fic for potafleurs
Title: FORCE OF LIGHT: not a requiem, a song for the future
Pairing: Akame
Word count: 3,921
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Explicit sexual encounters between two consenting adults.
Notes: Please consider this as taking place in a slightly divergent timeline, wherein every detail is exactly the same as reality except that Jin is unmarried.
Summary: Jin and Kame’s connection to each other ended when Jin went solo, not due to animosity, but because they ostensibly had nothing in common and no reason to pursue a friendship. However, after Kame makes a thoughtless remark on television that ends up bringing them together again, Jin has to wonder if maybe they missed out on something by never trying to have a relationship. So, he decides to try.
KAT-TUN is preparing to film the PV for their latest hit-to-be, and Kame is less than pleased with the song they’ve chosen to produce. It’s a ballad. Kame pushed hard for the fast rock number tentatively titled “FORCE OF LIGHT” but in the end he was outvoted, mostly because they’d recently released something of a similar quality and Taguchi, Tanaka, Ueda, and Nakamaru all thought their fans would appreciate a softer piece, something sweet and sorrowful and spring-like, to suit the season.
This song had a long title, something in Japanese that Kame couldn’t remember for the life of him. He preferred songs with titles all in English, the shorter the better, capitalized so that they screamed in his head. According to one of the managers, the name of Kame’s song was a mixture of metaphors, and that inscrutability, the loss of meaning in crossbreeding, only made it appeal to him more. Maybe he’d release it as a solo; he already thought of it as his song.
Kame is in the mood to sing a strong song. His latest string of commercials has been very successful in terms of viewership and actually selling the products, he’s being considered for an awesome role in a drama slated for an excellent time slot, and for the first time in too long he has no work-related plans for the upcoming weekend. Basically, everything is going extremely well, so he wants to sing a strong song. Kame could croon out a beautiful ballad with the best of them, however he simply felt no connection to the number at this time.
He is, however, a professional above all else. Perfect, poised Kame the professional. The camera zoomed in to capture the intensity of his expression. To the viewer, it would look like Kame was somberly reflecting on something of deep importance to him. In actuality, a mantra that he’d used on more than one occasion to get the job done resounded in his otherwise blank mind: be the best, no regrets, get it done.
One of Kame’s strengths is his dedication to his job above all else. It is also one of the things that Jin hates the most about him. Fakeness is second nature to Kame, to the extent that it’s questionable as to whether it still counts as “fakeness.” For how can it be fake when it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between it and Kame’s genuine emotions?
That, Jin expects, is the point though. And honestly, they’re all inscrutable in their own way. Jin himself hides behind fedoras and sunglasses and mostly incomprehensible English. He always shows what he’s feeling so he can’t use Kame’s method of self-preservation. Maybe that’s the best thing to call it. Self-preservation, in the face of an audience that demands more than anyone could give.
Or maybe Kame just gives them everything. The constructed facial expressions, the carefully planned words, the just-so hairstyle; maybe by making it all so perfect, so professional, it becomes real.
Questions like that will keep a man up at night, so Jin tries not to wonder too much. Anyways, Kame made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near Jin, least of all in his mind.
“Kaaaaaame,” Koki bleats, and instantly the façade of lovelorn solemnity yields to genuine mirth.
“Baldy, don’t mess me up!” Kame says. There’s no real anger in his voice though. It doesn’t matter that Koki doesn’t have a shaved head anymore, he’ll never outgrow the epithet no matter how long his hair gets.
In response, Koki makes a lewd gesture in Kame’s direction, one that involves two spread fingers, his tongue, and arched, knowing eyebrows, however Kame has already recovered from the prior lapse and no reaction registers in his expression as the camera keeps rolling. Koki gives up before the director yells “cut,” so Kame counts it at as a victory.
That is, until Koki gathers the rest of KAT-TUN to harmonize with him. Even Kame finds it impossible to be professional with four grown men crooning: “Kaaaaame, Kaaaaame, Kaaaaame, KaaAME” at him like some kind of messed up barbershop quartet. Well, at least it’s good footage for the making-of.
By the end of filming, they’re all exhausted. It shows in the tightness of Kame’s shoulders, if a person knows to look for it. When tired, Kame tends to get more uptight, sitting straighter, standing taller. His words and laughter, even when seemingly innocuous, become edged with razor sharpness. It’s better if he just keeps his mouth shut until he can get home and relax with good food and a hot bath, but the day is far from over so he’ll have to just power through it. Make-up is wiped off, costumes exchanged for street clothes only to be swapped out for fresh ones before new make-up is caked on to cover blemishes and semi-permanent bags beneath eyes.
Fortunately for Kame, the other members are taking on “exciting” (in the words of their interviewer) projects as well, so the questions are spread around evenly and Kame gets the chance to relax, sort of, when the focus isn’t on him.
“Kamenashi, rumor has it that you’re going to be starring in an upcoming drama whose script has been praised as ‘original and compelling.’ Throughout your career, you’ve taken on so many different roles! Which one has been the most fun to date?”
Since this program will be airing on NTV, Kame chooses to talk about his time as Bem. It really had been a cool part. “Ah, and I also enjoyed becoming Hatanaka. Tat-chan gave me lots of good advice about boxing, and it was interesting to become such a flawed yet determined character. He kept getting in the way of his own dreams. Even so, he never gave up, and was good at accepting help when he needed it. I feel like I learned a lot from that role. Plus the staged fights were a lot of fun to act out.”
The final comment elicits polite laughter, as he’d intended it to. “If you were going to really fight someone, who would it be?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe Akanishi.”
Tense silence follows his answer, and Kame realizes, too late, that he hadn’t tempered the edge of his words anywhere near as much as he should have, hadn’t done anything to indicate that he was kidding and that he didn’t actually feel any animosity towards Akanishi. Hastily, he amends: “Akanishi and I have always had that sort of manly relationship. Even when we get along well, we still fight, since we both hate to lose.”
“Oh, I see. It’s a very manly relationship indeed!” Crisis averted.
Except maybe not quite. Because that evening, Kame gets a call from his manager, who is thrilled to inform him that after watching the interview, Johnny had a brilliant idea for a new project. He and Kame will be having a meeting in the morning to discuss it.
Meanwhile Pi and Ryo are laughing their asses off as they imagine a fight between Kamenashi and Jin.
“That’s NOT how it would go down!” Jin protests after Pi posits a particularly ridiculous scenario. “I would totally win! I have, like, two inches and at least ten or twenty pounds on him. Not to mention the fact that he’d be too busy trying to protect his face to actually put up a fight.”
“That’s true, we didn’t think of that,” Ryo admits. “He’d probably just walk out of the ring with his already crooked nose in the air, saying something like: ‘I wouldn’t piss on Jin if he was on fire, much less actually get into a physical altercation with him.’ That sounds more like Kamenashi.”
“I don’t even think that he hates me. He just doesn’t give a fuck... I’m nothing to him. I don’t know why he wants to punch me.”
There’s something incredibly sad about that. Jin and Kamenashi spent some of the best years of their youth together, but when push comes to shove, or punch as it were, they really have nothing in common. Their friendship was based purely on proximity, and when that ceased to exist, so did it. Now and then Jin wonders if he ought to have tried harder to create a real relationship with Kamenashi, thinks that maybe he missed out on something that could have been really awesome. It goes against Jin’s code to have regrets though, so he doesn’t.
*
“The… the First Johnny’s Mixed Martial Arts Grand Prix?” Kame repeats back hesitantly
“First Annual,” his manager corrects helpfully.
“YOU will be the star attraction. YOU and Jin.” There is, of course, no room for argument with Johnny.
“It will be billed as a one-night exclusive event, though we’ll tentatively plan a couple ‘surprise bonus’ days that we can announce if it sells out quickly. I’m sure that you’ll have no trouble handling the addition to your schedule. It was your idea, after all.”
It’s not a punishment. If anything, it’s an honor, a privilege. It sure feels like a punishment though.
“Wouldn’t Ueda be better…” Kame suggests weakly, already knowing that it’s in vain. Johnny has decided, and his will will be carried out.
*
When Jin finds out, he is literally rendered speechless, to his manager’s delight. She’d anticipated backtalk.
“Is this real life!?” Jin wails after her, once he finally regains the ability to speak. Fortunately for her, she’s far enough down the hall that he can convincingly pretend not to hear him.
“Seriously, is this real life!?”
*
It actually ends up being kind of fun. There are a surprisingly large number of Johnny’s who are martial arts hobbyists, so Kame gets to enjoy quite a show before it’s his turn to enter the ring. The venue is medium-sized, crowded without being too claustrophobic, and everything was well coordinated and timed. Kame can appreciate all the careful planning that went into creating this, much as he wishes that he wasn’t a part of it.
Nervousness catches up to Kame ten minutes before he’s supposed to go on, right when Ueda begins the solo shadow boxing demonstration that is the opening to his and Akanishi’s act. His manager told him to try to draw the match out for as long as possible, but other than that he was given no direction (aside from a few boxing lessons to make sure that he didn’t grievously injure himself or his opponent). Kame the perfectionist, Kame who is always perfectly prepared, who always has a plan, has no clue what to do to please the audience. Should he try to turn the fight into a joke? No, that would never work, not with the rest of the exhibitions having been serious demonstrations of talent. It’d have to be a fierce fight then… Only he’s not particularly good at boxing, and furthermore he doesn’t actually want to hurt Akanishi. Can they make it dramatic somehow, look into each other’s eyes and scowl? Will Akanishi play along?
That’s the biggest question mark: Akanishi. It’s entirely possible that he’s going to have a horrible attitude about the whole thing, and ruin it all for Kame with his sullenness and refusal to play to the audience. Akanishi’s lack of professionalism has always brought out the best and the worst in Kame. It improved his work ethic at the expense of them never being able to have a true friendship, made him strive harder to make up for Akanishi’s lack of effort and then made him lose his temper backstage.
“Hey.”
Kame grunts in acknowledgment and reaches for his turtle emblazoned boxing shorts, hoping that Jin will take the hint that he wants to be left alone.
“We should hang out some time. Catch up and all that.”
At first Kame assumes that Akanishi is joking. But as the silence of his waiting for a response stretches and grows awkward, it dawns on him that the invitation is a serious one.
“Look, Akanishi,” he begins smoothly. “That’s nice of you, but-”
“Dogs,” Jin interrupts.
“… what?”
“You’re thinking ‘there’s nothing we can do, we have nothing in common.’ You’re wrong though. We both like dogs. It took me a while,” he admits with a small, surprisingly self-deprecating smile, “but I thought of it, and you can’t deny that we both like dogs. So we can do something with dogs. Just give me a chance, Kame.”
The pleading note in Jin’s voice is too familiar. It takes Kame back to yesteryear, when he and Jin were still actually close and Jin wanted Kame to buy him a soda, or teach him the dance moves, or trade costumes with him, never mind that they were completely different sizes.
And in that moment of the past colliding with present to conspire against his better judgment, Kame says yes.
Then it’s time to enter the ring. To their mutual relief, their respective fans hadn’t come expecting some sort of ultimate showdown from two opposing forces. Instead they’d turned the fight into something almost cute, with Akanishi’s fans betting fedoras and shades against the various turtle-themed items that Kamenashi’s fans were willing to gamble. Everybody is just happy to see the two of them onstage together again, even if in this case “onstage” technically means in a boxing arena.
Kame and Jin end up enjoying it as well. Kame is pleasantly shocked by Jin’s enthusiasm; he plays to the crowd, blowing kisses and making “muscle-man” poses, eliciting squeals of joy and amusement and looking like he’s genuinely having fun. Jin’s just glad that Kame isn’t taking things too seriously. He follows Jin’s lead and subtly takes over direction of the course in the fight in turn, leaving Jin feeling like he’s got a good partner, one he can depend on (instead of like he’s being micromanaged). When Kame ultimately wins he can’t even feel bitter despite the fact that he usually hates losing. Instead, Jin delights in Kame’s triumph and happily takes the hand that the other man offers to help him up.
“Good work, Akanishi,” Kame whispers.
“Good work, Kamenashi.” Jin echoes.
They set up a time and place to meet the following week, then part.
*
Kame shows up early, as is his habit, though he knows it’s probably a mistake because Jin is usually late. And he is, arriving about five minutes after the time they’d agreed on.
In Jin’s defense, he’d anticipated that Kamenashi would arrive early and tried, quite valiantly, to at least be on time. But he had no control over the traffic. At least Kamenashi had been cool about it, nodding calmly to Jin when he jogged up and saying not to worry about it when Jin mumbled something about a road being blocked off.
“Anyways, my car’s over here. You took a cab, right?”
“Yeah. How far away is the place we’re going to?”
Jin thinks for a moment. “Uhhh, maybe an hour from here. It’s in the country. That’s okay, right?”
“Sure, it’s a nice day to get out of the city. A nice day to play with dogs.” Kame slides into the passenger seat, wrinkles his nose at the assortment of trash littering the floor, and hopes that Jin does a better job driving his car than he does keeping it clean.
They’re silent because, honestly, they have nothing to talk about. Kame makes a couple awkward stabs at conversation, however their dialogue never makes it past the first few lines. Finally Jin turns on the radio, and they spend the rest of the ride using music as a means to avoid conversation, occasionally making innocuous comments like: “this song is so old” or “this is my favorite part of the song.”
Jin feels simultaneously relieved and scared when they arrive at their destination, a house surrounded by lots of fenced in, grassy land. He’s glad that the uncomfortable car ride is over, but can’t help but worry that this was a mistake, that Kame is going to hate this. Kame’s posture does nothing to ease his worries: his arms are crossed, his face carefully blank, and Jin can’t tell what he’s thinking at all.
However, all his worries are assuaged when Kame sees the first puppy and promptly melts.
“Whose a cute puppy-wuppy-woo? You, yes, you, you sweet widdle cuddlykins.” Kame drops do his knees and scoops the little dog up, laughing when she proceeds to vigorously lick any part of Kame that she can reach. Then the rest of the puppies arrive, and Kame, much to his immediate delight, is swarmed in squirmy, lick-y, roly-poly balls of fluff. Jin whips out his phone and starts recording because it’s too damn adorable and he can totally use this to blackmail Kame later (or just watch it and smile to himself). Then Jin’s friend, the owner of all the puppies, shows up, so he and Jin had a brief conversation. Kame momentarily extricates himself to politely greet Jin’s friend; then he goes back to playing with the puppies because he just can’t help himself, and now Jin joins in too.
Several hours later Jin, Kame, and all the puppies are exhausted. They thank Jin’s friend, return to Jin’s car, and begin the long drive home.
“Thank you too, Jin.” Kame says when they’re stopped at a red light.
Jin shrugs. “No need to thank me. It was fun for me too.”
“Hey, you know what, Akanishi?”
They’re moving again, so Jin can’t look at Kame. “No, what?”
“You wear jeans. I wear jeans.”
Jin can’t look at Kame. But he can hear the tentative grin in Kame’s voice, and it makes him grin too.
“I guess that’s another thing that we have in common, Kamenashi.
*
Their relationship continues in this vein for the next few months; they’ll meet up and pursue something of mutual interest, and at the end of the day, one of them will suggest something else that they have in common to do together in the future.
Jin has changed, Kame realizes fairly quickly. At heart, he’s still the same man that he always has been: unpredictable and independent, with an infuriating tendency to clam up and sulk if he doesn’t like what’s going on or if he doesn’t get his way. The good parts of his personality have remained too, like his exuberance, his fearlessness, and his friendliness. He’s less self-absorbed now though, a better listener, and doesn’t take every suggestion or direction as a personal attack on his freedom. It’s pleasant.
Kame has changed too, Jin notices, not quite as quickly as Kame sees the changes in him, but with time. His temper has mellowed out, and as a result he doesn’t criticize others anywhere near as much as he used to. He’s more content to go with the flow instead of trying to alter it because he sees ways that it could be improved. Of course he’s still a perfectionist, he wouldn’t be Kame if he weren’t. The difference is nice though.
And when it dawns on Jin that he might be attracted to Kame, it doesn’t seem so absurd.
*
“Recording? That’s kind of a stretch, Kamenashi. It’s our job.”
“We both like it, don’t we?”
Jin can’t argue with that. “Well, yeah.”
“I want you to hear this new song. It was pitched to us a possible single a few months back, but we didn’t pick it up, and now I’m making it into a solo.”
“What’s it called?”
Kame beams as he answers: “FORCE OF LIGHT,” enunciating the syllables carefully through his smile, and Jin swallows hard, hastily turning to fiddle with some of the settings in the studio so Kame won’t see his expression and wonder. Jin’s feelings are invariably reflected in his facial features and even Kame, who doesn’t know Jin as well as, say, his family or Pi, would surely guess what was going on in Jin’s heart, and Jin’s not quite ready for that.
Only, ready or not, here Kame comes. The confidence of his singing, the effort he puts into conveying the message in the lyrics, the way he holds the final note for a beat past when the music stops then turns to Jin expectantly, looking forward to hearing his impressions… Jin can’t stop himself. He’s always had horrible impulse control.
Kame’s knees go weak as Jin crushes him against the wall, kissing him like he’s terrified Kame will push him away. Kame has no intention of doing any such thing; he matches Jin’s passion and wastes no time wrestling the other man out of his shirt.
Because seriously, even though Kame had never really thought about it before, now, as they’re naked in a private recording studio, Kame can see nothing absurd about being attracted to a man like Jin.
Neither of them came prepared for an encounter like this, so they have to improvise. In this situation, that means 69-ing on the floor and postponing penetrative sex for another time. It ends up taking more than a week for them to both be free, and by that point they’re ridiculously, desperately horny.
They rush into Kame’s apartment, and by the time the door shuts behind them Jin has already got his pants undone and halfway down his legs. The sight of his erection poking out of the flap of his boxers as he tries to shake his jeans off would be humorous in any other circumstance, but not right now, not when Kame is equally hard and equally hindered by his own clothing.
The only reason why they make it to the bedroom is because that’s where Kame keeps his lubricant. Jin gasps when Kame spreads his fingers, gasps a second time when Kame laughs sensuously.
“Fucking hell, Jin, I never knew it could feel so good to make someone else feel good.” The words are tenderness of Kame’s words only heighten their eroticism.
Jin reaches for the lube, then Kame’s cock. “Inside me,” he chokes out, and Kame obliges. As he establishes a rhythm, Jin leaves deep red hickeys all over Kame’s neck and basically everywhere else that his mouth can reach (Kame’s probably going to yell at him when they’re done but it’s totally worth it because every time Jin bites him Kame’s thrusts falter and he whimpers and it’s so, so sexy).
When Jin comes around Kame, Kame seriously thinks that he might die, or possibly that he’s already dead and heaven is a lot more perverted than everyone believes it to be. His last coherent thought is that, if this is how their relationship was going to end up all along, the years of fighting and hating and not talking to each other were all completely, totally, absolutely worth it.
“Right, so, I guess that’s another thing we have in common.” Kame says once he’s got his breath back.
“You guess?” Jin asks with a laugh that Kame then echoes.
“I know,” he corrects himself, and snuggles up close to Jin.
*
They awaken, first Kame, followed shortly after by Jin, at that time of day and night when it feels like both the sun and moon are shining together in the sky. The force of the dual light is strong enough to make both of them shut their eyes again quickly.
This is how they were created to be. This is how they will be.
Jin starts to hum the opening bars of Kame’s song. Kame joins in after a beat.
Pairing: Akame
Word count: 3,921
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Explicit sexual encounters between two consenting adults.
Notes: Please consider this as taking place in a slightly divergent timeline, wherein every detail is exactly the same as reality except that Jin is unmarried.
Summary: Jin and Kame’s connection to each other ended when Jin went solo, not due to animosity, but because they ostensibly had nothing in common and no reason to pursue a friendship. However, after Kame makes a thoughtless remark on television that ends up bringing them together again, Jin has to wonder if maybe they missed out on something by never trying to have a relationship. So, he decides to try.
KAT-TUN is preparing to film the PV for their latest hit-to-be, and Kame is less than pleased with the song they’ve chosen to produce. It’s a ballad. Kame pushed hard for the fast rock number tentatively titled “FORCE OF LIGHT” but in the end he was outvoted, mostly because they’d recently released something of a similar quality and Taguchi, Tanaka, Ueda, and Nakamaru all thought their fans would appreciate a softer piece, something sweet and sorrowful and spring-like, to suit the season.
This song had a long title, something in Japanese that Kame couldn’t remember for the life of him. He preferred songs with titles all in English, the shorter the better, capitalized so that they screamed in his head. According to one of the managers, the name of Kame’s song was a mixture of metaphors, and that inscrutability, the loss of meaning in crossbreeding, only made it appeal to him more. Maybe he’d release it as a solo; he already thought of it as his song.
Kame is in the mood to sing a strong song. His latest string of commercials has been very successful in terms of viewership and actually selling the products, he’s being considered for an awesome role in a drama slated for an excellent time slot, and for the first time in too long he has no work-related plans for the upcoming weekend. Basically, everything is going extremely well, so he wants to sing a strong song. Kame could croon out a beautiful ballad with the best of them, however he simply felt no connection to the number at this time.
He is, however, a professional above all else. Perfect, poised Kame the professional. The camera zoomed in to capture the intensity of his expression. To the viewer, it would look like Kame was somberly reflecting on something of deep importance to him. In actuality, a mantra that he’d used on more than one occasion to get the job done resounded in his otherwise blank mind: be the best, no regrets, get it done.
One of Kame’s strengths is his dedication to his job above all else. It is also one of the things that Jin hates the most about him. Fakeness is second nature to Kame, to the extent that it’s questionable as to whether it still counts as “fakeness.” For how can it be fake when it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between it and Kame’s genuine emotions?
That, Jin expects, is the point though. And honestly, they’re all inscrutable in their own way. Jin himself hides behind fedoras and sunglasses and mostly incomprehensible English. He always shows what he’s feeling so he can’t use Kame’s method of self-preservation. Maybe that’s the best thing to call it. Self-preservation, in the face of an audience that demands more than anyone could give.
Or maybe Kame just gives them everything. The constructed facial expressions, the carefully planned words, the just-so hairstyle; maybe by making it all so perfect, so professional, it becomes real.
Questions like that will keep a man up at night, so Jin tries not to wonder too much. Anyways, Kame made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near Jin, least of all in his mind.
“Kaaaaaame,” Koki bleats, and instantly the façade of lovelorn solemnity yields to genuine mirth.
“Baldy, don’t mess me up!” Kame says. There’s no real anger in his voice though. It doesn’t matter that Koki doesn’t have a shaved head anymore, he’ll never outgrow the epithet no matter how long his hair gets.
In response, Koki makes a lewd gesture in Kame’s direction, one that involves two spread fingers, his tongue, and arched, knowing eyebrows, however Kame has already recovered from the prior lapse and no reaction registers in his expression as the camera keeps rolling. Koki gives up before the director yells “cut,” so Kame counts it at as a victory.
That is, until Koki gathers the rest of KAT-TUN to harmonize with him. Even Kame finds it impossible to be professional with four grown men crooning: “Kaaaaame, Kaaaaame, Kaaaaame, KaaAME” at him like some kind of messed up barbershop quartet. Well, at least it’s good footage for the making-of.
By the end of filming, they’re all exhausted. It shows in the tightness of Kame’s shoulders, if a person knows to look for it. When tired, Kame tends to get more uptight, sitting straighter, standing taller. His words and laughter, even when seemingly innocuous, become edged with razor sharpness. It’s better if he just keeps his mouth shut until he can get home and relax with good food and a hot bath, but the day is far from over so he’ll have to just power through it. Make-up is wiped off, costumes exchanged for street clothes only to be swapped out for fresh ones before new make-up is caked on to cover blemishes and semi-permanent bags beneath eyes.
Fortunately for Kame, the other members are taking on “exciting” (in the words of their interviewer) projects as well, so the questions are spread around evenly and Kame gets the chance to relax, sort of, when the focus isn’t on him.
“Kamenashi, rumor has it that you’re going to be starring in an upcoming drama whose script has been praised as ‘original and compelling.’ Throughout your career, you’ve taken on so many different roles! Which one has been the most fun to date?”
Since this program will be airing on NTV, Kame chooses to talk about his time as Bem. It really had been a cool part. “Ah, and I also enjoyed becoming Hatanaka. Tat-chan gave me lots of good advice about boxing, and it was interesting to become such a flawed yet determined character. He kept getting in the way of his own dreams. Even so, he never gave up, and was good at accepting help when he needed it. I feel like I learned a lot from that role. Plus the staged fights were a lot of fun to act out.”
The final comment elicits polite laughter, as he’d intended it to. “If you were going to really fight someone, who would it be?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe Akanishi.”
Tense silence follows his answer, and Kame realizes, too late, that he hadn’t tempered the edge of his words anywhere near as much as he should have, hadn’t done anything to indicate that he was kidding and that he didn’t actually feel any animosity towards Akanishi. Hastily, he amends: “Akanishi and I have always had that sort of manly relationship. Even when we get along well, we still fight, since we both hate to lose.”
“Oh, I see. It’s a very manly relationship indeed!” Crisis averted.
Except maybe not quite. Because that evening, Kame gets a call from his manager, who is thrilled to inform him that after watching the interview, Johnny had a brilliant idea for a new project. He and Kame will be having a meeting in the morning to discuss it.
Meanwhile Pi and Ryo are laughing their asses off as they imagine a fight between Kamenashi and Jin.
“That’s NOT how it would go down!” Jin protests after Pi posits a particularly ridiculous scenario. “I would totally win! I have, like, two inches and at least ten or twenty pounds on him. Not to mention the fact that he’d be too busy trying to protect his face to actually put up a fight.”
“That’s true, we didn’t think of that,” Ryo admits. “He’d probably just walk out of the ring with his already crooked nose in the air, saying something like: ‘I wouldn’t piss on Jin if he was on fire, much less actually get into a physical altercation with him.’ That sounds more like Kamenashi.”
“I don’t even think that he hates me. He just doesn’t give a fuck... I’m nothing to him. I don’t know why he wants to punch me.”
There’s something incredibly sad about that. Jin and Kamenashi spent some of the best years of their youth together, but when push comes to shove, or punch as it were, they really have nothing in common. Their friendship was based purely on proximity, and when that ceased to exist, so did it. Now and then Jin wonders if he ought to have tried harder to create a real relationship with Kamenashi, thinks that maybe he missed out on something that could have been really awesome. It goes against Jin’s code to have regrets though, so he doesn’t.
*
“The… the First Johnny’s Mixed Martial Arts Grand Prix?” Kame repeats back hesitantly
“First Annual,” his manager corrects helpfully.
“YOU will be the star attraction. YOU and Jin.” There is, of course, no room for argument with Johnny.
“It will be billed as a one-night exclusive event, though we’ll tentatively plan a couple ‘surprise bonus’ days that we can announce if it sells out quickly. I’m sure that you’ll have no trouble handling the addition to your schedule. It was your idea, after all.”
It’s not a punishment. If anything, it’s an honor, a privilege. It sure feels like a punishment though.
“Wouldn’t Ueda be better…” Kame suggests weakly, already knowing that it’s in vain. Johnny has decided, and his will will be carried out.
*
When Jin finds out, he is literally rendered speechless, to his manager’s delight. She’d anticipated backtalk.
“Is this real life!?” Jin wails after her, once he finally regains the ability to speak. Fortunately for her, she’s far enough down the hall that he can convincingly pretend not to hear him.
“Seriously, is this real life!?”
*
It actually ends up being kind of fun. There are a surprisingly large number of Johnny’s who are martial arts hobbyists, so Kame gets to enjoy quite a show before it’s his turn to enter the ring. The venue is medium-sized, crowded without being too claustrophobic, and everything was well coordinated and timed. Kame can appreciate all the careful planning that went into creating this, much as he wishes that he wasn’t a part of it.
Nervousness catches up to Kame ten minutes before he’s supposed to go on, right when Ueda begins the solo shadow boxing demonstration that is the opening to his and Akanishi’s act. His manager told him to try to draw the match out for as long as possible, but other than that he was given no direction (aside from a few boxing lessons to make sure that he didn’t grievously injure himself or his opponent). Kame the perfectionist, Kame who is always perfectly prepared, who always has a plan, has no clue what to do to please the audience. Should he try to turn the fight into a joke? No, that would never work, not with the rest of the exhibitions having been serious demonstrations of talent. It’d have to be a fierce fight then… Only he’s not particularly good at boxing, and furthermore he doesn’t actually want to hurt Akanishi. Can they make it dramatic somehow, look into each other’s eyes and scowl? Will Akanishi play along?
That’s the biggest question mark: Akanishi. It’s entirely possible that he’s going to have a horrible attitude about the whole thing, and ruin it all for Kame with his sullenness and refusal to play to the audience. Akanishi’s lack of professionalism has always brought out the best and the worst in Kame. It improved his work ethic at the expense of them never being able to have a true friendship, made him strive harder to make up for Akanishi’s lack of effort and then made him lose his temper backstage.
“Hey.”
Kame grunts in acknowledgment and reaches for his turtle emblazoned boxing shorts, hoping that Jin will take the hint that he wants to be left alone.
“We should hang out some time. Catch up and all that.”
At first Kame assumes that Akanishi is joking. But as the silence of his waiting for a response stretches and grows awkward, it dawns on him that the invitation is a serious one.
“Look, Akanishi,” he begins smoothly. “That’s nice of you, but-”
“Dogs,” Jin interrupts.
“… what?”
“You’re thinking ‘there’s nothing we can do, we have nothing in common.’ You’re wrong though. We both like dogs. It took me a while,” he admits with a small, surprisingly self-deprecating smile, “but I thought of it, and you can’t deny that we both like dogs. So we can do something with dogs. Just give me a chance, Kame.”
The pleading note in Jin’s voice is too familiar. It takes Kame back to yesteryear, when he and Jin were still actually close and Jin wanted Kame to buy him a soda, or teach him the dance moves, or trade costumes with him, never mind that they were completely different sizes.
And in that moment of the past colliding with present to conspire against his better judgment, Kame says yes.
Then it’s time to enter the ring. To their mutual relief, their respective fans hadn’t come expecting some sort of ultimate showdown from two opposing forces. Instead they’d turned the fight into something almost cute, with Akanishi’s fans betting fedoras and shades against the various turtle-themed items that Kamenashi’s fans were willing to gamble. Everybody is just happy to see the two of them onstage together again, even if in this case “onstage” technically means in a boxing arena.
Kame and Jin end up enjoying it as well. Kame is pleasantly shocked by Jin’s enthusiasm; he plays to the crowd, blowing kisses and making “muscle-man” poses, eliciting squeals of joy and amusement and looking like he’s genuinely having fun. Jin’s just glad that Kame isn’t taking things too seriously. He follows Jin’s lead and subtly takes over direction of the course in the fight in turn, leaving Jin feeling like he’s got a good partner, one he can depend on (instead of like he’s being micromanaged). When Kame ultimately wins he can’t even feel bitter despite the fact that he usually hates losing. Instead, Jin delights in Kame’s triumph and happily takes the hand that the other man offers to help him up.
“Good work, Akanishi,” Kame whispers.
“Good work, Kamenashi.” Jin echoes.
They set up a time and place to meet the following week, then part.
*
Kame shows up early, as is his habit, though he knows it’s probably a mistake because Jin is usually late. And he is, arriving about five minutes after the time they’d agreed on.
In Jin’s defense, he’d anticipated that Kamenashi would arrive early and tried, quite valiantly, to at least be on time. But he had no control over the traffic. At least Kamenashi had been cool about it, nodding calmly to Jin when he jogged up and saying not to worry about it when Jin mumbled something about a road being blocked off.
“Anyways, my car’s over here. You took a cab, right?”
“Yeah. How far away is the place we’re going to?”
Jin thinks for a moment. “Uhhh, maybe an hour from here. It’s in the country. That’s okay, right?”
“Sure, it’s a nice day to get out of the city. A nice day to play with dogs.” Kame slides into the passenger seat, wrinkles his nose at the assortment of trash littering the floor, and hopes that Jin does a better job driving his car than he does keeping it clean.
They’re silent because, honestly, they have nothing to talk about. Kame makes a couple awkward stabs at conversation, however their dialogue never makes it past the first few lines. Finally Jin turns on the radio, and they spend the rest of the ride using music as a means to avoid conversation, occasionally making innocuous comments like: “this song is so old” or “this is my favorite part of the song.”
Jin feels simultaneously relieved and scared when they arrive at their destination, a house surrounded by lots of fenced in, grassy land. He’s glad that the uncomfortable car ride is over, but can’t help but worry that this was a mistake, that Kame is going to hate this. Kame’s posture does nothing to ease his worries: his arms are crossed, his face carefully blank, and Jin can’t tell what he’s thinking at all.
However, all his worries are assuaged when Kame sees the first puppy and promptly melts.
“Whose a cute puppy-wuppy-woo? You, yes, you, you sweet widdle cuddlykins.” Kame drops do his knees and scoops the little dog up, laughing when she proceeds to vigorously lick any part of Kame that she can reach. Then the rest of the puppies arrive, and Kame, much to his immediate delight, is swarmed in squirmy, lick-y, roly-poly balls of fluff. Jin whips out his phone and starts recording because it’s too damn adorable and he can totally use this to blackmail Kame later (or just watch it and smile to himself). Then Jin’s friend, the owner of all the puppies, shows up, so he and Jin had a brief conversation. Kame momentarily extricates himself to politely greet Jin’s friend; then he goes back to playing with the puppies because he just can’t help himself, and now Jin joins in too.
Several hours later Jin, Kame, and all the puppies are exhausted. They thank Jin’s friend, return to Jin’s car, and begin the long drive home.
“Thank you too, Jin.” Kame says when they’re stopped at a red light.
Jin shrugs. “No need to thank me. It was fun for me too.”
“Hey, you know what, Akanishi?”
They’re moving again, so Jin can’t look at Kame. “No, what?”
“You wear jeans. I wear jeans.”
Jin can’t look at Kame. But he can hear the tentative grin in Kame’s voice, and it makes him grin too.
“I guess that’s another thing that we have in common, Kamenashi.
*
Their relationship continues in this vein for the next few months; they’ll meet up and pursue something of mutual interest, and at the end of the day, one of them will suggest something else that they have in common to do together in the future.
Jin has changed, Kame realizes fairly quickly. At heart, he’s still the same man that he always has been: unpredictable and independent, with an infuriating tendency to clam up and sulk if he doesn’t like what’s going on or if he doesn’t get his way. The good parts of his personality have remained too, like his exuberance, his fearlessness, and his friendliness. He’s less self-absorbed now though, a better listener, and doesn’t take every suggestion or direction as a personal attack on his freedom. It’s pleasant.
Kame has changed too, Jin notices, not quite as quickly as Kame sees the changes in him, but with time. His temper has mellowed out, and as a result he doesn’t criticize others anywhere near as much as he used to. He’s more content to go with the flow instead of trying to alter it because he sees ways that it could be improved. Of course he’s still a perfectionist, he wouldn’t be Kame if he weren’t. The difference is nice though.
And when it dawns on Jin that he might be attracted to Kame, it doesn’t seem so absurd.
*
“Recording? That’s kind of a stretch, Kamenashi. It’s our job.”
“We both like it, don’t we?”
Jin can’t argue with that. “Well, yeah.”
“I want you to hear this new song. It was pitched to us a possible single a few months back, but we didn’t pick it up, and now I’m making it into a solo.”
“What’s it called?”
Kame beams as he answers: “FORCE OF LIGHT,” enunciating the syllables carefully through his smile, and Jin swallows hard, hastily turning to fiddle with some of the settings in the studio so Kame won’t see his expression and wonder. Jin’s feelings are invariably reflected in his facial features and even Kame, who doesn’t know Jin as well as, say, his family or Pi, would surely guess what was going on in Jin’s heart, and Jin’s not quite ready for that.
Only, ready or not, here Kame comes. The confidence of his singing, the effort he puts into conveying the message in the lyrics, the way he holds the final note for a beat past when the music stops then turns to Jin expectantly, looking forward to hearing his impressions… Jin can’t stop himself. He’s always had horrible impulse control.
Kame’s knees go weak as Jin crushes him against the wall, kissing him like he’s terrified Kame will push him away. Kame has no intention of doing any such thing; he matches Jin’s passion and wastes no time wrestling the other man out of his shirt.
Because seriously, even though Kame had never really thought about it before, now, as they’re naked in a private recording studio, Kame can see nothing absurd about being attracted to a man like Jin.
Neither of them came prepared for an encounter like this, so they have to improvise. In this situation, that means 69-ing on the floor and postponing penetrative sex for another time. It ends up taking more than a week for them to both be free, and by that point they’re ridiculously, desperately horny.
They rush into Kame’s apartment, and by the time the door shuts behind them Jin has already got his pants undone and halfway down his legs. The sight of his erection poking out of the flap of his boxers as he tries to shake his jeans off would be humorous in any other circumstance, but not right now, not when Kame is equally hard and equally hindered by his own clothing.
The only reason why they make it to the bedroom is because that’s where Kame keeps his lubricant. Jin gasps when Kame spreads his fingers, gasps a second time when Kame laughs sensuously.
“Fucking hell, Jin, I never knew it could feel so good to make someone else feel good.” The words are tenderness of Kame’s words only heighten their eroticism.
Jin reaches for the lube, then Kame’s cock. “Inside me,” he chokes out, and Kame obliges. As he establishes a rhythm, Jin leaves deep red hickeys all over Kame’s neck and basically everywhere else that his mouth can reach (Kame’s probably going to yell at him when they’re done but it’s totally worth it because every time Jin bites him Kame’s thrusts falter and he whimpers and it’s so, so sexy).
When Jin comes around Kame, Kame seriously thinks that he might die, or possibly that he’s already dead and heaven is a lot more perverted than everyone believes it to be. His last coherent thought is that, if this is how their relationship was going to end up all along, the years of fighting and hating and not talking to each other were all completely, totally, absolutely worth it.
“Right, so, I guess that’s another thing we have in common.” Kame says once he’s got his breath back.
“You guess?” Jin asks with a laugh that Kame then echoes.
“I know,” he corrects himself, and snuggles up close to Jin.
*
They awaken, first Kame, followed shortly after by Jin, at that time of day and night when it feels like both the sun and moon are shining together in the sky. The force of the dual light is strong enough to make both of them shut their eyes again quickly.
This is how they were created to be. This is how they will be.
Jin starts to hum the opening bars of Kame’s song. Kame joins in after a beat.