JE fic: Looking For A Dream - Part I [Jin/Kame; R]
Title: Looking For A Dream - Part I
Author: momo (omoshiroina)
Pairing: Akame
Summary: au; Kamenashi Kazuya is just a boy searching for inspiration. Nothing more, nothing less. In this part, there is an inevitable breakup. Jin and Kazuya slowly get to see each other, bit by bit.
Notes: I'm aiming to finish this at parts 4 or 5, and I swear it gets longer with every part. I guess I want the increasing number of words per chapter to reflect Kame/Kazuya's own writing mindset.
prologue
night falls when you close your eyes
my love, and nothing stirs except my heart
There is a steady stream of notes that arrive in his locker. Sometimes there are lyrics from famous songs, sometimes there are quotes from sappy Shakespeare sonnets. Kazuya is most fond of the notes which contain crudely drawn images of hearts and birds shaped like the McDonald's logo flying over rainbows and pools of glittery rivers. There is a particular drawing that Kazuya likes very much of a large stick man holding a soccer ball and kicking it towards a goal; on the bottom is a message - quiz: where is your heart in this picture?
Kazuya smiles to himself. Jin has a thirst for love that he finds hard to turn down.
On the surface they are two different people. Kazuya is passionate, critical but full of ambition. The world to him is like a ripe fruit waiting to be eaten and savored. Jin is a natural romantic, effortlessly magnetic. To him the world is a large cake laced with cyanide - every bite of the tempting sweet poisons him a little more, but he cannot stop because it is so good. And yet their mutual differences bring them together all the more, like the two inseparable poles of north and south.
Kazuya quickly falls in love.
---
Yuichi's heart isn't the first one he breaks. In fact, if Kazuya is to count off the top of his memory, Yuichi's is the one hundred and twenty first. All the way back from that pigtailed girl he rejected in preschool to a rich gaijin executive who offered him his own apartment with added amenities if he agreed to be exclusively his. He never likes seeing the falling faces and saltwater eyes, but he has his own heart to attend to, afterall. Only Yuichi is showing the worst type of reaction - nothing.
"Please say something," Kazuya says softly, pleadingly.
"What do you want me to say?" Yuichi's eyes scare him somehow; they calmly reflect his own face, tired and wishing for the easy way out if only his conscience didn't hold on to a sense of fairness, and still held threads of romantic attachment to Yuichi. It is Yuichi who had seen him then, and still wanted him. Yuichi came from a well-off family, but had offered nothing but himself to Kazuya.
"Yuichi, please," he tries again. "I still love you." And he means it. He is forever grateful to Yuichi. "I want us to be friends."
"Friendship?" The slight sneer looks comical on Yuichi's big mouth. Kazuya has never seen Yuichi looking like this, and he almost wants to laugh. Almost.
"Kazuya, people who have shared what he have shared can never go back to being friends."
"That's not true," Kazuya counters. "I've had a lot of people tell me--"
"It means they didn't love each other, then." Yuichi is so sure that it sets off something in Kazuya's nerves. "Two people who have been intimate break up and they still can still regress to friendship?"
"Is friendship any less than love?" Kazuya answers heatedly. "Where did you get that primitive point of view?"
"I'm primitive," Yuichi sputters, "when you're the one here telling me that you want to leave me for someone you barely know. You don't even know this guy's age, what school he goes to, what kind of things he does to support himself." Yuichi's fist clenching, he continues, "You don't know what he likes to eat for breakfast, what his favorite color is, his favorite sleeping position."
Kazuya is stunned when Yuichi's voice breaks, and the walls he has set up earlier crumbles into a messy heap between them. "Where did I go wrong?"
Nowhere. That is the problem. Logical reasoning tells Kazuya that Yuichi has done nothing wrong - technically speaking. An ordinary person would find Yuichi sweet, thoughtful and careful. But to Kazuya, Yuichi is restraining. He knows it in the way Yuichi refuses to let him stay extra hours at the cafe, the way Yuichi's hand curls in his own like a snake's whenever they cross the street, the way Yuichi goes agonizingly slow when he is in fact panting faster, faster, harder, deeper.
The most glaring fault is that Yuichi has become his routine.
When he offers it, Yuichi comes into the circle of his arms. "How can you love someone you don't know?" Yuichi mutters into his shoulder, involuntarily relaxing in Kazuya's hold.
"You don't have to know every detail of someone's life to love them," Kazuya says into the tendrils of hair tickling his lips. "You don't know them in your mind; you know them in your blood. And that's what matters most."
"Artists," Yuichi says in reply, partly teasing, partly accepting and wholly bitter.
---
"So," Yuichi starts, feet shuffling awkwardly, "I guess I'll just tell you to take care then."
Kazuya nods, lowering the lone suitcase he held in his hand to the floor and embracing Yuichi. There is a faint smell of that cheery cologne Yuichi uses on his coat, the kind that reminds Kazuya of rain and moist soil and blossoming Sakura petals. He recognizes it as Yuichi's subconscious attempt to make him remember for the last time.
"You know my number," Yuichi says.
"Thank you," Kazuya replies. He is thankful for Yuichi's gentle nature; he never puts up too much of a fight, even in the face of losing someone precious.
He is out the door and climbing down flight a of stairs when the sound of running feet makes him turn around in surprise. Yuichi stands above, breathing heavily, an orange pen clutched in between his fingers.
"You forgot this," Yuichi holds the pen out.
Kazuya has many, many of those. He likes them in whatever color they come in and uses different ones to suit his mood. Blue for joy and sunshine. Red for heat and passion. Black for sorrow. Purple for terror and anger. Orange for absurdity, abstractness and confusion.
The orange pen in Yuichi's hands is leaking. Kazuya sees the bright orange ink staining Yuichi's fingers, and almost feels sorry.
---
Kazuya is most definitely a man, but his "womanly instincts" surface from time to time. Like a woman, abandoning something is as easy as the flip of a coin. Drift from one place to another, push yourself harder and leave everything behind - all for the completion of certain goals.
He moves into 3869 Kurosawa Apartment Complex without preamble, and Jin greets him at the door with a cigarette nestled between a charming smile.
"Hey," Jin says, looking up and down his form.
"Hi," he replies, looking straight.
Jin gestures grandly with both hands to the expanse of his apartment like a rajah proudly displaying his harem. "Welcome to the palace." He bows slightly, the action betraying proud words.
Kazuya enters, half-expecting beer cans and porn magazines strewn everywhere, but the place is neat, the walls painted a calm light blue. The living room is simple and comfortable. Atop a black, wooden table there is a stack of papers. Kazuya recognizes the messy scribbles to be musical notes.
"You're a songwriter?" Kazuya inspects one of the papers. There are little kanji characters everywhere, above the staff bars and swinging on musical note vines.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Jin shrugs. He is walking towards the balcony, and Kazuya quickly follows after him.
Kazuya doesn't expect much from the view. The area is not impressively clean, not very much like Yuichi's area. The roads are lined on both sides with shabbily built houses, loud billboard advertisements and piles of garbage that reeked.
"You don't like it very much, do you?" Jin echoes his thoughts.
Kazuya debates for a while with himself before finally deciding on shaking his head no. "Not really," he tells Jin, "When I look outside I can't see anything--"
"Worth seeing?" Jin chuckles, bringing the cigarette to his lips and puffing into the open air.
"Please don't take this the wrong way." Kazuya bends down and leans his arms on the railing. There is only an expanse of concrete on the other side. "But where I used to live I saw a lot of things, good things. Sometimes, when I look up," Kazuya stretches his lips into a line, "I see the future in the clouds, the way they move. They always tell something."
Jin leans down beside him, dropping the cigarette how many stories below. Their clothed shoulders touch. "The future, eh?" Jin doesn't sound skeptical or mocking at all. "The future is only a trap in your mind, you know."
Kazuya remembers Yuichi bobbing his head up and down, always the agreeable one, the one who compromised.
"Mm," he murmurs, feeling Jin's hands circling his waist. "Maybe it is."
---
"From the moment I first saw you there in that cafe," Jin says to him as they eat leftover pasta during dinner, "I knew you were a writer. There's just that something about you. Your eyes are really deep and you're always watching people. I even overheard you talking about philosophical theories with that one nerdy customer with the huge glasses." Jin forms circles with his fingers around his eyes and tilts his head slowly, like a fascinated child.
Kazuya can't help laughing. "That customer happens to give generous tips. He's very sweet."
Jin's lower lip sticks out in a small pout, his chewing slowing slightly. "And I'm not?"
Kazuya is almost surpised at this new development in Jin. In his mind Jin is a bit of a cynical lover. Childish pouts and strange mimes are out of the question - or is it, really?
"They say writers are famous for having split personalities or for being eccentric," Kazuya reaches and swipes a piece of sauce off the corner of Jin's lips. "Maybe you're the real writer here."
"I think I'm hurt," Jin mutters, but he is smiling wide. "But it's true, Kazuya. The air around you screams it."
Kazuya likes hearing this. "How loud?"
Jin's hand is hot on his palm. "The heavens are screaming back at you for surprising the angels and making them fall to hell."
Any other person - or Yuichi - saying the words would have made Kazuya's lips curl in amusement, but Jin's tone triggers a burst of velvet tenderness in his heart. The pit of Kazuya's stomach feels warm. He doesn't answer, and instead settles for a glance towards the bedroom. Like the first time Jin catches him looking in the cafe, Jin knows.
---
"You are worse than a whore," Jin says in the dark, and Kazuya isn't sure if it is meant as a compliment or an insult. It certainly sounds complimentary, though, and Kazuya doesn't want to stop. Kazuya strips his clothes off like an unraveling fairytale, a fairytale designed only for him and the man sitting on the bed.
When all his clothing pools in a pile around his feet, he steps out of it carefully, and like a preying feline crawls his way on top of Jin.
Their mouths meet, their kiss long and leisurely. There is no hurry, and Kazuya misses this feeling. Yuichi's kisses are only two things - either chaste and gentle or hurried and messy. It's Yuichi's idea of passion, but it leaves him feeling robbed afterwards. Jin's kiss is steady yet fiery, enhancing his desire.
"Will you let me, right now?" Jin whispers into his mouth, hands travelling to his bottom. Just the caress of his voice leaves Kazuya's cock trembling, and undeniably wet. The torrent of warmth in his stomach is threatening to explode.
"Please," Kazuya breathes. Jin's head lowers for a moment, and Kazuya feels his eyelashes quivering against his neck.
"I think I love you." Jin presses hard, and Kazuya forgets all reason.
---
It is exactly nine in that Sunday morning when Kazuya wakes up to find Jin looking down at him. They look at each for a while, before they start to kiss. Jin's morning kisses, Kazuya finds out, are tender and smooth as a leaf carried south to rest on a pond. Kazuya teasingly tells him at breakfast that Jin does it to avoid the tasting of morning breath between them.
Jin tells him yes, that's obviously the reason, and they both laugh it off. Jin doesn't tell Kazuya that he does it on impulse; the sunlight shining on Kazuya's face makes him seem as if he's not real. Jin doesn't tell Kazuya that in that small instance he is thinking that he will lose Kazuya if he demands too much.
---
tbc
Author: momo (omoshiroina)
Pairing: Akame
Summary: au; Kamenashi Kazuya is just a boy searching for inspiration. Nothing more, nothing less. In this part, there is an inevitable breakup. Jin and Kazuya slowly get to see each other, bit by bit.
Notes: I'm aiming to finish this at parts 4 or 5, and I swear it gets longer with every part. I guess I want the increasing number of words per chapter to reflect Kame/Kazuya's own writing mindset.
prologue
night falls when you close your eyes
my love, and nothing stirs except my heart
There is a steady stream of notes that arrive in his locker. Sometimes there are lyrics from famous songs, sometimes there are quotes from sappy Shakespeare sonnets. Kazuya is most fond of the notes which contain crudely drawn images of hearts and birds shaped like the McDonald's logo flying over rainbows and pools of glittery rivers. There is a particular drawing that Kazuya likes very much of a large stick man holding a soccer ball and kicking it towards a goal; on the bottom is a message - quiz: where is your heart in this picture?
Kazuya smiles to himself. Jin has a thirst for love that he finds hard to turn down.
On the surface they are two different people. Kazuya is passionate, critical but full of ambition. The world to him is like a ripe fruit waiting to be eaten and savored. Jin is a natural romantic, effortlessly magnetic. To him the world is a large cake laced with cyanide - every bite of the tempting sweet poisons him a little more, but he cannot stop because it is so good. And yet their mutual differences bring them together all the more, like the two inseparable poles of north and south.
Kazuya quickly falls in love.
---
Yuichi's heart isn't the first one he breaks. In fact, if Kazuya is to count off the top of his memory, Yuichi's is the one hundred and twenty first. All the way back from that pigtailed girl he rejected in preschool to a rich gaijin executive who offered him his own apartment with added amenities if he agreed to be exclusively his. He never likes seeing the falling faces and saltwater eyes, but he has his own heart to attend to, afterall. Only Yuichi is showing the worst type of reaction - nothing.
"Please say something," Kazuya says softly, pleadingly.
"What do you want me to say?" Yuichi's eyes scare him somehow; they calmly reflect his own face, tired and wishing for the easy way out if only his conscience didn't hold on to a sense of fairness, and still held threads of romantic attachment to Yuichi. It is Yuichi who had seen him then, and still wanted him. Yuichi came from a well-off family, but had offered nothing but himself to Kazuya.
"Yuichi, please," he tries again. "I still love you." And he means it. He is forever grateful to Yuichi. "I want us to be friends."
"Friendship?" The slight sneer looks comical on Yuichi's big mouth. Kazuya has never seen Yuichi looking like this, and he almost wants to laugh. Almost.
"Kazuya, people who have shared what he have shared can never go back to being friends."
"That's not true," Kazuya counters. "I've had a lot of people tell me--"
"It means they didn't love each other, then." Yuichi is so sure that it sets off something in Kazuya's nerves. "Two people who have been intimate break up and they still can still regress to friendship?"
"Is friendship any less than love?" Kazuya answers heatedly. "Where did you get that primitive point of view?"
"I'm primitive," Yuichi sputters, "when you're the one here telling me that you want to leave me for someone you barely know. You don't even know this guy's age, what school he goes to, what kind of things he does to support himself." Yuichi's fist clenching, he continues, "You don't know what he likes to eat for breakfast, what his favorite color is, his favorite sleeping position."
Kazuya is stunned when Yuichi's voice breaks, and the walls he has set up earlier crumbles into a messy heap between them. "Where did I go wrong?"
Nowhere. That is the problem. Logical reasoning tells Kazuya that Yuichi has done nothing wrong - technically speaking. An ordinary person would find Yuichi sweet, thoughtful and careful. But to Kazuya, Yuichi is restraining. He knows it in the way Yuichi refuses to let him stay extra hours at the cafe, the way Yuichi's hand curls in his own like a snake's whenever they cross the street, the way Yuichi goes agonizingly slow when he is in fact panting faster, faster, harder, deeper.
The most glaring fault is that Yuichi has become his routine.
When he offers it, Yuichi comes into the circle of his arms. "How can you love someone you don't know?" Yuichi mutters into his shoulder, involuntarily relaxing in Kazuya's hold.
"You don't have to know every detail of someone's life to love them," Kazuya says into the tendrils of hair tickling his lips. "You don't know them in your mind; you know them in your blood. And that's what matters most."
"Artists," Yuichi says in reply, partly teasing, partly accepting and wholly bitter.
---
"So," Yuichi starts, feet shuffling awkwardly, "I guess I'll just tell you to take care then."
Kazuya nods, lowering the lone suitcase he held in his hand to the floor and embracing Yuichi. There is a faint smell of that cheery cologne Yuichi uses on his coat, the kind that reminds Kazuya of rain and moist soil and blossoming Sakura petals. He recognizes it as Yuichi's subconscious attempt to make him remember for the last time.
"You know my number," Yuichi says.
"Thank you," Kazuya replies. He is thankful for Yuichi's gentle nature; he never puts up too much of a fight, even in the face of losing someone precious.
He is out the door and climbing down flight a of stairs when the sound of running feet makes him turn around in surprise. Yuichi stands above, breathing heavily, an orange pen clutched in between his fingers.
"You forgot this," Yuichi holds the pen out.
Kazuya has many, many of those. He likes them in whatever color they come in and uses different ones to suit his mood. Blue for joy and sunshine. Red for heat and passion. Black for sorrow. Purple for terror and anger. Orange for absurdity, abstractness and confusion.
The orange pen in Yuichi's hands is leaking. Kazuya sees the bright orange ink staining Yuichi's fingers, and almost feels sorry.
---
Kazuya is most definitely a man, but his "womanly instincts" surface from time to time. Like a woman, abandoning something is as easy as the flip of a coin. Drift from one place to another, push yourself harder and leave everything behind - all for the completion of certain goals.
He moves into 3869 Kurosawa Apartment Complex without preamble, and Jin greets him at the door with a cigarette nestled between a charming smile.
"Hey," Jin says, looking up and down his form.
"Hi," he replies, looking straight.
Jin gestures grandly with both hands to the expanse of his apartment like a rajah proudly displaying his harem. "Welcome to the palace." He bows slightly, the action betraying proud words.
Kazuya enters, half-expecting beer cans and porn magazines strewn everywhere, but the place is neat, the walls painted a calm light blue. The living room is simple and comfortable. Atop a black, wooden table there is a stack of papers. Kazuya recognizes the messy scribbles to be musical notes.
"You're a songwriter?" Kazuya inspects one of the papers. There are little kanji characters everywhere, above the staff bars and swinging on musical note vines.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Jin shrugs. He is walking towards the balcony, and Kazuya quickly follows after him.
Kazuya doesn't expect much from the view. The area is not impressively clean, not very much like Yuichi's area. The roads are lined on both sides with shabbily built houses, loud billboard advertisements and piles of garbage that reeked.
"You don't like it very much, do you?" Jin echoes his thoughts.
Kazuya debates for a while with himself before finally deciding on shaking his head no. "Not really," he tells Jin, "When I look outside I can't see anything--"
"Worth seeing?" Jin chuckles, bringing the cigarette to his lips and puffing into the open air.
"Please don't take this the wrong way." Kazuya bends down and leans his arms on the railing. There is only an expanse of concrete on the other side. "But where I used to live I saw a lot of things, good things. Sometimes, when I look up," Kazuya stretches his lips into a line, "I see the future in the clouds, the way they move. They always tell something."
Jin leans down beside him, dropping the cigarette how many stories below. Their clothed shoulders touch. "The future, eh?" Jin doesn't sound skeptical or mocking at all. "The future is only a trap in your mind, you know."
Kazuya remembers Yuichi bobbing his head up and down, always the agreeable one, the one who compromised.
"Mm," he murmurs, feeling Jin's hands circling his waist. "Maybe it is."
---
"From the moment I first saw you there in that cafe," Jin says to him as they eat leftover pasta during dinner, "I knew you were a writer. There's just that something about you. Your eyes are really deep and you're always watching people. I even overheard you talking about philosophical theories with that one nerdy customer with the huge glasses." Jin forms circles with his fingers around his eyes and tilts his head slowly, like a fascinated child.
Kazuya can't help laughing. "That customer happens to give generous tips. He's very sweet."
Jin's lower lip sticks out in a small pout, his chewing slowing slightly. "And I'm not?"
Kazuya is almost surpised at this new development in Jin. In his mind Jin is a bit of a cynical lover. Childish pouts and strange mimes are out of the question - or is it, really?
"They say writers are famous for having split personalities or for being eccentric," Kazuya reaches and swipes a piece of sauce off the corner of Jin's lips. "Maybe you're the real writer here."
"I think I'm hurt," Jin mutters, but he is smiling wide. "But it's true, Kazuya. The air around you screams it."
Kazuya likes hearing this. "How loud?"
Jin's hand is hot on his palm. "The heavens are screaming back at you for surprising the angels and making them fall to hell."
Any other person - or Yuichi - saying the words would have made Kazuya's lips curl in amusement, but Jin's tone triggers a burst of velvet tenderness in his heart. The pit of Kazuya's stomach feels warm. He doesn't answer, and instead settles for a glance towards the bedroom. Like the first time Jin catches him looking in the cafe, Jin knows.
---
"You are worse than a whore," Jin says in the dark, and Kazuya isn't sure if it is meant as a compliment or an insult. It certainly sounds complimentary, though, and Kazuya doesn't want to stop. Kazuya strips his clothes off like an unraveling fairytale, a fairytale designed only for him and the man sitting on the bed.
When all his clothing pools in a pile around his feet, he steps out of it carefully, and like a preying feline crawls his way on top of Jin.
Their mouths meet, their kiss long and leisurely. There is no hurry, and Kazuya misses this feeling. Yuichi's kisses are only two things - either chaste and gentle or hurried and messy. It's Yuichi's idea of passion, but it leaves him feeling robbed afterwards. Jin's kiss is steady yet fiery, enhancing his desire.
"Will you let me, right now?" Jin whispers into his mouth, hands travelling to his bottom. Just the caress of his voice leaves Kazuya's cock trembling, and undeniably wet. The torrent of warmth in his stomach is threatening to explode.
"Please," Kazuya breathes. Jin's head lowers for a moment, and Kazuya feels his eyelashes quivering against his neck.
"I think I love you." Jin presses hard, and Kazuya forgets all reason.
---
It is exactly nine in that Sunday morning when Kazuya wakes up to find Jin looking down at him. They look at each for a while, before they start to kiss. Jin's morning kisses, Kazuya finds out, are tender and smooth as a leaf carried south to rest on a pond. Kazuya teasingly tells him at breakfast that Jin does it to avoid the tasting of morning breath between them.
Jin tells him yes, that's obviously the reason, and they both laugh it off. Jin doesn't tell Kazuya that he does it on impulse; the sunlight shining on Kazuya's face makes him seem as if he's not real. Jin doesn't tell Kazuya that in that small instance he is thinking that he will lose Kazuya if he demands too much.
---
tbc