fic for scorch66
Title: Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner
By: soundczech
Pairing: Akame friendship
Word count: 5400 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst, some homophobia, bullying, low self-esteem issues.
Summary: Kame just has to get through his last year of middle school.
Kame hates school. He sits in math classes that seem to last for days and stares down at his textbook with bleary eyes, trying to will the little stacks of numbers and wriggly little letters to rearrange themselves and suddenly make sense to him. This used to be easier, he remembers, when he was younger; back then, the numbers were stacked in orderly little lines like the bricks in a building, solid and dependable, two plus two becoming four, multiplied by three to become twelve. Back then letters were just letters. They weren’t pretending to be something else.
He hates being bad at things. Whenever he gets a test back and sees the score on top in big red letters with a frowny face scrawled next to it, his stomach churns guiltily and he quickly covers it before any of the other kids can see and know that he’s not as smart as he is supposed to be. He used to be good at school, before. Back when the letters were letters and his brain wasn’t full of all the work he has to do after school. The work he wants to do. Now he’s barely passing. Scraping by. Jin is the only one who knows about it, other than his parents. Jin says it doesn’t matter, ‘cause he’s going to be a megastar anyway and megastars don’t need algebra, and that Kame is plenty smart but the school is just too dumb to realise it. Jin is mostly full of shit but his certainty makes Kame feel better anyway.
The worst part about school, other than the maths and his mediocrity and having to sit in this grey, hot room and stare out at the birds in the sky outside, is the way that Kawasaki stares at him from his seat two rows back. The way he and his friends snicker when Kame passes them in the halls.
They used to be friends, Kame thinks. It seems impossible now.
-
When Kame was accepted into JE, he didn’t tell anybody at first. His mother expected him to boast about it the way he boasted about everything - like being the pitcher on the national team, or winning all the prizes on athletics day, or beating his oldest brother at chess - but he makes her promise not to tell anybody, anybody meaning his older brothers and the other mothers from school, who she sometimes talked to at the grocery store. She told his grandmother, who sent him a good luck prayer for artists that he immediately hid under his mattress so Yuuichiro and Koji wouldn’t see it. He showed Yuuya one night, because they shared a room, but he swore him to secrecy too. Yuuya was more scared of him than of their older brothers, because most of the time they thought he was too little to pick on, so he got away with everything.
Yuuya is only two years younger than Kame, so he feels totally comfortable thumping him, if he really feels it is necessary. He doesn’t, very often, which is good, because now that they’re 15 and 13, Yuuya is almost as big as he is. All Kame’s brothers are bigger than he is. Not just because they are older, either. By the time they were his age, Yuuichiro and Koji’s shoulders were already spreading, their torsos thickening, thighs becoming great lumps of muscle, biceps made of steel with wrecking balls for fists. Kame keeps waiting to beef up like they did, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. He’s the delicate one. Graceful, his mother says. His brothers say he is scrawny. Yuuichiro keeps trying to make him eat more meat, but it just makes his stomach hurt.
“Leave Kazuya alone,” his mother says, whenever they start in on him. “He’ll eat if he’s hungry.”
Kame isn’t sure when he stopped thinking of himself as Kazuya. Probably around the time that he started spending so much time with Jin, who is so overwhelming that sometimes it is impossible not to see himself the way that Jin sees him, which sounds kind of weak and pathetic, but is actually okay because the way that Jin sees him is pretty awesome. When they’re together it feels like Jin has clumsily ripped away his disguise and found the real him hiding inside, and that kid is strong enough and brave enough to do anything. That kid would never have hidden the fact that he was a brand new Johnny’s Junior from his classmates. He’d have strutted into class like a superstar and told the kids like Kawasaki to suck it.
It’s harder to be that guy when Jin isn’t at his side. Reminding him that he’s indestructible.
In the end, his classmates found him out when Aya-chan brought in a magazine and slammed it down on his desk and demanded, “Is this really you?”
The other kids had crowded around behind her, craning their necks to see his awkward face staring out of the glossy pages. He had hastily closed the magazine, faux-nonchalantly saying, “I guess,” and then, after a beat of silence, “It’s just something I’m doing in my spare time.”
Which was true, back then. In the time that has passed, he has grown to realise he loves it, maybe even more than baseball, but back then it had just been this kind of weird, embarrassing thing his parents had forced him into. He’d been unable to turn it down once he’d realised that the weird old man was going to pay him to sit around with a bunch of other guys and let some guy take photos of him. Plus Jin had latched onto him at the auditions and filled his head full of promises about all the girls that would be throwing Valentine’s chocolates at them come February, and even though Kame hadn’t even really had any problems in that department, he’d gotten swept up in Jin’s enthusiasm.
That pretty much set the pattern for their entire friendship.
His classmates finding out had been almost a relief, really. The girls had spent most of the afternoon giggling and shrieking and after that people would periodically come up and ask him if he’d met Kimura Takuya yet, but for the most part everything had gone back to normal and he hadn’t had to think up excuses for why he couldn’t go play ball in the park after school, or why he was suddenly getting insane about avoiding acne. He had loads of new female friends. They would bring him homemade bento and cookies and sit in a crowd around him at lunch asking his opinion about their hair and clothes and stuff. In the beginning, Kame didn’t know anything about any of that stuff, so he gave some pretty terrible advice. He started reading the fashion magazines they brought in. They were interesting, actually. He liked the way the models looked like completely different people when they put on different clothes. They could be anybody.
Aya took him and Jin shopping a few months into their employment and made them buy all sorts of flashy clothes that they wouldn’t have been caught dead in before. She’d stuffed Jin into a changing room with a shimmering pair of graphite-coloured jeans. Kame still remembers his thin, wavering voice floating through the curtain. “I don’t think I can wear these,” he’d said. “I look like a hoodlum.”
“Of course you can,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “You’re a Johnny now.”
Now, Jin’s wardrobe is full of that shit. Mixed in with his old ratty blue jeans are leather jackets and slinky silk sweaters, necklaces ostentatiously paved with little fake diamonds, t-shirts that look better suited to a motorcycle gang member than a teenage boy. Kame has that stuff too, but he only wears it to work or when he goes into Shibuya with the other Johnnies. On the streets of his suburb he feels too conspicuous if he doesn’t wear his old dirty jeans and Giants sweatshirt. He likes to blend in. It makes him feel like he still belongs.
-
Sometimes Kawasaki catches him alone, trudging towards the train station where he’ll meet Jin so they can go into practice together. On those days he rides his bike behind him, setting a weaving, wide path like an angry shark, advancing and closing in. Sometimes he’ll call out to him, but mostly he doesn’t. He just sticks behind him. Close enough that Kame can’t possibly forget he is there.
-
Yuuya snores. Kame used to sleep right through it, but now it keeps him up at night. He lies on his back with the blankets pulled up to his chin, listening to the slight whistle and wheeze. Yuya has been playing more baseball lately, coming home with the same blisters and calluses on his hands that Kame finds on his feet. Their father is proud of Yuya’s achievements because they are milestones he understands. When he makes the starting lineup, when his team takes out the regional championships, his father beams with fatherly pride because Yuya is speaking his language. When Kame says that he’s been chosen to backdance in his senpai’s show, that he’s been chosen for a unit, he knows his father doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but he tries to be encouraging anyway.
When Kame came home and told his father he’d quit the baseball team, he’s pretty sure he locked himself in his study and cried.
“It’s okay, dear,” Kame’s mum said, patting him on the shoulder. “You just do what you think is right. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”
Kame thinks he has to be a superstar, now, just to prove to his dad that it was worth it.
-
It is Kame’s last year of junior high and he cannot wait for it to end. His parents are going to send him to a fancy private high school that he would never get into if he were not a Johnny. It is closer to the jimusho and the students wear a navy blue blazer that makes them look like Prince William. Jin’s school is only a few stations over, so they could take the train together in the morning. None of the other kids from Kame’s school are planning to go there. It’s a fresh start.
-
It started when Kame quit the baseball team. Or maybe before that, Kame thinks, because wasn’t that part of why he’d quit in the first place? It only got really bad after, though. He remembers the first time Kawasaki cornered him in the hall between periods, jabbing his meaty little fingers into Kame’s chest and hissing that he always knew he was selfish. That he knew he’d let them all down in the end.
Kame hadn’t wanted to let anyone down.
He’d gone home and cried that night, locked alone in the bathroom, bathwater hot enough to burn. No-one was home to hear him but he’d choked his sobs into silence anyway, thinking that if he swallowed them down it would be like they didn’t even exist and he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
When he got out, his skin was blotchy and his throat felt swollen and scratchy, like he’d been screaming rather than struggling into silence. He crawled into bed and was asleep before Yuuya even got home. When he woke the next morning he had three missed calls and two disgruntled voicemails from Jin asking where the hell he was. Jin really doesn’t like it when people disappear without explanation. Especially Kame, over whom his sense of entitlement is most fully-formed. Koki always asks if Kame finds it annoying, but he doesn’t. To Jin, he’s indispensable. It makes him feel braver.
-
Occasionally, Kawasaki roughs him up a bit. Like Yuuya, he’s been growing bigger and stronger while Kame basically just gets a little bit taller. He’s mean, too, and his animosity makes his muscles unbreakable. Kame knows that Kawasaki is probably a bit jealous of him, but that doesn’t help much when his pro-wrestler arms are shoving him back into a locker so hard that the metal bites into his shoulder blades and leaves marks. The incidents hurt Kame’s pride more than anything else, so he doesn’t tell anybody. Not even Jin.
-
Jin has a thing for Aya, which bothers Kame more than he wants to examine. Mostly, it’s because Jin has a pretty terrible track record with girls, and Aya is probably Kame’s best friend at school now. Jin’s had four girlfriends in the past three months. He’s so into them at first, but he has the shortest attention span in the world and the second he has them - really has them - his interest starts to wane. He’s like this with everything. New hobbies, new clothes. New foods. The agency is full of boys that Jin has formed sudden, intense friendships with, telling Kame that they’re gonna be their new best friend, only to totally forget about them the next week. When he is serious about something, he is endlessly loyal, but it’s rare that he is.
Kame doesn’t know how serious he is about Aya. He doesn’t really want to, because the other part of the problem is that Jin belongs to him and he doesn’t want to share him. It’s not a gay thing or anything. He doesn’t feel like that about Jin. Who would? Jin has scrawny legs and smelly feet and farts in his sleeps. If Kame were gay, he’d have a thing for Takizawa-senpai or even Yamashita-kun. Not stupid, stinky, Jin.
But Jin is his, and Kame really needs him.
-
Yuuya sees the bruise while he’s sleeping, dark tendrils of damaged tissue wrapping around his shoulder blade, angry and stark. He asks Kame about it the next morning when they’re walking to school, both trudging along with their eyes on the ground. Kame hitches his bag up higher on his shoulder, thinking about the workout sweats and demo CDs inside. Johnny has strict rules about fighting. They can brawl between themselves as much as they want, but if they get into it with an outsider they’ll be benched for a month, no exceptions. He flicks his hair out of his eyes.
“I slipped,” he tells Yuuya, then pokes him in the side. “Were you worried about your big brother?”
Yuuya shrugs him off. “You seem to slip a lot,” he says suspiciously.
“I’m clumsy,” Kame says nonchalantly.
“You were never clumsy before,” Yuuya says.
Kame ruffles the back of his hair. “You worry too much.”
Yuuya scowls. “Don’t make fun of me,” he growls, and stomps off ahead. Kame has to jog to catch up with him.
-
The thing about KAT-TUN is that they all kind of hate each other, but they don’t really have any other friends at the jimusho so they stick with each other most of the time anyway. Sometimes Jin and Kame and Nakamaru wander off to talk to their other friends, but they always end up back together in the end, alternately ignoring each other and harmlessly sniping. Kame is actually pretty proud of being in this group, even though that Tanaka kid is a total psycho and Ueda kind of seems like he might be keeping prisoners in his basement. Kame is a team player. It gives him a sense of purpose.
Jin is the total opposite. He objects to being in a group on principal, but feels especially affronted to be shoved together with these people who don’t even seem to feel particularly grateful for his presence. He says he’d rather be in a unit with Kame and Pi and Jimmy Mackey. Kame doesn’t know how to tell him that KAT-TUN is probably better for him because he’s never been sure if Pi and Jimmy like him very much. Pi only really seems to like him when Jin isn’t around. Kame likes him a lot, though. He always seems to have everything under control. He’s probably the most popular kid at his school. He’s certainly the most popular kid at the jimusho. He rules over the juniors with lazily, absent-minded nonchalance, as if he’s not even really aware he’s doing it. Even Jin defers to him, and Jin doesn’t generally defer to anybody, even the senpai. Except Takki, maybe. And Kame when he’s really mad. And his mother. It’s a short list.
Jin is off sweet-talking the catering ladies into giving them some of Arashi’s plentiful melons when Kame asks Ueda to teach him how to punch someone in the face. Ueda joined the boxing club a few months ago and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. He turns from where he’s been shadowboxing in the mirror and looks at Kame suspiciously.
“Why?” he asks, adjusting the tape that is beginning to unravel from the ridges of his knuckles.
“No reason,” Kame says, dropping his gaze. He pushes his teacup around the table in circles. “I’ve just never done it before.”
“You have brothers,” Ueda says impatiently.
“It’s not the same,” Kame starts. He frowns. “Forget about it.”
Ueda stares at him for a long time. Kame shifts uncomfortably under his eyes, wishing he would look away. “Do you…” Ueda makes a face. “Is everything… okay…?” he offers awkwardly. He’s three years older and clearly feels like he’s supposed to make some kind of effort here, but they don’t exactly have the kind of relationship where Kame will offload all his problems on him. “We could… talk…”
“No,” Kame says, pushing his chair back and trying to look normal as Jin walks in the door. Ueda is still frowning at him. “Seriously, forget about it.”
“Forget about what?” Jin asks. His mouth is half-full. He puts a bowl full of melon in front of Kame and doesn’t offer Ueda any.
“Nothing,” Kame says.
“Oh,” Jin says. He picks up a piece of melon and stuffs it in Kame’s mouth. “Quick, eat this before Matsumoto comes looking for it.”
Kame concentrates on devouring the melon so that he doesn’t have to think about the way Ueda’s eyes linger on his face.
-
The guidance counsellor calls him into her office on a Wednesday afternoon. His heart pounds with dread as he packs up his stuff and trudges, step by step, to her strange off-white office with the paintings of mountains and meadows on the walls. He’s certain she’s going to lecture him about his shitty grades. He can feel the rising flush of humiliation already.
Hamasaki-sensei is typing on her boxy grey computer when he walks in. She stops and takes off her glasses, folding them and stowing them away in a pale peach coloured case. He bows slightly as she indicates for him to take a seat. He sits with fists folded tense on his knees.
“Good afternoon Kamenashi-kun,” she says. “Would you like some tea?”
He doesn’t, but it is impolite to refuse. She places a steaming taupe-coloured cup in front of him. He has never been in this office before. He thanks her and waits for her to speak.
“Kiriyama-sensei is concerned about you,” she says, with her careful, oddly smooth voice. She reminds him a bit of the journalists that interview him sometimes; her voice is polished like river rocks. “He thought you might be having problems with one of the other students.”
Kame’s shoulders go rigid. Talking about his shitty grades would be preferable. At least that he is prepared for. He doesn’t answer her; his nails scrape desperately at the fabric covering his knees.
She watches him, delicately painted lips pursed. “Should we talk about that, Kamenashi-kun?”
Kiriyama-sensei is his history teacher, an old man with a cranky, scratchy voice who likes to harass Kame about his hair, which is dyed brown against school policy. Kame would never have expected him to notice anything unusual about him, let alone take it up with the guidance counsellor. He smiles politely, thankful for his practice in hiding his real feelings. He just has to take it a little longer, and then he’ll be at a new school and he’ll be free and Kawasaki will rot here like the loser he is. If Kame’s parents find out, then they’ll tell Johnny and Kawasaki will probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Jin will find out and he’ll know how weak Kame is. He won’t be invincible anymore.
“I am fine, sensei,” he says, letting the charming smile he is only just beginning to perfect break out across his lips. “Kiriyama-sensei must have been mistaken.”
“Ah, is that so,” she says. “I see.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “Yes, sensei.”
“Well, then.” She reaches into her desk and pulls out a book, which she places gently on the table in front of him. “I’d like you to read this.”
He picks it up and stares at it. The cover features a hazy pastel-coloured illustration of a sad looking girl with her hand on the ruff of her dependable-looking dog’s neck. It is called The Cage Inside: A True Story. He can tell without even looking inside that it is a self-help parable. “I understand, sensei,” he says. He probably won’t read it.
“Come back and see me any time,” she says, but they both know he won’t.
-
The day Kawasaki finds him in front of Jin is possibly one of the worst days of his life to date.
When they don’t have to work in the afternoon, Jin likes to get off at Kame’s station and walk home with him. If it is warm they stop in the park near Kame’s house and sit on the banks with their trousers rolled up, toes in the grass. Sometimes the local girls recognise them and giggle. Lately there has been all sorts of weird shit about them on the internet. At first it was kind of uncomfortable, but now it’s just funny. Sometimes when he knows the girls are watching Jin will lie down with his head in Kame’s lap just to hear their squawks. He hasn’t done that in a while, since a girl he was seeing asked him in all seriousness if he was messing around with Kame behind her back. He still sleeps in Kame’s bed when he stays over, though.
On this afternoon, Jin leaves Kame in the park and goes to find them some takoyaki. He has to buy them because he bet Kame that he could hock a loogie further and lost. Kame has the dubious honour of being the loogie hock champion. Jin is jealous, more because he hates not being the best at everything than because there is any particular merit in loogie hocking.
He’s been gone for ages and Kame is beginning to think Jin has abandoned him to chat up a pretty girl (again) when a shadow falls over him. He’s just about to bitch Jin out for being slow when he realises the legs blocking his sun are too thick to be Jin’s chicken legs. Kawasaki stares down at him with that same blank expression; Kame would prefer it if he were sneering.
“Oh,” Kame says awkwardly, as if he’s just run into an old friend. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?” Kawasaki asks; for a minute it seems as if he’s really curious about the answer and not just out to incite terror.
“You know…” Kame says. “Hanging out…”
“Didn’t think idols hung out in parks,” Kawasaki says, and now he is sneering. “Don’t you have some fancy club to go to?”
Kame bristles. That’s stupid; he never hangs out anywhere fancy. Sometimes Jin goes to the clubs in Roppongi, but he keeps imperiously telling Kame that he is too young to come along. Kame isn’t that interested anyway. Besides, it is the middle of the afternoon. “I hang out here a lot,” he says.
“Yeah?” Kawasaki says. He has one crooked tooth that jets out of his mouth like a jagged rock. Kame can’t help but stare at it when he talks. “Maybe you shouldn’t anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kame asks, swallowing down the instinctive surge of anger; they’re in a public place, he reminds himself. Don’t cause a scene.
“It means I don’t want to see your ugly face around here anymore,” Kawasaki spits, and kicks the back at Kame’s feet across the ground. They both stare at it for a minute; it’s not even Kame’s bag, it is Jin’s, and his schoolbooks and tattered copy of Shounen Jump spill out into the grass. Kame stumbles to his feet.
“Hey,” he says. “Cut it out.”
“Why?” Kawasaki asks as Kame bends to gather the books, brushing dirt from the pages. Kame ignores him. “Are you gonna run and tell the old man? Everyone knows he’s a pedo, has he popped your cherry yet?” He grabs Kame’s arm, yanking him closer; too close, Kame can smell the bitterness of iced coffee on his breath. “Are you listening to me, freak?”
“Let me go,” Kame says. He tries to tear his arm free but Kawasaki is holding it too tight; it feels like he could fracture the bone. “Seriously, let me go.”
“He said let him GO,” Jin is suddenly saying, then Kawasaki is on the ground a few feet away and Jin is red-faced and shaking at Kame’s side. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“I was just about to teach your boyfriend a lesson,” Kawasaki says, getting up and wiping dirt from his face.
“Don’t come any closer,” Jin says as Kawasaki starts to advance; he looks terrifying, all flushed, angry cheeks and tight, trembling jaw. He’s standing a little bit in front of Kame, which is annoying and touching at the same time. In his puffy FuBu jacket, he looks bigger and tougher than he is; Kame knows if he grabs one of the sleeves he’ll find a skinny little arm inside, but he’s two years older and he’s got big, broad shoulders and a scary face and Kame can tell Kawasaki is wavering. When Kawasaki takes an insolent step forward, Jin does too, and he grabs his collar and hisses in his face. “You come anywhere near him ever again and I will beat you until even your mother doesn’t recognise you,” he says, and for a minute the intensity of his words is so strong that Kame almost believes him.
Kawasaki sneers. “You can’t protect him forever.”
“Wanna bet?” Jin asks, and the low threat in his voice is enough to make Kawasaki turn and walk away.
Kame wants to pick up his stuff and flee rather than have to meet Jin’s eyes when he turns around, but he just stands there, helplessly. Jin’s cheeks are still flushed, his breathing heavy. He looks at Kame and then starts to wave his hands in panicky little flutters near his face.
“That was SCARY,” he says. “I’ve never been in a fight before.” He collapses on the bank by his bag, arms and legs sprawled. “I don’t know what I would have done if he’d thrown a punch.”
Kame folds himself neatly at Jin’s side, staring out at the canal. He doesn’t know what he’d have done either; the idea of Jin getting hurt for him makes him sick. “He wouldn’t have,” he says. “He mostly just does a lot of shoving.”
Jin peers up at him, obviously trying to see his eyes beneath the bangs that brush his cheekbones. “How long has this been going on?”
Kame’s stomach turns over. He doesn’t look at Jin. He shrugs. “A while.”
Jin sounds affronted now. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kame can’t answer at first; his throat feels too tight. He thinks if he talks his body might shatter to pieces. Finally, he swallows and decides to be brave. “I didn’t want you to think I was weak.”
Jin shoves him, then reaches out and clumsily clutches his hand, then shoves him again. “You’re not weak.” He sounds like he thinks Kame is crazy for even considering the idea. “You’re not.”
“I don’t know,” Kame says. “Whenever that guy corners me he just shoves me around like a ragdoll. Maybe I am.” He swallows. “I don’t want to fight anybody.”
“That’s not weakness,” Jin says. Most of the time Jin doesn’t take anything seriously but when he does, he’s really intense. He’s clutching Kame’s shoulder and looking him in the eyes, leaning in really close like a creepy psycho. “You’re not weak. That guy isn’t strong.”
“He feels pretty strong when he’s gone my bicep clenched in his iron fist,” Kame jokes.
“He’s a pathetic weakling and he’ll die miserable and alone,” Jin spits, but his hand traces gently over Kame’s bicep like he’s worried there might be bruising there even now. “So you don’t want to fight anybody. I don’t either. Who cares? Being gentle is its own kind of strength, dumbass.” His hand trails down past Kame’s elbow and wraps around his wrist. “Don’t ever let some dick like that change you.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” Kame asks. “Next time he comes for me?”
Jin’s jaw clenches. “Bluff it out,” Jin says. “That’s what I did.” He makes a face. “And if that doesn’t work get Johnny to send his yakuza dudes after him.”
Kame rolls his eyes and tries to pretend he didn’t hear that. “I don’t know if I can.” He elbows Jin. “I don’t look like a thug like you.”
Jin shrugs. “You’re Kamenashi,” he says. “Play to your strengths.”
-
Kawasaki finds him not even a week later. He corners him in the empty toilets, pressed uncomfortably up against the sinks. Sometimes Kame thinks Kawasaki might be in love with him; he spends an awful lot of time pressing his body all over Kame’s.
“Told you your boyfriend wouldn’t always be here,” he says. Looking at him, Kame remembers the slightly fat little kid Kawasaki used to be. Kame taught him how to pitch properly. It makes this harder, or easier, he’s not sure. He lifts his chin. You’re Kamenashi, he remembers. Jin had said it like that meant something. Like Kamenashi is a superhero.
“You think I need him to protect me?” Kame asks. His voice doesn’t even sound like his own, but it sounds good. Powerful.
“Look who is all brave all of a sudden,” Kawasaki says. He leans his hands on either side of Kame’s hips. Kame doesn’t shrink back.
“I know I’m small, but I can throw a fastball so powerful it’ll splinter the bat,” he says. “What do you think I could do to your face, if I wanted?”
Years later, Kame will remember this whenever he needs to be brave; the slight fear that lights in Kawasaki’s eyes and the way he flinches slightly and drops one of his hands.
“Yeah?” Kawasaki says.
“Yeah,” Kame says. He wraps his hand around Kawasaki’s tie and jerks him down until Kame’s mouth nearly touches his ear. “I’ve been trying to be patient, but you’re on my last nerve. Leave me. The fuck. Alone.”
Kame walks out. Kawasaki never really bothers him again. He tries, but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect anymore. Whenever he tries, Kame reminds himself: You’re Kamenashi, he thinks. You’re Kamenashi.
Kamenashi isn’t afraid of anything.
-
A few days later, Ueda brings in a copy of a beginner’s boxing manual with dogeared pages and Ueda’s notes in tiny neat handwriting all over the margins. He proffers it to Kame with awkward generosity, pursing his lips and nodding uncomfortably when Kame thanks him.
Later, when they’re alone, Jin picks it up and flips through it. “Are you really going to read this?” he asks.
“No,” Kame says, flipping through the pages of the issue of French Vogue he’d stolen from Takki’s tote bag. He can’t read anything in it but he likes the photography and the models’ glossy mahogany lips.
“Why?” Jin asks, and Kame can tell that he is being tested; Jin is all watchful, concerned eyes.
“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” Kame says. “But I don’t need it anymore.” He looks at Jin and grins, a bit shyly. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Jin rolls his eyes, but says, “Good,” and reaches out to peel a sample of women’s perfume from the pages of the magazine and rub it all over Kame’s neck.
By: soundczech
Pairing: Akame friendship
Word count: 5400 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Angst, some homophobia, bullying, low self-esteem issues.
Summary: Kame just has to get through his last year of middle school.
Kame hates school. He sits in math classes that seem to last for days and stares down at his textbook with bleary eyes, trying to will the little stacks of numbers and wriggly little letters to rearrange themselves and suddenly make sense to him. This used to be easier, he remembers, when he was younger; back then, the numbers were stacked in orderly little lines like the bricks in a building, solid and dependable, two plus two becoming four, multiplied by three to become twelve. Back then letters were just letters. They weren’t pretending to be something else.
He hates being bad at things. Whenever he gets a test back and sees the score on top in big red letters with a frowny face scrawled next to it, his stomach churns guiltily and he quickly covers it before any of the other kids can see and know that he’s not as smart as he is supposed to be. He used to be good at school, before. Back when the letters were letters and his brain wasn’t full of all the work he has to do after school. The work he wants to do. Now he’s barely passing. Scraping by. Jin is the only one who knows about it, other than his parents. Jin says it doesn’t matter, ‘cause he’s going to be a megastar anyway and megastars don’t need algebra, and that Kame is plenty smart but the school is just too dumb to realise it. Jin is mostly full of shit but his certainty makes Kame feel better anyway.
The worst part about school, other than the maths and his mediocrity and having to sit in this grey, hot room and stare out at the birds in the sky outside, is the way that Kawasaki stares at him from his seat two rows back. The way he and his friends snicker when Kame passes them in the halls.
They used to be friends, Kame thinks. It seems impossible now.
-
When Kame was accepted into JE, he didn’t tell anybody at first. His mother expected him to boast about it the way he boasted about everything - like being the pitcher on the national team, or winning all the prizes on athletics day, or beating his oldest brother at chess - but he makes her promise not to tell anybody, anybody meaning his older brothers and the other mothers from school, who she sometimes talked to at the grocery store. She told his grandmother, who sent him a good luck prayer for artists that he immediately hid under his mattress so Yuuichiro and Koji wouldn’t see it. He showed Yuuya one night, because they shared a room, but he swore him to secrecy too. Yuuya was more scared of him than of their older brothers, because most of the time they thought he was too little to pick on, so he got away with everything.
Yuuya is only two years younger than Kame, so he feels totally comfortable thumping him, if he really feels it is necessary. He doesn’t, very often, which is good, because now that they’re 15 and 13, Yuuya is almost as big as he is. All Kame’s brothers are bigger than he is. Not just because they are older, either. By the time they were his age, Yuuichiro and Koji’s shoulders were already spreading, their torsos thickening, thighs becoming great lumps of muscle, biceps made of steel with wrecking balls for fists. Kame keeps waiting to beef up like they did, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. He’s the delicate one. Graceful, his mother says. His brothers say he is scrawny. Yuuichiro keeps trying to make him eat more meat, but it just makes his stomach hurt.
“Leave Kazuya alone,” his mother says, whenever they start in on him. “He’ll eat if he’s hungry.”
Kame isn’t sure when he stopped thinking of himself as Kazuya. Probably around the time that he started spending so much time with Jin, who is so overwhelming that sometimes it is impossible not to see himself the way that Jin sees him, which sounds kind of weak and pathetic, but is actually okay because the way that Jin sees him is pretty awesome. When they’re together it feels like Jin has clumsily ripped away his disguise and found the real him hiding inside, and that kid is strong enough and brave enough to do anything. That kid would never have hidden the fact that he was a brand new Johnny’s Junior from his classmates. He’d have strutted into class like a superstar and told the kids like Kawasaki to suck it.
It’s harder to be that guy when Jin isn’t at his side. Reminding him that he’s indestructible.
In the end, his classmates found him out when Aya-chan brought in a magazine and slammed it down on his desk and demanded, “Is this really you?”
The other kids had crowded around behind her, craning their necks to see his awkward face staring out of the glossy pages. He had hastily closed the magazine, faux-nonchalantly saying, “I guess,” and then, after a beat of silence, “It’s just something I’m doing in my spare time.”
Which was true, back then. In the time that has passed, he has grown to realise he loves it, maybe even more than baseball, but back then it had just been this kind of weird, embarrassing thing his parents had forced him into. He’d been unable to turn it down once he’d realised that the weird old man was going to pay him to sit around with a bunch of other guys and let some guy take photos of him. Plus Jin had latched onto him at the auditions and filled his head full of promises about all the girls that would be throwing Valentine’s chocolates at them come February, and even though Kame hadn’t even really had any problems in that department, he’d gotten swept up in Jin’s enthusiasm.
That pretty much set the pattern for their entire friendship.
His classmates finding out had been almost a relief, really. The girls had spent most of the afternoon giggling and shrieking and after that people would periodically come up and ask him if he’d met Kimura Takuya yet, but for the most part everything had gone back to normal and he hadn’t had to think up excuses for why he couldn’t go play ball in the park after school, or why he was suddenly getting insane about avoiding acne. He had loads of new female friends. They would bring him homemade bento and cookies and sit in a crowd around him at lunch asking his opinion about their hair and clothes and stuff. In the beginning, Kame didn’t know anything about any of that stuff, so he gave some pretty terrible advice. He started reading the fashion magazines they brought in. They were interesting, actually. He liked the way the models looked like completely different people when they put on different clothes. They could be anybody.
Aya took him and Jin shopping a few months into their employment and made them buy all sorts of flashy clothes that they wouldn’t have been caught dead in before. She’d stuffed Jin into a changing room with a shimmering pair of graphite-coloured jeans. Kame still remembers his thin, wavering voice floating through the curtain. “I don’t think I can wear these,” he’d said. “I look like a hoodlum.”
“Of course you can,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “You’re a Johnny now.”
Now, Jin’s wardrobe is full of that shit. Mixed in with his old ratty blue jeans are leather jackets and slinky silk sweaters, necklaces ostentatiously paved with little fake diamonds, t-shirts that look better suited to a motorcycle gang member than a teenage boy. Kame has that stuff too, but he only wears it to work or when he goes into Shibuya with the other Johnnies. On the streets of his suburb he feels too conspicuous if he doesn’t wear his old dirty jeans and Giants sweatshirt. He likes to blend in. It makes him feel like he still belongs.
-
Sometimes Kawasaki catches him alone, trudging towards the train station where he’ll meet Jin so they can go into practice together. On those days he rides his bike behind him, setting a weaving, wide path like an angry shark, advancing and closing in. Sometimes he’ll call out to him, but mostly he doesn’t. He just sticks behind him. Close enough that Kame can’t possibly forget he is there.
-
Yuuya snores. Kame used to sleep right through it, but now it keeps him up at night. He lies on his back with the blankets pulled up to his chin, listening to the slight whistle and wheeze. Yuya has been playing more baseball lately, coming home with the same blisters and calluses on his hands that Kame finds on his feet. Their father is proud of Yuya’s achievements because they are milestones he understands. When he makes the starting lineup, when his team takes out the regional championships, his father beams with fatherly pride because Yuya is speaking his language. When Kame says that he’s been chosen to backdance in his senpai’s show, that he’s been chosen for a unit, he knows his father doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but he tries to be encouraging anyway.
When Kame came home and told his father he’d quit the baseball team, he’s pretty sure he locked himself in his study and cried.
“It’s okay, dear,” Kame’s mum said, patting him on the shoulder. “You just do what you think is right. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”
Kame thinks he has to be a superstar, now, just to prove to his dad that it was worth it.
-
It is Kame’s last year of junior high and he cannot wait for it to end. His parents are going to send him to a fancy private high school that he would never get into if he were not a Johnny. It is closer to the jimusho and the students wear a navy blue blazer that makes them look like Prince William. Jin’s school is only a few stations over, so they could take the train together in the morning. None of the other kids from Kame’s school are planning to go there. It’s a fresh start.
-
It started when Kame quit the baseball team. Or maybe before that, Kame thinks, because wasn’t that part of why he’d quit in the first place? It only got really bad after, though. He remembers the first time Kawasaki cornered him in the hall between periods, jabbing his meaty little fingers into Kame’s chest and hissing that he always knew he was selfish. That he knew he’d let them all down in the end.
Kame hadn’t wanted to let anyone down.
He’d gone home and cried that night, locked alone in the bathroom, bathwater hot enough to burn. No-one was home to hear him but he’d choked his sobs into silence anyway, thinking that if he swallowed them down it would be like they didn’t even exist and he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
When he got out, his skin was blotchy and his throat felt swollen and scratchy, like he’d been screaming rather than struggling into silence. He crawled into bed and was asleep before Yuuya even got home. When he woke the next morning he had three missed calls and two disgruntled voicemails from Jin asking where the hell he was. Jin really doesn’t like it when people disappear without explanation. Especially Kame, over whom his sense of entitlement is most fully-formed. Koki always asks if Kame finds it annoying, but he doesn’t. To Jin, he’s indispensable. It makes him feel braver.
-
Occasionally, Kawasaki roughs him up a bit. Like Yuuya, he’s been growing bigger and stronger while Kame basically just gets a little bit taller. He’s mean, too, and his animosity makes his muscles unbreakable. Kame knows that Kawasaki is probably a bit jealous of him, but that doesn’t help much when his pro-wrestler arms are shoving him back into a locker so hard that the metal bites into his shoulder blades and leaves marks. The incidents hurt Kame’s pride more than anything else, so he doesn’t tell anybody. Not even Jin.
-
Jin has a thing for Aya, which bothers Kame more than he wants to examine. Mostly, it’s because Jin has a pretty terrible track record with girls, and Aya is probably Kame’s best friend at school now. Jin’s had four girlfriends in the past three months. He’s so into them at first, but he has the shortest attention span in the world and the second he has them - really has them - his interest starts to wane. He’s like this with everything. New hobbies, new clothes. New foods. The agency is full of boys that Jin has formed sudden, intense friendships with, telling Kame that they’re gonna be their new best friend, only to totally forget about them the next week. When he is serious about something, he is endlessly loyal, but it’s rare that he is.
Kame doesn’t know how serious he is about Aya. He doesn’t really want to, because the other part of the problem is that Jin belongs to him and he doesn’t want to share him. It’s not a gay thing or anything. He doesn’t feel like that about Jin. Who would? Jin has scrawny legs and smelly feet and farts in his sleeps. If Kame were gay, he’d have a thing for Takizawa-senpai or even Yamashita-kun. Not stupid, stinky, Jin.
But Jin is his, and Kame really needs him.
-
Yuuya sees the bruise while he’s sleeping, dark tendrils of damaged tissue wrapping around his shoulder blade, angry and stark. He asks Kame about it the next morning when they’re walking to school, both trudging along with their eyes on the ground. Kame hitches his bag up higher on his shoulder, thinking about the workout sweats and demo CDs inside. Johnny has strict rules about fighting. They can brawl between themselves as much as they want, but if they get into it with an outsider they’ll be benched for a month, no exceptions. He flicks his hair out of his eyes.
“I slipped,” he tells Yuuya, then pokes him in the side. “Were you worried about your big brother?”
Yuuya shrugs him off. “You seem to slip a lot,” he says suspiciously.
“I’m clumsy,” Kame says nonchalantly.
“You were never clumsy before,” Yuuya says.
Kame ruffles the back of his hair. “You worry too much.”
Yuuya scowls. “Don’t make fun of me,” he growls, and stomps off ahead. Kame has to jog to catch up with him.
-
The thing about KAT-TUN is that they all kind of hate each other, but they don’t really have any other friends at the jimusho so they stick with each other most of the time anyway. Sometimes Jin and Kame and Nakamaru wander off to talk to their other friends, but they always end up back together in the end, alternately ignoring each other and harmlessly sniping. Kame is actually pretty proud of being in this group, even though that Tanaka kid is a total psycho and Ueda kind of seems like he might be keeping prisoners in his basement. Kame is a team player. It gives him a sense of purpose.
Jin is the total opposite. He objects to being in a group on principal, but feels especially affronted to be shoved together with these people who don’t even seem to feel particularly grateful for his presence. He says he’d rather be in a unit with Kame and Pi and Jimmy Mackey. Kame doesn’t know how to tell him that KAT-TUN is probably better for him because he’s never been sure if Pi and Jimmy like him very much. Pi only really seems to like him when Jin isn’t around. Kame likes him a lot, though. He always seems to have everything under control. He’s probably the most popular kid at his school. He’s certainly the most popular kid at the jimusho. He rules over the juniors with lazily, absent-minded nonchalance, as if he’s not even really aware he’s doing it. Even Jin defers to him, and Jin doesn’t generally defer to anybody, even the senpai. Except Takki, maybe. And Kame when he’s really mad. And his mother. It’s a short list.
Jin is off sweet-talking the catering ladies into giving them some of Arashi’s plentiful melons when Kame asks Ueda to teach him how to punch someone in the face. Ueda joined the boxing club a few months ago and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. He turns from where he’s been shadowboxing in the mirror and looks at Kame suspiciously.
“Why?” he asks, adjusting the tape that is beginning to unravel from the ridges of his knuckles.
“No reason,” Kame says, dropping his gaze. He pushes his teacup around the table in circles. “I’ve just never done it before.”
“You have brothers,” Ueda says impatiently.
“It’s not the same,” Kame starts. He frowns. “Forget about it.”
Ueda stares at him for a long time. Kame shifts uncomfortably under his eyes, wishing he would look away. “Do you…” Ueda makes a face. “Is everything… okay…?” he offers awkwardly. He’s three years older and clearly feels like he’s supposed to make some kind of effort here, but they don’t exactly have the kind of relationship where Kame will offload all his problems on him. “We could… talk…”
“No,” Kame says, pushing his chair back and trying to look normal as Jin walks in the door. Ueda is still frowning at him. “Seriously, forget about it.”
“Forget about what?” Jin asks. His mouth is half-full. He puts a bowl full of melon in front of Kame and doesn’t offer Ueda any.
“Nothing,” Kame says.
“Oh,” Jin says. He picks up a piece of melon and stuffs it in Kame’s mouth. “Quick, eat this before Matsumoto comes looking for it.”
Kame concentrates on devouring the melon so that he doesn’t have to think about the way Ueda’s eyes linger on his face.
-
The guidance counsellor calls him into her office on a Wednesday afternoon. His heart pounds with dread as he packs up his stuff and trudges, step by step, to her strange off-white office with the paintings of mountains and meadows on the walls. He’s certain she’s going to lecture him about his shitty grades. He can feel the rising flush of humiliation already.
Hamasaki-sensei is typing on her boxy grey computer when he walks in. She stops and takes off her glasses, folding them and stowing them away in a pale peach coloured case. He bows slightly as she indicates for him to take a seat. He sits with fists folded tense on his knees.
“Good afternoon Kamenashi-kun,” she says. “Would you like some tea?”
He doesn’t, but it is impolite to refuse. She places a steaming taupe-coloured cup in front of him. He has never been in this office before. He thanks her and waits for her to speak.
“Kiriyama-sensei is concerned about you,” she says, with her careful, oddly smooth voice. She reminds him a bit of the journalists that interview him sometimes; her voice is polished like river rocks. “He thought you might be having problems with one of the other students.”
Kame’s shoulders go rigid. Talking about his shitty grades would be preferable. At least that he is prepared for. He doesn’t answer her; his nails scrape desperately at the fabric covering his knees.
She watches him, delicately painted lips pursed. “Should we talk about that, Kamenashi-kun?”
Kiriyama-sensei is his history teacher, an old man with a cranky, scratchy voice who likes to harass Kame about his hair, which is dyed brown against school policy. Kame would never have expected him to notice anything unusual about him, let alone take it up with the guidance counsellor. He smiles politely, thankful for his practice in hiding his real feelings. He just has to take it a little longer, and then he’ll be at a new school and he’ll be free and Kawasaki will rot here like the loser he is. If Kame’s parents find out, then they’ll tell Johnny and Kawasaki will probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Jin will find out and he’ll know how weak Kame is. He won’t be invincible anymore.
“I am fine, sensei,” he says, letting the charming smile he is only just beginning to perfect break out across his lips. “Kiriyama-sensei must have been mistaken.”
“Ah, is that so,” she says. “I see.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “Yes, sensei.”
“Well, then.” She reaches into her desk and pulls out a book, which she places gently on the table in front of him. “I’d like you to read this.”
He picks it up and stares at it. The cover features a hazy pastel-coloured illustration of a sad looking girl with her hand on the ruff of her dependable-looking dog’s neck. It is called The Cage Inside: A True Story. He can tell without even looking inside that it is a self-help parable. “I understand, sensei,” he says. He probably won’t read it.
“Come back and see me any time,” she says, but they both know he won’t.
-
The day Kawasaki finds him in front of Jin is possibly one of the worst days of his life to date.
When they don’t have to work in the afternoon, Jin likes to get off at Kame’s station and walk home with him. If it is warm they stop in the park near Kame’s house and sit on the banks with their trousers rolled up, toes in the grass. Sometimes the local girls recognise them and giggle. Lately there has been all sorts of weird shit about them on the internet. At first it was kind of uncomfortable, but now it’s just funny. Sometimes when he knows the girls are watching Jin will lie down with his head in Kame’s lap just to hear their squawks. He hasn’t done that in a while, since a girl he was seeing asked him in all seriousness if he was messing around with Kame behind her back. He still sleeps in Kame’s bed when he stays over, though.
On this afternoon, Jin leaves Kame in the park and goes to find them some takoyaki. He has to buy them because he bet Kame that he could hock a loogie further and lost. Kame has the dubious honour of being the loogie hock champion. Jin is jealous, more because he hates not being the best at everything than because there is any particular merit in loogie hocking.
He’s been gone for ages and Kame is beginning to think Jin has abandoned him to chat up a pretty girl (again) when a shadow falls over him. He’s just about to bitch Jin out for being slow when he realises the legs blocking his sun are too thick to be Jin’s chicken legs. Kawasaki stares down at him with that same blank expression; Kame would prefer it if he were sneering.
“Oh,” Kame says awkwardly, as if he’s just run into an old friend. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?” Kawasaki asks; for a minute it seems as if he’s really curious about the answer and not just out to incite terror.
“You know…” Kame says. “Hanging out…”
“Didn’t think idols hung out in parks,” Kawasaki says, and now he is sneering. “Don’t you have some fancy club to go to?”
Kame bristles. That’s stupid; he never hangs out anywhere fancy. Sometimes Jin goes to the clubs in Roppongi, but he keeps imperiously telling Kame that he is too young to come along. Kame isn’t that interested anyway. Besides, it is the middle of the afternoon. “I hang out here a lot,” he says.
“Yeah?” Kawasaki says. He has one crooked tooth that jets out of his mouth like a jagged rock. Kame can’t help but stare at it when he talks. “Maybe you shouldn’t anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kame asks, swallowing down the instinctive surge of anger; they’re in a public place, he reminds himself. Don’t cause a scene.
“It means I don’t want to see your ugly face around here anymore,” Kawasaki spits, and kicks the back at Kame’s feet across the ground. They both stare at it for a minute; it’s not even Kame’s bag, it is Jin’s, and his schoolbooks and tattered copy of Shounen Jump spill out into the grass. Kame stumbles to his feet.
“Hey,” he says. “Cut it out.”
“Why?” Kawasaki asks as Kame bends to gather the books, brushing dirt from the pages. Kame ignores him. “Are you gonna run and tell the old man? Everyone knows he’s a pedo, has he popped your cherry yet?” He grabs Kame’s arm, yanking him closer; too close, Kame can smell the bitterness of iced coffee on his breath. “Are you listening to me, freak?”
“Let me go,” Kame says. He tries to tear his arm free but Kawasaki is holding it too tight; it feels like he could fracture the bone. “Seriously, let me go.”
“He said let him GO,” Jin is suddenly saying, then Kawasaki is on the ground a few feet away and Jin is red-faced and shaking at Kame’s side. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“I was just about to teach your boyfriend a lesson,” Kawasaki says, getting up and wiping dirt from his face.
“Don’t come any closer,” Jin says as Kawasaki starts to advance; he looks terrifying, all flushed, angry cheeks and tight, trembling jaw. He’s standing a little bit in front of Kame, which is annoying and touching at the same time. In his puffy FuBu jacket, he looks bigger and tougher than he is; Kame knows if he grabs one of the sleeves he’ll find a skinny little arm inside, but he’s two years older and he’s got big, broad shoulders and a scary face and Kame can tell Kawasaki is wavering. When Kawasaki takes an insolent step forward, Jin does too, and he grabs his collar and hisses in his face. “You come anywhere near him ever again and I will beat you until even your mother doesn’t recognise you,” he says, and for a minute the intensity of his words is so strong that Kame almost believes him.
Kawasaki sneers. “You can’t protect him forever.”
“Wanna bet?” Jin asks, and the low threat in his voice is enough to make Kawasaki turn and walk away.
Kame wants to pick up his stuff and flee rather than have to meet Jin’s eyes when he turns around, but he just stands there, helplessly. Jin’s cheeks are still flushed, his breathing heavy. He looks at Kame and then starts to wave his hands in panicky little flutters near his face.
“That was SCARY,” he says. “I’ve never been in a fight before.” He collapses on the bank by his bag, arms and legs sprawled. “I don’t know what I would have done if he’d thrown a punch.”
Kame folds himself neatly at Jin’s side, staring out at the canal. He doesn’t know what he’d have done either; the idea of Jin getting hurt for him makes him sick. “He wouldn’t have,” he says. “He mostly just does a lot of shoving.”
Jin peers up at him, obviously trying to see his eyes beneath the bangs that brush his cheekbones. “How long has this been going on?”
Kame’s stomach turns over. He doesn’t look at Jin. He shrugs. “A while.”
Jin sounds affronted now. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kame can’t answer at first; his throat feels too tight. He thinks if he talks his body might shatter to pieces. Finally, he swallows and decides to be brave. “I didn’t want you to think I was weak.”
Jin shoves him, then reaches out and clumsily clutches his hand, then shoves him again. “You’re not weak.” He sounds like he thinks Kame is crazy for even considering the idea. “You’re not.”
“I don’t know,” Kame says. “Whenever that guy corners me he just shoves me around like a ragdoll. Maybe I am.” He swallows. “I don’t want to fight anybody.”
“That’s not weakness,” Jin says. Most of the time Jin doesn’t take anything seriously but when he does, he’s really intense. He’s clutching Kame’s shoulder and looking him in the eyes, leaning in really close like a creepy psycho. “You’re not weak. That guy isn’t strong.”
“He feels pretty strong when he’s gone my bicep clenched in his iron fist,” Kame jokes.
“He’s a pathetic weakling and he’ll die miserable and alone,” Jin spits, but his hand traces gently over Kame’s bicep like he’s worried there might be bruising there even now. “So you don’t want to fight anybody. I don’t either. Who cares? Being gentle is its own kind of strength, dumbass.” His hand trails down past Kame’s elbow and wraps around his wrist. “Don’t ever let some dick like that change you.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” Kame asks. “Next time he comes for me?”
Jin’s jaw clenches. “Bluff it out,” Jin says. “That’s what I did.” He makes a face. “And if that doesn’t work get Johnny to send his yakuza dudes after him.”
Kame rolls his eyes and tries to pretend he didn’t hear that. “I don’t know if I can.” He elbows Jin. “I don’t look like a thug like you.”
Jin shrugs. “You’re Kamenashi,” he says. “Play to your strengths.”
-
Kawasaki finds him not even a week later. He corners him in the empty toilets, pressed uncomfortably up against the sinks. Sometimes Kame thinks Kawasaki might be in love with him; he spends an awful lot of time pressing his body all over Kame’s.
“Told you your boyfriend wouldn’t always be here,” he says. Looking at him, Kame remembers the slightly fat little kid Kawasaki used to be. Kame taught him how to pitch properly. It makes this harder, or easier, he’s not sure. He lifts his chin. You’re Kamenashi, he remembers. Jin had said it like that meant something. Like Kamenashi is a superhero.
“You think I need him to protect me?” Kame asks. His voice doesn’t even sound like his own, but it sounds good. Powerful.
“Look who is all brave all of a sudden,” Kawasaki says. He leans his hands on either side of Kame’s hips. Kame doesn’t shrink back.
“I know I’m small, but I can throw a fastball so powerful it’ll splinter the bat,” he says. “What do you think I could do to your face, if I wanted?”
Years later, Kame will remember this whenever he needs to be brave; the slight fear that lights in Kawasaki’s eyes and the way he flinches slightly and drops one of his hands.
“Yeah?” Kawasaki says.
“Yeah,” Kame says. He wraps his hand around Kawasaki’s tie and jerks him down until Kame’s mouth nearly touches his ear. “I’ve been trying to be patient, but you’re on my last nerve. Leave me. The fuck. Alone.”
Kame walks out. Kawasaki never really bothers him again. He tries, but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect anymore. Whenever he tries, Kame reminds himself: You’re Kamenashi, he thinks. You’re Kamenashi.
Kamenashi isn’t afraid of anything.
-
A few days later, Ueda brings in a copy of a beginner’s boxing manual with dogeared pages and Ueda’s notes in tiny neat handwriting all over the margins. He proffers it to Kame with awkward generosity, pursing his lips and nodding uncomfortably when Kame thanks him.
Later, when they’re alone, Jin picks it up and flips through it. “Are you really going to read this?” he asks.
“No,” Kame says, flipping through the pages of the issue of French Vogue he’d stolen from Takki’s tote bag. He can’t read anything in it but he likes the photography and the models’ glossy mahogany lips.
“Why?” Jin asks, and Kame can tell that he is being tested; Jin is all watchful, concerned eyes.
“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” Kame says. “But I don’t need it anymore.” He looks at Jin and grins, a bit shyly. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Jin rolls his eyes, but says, “Good,” and reaches out to peel a sample of women’s perfume from the pages of the magazine and rub it all over Kame’s neck.