Phosphorescent Lights: Chapter 16 [1]
Every secret has a price…
Title: Phosphorescent Lights
Summary: A photographer with no memories whose goal in life is to seek out what he has lost; a businessman who swore revenge for the death of his lover while desperately trying to escape his fixated reality. Two entirely different men with entirely different lives bound together by the threads of destiny. But little do the two know that they are bounded together by more than just simple destiny…
Genre: Romance/Drama
Pairings: Akame (primary), Ryoda (secondary) mentions of Jinda, Pin, Ryopi, Kokame, Kamaki
Other Characters: Jin, Kame, Ueda, Yamashita, Ryo, Koki, slight appearances from Taguchi, Nakamaru, Shige, Ayase, Tegoshi
Content: Romance, drama, AU [Alternate Universe]
Author: Nerd-san
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with Johnny Entertainment
…are they willing to pay it?
Phosphorescent Lights: Chapter 16 [1]
“Oh my god.”
Kame ran an agitated finger through his murky hair in distress. His clothes had been confiscated in hopes that the policemen were going to find some sort of weapon on the man. Jin had been no better, sitting restlessly in nothing but his boxers, frowning outside of the cellars.
Kame refused to believe that this was happening. “Oh my god… Oh my god…” His incoherent ramblings must have soon caught on because even Jin himself seemed to become a little restless at Kame’s words. “Oh my-”
“Kame. Breathe.” Jin said casually, his hand still barraged onto the latter’s.
It was a rather awkward position: the older man was sitting on the floor of the cell with his legs crossed and one arm folded across his chest.
Kame figured that Jin had wanted to put the other hand over the first to compete his I’m-keeping-my-sanity-unlike-you look he had been giving Kame since they’ve been thrown in their cellar. But the fact that the other handcuff was festooned onto the younger man’s wrist stopped that.
Jin rolled his eyes at Kame’s misery. “We’re not going to jail-”
“Don’t say it!” the photographer snapped angrily.
This was the other part of the awkwardness. Kame was standing up anxiously, but due to the fact that Jin was stuck onto his hand, Kame was leaning down a bit. He was trying to pace to relieve his immeasurable worry, but Jin’s presence as well as the handcuffs were not permitting it.
When Jin’s mouth had opened for a second time, Kame abruptly held out a hand to stop his words. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear about their situation - the fact that they had both been accused of causing the crash, the fact that they were probably going to be staying in the cellar for a while.
Jin opened his mouth and was just about to make a sound before Kame cut him off. “Don’t even dare to say it! Where do you think we are?!”
“We’re in jail, damn it!” Kame didn’t wait for his pathetic reply; he just gave it to him. He slumped down on the ground now, the handcuffs irritably tinkling against his skin as he did so. Kame buried his face in his hands. This was not happening.
He thought back to Koki who was surely enraged by now, back to his manager who was sure to have his throat for this little outburst, and then finally to Akanishi Jin who Kame was certain he’d never find under these circumstances.
“They’re going to call the Medical Department and then bring me back to Okinawa! And I bet you anything that my friend is already on his way! Oh my god…oh my god…” Kame further relined himself into a withdrawn ball and groaned - long and disgruntled sound.
Jin, completely oblivious to everything, shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He said simply. Jin looked at Kame who wasn’t sitting that far from him. Well, Kame had no choice. Wherever Jin went, Kame went.
Jin watched the smaller man lick his lips again and automatically, he licked his own as well. Great, Jin thought, I’ve officially become a pervert. Maybe Kame had never been too far off his mark to begin with.
The photographer didn’t notice Jin’s action, thankfully, and instead continued to mindlessly twiddle with his earring. So he kept it, Jin smiled. Even if Kame hadn’t the faintest clue as to what its purpose was, he had kept it.
Jin found himself fumbling around with his words, and he couldn’t help it. He was curious. “Um…” Nothing else was coming out; probably from the shock of knowing that this was Kame, this was now and this was real.
Kame, however, didn’t seem as enthusiastic as Jin did. Jin didn’t blame him. He was sure Kame hadn’t a clue as to who he was, but he was there and Jin was guessing that was all that really mattered.
Kame sat crossed legged now, head lifted and glaring at the businessman from the side of his face. “What?!” he snapped, self-conscious and irritated at the man’s awkward stare.
Jin turned his head away. “How…how have you been?” His voice was hoarse and it was wavering, but he didn’t mind. Jin bit his lower lip anxiously and played around with the manacles on his hand.
Kame squirmed a little under Jin’s watchful eye. The older of the two was sure that Kame had been wondering the same thing he was. When were the police going to come for them? When were they going to be lifted of suspicion? Had they been forgotten?
Jin shuddered a little at that last thought. His stomach was going to growl soon from the lack of food he had eaten today and if that meant he had to eat Kame as compensation, then so be it. No. Jin shook his head clear again. No. No. No.
Kame looked at the latter in a meaningful manner before shrugging his slumped shoulders. “I don’t know.” He said carefully. For a minute his shoulders brushed against Jin’s and Jin felt that same tingling sensation run down the front of his pants. Not a good sign.
Leaving him alone with Kame in an isolated room with their half-naked bodies practically bound together was sort of like being thrust into Jin’s own personal heaven…before being thrown down back to hell. He had to strictly keep in mind that this Kame didn’t know him. At least, not really.
Jin looked around for something, anything, to keep his mind off of other things. “Oh.” So much for his attempt at conversation. And what followed was nothing but a blindly awkward silence.
Kame felt himself fidgeting. His head was hurting greatly but he tried to not let it get the better of him. He groaned again in anguish before burning a hardened hand to his forehead, pressing down on the flesh to try and restrain the flaming pain.
The photographer felt his breathing picking up speed and for the sake of his searing head, had to keep eye contact with the latter to a minimal. “Who are you?” he barked. To make his head hurt to that extent; did it mean that he knew the other man once upon a time?
Jin frowned at Kame’s question. “Huh?”
Kame groaned again and let the hand fall into his lap. “Why are you even here?” he tried to ask in the most level-headed voice he could muster. Quietly, Kame watched as Jin pursed his lips into a thin line, considering the question.
“Kame…” he began wearily.
Kame. Kame? Kame?! What right does he have to call me by my nickname? Kame hollered inwardly. Furthermore, how had he even known his name? Kame felt frustrated at the fact that this man probably did know him at some point. “Don’t call me by that name like you do it all the time!”
Jin narrowed his eyes at Kame’s deliverance. “But I do do it all the time!”
“I didn’t give you permission to call me Kame,” Kame spat back; “it’s Kamenashi to you.”
Jin flopped to his back and unwillingly, Kame felt his hand follow as did the rest of his body. Kame crashed next to Jin’s body and groaned in the slight pain of hitting his head against the cement floor.
“I like Kame better,” Jin said that in this tone that overflowed with this strange form of confidence. Kame resented him further for that.
He didn’t understand why but it felt as if he had heard the words once before and that his life was repetitively coming around in a circle. “S-Stupid…”
Why had it felt that he’s had a conversation like this before?
“But you called me Akanishi!” Jin complained outright, turning to his side and towards Kame. Kame flushed at the close contact and turned away. What right did he have to tell Kame that he had called him such a thing?
“A-A-Akanishi?! As in the photographer of Phosphorescent Lights?!” Kame yelped and tried to undo the handcuffs now, embarrassed. “Don’t get a thick head! I did not call you that!”
Jin seemed pleased by the outburst and only further fueled the flames of hatred. Or love. He wasn’t sure. “Yes, yes you did!” He grinned as he swung the handcuffed hands away from Kame’s reach. “I heard it with my own ears!”
“Clean them, then!” Kame snorted, “I would never call you Akanishi!”
Appalled, Jin completely forgot about the fact that this was not the Kame of the past and sat up straight, ready for the inevitable argument that was bound to come. Some things, no matter how old a person, never changed. “Why not?! It’s my name!”
Kame sat up to, facing the man and feeling the need to raise his voice. He wasn’t mad, not at all, but instead horribly embarrassed at his slip up and at the fact that the man was causing him to redden. “No it’s not!”
Jin made a face before he spat, “yes it is!”
“No it’s not!”
The older of the two groaned in frustration and at Kame’s sheer stubbornness. “I know my own name!” he whined regally.
Their heated argument came to an abrupt halt as a police officer came to their cell, a baton and cell keys in hand. “Sorry to interrupt the married couple,” Jin turned away in embarrassment and at the factuality of the comment while Kame only bristled, “we’d like to keep you overnight-”
“What?!” Kame got to his feet and dragged the lazy ass on his hand with him as he clutched onto the bars. He couldn’t believe it. Kame couldn’t afford staying overnight. Not with this man.
The hysterical Kame couldn’t remember what else he blurted out at the guard but he continued and even began to try and shake the bars out of my aggravation.
“Calm down please, Kamenashi-san.” The policeman with the bad hair-cut said in an even tone. “It’s only until the damages to the road, taxi, car, not to mention public bathroom, are negotiated.”
Jin couldn’t help but bite his lips. They knew about the bathroom too.
Kame seemed distraught and ashamed by the new information and only sunk to the floor in defeat. Jin, now leaning to one side because of the man, stared back at the officer as he said, “you are, however, allowed one phone call each.”
“So, who’d like to go first?”
The two looked down at their shackles. There would be no privacy during the phone call; that was for sure. Uncertainly, the officer looked at Kame. “Kamenashi-san?”
Kame further wallowed into the mental hole he had made for himself at the back of his mind. “I don’t want to call anyone,” he growled. Who was there to call? Koki who had probably already known? His manager who would refuse to believe Kame was capable of such things?
“I need to call work,” Jin said, suddenly chancing his tone to one of seriousness.
The officer must have recognized him as the president of A. Jewelry because he immediately nodded and opened the cellar door. Kame walked out after Jin, trying his best not to stare at the man’s long legs as he did so. It was damn hard not to.
On their way out a few of the other officers gave the two men odd looks; two men tied together in nothing but boxers was a sight to stare at, to say at the least. “God,” Kame muttered under his breath as he heard a few chuckles in the background, “just kill me now.”
Jin walked over to the phone and hastily began to dial Ryo’s number. The man had probably already heard about the accident from the televisions at work, but Jin couldn’t be for certain.
Ryo picked up after the first ring and Jin shuddered at the man’s expectancy of the call. That was probably not a good sign. Kame stood behind Jin, impatiently waiting for the man to finish. When Jin could move again, it meant that Kame could move again. His head began to hurt yet again.
Kame heard another voice from the phone, it sounded rather worried or mad or most likely a combination of the two - he couldn’t be too sure. But what Kame was sure of was that it was rather loud. Very loud.
“Hello?” Jin fumbled awkwardly with the phone cord. The officer looked at Jin and told him that he had only five minutes to explain his current predicament. Jin did so. “Don’t freak Ryo, but…”
“I’m going to need hearing-aid.”
Jin muttered the phrase darkly once the two were returned to their dungeon of a stay.
It was only overnight until the case had been cleared, but nonetheless it was hell for Kame. Kame was still clogging and unclogging his ears in hopes of his sound frequency returning to its natural state.
“I’m the one needing hearing-aid! And I was just beside you,” he snarled, nostrils flaring with rage, “god damn it, he sounded pissed.”
The two sat on the hard bed in the corner now, eyes dropping and in a dire need for sleep, but Jin’s mind refused to shut off. He didn’t want Kame disappearing the second he went to bed.
If this meant he had to keep his eyes open the entire night just to make sure of it, then he would. After holding the hand attached to him so tightly before, he wasn’t going to let it go a second time.
“He has every right to be. I’m stuck here overnight - the media’s going to be all over this and I’m going to get hell for it at work.” Jin scoffed himself softly, thinking of A. Jewelry’s reputation for the first time since he had been thrown in the vault.
Three years worth of time had rewarded Jin with benevolence towards what people saw A. Jewelry as on the outside.
To save stocks, he had even gone out with his fiancé’s ex-girlfriend even though deep inside he had known that Maki too knew that there were no feelings attached to the relationship.
Kame lay pressed up against Jin who in turn was pressed up against the hard wall. Kame wiggled away so that he was giving Jin minimal body contact and at this, Jin frowned. Kame’s “why?” to Jin’s previous statement went disregarded and instead, Jin asked if Kame was cold.
Kame stiffened and could feel his feet giving him away by beginning to shake. Despite that, he still said a soft but self-assured “no.”
“You’re cold.” Kame said nothing. How did he know? I closed my eyes and refused to think about it - to think about him. I even further shut my eyes together.
“Jesus,” Kame cursed under his breath, there was no stopping Jin’s image from crawling into his mind now. He began to wonder why he always ended up just thinking about the man with him now.
Is it my imagination? Or is this serious? Kame asked himself, further pushing himself away from Jin’s warmth. Kame ignored all of his senses and turned onto his side. So what if he was cold? What did Jin care?
“Here,” Jin muttered, pressing his lean figure to Kame’s rigid back and wrapping his arms around the tiny waist. Geez, Kame thought he felt like he was melting into the older man. That could not have been a good thing. Definitely not.
“I’ll keep you warm.” Jin said the words as if he did things like this all the time. He truly is a pervert, Kame thought sadly. Jin positioned himself snuggly behind him and wrapped his arms around the man in a protective manner.
“H-Hey…” Kame squirmed, a little embarrassedly as Jin’s bold movements. He didn’t like how perfectly their bodies had fit together; almost as if they had done this far more times that just now.
“Shhh,” Jin muttered into Kame’s sensitive ears, “sleep.”
“Mrrmp…” the noise just came out without Kame’s permission, but he gave most of the blame to Jin and his sudden actions. His face darkened shades, but Kame thanked the darkness of the night for covering his newly-shaded features.
Jin, however, wasn’t so easily going to let the slipup go. “Kame?”
“W-What?!” He didn’t mean to shout, Jin just surprised him.
“You moaned.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did!”
“Why would I moan-”
Jin couldn’t help but to smile to himself. Kame whimpered at his touch. That meant that, at the very least, his body had remembered Jin.
Perhaps memories were not what Kame’s mind had held at the moment, but at least Jin knew that there were vague traces of him somewhere in the man’s mind.
“Kame~” Jin halfheartedly sang, running his fingers up and down Kame’s bare stomach, stopping at his nipples before playfully squeezing the stubs.
Kame groaned and tried to push the man from himself.
But there was never a point in trying to get rid of the man, he realized once he tried to push Jin off the steel bed but only succeeded in falling off as well. If there was anything in the world Kame hated more than handcuffs at the moment, he was yet to find it.
Kame grunted, trying to stand up on his knees. But Jin, with his larger body, tackled him to the ground and held him there. Kame could feel something waking between his legs but he refused to acknowledge his pained and growing erection.
There was something about this that exerted a familiar sort of need from the latter. “What?!” Kame whined, trying to sound annoyed. He wasn’t about to admit that he was sort of, in his own sickly disturbing way, enjoying what the latter was doing to his body.
Jin didn’t stop; instead he slipped a hand down the back of the man’s boxers, electing an angered hiss from Kame. “Do you…do you remember me?” he asked huskily, dragging his face closer to Kame’s until the bridges of their noses were touching.
Kame turned his head to the side to further avoid contact. “No.”
“You’re not even trying!” Jin accused forcibly, pulling his hand from Kame and to his side. Kame grunted at the lack of contact but said nothing nonetheless.
The man was persistent to force answers out of Kame and Kame was just as stubborn to keep them to himself. He had seen the long, restless night coming from a mile away. “I don’t want to remember you.” He said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a nuisance!”
Jin pursed his lips together. “Didn’t think I was a nuisance when you agreed to marry me…” he mumbled under his breath, and luckily for him, Kame hadn’t caught on to it.
“What?” he asked.
Jin pressed a finger to his lips, which only further annoyed Kame. “Nothing.”
“Hey…” Kame crawled over to Jin and began experimenting with his earring once more as if it had been the most fascinating species on the face of the earth.
On those lonely nights alone where the wind would lash at Kame’s window, it someone had hit his heart too. It was then that he realized that he wasn’t lonely. He was missing someone. He continued to play with the blue earring. Could it be? “You’re earring. It glows.”
Jin nodded. “Do you believe me now? That I’m Akanishi Jin?”
Kame growled and turned away. How could it be that the person he had been looking for had been right there? “Leave me alone,” he growled and clutched his head again. Sometimes this was all too much.
“Such a grump…”
“Akanishi Jin?”
Kame clamed his eyes together in pain. Memories. Memories began to play in the back of his mind, but still he couldn’t retrieve the vivid pictures that were simply moving too fast. He couldn’t remember anything, but he could see bits and pieces of insignificant things.
A couch, a camera - but they were gone as quickly as they had come. Patiently, Kame waited for a stream of light that would enable him to look back to the past, to look back to the time he and Jin made a prediction together.
Take away the moment, he thought, and make here and now a new memory. Did his world really have this man’s face once upon a time? He wished more than anything that he still had his shirt to take out the small copy of his own photograph to compare the man’s silhouette to the man now.
If this was really Akanishi Jin, photographer of the picture that was meant to bring about absolute happiness, then what were the chances that they had met once again? Of all the countless people in the world, what were the chances that they had met once again?
Kame laughed. He didn’t know why, but he felt the need to. “It’s like running around in circles, isn’t it?” he asked softly, turning to Jin. Jin looked confused and doubtful for a second and at that Kame only laughed harder.
“What is?” Jin asked, incoherent at the latter’s meaning. Had Kame finally lost it? Or had he finally accepted him as Akanishi Jin? Jin felt the need to know. It was no longer the want, but instead the need.
Kame flumped his shoulders upwards and then down. “I don’t know,” he said, “something just told me to say that.”
“How can’t you know?”
“I don’t know. You…you keep me on my feet. I was thinking about it yesterday, I mean I was thinking about tomorrow. Our tomorrow.”
How long had Kame been trying to figure it all out? How long had he been searching for the missing warmth? Too long, he decided. And it had always been driving him crazy. For some reason he assumed that he would be used to it; but he wasn’t. Not at the slightest.
“Can you remember me?” Jin asked again, merely out of curiosity. He sat up but not on the bed, instead against the wall.
Kame sat up beside Jin; he wasn’t sure it was because he was forced to or because he had wanted to. Settling upon that it was a probable mixture of both, he shook his head. “I told you. No.”
“You know, that day, if I had my way, I’d never get over you.” Jin said softly, rustling his finger through Kame’s hair and grabbing onto the ends, dragging the man closer.
As if expecting Jin to hungrily ask for entry to his mouth by gnawing at his lower lip, Kame opened his mouth willingly.
They parted after a few minutes, both breathless but wanting - needing - more. “I thought big businessmen always had their way,” Kame passed off lightly as he impatiently knocked Jin onto the ground, shackles coarsely swinging against the thin air.
“Well, sometimes.” Jin replied with a halfhearted shrug as Kame positioned himself on top of him. He felt his heart picking up its pace rapidly but shut his eyes to dispel any unwanted thoughts. Kame was not a bad guy; he tried to reason with his mind but that didn’t help his body.
The same way Kame’s body remembered Jin’s, Jin’s also remembered that day so long ago. It was something that he had figured he would be living with for the rest of his life.
Kame somehow sensed something the matter. Something simply didn’t feel right. Jin didn’t say anything at all; he didn’t complain that he was both older and bigger and that he should be the dominant one. He didn’t push Kame away. He simply lay where he was, blankly staring at the murky ceiling.
No matter how normal the motion seemed, Kame still felt something out of place - as if his mind was telling him that this wasn’t what the latter wanted.
“Akanishi Jin?” he asked softly, trying to detangle their intangible arms and legs.
Jin shook his head, knowing full well what Kame wanted to do. “No. It’s okay. I-I don’t mind it this way.”
“You’re shaking,” Kame countered, kneading the man’s trembling feet with his hands to serve as proof. “You’re shaking.”
“I…I…” Jin turned away, embarrassed. He wasn’t about to tell Kame what had happened to him before. He never had before, even though the man had probably figured it out on his own accord. Jin took a deep breath. If it was Kame; it was fine.
“I’ll keep my eyes and heart on you,” he said as if that had solved everything.
At Kame’s bemused stare, Jin smiled. “I’m saying that it’s alright as long as it’s Kame who’s doing it,” he clarified every syllable slowly. Kame only nodded; red, anxious and erect.
Kame noticed that love was near him with this man. And that simply meant one thing and one thing only.
No one could stop their feelings this time.