there, just out of frame. This set, the latest set, every set. They won't do.

Thanksgiving comes and goes. Kame doesn't plan to see any of his brothers or his father. When his father calls a few weeks before, Kame tells him he has a job that will have him traveling through the holiday. There is no job. There's only the clock running down in his head. He'd rather not deal with the submerged concern in his father's faded eyes.

His assistant, Riisa, has already made arrangements for a flight and rental car, into Phoenix and out of Portland, and he decides he'll figure out his motels along the way. He's in Santa Barbara on Thanksgiving day, watching American football in a noisy sports bar filled with holiday refugees, and he's driving north from San Francisco by the weekend. He stops occasionally, shoots until he's ready to move on.

There's another handful of hair on December first, the day after he has a chat with his agent, Nakamaru, about his December schedule, two upcoming jobs in New York City and one in Europe that will take him through Christmas, easy. Kame thinks of his father as he tugs at his knit cap and ties on his running shoes. Wonders if his father will try to crash the job in Venice just like he did last year in Austin, to keep Kame company. Paternal duty, Kame thinks, must suck.

Kame gasps as he runs and ignores what hurts as he dashes through Oregon rain.

It's a few days into December when Kame finally piles out of a taxi from the airport. It's late afternoon, three or four, maybe, but he's not sure and he stopped wearing a watch years ago.

Entering the house, he's assaulted. Lively Cole Porter comes from the morning room, sunshine and twinkling notes, music in the house again. Kame quietly closes the front door and leaves his bags there in the entryway, toes off his shoes, and pads to the arched entrance on his right. Folding his arms across his chest, he leans up against the doorjamb with one shoulder, settles in to listen for a while. He likes music. He likes musicians. He liked them all, enough.

So the housemate is male, Kame realizes as he studies the slim figure slouching at Meisa's mother's upright near a pool of wintry afternoon sunlight. He's also something of a cliché, Kame thinks, taking in the tipped-back straw pork pie hat, the wide X across his back of crossed suspenders, the white crisp-collared shirt with the sleeves folded back to the elbow. Depression-era piano man chic.

After a while, he doesn't know how long, Kame rouses himself, pushes to a stand. Raps his knuckles on the doorjamb, and the music abruptly ends.

The guy's frame tightens and he half-turns on his bench. Kame waves.

"Hey," Kame says, beginning to cross the room, "you must be the musician." He's close enough now. He thinks he should offer his hand. The bench scrapes as the guy stands, and he's taller than Kame, dark brown hair just curling over his collar, full lips and dark eyes. Kame's mouth goes bone-dry, he drinks it all in.

"Um, hi," the guy falters, his adam's apple bobbing as he blinks rapidly, his gaze flickering up and down before settling somewhere on Kame's face, not quite his eyes at first, too low, and then finally they snap up, and Kame feels it, an electric jolt. The guy smiles, wide, a little lop-sided, and there it is again. A pang in his chest, a sickening thud. Not now, he thinks, and he closes his eyes for just a second, trying to breathe shallow, avoid the next sharp strike. Please, not now.

When he opens them again, the guy is reaching out his hand, which Kame takes on autopilot, distantly registering the calluses where the tip of each fingertip touches his skin.

"-and you must be the photographer," the guy says with a slow-spreading smile, a lingering squeeze, release. Kame drops his hand to his side, feels burned. His fingers tingle. His whole fucking arm tingles, and he's lightheaded for a moment. He hasn't eaten since Portland, hours and hours ago.

"That's right," Kame nods, making himself form the correct words. They look at each other. Seconds tick by, and the guy's smile slips.

"So, I'm Jin," he says, shifting awkwardly. "Jin Akanishi."

Kame nods again. Jin, okay. Akanishi.

"And," the guy says slowly, a crease appearing between his eyebrows, "you must be Kazuya."

The fog begins to clear. "Yeah, yes, but," Kame says, grasping for his manners, rubbing his forehead, "you can call me Kamenashi. Sorry, I'm really out of it. Just flew in from Portland. Oregon, not Maine. Haven't slept much lately. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the house."

"Thanks," Akanishi says, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"So," Kame says, "piano?"

"Sometimes."

"So is it a costume," Kame asks, his mouth twitching up in a smile, "or you just like the style."

"What? This?" Akanishi looks down, plucks at a suspender as if he's forgotten about the outfit, which, Kame supposes, could look out of place or ridiculous, but now he decides it's perfect, it looks fucking perfect. Kame suppresses the twitch of his fingers that long for a camera, ignores the way he automatically frames Akanishi against the piano, beams of winter sunshine just beyond his shoulder, the angle of the hat tipped back from his high forehead, the curl of his hair dipping over his collar, his narrow waist, the dark brown trousers that fall to his polished shoes. "Oh. Yeah. And yes." His shoulders jerk in an artless shrug. "I have a gig, Tin Pan Alley thing. With a group. Hey, you interested? I can get you in. It should be fun."

Kame barely avoids jerking back at the invitation, which trips out of Akanishi's mouth like a little kid charging a playground. Kame feels old, weary, cotton-headed, done in. He doesn't belong around such energy, he'll fuck up the chi or something. When Akanishi's open face tightens, shutters, just a bit, Kame knows he's done it again, hesitated too long. Not good, Kamenashi, he scolds himself, don't be a jerk, as though he's reminding himself to stand up straight, not to slouch, or use proper English when he speaks. Don't be a jerk. Not on the first day.

"Hey, man, don't worry about it, okay. You must be exhausted." Akanishi speaks quickly, his words bumping up against each other, "another time, if you want. Or not. No big deal, right." He nods, retreats, pulls the knob to bring the cover down over the piano's black-and-white keys, and he pushes the bench in with his knees. Kame watches all this, wants to stop him, but it's too late, Akanishi's already moving away with a steady, unhurried pace that gives Kame plenty of time. But Kame just watches, mesmerized by the sway of long limbs, the shift of shoulders beneath the billow of white shirt, until Akanishi's almost gone, nearly through the archway on the far end, just about hidden beyond a tall spray of flowers Meisa's arranged on a round table in the center of the room. Kame likes the composition, the flowers should be just out of focus in the foreground, lit by streaks of light, the focus sharpening on Akanishi's face beside the abrupt line of a doorway, paused in a transition where the viewer might not know whether he's coming or going-

"Wait," Kame says, raising his voice a little, "let me know."

Akanishi pauses in the doorway, one hand palming the doorjamb, expressionless as he meets Kame's eyes.

"Today isn't good, but. Next time," Kame continues when Akanishi doesn't say anything, "let me know. I love music."

Akanishi's nodding now, and his expression relaxes into a smile. "Sure, man," he slaps his hand against the doorjamb, "next time."

The house is full again, no empty rooms, music once more; it gives Kame an odd sense of relief. He drags his bags off to his room and collapses onto his bed for a couple hours, wakes up around six and putters about, finds his car keys and makes a grocery run. He falls asleep at ten that night and no one is home, not even Joseph, the painter who lives upstairs. Akanishi’s left the door to his room partially open, so Kame peers in through the gap, sees the sprawling mess of boxes, a music stand, instrument cases, electronic equipment.

In the morning, he’s up at six, running in the dark along the Rock Creek Park trail he picks up out back of the property. The old ache in his left leg is back, deep and sharp, but he ignores it even as he limps into the house, swallows some painkillers with water over the kitchen sink. He’s showered, dressed and caramelizing bananas in butter and brown sugar by seven-thirty, and two hours later there’s a note on the kitchen island describing the banana-stuffed french toast casserole in the oven, the orange juice he squeezed in the fridge, and the chocolate muffins piled in a pyramid which concludes with “Help Yourself” surrounded by a few squiggled smiley faces.

Kame looks up as Meisa walks in, and he puts the pen down. Her long dark hair tumbles over her shoulders in disarray and her slender form is undisguised by loose grey pajamas that cling to her narrow shoulders, the swell of her breasts and hips. Her eyes widen as she sees the muffins.

“Kame,” she breathes, “you didn’t.” She reaches out to the plate of still-warm muffins, greedily peeling off the paper and taking a huge bite, heedless of dark crumbs raining onto the counter.

When she opens her eyes, her expression is blissful. She accepts the cup of black coffee Kame hands her. She takes a big gulp, and swallows.

"My favorite," she beams.

"I know," Kame says.

"What would we do without you?" she mumbles around another mouthful.

"Probably starve," Kame says. He slips off the stool, leaving it pulled out for Meisa to climb on. He's standing there, fingertips just touching the island when Akanishi appears, his hair a tousled mess, clad in a worn-thin Thundercats t-shirt with a shapeless drooping neckline and a pair of boxers.

He comes to a halt, hands braced against either side of the kitchen doorway, his neck dropped forward, the picture of a skinny Japanese Samson pushing against the pillars, Kame thinks. "It smells like chocolate," he says slowly with a frown, "and bananas. Why does it smell like chocolate?"

Kame bites back a grin as Meisa turns to looks at Akanishi over her shoulder. "It's breakfast," she says, chipmunk-cheeked and cheerful, "Kame made breakfast."

"Coffee?" Kame asks, moving away from the island to the coffee pot on the counter. He touches the back of his knit cap self-consciously.

"Mmm, yeah, black, please," Akanishi says, sliding onto a stool beside Meisa. "Kame?" he asks, his forehead wrinkling.

"Kamenashi," Kame says firmly and Meisa shoots him a quick look.

"Oh, right. Does this happen often?" Akanishi asks, cupping his hands around the coffee mug Kame places in front of him. He's slumped over the breakfast bar of the island, his eyes half-closed. There are lines at the corners of his eyes that Kame didn't notice the day before, pale purple shadows beneath them.

"What?"

"Breakfast. Do you make breakfast often?" Akanishi opens his eyes and peers blearily at Kame.

The corner of Meisa's mouth quirks up. "Often enough," she says, "when he's home. Kame likes us."

Kame feels himself flush. "Late night?"

Akanishi groans after gulping at the coffee. "They're always late nights, fuck me. I'm starving."

Kame doesn't ask any more questions, but he goes ahead and dishes up french toast from the oven and slides the plate in front of Akanishi, who immediately perks up.

After a few hungry mouthfuls, Akanishi breathes out hard through his nose and puts down his fork. Looks at Kame through hair fallen over his eyes and says seriously: "I could get used to this."

"Yeah, well." Kame smiles faintly. He's caught on a drift of white powdered sugar in the corner crease of Akanishi's mouth. He looks away.

Meisa nudges Akanishi with her shoulder, her expression chummy. "I told you, didn't I? You'll like living here."

"You did tell me." Akanishi's voice is easy, morning-rough, and smile-warm.

"Think I'll get going," Kame says, wiping his hands unnecessarily on his jeans.

"Big day?" Meisa asks.

Kame's shoulders lift a little, noncommittal. "Not sure yet. I need to check in with my assistant first, but. I was thinking about." He shakes his head, looks off to the side, it's not like him to be indecisive. He'd woken up with invigorating purpose that had evaporated five minutes ago. "Politics & Prose. Maybe go into the park. No jobs today, so." He pauses, considering. "I need to go through this last set, what I shot out west, but I." He shakes his head, and looks back at Meisa, who's clearly more awake now and watching him. "What about you?"

"Oh, god, full day," she groans, dropping her head into her hands. "Five thousand meetings, I think, and they're all assholes."

"Not me," Akanishi says, with an odd hitch to his voice, as though he can hardly believe it, "free as a bird. I suppose I should."

"What?" Kame asks, curious.

Akanishi's looking down at his empty plate with something like confusion, like he isn't sure what happened to his breakfast. He rubs his hands over his face. "I need to get out, learn my way around here."

"Oh," Kame says, surprised without knowing why, "so you're new to the area."

"See," Meisa interjects in a withering tone, "this is what you get for not being around when someone moves in."

"Sorry," Kame says, unrepentant. Okay, maybe he's a little sorry. His eyes flicker toward Akanishi, and he shifts.

"I've been gigging around here for years," Akanishi explains, "all over America, really, but here, man, all the time. Up the east coast, down, all over the south, out west. You name it, I've played there, probably. But I never really lived anywhere, you know? I know hotels and venues, and you know, shit like that. I tend to remember restaurants I like. Where my friends live, if I'm lucky. But most of the time? I only know where my GPS tells me to go..." He shrugs. "I'd like it to be different this time. I'd like to get to know this city. Properly I mean. Got a lot to learn."

Kame frowns, wanting to ask more, but he closes his mouth, glances at Meisa with mistrust; she's wearing a tiny suspect smile, and she tosses Kame a sidelong look.

"Like what?" she asks brightly, turning to Akanishi.

Akanishi rubs his chin, considering. "Well," he says, drawing the syllable out, and Kame hears something molasses-slow in it, the way his English holds no trace of Japanese, the way it ever so faintly twangs. He's surprised he didn't pick up on it before. "Any good bookstores around here?"

Meisa breaks into a wide satisfied grin and looks at Kame with a look that says see?

And really, Kame should have known.

"You know it's, it's basically a commune, right," Kame tells Akanishi later, after a wander on Connecticut Avenue, a couple hours spent in Politics & Prose. Now, they're on a path by the creek in Rock Creek Park, a short muddy climb down the ravine where the house backs onto the park.

"Yeah, I know." Akanishi's tone is dry and amused, matching Kame's. His head is bowed, hands in his jeans pockets, short navy wool peacoat buttoned up to a soft-looking woolly grey scarf wound round his throat. A pair of tinted aviator sunglasses nestles in his hair like a headband.

"So why. What do you want with a commune." Kame doesn't mean for it to come out like that, like a challenge, but somehow it hangs in the air.

Akanishi stops to look at him with a puzzled expression. "What about you."

"What about me," and Kame considers that no one's ever asked why he's there, not even Meisa. He wonders, not for the first time, what his father's told her, if they talk about him when he's not around. He keeps walking, slow, and a few seconds later, he hears Akanishi's footsteps scuffing through fallen leaves again.

"It's just." Akanishi's voice sounds breathless, maybe with mirth, maybe exasperation, but Kame isn't looking. "You don't even know me."

A shrug rolls Kame's shoulders, like there's an itch somewhere in the center of his back.

"No," he says, "I don't. So what if I'm curious."

"I'm curious, too."

"So, what, you'll tell me if I tell you. That's just dumb." Kame chuckles despite himself.

"Yeah, it is," Akanishi agrees, "but I can still ask."

"Fine." Kame studies the path ahead, taking in the glitter of light on the trickles of late-autumn creek water, the dark empty trees, the thousand shades of brown and yellow undulating in every direction, punctuated here and there with bits of persistent green.

"I like it." He grins as he says it, feeling strangely lighthearted, impish.

"That's it? 'I like it.' Great answer, Kamenashi. Interviewers must love you." He huffs. "Meisa says you've lived in the house longer than anyone else."

"Six years," Kame says in a bright radio-announcer voice, nearly choking on it, "heading into year seven." He takes a breath, feeling his heart beat faster, a sharp pang again. His stomach twists and churns. Goddamnit.

"And you like it."

"Well, I like Meisa, too. She's great, everyone is. You've met the others? Wait till you try Joseph's barbecue, he's from Tennessee, and Maude makes the most amazing pies."

"Oh, I see. It's really about the food," Akanishi says with a grin, "you're just here for the food."

Kame hitches one shoulder, rocks his head from side to side. "You got me. So what's your excuse."

"I don't know, food sounds like a pretty good reason to me." Akanishi wears a teasing smile, gives him little sidelong glances.

"Shut up." But he's smiling, too.

Akanishi grows quiet, his smile fades after a few minutes walking. It's cold, but Kame's warm from the walk, and Akanishi's cheeks are tinted pink.

"I'm tired," Akanishi says later, and there's something in his voice, something brittle, sad even, that makes Kame turn, startled, look close. "I'm really fucking tired."

Kame waits for him to continue.

"I needed somewhere to just..." Akanishi stops and Kame holds his breath in the silence that chases their leaf-rustling footsteps. "I've been on the road for so long, my life is basically suitcases and storage facilities. Anyway, a friend of a friend of a friend, you know what I mean. Told me there was an opening here, suggested it might be," he pauses, the hesitation palpable, "that it might be good for me. Good place, good people. Rest for a while. Said it was a retreat." He chuckles softly, almost bitter, as though he's been talking to himself, as though he's forgotten that Kame's walking alongside him and listening hard.

Kame gets it, what he hears in Akanishi's voice, the exhaustion, and with that thought, it comes, the stab that rips into his breath pattern, makes him freeze, tense up and breathe shallow, fearful of the next blow. It strikes again, hard, the kind of pain that normally has him feeling around along his chest with one hand, searching for the crater, but he's getting used to it, so he just stops. A shivery hush descends, a heavy muffling shroud that blots out every last sound. Inside the hush, he waits.

Kame looks up only when Jin touches him lightly on the arm, a brief, electrifying brush that brings him back, that unblocks his ears. Perhaps it's all there on his face, what's thundering in his head, counting down. Jin's hand falls away, he looks stricken. Kame shakes him off anyway, as though Jin's hand is still there, holding him, even when he isn't. The pain is gone; Kame is relieved. He lengthens his stride, and Jin matches him without a word, without apology, and it's an easy loping pace, air in his lungs, leaves underfoot in a crisp-crunch rhythm, no birds, a little breeze to freshen warm cheeks and the whoosh of cars on the road. Kame doesn't need to look at Jin; Jin doesn't walk faster or slower. Kame doesn't think about anything, not how Jin is careful and knows how to leave him alone. Kame keeps looking ahead. He sees the bend in the road, the blind curve, the plunge. Jin isn't stupid, Kame can see that, too.

Just past mid-December, Kame lets himself into the house, tired and dirty from the train; Penn Station always makes him feel grimy; even arriving at stately Union Station can't compensate. His left leg is aching again, and his eyelids are gummy from fitful sleep caught in snatches between the train and the taxi. It's been a long stretch of days, three following Koki Tanaka around the Bronx for a magazine cover feature touting him as the next Barry McGee and then five days photographing the construction of a large-scale Kapoor sculpture exhibition at MOMA. Five days of hard hats and ladders and scaffolding, drinking too much coffee and smoking cigarettes on the loading dock with welders in steel-toed boots.

"I'm home," Kame says quietly as he pulls off his boots, and he's vaguely disappointed by the silence that greets him. It isn't until he's left his clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor with the black knit skullcap on top, until after he's climbed under the hot spray and turned his face, sunflower-like, up into it, that he thinks of Jin and of how much he'd been hoping to hear music when he walked in the door.

Some hours later he wakes up sprawled face-down on top of his comforter, naked inside a heavy plush bathrobe. As he pushes himself up, he notices a piece of paper on the bed beside him. He tries to be rational as he examines how that makes him feel: uncomfortable that someone came into his room while he was sleeping, more so when he sees it's from Jin. He wonders if he should say something. He decides not to, and he wonders what that means.

He dresses quickly, first tugging on another knit cap before he finds a pair of clean dark jeans, v-neck knit shirt and a closely-tailored single-breasted black jacket. He makes sure he has his phone, wallet, and keys, and he climbs into his hybrid SUV.

The address on the note leads to a small Atlas District hole-in-the-wall with a line out the door to get in, and "SOLD OUT" signs taped to the will call window. But Kame's name is on the guest list so he slips in and takes in the shabby low couches and scuffed-up chairs. He orders a drink from the barely-there bar and notices that many people have brought their own beverages which they pull out of brown paper tucked inside black plastic bags. The music is loud, but not uncomfortable, and as he takes in the handbills peeling off the walls that badly need a fresh coat of paint, the mushy wooden floorboards underfoot and the grimy lighting, Kame smiles. Already he loves it, the weary, careless aesthetic paired with the intense energetic vibe in the room. If he'd staged it, he couldn't have imagined it better.

There's a man on a saxophone right now, accompanied by an electric bass, and Kame doesn't see Jin anywhere, so he takes his drink to a far table. He people-watches and lets his mind drift while he listens and waits. When he closes his eyes, he sees long planes of sinuous steel arcing and twisting through space; he's still in New York, looking for the right angle, and the right light.

"You made it," Kame hears, lips just brushing his ear. He turns, startled, his right arm going to the back of his chair as he makes to stand, and Jin's so close, he nearly collides with that chin.

"No, no, don't get up," Jin says as he moves past Kame, spinning the opposite chair and straddling it. Folding his arms over the back, he marks Kame with a sharp gaze. "Well," he begins, frowning a little, "don't you look fresh as a daisy."

"Shut up," Kame says, shifting uncomfortably. "I've been working."

"Yeah, I noticed. You've been gone for a while. I missed your french toast. No one else makes breakfast."

Kame reaches for his drink, and notes Jin's untucked button-down shirt, vertical dark stripes, grey and black, good looking fabric that pulls slightly across the breadth his shoulders. Skinny tie, gel in his hair. Kame meets Jin's straight gaze.

"What," he says, "do I have something on my face."

Jin shakes his head and purses his lips critically. "You look tired."

"Gee, thanks," Kame tilts his glass toward Jin in salute, "and, by the way, so do you," which is true, Jin doesn't look particularly rested, not with mailbag pouches under his eyes and pale, waxy skin. Kame can see it even in this light.

"I know," Jin says before he looks down and lowers his voice, mutters, "I really need to learn how to say no."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, you know what I mean, Kamenashi," Jin says, his eyes flashing in exasperation as he looks up again. "Somehow I think you have the same problem."

Kame rolls his eyes and shakes his head, feels his lip curl in derision. No, he doesn't. He says no all the time. Well, Nakamaru does, anyway, before Kame has the chance to say yes, which is basically the same thing, right? And it's not a problem, it means he's a working artist, which is more than a lot of people can say, and Kame doesn't feel like he can just lay around and live off his past success because then he might as well be dead and he doesn't have much time left anyway, so he wants to do everything he can with what's left-

"Kamenashi," Jin says, leaning forward to shake his arm, and Kame's mouth snaps shut with a horrified click. Jin sits back slowly, his forehead creased in a trouble frown. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Nothing," Kame says, fast, and then: "I'm drunk, man, just ignore me. You're right, I'm tired. I haven't slept well in a week. And-"

"-and what," Jin says.

"-and nothing," Kame huffs dismissively, "look, I'm here, you asked me to come, so I came. And then you tell me how shitty I look. Thanks for that."

Jin places both his hands flat on the table and levels him with a long look. Kame manages, only through great effort, not to squirm.

"You don't look shitty, Kame," Jin says evenly, "you look good, you always look good, but, come on. Sue me if I think you could use some sleep. And yeah, so could I, but fuck." He makes a face. "Why do we even have these conversations. I think you just like fucking with me, and." He pauses, heaves an irritated sigh. "I really wish you wouldn't."

Kame's mouth falls open.

"Look. Thanks for coming," Jin says to forestall any further comments. He stands and turns the chair to push it in. "Was real nice of you. If you feel like staying, I'm on at ten-thirty. If not, no sweat. Another time. If you're still interested. Don't kill yourself on my account."

"Of course not," Kame manages, and then he's watching Jin slip away.

Kame stays. He finishes his drink and drinks more until he feels distant and floaty, until he stops thinking about backwards or forwards and his mind stays still, a central fixed point, wrapped in music, the din of voices, the clink of glass. Kame almost doesn't notice when some guy with grey hair and a little pointed goatee steps onto the small stage with a microphone and explains that they have very special guests tonight, the Murasaki Blues Trio. After he rattles off a short introduction listing some of their accolades and the notable venues where they've been featured, he finishes by thanking everyone for coming out and the group for gracing them with what should be a very special performance.

When he looks up again, the trio is taking the stage. There's a serious-looking guy with a shock of red hair behind an upright bass on the right, a woman in a black sequined camisole behind the drum kit in the center; both look about Jin's age; and then Jin is sitting down at a Yamaha keyboard on the left. From Kame's corner, his view is obstructed by taller people, so as everyone begins to applaud, he picks up his drink and moves, squeezing through the tightly-packed crowd until he's not far off Jin's right side. Jin is poised with one hand on the keys, watching the drummer who gives him a tiny nod, and Jin begins.

It's definitely not Cole Porter. Instead it's something else entirely, something that rips through him, something blistering and fierce, manic almost, until it becomes thoughtful and yet still insistent.

Kame likes it. He's easy; he likes a lot, but this. Two hours vanish as he listens, watches, rapt, unable to look away. It's as much about how the music makes him feel, when it's crackling with energy or delicate with melancholy, as what the music makes him see, the pictures in his head that fill him up and carry him away. The rudimentary overhead spotlights catch on Jin's smile, every shift of Jin's shoulders, his arms moving, his body swaying, his fingers on the keys. Kame notices the way Jin's leg bounces, his foot tapping to keep time, and he not only sees but feels the rapport on the small stage, the unspoken conversation that passes between the three musicians as they play, the way Jin looks at them; the way they look at him.

Kame listens to their patter, all three of them, between pieces. There are all these little looks, little jokes and stories, and Kame realizes that Jin is shy, not in his playing, which is confident and playful, but rather in how he has to be drawn out by the others, coaxed to join them in their onstage banter.

Kame finds himself laughing out loud when the drummer tells the story of a man who once came to a performance at the Natural History Museum with his infant daughter in one of those carriers on the front of his chest. Afterward, he'd asked Jin to sign his baby.

"I said no," Jin says indignantly, picking up the thread of the story, "hell no," and Kame hears that odd twang in Jin's accent again, "I'm not signing a baby. Who on earth would sign a baby?" Jin looks around, raising his eyebrows for effect, "I hope no one wants me to sign their kid tonight. I'll sign almost anything else."

"I got something for you to sign," some guy calls out, thick with innuendo, from the darkened room, and everyone, including Jin, laughs. He leans into his microphone and looks in the direction of the comment with a suggestive smile. He pauses, and the room quiets, waiting.

"I said almost anything, man," but Kame hears some kind of dirty promise lurking just beneath the teasing words. He feels his face heat. He can't tell if Jin means yes or no.

It's late when the trio finishes up, two sets and three encores. Kame hangs back until the crowd and fans have mostly dispersed before approaching the stage. Jin, who's snapping the latches on a huge hard-sided keyboard case, notices him only after Kame clears his throat.

"You're still here." Jin lifts his head with an expression of happy surprise, all earlier tension seemingly forgotten. Jin looks tired, but the good kind of tired, relaxed and buoyant. His forehead is damp along the hair line, and moist hair clings to his neck.

"Yeah." Kame hitches his shoulders as he tucks his hand into the front pockets of his jeans. He's still strangely giddy from the show. "So. I wanted to thank you. For inviting me."

"Sure," Jin says, straightening, "what'd you think?" He's studiously nonchalant.

"Um," Kame purposefully hesitates, unable to fight the compulsion to tease Jin. He's sorry a few seconds later when Jin's face falls.

"Oh," Jin says, "okay," and he hunches over the enormous case, carefully flipping it on its end so it's angled on two wheels like a rolling suitcase.

"Hey. Wait," Kame reaches out, touches Jin's arm, "I'm kidding, you dope."

Jin draws himself up, holding the case with two hands and he waits, his face flushed.

"I loved it," Kame says honestly, and he's smiling as he says it, glad he can tell the truth. "I'm not just saying that, either. You guys are..." He shakes his head. "-something else. I mean, I told you I love music, but man, that was. I don't know, it hit my kinks, I guess."

"Really?" Jin's starting to smile again.

"Really," Kame says.

"We have CDs?" Jin offers, "if, you know, you'd like to hit your kinks again. Maybe in private." His tone is carefully neutral, but the sidelong glance he tosses Kame is anything but. Kame huffs a short laugh, tilts his head, studying Jin. Light flares behind Jin, creating a golden nimbus around his dark hair and his eyes fall into shadow, deepen.

"Akanishi," Kame begins, grasping at a vague thought.

"Yeah?"

Kame steps into Jin's space and, without thinking about it, he reaches out with one hand and lightly touches Jin's face.

Jin freezes.

"Have you ever modeled?" Kame asks. He considers Jin's classically Japanese features, the perfect eyes, the straight eyebrows, high forehead, full mouth. Absently he presses his fingertips to Jin's long jaw, pushing it gently to the side.

It's not what he was planning to ask or how he would have if he'd considered it consciously, the words just pop out. He blinks, then. Realizes what he's doing and drops his hand, his fingertips burning.

Jin's expression is hard, like he wants to punch Kame in the face. He reaches out instead and wraps one large hand around Kame's jaw.

"Have you," Jin says roughly and he's angry, mingled with something like scorn or disgust, too. Kame's ears ring with the rebuke. Heat from Jin's hand bleeds into Kame's skin.

"Sorry," Kame breathes, shocked, unable to look away from Jin's flashing eyes.

Jin releases him and steps back, pressing the back of his hand over his mouth. He says nothing. His face is blank now; only his eyes are still stormy.

"I have," Kame says a moment later, quiet. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." He shrugs helplessly. "I'm sorry."

A muscle along Jin's jaw twitches. "Whatever, man. Don't touch me like that. I'm not a piece of meat."

His face burning, Kame waits for him to continue. For a few seconds, it seems like Jin will, but instead he shakes his head roughly, his expression strangled.

"Look," Jin says, frustration and now embarrassment written across his face, "can you grab the stand?" Jin lowers the hard case and leaves it on its side.

"Sure," Kame says, stepping out of Jin's way. He bends to collapse the stand and grab it up in his arms. When he straightens, Jin's speaking quietly to his bandmates, looking over his shoulder briefly at Kame, and they all look at him. Kame's scalp prickles and his face grows hotter before Jin detaches himself and comes back to Kame's side with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a beat-up duffle bag in the other hand.

"Where did you park?" he asks without looking at Kame.

"In the lot," Kame answers with a frown.

"Good," Jin says, "stay right here." He leaves Kame with all the gear and walks away; Kame sees him lean in toward the grey haired man with the goatee who'd introduced the trio. A minute later, he returns with the man in tow.

"What'd you leave in the lot?" Jin asks and when Kame looks at him in confusion, the man clarifies: "Your car, sir?"

After Kame tells them, he frowns, his eyes skipping between them, and he asks, "why?"

Jin nods at the older man and says "Thanks." Gripping Kame's bicep, he turns them away.

"Because I'm driving you home," Jin says and his voice is low and firm, and he's tense, as though he's sure Kame will fight. Kame feels his frown deepen and he begins to protest, but Jin cuts him off. "No. You look like you're gonna fall over, and," he says, the last word louder to drown out Kame's abortive attempt to interrupt, "you've had a lot to drink. I can smell it, and this is not a discussion, okay? Frankly, I don't care what you think. Just get in the car and we'll come back for your car tomorrow."

Kame opens his mouth again, but after a few seconds, he closes it, wanting desperately to dig his heels in. He can take a taxi, damnit, he doesn't need-

"If you really can't stand my company, go ahead, Kamenashi, find your own way home," Jin says wearily, "but you aren't driving."

Kame stares at him. His heart pounds, he can't hear anything over its bass-drum beat. "Is that what-" he starts through numb lips. "Do you really-" He stops. His throat tightens.

"Fine," he manages to croak, and he bends to grab the heavy duffle bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and he takes up the keyboard stand again.

Jin lets out a breath, two spots of color high up on his cheeks. He shrugs into his coat and pulls both straps of the backpack on before bending down to the hard case, tipping it back onto its wheels and pulling it forward. Kame follows him silently, praying they won't get stopped before they escape; he isn't sure he can face having to smile at anyone anymore.

After they've stowed the gear in the back of Jin's hatchback Volvo, Kame comes around to the passenger side, hesitates before climbing in. At this time of night, it shouldn't take more than a half hour to get back to the house, but even thirty minutes is too long to sit next to Jin and examine what went wrong. He isn't sure how or why he keeps wrong-footing it, but he has to live with the guy. It's really not good if Jin hates him.

Jin settles in beside him and they're both buckling their seatbelts in near-dark. Jin sits back and braces his hands against the steering wheel without starting the engine. The silence is thick, broken by the intermittent sounds of traffic on the street outside the lot. Kame suppresses a shiver.

"I'm sorry," Jin says at last, and he sounds hoarse and contrite. "I. I lost my temper back there, and. It wasn't your fault."

Kame turns his head, considers Jin for a long empty moment. Jin's slumped in his seat, staring down into his lap.

"I'm not trying to be contrary," Kame says slowly, "but actually, I think it was. I shouldn't have done that."

"I overreacted," Jin says.

"Maybe," Kame allows, tipping his head back against the headrest. "I'm sure you have your reasons."

He can hear Jin swallow in the silence that follows, and Kame supposes that's all the answer he deserves. He senses more than sees Jin's hands tightening on the steering wheel, and then he hears a sigh. He turns his head again to see Jin pressing the ignition button and the lights come on, illuminating the dirty brick wall in front of them. Jin puts the car in reverse, and resting his hand behind Kame's headrest, he looks over his right shoulder to back out of the parking spot.

When they're out on the street, he drives carefully, uses his signal, brakes gently. At a stop light, he glances over at Kame. Kame's hands are spread out over his thighs.

"Kame," Jin starts, and stops.

Kame looks over. Jin's profile is a dark outline against a paler rectangle of grey, his teeth chew down into his lower lip. Kame isn't sure how to respond when Jin doesn't continue.

"So," Jin begins again, "this sucks."

Kame clears his throat. "Yeah."

"I don't. I mean. Can we. Can we just talk about something else?" Jin asks, and there's a note of pleading in his voice.

"What do you want to talk about," Kame says dully. The pain is striking again, sharp and deep, and his breath stutters. His chest feels heavy, and he thinks that Jin was right not to let him drive home. He keeps his eyes trained out the window. One hand tightens into a fist on his thigh.

"Why don't you tell me about New York."

Kame is surprised. "Why-" He catches himself, but he can't resist. "It's not very interesting."

Jin checks the rearview mirror. "How do you know what I think is interesting."

"Point," He rests his elbow on the little ledge of the passenger side window, leans his head into his hand and watches the tail lights drift and shift ahead.

"Okay," he says, more to himself, and when he looks over at Jin, Jin's looking back, a long red light moment that captures him until Kame sees green glow across Jin's face; Kame feels the acceleration before Jin looks away.

Kame tries to relax, to let the pain recede, to gather his thoughts where they've scattered to exhaustion and alcohol and distress. When he was very young, his mother gave him a journal before she gave him a camera, words were his first medium, and yet words fail him now, log-jammed somewhere in the back of his throat, where uncertainty strangles them into silence.

He worries his lower lip and listens to the hum of the car, watches the neon signs, spray-paint-tagged metal shutters, black-barred windows, stripes of streetlight falling across the dashboard. In darkness he conjures towering forms of twisting and arching metal, vast sheets that bend and trick the eye, shapes that take flight. Kame wants to tell him what they are like, the Kapoor sculptures he'd tried to capture, their energy and motion expressed in a single frame. He starts somewhere, anywhere. Maybe with the graffiti artist, Tanaka, and his three-story-high murals in the Bronx, or maybe on a loading dock, watching a sculpted spiral of steel emerge from a tractor trailer until it's lofted high, suspended from girders, to drip gleaming metal and catch light.

"So," Kame yawns, "my agent thinks I'm wasting my time with meaningless jobs when I should be working on my next book." Kame is rambling, half-asleep. He strokes the back of his fingers against the cold window as Jin pulls around the curving driveway, parks. The engine cuts off, the headlamps shut down, the interior lights fade. It's very quiet, a cold wintry stillness.

"What do you think?" Jin's voice is a low vibration that Kame somehow feels along his skin.

He forces himself to think through the sleep crushing down on him, considers the question. "I think he's wrong. I'm not wasting my time. Nothing is meaningless. But he's right. I do need to work on the book." He breathes out. "My last book," he whispers.

"Last? Why?"

Kame drowsily peers over at Jin. His head feels heavy, like it would roll right off his shoulders if he let it. Jin was so right, he could never have driven home.

"I know what you did," Kame murmurs, curling slowly, angling inwards. He leans his head against the headrest, tucking a hand beneath his cheek. "Are you still-" Kame breaks off when he hears Jin yawn hugely.

"Am I still what," Jin says, his voice slow and high, distorted by the yawn.

Kame closes his eyes for just a second.

"Come on, Kame, we're home. You have to wake up." Jin lightly pushes his shoulder.

Kame opens his eyes with some effort. Jin is turned in his seat, squarely facing him. His heart lurches in his chest; a small burst of adrenaline gives him enough to lift his head and, bracing both hands against the seat back, push himself up.

"Angry," Kame mumbles, rubbing his eyes, "don't be mad."

"I'm not mad, Kame," Jin says, and his voice sounds muffled, strange.

"I know what you did," Kame repeats, oddly relieved, "you. You took the long way around." Kame fumbles for the door handle, forgetting about his seat belt until he hears a click and feels the release.

"Thanks," he says, pushing the straps off. "Why'd you take the long way around." It comes out like a sigh. He looks back, searching for the dim oblong of Jin's face.

Jin's eyes glitter, barely visible in the darkness. Kame hears a rustle he imagines is a shrug, and it's loud in the deep silence.

"I was listening to you," Jin says, "and you weren't done."

::part two