Running With Scissors
Title: Running With Scissors
Pairings/Characters: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya, with cameo appearances by T-TUN
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU. Kissing, making-out and off-screen sex. Enough sap for a maple forest.
Notes: The services offered by Japanese barber shops tend to be much more comprehensive than those in Western cultures. In addition to "traditional" barbershop services of shaving and hair cutting, it is standard practice to include things such as hair styling, ear cleaning, and head and shoulder massages. Originally posted as a gift fic for kaminikaku in fic_the_faith. 8400 words.
Summary: All Kame wanted was a haircut.
Kamenashi Kazuya is an overachiever. He hasn't always been, but after an accident in tenth grade had crushed his dreams of playing pro baseball, he'd resolved to throw himself into everything he did. At first it was just to forget the pain, checking and rechecking the meaningless school assignments as a way to fill up the hours he no longer spent at practice. Somewhere along the way-maybe when he graduated at the top of his class; maybe while attending business school at Keio; definitely by the time he was offered a job at Kurogin Corp.-he became proud of it. He works harder and longer than anyone else and it's the reason why he sits one seat away from the manager's desk at only twenty-four.
Even though he's Kamenashi Kazuya, wunderkind of the business world, he has his bad days. It’s been one of those. He's on his way to the train station when the wind gusts his hair into his face. He’s temporarily blinded and stumbles into a telephone pole, muttering profanities under his breath. In the bustle of meetings, reports, and projects, he’d forgotten to get his hair cut for the presentation tomorrow.
It’s late enough that the fussy salon he usually goes to is probably closed for the day. He’ll have to live with his hair the way it is until the workweek ends. He takes his organizer out of his briefcase and tries to carve some time out of his weekend. In the end, he blocks out part of Saturday morning and slips the organizer back into his bag as the platform rumbles beneath his feet with the arrival of the train.
As the train hums along through the growing dark, he finds himself leaning first his shoulder, then his head against the plexiglass divider beside his seat. Just for a moment, he thinks. It's been a very long day, he'll only rest for a minute. He breathes, settles-
-opens his eyes to the sound of the professional female voice announcing that they've just left his station and are continuing east. Kame forces himself to sit up calmly, though he's mentally berating himself for falling asleep. He gets up, apologizing to the woman next to him, and stares out the windows at the blink of lights speeding past.
When the train pulls in to the next stop, he gets off, checks the schedule. The earliest train going back won't arrive for over an hour, so he leaves to look for somewhere to pass the time. He comes here occasionally with one of his colleagues, Nakamaru. Maru's one of the few people Kame meets with on a regular basis, and the two of them haunt a bar called Taguchi’s a couple blocks away from the station. It should just be opening and the appeal of being indoors away from the freezing cold is reason enough for Kame to head in that direction.
He's about to turn down the street to Taguchi's when he notices a barbershop across the intersection with its lights still on. Kame considers for a moment. All he needs is a trim-it shouldn't take long, it’ll be ready for his budget proposal tomorrow and then he won't have to make time this weekend.
But when he gets to the barber’s door, it's locked. He peers through the small bit of the window reachable from where he’s standing. There's someone inside, singing and moving around. Kame knocks loudly on the door. The singing stops, and a moment later the door swings open on well-oiled hinges.
The man in the doorway is young and a little taller than himself, with a fluff of hair framing his curious face. Kame’s strangely discomfited, stumbling over his words and flapping his hands around before just pointing to his hair. The man's face lights up in one of the biggest smiles Kame's ever seen as he pulls him inside.
"Oh! Come in-here, have a seat." A strong pair of hands steers Kame to one of the barber's chairs in front of the mirrored wall.
"I'm Akanishi Jin," the man says, and when Kame twists around in the chair to follow the voice, the fluffy head has bent into a cupboard to rummage for something. The barber pulls out a cape and whips it around Kame with all the flourish of a matador, securing the collar with a flick of the wrist.
"It's good you came when you did-I was closing up. So what would you like today?" He moves behind Kame and examines him in the mirror. "Shampoo, color, styling?" Long fingers ruffle Kame's almost-shoulder-length hair, gently teasing the strands away from his head, twisting them in different patterns around his face.
Kame’s own fingers twitch as he forces himself to not bat Akanishi's hands away. In the mirror, they wind around his face like a hypnotist’s, never actually touching his skin, but there's something about the way the fingers almost caress his hair that’s unexpectedly mesmerizing. Kame digs his nails into his palms beneath the cape and says, "Just a trim please. Shorter around the face, two inches off the back. Scissors only, no razor."
"How about a shampoo?" Akanishi asks. "I give excellent shampoos. Most people find them very relaxing."
"I'm sorry," Kame says. All he wants is to get his haircut and go home and sleep. "I have a train to catch."
"The 8:15?"
Kame nods.
"I can have you out of here in plenty of time," says Akanishi. "And you look like you could use it. You're probably the most stressed person I've seen in weeks."
Kame knows he’s only trying to make a sale, but Akanishi has an adorable puppy-dog face and he sighs.
"Fine," Kame says, "but if I miss the train, I'm coming to get my money back."
"I'm not worried," the barber says, his sad-kicked-puppy face giving way to that large grin once more. Humming absently, he gestures for Kame to move to another chair that has a sink at the head for the shampoo.
By the time Akanishi's done massaging the coconut-scented shampoo into his hair, Kame has practically melted into the barber's chair. He's reluctant to pull his head away from the warm water and warmer hands, shuffling from the shampoo chair back to his original seat in a bit of a daze. The thread of the comb through his hair as it gently detangles the damp mass is a purely sensual pleasure, and he makes an appreciative noise in his throat at the careful tug of the plastic teeth and the confident touch of fingers on his scalp.
Then suddenly there's a *snip, snip* and Kame's eyes fly open to see that half of his hair on the right side is gone. He sits bolt upright and whips around to glare at Akanishi. His damp hair swings with him and suddenly Akanishi lets out what has to be the girliest scream Kame has ever heard from either gender.
"Gah, don't...don't do that!" he says, rubbing his collarbone and Kame looks at him in bafflement, lost.
Then he remembers he's supposed to be righteously angry that this man has just chopped off half of his hair. "What? Me? No, wait, you-what have you done to my hair?!"
"It'll look great, I promise!" Akanishi says, scrambling to pick up the comb and scissors he's dropped. Wiping them carefully with a towel, he mutters embarrassedly, "Um, just...don't touch my collarbones. They're, ah, they're ticklish."
"What?" Kame says again. "I didn't touch them!"
Akanishi goes slightly red. "No, but your hair..."
"Oh." Kame processes that for a moment. "That ticklish, huh?" He looks at himself in the mirror. There’s nothing to be done for his hair now. He sits back in the chair and resigns himself to whatever Akanishi chooses to do to him.
As Akanishi snips away and mutters under his breath, Kame studies him in the mirror. It’s a habit of his, watching people, and the barber is a particularly interesting subject. His appearance is comfortable rather than polished, V-necked shirt hanging low and loose over his collarbones and cargo pants stuffed with the tools of his trade riding on his hips. It’s not particularly professional, but Kame thinks that for this man in this little shop, working in a suit or even a collared shirt would be ludicrous. He’s clearly skilled, working the scissors around Kame’s left ear with a deftness that speaks of long practice. And he has a presence to him that seems to fill the space behind Kame, an unpolished sensuality in the way he fractionally sways from side to side as he hums and bites his lip in concentration. Kame has trouble shifting his gaze away from that contradiction of white teeth and soft pink flesh. It’s sexy and adorable in a way that’s horribly dangerous to Kame’s libido. Or maybe it's just that Kame needs to stop working all the time and find a girl to date and maybe get laid. Clearly his mind is overly concerned with one thing if he’s thinking like that about a man he’s just met.
Even his sensible self can't deny that Akanishi's gorgeous, though. He watches as the man's large dark eyes narrow in concentration as he carefully evens out the left side to match the right. His ridiculous hair forms a halo of pale brown that frames full lips and a gently sloping nose.
"What's your name, by the way?" Akanishi asks several minutes later.
Kame's startled out of his examination. "Hm? Oh-uh. Kamenashi." Something prompts him to keep going. "Kamenashi Kazuya."
"Well, Mr. Kamenashi," Akanishi says as he rotates the chair to face the mirror again, "what do you think?"
Kame examines his hair carefully. It is, he admits, still professional, maybe even more so than his previously long locks, but somehow just...a little bit more.
A few pieces fall across his forehead to frame his eyebrows. Wisps on the side draw attention to his cheekbones. While his face is exactly the same, with the new haircut it's compelling in a way that it hadn't been before.
Akanishi smiles at him in the mirror. "Do you like it?"
Kame's actually quite impressed. Beautiful and talented, this man. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."
Akanishi points at the clock, his face smug. Eight o’clock exactly. "Better catch that train."
Kame laughs and pulls the cape off. He grabs his briefcase and his coat and heads out the door.
"Please come again!" Akanishi says, and Kame can imagine him grinning as he heads to the station.
The next day, working on expense reports at his desk, Kame realizes in his haste to leave, he forgot to pay the man for his haircut. It bothers his fiercely organized soul all day, enough that he finds Nakamaru and makes plans to go drink at Taguchi's that evening so Kame can give Akanishi the money he owes. Nakamaru makes fun of him for his anxiousness to return ("He won't go out of business if you don't pay him today, you know," and, "What, did you meet a girl? Was she hot?") but he agrees and the two of them take the 6pm train.
Akanishi's just finishing up with a customer when they arrive. As soon as they open the door (unlocked, this time), he looks up and greets them.
His face lights up when he sees Kame. "Ah, Kamenashi! You don't need another haircut, I hope!" Nakamaru quizzically at Kame when Akanishi gestures them familiarly towards the waiting area. They sit on a comfortable old couch while he finishes drying the hair of the man in the chair. After the other customer has paid and left ("I'll see you next month as usual, Pi!") Akanishi comes over to where Kame and Nakamaru have been thumbing through the magazines.
"What can I do for you?" he asks. Kame explains how he'd forgotten to pay yesterday, and hands him the money in an envelope with an apology and a deep bow. Akanishi thanks him, says it's no problem, and puts it next to the cash register.
Nakamaru clears his throat in what's probably an indication that he's ready to leave, but Akanishi takes it as a request. "Oh, Kamenashi, introduce me!"
Kame fumbles for a moment, caught off guard. "This is Nakamaru, my colleague from work." Nakamaru and Akanishi exchange greetings and Nakamaru finds himself the object of all the other man's considerable charm and persuasive power as the barber starts making comments about all the things he could do with Maru’s hair. His coworker puts up more resistance than Kame had, but eventually Kame's watching his friend stare nervously at the mirror as Akanishi's scissors fly around his face.
They eventually make it to Taguchi's, but somehow, Jin ends up coming with them. ("Call me Jin," he'd said, and it fits him so much better than "Akanishi" that even Nakamaru is using it now.)
Taguchi’s is crowded with the Thursday after-work crowd. Kame and Maru settle into their usual places at the bar while Jin plops down next to them. They quickly discover that Jin knows more of the people there than they do. Kame is slightly annoyed by all the people who keep coming up to say hello to Jin and sulks into his drink. Nakamaru, however, is wide-eyed and excited about how popular his new friend is, and Kame figures his colleague’s excited conversation will compensate for his own sullenness. By the second hour, Kame is getting somewhat tipsy. The more intoxicated he gets, the more annoyed he is by the amount of time Jin spends away from the bar. (You’re just jealous, a little voice inside of him says, but he quickly quashes that ridiculous thought.) Nakamaru goes with Jin as he makes his way around the tables and Jin introduces him to one group of friends after another. Maru blushes and stumbles over himself, and everyone thinks he’s adorable. In the beginning, he protests weakly when they tell him he has a fabulous friend in Jin, says really they’ve only just met, but eventually he just smiles and laughs when Jin affectionately buffets him on the head.
The two of them seem immune to Kame’s very best glare. Taguchi eyes him knowingly from behind the bar. "Caught you, has he?"
Kame spins on the barstool and focuses the glare on Junno, who gives him a toothy grin.
"This must be your first time out with Jin."
Kame sighs and rests his chin in his hands. "I’m not sure how we ended up here. I’m not sure how we ended up with him. All I wanted was a haircut."
Junno laughs at him, but is abruptly cut off when a hand whacks him on the back of the head.
"I can tell you’re talking about me, Junno," Jin says, and Taguchi smiles and makes no denial. He rubs his head where Jin hit him and slips away to the other end of the bar.
Jin turns to Kame with that megawatt smile. Kame flinches away when the other man touches his cheek, but Jin doesn’t pull back, just brushes his fingers lightly along Kame’s cheekbones, traces his odd eyebrows. Kame wonders if anyone else finds it as weirdly intimate as he does. Those warm brown eyes are suddenly laughing at him, and Kame decides he’s had enough and pushes himself away from the bar.
Or tries to, anyway, because Nakamaru returns and sits next to Kame, having finished romancing the giggling group of women in the corner booth. Kame slouches onto the counter and groans. The combination of alcohol and his unfounded annoyance with Jin has made him touchy and he snaps at Maru for leaving him alone. Jin steps in and apologizes, says it’s his fault. Some part of Kame knows he’s being unreasonable, but he shoves the other man off his bar stool and tells him to leave Kame out of his stupid games. Kame walks unsteadily out into the night and pretends he’s not sorry to leave.
Kame tells himself he would have been perfectly happy to return to his normal hairdresser and never think about Jin and his discomfiting touch again, but there are two things going against him. One is Nakamaru, who calls Jin on a regular basis and usually spends Thursday nights hanging out at Taguchi’s with him. The second is that he really, really likes his haircut. He’d been impressed in spite of himself when Jin had first cut it, but after living with it for a month...it falls perfectly into place after his bath, slides across his eyes just enough to be heartbreakingly sexy without actually obstructing his vision-it’s the most perfect haircut he’s ever had and he doesn’t think he can ever go back to something less.
So when it starts getting a bit long, Kame succumbs to the inevitable and makes plans to have Jin cut it again. He starts looking for him in the phonebook to make an appointment, but then he realizes he doesn’t actually know the shop’s name. He could ask Nakamaru, but the memory of his behavior at the bar is embarrassing even a month later. He just doesn’t do things like that. So he boards the train one Wednesday, gets off a stop later than usual, and peeks, somewhat cautiously, into Jin’s barber shop. Jin is humming around a mouthful of hairclips and snipping away at a cap of light brown hair. Kame’s nervous about what Jin will say when he asks for a haircut, whether he’ll hold Kame’s rudeness the last time they’d met against him, but Jin’s eyes look at Kame knowingly and the crinkle around their corners tell him all is forgiven.
He waves Kame over to the waiting area. Instead of perusing the ancient magazines, this time Kame finds it more interesting to sit and watch Jin work his magic on the slim man in the chair. Jin notices him observing and brings Kame into their conversation as easily as breathing.
The man’s name is Ueda, he learns in the first minute. Jin introduces him as his "best friend, Tat-chan." Ueda snorts and says, "Everyone’s your best friend, Jin. And don’t call me Tat-chan," but the whack on Jin’s head is fond and when Jin scolds him for moving, Ueda leans back in the chair again meekly.
Ueda’s face is beautiful, exotic, though his nose has the peculiar crook that comes from multiple past fractures. That’s because he’s a boxer, Kame learns, training every day at a gym a couple streets over. In the evenings, he and Jin get together with a couple of their friends to play in a band.
"It makes for great stories," Jin mumbles around the clips in his mouth.
"Ha! Does it ever." Ueda’s eyes are obscured by the chunk of bangs Jin’s clipped at the front of his face, but Kame has no problem seeing his mouth twist wryly. "Like that time we were going to open for another band and their guitarist took Nishikido’s, uh, ‘constructive criticism’ the wrong way."
"What did he say?" Kame asks.
"Something along the lines of, ‘Why would you ever play an F chord in that progression, dumbass,’" Ueda replies.
"Ah." Kame rubs the back of his neck thoughtfully.
"Yeah, we didn’t get paid very much for that one." Jin twists himself around and examines Ueda with a squint.
"Most of the time it’s Ryo’s fault," Ueda says. "No, I take that back, it’s always Ryo’s fault."
"What about that time you locked the drum kit and the keys in the trunk of the rental car?"
"Hey," Ueda says, "You were the one who stuffed my jacket in the bass drum to muffle the sound."
"But I wasn’t the one who claimed the keys were in my bag. Kamenashi believes me, don’t you?" Jin turns to him, an expectant look on his face.
Kame puts his hands up defensively. "Uh...Ryo’s fault?"
That makes both of them laugh. Jin walks over to where Kame’s sitting on the couch and throws an arm around his shoulders. "I approve of this man," he says to Ueda.
Jin’s shiny scissors are pointing directly at Kame’s nose, but the smaller man’s less concerned with that than he is with the arm draped over him. No one’s touched him that casually since, well, since that night at Taguchi’s. Jin’s a lot more physical that Kame’s used to, and that he finds the weight to be warm and natural despite that is unsettling.
Kame’s so caught up in analyzing the odd sensation that he doesn’t even realize that Ueda’s taking off the cape and it’s his turn. He ducks out from under Jin’s arm with relief and tells himself to get a grip.
As Kame settles into the chair, Ueda disappears into the back room and returns with a guitar-presumably Jin’s-and starts strumming it idly on the couch. Jin calls out ridiculous requests to which Ueda replies snarkily.
When Kame’s hair has been shampooed and cut and blow-dried, Jin pulls him back over to the waiting area. It seems matter-of-course to watch from the other side of the battered coffee table as Jin throws himself down on the couch next to Ueda and steals the guitar. He starts to play and sing along, but quickly get too caught up in the vocals and messes up his strumming. Ueda heaves a tortured sigh and takes the guitar back.
"I need to practice, Tat-chan!" Jin says.
"Yes, you do," Ueda replies, but he doesn’t give up the guitar. Instead he starts playing a different song, nods at Jin and the two of them begin to sing together.
After listening to him hum and mumble under his breath for the span of two haircuts, it’s the first time Kame hears Jin sing, really sing with his whole voice. Ueda’s voice is very rockish, breathy and rumbling. As he croons the melody, Jin sings the descant. It’s gorgeous, full and strong and resonant and he embellishes each line with little flourishes and dips.
And then he hits a note at the top, effortlessly, cleanly, holding it forever as Ueda harmonizes under him and Kame thinks the neighbors must hear and will probably complain but for once he doesn’t care what others will think because it’s just so powerful, grabbing him and sweeping him along and not letting go. Jin’s eyes are closed and sound pours out of him and Kame can’t look away until Jin finally breaks off at the peak of the note.
Kame doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until he’s gasping, until Jin’s voice has released him. He looks at Ueda, who just shrugs and continues playing. What can you say after something like that? his expression says. They’re in perfect accord.
Jin is oblivious, smiling and happy from the music as the song draws to an end. He suggests Kame stay while they order in ramen and so he does and they do.
Ueda eats deliberately, efficiently, the same as Kame. Jin slurps his food loudly, noisy and messy and ridiculous and Kame can’t help but wonder at this contradiction of a man, with his mess of hair and his swift hands, his sloppy eating and his tight vocal control, his people-intelligence and occasional utter stupidity.
Ueda grumps about something related to the song they’re working on and Jin laughs and starts humming the Dragonball theme song. The two bicker over a chord progression and Kame just watches bemusedly as Jin squeaks in outrage at Ueda’s utterly unimpressed face.
Kame doesn’t leave until three hours later, when the ramen bowls sit sad and empty on the counter and all three of them are just a little drunk. No other customers had come by, so Jin had closed the shop early and they’d been free to just relax. Jin’s voice is slightly hoarse, partly from singing and partly from laughing. Kame feels like he could stay here forever. But he has to go to work early tomorrow and so he starts hinting his goodbyes. His phone has tumbled under the couch-Jin fishes it out for him and insists on getting a cloth from the back room to wipe off the dust. Kame is happy to keep sitting there, full and content as Ueda’s fingers tap out different rhythms on the tabletop.
Jin returns with the phone too soon, and Kame reluctantly takes his leave. He’s on the train back home when his pocket buzzes. He pulls out his phone to see Jin’s name on the caller ID. The man must have programmed in his number. "Um, hi," Jin says when he answers. "I hope it’s not too weird, me putting my number in your phone." Normally Kame would think it odd, but he’s not really surprised. He’d learned a lot about Jin in the past three hours, and it seems like the sort of thing he would do.
"Oh, no, don’t worry about it. It’s fine."
"No, really," Jin insists, "I don’t want you to think I, you know, just go around entering my number into customers' phones. Just...tonight was fun." His voice gets soft. "And I, um, I’d like to hang out some more. Actually," he says, and Kame can hear his excitement over the line, "Ueda and I-and Ryo-will be playing a gig Saturday night. I-We’d love it if you’d come. If you want to. And if you’re not busy, of course."
Kame mentally rifles through his schedule. He’d been thinking of driving out to visit his parents, but he could leave early in the morning and be back by dinner. "Sure," he says. "Sure, I’ll come. What time?"
"Nine. At a club called Talus. I’ll mail you the address?"
"That’d be great." And Kame realizes he really does think it will be.
"Okay, I’ll see you then!"
Kame’s a little giddy and unusually excited the rest of the week. It’s more than just the prospect of watching the band perform, though with a frontsman like Jin it’s bound to be a fabulous experience. It’s just that each day he keeps finding things he wants to tell Jin, and it’s hard to keep from picking up his phone and dialing each time he thinks of something to say. On Thursday it was a new song on the radio. On Friday it was something one of his coworkers did that reminded him of one of Jin’s many Ryo stories. On Saturday...well, to be honest, on Saturday Kame spent most of the day anticipating the evening’s performance. He’d gone to see his parents, and as they’d all sat down to lunch, his mother had commented that he was looking particularly antsy that day. He’d brushed her off and quickly changed the subject because she’d hit closer to the mark than he’d like her to believe.
Talus is a small but sophisticated club and the band’s performance does not disappoint. They play mostly rock, plus a couple of ballads and the odd dance number. A substantial portion of the tables surrounding the stage are occupied by people who’ve come specifically to see Jin and Ueda and the others play. Afterwards, Jin comes and sits at Kame’s table, politely turning aside the girls that approach looking for his attention.
Kame raises his drink in a salute. "That was impressive," he says. "How long have you guys been playing together?"
"About two and a half years now," Jin answers as he waves the server over. "Though we only started getting gigs this year."
"You guys are really good," Kame says. "It’s the sort of music I’d listen to while driving or something."
"Thanks," Jin says, and he rubs his head, pleased and embarrassed by the praise. Kame thinks to himself that a flustered Jin is the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He feels a little strange thinking of a full-grown man as "cute," but it’s true and Kame thinks he might be falling for that smile.
They sip their drinks, and Jin looks at Kame with a strange expression on his face. "I-" he begins, and then stops. "Do you have time to come back to the shop later? I have something to show you."
"Something" turns out to be a CD recording of several of the band’s past performances. Kame thanks him and then there’s a bit of an awkward silence where he feels like he should probably leave, but doesn’t really want to. It’s the first time he’s really been uncomfortable in Jin’s presence (excluding their initial meeting, though since getting to know Jin better, Kame’s decided that doesn’t really count anymore). Jin stands with one hand on the barber’s chair, fingers fiddling with a hole in the leather. All of a sudden, his shoulders straighten and he moves in close to Kame, who looks up at him a little curious, a little excited by their closeness. Jin’s hand comes up, but Kame’s not watching it, focused instead on Jin’s liquid eyes, which have gone soft and shuttered. The hand cups his cheek and pulls him in and his eyelids slip closed and then Jin’s lips are on his, gentle and full.
They pull apart and Jin looks nervous, pulling back his hands and twisting them over each other in unsure, jerky movements. Kame thinks he should be more confused, but it seems easy and natural to drop the CD on the table, to wind his fingers in that glorious hair and tug Jin’s head back down. The second kiss is even better than the first.
Kame’s not sure whether to tell anyone-or what to tell them if he did. He feels like he should say something to someone-their mutual friends, maybe Ueda, maybe Nakamaru. Jin had kissed him and he’d kissed Jin and then they’d broken apart, laughing a little with relief. It has always surprised Kame, the few times that the person he’s liked has liked him back. He’d said as much and Jin had smiled and been embarrassed. "I’m just relieved," he’d said, "that I didn’t scare you off. Some people think I’m too overwhelming."
Kame can’t imagine not liking Jin. He’s like a beacon of light, and the barber shop is more of a neighborhood hangout than a business. Jin’s fine with that-he’s lucky, he says, he doesn’t have to pay rent because he inherited the shop and the little apartment above it from his parents. All he really needs, he says, is enough money to keep his business running and to go out with his friends every so often.
That baffles Kame, who budgets carefully and has his savings portfolio all neatly arranged at the bank. He doesn’t know how much Jin has sitting in his account, but it can’t be much, and on their first real date he asks Jin if it doesn’t bother him, living like that.
"What if there was a fire? Or the shop flooded? Or you got sued by an angry customer? Or if long hair suddenly became the universal fashion and nobody wanted haircuts anymore?"
"Now you’re just being silly," Jin says with a laugh. "They’d still need a barber, wouldn’t they? And I have insurance." They’re at a café near Kame’s office building. Jin had closed the shop early so he could come meet Kame there after work (and that’s another thing Kame has had no experience with, leaving work for the sake of a personal commitment).
Okay, Kame admits, maybe that last one’s not really a legitimate concern, but still. His confusion must have shown on his face, because Jin reaches over and playfully grabs his hand. "Don’t worry," he says. "I promise I have a backup plan in case fashion suddenly turns against me-I’ll just turn the shop into a host club and hire Ueda and Taguchi to work for me."
Kame nods at the joke but doesn’t really hear him, because Jin is Holding His Hand and while they’ve already kissed, somehow the touch of Jin’s hairdresser fingers, soft and a little bit dry from all the product that’s coated them and been washed off that day, is every bit as intimate. It’s a warm, friendly hand, just like its owner.
He doesn’t forget about the shop, though, and goes home and checks the fashion magazines, just in case.
A month or so into their relationship, they go to karaoke with Kame’s friends. Jin settles right in, even though he's the only one not wearing a suit, the only one drinking water instead of the overly expensive mixed drinks. Kame is coerced into performing a ridiculous boyband song, and despite the indignity he refuses to do anything less than his best, hip-rolling like the costumed puppets on TV, ending with a spin and a point and a wink at Jin.
Kame's a little smug about the shocked expression on Jin's face. The fact that he works in an office doesn't mean he can't put on a show when he wants to. His satisfaction doesn't last long, though, before Jin drags him out of the room on some paltry excuse and into the bathroom where he kisses him into the wall.
"Tease," Jin whispers into Kame's ear, sliding his fingers through Kame's belt loops and pulling their hips together. Kame can only moan a reply because Jin's tongue has found its way into his mouth and is leisurely tracing the edge of his teeth. Jin's hips have pinned his against the wall so his hands are free to wander. Kame squirms. Jin uses his index finger to brush a strand of hair away from Kame's face, and that tiny movement turns him on even more than the press of the other man's hips. Kame moans again and pulls Jin deeper into the kiss as he finds himself getting hard.
Jin notices and grinds against Kame, once, slowly. Kame's fingers twist into his hair and so Jin does it again. This time, he takes his palm and drags it down Kame's chest. Kame pants into his mouth, anticipating the touch of Jin's fingers as the hand slides closer to the waistband of his pants. Just before he reaches it, though, Jin moves the hand back up to his chest and uses it to break the kiss and push himself away.
Jin smiles an innocent smile as Kame leans against the wall for support, breathing roughly, hair mussed and the thin fabric of his slacks not at all disguising the fact that he's fully aroused. When the dazed look clears from Kame's eyes, he glares at Jin. "I'll get you back for this later," he says.
"I'm looking forward to it." Jin moves back in, enjoying how Kame tilts his face up automatically for a kiss and then his outrage when all Jin does is brush his lips against his hair before sauntering out of the bathroom.
Kame’s scared of this. He’s never had a relationship go this smoothly, never met someone he’s been this impatient to see. He keeps making contingency plans in his head, just in case Jin doesn’t show up for a date, telling himself not to be too eager. But then the one time Jin is late, he stays waiting at the park for a desperate twenty minutes before the other man runs up, gasping out something that’s vaguely, "Koki...motorcycle...forgot my phone." Jin stands there panting for a moment, then Kame surprises them both with the strength of his grip as he roughly pulls the taller man to him. Afterwards he can’t quite look Jin in the eye, shocked with the ferocity of his own reactions.
He thinks it might be love-he doesn’t know what else to call it-but his cautious, suspicious self won’t let him call it that.
He keeps it secret from his coworkers not because he thinks they’d be shocked at him dating another man (though they would be) but because to acknowledge it is to make it real in a way he’s not sure he’s ready for. Maru knows the two of them have been spending a lot of time together, but Kame doubts his friend has realized the extent of their relationship. Taguchi has probably figured it out. Despite his studied nonchalance when he’s behind the bar, his job requires him to be quietly observant. Ueda knows-has probably known from the beginning. He never says anything, but the boxing has trained his eyes to catch movement and Kame knows he and Jin have given themselves away in a thousand little gestures. He can feel Ueda’s eyes on them whether they’re in the shop or out drinking or stumbling into Kame’s apartment late at night to collapse on the couch.
Kame doesn’t like his apartment-its perfectly coordinated furnishings make it uncomfortable for anything other than business, and while Kame might not know what Jin is to him, it’s definitely not business. Conversely, Jin’s apartment above the shop is tiny, a room with a bed and a stove and no space for anything else.
They end up spending most of their time hanging out inside the shop as a neutral, comfortable site. Jin doesn’t have the money to be constantly eating at restaurants, and he refuses to let Kame pay more than half the time, so the regular customers have gotten used to seeing Kame eating takeout at the coffee table. Jin’s portion sits covered beside him until his next break.
When Jin finally closes up in the evenings, he usually wants to get out of the shop for a few minutes. They often end up wandering around the neighborhood as Jin catches up on all the gossip within a three-block radius. Jin has a lot of friends in the arts community because of his band, though, and so sometimes they venture farther out or take the train if one of them has a gig or a gallery showing. Jin’s birthday happens to fall on the same day as the opening of one of his friends’ exhibitions, and he badgers Kame into attending that with him instead of going out to eat.
Even though he knows that Jin is friends with all sorts of people, when Kame asks for more information about the exhibition as they’re leaving the shop that night, he’s still somewhat surprised at the answer.
"What?"
"He makes dolls. No, really, he hand makes his own dolls. They're pretty awesome."
"This is a guy?"
"Hah, just wait til you meet him. Koki's a sweetheart." Jin leans in conspiratorially. "He thinks he's the toughest thing to ever walk these streets, though, and we try not to shatter his illusions."
"Is this the same Koki that crashed his bike last week?" Kame asks, a little alarmed.
"Don’t worry," Jin says, "you’ll love him. Plus, the food should be at least as good as that restaurant you wanted to go to."
Kame's a little freaked out at the thought of meeting this doll-maker, but it's Jin asking and no one can resist him when he's being charming or trying to help out a friend and certainly not both at once, on his birthday no less. He finds himself saying that a lot, "it's Jin" and going along with whatever the other man wants.
Which is how he ends up at an art exhibition in a very swanky neighborhood, shaking hands with a bleached-blonde, tattooed man covered in bling. Tanaka excuses himself from their conversation to take a call from his mother, and Kame can only stand there confused, champagne in one hand and a plate of expensive cheeses and little quiches in the other. Jin grins at him, and he was totally right, damn it, and Kame doesn’t know why he’s confused but he may as well just stop questioning.
On rainy days, when the streets of Tokyo become slick silver rivers, Kame's leg stiffens and the limp he's worked so hard to suppress makes an involuntary, if slight, return. When Jin asks him about it one wet lazy Sunday as they’re lounging on the couch, Kame freezes for a moment. He's never hidden the scars when they've made love, but he's resisted telling Jin about where they’d come from. For a very long time, those few seconds had been what defined his life, made him into his present self. Now, having met Jin, things are shifting again, a slower revolution, but his instincts tell him it's no less pivotal.
He's inexplicably shaken. He shouldn't be, it's stupid, it's nothing, an event long past, but he can't stop it. He wants to tell Jin-there's no reason not to, it's not like it's a big secret.
Jin looks at him curiously, concerned. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he says. "I was just wondering."
Kame wants to yell at him, to tell Jin it has nothing to do with him, it’s just something he doesn’t want to remember. That it’s an old wound, the deepest one he’s ever suffered. But his mouth refuses to work and so he just gazes helplessly at Jin across the three feet of space between them.
"Hey," Jin says, and he reaches over and pulls Kame to him, shuffling their limbs so that the younger man is settled between his legs, back against his chest. Kame is stiff and unresponsive, locked in his own head and so Jin wraps his arms around the slim body and settles his chin on top of the mussed black locks.
When Kame continues to say nothing, Jin gives him a gentle shake. "Hey," he says again, "Never mind that, okay? Forget I asked."
Kame feels the rumble of the words in Jin’s chest against his back, and that physical reassurance is enough compulsion for him to begin.
"I was hit by a car.The most cliché thing imaginable, right?"
It’s uncomfortable to contort his head around so they can see each other, but it's Jin, and he deserves to have Kame facing him. "It was a stupid thing. An accident. Summer break in tenth grade, some friends and I were walking back from practicing baseball in the park. A woman's dog had gotten loose...we chased after it." Kame inhales, lets it out in a gust. "The dog ran into the street, and one of my friends started to follow. I grabbed him, pulled him back, and we both overbalanced and fell into the road." A shrug, a wry grimace, a graceful flick of the hand as he indicates his right leg. "My leg shattered. They had to amputate his arm. The dog was fine.
"That was the end of baseball for me." They’re simple words, falling off his tongue easily because this isn’t the first time he’s told this story. But he still can’t help but flinch away from them internally. That handful of words is all he has to show for a decade of dedication, the basis for all of his childhood dreams, summed up in a sentence and lost in an instant.
"But most of the time, you seem to move fine." Jin's voice is sympathetic, curious, utterly lacking in pity.
Kame shrugs again. "'Most of the time' isn't enough. Not for going pro. Not even for a top high school."
Jin nods. "And you’re Kamenashi Kazuya. You don’t settle for mediocrity."
"Maybe I thought I could then," Kame says. "But now...no, I couldn't have."
"Well," Jin says, "I'm selfish, so I'm sort of glad you didn't settle. Otherwise..."
Kame raises an eyebrow at him, but he tilts his face up to Jin's, and as they kiss, chins and shoulders bumping awkwardly, he feels a little lighter. Jin's soft hair tickles against his cheek and Kame slides his mouth down to Jin's neck. It's the first time he whispers the words, lips moving soundlessly against the pulse point before he pulls his head away and refastens their mouths together. As their tongues slip around each other, he repeats the words into the warmth of Jin's mouth, over and over again.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
It takes him so much longer to say it out loud, and when he does it’s entirely unpremeditated. They’re lying in bed, and Jin is trying to explain it to him, what it's like to be able to sing. Kame himself can carry a tune, has a pretty decent range, but Jin has a raw power in his voice that Kame can feel ringing through his bones. It's just a little bit different, a little bit fiercer a sound-and it's that little bit that makes all the difference when he stands on stage.
"It's hard to describe," he says. "It's there, inside me, and I know I can hit the notes, hold them, push them just a little farther than they need to go. But there's always something that says, 'maybe not-what if it doesn’t work'-and so when I do make it, it's this incredible high.
"Mm," Kame says, closing his eyes as he listens. Jin is warm and his bed is soft, if absurdly narrow.
Jin continues. "Sometimes I’m amazed, that there's this sound, coming out of this body. It feels like the strongest part of me. The-most real part, in that moment."
His fingers twist in Kame's messy hair, twirling the strands into little ropes before smoothing them out again. "It's a little addictive," he says, "being able to move people to tears"-and he says it straight, no false modesty, contemplative.
Jin puzzles over philosophical problems and deciding what to have for lunch with the same quiet energy. Beneath the charm and the smoldering sensuality is an intent, sharp intellect. It's not a careful one-Jin's gotten into far too many scrapes for that to be the case and sometimes he does horribly dumb things-but he does more thinking than Kame would have first believed.
Kame turns this over in his mind as he lies there sleepily, one arm tucked behind his head, the other slowly going numb beneath Jin’s weight. He opens his mouth, meaning to share something equally profound, but somehow his muddled thoughts get in the way.
"God, Jin, I love you."
...Shit.
Kame’s mind snaps back into focus as he realizes what he’s said, quickly processing the possibilities. At best, Jin will think he’s being some kind of stupid flighty girl, getting all emotional. At worst he’ll be freaked out and want to break up. Kame’s thought through the potential consequences of this exact situation too many times to delude himself into believing that the moment will just pass by unnoticed, as much as he might want it to. They’ve been going out for several months now, but they’ve never really talked about anything as slippery as feelings since the night they first kissed.
Jin stretches, sits up and looks at him. Kame avoids his eyes, busying himself with rubbing sensation back into his numbed arm. It’s too late to try and pass it off as a joke or a slip of the tongue.
"Kame?"
"I’m sorry!" he blurts out. "I-I didn’t mean to say that."
He feels the mattress shift as Jin gets up. The shush of fabric over skin seems absurdly loud, and Kame steels himself for the moment when Jin leaves. He squeezes his eyes shut so he won’t have to see.
When he doesn’t hear the squeak of the door, he cracks one lid open and recoils with a yelp upon seeing Jin’s face right in front of him. He scrambles backwards on the bed, shaking off his surprise.
"It wasn’t a joke, was it," Jin says thoughtfully, watching him.
Kame’s heart is still pounding. "Huh?"
"What you said. You meant it, didn’t you."
"Uh, I..." Jin’s not running away, at least not at the moment, and he doesn’t look disgusted, and Kame’s not really sure what to think. He decides to be honest. It’s not like he hasn’t already said it once. "...Yes? I do-" he swallows, "I love you. I think."
Jin smiles at him then, and it’s like sunshine and a seventh chord. He flicks Kame lightly on the forehead. "Why didn’t you say so?"
Kame mumbles in reply. "Stupid...like a girl...thought you’d leave."
"Idiot," Jin says quietly, "I don’t sleep with just anyone, you know."
Kame pushes himself up until he’s sitting, resting his weight back on his hands. "But then, why’d you get up and..." He indicates Jin's clothes.
"Weeeeell," Jin says, "I just thought it would be a really awkward conversation to have naked." He eyes Kame, who’s still sprawled among the covers, and raises a brow. "Though clearly you have no problems with that.
A pillow comes flying at Jin’s head as Kame yelps and pulls up the sheets. Jin laughs and returns the missile so it thumps into Kame’s chest, and while Kame will deny to his last breath doing something as immature as starting a pillow fight, that’s the best way to describe what comes next.
By the time they collapse back onto the bed, they’re both considerably worse for wear. Jin has lost his pants to Kame through a sneak collarbone attack. The drawstring waist keeps slipping down the smaller man’s hips, but he gloats in triumph nonetheless. The effect is somewhat spoiled by the down fluff stuck to his eyebrows.
Jin rolls onto his side and brushes the feathers away from Kame’s face, then presses a kiss on each eyebrow. "I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that for a while now."
Kame glares at him halfheartedly. "Yeah, well, you never said anything!"
"Well. Um. I kissed you first?"
"That was months ago!"
"I guess you’re right. Though you know, now that you’ve said it, I can take my time." Jin’s eyes sparkle with mischief.
Kame thinks about that for a moment, then shoves Jin away and onto his back with a thump. The other man squeaks as Kame straddles his stomach.
"You tell me right now, Akanishi, or so help me I will tickle the living daylights out of you. And I’ll tell Ueda about the permanent-ink smiley faces on his guitar case." Kame ghosts his fingertips over Jin’s collarbones and he screeches.
"Okay, okay, I give up!" Jin is suddenly serious. "I love you, Kamenashi Kazuya. I love that you’re dedicated and strong and that you care." Jin pauses, then breaks into a grin again. "Plus, you’re really hot."
Kame smacks him on the head. Jin laughs and takes advantage of the moment to pull him down into a kiss that tastes of love and smiles and forever.
Pairings/Characters: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya, with cameo appearances by T-TUN
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU. Kissing, making-out and off-screen sex. Enough sap for a maple forest.
Notes: The services offered by Japanese barber shops tend to be much more comprehensive than those in Western cultures. In addition to "traditional" barbershop services of shaving and hair cutting, it is standard practice to include things such as hair styling, ear cleaning, and head and shoulder massages. Originally posted as a gift fic for kaminikaku in fic_the_faith. 8400 words.
Summary: All Kame wanted was a haircut.
Kamenashi Kazuya is an overachiever. He hasn't always been, but after an accident in tenth grade had crushed his dreams of playing pro baseball, he'd resolved to throw himself into everything he did. At first it was just to forget the pain, checking and rechecking the meaningless school assignments as a way to fill up the hours he no longer spent at practice. Somewhere along the way-maybe when he graduated at the top of his class; maybe while attending business school at Keio; definitely by the time he was offered a job at Kurogin Corp.-he became proud of it. He works harder and longer than anyone else and it's the reason why he sits one seat away from the manager's desk at only twenty-four.
Even though he's Kamenashi Kazuya, wunderkind of the business world, he has his bad days. It’s been one of those. He's on his way to the train station when the wind gusts his hair into his face. He’s temporarily blinded and stumbles into a telephone pole, muttering profanities under his breath. In the bustle of meetings, reports, and projects, he’d forgotten to get his hair cut for the presentation tomorrow.
It’s late enough that the fussy salon he usually goes to is probably closed for the day. He’ll have to live with his hair the way it is until the workweek ends. He takes his organizer out of his briefcase and tries to carve some time out of his weekend. In the end, he blocks out part of Saturday morning and slips the organizer back into his bag as the platform rumbles beneath his feet with the arrival of the train.
As the train hums along through the growing dark, he finds himself leaning first his shoulder, then his head against the plexiglass divider beside his seat. Just for a moment, he thinks. It's been a very long day, he'll only rest for a minute. He breathes, settles-
-opens his eyes to the sound of the professional female voice announcing that they've just left his station and are continuing east. Kame forces himself to sit up calmly, though he's mentally berating himself for falling asleep. He gets up, apologizing to the woman next to him, and stares out the windows at the blink of lights speeding past.
When the train pulls in to the next stop, he gets off, checks the schedule. The earliest train going back won't arrive for over an hour, so he leaves to look for somewhere to pass the time. He comes here occasionally with one of his colleagues, Nakamaru. Maru's one of the few people Kame meets with on a regular basis, and the two of them haunt a bar called Taguchi’s a couple blocks away from the station. It should just be opening and the appeal of being indoors away from the freezing cold is reason enough for Kame to head in that direction.
He's about to turn down the street to Taguchi's when he notices a barbershop across the intersection with its lights still on. Kame considers for a moment. All he needs is a trim-it shouldn't take long, it’ll be ready for his budget proposal tomorrow and then he won't have to make time this weekend.
But when he gets to the barber’s door, it's locked. He peers through the small bit of the window reachable from where he’s standing. There's someone inside, singing and moving around. Kame knocks loudly on the door. The singing stops, and a moment later the door swings open on well-oiled hinges.
The man in the doorway is young and a little taller than himself, with a fluff of hair framing his curious face. Kame’s strangely discomfited, stumbling over his words and flapping his hands around before just pointing to his hair. The man's face lights up in one of the biggest smiles Kame's ever seen as he pulls him inside.
"Oh! Come in-here, have a seat." A strong pair of hands steers Kame to one of the barber's chairs in front of the mirrored wall.
"I'm Akanishi Jin," the man says, and when Kame twists around in the chair to follow the voice, the fluffy head has bent into a cupboard to rummage for something. The barber pulls out a cape and whips it around Kame with all the flourish of a matador, securing the collar with a flick of the wrist.
"It's good you came when you did-I was closing up. So what would you like today?" He moves behind Kame and examines him in the mirror. "Shampoo, color, styling?" Long fingers ruffle Kame's almost-shoulder-length hair, gently teasing the strands away from his head, twisting them in different patterns around his face.
Kame’s own fingers twitch as he forces himself to not bat Akanishi's hands away. In the mirror, they wind around his face like a hypnotist’s, never actually touching his skin, but there's something about the way the fingers almost caress his hair that’s unexpectedly mesmerizing. Kame digs his nails into his palms beneath the cape and says, "Just a trim please. Shorter around the face, two inches off the back. Scissors only, no razor."
"How about a shampoo?" Akanishi asks. "I give excellent shampoos. Most people find them very relaxing."
"I'm sorry," Kame says. All he wants is to get his haircut and go home and sleep. "I have a train to catch."
"The 8:15?"
Kame nods.
"I can have you out of here in plenty of time," says Akanishi. "And you look like you could use it. You're probably the most stressed person I've seen in weeks."
Kame knows he’s only trying to make a sale, but Akanishi has an adorable puppy-dog face and he sighs.
"Fine," Kame says, "but if I miss the train, I'm coming to get my money back."
"I'm not worried," the barber says, his sad-kicked-puppy face giving way to that large grin once more. Humming absently, he gestures for Kame to move to another chair that has a sink at the head for the shampoo.
By the time Akanishi's done massaging the coconut-scented shampoo into his hair, Kame has practically melted into the barber's chair. He's reluctant to pull his head away from the warm water and warmer hands, shuffling from the shampoo chair back to his original seat in a bit of a daze. The thread of the comb through his hair as it gently detangles the damp mass is a purely sensual pleasure, and he makes an appreciative noise in his throat at the careful tug of the plastic teeth and the confident touch of fingers on his scalp.
Then suddenly there's a *snip, snip* and Kame's eyes fly open to see that half of his hair on the right side is gone. He sits bolt upright and whips around to glare at Akanishi. His damp hair swings with him and suddenly Akanishi lets out what has to be the girliest scream Kame has ever heard from either gender.
"Gah, don't...don't do that!" he says, rubbing his collarbone and Kame looks at him in bafflement, lost.
Then he remembers he's supposed to be righteously angry that this man has just chopped off half of his hair. "What? Me? No, wait, you-what have you done to my hair?!"
"It'll look great, I promise!" Akanishi says, scrambling to pick up the comb and scissors he's dropped. Wiping them carefully with a towel, he mutters embarrassedly, "Um, just...don't touch my collarbones. They're, ah, they're ticklish."
"What?" Kame says again. "I didn't touch them!"
Akanishi goes slightly red. "No, but your hair..."
"Oh." Kame processes that for a moment. "That ticklish, huh?" He looks at himself in the mirror. There’s nothing to be done for his hair now. He sits back in the chair and resigns himself to whatever Akanishi chooses to do to him.
As Akanishi snips away and mutters under his breath, Kame studies him in the mirror. It’s a habit of his, watching people, and the barber is a particularly interesting subject. His appearance is comfortable rather than polished, V-necked shirt hanging low and loose over his collarbones and cargo pants stuffed with the tools of his trade riding on his hips. It’s not particularly professional, but Kame thinks that for this man in this little shop, working in a suit or even a collared shirt would be ludicrous. He’s clearly skilled, working the scissors around Kame’s left ear with a deftness that speaks of long practice. And he has a presence to him that seems to fill the space behind Kame, an unpolished sensuality in the way he fractionally sways from side to side as he hums and bites his lip in concentration. Kame has trouble shifting his gaze away from that contradiction of white teeth and soft pink flesh. It’s sexy and adorable in a way that’s horribly dangerous to Kame’s libido. Or maybe it's just that Kame needs to stop working all the time and find a girl to date and maybe get laid. Clearly his mind is overly concerned with one thing if he’s thinking like that about a man he’s just met.
Even his sensible self can't deny that Akanishi's gorgeous, though. He watches as the man's large dark eyes narrow in concentration as he carefully evens out the left side to match the right. His ridiculous hair forms a halo of pale brown that frames full lips and a gently sloping nose.
"What's your name, by the way?" Akanishi asks several minutes later.
Kame's startled out of his examination. "Hm? Oh-uh. Kamenashi." Something prompts him to keep going. "Kamenashi Kazuya."
"Well, Mr. Kamenashi," Akanishi says as he rotates the chair to face the mirror again, "what do you think?"
Kame examines his hair carefully. It is, he admits, still professional, maybe even more so than his previously long locks, but somehow just...a little bit more.
A few pieces fall across his forehead to frame his eyebrows. Wisps on the side draw attention to his cheekbones. While his face is exactly the same, with the new haircut it's compelling in a way that it hadn't been before.
Akanishi smiles at him in the mirror. "Do you like it?"
Kame's actually quite impressed. Beautiful and talented, this man. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."
Akanishi points at the clock, his face smug. Eight o’clock exactly. "Better catch that train."
Kame laughs and pulls the cape off. He grabs his briefcase and his coat and heads out the door.
"Please come again!" Akanishi says, and Kame can imagine him grinning as he heads to the station.
The next day, working on expense reports at his desk, Kame realizes in his haste to leave, he forgot to pay the man for his haircut. It bothers his fiercely organized soul all day, enough that he finds Nakamaru and makes plans to go drink at Taguchi's that evening so Kame can give Akanishi the money he owes. Nakamaru makes fun of him for his anxiousness to return ("He won't go out of business if you don't pay him today, you know," and, "What, did you meet a girl? Was she hot?") but he agrees and the two of them take the 6pm train.
Akanishi's just finishing up with a customer when they arrive. As soon as they open the door (unlocked, this time), he looks up and greets them.
His face lights up when he sees Kame. "Ah, Kamenashi! You don't need another haircut, I hope!" Nakamaru quizzically at Kame when Akanishi gestures them familiarly towards the waiting area. They sit on a comfortable old couch while he finishes drying the hair of the man in the chair. After the other customer has paid and left ("I'll see you next month as usual, Pi!") Akanishi comes over to where Kame and Nakamaru have been thumbing through the magazines.
"What can I do for you?" he asks. Kame explains how he'd forgotten to pay yesterday, and hands him the money in an envelope with an apology and a deep bow. Akanishi thanks him, says it's no problem, and puts it next to the cash register.
Nakamaru clears his throat in what's probably an indication that he's ready to leave, but Akanishi takes it as a request. "Oh, Kamenashi, introduce me!"
Kame fumbles for a moment, caught off guard. "This is Nakamaru, my colleague from work." Nakamaru and Akanishi exchange greetings and Nakamaru finds himself the object of all the other man's considerable charm and persuasive power as the barber starts making comments about all the things he could do with Maru’s hair. His coworker puts up more resistance than Kame had, but eventually Kame's watching his friend stare nervously at the mirror as Akanishi's scissors fly around his face.
They eventually make it to Taguchi's, but somehow, Jin ends up coming with them. ("Call me Jin," he'd said, and it fits him so much better than "Akanishi" that even Nakamaru is using it now.)
Taguchi’s is crowded with the Thursday after-work crowd. Kame and Maru settle into their usual places at the bar while Jin plops down next to them. They quickly discover that Jin knows more of the people there than they do. Kame is slightly annoyed by all the people who keep coming up to say hello to Jin and sulks into his drink. Nakamaru, however, is wide-eyed and excited about how popular his new friend is, and Kame figures his colleague’s excited conversation will compensate for his own sullenness. By the second hour, Kame is getting somewhat tipsy. The more intoxicated he gets, the more annoyed he is by the amount of time Jin spends away from the bar. (You’re just jealous, a little voice inside of him says, but he quickly quashes that ridiculous thought.) Nakamaru goes with Jin as he makes his way around the tables and Jin introduces him to one group of friends after another. Maru blushes and stumbles over himself, and everyone thinks he’s adorable. In the beginning, he protests weakly when they tell him he has a fabulous friend in Jin, says really they’ve only just met, but eventually he just smiles and laughs when Jin affectionately buffets him on the head.
The two of them seem immune to Kame’s very best glare. Taguchi eyes him knowingly from behind the bar. "Caught you, has he?"
Kame spins on the barstool and focuses the glare on Junno, who gives him a toothy grin.
"This must be your first time out with Jin."
Kame sighs and rests his chin in his hands. "I’m not sure how we ended up here. I’m not sure how we ended up with him. All I wanted was a haircut."
Junno laughs at him, but is abruptly cut off when a hand whacks him on the back of the head.
"I can tell you’re talking about me, Junno," Jin says, and Taguchi smiles and makes no denial. He rubs his head where Jin hit him and slips away to the other end of the bar.
Jin turns to Kame with that megawatt smile. Kame flinches away when the other man touches his cheek, but Jin doesn’t pull back, just brushes his fingers lightly along Kame’s cheekbones, traces his odd eyebrows. Kame wonders if anyone else finds it as weirdly intimate as he does. Those warm brown eyes are suddenly laughing at him, and Kame decides he’s had enough and pushes himself away from the bar.
Or tries to, anyway, because Nakamaru returns and sits next to Kame, having finished romancing the giggling group of women in the corner booth. Kame slouches onto the counter and groans. The combination of alcohol and his unfounded annoyance with Jin has made him touchy and he snaps at Maru for leaving him alone. Jin steps in and apologizes, says it’s his fault. Some part of Kame knows he’s being unreasonable, but he shoves the other man off his bar stool and tells him to leave Kame out of his stupid games. Kame walks unsteadily out into the night and pretends he’s not sorry to leave.
Kame tells himself he would have been perfectly happy to return to his normal hairdresser and never think about Jin and his discomfiting touch again, but there are two things going against him. One is Nakamaru, who calls Jin on a regular basis and usually spends Thursday nights hanging out at Taguchi’s with him. The second is that he really, really likes his haircut. He’d been impressed in spite of himself when Jin had first cut it, but after living with it for a month...it falls perfectly into place after his bath, slides across his eyes just enough to be heartbreakingly sexy without actually obstructing his vision-it’s the most perfect haircut he’s ever had and he doesn’t think he can ever go back to something less.
So when it starts getting a bit long, Kame succumbs to the inevitable and makes plans to have Jin cut it again. He starts looking for him in the phonebook to make an appointment, but then he realizes he doesn’t actually know the shop’s name. He could ask Nakamaru, but the memory of his behavior at the bar is embarrassing even a month later. He just doesn’t do things like that. So he boards the train one Wednesday, gets off a stop later than usual, and peeks, somewhat cautiously, into Jin’s barber shop. Jin is humming around a mouthful of hairclips and snipping away at a cap of light brown hair. Kame’s nervous about what Jin will say when he asks for a haircut, whether he’ll hold Kame’s rudeness the last time they’d met against him, but Jin’s eyes look at Kame knowingly and the crinkle around their corners tell him all is forgiven.
He waves Kame over to the waiting area. Instead of perusing the ancient magazines, this time Kame finds it more interesting to sit and watch Jin work his magic on the slim man in the chair. Jin notices him observing and brings Kame into their conversation as easily as breathing.
The man’s name is Ueda, he learns in the first minute. Jin introduces him as his "best friend, Tat-chan." Ueda snorts and says, "Everyone’s your best friend, Jin. And don’t call me Tat-chan," but the whack on Jin’s head is fond and when Jin scolds him for moving, Ueda leans back in the chair again meekly.
Ueda’s face is beautiful, exotic, though his nose has the peculiar crook that comes from multiple past fractures. That’s because he’s a boxer, Kame learns, training every day at a gym a couple streets over. In the evenings, he and Jin get together with a couple of their friends to play in a band.
"It makes for great stories," Jin mumbles around the clips in his mouth.
"Ha! Does it ever." Ueda’s eyes are obscured by the chunk of bangs Jin’s clipped at the front of his face, but Kame has no problem seeing his mouth twist wryly. "Like that time we were going to open for another band and their guitarist took Nishikido’s, uh, ‘constructive criticism’ the wrong way."
"What did he say?" Kame asks.
"Something along the lines of, ‘Why would you ever play an F chord in that progression, dumbass,’" Ueda replies.
"Ah." Kame rubs the back of his neck thoughtfully.
"Yeah, we didn’t get paid very much for that one." Jin twists himself around and examines Ueda with a squint.
"Most of the time it’s Ryo’s fault," Ueda says. "No, I take that back, it’s always Ryo’s fault."
"What about that time you locked the drum kit and the keys in the trunk of the rental car?"
"Hey," Ueda says, "You were the one who stuffed my jacket in the bass drum to muffle the sound."
"But I wasn’t the one who claimed the keys were in my bag. Kamenashi believes me, don’t you?" Jin turns to him, an expectant look on his face.
Kame puts his hands up defensively. "Uh...Ryo’s fault?"
That makes both of them laugh. Jin walks over to where Kame’s sitting on the couch and throws an arm around his shoulders. "I approve of this man," he says to Ueda.
Jin’s shiny scissors are pointing directly at Kame’s nose, but the smaller man’s less concerned with that than he is with the arm draped over him. No one’s touched him that casually since, well, since that night at Taguchi’s. Jin’s a lot more physical that Kame’s used to, and that he finds the weight to be warm and natural despite that is unsettling.
Kame’s so caught up in analyzing the odd sensation that he doesn’t even realize that Ueda’s taking off the cape and it’s his turn. He ducks out from under Jin’s arm with relief and tells himself to get a grip.
As Kame settles into the chair, Ueda disappears into the back room and returns with a guitar-presumably Jin’s-and starts strumming it idly on the couch. Jin calls out ridiculous requests to which Ueda replies snarkily.
When Kame’s hair has been shampooed and cut and blow-dried, Jin pulls him back over to the waiting area. It seems matter-of-course to watch from the other side of the battered coffee table as Jin throws himself down on the couch next to Ueda and steals the guitar. He starts to play and sing along, but quickly get too caught up in the vocals and messes up his strumming. Ueda heaves a tortured sigh and takes the guitar back.
"I need to practice, Tat-chan!" Jin says.
"Yes, you do," Ueda replies, but he doesn’t give up the guitar. Instead he starts playing a different song, nods at Jin and the two of them begin to sing together.
After listening to him hum and mumble under his breath for the span of two haircuts, it’s the first time Kame hears Jin sing, really sing with his whole voice. Ueda’s voice is very rockish, breathy and rumbling. As he croons the melody, Jin sings the descant. It’s gorgeous, full and strong and resonant and he embellishes each line with little flourishes and dips.
And then he hits a note at the top, effortlessly, cleanly, holding it forever as Ueda harmonizes under him and Kame thinks the neighbors must hear and will probably complain but for once he doesn’t care what others will think because it’s just so powerful, grabbing him and sweeping him along and not letting go. Jin’s eyes are closed and sound pours out of him and Kame can’t look away until Jin finally breaks off at the peak of the note.
Kame doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until he’s gasping, until Jin’s voice has released him. He looks at Ueda, who just shrugs and continues playing. What can you say after something like that? his expression says. They’re in perfect accord.
Jin is oblivious, smiling and happy from the music as the song draws to an end. He suggests Kame stay while they order in ramen and so he does and they do.
Ueda eats deliberately, efficiently, the same as Kame. Jin slurps his food loudly, noisy and messy and ridiculous and Kame can’t help but wonder at this contradiction of a man, with his mess of hair and his swift hands, his sloppy eating and his tight vocal control, his people-intelligence and occasional utter stupidity.
Ueda grumps about something related to the song they’re working on and Jin laughs and starts humming the Dragonball theme song. The two bicker over a chord progression and Kame just watches bemusedly as Jin squeaks in outrage at Ueda’s utterly unimpressed face.
Kame doesn’t leave until three hours later, when the ramen bowls sit sad and empty on the counter and all three of them are just a little drunk. No other customers had come by, so Jin had closed the shop early and they’d been free to just relax. Jin’s voice is slightly hoarse, partly from singing and partly from laughing. Kame feels like he could stay here forever. But he has to go to work early tomorrow and so he starts hinting his goodbyes. His phone has tumbled under the couch-Jin fishes it out for him and insists on getting a cloth from the back room to wipe off the dust. Kame is happy to keep sitting there, full and content as Ueda’s fingers tap out different rhythms on the tabletop.
Jin returns with the phone too soon, and Kame reluctantly takes his leave. He’s on the train back home when his pocket buzzes. He pulls out his phone to see Jin’s name on the caller ID. The man must have programmed in his number. "Um, hi," Jin says when he answers. "I hope it’s not too weird, me putting my number in your phone." Normally Kame would think it odd, but he’s not really surprised. He’d learned a lot about Jin in the past three hours, and it seems like the sort of thing he would do.
"Oh, no, don’t worry about it. It’s fine."
"No, really," Jin insists, "I don’t want you to think I, you know, just go around entering my number into customers' phones. Just...tonight was fun." His voice gets soft. "And I, um, I’d like to hang out some more. Actually," he says, and Kame can hear his excitement over the line, "Ueda and I-and Ryo-will be playing a gig Saturday night. I-We’d love it if you’d come. If you want to. And if you’re not busy, of course."
Kame mentally rifles through his schedule. He’d been thinking of driving out to visit his parents, but he could leave early in the morning and be back by dinner. "Sure," he says. "Sure, I’ll come. What time?"
"Nine. At a club called Talus. I’ll mail you the address?"
"That’d be great." And Kame realizes he really does think it will be.
"Okay, I’ll see you then!"
Kame’s a little giddy and unusually excited the rest of the week. It’s more than just the prospect of watching the band perform, though with a frontsman like Jin it’s bound to be a fabulous experience. It’s just that each day he keeps finding things he wants to tell Jin, and it’s hard to keep from picking up his phone and dialing each time he thinks of something to say. On Thursday it was a new song on the radio. On Friday it was something one of his coworkers did that reminded him of one of Jin’s many Ryo stories. On Saturday...well, to be honest, on Saturday Kame spent most of the day anticipating the evening’s performance. He’d gone to see his parents, and as they’d all sat down to lunch, his mother had commented that he was looking particularly antsy that day. He’d brushed her off and quickly changed the subject because she’d hit closer to the mark than he’d like her to believe.
Talus is a small but sophisticated club and the band’s performance does not disappoint. They play mostly rock, plus a couple of ballads and the odd dance number. A substantial portion of the tables surrounding the stage are occupied by people who’ve come specifically to see Jin and Ueda and the others play. Afterwards, Jin comes and sits at Kame’s table, politely turning aside the girls that approach looking for his attention.
Kame raises his drink in a salute. "That was impressive," he says. "How long have you guys been playing together?"
"About two and a half years now," Jin answers as he waves the server over. "Though we only started getting gigs this year."
"You guys are really good," Kame says. "It’s the sort of music I’d listen to while driving or something."
"Thanks," Jin says, and he rubs his head, pleased and embarrassed by the praise. Kame thinks to himself that a flustered Jin is the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He feels a little strange thinking of a full-grown man as "cute," but it’s true and Kame thinks he might be falling for that smile.
They sip their drinks, and Jin looks at Kame with a strange expression on his face. "I-" he begins, and then stops. "Do you have time to come back to the shop later? I have something to show you."
"Something" turns out to be a CD recording of several of the band’s past performances. Kame thanks him and then there’s a bit of an awkward silence where he feels like he should probably leave, but doesn’t really want to. It’s the first time he’s really been uncomfortable in Jin’s presence (excluding their initial meeting, though since getting to know Jin better, Kame’s decided that doesn’t really count anymore). Jin stands with one hand on the barber’s chair, fingers fiddling with a hole in the leather. All of a sudden, his shoulders straighten and he moves in close to Kame, who looks up at him a little curious, a little excited by their closeness. Jin’s hand comes up, but Kame’s not watching it, focused instead on Jin’s liquid eyes, which have gone soft and shuttered. The hand cups his cheek and pulls him in and his eyelids slip closed and then Jin’s lips are on his, gentle and full.
They pull apart and Jin looks nervous, pulling back his hands and twisting them over each other in unsure, jerky movements. Kame thinks he should be more confused, but it seems easy and natural to drop the CD on the table, to wind his fingers in that glorious hair and tug Jin’s head back down. The second kiss is even better than the first.
Kame’s not sure whether to tell anyone-or what to tell them if he did. He feels like he should say something to someone-their mutual friends, maybe Ueda, maybe Nakamaru. Jin had kissed him and he’d kissed Jin and then they’d broken apart, laughing a little with relief. It has always surprised Kame, the few times that the person he’s liked has liked him back. He’d said as much and Jin had smiled and been embarrassed. "I’m just relieved," he’d said, "that I didn’t scare you off. Some people think I’m too overwhelming."
Kame can’t imagine not liking Jin. He’s like a beacon of light, and the barber shop is more of a neighborhood hangout than a business. Jin’s fine with that-he’s lucky, he says, he doesn’t have to pay rent because he inherited the shop and the little apartment above it from his parents. All he really needs, he says, is enough money to keep his business running and to go out with his friends every so often.
That baffles Kame, who budgets carefully and has his savings portfolio all neatly arranged at the bank. He doesn’t know how much Jin has sitting in his account, but it can’t be much, and on their first real date he asks Jin if it doesn’t bother him, living like that.
"What if there was a fire? Or the shop flooded? Or you got sued by an angry customer? Or if long hair suddenly became the universal fashion and nobody wanted haircuts anymore?"
"Now you’re just being silly," Jin says with a laugh. "They’d still need a barber, wouldn’t they? And I have insurance." They’re at a café near Kame’s office building. Jin had closed the shop early so he could come meet Kame there after work (and that’s another thing Kame has had no experience with, leaving work for the sake of a personal commitment).
Okay, Kame admits, maybe that last one’s not really a legitimate concern, but still. His confusion must have shown on his face, because Jin reaches over and playfully grabs his hand. "Don’t worry," he says. "I promise I have a backup plan in case fashion suddenly turns against me-I’ll just turn the shop into a host club and hire Ueda and Taguchi to work for me."
Kame nods at the joke but doesn’t really hear him, because Jin is Holding His Hand and while they’ve already kissed, somehow the touch of Jin’s hairdresser fingers, soft and a little bit dry from all the product that’s coated them and been washed off that day, is every bit as intimate. It’s a warm, friendly hand, just like its owner.
He doesn’t forget about the shop, though, and goes home and checks the fashion magazines, just in case.
A month or so into their relationship, they go to karaoke with Kame’s friends. Jin settles right in, even though he's the only one not wearing a suit, the only one drinking water instead of the overly expensive mixed drinks. Kame is coerced into performing a ridiculous boyband song, and despite the indignity he refuses to do anything less than his best, hip-rolling like the costumed puppets on TV, ending with a spin and a point and a wink at Jin.
Kame's a little smug about the shocked expression on Jin's face. The fact that he works in an office doesn't mean he can't put on a show when he wants to. His satisfaction doesn't last long, though, before Jin drags him out of the room on some paltry excuse and into the bathroom where he kisses him into the wall.
"Tease," Jin whispers into Kame's ear, sliding his fingers through Kame's belt loops and pulling their hips together. Kame can only moan a reply because Jin's tongue has found its way into his mouth and is leisurely tracing the edge of his teeth. Jin's hips have pinned his against the wall so his hands are free to wander. Kame squirms. Jin uses his index finger to brush a strand of hair away from Kame's face, and that tiny movement turns him on even more than the press of the other man's hips. Kame moans again and pulls Jin deeper into the kiss as he finds himself getting hard.
Jin notices and grinds against Kame, once, slowly. Kame's fingers twist into his hair and so Jin does it again. This time, he takes his palm and drags it down Kame's chest. Kame pants into his mouth, anticipating the touch of Jin's fingers as the hand slides closer to the waistband of his pants. Just before he reaches it, though, Jin moves the hand back up to his chest and uses it to break the kiss and push himself away.
Jin smiles an innocent smile as Kame leans against the wall for support, breathing roughly, hair mussed and the thin fabric of his slacks not at all disguising the fact that he's fully aroused. When the dazed look clears from Kame's eyes, he glares at Jin. "I'll get you back for this later," he says.
"I'm looking forward to it." Jin moves back in, enjoying how Kame tilts his face up automatically for a kiss and then his outrage when all Jin does is brush his lips against his hair before sauntering out of the bathroom.
Kame’s scared of this. He’s never had a relationship go this smoothly, never met someone he’s been this impatient to see. He keeps making contingency plans in his head, just in case Jin doesn’t show up for a date, telling himself not to be too eager. But then the one time Jin is late, he stays waiting at the park for a desperate twenty minutes before the other man runs up, gasping out something that’s vaguely, "Koki...motorcycle...forgot my phone." Jin stands there panting for a moment, then Kame surprises them both with the strength of his grip as he roughly pulls the taller man to him. Afterwards he can’t quite look Jin in the eye, shocked with the ferocity of his own reactions.
He thinks it might be love-he doesn’t know what else to call it-but his cautious, suspicious self won’t let him call it that.
He keeps it secret from his coworkers not because he thinks they’d be shocked at him dating another man (though they would be) but because to acknowledge it is to make it real in a way he’s not sure he’s ready for. Maru knows the two of them have been spending a lot of time together, but Kame doubts his friend has realized the extent of their relationship. Taguchi has probably figured it out. Despite his studied nonchalance when he’s behind the bar, his job requires him to be quietly observant. Ueda knows-has probably known from the beginning. He never says anything, but the boxing has trained his eyes to catch movement and Kame knows he and Jin have given themselves away in a thousand little gestures. He can feel Ueda’s eyes on them whether they’re in the shop or out drinking or stumbling into Kame’s apartment late at night to collapse on the couch.
Kame doesn’t like his apartment-its perfectly coordinated furnishings make it uncomfortable for anything other than business, and while Kame might not know what Jin is to him, it’s definitely not business. Conversely, Jin’s apartment above the shop is tiny, a room with a bed and a stove and no space for anything else.
They end up spending most of their time hanging out inside the shop as a neutral, comfortable site. Jin doesn’t have the money to be constantly eating at restaurants, and he refuses to let Kame pay more than half the time, so the regular customers have gotten used to seeing Kame eating takeout at the coffee table. Jin’s portion sits covered beside him until his next break.
When Jin finally closes up in the evenings, he usually wants to get out of the shop for a few minutes. They often end up wandering around the neighborhood as Jin catches up on all the gossip within a three-block radius. Jin has a lot of friends in the arts community because of his band, though, and so sometimes they venture farther out or take the train if one of them has a gig or a gallery showing. Jin’s birthday happens to fall on the same day as the opening of one of his friends’ exhibitions, and he badgers Kame into attending that with him instead of going out to eat.
Even though he knows that Jin is friends with all sorts of people, when Kame asks for more information about the exhibition as they’re leaving the shop that night, he’s still somewhat surprised at the answer.
"What?"
"He makes dolls. No, really, he hand makes his own dolls. They're pretty awesome."
"This is a guy?"
"Hah, just wait til you meet him. Koki's a sweetheart." Jin leans in conspiratorially. "He thinks he's the toughest thing to ever walk these streets, though, and we try not to shatter his illusions."
"Is this the same Koki that crashed his bike last week?" Kame asks, a little alarmed.
"Don’t worry," Jin says, "you’ll love him. Plus, the food should be at least as good as that restaurant you wanted to go to."
Kame's a little freaked out at the thought of meeting this doll-maker, but it's Jin asking and no one can resist him when he's being charming or trying to help out a friend and certainly not both at once, on his birthday no less. He finds himself saying that a lot, "it's Jin" and going along with whatever the other man wants.
Which is how he ends up at an art exhibition in a very swanky neighborhood, shaking hands with a bleached-blonde, tattooed man covered in bling. Tanaka excuses himself from their conversation to take a call from his mother, and Kame can only stand there confused, champagne in one hand and a plate of expensive cheeses and little quiches in the other. Jin grins at him, and he was totally right, damn it, and Kame doesn’t know why he’s confused but he may as well just stop questioning.
On rainy days, when the streets of Tokyo become slick silver rivers, Kame's leg stiffens and the limp he's worked so hard to suppress makes an involuntary, if slight, return. When Jin asks him about it one wet lazy Sunday as they’re lounging on the couch, Kame freezes for a moment. He's never hidden the scars when they've made love, but he's resisted telling Jin about where they’d come from. For a very long time, those few seconds had been what defined his life, made him into his present self. Now, having met Jin, things are shifting again, a slower revolution, but his instincts tell him it's no less pivotal.
He's inexplicably shaken. He shouldn't be, it's stupid, it's nothing, an event long past, but he can't stop it. He wants to tell Jin-there's no reason not to, it's not like it's a big secret.
Jin looks at him curiously, concerned. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he says. "I was just wondering."
Kame wants to yell at him, to tell Jin it has nothing to do with him, it’s just something he doesn’t want to remember. That it’s an old wound, the deepest one he’s ever suffered. But his mouth refuses to work and so he just gazes helplessly at Jin across the three feet of space between them.
"Hey," Jin says, and he reaches over and pulls Kame to him, shuffling their limbs so that the younger man is settled between his legs, back against his chest. Kame is stiff and unresponsive, locked in his own head and so Jin wraps his arms around the slim body and settles his chin on top of the mussed black locks.
When Kame continues to say nothing, Jin gives him a gentle shake. "Hey," he says again, "Never mind that, okay? Forget I asked."
Kame feels the rumble of the words in Jin’s chest against his back, and that physical reassurance is enough compulsion for him to begin.
"I was hit by a car.The most cliché thing imaginable, right?"
It’s uncomfortable to contort his head around so they can see each other, but it's Jin, and he deserves to have Kame facing him. "It was a stupid thing. An accident. Summer break in tenth grade, some friends and I were walking back from practicing baseball in the park. A woman's dog had gotten loose...we chased after it." Kame inhales, lets it out in a gust. "The dog ran into the street, and one of my friends started to follow. I grabbed him, pulled him back, and we both overbalanced and fell into the road." A shrug, a wry grimace, a graceful flick of the hand as he indicates his right leg. "My leg shattered. They had to amputate his arm. The dog was fine.
"That was the end of baseball for me." They’re simple words, falling off his tongue easily because this isn’t the first time he’s told this story. But he still can’t help but flinch away from them internally. That handful of words is all he has to show for a decade of dedication, the basis for all of his childhood dreams, summed up in a sentence and lost in an instant.
"But most of the time, you seem to move fine." Jin's voice is sympathetic, curious, utterly lacking in pity.
Kame shrugs again. "'Most of the time' isn't enough. Not for going pro. Not even for a top high school."
Jin nods. "And you’re Kamenashi Kazuya. You don’t settle for mediocrity."
"Maybe I thought I could then," Kame says. "But now...no, I couldn't have."
"Well," Jin says, "I'm selfish, so I'm sort of glad you didn't settle. Otherwise..."
Kame raises an eyebrow at him, but he tilts his face up to Jin's, and as they kiss, chins and shoulders bumping awkwardly, he feels a little lighter. Jin's soft hair tickles against his cheek and Kame slides his mouth down to Jin's neck. It's the first time he whispers the words, lips moving soundlessly against the pulse point before he pulls his head away and refastens their mouths together. As their tongues slip around each other, he repeats the words into the warmth of Jin's mouth, over and over again.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
It takes him so much longer to say it out loud, and when he does it’s entirely unpremeditated. They’re lying in bed, and Jin is trying to explain it to him, what it's like to be able to sing. Kame himself can carry a tune, has a pretty decent range, but Jin has a raw power in his voice that Kame can feel ringing through his bones. It's just a little bit different, a little bit fiercer a sound-and it's that little bit that makes all the difference when he stands on stage.
"It's hard to describe," he says. "It's there, inside me, and I know I can hit the notes, hold them, push them just a little farther than they need to go. But there's always something that says, 'maybe not-what if it doesn’t work'-and so when I do make it, it's this incredible high.
"Mm," Kame says, closing his eyes as he listens. Jin is warm and his bed is soft, if absurdly narrow.
Jin continues. "Sometimes I’m amazed, that there's this sound, coming out of this body. It feels like the strongest part of me. The-most real part, in that moment."
His fingers twist in Kame's messy hair, twirling the strands into little ropes before smoothing them out again. "It's a little addictive," he says, "being able to move people to tears"-and he says it straight, no false modesty, contemplative.
Jin puzzles over philosophical problems and deciding what to have for lunch with the same quiet energy. Beneath the charm and the smoldering sensuality is an intent, sharp intellect. It's not a careful one-Jin's gotten into far too many scrapes for that to be the case and sometimes he does horribly dumb things-but he does more thinking than Kame would have first believed.
Kame turns this over in his mind as he lies there sleepily, one arm tucked behind his head, the other slowly going numb beneath Jin’s weight. He opens his mouth, meaning to share something equally profound, but somehow his muddled thoughts get in the way.
"God, Jin, I love you."
...Shit.
Kame’s mind snaps back into focus as he realizes what he’s said, quickly processing the possibilities. At best, Jin will think he’s being some kind of stupid flighty girl, getting all emotional. At worst he’ll be freaked out and want to break up. Kame’s thought through the potential consequences of this exact situation too many times to delude himself into believing that the moment will just pass by unnoticed, as much as he might want it to. They’ve been going out for several months now, but they’ve never really talked about anything as slippery as feelings since the night they first kissed.
Jin stretches, sits up and looks at him. Kame avoids his eyes, busying himself with rubbing sensation back into his numbed arm. It’s too late to try and pass it off as a joke or a slip of the tongue.
"Kame?"
"I’m sorry!" he blurts out. "I-I didn’t mean to say that."
He feels the mattress shift as Jin gets up. The shush of fabric over skin seems absurdly loud, and Kame steels himself for the moment when Jin leaves. He squeezes his eyes shut so he won’t have to see.
When he doesn’t hear the squeak of the door, he cracks one lid open and recoils with a yelp upon seeing Jin’s face right in front of him. He scrambles backwards on the bed, shaking off his surprise.
"It wasn’t a joke, was it," Jin says thoughtfully, watching him.
Kame’s heart is still pounding. "Huh?"
"What you said. You meant it, didn’t you."
"Uh, I..." Jin’s not running away, at least not at the moment, and he doesn’t look disgusted, and Kame’s not really sure what to think. He decides to be honest. It’s not like he hasn’t already said it once. "...Yes? I do-" he swallows, "I love you. I think."
Jin smiles at him then, and it’s like sunshine and a seventh chord. He flicks Kame lightly on the forehead. "Why didn’t you say so?"
Kame mumbles in reply. "Stupid...like a girl...thought you’d leave."
"Idiot," Jin says quietly, "I don’t sleep with just anyone, you know."
Kame pushes himself up until he’s sitting, resting his weight back on his hands. "But then, why’d you get up and..." He indicates Jin's clothes.
"Weeeeell," Jin says, "I just thought it would be a really awkward conversation to have naked." He eyes Kame, who’s still sprawled among the covers, and raises a brow. "Though clearly you have no problems with that.
A pillow comes flying at Jin’s head as Kame yelps and pulls up the sheets. Jin laughs and returns the missile so it thumps into Kame’s chest, and while Kame will deny to his last breath doing something as immature as starting a pillow fight, that’s the best way to describe what comes next.
By the time they collapse back onto the bed, they’re both considerably worse for wear. Jin has lost his pants to Kame through a sneak collarbone attack. The drawstring waist keeps slipping down the smaller man’s hips, but he gloats in triumph nonetheless. The effect is somewhat spoiled by the down fluff stuck to his eyebrows.
Jin rolls onto his side and brushes the feathers away from Kame’s face, then presses a kiss on each eyebrow. "I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that for a while now."
Kame glares at him halfheartedly. "Yeah, well, you never said anything!"
"Well. Um. I kissed you first?"
"That was months ago!"
"I guess you’re right. Though you know, now that you’ve said it, I can take my time." Jin’s eyes sparkle with mischief.
Kame thinks about that for a moment, then shoves Jin away and onto his back with a thump. The other man squeaks as Kame straddles his stomach.
"You tell me right now, Akanishi, or so help me I will tickle the living daylights out of you. And I’ll tell Ueda about the permanent-ink smiley faces on his guitar case." Kame ghosts his fingertips over Jin’s collarbones and he screeches.
"Okay, okay, I give up!" Jin is suddenly serious. "I love you, Kamenashi Kazuya. I love that you’re dedicated and strong and that you care." Jin pauses, then breaks into a grin again. "Plus, you’re really hot."
Kame smacks him on the head. Jin laughs and takes advantage of the moment to pull him down into a kiss that tastes of love and smiles and forever.