The last of you (oneshot)
Title: The last of you
Author: nimlothemeli
Pairing: Akame (kind of)
Rating: Safe
Word count: ~2224
Disclaimer: I do not claim that anything in this story is real. Nor is it meant for commercial use.
Summary: Kazuya wakes up and remembers, but what he remembers is not real.
Note: Also posted here on AO3 and banner posted here on Tumblr.
☂
The rain is staining the windows, drops creating shadow patterns all over his face, stripes now and then running down across the panes as if they were tears. He hadn't lit a single light inside his apartment, he had just stepped inside, kicked off his shoes and stumbled in the messy darkness to his living room, folding himself down on the sofa. The strong street lights outside the window invaded the room with the patterns.
The rain had started three days ago and had relentlessly fallen since. It had held up for about five minutes in the morning when he waited for the company car, but it had started to fall again the moment he had stepped out from the lobby and into the car. It had, to the chagrin of his stylists, ruined his hair the day before that. It was late spring and early summer, rain and heat packaged in a stifling rain season.
The cherry blossom season had come and gone before he even noticed that the snow had melt. Now it was almost summer. When had his time started to be measured in the length of a drama shooting?
When he was younger it had been measured in school semesters and the baseball season. Both those things he had given up a long time ago.
A new rivulet of water streaked one of the large windows, drawing a line diagonally across his chest.
"Rain is beautiful when you're in love."
-
"Rain is beautiful when you're in love," the woman behind the counter said as she handed him the change. He glanced out through the glass front of the convenience store, catching a glimpse of thin golden fingers clutching an umbrella. He took the change and the two cans of coffee he had bought, now with a smile.
-
"You're silent, I mean, you used to be before too... but Yuichi has been bugging me about it for a month now and I can't stand him anymore. Why are you silent?"
"I'm getting old," Kazuya said, sitting back in the padded seat they had been shown to by the waiter. It was a corner table, hidden away from the bustle of the normal clients, screens dividing them from the common people. Like fake royals, or people bearing plague.
Tatsuya nodded, stretching his fingers as he did. His knuckles were branded by scars and calluses after decades of boxing. His hands were stiff, they hurt in winter and sometimes they shook, he knew very well what Kazuya was talking about.
"We're not ready for the grave yet though, so why're you acting like you're already dead and buried?"
Kazuya shook his head, concentrated on the beer in front of him. He didn't know where to start.
"I've just started to remember," he finally said with a sigh, making his friend sit up straight in curiosity.
"What, you've remembered what?"
"Everything Tatsuya, everything I've tried to forget."
-
"I'm never going to forget you," the girl managed to say through the sobs which made Kazuya feel sorry for her even more now than before. Some things made it hard to end a relationship, but it never worked out and he'd end up doing it either way. It was his second break up in a year. He'd probably manage to do it again before the year had passed if he knew himself. Maybe he should just stop, maybe he should just stop falling in love and regret it, because they were never who he wanted them to be anyway.
"I'm so sorry," he would always say, not sure if it was aimed at himself or the girl.
-
The roles kept coming, the singles with the group became more rare and the movies he played in got bigger budgets. Once he played the part of a man that had lost his wife in a car accident caused by a drunken driver, once he played a man that was unfaithful to his wife with his first love. A few times he played in romantic comedies where he lived happily ever after.
On stage he performed a play about incest and the darkest secrets a family could have. At one point he thought he recognized a silhouette in the audience but it was just a trick of the light. When one movie he had been a part of tanked at the box offices he had seen a familiar face across the room of the agency. It was silly. He was imagining things. But whenever he was at his weakest, when he was the most embarrassed to be seen, he would see things that was not real.
When Kazuya once crashed his car and had to be taken to the hospital because of a severe concussion he had a dream of a rainy day and a shared umbrella that had a frayed edge. Then he started to remember.
-
When he's not walking through his day remembering, he's traveling through the night in dreams. Golden skin and a pair of jeans that's got great big holes in them, soaked all the way through at the bottom of the legs. Kazuya dreams of days that never were, days he has not lived, but they live in his mind either way. Kazuya knows that he has never stood looking out at a hand and an umbrella, that he has never been told that rainy days are beautiful when you're in love. It's imagination, it's impossible. He's never held that hand like that, never walked the streets with that person like that.
The times Kazuya remembers cannot have been because in his memories he's not an idol, he never plays parts in dramas and there's no band, no controversies, and he's just trudging through life like a normal person. It's just a dream, a fantasy, something he would've wanted to do if he wasn't who he was. Maybe he's created it himself, maybe it's just his desires. Maybe it's envy, maybe he's envious that one got away.
He lies in his sofa and watches the rain stain the glass as the yellow light of the streets fills the room with patterns.
Kazuya dreams of Jin.
-
"He's fucking done it this time," Koki barks and slams a tabloid down hard on the table. Taguchi flinches away and Tatsuya curiously leans in closer. Yuichi, mother and mediator heaves out a "there there," from his place in the corner.
"What?" Kazuya asks and pulls the tabloid away from under Tatsuya's nose. The kanji in the headline doesn't make any sense at first, all Kazuya can do is read them over and over again until the beating of his heart is so loud that it is deafening.
Tatsuya laughs hysterically as Yuichi and Taguchi steals the paper back, both staring incredulously at the front page.
Koki bristles, Kazuya can see the thoughts burning through his eyes, “the fucker, that idiot, he's going to bury himself and he's dragging us with him if he can't help it”.
Kazuya breathes and breathes and sinks back in the changing room chair. They've been up all night for practices and now this. It's too much and he can't even think.
One got out.
-
Jin leaves, Jin creates a mess and then Koki drags himself under as well. Kazuya keeps breathing and Yuichi picks up the slack as Kazuya makes movies and TV. Jin's movie tanks in Japan. But Kazuya has been in things that got horrible rates too. Somehow, now that they don't know each other anymore, Kazuya remembers.
-
"Rain is beautiful when you're in love," the woman behind the counter says. In his dreams he nods and takes his change and the two cans of coffee and walks out to the rainy street. Jin is standing there, sulking at the weather, carelessly using the umbrella to rap out a beat against the curb.
“Hey, we need that to not drown,” Kazuya says and holds one can out to Jin who snorts and pulls the hood of his washed out sweatshirt down. His jeans are soaked through at the edges and there are dark wet spots on the front of his thighs. Jin hates rain and he hates getting wet. Also, it messes with his hair and Jin's hair is very, very important to him.
Kazuya smiles. Jin does too, but only for a second because he's then gulping down the coffee.
“Let's walk,” Kazuya says and takes the umbrella from Jin's hand, folds it out and steps out into the relentless rain.
“Hey, wait for me,” Jin says with that whine that he has perfected, the one that can make Kazuya give in to whatever Jin is asking of him.
“Not my fault you're a lazy cat, afraid of water too.”
“Hey!” Jin bumps their shoulders together. A few moments later a wet and cold hand finds Kazuya's dry and warm one, fingers interlacing even though Kazuya's holding the umbrella with that hand and it's a bit awkward really.
“You're always warm,” Jin offers as an explanation.
“You're always stealing my heat,” Kazuya murmurs into the opening of his canned coffee.
-
Kazuya dreams and remembers and his heart aches at the moment that never happened and at the same time did.
Kazuya remembers all the times he has watched Jin, laughed at Jin's jokes, worshiped the ground Jin walked on. He remembers how he's never really been Jin's friend like Tomohisa or Yuu, how he ended up watching from afar even though he tried so hard to get close.
That Jin would hold his hand as they walked under a shared umbrella makes no sense, yet it makes all the sense of the world.
-
One got away, then another, then Kazuya didn't know if he wanted to stay.
-
It takes time before he remembers all of it, years pass by. He finds himself looking for a white umbrella with a frayed edge when it rains. When Jin is on TV Kazuya drinks in every second, every word, every smile. Even though there rarely are any smiles. This is the man he grew up with, but what he remembers of him has never happened and Kazuya never dares to approach again.
Kazuya sees him one day over a room of desks in the office. He holds his breath as Jin walks beside his manager, holding a few papers, looking ragged and so much older, but still as beautiful at 40 as at 20. It's surreal, Kazuya halfway ducks behind a screen, halfway hunches behind a desk. He feels dirty, for remembering Jin as he remembers him, when Jin is a married man with kids. He disgusts himself yet he can't look away. Then Jin is gone and Kazuya's manager taps him on the shoulder with a script.
“Old friends not even greeting each other anymore, both your parents are ashamed,” the manager says and shakes his head.
That's how it looks to someone from the outside. It's just that they don't know, they don't know how it's like working and growing up together. They don't know how much Jin can't stand people like the person Kazuya became. And Kazuya can't help that, he can't help that he's remembering either, or that the memories float through his head as he's studying his lines in the car on the way to his next schedule.
Jin in the rain, Jin in the sun, Jin on the beach, Jin in their apartment, Jin in bed, Jin in the shower, Jin at the breakfast table with a five o'clock shade.
Jin Jin Jin.
-
“I'm obsessed,” Kazuya confesses to Yuichi one night over a drink. Yuichi stays silent and waits for an explanation. Kazuya leaves it at that and Yuichi never asks either. Maybe he writes it off as Kazuya confessing his obsession with work, or with perfection. Who would've guesses that he'd turn out to be obsessed with Jin?
With Akanishi.
It's impossible and yet Kazuya remembers a life time with him. Remembers cold fingers in the rain. An umbrella with a frayed edge.
He can't mend it.
Neither the umbrella, his heart nor their past can be fixed.
Kazuya goes through his days with memories of a life not lived and travels through the night in dreams of his love.
-
Jin.
-
Kazuya dreams and remembers, regrets and wishes, longs and waits. Kazuya wakes up and stops.
-
No more.
-
“You're not as down in the blues today, is it better? The obsession?” Yuichi asks over a drink another night.
“I've decided to stop,” Kazuya says and smiles into his glass of wine.
“What was it, the obsession?” Yuichi asks curiously. He must've been thinking about it since.
“You won't believe it, but I had this thought, this dream about Akanishi. It sort of stuck with me,” Kazuya says and feels a blush spread over his cheeks. Embarrassing as it is, he needs to say it out loud to break the spell.
“Akanishi? Hmm... that reminds me, he asked about you, said that you hid from him behind a desk a few months ago. He's back in town and everything, wanted to meet up with some of us.”
Kazuya shakes his head and laughs in what feels like the first time in years. No, no meeting up.
“Tell him another time, and that I'm sorry for hiding.”
-
Kazuya remembers, dreams and forgets.
Some things are better forgotten.
-
-
-
-
EDIT: I've realized that it might be appropriate if I explain myself. This whole thing is a try at investigating the obession we all take part in when we ship a certain pairing, or when we fall in love with these boys and girls that we will never meet privately. I have several more fics on this theme on my computer. I'm aware that the main purpose of fanfiction is to entertain, but I seem to have painted myself into a corner and now I can only write about my own aching heart. Sorry about that.