Gift fic for lady_aenea: there you are again
Title: there you are again
Written For: lady_aenea
Pairing: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7982 words
Warnings: n/a
Author's Notes: So many thanks to the mods for their endless patience with me and for running this exchange. Thanks for keeping the Akame love alive, friends. lady_aenea, I really hope you like this!! I haven’t written Akame in years, so I’m a little rusty, but I hope that I do them justice and that this fits what you like. Thanks to J. for the endless cheerleading, as always.
Summary: 16 love songs for the one who got away. Jin wakes up in an unfamilar place.
You can also read this story at the AO3.
1.
Jin means it when he says it.
“Do you miss it?” Josh asks one night, half-drunk, arm draped across the sofa cushions behind them. His eyes are hooded and dark. He looks like a movie star that Jin’s see before, on the screen or in his dreams, if movie stars were almost always out of their minds drunk and a little ugly from most angles. They’re both sitting on the cold floor of Jin’s condo, uncomfortably hard tile pressed into Jin’s ankle bone no matter how he sits.
A KAT-TUN concert plays on the big screen tv in front of them. A giant pirate ship looms in the distance, and Jin watches a version of himself he barely recognizes lean over and strain to reach a high note that he shouldn’t have even been attempting, back then, with his vocal range and technique at the time. He doesn’t remember this, though. The song is muffled, hard to hear, like he’s underwater.
“Do you miss being in a boy band?” Josh asks, burping on the last syllable. His Japanese is still choppy, uneven. Their night classes for both Japanese and English run at the same time, every Tuesday, Thursdays, and Fridays, so naturally they always end up ditching together as well. It’s like being sixteen and ditching rehearsal all over again, except there aren’t any consequences. Just hangovers, and Jin leaning forward over his sink in the mornings just enough to rest his forehead, lightly, against the cool touch of the mirror.
It is a lot easier to say than he originally thought it would be, when he finally opens his mouth, cottoned and dry from the alcohol. He always forgets to drink water. Maybe it’s because he means it now, more than he’s ever meant it before, when he used to tell Josh about the shit music he had to sing, when he used to tell his mother how stifling it was, living and breathing in the jimusho, when he used to sit and talk with the guys in the KAT-TUN dressing room, staring at his hands. No one’s asked him this, though. Not yet.
Jin guesses everyone’s already sure of what his answer would be.
“Nah, man,” Jin says, watching his breath in the cold Tokyo air, hovering between them like a ghost, “I really don’t.”
2.
There are many things that Jin remembers about being in KAT-TUN-the glitter, the costumes, the stage lights bright and burning in his eyes, the measured weight of a microphone balanced in his hand. Those are all things that he can still have.
Taguchi’s laughter in the morning, the sound of his hand slapping against the strong expanse of Koki’s shoulder. Ueda sitting up in the middle of the night, head tipped back against the wall, quietly practicing his singing underneath his breath. Nakamaru laughing.
Tokyo Dome, the enormity of it stretched out before him like a stolen dream, each time.
A contract, slid across a conference table.
A resignation letter-signed, sealed, delivered.
A kiss.
There are many things that he doesn’t want to remember.
3.
He goes to bed that night with Josh curled around him like an extra blanket. Josh is almost always weirded out by the cuddling in the morning, worried that hard alcohol turns him gay without his consent. He said once that it was unfair that tequila just made Jin sad, but it turned Josh into a cuddling monster who liked his best friend too much. Relatable, Jin had thought, but he’d laughed instead, and said, “I’d accept you either way, bro.”
Jin has a recording session tomorrow-the second one since he’d left the jimusho, in his own studio that he rents with his own money, with his own hand-picked producers sitting in the glass booth. He has the melody down, but the lyrics are starting to feel wrong. It’s a song about freedom, and being drunk in the club. He’ll fix it as he goes, he figures, and leans his head, to the right, to lean against the curve of Josh’s arm.
Familiar, he thinks.
He wakes up that morning with Taguchi in his arms.
“What,” Jin says, voice strangled, “the fuck.”
“Shut up,” a voice grumbles, and Jin blinks the sleep and the blur from his eyes, blinks for what feels like a hundred times, to see the crystal clear image of Ueda’s head pop up from the bed beside them, lip curled into a snarl. “It’s fucking six am, Akanishi,” he says. Jin has a flashback of when they were sixteen and fighting over curry bread that a senior had managed to sneak into the jimusho and Ueda had literally almost killed him for the last bite before Ishihara-san came back from his smoke break.
“Why are you here?” Jin asks, his voice cracking in a way it hasn’t in a year. His throat feels parched and sore, the way it used when he strained it in lives. Jin hasn’t had a live in a year-Johnny took his last tour from him, and then Jin quit before he could give up his pride enough to beg for another. Now, Jin’s been staring at the cost proposals for his own solo tour long enough to finally comprehend the amount of money it takes to run of those things, even ones that don’t play in domes, or stadiums, or arenas.
Jin places his hand on his throat. Swallows hard enough for it to hurt; a steady burn.
This.
This is something he missed.
“Can’t we just go back to sleep?” Taguchi murmurs, pressing his head closer into the curve of Jin’s bicep.
Jin yanks his arm away, ignoring Taguchi’s hurt hey!, and yells, “Why are you here?!”
Then he finally takes a look around.
He’s definitely not home. Jin throws off the blanket he’s sharing with Taguchi and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet touch carpet. A hotel room bleeds into focus around him-white walls, two queen-sized beds, luggage thrown and piled into the corner. Makeup scattered across the vanity. Jin recognizes his luggage bag from two years ago leaning up against the wall, and remembers giving it away a year ago, wheeling it away to one of the juniors in the rehearsal room. It’d been mostly new, barely touched. Jin had spent the last year of his time at the jimusho stuck in Tokyo, banned from going anywhere and doing anything but hanging out with the juniors in the rehearsal rooms and the studio.
“You can have it if you want,” Jin had said, and the kid had grinned up at him-his hair was damp with sweat, his face flushed and exhausted. He looked excited and pleased, and ready to drop dead at the first sign of a bed.
Jin can’t remember his name. He wonders if he’s famous, now.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ueda is saying, sounding tired. He’s laying back on the bed now, arm thrown over his face.
“Go back to sleep,” Taguchi says, yawning loudly, “We’re driving back to Tokyo today.”
“No,” Jin says, voice climbing, and then very promptly begins to freak the fuck out.
4.
Taguchi is sitting on his chest.
Jin snaps, “Get off me!”
“Not until you calm down,” Taguchi says calmly, lazily scratching his arm. He smiles at Ueda, who is still in bed on the other side of the room. He hasn’t moved.
“Did you get drunk last night, Akanishi?” Ueda says, rolling his eyes. Jin can’t actually see him from where he’s pinned to the floor by Taguchi’s lanky-ass, bony body, but he can hear it in the tone of voice.
“No,” Jin says angrily, then: “Well, yes, but there’s no way-”
“God, I hate sharing a room with you two,” Ueda interrupts, sighing.
“I didn’t even do anything this time,” Taguchi says defensively.
“God,” Ueda repeats, louder, “I hate sharing a room with you two.”
“I think I’m going crazy,” Jin says, voice getting shrill again, and Taguchi leans over to flick him in the forehead.
“Don’t say that,” he says, shaking his head, “Don’t put that out into the universe.”
“I haven’t seen you guys in a year,” Jin says, swatting his hand away, struggling to get up. He settles for resting on his elbows to look up at Taguchi’s face instead. He looks different than how Jin last remembers him, but Jin’s last memory of Taguchi isn’t a happy one, or even one that he even likes to think about or even acknowledge that it exists.
This Taguchi is smiling, fond. His eyes crinkle on the sides. “Stop drinking so much, man,” he says, slowly clambering to his feet, “You’re getting too old for this.”
He reaches out a hand to help Jin up.
Jin stares at it warily, but ends up taking it anyway, a beat, just one heartbeat later.
He says, again, “I think I’m going crazy.”
Ueda spits toothpaste out into the sink and sticks his toothbrush in Jin’s face. He says, squinting, waving gesturing up and down at Jin’s whole body with his toothbrush, “Is this a concept you’re trying out? Like the fairies?”
“You’re an idiot,” Jin says, deadpan.
Ueda flicks water in his face. He says, “You think you’re hallucinating and I’m an idiot. Brush your teeth, Bakanishi.”
“No,” Jin snaps, and stalks out of the bathroom to go sit with Taguchi on the bed. Taguchi is watching something stupid on tv. Jin actually can’t even pay attention to it but he’s sure it’s stupid. It’s Taguchi, after all.
“Is Ueda being mean?” Taguchi asks, kindly.
“Ueda is BEING AN ASSHOLE,” Jin says, loud enough for Ueda to hear.
“That sounds like him,” Taguchi says, nodding. Then, “Your breath smells, dude.”
Taguchi drags him to the breakfast table, which is a conference room in the middle of the hotel, a hotel that is apparently in Niigata, where they’ve just finished the first leg of their tour. Breakfast is a bundle of still-too-green bananas that they have to share amongst all of the members.
Nakamaru is on the other side of the conference room, speaking to a woman with dark hair and dark red lipstick in a hushed voice. Jin doesn’t recognize her.
Koki is the only person at the table, eating his banana of the day, and Jin feels frozen in the doorway. The last time he spoke to Koki, it’d been on the phone-Jin had been drunk, half-out of his mind and half-heartbroken, and the first number he’d thought to call was-
If this is a dream, if Jin is going crazy, where is-
Jin’s throat hurts before he says it. “Hey,” he says, “Where’s Kamenashi?”
Koki looks up at that, mouth full, and Taguchi says, voice quiet and hard, his hand slipping off of Jin’s elbow like water slipping off an edge, an inevitability, “That’s not funny, Jin.”
5.
Where the fuck is Kame?
6.
The night before Jin left, his figurative bags were already packed and ready by the door.
All that was left to do was the press conference, and the official notice. Johnny said he would handle it himself, but he’d been weirdly quiet about how it would exactly go down, eerily silent, and Jin wasn’t allowed to have questions, concerns. If you choose your solo career, you can’t care about KAT-TUN anymore, Johnny said, weeks before, and Jin remembered it so vividly in that moment that it felt like Johnny had said it all over again, repeating himself just to make sure he was heard.
Kame stared at him from across the dining table at three o’clock in the morning, in Kame’s too-clean and pretty much not-lived-in million dollar apartment. His lips were pursed into a tense line. “You’re a coward,” he snapped.
Jin bristled. “It’s not my fault,” he said.
“You’re the one who wants to leave.”
Jin opened his mouth, but the words stuck in his throat. He looked at Kame, whose mouth was twisted to the side and the skin between his eyes was furrowed like he suddenly aged fifteen years, or like he was that dorky, ugly high school kid all over again, furiously pouring over baseball stats in his free time.
“Yeah,” Jin said, “I am.”
“Yeah,” Kame said, mocking, disgusted, and suddenly he leaned across the wood and metal stretched between them to press a hard kiss to Jin’s lips. His lips were dry and cracked, and Kame’s hand was pressed uncomfortably against Jin’s wrist, pinning a part of him to the table. Jin hurt, everywhere.
“Kame-” Jin began, pulling away immediately, eyes wide and his hand clenched into a fist in his lap, blunt fingernails scratching against sweaty palms-
“Get out of my apartment,” Kame said.
7.
No one talks to him after that.
Taguchi and Koki monitor the concert from last night-Jin can hear the tinny sound of their voices from the small speaker as they watch the shaky camerawork from their staff.
It sounds like the six of them, but they’ve always sounded complete when they sing together. Jin’s out of practice on trying to pick out their individual voices in a song, in a chorus. He remembers the first single they dropped after he left, one year ago. He remembers thinking, It sounds like KAT-TUN.
He wants to get closer, wants to see. A song he doesn’t even know is playing; his voice is there, harmonizing with Ueda. He almost doesn’t recognize his own voice. He’s singing an arrangement he’s never heard before.
“Jin,” Nakamaru says, and Jin looks up.
Nakamaru throws him a banana and a smile. “It’s been a long trip,” he says, soft-an out.
“Not really,” Jin says, and he leans his head back against the chair, looks up at the ceiling. Ueda is outside with the managers. Jin doesn’t know them; Ishihara-san quit before Jin did, but Jin didn’t care about his replacements, back then, the four that came and went. Jin doesn’t care about them now. He’s his own manager, now.
“He thinks he’s going crazy,” Taguchi says in the car, when they’ve all gotten settled. Jin hasn’t been cramped into a van with five-four other people in such a long time he forgot how uncomfortable it is. He’s in the back seat with Nakamaru, legs stretched out over Nakamaru’s lap.
“I think he’s just an asshole,” Koki says, as he pulls his headphones over his ears.
“Hey,” Nakamaru says, frowning, as Jin says, “I am going crazy.”
He stares at the iPhone in his hand. He types the password he uses now, in his current world, and it doesn’t work. He tries a few more combinations. They all fail, and the phone, the betraying asshole, lets him know that he only has three more tries before he’s locked out for the next 10 minutes, and then forever, if he keeps pushing it. Jin’s been trying to unlock it all morning ever since he found the phone, stuffed into one of his jean pockets.
“Do you know my password?” Jin pokes Nakamaru’s side.
“No,” Nakamaru says instantly.
“Seriously,” Koki says, almost concerned, “Did you hit your head last night or something?”
“It’s a concept,” Ueda explains; the manager that’s driving nods emphatically.
Taguchi says, “Let me try,” reaching out his hand.
“I only have a couple of tries left,” Jin says, cradling it against his chest. His lock screen is a picture of Pin, curled up in Jin’s lap and looking up at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“Have a little faith,” Ueda says, flipping mindlessly through a magazine in the front seat.
Jin pouts, but no one’s looking at him, except for Taguchi, who continues to beam in his direction. He feels like he’s nineteen again.
He hands it over.
Two minutes later, Koki says, “My birthday,” pointing at the screen, “Try my birthday.”
“I’m not going to waste the last try on your birthday,” Taguchi says, exasperated. Then, in a sad voice, “I really thought it would be mine.”
Jin lunges across the seats to snatch his phone back and kicks Nakamaru in the stomach in the process.
8.
Halfway through the ride back to Tokyo from Niigata, Jin looks up KAT-TUN on Nakamaru’s phone.
Nakamaru’s password is really easy; it’s the same as it’s been for years-9876. Very secure for a pop idol, Jin said once, and Nakamaru had just shrugged. I don’t have that much to hide, he said.
Good for you, Jin had thought, and had changed his password again later that night, just in case.
There are various articles on their concert last night and the day before-sold out, of course, because they’re KAT-TUN. He looks for any hint of Kamenashi in the articles; an injury, maybe? Maybe Kamenashi is sick and that’s why no one will talk about him. A sick Kame is the worst Kame.
Nothing.
He scrolls some more. Past fan pages that he’s learned to never go on, past speculative chat boards that Jin knows will just make his skin crawl with how much they know, how much they’ve seen. He clicks on the official KAT-TUN website.
The picture that loads, slow, steady, onto the screen of Nakamaru’s phone is of the five of them. No Kame.
Jin backs out of the website immediately, and types into google: KAMENASHI KAZUYA
The screen blinks back, impossibly bright even in the glare of the sun filtering in through the tinted windows all around him: KAMENASHI KAZUYA-SOLO ARTIST
“What,” Jin says out loud, “the fuck.”
9.
An article, dated a year ago:
KAMENASHI KAZUYA LEAVES KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN’s Kamenashi Kazuya (24) will officially graduate from the group, effective immediately, it has been announced. During KAT-TUN’s concert at the Tokyo Dome on Friday night, Johnny’s Jimusho president Johnny Kitagawa said the final decision has been made. Since last year, Kamenashi has been pursuing a solo career in acting and in music. He has scheduled a 6-city tour for February and March of next year and will be starring in two upcoming dramas in the fall. Meanwhile, KAT-TUN has been continuing as a 5-member group, just as they did when Akanishi Jin (26) temporarily left in 2006 to study abroad.
Kitagawa assured fans that KAT-TUN is not breaking up. Although the group’s name is based on the initial characters of the members’ names, it is said that Kamenashi’s “K” will be replaced by Akanishi absorbing the “K” for “Ak” of Akanishi. There are no plans to bring in a new member, as Kitagawa stated that there is no need to have six people in the group. He said that the remaining five members are currently doing fine without Kamenashi.
10.
“Dude,” Jin hisses, reaching out to shake Nakamaru awake, “Dude.”
“What,” Nakamaru groans, turning in his sleep. His eyes are screwed closed, arms crossed over his chest, curling in on himself. The air conditioning is blasting; Ueda likes it cold, and he’ll forget to turn it down for the people in the back.
“Kame left?!” Jin says.
Nakamaru’s eyes snap open. He frowns. Says, “To where? Isn’t he still back in Tokyo?”
“No, I mean-” Jin starts. Stops.
“I’m too tired for this, Akanishi,” Nakamaru says, turning to face the other way, the window, away from Jin.
His finger lingers on the name Kamenashi Kazuya in Nakamaru’s phone.
He could call him, right now, and no one would be able to stop him. Everyone else is asleep, or ignoring Jin’s existence. He wishes he could call Josh; wonders what would happen if he called Josh’s number, right now, but that would require Jin actually knowing Josh’s number. He makes a vow to memorize phone numbers from here on out.
Jin calls Yamapi instead.
Yamapi picks up on the fifth ring, sounding sleepy, bleary. “Hello?” he says, “Nakamaru?”
“It’s me,” Jin says, pressing the phone closer to his face. “Quick, answer me. Are we still best friends?”
Yamapi’s voice immediately changes. “Not when you wake me up early on my only day off in three months,” he snaps, “Are you drunk? Why are you calling from Nakamaru’s phone?”
“I don’t know my password,” Jin whines, “Help me.”
“You change it all the fucking time,” Pi says, then he yawns, loud, long. “I’m going back to sleep. Are you on your way back to Tokyo?”
“No, wait,” Jin says.
“Pi,” Jin says, not liking how he sounds, “Did Kame leave KAT-TUN?”
Pi would never lie to him, not like the paparazzi who make up dumb shit. The article could’ve been fake. His members like to fuck with him. Maybe they just go too far in this world that he’s found himself in; maybe they’re sick sons of bitches in this world. In every world Jin could find himself in, in a fucked up dream world or not, Pi would be the one he could trust, no matter what.
“Are you okay, man?” Pi says, sounding concerned and awake.
Jin clenches the phone in his hand and stares out the window, watches the scenery speed past them in a blur of muted color. He’s never seen anything clearly from inside these vans.
Pi’s only day off in three months, he thinks.
“I don’t know,” Jin says. He looks up to see Koki slide his headphones back over his right ear.
A pause. Another.
Pi breathes into the phone, in, out. Jin tried to mimic him over the tightness in his chest. He doesn’t know whose breath he’s listening to. It feels like an in-ear from a concert, too loud and overwhelming.
“Yeah,” Pi says, finally, “Kame left. But you knew this. You were there. Why are you asking?”
“Dude, seriously,” Pi says, “Are you okay?”
Jin says, “Yeah, I’ll call later,” and promptly hangs up.
When they’re almost back to Tokyo, about twenty minutes away, Jin gets a text from TURTLE.
Are you almost back yet? Do you want-
The rest of it cuts out; too long for the preview. Jin stares at the passcode screen as he tries to open the text, and the blaring warning that he only has one more try.
“I’m seriously going crazy,” he says, and thunks his head back against the car seat.
“This is Kamenashi, right?” Jin asks, shoving his phone in Nakamaru’s face as soon as he wakes up. He slaps away Nakamaru’s hands when he tries to reach for the phone; he has one try left and he’s not going to let Nakamaru waste it by trying his damn birthday.
Nakamaru blinks. “Akanishi,” he says, slowly, with practiced patience, “Do you know anyone else that you’d call Turtle?”
11.
There are many things that Jin remembers about not being in KAT-TUN-the smell of ramen after a long day of hunting for a studio rental, the weight of Josh’s arm wrapped around his shoulders after a recording session, the careful positioning of a camera on top of a kitchen shelf as he filmed himself.
Phone calls from the juniors, from the younger kids-“We miss you,” they would say every time, low like it was a secret, “Will you come back to visit?”
Kame, once, right after Jin left, during the world tour that he was supposed to go on, hiccuping the entire time, drunk off of soju and NO MORE PAIN’s success: I wish you were here.
Not -senpai. Not anymore.
A lease, another contract. He was the one drafting them up now. He slid them across the table, and watched someone else’s pen pressed hesitantly to the stark whiteness of the paper, and linger, and not sign. A rejection.
Still-always-a kiss.
12.
Jin doesn’t recognize the house that Taguchi gets dropped off to-it’s not his parents’ house, nor is it the apartment that Taguchi shared with his girlfriend for all the years that Jin’s known him.
Koki hops out of the car to take the train back home, tells Ueda to keep his things at his house for now. Ueda nods and continues to scroll through his phone.
Jin’s apartment is next, Nakamaru says. They turn down streets Jin remembers, past conbinis that he used to sneak into, mask on his face, hurriedly shoving cash across the tabletop to get out as fast as he could before the paparazzi showed up. It is so familiar that it actually disorients him, a sudden shock; of all places, of all--
“See you tomorrow,” Nakamaru says, as the car lurches to a halt, as Jin swallows back a curse and a question.
Kame’s apartment. They’re in front of Kame’s apartment.
“Where,” Jin begins, and Ueda says, “Oh my god just go be Kame’s problem, please.”
That’s how Jin finds himself standing outside of Kame’s apartment door with his luggage and his useless cellphone, his keys jammed into his hands by Nakamaru. A jumble of car keys, the key to the jimusho rehearsal rooms that Jin recognizes, the house key of his parents’ condo near Shinjuku.
The key to Kame’s apartment-there’s a “K” sharpied onto both sides of the key handle. Jin remembers doing that, years ago, when Kame first got the place-the first place he could afford on his own, when Shuuji to Akira dropped. Jin stole the key once to make a copy, and Kame had emailed him several lines of upset emojis that ended with: Idiot. I already made you one.
Kame changed the locks, years later, back in reality.
In this dream-world, though, apparently not. Maybe.
Jin knocks, once, twice. Considers knocking a third time when the door swings open, and there is Kame.
Kamenashi is standing in the middle of the doorway, wearing what looks like a ridiculously expensive suit. Smiling.
Fuck.
Jin hasn't seen him in a year. His wig is terrible. It doesn't fit right on his head, a little too big, and Jin can still see his real hair underneath it, even from one glance. Jin hasn't seen Kamenashi in a year. Hasn't spoken to him face-to-face in a year, since that last night, in this same apartment.
“Why are you knocking?” Kame asks, voice warm and amused, and then he steps back, once, one step. Jin follows him, pulling his luggage along behind him, and then Kame is slamming the door behind them, crashing into Jin with strong hands and a warm body, curling his fingers around the curve of Jin’s jaw as he leans forward to press a kiss, hard, familiar, to Jin’s lips.
Jin pulls away instantly, mouth dropping open.
“I missed you,” Kame murmurs, leaning forward after him, and tilts his head just right to press another kiss to Jin’s lips, open, his lips opening like an invitation that Jin never knew he could have. Jin closes his eyes, and Kame brushes a kiss against the corner of Jin’s lips, the dusty skin of Jin’s cheek.
Jin’s hands flounder-clench into fists, unravel, hang by his sides. There is no natural position.
“Kame,” Jin says, strangled, “What’s happening?”
13.
Kame says, voice flat and unimpressed, “So you think you’re going crazy?”
Jin nods. “Or I’m still dreaming,” he says, thoughtfully, “Last I remember, I fell asleep with Josh and here I am.”
“Josh?” Kame says, voice sharp, “The guy from LA? What was he doing in Niigata?”
“No, back in Tokyo,” Jin says, then awkwardly, low and hushed like a secret, “Back in the--real world.”
“Stop fucking around,” Kame says, looking tired. The edge in his voice is gone, but so is the warmth that Jin had been greeted with at the door; now it’s just tired, soft around the corners. Kame rubs at his face and blearily looks at him from across the dining table in Kame’s still too-clean, million dollar apartment, the same dining table that he, once upon a time, leaned over to kiss Jin, hard, unforgiving.
“We haven’t seen each other in days, and I don’t want to play games,” Kame continues.
“I’m not playing games,” Jin says, irritated, “I don’t know what’s going on and you all are acting like I’m just-”
He stops, then starts again: “You all are acting like I’m just fucking around, when I’m--you left KAT-TUN, and I’m still here, and no one will listen to me.”
“You--” Kame begins. He stops, and blinks at Jin from across the table. Kame’s hair is a mess, his makeup is smudged, and his suit is a terrible fit, a size too small. It pulls tightly across his shoulders. Jin’s uncomfortable just looking at him. Kame closes his eyes, leans against the back of the dining table chair. He breathes in, out.
Jin wants to tell him to finish his goddamn thought, and wants to press his thumb, soft, to the corner of Kame’s left eye to wipe away the eyeliner, and wants to tell Kame to go get some fucking sleep. He squashes those instincts down.
“You know that I left KAT-TUN, Jin,” Kame says, rolling his head to the side to look at Jin underneath hooded eyes, his neck crooked and shoulders askew like a human scraecrow. “I can’t fight about this anymore. It’s been a year.”
“I’m not trying to fight about it,” Jin says, “I just need to wake up.”
“I said stop messing around.”
“I’m not,” Jin says, “Where I’m from, we don’t even talk anymore!”
Kame takes a sharp breath in, and looks at him. His eyes are wide open. “This isn’t funny,” he says.
“I know,” Jin says, distressed.
Kame sighs. He pulls off his wig, and his natural hair is so familiar that it looks even more beautiful to Jin, even in the dim light of the apartment. It’s not even three o’clock yet, barely afternoon, but the curtains are drawn.
“I’m tired,” Kame says, finally, “Can we lay down and talk?”
The apartment looks different since the last time Jin saw it, a year ago, bare and empty except for the furniture that Kame paid some guy to furnish his place with. There were small touches that had been Kame’s--Ran’s bed, and Ran’s things; his clothing rack; his shoes piled in the corner. A shelf of books, a table for his cameras. Last time Jin had been here, the place hadn’t even felt lived in.
It’s still too clean, as Jin toes off his shoes and follows Kame down the long hallway to the master bedroom. The housekeeper that Kame keeps employed obviously still comes too often, gets paid to do nothing but wipe the sink down a third time after Kame’s already done it twice, to make the bed because that’s the only thing Kame’s ever been too lazy to do.
A major difference is that Jin’s stuff is everywhere.
His guitars, his shoes, his clothes. One glance at the bathroom and he knows that the left side of the sink is all of his stuff: his hair products that Kame wrinkles his nose at, his blue toothbrush, his fluffy towels that Kame thinks are too expensive.
“Do I live here?” It’s a pointless question. He already knows the answer.
Kame replies anyway, sounding hurt, “Of course you do. Where else would you live?”
14.
Back in reality, Jin and Kame never lived together.
They joked about it sometimes, mostly whenever Kame would clamber out of bed at 5am and press a kiss to Jin’s lips and say something about having to go back to get ready for work. Back then, they were going to the same place at the same time, and it was just so fucking inconvenient that Jin would dream of it, sometimes, living in the same place as Kame, waking up at the same time as Kame, having breakfast with Kame before they went off to the KAT-TUN rehearsal rooms together.
When Jin started doing more and more solo stuff, they were almost grateful for the separate spaces; their schedules made them come and go at different times, and it made more sense to text Kame at 3am to say he wasn’t going to make it over after a long day of recording than to stumble into his place and wake him up unnecessarily, especially if Kame had an early call.
When they broke up, just before Jin left, Jin remembers thinking of all the things he’d left at Kame’s place: the one guitar that he really liked, the socks, the jacket that Pi got him for Christmas six years ago, the endless amount of cds that he brought over and never thought to take back because it was a song that he wanted to share with Kame, an album he thought Kame would really like.
Jin remembers wondering if they were still littered around the apartment, or if Kame had collected them and put them away to never be thought about again. Back in reality, Kame had a condo in Okinawa that he never had time to visit, an old T-shirt hanging in his closet that he never wore. Memories he never thought about, old friends he never talked to.
Kame collected things for sentimental purposes, but for as long as Jin knew, he never gave himself time to be nostalgic over anything. Jin wondered, once, drunk and sad and falling over himself in the club, what Kame looked like when he thought of Jin.
He remembers trying to envision the look on Kame’s face, and kept coming up with blurry versions of the strong slope of Kame’s eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, the small curve of the bow of his top lip. He called Kame that night, months after leaving KAT-TUN, months after that last kiss at the dining table.
Kame, or Koki, who knows anymore, hung up on him.
He stumbled home, after that. Almost got off at Kame’s stop, but didn’t.
“I haven’t dreamt about you in a long time,” Jin says.
The bedroom looks the same.
Kame is pulling off his jacket and he says, voice soft, “Maybe three concerts in a row is too much. Just lay down.”
The bed is also the same. It’s large, white. The heavy comforter that Jin loves, the fluffy pillows that Kame will steal in the middle of the night. Jin swallows over the lump in his throat. He lays down on the bed without taking off his clothes, lets himself sink into it.
Kame lays down next to him. Jin turns his head to look at him.
He looks the same. His face isn’t blurry, or opaque, like Jin’s looking at him through a glass window from afar.
For a while, Jin had been convinced he’d forgotten what Kame looked like, soft and unguarded like this in their bedroom. He can’t believe he’s dreaming it now, vivid, real. He reaches out to press a finger to the side of Kame’s face, to fan his fingers against the pale curve of Kame’s cheek.
“Go to sleep,” Kame says, smiling. He shifts closer. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“I don’t feel sick,” Jin says.
“But I do,” Kame says. “Maybe I’m dreaming and this is a nightmare.”
“You can’t take this from me,” Jin says, “I’m the lost and confused one.”
Kame grins and leans forward. Jin closes his eyes, and lets himself be kissed. It’s soft, and warm, and familiar. Jin opens his mouth to kiss back, and Kame hums, a low sound, in the back of his throat that Jin can feel down to his toes.
“Do you know my passcode?” Jin asks.
“It’s Ran’s birthday,” Kame says, “I changed it before you left. Did you forget?”
“I missed you,” Jin says.
“I’m right here,” Kame says, and kisses him again, and again, and once more.
15.
They don’t fall asleep.
They exchange kisses for a long time, slow making out like back when they were teenagers and like they haven’t done in years, at least as long as Jin can remember. Kame’s mouth is kissed red, almost bruised around the edges, and Jin wipes away a little saliva at the corner of his mouth, enamored by the way Kame tilts his head into the pillow at the slightest touch. He doesn’t know if the real Kame ever did that, or maybe Jin just never paid close enough attention.
“Don’t get mad,” Jin says.
“That pretty guarantees that I’m going to get mad,” Kame says, rolling his eyes.
“Why’d you leave KAT-TUN?”
He has to know. Kame is here, in their bed, looking kissed and tired and like he’s Jin’s again, back before they kept fighting and wouldn’t stop, before Jin looked at Kame from across a dining room table and said he wanted out--of whatever was between them, of the band, of everything.
Kame says, “You know why.”
“Pretend I don’t,” Jin says, irritated.
There’s a pause, and Kame turns so that he’s laying flat on his back, eyes up to the ceiling. He folds his hand over his chest and says, contemplative, soft, “Because I had to.”
“Did Johnny make you?” Jin asks.
“A little,” Kame says, smiling a little. The right side of his mouth tilts up. It’s an attractive look. Jin clambers to his elbows so that he can lean over to press a kiss to his lips, in an attempt to capture it. “But mostly I just needed to.”
“For me,” Kame continues, “And for the band. I agreed with Johnny when he told me that I needed to focus on one and couldn’t do both.”
Jin remembers what it's like being on the other side of that table in that dim, dark office with Johnny staring at him like he's just doomed the rest of the jimusho, like he's fucked over everyone he's ever worked with and betrayed everyone he's ever cared about by wanting something more than what the company wanted to give. He remembers being told to choose, and remembers the tight-lipped look on Johnny’s face that let Jin know that it wasn’t really a choice at all.
Jin knows the look on Johnny’s face when he’s livid and rejected, carefully constructed contracts sitting untouched on a spotless tabletop. That day, Johnny had placed his hand on Jin's shoulder on Jin's last way out; it had been just as warm and strong as the first time, the day Jin auditioned.
Jin still feels the phantom weight of it, sometimes.
“Why didn’t you pick KAT-TUN?” Jin asks.
Jin’s had a hard time admitting to himself why he didn’t even try to pick KAT-TUN. At the end of the day, what it came down to was that his heart wasn’t in it anymore.
He can’t imagine a Kame whose heart wasn’t in KAT-TUN. That’s how he knows this is a dream world. His Kame, the real one, would always put the band first.
“I couldn’t,” Kame says. His eyes are trained on the ceiling. “It wasn’t an option for me.”
Kame sighs, and gets up. Swings his legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t like talking about this,” he says, “Get some rest and we can talk when you’re feeling like yourself.”
Jin says, in a rush, watching the muscles in Kame’s back bunch together, “Back in--back in my world,” Kame’s head tips forward, his head momentarily hanging between his shoulders, “I’m the one who left.”
He feels like he’s talking into a microphone, with how loud Jin’s voice is in his own damn ears.
“I left the band. And the company,” he barrels on, “So I get it.”
Kame’s still not looking at him.
“I get what not having that choice feels like,” Jin says, “Did I give you shit about it?”
“Of course you did,” Kame says, voice rough.
Of course he did.
“Don’t leave,” Jin says, “I’m sorry.” He reaches out for Kame’s wrist, and pulls lightly.
Kame comes to him with little resistance, facing away, his back to Jin’s front. He smells familiar, feels warm. Jin closes his eyes and thinks about how much he doesn’t want to forget this, when he finally wakes up.
As he’s falling asleep, Jin asks, soft, “Did I kiss you?”
Kame says, sounding wide awake, “When? Just now? Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“No,” Jin says, snorting. He buries his face into the back of Kame’s neck, into Kame’s hair. “When you left. The night you left. Did I kiss you?”
Kame pauses.
“You weren’t even there,” he says.
Something in Jin’s chest compresses, shivers.
“But you’re here now,” Kame says.
“Kazuya,” Jin says. He feels drowsy and horrible, like he’s sick. He wonders what this Akanishi Jin did to deserve Kame’s forgiveness in this dream-world. Wonders if it would work back in reality.
“I don’t care about the rest of it,” Kame says, sitting up in bed, “I never have. You just have to be here. We always get through the rest of it.”
He brushes Jin’s hair back from his forehead. Says, “You’re burning up, Jin. Are you okay?”
Jin leans into his touch, warm. Soft. Familiar, Jin thinks.
“Jin,” Kame says, “Jin, hey--”
16.
Jin wakes up in his own condo, in his own bed. Josh is in bed with him, mouth open, drooling against Jin’s pillows.
“Dude,” Jin says, and then he reaches out to shake Josh awake. Josh groans and buries his head into the pillow, swatting away at Jin’s hands. “Dude, wake up.”
“Go away,” Josh groans, and Jin calls him useless and stumbles to his feet. He’s in his pajamas, back in Tokyo, back in the world he knows. He feels a wave of nausea and curses himself for how much drinking he did last night. He looks at himself in the mirror of the bathroom--dark circles under his eyes, sleep dust in the corner of his eyes, hair a mess.
He does his best to wash it away, to comb his hair.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning.
He has somewhere he has to be.
The taxi driver goes down the familiar streets, past the conbinis that Jin knows too well, to the apartment building that he hasn’t been to in a year except for last night, in a dream.
Jin has a beanie and sunglesses on, still dressed in the baggy shirt and pants he slept in.
“Here?” the cab driver says, tilting his head to stare from the front window. He squints. It’s early for everyone.
“Yes,” Jin says, shoving the money at the old man just to get his eyes off the apartment building. He bows when he gets out of the car and hopes that he won’t go to the tabloids about how still-an-asshole Akanishi Jin needed an urgent ride to a mysterious apartment building at seven o’clock in the morning.
He takes the stairs two at a time, and then regrets it when he’s in front of Kame’s door, sooner than he could’ve been, unprepared. He thinks of going back down and up again, just to have time to think about it some more.
What is he going to say?
I had a dream about you, and it made me realize I still want to be with you, and mostly I just want to be here, with you, all the time. I’m sorry about everything. Can we try again? Yes, this is because of a dream. Wait, no, don’t close the door.
He falters, his hand almost up against the door to knock, and thinks, This is a terrible idea, when the door swings open and there is Kame, Kamenashi, in front of him.
He’s wearing what looks like a ridiculously expensive suit.
Jin hasn't seen him in a year.
His wig is terrible. It doesn't fit right on his head, a little too big, and Jin can still see his real hair underneath it, even from one glance. Jin hasn't seen Kamenashi in a year. Hasn't spoken to him face-to-face since last night, in his dreams, in this apartment.
“Jin,” Kame says, shocked, blinking rapidly. “Akanishi,” he amends, and then, “What are you doing here?”
He sounds wary. He sounds tired.
Jin wishes they were inside.
“I wanted to see you,” Jin says, and Kame’s eyes widen, almost comically so. He sticks his head out of the door enough to look around them, left and right, and then grabs Jin by his pajama shirt to drag him into the apartment, all the while hissing, “What? You can’t just say that out loud in the hallway!”
“Oh,” Jin says, “I forgot how nosy your neighbors are.”
Kame slams the door behind them, looking furious. “Yes, of course you did,” he snaps, and then he looks at his watch.
He says, “I have to leave in two minutes. Did you need something?”
Then shrewdly, “Are you drunk? Why are you here?”
Jin opens his mouth to tell him about the dream, so vividly real, that it made Jin climb barefoot and dumbassed into a cab and straight to Kame’s apartment in the hopes that he could make it actually, actually real. He ends up saying another truth instead: “I missed you.”
Kame closes his eyes. Jin can visibly see him counting to ten in his head.
“Jin,” Kame says.
Jin interrupts, “Hear me out.”
Kame says, “No, I don’t think--”
“I was dumb,” Jin continues, over the rush in his ears and the look on Kame’s face, “I gave up on us without really trying, and I regret it. I still think I made the right decision about leaving the band and we can fight about that, I’m sorry I never gave us the chance to fight about it, and I’m sorry I left.”
He thinks about the concert where Johnny announced that KAT-TUN would become a five-member band. He thinks about what Kame would’ve looked like, in that moment; what he was thinking about. Jin hates that he doesn’t know, hates that he has to wonder, hates that he never asked.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Jin says, “I want to be here.”
Kame takes a sharp breath in. Exhales out.
“Are you done?” he asks.
“No,” Jin says, even though he is. He doesn’t want to be done. He feels nauseated. He’s hungover, and nervous, and feels like he’s shaking all over, and he’s staring at Kame’s face so hard that it feels like his eyes are crossing.
“Well,” Kame says, voice hard, “I’m done listening.”
Then he’s crossing the foyer, expensive suit pulled tight across his tense shoulders, and he’s in front of Jin in two seconds flat, close enough that Jin’s eyes really do have to cross to look at him. Kame’s hands are on his face, gentle but strong, and Kame’s lips are hard, almost tense, against Jin’s, like it’s unknown territory.
Jin’s hands falter for a second by his side, until he remembers what to do, until it clicks, and then he opens his mouth against Kame’s, warm and familiar, tilts his head just slightly to the right so that they fit together as well as they always have. Fits his hand lightly against the curve of Kame’s side, places his other against the side of Kame’s neck.
Kame’s fingers tighten in Jin’s hair as Jin pulls away.
“Don’t go,” Kame says. His eyes are closed, and his forehead is leaned forward, pressed lightly to Jin’s. “Stay here.”
Jin bends forward to kiss him again instead of answering, and Kame leans away from it, frowning.
“I need to hear you say it,” he says.
“Thought you were done listening,” Jin says, grinning. They’re close enough that it’s more like sharing air than a kiss, but Jin will count as one anyway.
“Not for this,” Kame says.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jin says. Then, “What about you?”
Kame smiles, warm, and leans forward to kiss Jin, again, and once more, and Jin lets him.
They’ll have time for words later.
Written For: lady_aenea
Pairing: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7982 words
Warnings: n/a
Author's Notes: So many thanks to the mods for their endless patience with me and for running this exchange. Thanks for keeping the Akame love alive, friends. lady_aenea, I really hope you like this!! I haven’t written Akame in years, so I’m a little rusty, but I hope that I do them justice and that this fits what you like. Thanks to J. for the endless cheerleading, as always.
Summary: 16 love songs for the one who got away. Jin wakes up in an unfamilar place.
You can also read this story at the AO3.
1.
Jin means it when he says it.
“Do you miss it?” Josh asks one night, half-drunk, arm draped across the sofa cushions behind them. His eyes are hooded and dark. He looks like a movie star that Jin’s see before, on the screen or in his dreams, if movie stars were almost always out of their minds drunk and a little ugly from most angles. They’re both sitting on the cold floor of Jin’s condo, uncomfortably hard tile pressed into Jin’s ankle bone no matter how he sits.
A KAT-TUN concert plays on the big screen tv in front of them. A giant pirate ship looms in the distance, and Jin watches a version of himself he barely recognizes lean over and strain to reach a high note that he shouldn’t have even been attempting, back then, with his vocal range and technique at the time. He doesn’t remember this, though. The song is muffled, hard to hear, like he’s underwater.
“Do you miss being in a boy band?” Josh asks, burping on the last syllable. His Japanese is still choppy, uneven. Their night classes for both Japanese and English run at the same time, every Tuesday, Thursdays, and Fridays, so naturally they always end up ditching together as well. It’s like being sixteen and ditching rehearsal all over again, except there aren’t any consequences. Just hangovers, and Jin leaning forward over his sink in the mornings just enough to rest his forehead, lightly, against the cool touch of the mirror.
It is a lot easier to say than he originally thought it would be, when he finally opens his mouth, cottoned and dry from the alcohol. He always forgets to drink water. Maybe it’s because he means it now, more than he’s ever meant it before, when he used to tell Josh about the shit music he had to sing, when he used to tell his mother how stifling it was, living and breathing in the jimusho, when he used to sit and talk with the guys in the KAT-TUN dressing room, staring at his hands. No one’s asked him this, though. Not yet.
Jin guesses everyone’s already sure of what his answer would be.
“Nah, man,” Jin says, watching his breath in the cold Tokyo air, hovering between them like a ghost, “I really don’t.”
2.
There are many things that Jin remembers about being in KAT-TUN-the glitter, the costumes, the stage lights bright and burning in his eyes, the measured weight of a microphone balanced in his hand. Those are all things that he can still have.
Taguchi’s laughter in the morning, the sound of his hand slapping against the strong expanse of Koki’s shoulder. Ueda sitting up in the middle of the night, head tipped back against the wall, quietly practicing his singing underneath his breath. Nakamaru laughing.
Tokyo Dome, the enormity of it stretched out before him like a stolen dream, each time.
A contract, slid across a conference table.
A resignation letter-signed, sealed, delivered.
A kiss.
There are many things that he doesn’t want to remember.
3.
He goes to bed that night with Josh curled around him like an extra blanket. Josh is almost always weirded out by the cuddling in the morning, worried that hard alcohol turns him gay without his consent. He said once that it was unfair that tequila just made Jin sad, but it turned Josh into a cuddling monster who liked his best friend too much. Relatable, Jin had thought, but he’d laughed instead, and said, “I’d accept you either way, bro.”
Jin has a recording session tomorrow-the second one since he’d left the jimusho, in his own studio that he rents with his own money, with his own hand-picked producers sitting in the glass booth. He has the melody down, but the lyrics are starting to feel wrong. It’s a song about freedom, and being drunk in the club. He’ll fix it as he goes, he figures, and leans his head, to the right, to lean against the curve of Josh’s arm.
Familiar, he thinks.
He wakes up that morning with Taguchi in his arms.
“What,” Jin says, voice strangled, “the fuck.”
“Shut up,” a voice grumbles, and Jin blinks the sleep and the blur from his eyes, blinks for what feels like a hundred times, to see the crystal clear image of Ueda’s head pop up from the bed beside them, lip curled into a snarl. “It’s fucking six am, Akanishi,” he says. Jin has a flashback of when they were sixteen and fighting over curry bread that a senior had managed to sneak into the jimusho and Ueda had literally almost killed him for the last bite before Ishihara-san came back from his smoke break.
“Why are you here?” Jin asks, his voice cracking in a way it hasn’t in a year. His throat feels parched and sore, the way it used when he strained it in lives. Jin hasn’t had a live in a year-Johnny took his last tour from him, and then Jin quit before he could give up his pride enough to beg for another. Now, Jin’s been staring at the cost proposals for his own solo tour long enough to finally comprehend the amount of money it takes to run of those things, even ones that don’t play in domes, or stadiums, or arenas.
Jin places his hand on his throat. Swallows hard enough for it to hurt; a steady burn.
This.
This is something he missed.
“Can’t we just go back to sleep?” Taguchi murmurs, pressing his head closer into the curve of Jin’s bicep.
Jin yanks his arm away, ignoring Taguchi’s hurt hey!, and yells, “Why are you here?!”
Then he finally takes a look around.
He’s definitely not home. Jin throws off the blanket he’s sharing with Taguchi and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet touch carpet. A hotel room bleeds into focus around him-white walls, two queen-sized beds, luggage thrown and piled into the corner. Makeup scattered across the vanity. Jin recognizes his luggage bag from two years ago leaning up against the wall, and remembers giving it away a year ago, wheeling it away to one of the juniors in the rehearsal room. It’d been mostly new, barely touched. Jin had spent the last year of his time at the jimusho stuck in Tokyo, banned from going anywhere and doing anything but hanging out with the juniors in the rehearsal rooms and the studio.
“You can have it if you want,” Jin had said, and the kid had grinned up at him-his hair was damp with sweat, his face flushed and exhausted. He looked excited and pleased, and ready to drop dead at the first sign of a bed.
Jin can’t remember his name. He wonders if he’s famous, now.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ueda is saying, sounding tired. He’s laying back on the bed now, arm thrown over his face.
“Go back to sleep,” Taguchi says, yawning loudly, “We’re driving back to Tokyo today.”
“No,” Jin says, voice climbing, and then very promptly begins to freak the fuck out.
4.
Taguchi is sitting on his chest.
Jin snaps, “Get off me!”
“Not until you calm down,” Taguchi says calmly, lazily scratching his arm. He smiles at Ueda, who is still in bed on the other side of the room. He hasn’t moved.
“Did you get drunk last night, Akanishi?” Ueda says, rolling his eyes. Jin can’t actually see him from where he’s pinned to the floor by Taguchi’s lanky-ass, bony body, but he can hear it in the tone of voice.
“No,” Jin says angrily, then: “Well, yes, but there’s no way-”
“God, I hate sharing a room with you two,” Ueda interrupts, sighing.
“I didn’t even do anything this time,” Taguchi says defensively.
“God,” Ueda repeats, louder, “I hate sharing a room with you two.”
“I think I’m going crazy,” Jin says, voice getting shrill again, and Taguchi leans over to flick him in the forehead.
“Don’t say that,” he says, shaking his head, “Don’t put that out into the universe.”
“I haven’t seen you guys in a year,” Jin says, swatting his hand away, struggling to get up. He settles for resting on his elbows to look up at Taguchi’s face instead. He looks different than how Jin last remembers him, but Jin’s last memory of Taguchi isn’t a happy one, or even one that he even likes to think about or even acknowledge that it exists.
This Taguchi is smiling, fond. His eyes crinkle on the sides. “Stop drinking so much, man,” he says, slowly clambering to his feet, “You’re getting too old for this.”
He reaches out a hand to help Jin up.
Jin stares at it warily, but ends up taking it anyway, a beat, just one heartbeat later.
He says, again, “I think I’m going crazy.”
Ueda spits toothpaste out into the sink and sticks his toothbrush in Jin’s face. He says, squinting, waving gesturing up and down at Jin’s whole body with his toothbrush, “Is this a concept you’re trying out? Like the fairies?”
“You’re an idiot,” Jin says, deadpan.
Ueda flicks water in his face. He says, “You think you’re hallucinating and I’m an idiot. Brush your teeth, Bakanishi.”
“No,” Jin snaps, and stalks out of the bathroom to go sit with Taguchi on the bed. Taguchi is watching something stupid on tv. Jin actually can’t even pay attention to it but he’s sure it’s stupid. It’s Taguchi, after all.
“Is Ueda being mean?” Taguchi asks, kindly.
“Ueda is BEING AN ASSHOLE,” Jin says, loud enough for Ueda to hear.
“That sounds like him,” Taguchi says, nodding. Then, “Your breath smells, dude.”
Taguchi drags him to the breakfast table, which is a conference room in the middle of the hotel, a hotel that is apparently in Niigata, where they’ve just finished the first leg of their tour. Breakfast is a bundle of still-too-green bananas that they have to share amongst all of the members.
Nakamaru is on the other side of the conference room, speaking to a woman with dark hair and dark red lipstick in a hushed voice. Jin doesn’t recognize her.
Koki is the only person at the table, eating his banana of the day, and Jin feels frozen in the doorway. The last time he spoke to Koki, it’d been on the phone-Jin had been drunk, half-out of his mind and half-heartbroken, and the first number he’d thought to call was-
If this is a dream, if Jin is going crazy, where is-
Jin’s throat hurts before he says it. “Hey,” he says, “Where’s Kamenashi?”
Koki looks up at that, mouth full, and Taguchi says, voice quiet and hard, his hand slipping off of Jin’s elbow like water slipping off an edge, an inevitability, “That’s not funny, Jin.”
5.
Where the fuck is Kame?
6.
The night before Jin left, his figurative bags were already packed and ready by the door.
All that was left to do was the press conference, and the official notice. Johnny said he would handle it himself, but he’d been weirdly quiet about how it would exactly go down, eerily silent, and Jin wasn’t allowed to have questions, concerns. If you choose your solo career, you can’t care about KAT-TUN anymore, Johnny said, weeks before, and Jin remembered it so vividly in that moment that it felt like Johnny had said it all over again, repeating himself just to make sure he was heard.
Kame stared at him from across the dining table at three o’clock in the morning, in Kame’s too-clean and pretty much not-lived-in million dollar apartment. His lips were pursed into a tense line. “You’re a coward,” he snapped.
Jin bristled. “It’s not my fault,” he said.
“You’re the one who wants to leave.”
Jin opened his mouth, but the words stuck in his throat. He looked at Kame, whose mouth was twisted to the side and the skin between his eyes was furrowed like he suddenly aged fifteen years, or like he was that dorky, ugly high school kid all over again, furiously pouring over baseball stats in his free time.
“Yeah,” Jin said, “I am.”
“Yeah,” Kame said, mocking, disgusted, and suddenly he leaned across the wood and metal stretched between them to press a hard kiss to Jin’s lips. His lips were dry and cracked, and Kame’s hand was pressed uncomfortably against Jin’s wrist, pinning a part of him to the table. Jin hurt, everywhere.
“Kame-” Jin began, pulling away immediately, eyes wide and his hand clenched into a fist in his lap, blunt fingernails scratching against sweaty palms-
“Get out of my apartment,” Kame said.
7.
No one talks to him after that.
Taguchi and Koki monitor the concert from last night-Jin can hear the tinny sound of their voices from the small speaker as they watch the shaky camerawork from their staff.
It sounds like the six of them, but they’ve always sounded complete when they sing together. Jin’s out of practice on trying to pick out their individual voices in a song, in a chorus. He remembers the first single they dropped after he left, one year ago. He remembers thinking, It sounds like KAT-TUN.
He wants to get closer, wants to see. A song he doesn’t even know is playing; his voice is there, harmonizing with Ueda. He almost doesn’t recognize his own voice. He’s singing an arrangement he’s never heard before.
“Jin,” Nakamaru says, and Jin looks up.
Nakamaru throws him a banana and a smile. “It’s been a long trip,” he says, soft-an out.
“Not really,” Jin says, and he leans his head back against the chair, looks up at the ceiling. Ueda is outside with the managers. Jin doesn’t know them; Ishihara-san quit before Jin did, but Jin didn’t care about his replacements, back then, the four that came and went. Jin doesn’t care about them now. He’s his own manager, now.
“He thinks he’s going crazy,” Taguchi says in the car, when they’ve all gotten settled. Jin hasn’t been cramped into a van with five-four other people in such a long time he forgot how uncomfortable it is. He’s in the back seat with Nakamaru, legs stretched out over Nakamaru’s lap.
“I think he’s just an asshole,” Koki says, as he pulls his headphones over his ears.
“Hey,” Nakamaru says, frowning, as Jin says, “I am going crazy.”
He stares at the iPhone in his hand. He types the password he uses now, in his current world, and it doesn’t work. He tries a few more combinations. They all fail, and the phone, the betraying asshole, lets him know that he only has three more tries before he’s locked out for the next 10 minutes, and then forever, if he keeps pushing it. Jin’s been trying to unlock it all morning ever since he found the phone, stuffed into one of his jean pockets.
“Do you know my password?” Jin pokes Nakamaru’s side.
“No,” Nakamaru says instantly.
“Seriously,” Koki says, almost concerned, “Did you hit your head last night or something?”
“It’s a concept,” Ueda explains; the manager that’s driving nods emphatically.
Taguchi says, “Let me try,” reaching out his hand.
“I only have a couple of tries left,” Jin says, cradling it against his chest. His lock screen is a picture of Pin, curled up in Jin’s lap and looking up at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“Have a little faith,” Ueda says, flipping mindlessly through a magazine in the front seat.
Jin pouts, but no one’s looking at him, except for Taguchi, who continues to beam in his direction. He feels like he’s nineteen again.
He hands it over.
Two minutes later, Koki says, “My birthday,” pointing at the screen, “Try my birthday.”
“I’m not going to waste the last try on your birthday,” Taguchi says, exasperated. Then, in a sad voice, “I really thought it would be mine.”
Jin lunges across the seats to snatch his phone back and kicks Nakamaru in the stomach in the process.
8.
Halfway through the ride back to Tokyo from Niigata, Jin looks up KAT-TUN on Nakamaru’s phone.
Nakamaru’s password is really easy; it’s the same as it’s been for years-9876. Very secure for a pop idol, Jin said once, and Nakamaru had just shrugged. I don’t have that much to hide, he said.
Good for you, Jin had thought, and had changed his password again later that night, just in case.
There are various articles on their concert last night and the day before-sold out, of course, because they’re KAT-TUN. He looks for any hint of Kamenashi in the articles; an injury, maybe? Maybe Kamenashi is sick and that’s why no one will talk about him. A sick Kame is the worst Kame.
Nothing.
He scrolls some more. Past fan pages that he’s learned to never go on, past speculative chat boards that Jin knows will just make his skin crawl with how much they know, how much they’ve seen. He clicks on the official KAT-TUN website.
The picture that loads, slow, steady, onto the screen of Nakamaru’s phone is of the five of them. No Kame.
Jin backs out of the website immediately, and types into google: KAMENASHI KAZUYA
The screen blinks back, impossibly bright even in the glare of the sun filtering in through the tinted windows all around him: KAMENASHI KAZUYA-SOLO ARTIST
“What,” Jin says out loud, “the fuck.”
9.
An article, dated a year ago:
KAMENASHI KAZUYA LEAVES KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN’s Kamenashi Kazuya (24) will officially graduate from the group, effective immediately, it has been announced. During KAT-TUN’s concert at the Tokyo Dome on Friday night, Johnny’s Jimusho president Johnny Kitagawa said the final decision has been made. Since last year, Kamenashi has been pursuing a solo career in acting and in music. He has scheduled a 6-city tour for February and March of next year and will be starring in two upcoming dramas in the fall. Meanwhile, KAT-TUN has been continuing as a 5-member group, just as they did when Akanishi Jin (26) temporarily left in 2006 to study abroad.
Kitagawa assured fans that KAT-TUN is not breaking up. Although the group’s name is based on the initial characters of the members’ names, it is said that Kamenashi’s “K” will be replaced by Akanishi absorbing the “K” for “Ak” of Akanishi. There are no plans to bring in a new member, as Kitagawa stated that there is no need to have six people in the group. He said that the remaining five members are currently doing fine without Kamenashi.
10.
“Dude,” Jin hisses, reaching out to shake Nakamaru awake, “Dude.”
“What,” Nakamaru groans, turning in his sleep. His eyes are screwed closed, arms crossed over his chest, curling in on himself. The air conditioning is blasting; Ueda likes it cold, and he’ll forget to turn it down for the people in the back.
“Kame left?!” Jin says.
Nakamaru’s eyes snap open. He frowns. Says, “To where? Isn’t he still back in Tokyo?”
“No, I mean-” Jin starts. Stops.
“I’m too tired for this, Akanishi,” Nakamaru says, turning to face the other way, the window, away from Jin.
His finger lingers on the name Kamenashi Kazuya in Nakamaru’s phone.
He could call him, right now, and no one would be able to stop him. Everyone else is asleep, or ignoring Jin’s existence. He wishes he could call Josh; wonders what would happen if he called Josh’s number, right now, but that would require Jin actually knowing Josh’s number. He makes a vow to memorize phone numbers from here on out.
Jin calls Yamapi instead.
Yamapi picks up on the fifth ring, sounding sleepy, bleary. “Hello?” he says, “Nakamaru?”
“It’s me,” Jin says, pressing the phone closer to his face. “Quick, answer me. Are we still best friends?”
Yamapi’s voice immediately changes. “Not when you wake me up early on my only day off in three months,” he snaps, “Are you drunk? Why are you calling from Nakamaru’s phone?”
“I don’t know my password,” Jin whines, “Help me.”
“You change it all the fucking time,” Pi says, then he yawns, loud, long. “I’m going back to sleep. Are you on your way back to Tokyo?”
“No, wait,” Jin says.
“Pi,” Jin says, not liking how he sounds, “Did Kame leave KAT-TUN?”
Pi would never lie to him, not like the paparazzi who make up dumb shit. The article could’ve been fake. His members like to fuck with him. Maybe they just go too far in this world that he’s found himself in; maybe they’re sick sons of bitches in this world. In every world Jin could find himself in, in a fucked up dream world or not, Pi would be the one he could trust, no matter what.
“Are you okay, man?” Pi says, sounding concerned and awake.
Jin clenches the phone in his hand and stares out the window, watches the scenery speed past them in a blur of muted color. He’s never seen anything clearly from inside these vans.
Pi’s only day off in three months, he thinks.
“I don’t know,” Jin says. He looks up to see Koki slide his headphones back over his right ear.
A pause. Another.
Pi breathes into the phone, in, out. Jin tried to mimic him over the tightness in his chest. He doesn’t know whose breath he’s listening to. It feels like an in-ear from a concert, too loud and overwhelming.
“Yeah,” Pi says, finally, “Kame left. But you knew this. You were there. Why are you asking?”
“Dude, seriously,” Pi says, “Are you okay?”
Jin says, “Yeah, I’ll call later,” and promptly hangs up.
When they’re almost back to Tokyo, about twenty minutes away, Jin gets a text from TURTLE.
Are you almost back yet? Do you want-
The rest of it cuts out; too long for the preview. Jin stares at the passcode screen as he tries to open the text, and the blaring warning that he only has one more try.
“I’m seriously going crazy,” he says, and thunks his head back against the car seat.
“This is Kamenashi, right?” Jin asks, shoving his phone in Nakamaru’s face as soon as he wakes up. He slaps away Nakamaru’s hands when he tries to reach for the phone; he has one try left and he’s not going to let Nakamaru waste it by trying his damn birthday.
Nakamaru blinks. “Akanishi,” he says, slowly, with practiced patience, “Do you know anyone else that you’d call Turtle?”
11.
There are many things that Jin remembers about not being in KAT-TUN-the smell of ramen after a long day of hunting for a studio rental, the weight of Josh’s arm wrapped around his shoulders after a recording session, the careful positioning of a camera on top of a kitchen shelf as he filmed himself.
Phone calls from the juniors, from the younger kids-“We miss you,” they would say every time, low like it was a secret, “Will you come back to visit?”
Kame, once, right after Jin left, during the world tour that he was supposed to go on, hiccuping the entire time, drunk off of soju and NO MORE PAIN’s success: I wish you were here.
Not -senpai. Not anymore.
A lease, another contract. He was the one drafting them up now. He slid them across the table, and watched someone else’s pen pressed hesitantly to the stark whiteness of the paper, and linger, and not sign. A rejection.
Still-always-a kiss.
12.
Jin doesn’t recognize the house that Taguchi gets dropped off to-it’s not his parents’ house, nor is it the apartment that Taguchi shared with his girlfriend for all the years that Jin’s known him.
Koki hops out of the car to take the train back home, tells Ueda to keep his things at his house for now. Ueda nods and continues to scroll through his phone.
Jin’s apartment is next, Nakamaru says. They turn down streets Jin remembers, past conbinis that he used to sneak into, mask on his face, hurriedly shoving cash across the tabletop to get out as fast as he could before the paparazzi showed up. It is so familiar that it actually disorients him, a sudden shock; of all places, of all--
“See you tomorrow,” Nakamaru says, as the car lurches to a halt, as Jin swallows back a curse and a question.
Kame’s apartment. They’re in front of Kame’s apartment.
“Where,” Jin begins, and Ueda says, “Oh my god just go be Kame’s problem, please.”
That’s how Jin finds himself standing outside of Kame’s apartment door with his luggage and his useless cellphone, his keys jammed into his hands by Nakamaru. A jumble of car keys, the key to the jimusho rehearsal rooms that Jin recognizes, the house key of his parents’ condo near Shinjuku.
The key to Kame’s apartment-there’s a “K” sharpied onto both sides of the key handle. Jin remembers doing that, years ago, when Kame first got the place-the first place he could afford on his own, when Shuuji to Akira dropped. Jin stole the key once to make a copy, and Kame had emailed him several lines of upset emojis that ended with: Idiot. I already made you one.
Kame changed the locks, years later, back in reality.
In this dream-world, though, apparently not. Maybe.
Jin knocks, once, twice. Considers knocking a third time when the door swings open, and there is Kame.
Kamenashi is standing in the middle of the doorway, wearing what looks like a ridiculously expensive suit. Smiling.
Fuck.
Jin hasn't seen him in a year. His wig is terrible. It doesn't fit right on his head, a little too big, and Jin can still see his real hair underneath it, even from one glance. Jin hasn't seen Kamenashi in a year. Hasn't spoken to him face-to-face in a year, since that last night, in this same apartment.
“Why are you knocking?” Kame asks, voice warm and amused, and then he steps back, once, one step. Jin follows him, pulling his luggage along behind him, and then Kame is slamming the door behind them, crashing into Jin with strong hands and a warm body, curling his fingers around the curve of Jin’s jaw as he leans forward to press a kiss, hard, familiar, to Jin’s lips.
Jin pulls away instantly, mouth dropping open.
“I missed you,” Kame murmurs, leaning forward after him, and tilts his head just right to press another kiss to Jin’s lips, open, his lips opening like an invitation that Jin never knew he could have. Jin closes his eyes, and Kame brushes a kiss against the corner of Jin’s lips, the dusty skin of Jin’s cheek.
Jin’s hands flounder-clench into fists, unravel, hang by his sides. There is no natural position.
“Kame,” Jin says, strangled, “What’s happening?”
13.
Kame says, voice flat and unimpressed, “So you think you’re going crazy?”
Jin nods. “Or I’m still dreaming,” he says, thoughtfully, “Last I remember, I fell asleep with Josh and here I am.”
“Josh?” Kame says, voice sharp, “The guy from LA? What was he doing in Niigata?”
“No, back in Tokyo,” Jin says, then awkwardly, low and hushed like a secret, “Back in the--real world.”
“Stop fucking around,” Kame says, looking tired. The edge in his voice is gone, but so is the warmth that Jin had been greeted with at the door; now it’s just tired, soft around the corners. Kame rubs at his face and blearily looks at him from across the dining table in Kame’s still too-clean, million dollar apartment, the same dining table that he, once upon a time, leaned over to kiss Jin, hard, unforgiving.
“We haven’t seen each other in days, and I don’t want to play games,” Kame continues.
“I’m not playing games,” Jin says, irritated, “I don’t know what’s going on and you all are acting like I’m just-”
He stops, then starts again: “You all are acting like I’m just fucking around, when I’m--you left KAT-TUN, and I’m still here, and no one will listen to me.”
“You--” Kame begins. He stops, and blinks at Jin from across the table. Kame’s hair is a mess, his makeup is smudged, and his suit is a terrible fit, a size too small. It pulls tightly across his shoulders. Jin’s uncomfortable just looking at him. Kame closes his eyes, leans against the back of the dining table chair. He breathes in, out.
Jin wants to tell him to finish his goddamn thought, and wants to press his thumb, soft, to the corner of Kame’s left eye to wipe away the eyeliner, and wants to tell Kame to go get some fucking sleep. He squashes those instincts down.
“You know that I left KAT-TUN, Jin,” Kame says, rolling his head to the side to look at Jin underneath hooded eyes, his neck crooked and shoulders askew like a human scraecrow. “I can’t fight about this anymore. It’s been a year.”
“I’m not trying to fight about it,” Jin says, “I just need to wake up.”
“I said stop messing around.”
“I’m not,” Jin says, “Where I’m from, we don’t even talk anymore!”
Kame takes a sharp breath in, and looks at him. His eyes are wide open. “This isn’t funny,” he says.
“I know,” Jin says, distressed.
Kame sighs. He pulls off his wig, and his natural hair is so familiar that it looks even more beautiful to Jin, even in the dim light of the apartment. It’s not even three o’clock yet, barely afternoon, but the curtains are drawn.
“I’m tired,” Kame says, finally, “Can we lay down and talk?”
The apartment looks different since the last time Jin saw it, a year ago, bare and empty except for the furniture that Kame paid some guy to furnish his place with. There were small touches that had been Kame’s--Ran’s bed, and Ran’s things; his clothing rack; his shoes piled in the corner. A shelf of books, a table for his cameras. Last time Jin had been here, the place hadn’t even felt lived in.
It’s still too clean, as Jin toes off his shoes and follows Kame down the long hallway to the master bedroom. The housekeeper that Kame keeps employed obviously still comes too often, gets paid to do nothing but wipe the sink down a third time after Kame’s already done it twice, to make the bed because that’s the only thing Kame’s ever been too lazy to do.
A major difference is that Jin’s stuff is everywhere.
His guitars, his shoes, his clothes. One glance at the bathroom and he knows that the left side of the sink is all of his stuff: his hair products that Kame wrinkles his nose at, his blue toothbrush, his fluffy towels that Kame thinks are too expensive.
“Do I live here?” It’s a pointless question. He already knows the answer.
Kame replies anyway, sounding hurt, “Of course you do. Where else would you live?”
14.
Back in reality, Jin and Kame never lived together.
They joked about it sometimes, mostly whenever Kame would clamber out of bed at 5am and press a kiss to Jin’s lips and say something about having to go back to get ready for work. Back then, they were going to the same place at the same time, and it was just so fucking inconvenient that Jin would dream of it, sometimes, living in the same place as Kame, waking up at the same time as Kame, having breakfast with Kame before they went off to the KAT-TUN rehearsal rooms together.
When Jin started doing more and more solo stuff, they were almost grateful for the separate spaces; their schedules made them come and go at different times, and it made more sense to text Kame at 3am to say he wasn’t going to make it over after a long day of recording than to stumble into his place and wake him up unnecessarily, especially if Kame had an early call.
When they broke up, just before Jin left, Jin remembers thinking of all the things he’d left at Kame’s place: the one guitar that he really liked, the socks, the jacket that Pi got him for Christmas six years ago, the endless amount of cds that he brought over and never thought to take back because it was a song that he wanted to share with Kame, an album he thought Kame would really like.
Jin remembers wondering if they were still littered around the apartment, or if Kame had collected them and put them away to never be thought about again. Back in reality, Kame had a condo in Okinawa that he never had time to visit, an old T-shirt hanging in his closet that he never wore. Memories he never thought about, old friends he never talked to.
Kame collected things for sentimental purposes, but for as long as Jin knew, he never gave himself time to be nostalgic over anything. Jin wondered, once, drunk and sad and falling over himself in the club, what Kame looked like when he thought of Jin.
He remembers trying to envision the look on Kame’s face, and kept coming up with blurry versions of the strong slope of Kame’s eyebrows, the bridge of his nose, the small curve of the bow of his top lip. He called Kame that night, months after leaving KAT-TUN, months after that last kiss at the dining table.
Kame, or Koki, who knows anymore, hung up on him.
He stumbled home, after that. Almost got off at Kame’s stop, but didn’t.
“I haven’t dreamt about you in a long time,” Jin says.
The bedroom looks the same.
Kame is pulling off his jacket and he says, voice soft, “Maybe three concerts in a row is too much. Just lay down.”
The bed is also the same. It’s large, white. The heavy comforter that Jin loves, the fluffy pillows that Kame will steal in the middle of the night. Jin swallows over the lump in his throat. He lays down on the bed without taking off his clothes, lets himself sink into it.
Kame lays down next to him. Jin turns his head to look at him.
He looks the same. His face isn’t blurry, or opaque, like Jin’s looking at him through a glass window from afar.
For a while, Jin had been convinced he’d forgotten what Kame looked like, soft and unguarded like this in their bedroom. He can’t believe he’s dreaming it now, vivid, real. He reaches out to press a finger to the side of Kame’s face, to fan his fingers against the pale curve of Kame’s cheek.
“Go to sleep,” Kame says, smiling. He shifts closer. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“I don’t feel sick,” Jin says.
“But I do,” Kame says. “Maybe I’m dreaming and this is a nightmare.”
“You can’t take this from me,” Jin says, “I’m the lost and confused one.”
Kame grins and leans forward. Jin closes his eyes, and lets himself be kissed. It’s soft, and warm, and familiar. Jin opens his mouth to kiss back, and Kame hums, a low sound, in the back of his throat that Jin can feel down to his toes.
“Do you know my passcode?” Jin asks.
“It’s Ran’s birthday,” Kame says, “I changed it before you left. Did you forget?”
“I missed you,” Jin says.
“I’m right here,” Kame says, and kisses him again, and again, and once more.
15.
They don’t fall asleep.
They exchange kisses for a long time, slow making out like back when they were teenagers and like they haven’t done in years, at least as long as Jin can remember. Kame’s mouth is kissed red, almost bruised around the edges, and Jin wipes away a little saliva at the corner of his mouth, enamored by the way Kame tilts his head into the pillow at the slightest touch. He doesn’t know if the real Kame ever did that, or maybe Jin just never paid close enough attention.
“Don’t get mad,” Jin says.
“That pretty guarantees that I’m going to get mad,” Kame says, rolling his eyes.
“Why’d you leave KAT-TUN?”
He has to know. Kame is here, in their bed, looking kissed and tired and like he’s Jin’s again, back before they kept fighting and wouldn’t stop, before Jin looked at Kame from across a dining room table and said he wanted out--of whatever was between them, of the band, of everything.
Kame says, “You know why.”
“Pretend I don’t,” Jin says, irritated.
There’s a pause, and Kame turns so that he’s laying flat on his back, eyes up to the ceiling. He folds his hand over his chest and says, contemplative, soft, “Because I had to.”
“Did Johnny make you?” Jin asks.
“A little,” Kame says, smiling a little. The right side of his mouth tilts up. It’s an attractive look. Jin clambers to his elbows so that he can lean over to press a kiss to his lips, in an attempt to capture it. “But mostly I just needed to.”
“For me,” Kame continues, “And for the band. I agreed with Johnny when he told me that I needed to focus on one and couldn’t do both.”
Jin remembers what it's like being on the other side of that table in that dim, dark office with Johnny staring at him like he's just doomed the rest of the jimusho, like he's fucked over everyone he's ever worked with and betrayed everyone he's ever cared about by wanting something more than what the company wanted to give. He remembers being told to choose, and remembers the tight-lipped look on Johnny’s face that let Jin know that it wasn’t really a choice at all.
Jin knows the look on Johnny’s face when he’s livid and rejected, carefully constructed contracts sitting untouched on a spotless tabletop. That day, Johnny had placed his hand on Jin's shoulder on Jin's last way out; it had been just as warm and strong as the first time, the day Jin auditioned.
Jin still feels the phantom weight of it, sometimes.
“Why didn’t you pick KAT-TUN?” Jin asks.
Jin’s had a hard time admitting to himself why he didn’t even try to pick KAT-TUN. At the end of the day, what it came down to was that his heart wasn’t in it anymore.
He can’t imagine a Kame whose heart wasn’t in KAT-TUN. That’s how he knows this is a dream world. His Kame, the real one, would always put the band first.
“I couldn’t,” Kame says. His eyes are trained on the ceiling. “It wasn’t an option for me.”
Kame sighs, and gets up. Swings his legs over the side of the bed. “I don’t like talking about this,” he says, “Get some rest and we can talk when you’re feeling like yourself.”
Jin says, in a rush, watching the muscles in Kame’s back bunch together, “Back in--back in my world,” Kame’s head tips forward, his head momentarily hanging between his shoulders, “I’m the one who left.”
He feels like he’s talking into a microphone, with how loud Jin’s voice is in his own damn ears.
“I left the band. And the company,” he barrels on, “So I get it.”
Kame’s still not looking at him.
“I get what not having that choice feels like,” Jin says, “Did I give you shit about it?”
“Of course you did,” Kame says, voice rough.
Of course he did.
“Don’t leave,” Jin says, “I’m sorry.” He reaches out for Kame’s wrist, and pulls lightly.
Kame comes to him with little resistance, facing away, his back to Jin’s front. He smells familiar, feels warm. Jin closes his eyes and thinks about how much he doesn’t want to forget this, when he finally wakes up.
As he’s falling asleep, Jin asks, soft, “Did I kiss you?”
Kame says, sounding wide awake, “When? Just now? Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“No,” Jin says, snorting. He buries his face into the back of Kame’s neck, into Kame’s hair. “When you left. The night you left. Did I kiss you?”
Kame pauses.
“You weren’t even there,” he says.
Something in Jin’s chest compresses, shivers.
“But you’re here now,” Kame says.
“Kazuya,” Jin says. He feels drowsy and horrible, like he’s sick. He wonders what this Akanishi Jin did to deserve Kame’s forgiveness in this dream-world. Wonders if it would work back in reality.
“I don’t care about the rest of it,” Kame says, sitting up in bed, “I never have. You just have to be here. We always get through the rest of it.”
He brushes Jin’s hair back from his forehead. Says, “You’re burning up, Jin. Are you okay?”
Jin leans into his touch, warm. Soft. Familiar, Jin thinks.
“Jin,” Kame says, “Jin, hey--”
16.
Jin wakes up in his own condo, in his own bed. Josh is in bed with him, mouth open, drooling against Jin’s pillows.
“Dude,” Jin says, and then he reaches out to shake Josh awake. Josh groans and buries his head into the pillow, swatting away at Jin’s hands. “Dude, wake up.”
“Go away,” Josh groans, and Jin calls him useless and stumbles to his feet. He’s in his pajamas, back in Tokyo, back in the world he knows. He feels a wave of nausea and curses himself for how much drinking he did last night. He looks at himself in the mirror of the bathroom--dark circles under his eyes, sleep dust in the corner of his eyes, hair a mess.
He does his best to wash it away, to comb his hair.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning.
He has somewhere he has to be.
The taxi driver goes down the familiar streets, past the conbinis that Jin knows too well, to the apartment building that he hasn’t been to in a year except for last night, in a dream.
Jin has a beanie and sunglesses on, still dressed in the baggy shirt and pants he slept in.
“Here?” the cab driver says, tilting his head to stare from the front window. He squints. It’s early for everyone.
“Yes,” Jin says, shoving the money at the old man just to get his eyes off the apartment building. He bows when he gets out of the car and hopes that he won’t go to the tabloids about how still-an-asshole Akanishi Jin needed an urgent ride to a mysterious apartment building at seven o’clock in the morning.
He takes the stairs two at a time, and then regrets it when he’s in front of Kame’s door, sooner than he could’ve been, unprepared. He thinks of going back down and up again, just to have time to think about it some more.
What is he going to say?
I had a dream about you, and it made me realize I still want to be with you, and mostly I just want to be here, with you, all the time. I’m sorry about everything. Can we try again? Yes, this is because of a dream. Wait, no, don’t close the door.
He falters, his hand almost up against the door to knock, and thinks, This is a terrible idea, when the door swings open and there is Kame, Kamenashi, in front of him.
He’s wearing what looks like a ridiculously expensive suit.
Jin hasn't seen him in a year.
His wig is terrible. It doesn't fit right on his head, a little too big, and Jin can still see his real hair underneath it, even from one glance. Jin hasn't seen Kamenashi in a year. Hasn't spoken to him face-to-face since last night, in his dreams, in this apartment.
“Jin,” Kame says, shocked, blinking rapidly. “Akanishi,” he amends, and then, “What are you doing here?”
He sounds wary. He sounds tired.
Jin wishes they were inside.
“I wanted to see you,” Jin says, and Kame’s eyes widen, almost comically so. He sticks his head out of the door enough to look around them, left and right, and then grabs Jin by his pajama shirt to drag him into the apartment, all the while hissing, “What? You can’t just say that out loud in the hallway!”
“Oh,” Jin says, “I forgot how nosy your neighbors are.”
Kame slams the door behind them, looking furious. “Yes, of course you did,” he snaps, and then he looks at his watch.
He says, “I have to leave in two minutes. Did you need something?”
Then shrewdly, “Are you drunk? Why are you here?”
Jin opens his mouth to tell him about the dream, so vividly real, that it made Jin climb barefoot and dumbassed into a cab and straight to Kame’s apartment in the hopes that he could make it actually, actually real. He ends up saying another truth instead: “I missed you.”
Kame closes his eyes. Jin can visibly see him counting to ten in his head.
“Jin,” Kame says.
Jin interrupts, “Hear me out.”
Kame says, “No, I don’t think--”
“I was dumb,” Jin continues, over the rush in his ears and the look on Kame’s face, “I gave up on us without really trying, and I regret it. I still think I made the right decision about leaving the band and we can fight about that, I’m sorry I never gave us the chance to fight about it, and I’m sorry I left.”
He thinks about the concert where Johnny announced that KAT-TUN would become a five-member band. He thinks about what Kame would’ve looked like, in that moment; what he was thinking about. Jin hates that he doesn’t know, hates that he has to wonder, hates that he never asked.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Jin says, “I want to be here.”
Kame takes a sharp breath in. Exhales out.
“Are you done?” he asks.
“No,” Jin says, even though he is. He doesn’t want to be done. He feels nauseated. He’s hungover, and nervous, and feels like he’s shaking all over, and he’s staring at Kame’s face so hard that it feels like his eyes are crossing.
“Well,” Kame says, voice hard, “I’m done listening.”
Then he’s crossing the foyer, expensive suit pulled tight across his tense shoulders, and he’s in front of Jin in two seconds flat, close enough that Jin’s eyes really do have to cross to look at him. Kame’s hands are on his face, gentle but strong, and Kame’s lips are hard, almost tense, against Jin’s, like it’s unknown territory.
Jin’s hands falter for a second by his side, until he remembers what to do, until it clicks, and then he opens his mouth against Kame’s, warm and familiar, tilts his head just slightly to the right so that they fit together as well as they always have. Fits his hand lightly against the curve of Kame’s side, places his other against the side of Kame’s neck.
Kame’s fingers tighten in Jin’s hair as Jin pulls away.
“Don’t go,” Kame says. His eyes are closed, and his forehead is leaned forward, pressed lightly to Jin’s. “Stay here.”
Jin bends forward to kiss him again instead of answering, and Kame leans away from it, frowning.
“I need to hear you say it,” he says.
“Thought you were done listening,” Jin says, grinning. They’re close enough that it’s more like sharing air than a kiss, but Jin will count as one anyway.
“Not for this,” Kame says.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jin says. Then, “What about you?”
Kame smiles, warm, and leans forward to kiss Jin, again, and once more, and Jin lets him.
They’ll have time for words later.